A nationwide campaign of violence against Jehovah’s witnesses began. Press attacks, particularly in the Catholic Herald and the Universe, subtly encouraged further acts of violence. The first assault occurred at Clydebank, Scotland, on February 7, 1939, and other incidents quickly followed in other parts of Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland. Instigated by local priests and carried out by Catholic Action groups, ten of the cases were prosecuted and the offenders sentenced.

In Clydebank, Scotland, two priests supported by their congregations ordered Witnesses operating a sound car to get out of town. Departing in the sound car, George Saltmarsh came on a crowd of about a hundred in the main road kicking a ball all over the tramway tracks. As he got nearer, Saltmarsh saw a phonograph lying on the road, and then suddenly realized that the “ball” was the owner of the phonograph. The sound car drove into the mob, scattering them. The brother, bleeding and muddy, was dragged into the car and taken to the police station for attention and to report this lawlessness. The Society laid charges against the mob leader, Patrick McGrory. The priests, for their part, laid charges against four of the sound-car operators. The prosecutor wished to lay off one charge against the other and forget them. If the Society would not press the charge of inciting a mob to near-murder, then the other side would not press the charge of playing a speech record. The bargain was rejected, but the matter dragged.

The Society then printed a leaflet setting out all the facts, and two hundred volunteers offered to distribute them. The operation, led by Saltmarsh, proceeded according to plan. There were ten assaults that morning, but only one was serious enough to call for the doctor’s attention. This action speeded things up and both cases were heard in June 1939. The charge made by the priests, Thomas McEwan and Charles Duffan, came first, but Duffan had disappeared and could not be found. The other priest called witnesses who contradicted themselves and one another, and the four accused, George Saltmarsh, Thomas Brown, Albert Bacon and George Whitford, were discharged.