Journal de Genève
- The Latest Popular Vote in England
- Obstacle Course
- Letter from Berlin
The Journal de Genève of 12 November 1926 carried H. Wilson-Harris's report on Labour's sweeping gains in the English municipal elections. He wrote that the results had surprised and pleased a leading German socialist he met in Berlin and alarmed English Conservatives, and put Labour's gains at 149 seats in all, against Liberal losses of 45 and Conservative losses of 63. An editorial signed "J. M." described the Geneva Grand Council rejecting the minority's plan by 47 votes to 23 and sending the majority's plan to a second debate. A letter from Berlin looked ahead to the Reichstag's third reading of a bill to protect young people from immoral literature and art: it called the aim praiseworthy but warned that a censor in one state, such as Mecklenburg, could decide what readers in Munich and Berlin were not allowed to read.
Translation
The Latest Popular Vote in England
The successes of the socialist party in England in the recent municipal elections have provoked a great deal of comment in every quarter, and a certain nervousness in some. A few days ago I had occasion to talk in Berlin with a very well-known German socialist leader, who was as surprised as he was pleased at the extent of the socialist victories. In Conservative circles in England, on the other hand, no one hides their alarm at the progress socialism has just made in the important field of local government. Elections for the town councils, which are entrusted with the public affairs of the cities and boroughs of England, take place once a year, at the beginning of November. Members are generally elected for three years, and one third retire each year. In a word, the Labour or socialist party gained 149 seats in all, while the Liberals lost 45 and the Conservatives 63.
Obstacle Course
On Thursday the Grand Council was called upon to clear the first great obstacle on the course it has to run: the obstacle of the vote to "enter into the matter." It cleared it without the slightest hesitation: by 47 votes to 23 it refused to take the minority's plan as the basis of its deliberations, and then, by a show of hands, it decided to move on to a second debate on the majority's plan.
Letter from Berlin
One debate promises to be interesting: the third reading of the bill, drawn up on the basis of a motion from the Right, to protect young people against the immoral productions of literature and art. The bill was received with sympathy by all Germans who hold as a principle the respect owed to childhood: maxima debetur puero reverentia. Its aim is obviously praiseworthy, but its elastic provisions give rise to concern, and so it is drawing sharp criticism. For example, the restored censorship would fall to each of the German states, and its decisions would be applied throughout the whole Reich, so that a work banned in Mecklenburg would also, automatically, be banned in Bavaria and Prussia, and the censor in Schwerin would decree what may not be read in Munich and Berlin. This clumsy provision therefore seems exorbitant to German particularism.
Context
The scale of Labour's November 1926 municipal gains
Wilson-Harris gave Labour 149 seats gained in all, with the Liberals down 45 and the Conservatives down 63, and explained that a third of councillors retire each year. The Spectator's issue of 6 November 1926 reported the same annual polling in 300 county and municipal boroughs of England and Wales outside London, confirming that one third of members retire each year, but it put Labour's net gain at 152 seats, three more than the Journal's figure. According to The Spectator, Labour gained 7 seats in Leeds and 6 in Sheffield, which gave it a majority in both cities. It also gained 10 seats at Stoke-on-Trent, 8 in Birmingham and 7 in Manchester, though The Spectator did not say that Labour won control in those places. Wilson-Harris's account of Conservative alarm therefore reflects real advances in large industrial cities, including outright majorities in at least two of them.
Conservative worries and the 1927 audit law for local councils
The Conservative alarm Wilson-Harris described continued in Parliament's treatment of local councils over the following years. A Commons exchange of 30 January 1930 shows that an Audit (Local Authorities) Act had been passed in 1927. On that day Sir K. Wood asked the Minister of Health whether he would bring proposals before Parliament to repeal the Act. Mr. Greenwood replied that he could not undertake to legislate at present because of the pressure of parliamentary business. Wood then claimed that all the London boroughs with Socialist majorities were demanding repeal and asked whether the minister did not know that they wanted to get back to "Poplarism" as quickly as possible. The exchange shows that, in Wood's view, the 1927 audit law served as a check on Socialist-run councils, the kind of local power whose growth the Journal's correspondent reported in November 1926.
The Grand Council's vote and the road to "Grande Genève"
J. M.'s editorial reports that the Grand Council refused, by 47 votes to 23, to take the minority's plan as the basis for its work and then sent the majority's plan to a second debate by a show of hands. The excerpt does not name the subject of the bill. The City of Geneva's official history of its municipal system records that on 18 May 1930, four years after a first refusal, Geneva's voters approved the creation of "Grande Genève", which merged the communes of Geneva, Eaux-Vives, Plainpalais and Petit-Saconnex. Since that first refusal falls in 1926, the debate J. M. likened to an obstacle course may have been an early stage of the merger question. After the merger, the enlarged city was run by an administrative council of five members and had a municipal council of 80 members, an arrangement the city says is still in force.
How the Berlin youth-protection bill became law
The bill whose third reading the Berlin letter anticipated was enacted before the end of the year. According to Legal Tribune Online, President Hindenburg signed the "Schmutz- und Schundgesetz" into law with effect from 18 December 1926. Its first section provided that, to protect the young, trashy and indecent writings were to be entered on a list. Once a work's listing was publicly announced, it became illegal to hand it over, whether for payment or not, to anyone under 18. Inspection offices, each made up of an official chairman and eight experts, decided which works were listed, and those affected could apply for removal to a higher inspection office set up in Leipzig. The Reich-wide effect the Berlin correspondent feared, under which one decision would bind readers everywhere, was thus written into the law through a single list.
Why critics called the law's provisions "elastic"
The Berlin letter praised the bill's aim but objected to its "elastic" provisions, and the law as passed kept that weakness. Martin Rath, writing in Legal Tribune Online in 2016, notes that the act of 18 December 1926 contained no definition at all of what the new inspection offices were supposed to keep off the market. He judges that, despite the liberal Weimar constitution, the new youth-protection law created a nightmare for lawyers and writers. The law exempted political daily newspapers and political magazines, but for other writings the decision on what counted as trash or filth was left to the inspection offices. This lack of definition is the concrete form of the concern the Journal's correspondent expressed in November 1926.
Original
Le dernier scrutin populaire en Angleterre
Les succès du parti socialiste en Angleterre aux récentes élections municipales ont provoqué un grand nombre de commentaires dans tous les milieux et une certaine nervosité dans quelques-uns. J'ai eu l'occasion, voici peu de jours, de m'entretenir à Berlin avec un chef socialiste allemand très connu, qui se montrait aussi surpris que satisfait de l'étendue des victoires socialistes. Dans les cercles conservateurs d'Angleterre, d'autre part, on ne dissimule pas son alarme en présence du progrès que le socialisme vient de faire dans le domaine important du gouvernement local. Les élections pour les conseils municipaux, auxquels sont confiées les affaires publiques des villes et des bourgs en Angleterre, ont lieu une fois par an, au début de novembre. Les membres sont en général élus pour trois ans et un tiers se retirent chaque année. En deux mots, le parti travailliste ou socialiste a gagné au total 149 sièges, pendant que les libéraux en ont perdu 45 et les conservateurs 63.
Course d'obstacles
Jeudi, le Grand Conseil était appelé à franchir le premier grand obstacle de la piste qu'il doit parcourir: l'obstacle de l ' «entrée en matière». Sans aucune hésitation il l'a franchi: par 47 voix contre 23, il a refusé de prendre comme base de ses délibérations le projet de la minorité, puis, à mains levées, il a décidé le passage en second débat sur le projet de la majorité.
Lettre de Berlin
Un débat promet d'être intéressant, la troisième lecture du projet de loi élaboré d'après une motion de la droite en vue de protéger la jeunesse contre les productions immorales de la littérature et de l'art. Ce projet a été accueilli avec sympathie par tous les Allemands qui posent en principe le respect dû à l'enfance: maxima debetur puero reverentia. Sa portée est évidemment louable, mais son dispositif élastique inspire des inquiétudes; aussi donne-t-il lieu à de vives critiques. Ainsi, par exemple, la censure rétablie relèverait de chacun des Etats allemands, et ses décisions seraient appliquées dans toute l'étendue du Reich, de sorte qu'un ouvrage interdit dans le Mecklembourg le serait aussi, automatiquement, en Bavière et en Prusse, et que le censeur du Schwerin décréterait ce qu'il est défendu de lire à Munich et à Berlin. Cette disposition maladroite paraît donc exorbitante au particularisme allemand.