As long ago as 1920 Sir Donald Maclean, opposing the bill, said it was object nable because it contained no definition of an official document, and that it hit at the legitimate ex-excise of the function of the pre:
It was the activity of the police that had aroused the resentment and alarm of the whole newspaper world. In practice inconvenient publication had been taken as synonymous with illegal publication, and the police had gone to the extreme of inventing stories. t One case involved the publication of informatíon about the contents of some proposed legislation dealing with the coal industry. The bill itself had not been published,—The Attorney General's Department set the machinery in motion, and two Lobby journalists were asked to attend at the Attorney's office. They did so, but declined to reveal the source of their information, and gave the assurance that there was no reason to doubt the fidelity of any civil servant, Tt can now be stated how that case arose, Mr. Robson went on. The m-servants, Sir Samuel Hoare, in the House of Commons, gave an undertaking that in future the authorization to use the Act would be given only in cases where the information disclosed was itself of serious public importance. That assurance was worth something, but until it was embodied in legislation it was not worth very much. The journalist was not seeking to put himself outside the operations of the law Or to secure a privileged position incompatible with the responsibility of common citizenship, but he did object to being placed in a worse position than any common felon or suspected murderer, who at least was not required to furnish the evidence for the prosecution in advance of his trio Mr. A. T. Penman, of London, seid that they were fighting the battle of journalists not only in Great Britain but all over the world, as these acts could be put into operation by the decree of the governors of British Colonies. There was a very real danger to their many colleagues in the colonies, especially in places like Singapore, formation came to hand as the result of an indiscreet speech by a member of Parliament who, believing himself Millionaire Chinese Laundryman Dies
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.