Catholics hack Commons' demand for action to get rid of unsavoury reading for children

BEAT THE 'HORROR COMICS'
Attractive new publications to put them out of • bustness?
THE undertaking given to the Commons by the new Home Secretary, Major Lloyd George, to look "very carefully" into the problem of "horror comics" is eagerly welcomed by a number of Catholics prominent in family welfare activities and children's education who spoke to "The Catholic Herald" this week.
The advice of the Catholic teachers' national president, Mr. Richard Burke—a father and a headmaster—is to beat the horror comics by producing other comics—comics that, with first rate production, stories and pictures would put the others out of business.
But he warns, don't "allow the saints in Heaven to Infiltrate among space pilots. The saint has to take second place to the space pilot and the young reader feels he is being 'got at.'" "Some form of censorship is obviously necessary. however much we may dislike it." said the headmaster of a big London Catholic secondary school.
"True, we all graduated through the stage of reading comics and thrillers when we were young without coming to much harm. But some children's papers today have definitely hit anew low level."
41sio easy matter'
It is obvious that anxiety to protect the minds of British children from unhealthy reading is conflicting with an ingrained distrust of censorship tending to encroach upon freedom of speech and publication.
Some people would lay the onus of solution squarely on the shoulders of those directly responsible for the upbringing and training of children and would not have it shifted to the impersonal jurisdiction of the courts.
In the Commons last week five M.P.s asked Major Lloyd George if he would take action to prevent the circulation of horror comics.
Mr. John Rankin (Lab.) asked if horrific comics could be banned from the country entirely or if the Minister could find a "definition of the term 'obscenity' which will bring them within the compass of the law."
Such a definition, said the Home Secretary, is difficult and it is "no easy matter to differentiate between what is objectionable and what is not."
"While some of these publications are certainly better not read by children in this country," he said, "others are quite unobjectionable. . . . But I am looking into the matter very carefully and I will do all I can."
Action overdue Mr. Richard A. B. Burke, president of the Catholic Teachers` Federation, said to THE CATHOLIC HERALD:
'The Home Secretary's promise to take action against 'horror comics' and obscene books will naturally be a source of satisfaction to Catholic teachers.
"This action is long overdue; and while the effect of their sales on the young may not be so evident in this country as in the U.S.A.. the effect is nevertheless there, as any probation officer will tell you.
"Naturally, teachers and children, will look for a satisfactory substitute. Children are voracious readers and it is idle to pretend that they do not enjoy sensational reading. Of course they do, and that far-seeing clergyman-become-editor knew this when he launched Dan Dare in the stratosphere of children's reading.
'Too holy' comics
controls three exciting and cleanly sensational 'comics' for boys, girls and 'mixed infants.'
"But these alone are not sufficient to satisfy the maw of children's reading needs.
"A number of attempts have been made by well-meaning Catholics to provide Catholic comics. Frankly. I have yet to see one which fills the bill—judged by any standard. Most of them are too holy.
"To my mind a comic should consist of reading and picture matter which is purely recreational. To allow the saints of Heaven to infiltrate among space pilots is not fair to the saints or to the children. The saint has to take second place to the space pilot, and the young reader feels that he is being 'got at:
Writers wanted "Have we no enlightened writers of children's fiction and capable artists who can turn out not Catholic comics hut comics fit to be read by all children—including Catholics?
"The standard must he high— good writing, good drawing and colour and excellent printing. Otherwise they will fail in their object.
"Perhaps one of our Catholic weeklies would undertake the printing and distribution."
The headmaster of a large Catholic secondary school In London said
"Perhaps the best solution would be to set up some sort of 'persuasive' body operating like the highly effective American campaigns against inmorality in films.
'There are some comics on sale
'HORROR COMICS MUST BE STOPPED'
now which no parent should dream of allowing his children to read. They have got to be stopped somehow.
"Psychologists talk as though it were dangerous to stop any child from doing what he wants to do. I prefer what Lord Montgomery said In another connection : 'There are things that are right and things that are wrong? And licence for children in these matters is wrong.
"Some of us read recently of a children's paper which told the story of a girl whose mother was discovered with a lover. The girl shot her father, put the smoking gun into her mother's hand and rejoiced when mother and lover went to the electric chair. 'The cops didn't pin it on me,' she said.
"That kind of thing must go. It is the product of a diseased mind.
"That particular comic was the first issue of a new publication, and, according to a letter written to The Times Educational Supplement, was bought by a child in a sweetshop."
Restraining view
A restraining view comes from a parish priest in the East End of London.
"I wonder," he said, "how far we project adult inhibitions into children's minds. We all went through it. After all, some of Grimm's fairy tales might not pass a modern censor who wanted to be really finicky.
"What about things like 'Fee, Ii. fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman'? Is it that the principle remains the same while only the technique has changed?
"I am inclined to be a little suspicious of the present campaign hecause a lot of it started two years ago as part of a Communist antiAmerican campaign. We saw a lot of it down here.
"I must say I have not noticed any deterioration among the many children I have to deal with --some of them at an Approved School--due to comics. It is difficult to sec that they have had any influence on them,
"However, while we must avoid being led up the garden path by puritans and racketeers. I fully appreciate that children need safeguarding. But this is primarily the task of parents. teachers and club leaders rather than of the law.
What do they like?
"How many parents take the trouble to examine their children's reading matter or to see their films?
"As regards the immediate problem. tackle the children themselves. They're a pretty highly sophisticated lot these days. Make an essay competition of it, if you like.
"Ask them what they like reading and why. Find out from them what it is they get out of these comics if they enjoy reading them. Ask them if they think it has any effect on them. They'll probably tell you."
The assistant secretary of the Union of Catholic Mothers states that her organisation has been fighting unhealthy papers for children for six years.
111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 The advice the U.C.M. invariably gives to mothers is: "It's no use forbidding a child to read anything unless you can supply something to take its place."
The U.C.M. tried to combat current trends by importing copies of Catholic papers published for children in America and distributing them here, but had to stop it because of the cost.
"If mothers cannot get specifically Catholic papers," said the U.C.M. leader, "they can at least see that their children buy papers with a Christian bias like the English publication The Eagle.
"The remedy lies in the parents' hands. They must 'vet' their children's reading and endeavour to get hold of the right sort of material for them."
Y.C.W. view
The national president of the Young Christian Workers told The CATHOLIC HERALD:
"We continued the practice of importing good American papers like Topix and distributing them to children here until 1951. But unfortunately we had to sell it for sixpence a copy and could not compete with the many cheaper papers of a less desirable kind.
"Our attitude is that Catholics must do more than buy Catholic
products. They must try to influence the non-Catholic publisher.
"Catholics working in publishing companies here should bring all their influence to bear in toning-up the level of the comics and books which their organisations turn out."
A Catholic barrister, dealing with the law as it stands, said : "English law tests obscenity by whether 'the tendency of the matter charged is to deprave and corrupt those who are open to immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of this kind may fall.' This is wide enough to cover some but not all 'horror comics.'
No censorship "The publisher of obscene literature may face trial before a jury— which then has the task of applying the definition of obscenity to the work in question—or be tried by magistrates under the Vagrancy Act. I 824.
"Apart from this, the magistrates can. under the Obscene Publications Act, 1857, order the destruction of indecent or obscene publications in their own court areas.
"Finally Customs laws restrict the importation of indecent or obscene literature, and it is an offence to transmit such matter through the post.
"But Britain, unlike Eire and other countries, has no censorship board for literature in general, although a list of books condemned by the verdicts of jury or bench in recent years does exist as a guide to the police.
"Except in the most flagrant and obvious cases the judicial and democratic tendency is to defend the right to publish.
Cumbersome "The authorities. however, are now inclining to the view that existing safeguards. though adequate in theory. prove somewhat cumbersome and sporadic in application.
"An effort to broaden the definition of obscenity is possible, but a modification of procedure in this branch of the criminal law would seem to be a more fruitful reform."