NEWS from one hundred years ago: INCITING LAWLESSNESS

One of the lead stories in the papers today concerns their own freedom to voice political opinions. The Grey River Argus, the only daily newspaper anywhere in the country to support the Labour Party, was convicted yesterday under wartime censorship law. An article in the newspaper ‘incited lawlessness’ by saying: ‘From the wage earners’ point of view, the most important event in the world to-day is the success attending the Red Army of Russia in scattering and humiliating all the forces of reaction and intrigue that can be scraped together by the Allied capitalists.’ The article also said that the working class of the world must fight for justice not by tinkering with the system but by becoming ‘uncompromising revolutionists.’ No publication was ever convicted for saying such things before the First World War. Wartime tightening of political censorship is now being kept up by the postwar conservative government. The Grey River Argus does not bow its head. ‘If it should prove that the peaceful advocacy of Socialism in their own press is incomparable with the laws of New Zealand, or rather with the present regime,’ the paper declares in its editorial today, ‘then it will be for the workers of this country to consider what other steps must be adopted.’
​
Grey River Argus, 20 October 1920