One Million Votes Offer
One Million Votes Offer is an article published in the Sunday Dispatch on 28 october 1928.
One Million Votes Offer
SPIRITUALISTS' MOVE FOR ELECTION.
PERSECUTION CRY.
From our own correspondent.
Manchester, Saturday Night.
One million votes are promised to any political party which at the next general election undertakes to pass a law that will save spiritualists from being prosecuted under the Vagrancy Act.
This is a result of the campaign against the prosecution of bona-fide spiritualists and mediums which is being waged by the spiritualist societies in Great Britain.
The council of the Spiritualists' National Union, representing 400 churches in Great Britain, met at Manchester to-day and a resolution was passed that a definite manifesto should be prepared setting forth the position of the spiritualist and the law.
This manifesto is to be presented to the leaders of the political parties.
The campaign has arisen out of the prosecution of the spiritualist medium Mrs C. Cantlon, who at Westminster Police Court on July 24 last was found guilty of "having professed to tell fortunes," though the charge was dismissed under the Probation of Offenders Act.
CONAN DOYLE'S PLEA.
Below is an extract from a letter Sir A. Conan Doyle sent to the Home Secretary before he sailed for South Africa:
- (1) That the laws were passed before modern spiritualism was heard of, and they are therefore not applicable to us.
- (2) We regard the use and development of high-class mediumship as necessary to our religion. The suppression of it, therefore, is from, our point of view religious persecution. I earnestly hope that the Conservative Government will make some effort to meet our demands.
Mr. W. Oaten. editor of The Two Worlds newspaper, told me to-night:
"Spiritualism is a religion, and we must be able to practise it without being persecuted and prosecuted owing to foolish laws that ought to have been abolished years ago."
