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In 1944 Europe was in the midst of World War II and Britain, an allied nation, brought with her all her colonial strength. When Jamaican journalist Roger Mais, who opposed imperialism, wrote an article criticizing Churchill's war aim as being the preservation of British supremacy, he was prosecuted under the Defence Regulations that were aimed at ensuring the successful prosecution of the war. This article examines Mais' prosecution under the regulations, contextualizing it in light of growing tension between the British Empire and the Jamaican national movement.
In 1944, as Britain and her allies were fighting against Fascism in NaziGermany and the axis, British colonials in Jamaica were agitating to end imperialism at home. On 11 July 1944, in the face of a new constitution consolidating British rule, Public Opinion, a progressive Jamaican newspaper, published an article written by nationalist agitator Roger Mais that began:
Now we know why the draft of the New Constitution has not been published before. The authors of that particular piece of hypocrisy and deception are the little men who are hopping about like mad all over the British Empire implementing the real official policy, implicit in the statements made by the Prime Minister [Winston Churchill] from time to time.1
That man of brave speeches has told the world again and again that he does not intend the old order to change; that he does not mean to yield an inch in concessions to any one, least of all to people in the Colonies. Time and again he has avowed in open Parliament that, in so many words, what we are fighting for is that England might retain her exclusive prerogative to the conquest and enslavement of other nations and she will not brook competition in that field from anyone.2
On July 12, the police seized the "Now We Know" manuscript in a raid on Public Opinion's office.3 On the next day, Mais' family home was also raided.4 The searches yielded fifteen summonses, five each, against City Printery and Osmond Theodore (O.T.) Fairclough, publisher and editor of Public Opinion respectively, and Mais.5 Along with seditious libel against the British and Jamaican governments and Churchill, the defendants were charged with breaching the Defence Regulations by publishing an article...