CAB129-45 — Page 192

Printed for the Cabinet. April 1951

CONFIDENTIAL

C.P. (51) 102

9th April, 1951

CABINET

Copy No. 31

PROPAGANDA FILM OF THE BERLIN YOUTH RALLY

MEMORANDUM BY THE HOME SECRETARY

I desire to draw the attention of my colleagues to certain points arising on the Foreign Secretary's Memorandum on the subject of the propaganda film of the Berlin Youth Rally (C.P. (51) 86).

2. As I understand it, the main question is whether the President of the Board of Trade should refuse to grant an import licence for a copy of this film on the application of the National Union of Students, but paragraph 6 of the Foreign Secretary's Memorandum refers to the possibility of exercising the Royal Prerogative to detain the film at the port of entry and to prevent the film being released to the National Union of Students. The circumstances in which it would in my view be proper to exercise the Prerogative powers are summarised in para- graph 6 of the Foreign Secretary's Memorandum. I have seen an exhibition of the film and in my view there can be no question of using the Prerogative power to intercept it. The use of the power is open to challenge both in the courts and in Parliament and there is grave danger of losing this power or of having it curtailed if it is used unnecessarily.

3. It should be made clear that if the film is, in fact, brought into this country there is nothing the Government can do to prevent it being exhibited. Private exhibitions of the film would be subject to no control, and in the case of public exhibitions the control would rest with the local licensing authority. It would be quite contrary to accepted practice and most undesirable for the Government to attempt to interfere with the discretion which the law has vested in local licensing authorities.

4. While anything that may be said on the question of merits must be subject to review when information as to the nature of the import licensing powers is avail- able, it does seem to me that it would be quite wrong in principle to use such powers to exercise censorship. I see that in paragraph 7 of the Foreign Secretary's Memorandum it is suggested that we should have prevented the importation of Nazi anti-semitic propaganda films before the war, but I am not aware that any question of such action ever arose. If we attempt to exercise the powers to regulate import for the purpose of imposing a political censorship, we shall without doubt find ourselves in very deep water before long. I should have thought that action by the Government to prevent the importation of this film would provide much better propaganda material for the Communists than the film itself is likely to do.

J. C. E.

Home Office, S.W.1,

9th April, 1951.

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