Havelock's political engagement deepened rapidly. In 1931, after Toronto police had blocked a public meeting by an organisation the police claimed was associated with communists, he and Underhill wrote a public letter of protest, calling the action "short-sighted, inexpedient, and intolerable." The letter led to considerable tension between the leadership of the university and the activist professors led by Havelock and Underhill, as well as a sharply critical public reaction. All of the major newspapers in Toronto, along with a number of prominent business leaders, denounced the professors as radical leftists and their behaviour as unbecoming of academics.