Individual and Civil Liberties
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Everyone must be equal under the law, and able to enjoy the fundamental freedoms of belief, thought, expression and the press.
From the book Big Ideas: The Social Crusades of Joseph Atkinson, edited by Michael Pieri:
Joseph Atkinson's crusading journalism made him powerful friends and foes. In the early 1900s, workers applauded his support for unions and their right to strike for higher wages. Businessmen disliked his insistence that all public utilities should be owned by the public.
When labour unrest erupted in Canada following the end of World War I, the Star's publisher advocated far-reaching social reforms as the best defence against the threat of Bolshevism.
"Law and order must be maintained. But more is required. We must build up a social system that . . . is better than Bolshevism. We must not allow conditions to be maintained or to arrive which will cause discontent and pile up the inflammable material on which the flames of Bolshevism may feed," said a 1919 editorial.
The viewpoint aroused suspicion among the wealthy elite. Powerful businessmen were already unhappy with the Star's calls for an excess profits tax, and the paper's relentless push for social reforms such as old-age pensions, unemployment insurance and mothers' allowances. When the Star also began to vocally support minimum wages, the eight-hour day, and labour having a bigger voice in Parliament, the paper came to be seen by some critics as showing a "Bolshevistic trend."
This view hardened in the late 1920s when the paper engaged in a spirited defence of free speech and the right of public assembly, at a time when police roughly broke up meetings in the parks with gas, batons and mounted police charges. The paper's belief in the free public expression of opinions led to accusations that the Star was sympathetic with Communism. The paper dismissed all such suggestions, made principally by newspaper rivals and, with a jab at the Telegram , declared in 1929:
" . . . This paper steadily adheres to liberal principles, believes in democracy and has no more use for Communism or the Reds than the Tories' morning newspaper."
The paper also aggressively fought racial religious bigory, the growing power of Toronto's police force, and mass deportations of immigrants from across Canada who became ill, unemployed or were otherwise seen as undesirable.
The Star publisher personally opposed capital punishment, a view that was reinforced after spending a night in a death-watch with a hangman and then covering the grisly execution of a condemned murderer the following day. The hangman was John Radclive, a steward at the Sunnyside Boating Club of Toronto. He executed murderers as a sideline. On the eve of the execution, the hangman told Atkinson: "I shall carry it out as strict and stern as if I was shooting a dog . . ."
But the execution of murderer Reginald Birchall was hideously botched. It took the condemned man 18 minutes to die of strangulation.
Under Atkinson, the Star became a forum for a lenghty debate on capital punishment. One faction in Canada believed there was too much "maudlin sympathy for desperate criminals" and that the gallows was "a necessary deterrent," while another faction argued that crime - even when culminating in murder - should be treated like any other disease. The Star wavered on capital punishment for a half century under the publisher. Some editorials and stories tended to favour a more humane treatment of criminals and supported a system of parole for convicts who, after serving prison terms, had demonstrated they had learned the errors of their ways and were able to re-enter society as good citizens. Other editorials and stories tended to support the death penalthy but expressed the view that if hangings of murderers had to continue, the executions should be conducted out of the public eye.
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