HC Deb 19 December 1908 vol 198 cc2328-43

Motion made, and Question proposed, 'That the Lords Amendment be now considered."—(Lord Robert Cecil.)

MR. MORTON moved that the Lords Amendments be considered this day three months, as the House had not sufficient time left properly to consider the matter.

MR. C. DUNCAN (Barrow-in-Furness)

seconded the Amendment.

Amendment proposed— To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the Question to add the words 'upon this day three months.'"—(Mr. Morton.)

Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

THE SOLICITOR-GENERAL (Sir S. EVANS, Glamorganshire, Mid.)

expressed the hope that the hon. Member would not insist on the Amendment. The Bill as it now stood practically said that if a person disturbed a public meeting or incited any other person to do so for the purpose of preventing the transaction of business for which the meeting had been called he should be guilty of a punishable offence and that in the case of a Parliamentary1 election, between the issue of the writ and the return of the writ, the same should be deemed an illegal practice. The alterations made in another place were not alterations in substance and the House having agreed to the Bill it would be a very great pity if it did not become law.

* MR. C. B. HARMSWORTH (Worcestershire, Droitwich)

drew attention to the fact that the Bill had never been discussed in the House or in any way considered. Two stages of the Bill were passed in a very small portion of an afternoon. He was convinced that if hon. Members had the Bill in their hands they would readily support the Motion of his hon. friend. The Bill caused the gravest infringement of the right of public meeting in this country and arose out of a recent meeting at the Albert Hall. In Scotland a very favourite practice at public meetings was heckling and the Bill constituted that practice, if indulged in, an offence. He hoped his hon. friend would persist in his Motion.

MR. JOHN WARD (Stoke-on-Trent)

thought there were two sides to the question. The hon. Gentleman who spoke last thought it would be a grave infringement of the rights of public meeting if the Bill were passed, but if there was no way to prevent people, sent to break up a meeting, from doing so, it was an absolute infringement of the rights of public meeting. People, whatever their views might be, were entitled to call a meeting and expound those views; that was the only way in which free expression of opinion could be obtained for minorities. It was true that this had not been thought of before, but it was only recently that deliberate attempts had been made to break up public meetings. [A voice: "What about the Boer War?"] Unquestionably the same remarks applied to that, and he agreed that wherever there were organised attempts deliberately to break up meetings there should be some means of preventing it. For that reason he gave his most unqualified support to the Bill. He read it before it was in print, and had come to the conclusion it was the only way by which they could secure the liberty of the subject and the chance of expressing views which happened to be hostile to those entertained by either the majority or the minority of the audience.

MR. WEDGWOOD (Newcastle-under-Lyme)

said he felt himself to be in a somewhat difficult position, because originally he informed the noble Lord the Member for East Marylebone that he was in favour of the Bill. But having examined it more carefully he confessed he was shocked at it. He had looked on the noble Lord as the champion of individual liberty, but in his view the Bill was the worst blow at the right of expressing individual political opinion that had been delivered for a long time. Who were to be the judges whether a person heckling a public speaker was trying to break up a public meeting or not? It was to be the task of the bench of magistrates, and he certainly did not think that was a proper body to decide whether or not a heckler was asking a reasonable question or trying to break up a meeting. If the Bill were passed it would aim the heaviest possible blow at Socialism making itself heard. Who were the people whom this Bill would most seriously hit? Those who were enthusiastic and keen on certain lines of politics which did not command universal public approval. These people had to persuade other people, and their only chance of getting at them was to speak at other people's meetings. They could not get those whom they desired to convert to attend the meetings they themselves arranged, and they must therefore seize the opportunity of other people's meetings to make themselves heard. If the Bill were carried it would upset traditions which had obtained for 500 years, and he therefore hoped that even at this eleventh hour it would be successfully opposed.

* MR. VIVIAN (Birkenhead)

could not understand how any hon. Member could in the name of freedom demand that a minority or even a majority should have the right to break up a meeting in a room paid for by the promoters of the gathering in order to meet and discuss given matters with their friends. He supported the Bill heartily, and mainly because he had never been able to understand why he should be prevented speaking his mind upon a particular subject at a meeting specially called to enable him to do so. Why, a man might just as well walk into a printer's establishment and smash up the type whereby it was intended in book or pamphlet to express certain views which were not approved. The right of free speech should be as sacred as the right of a free Press, and he supported the Bill in the name of the right of free speech. He did not think the measure as framed would injure either minorities or majorities. It would, on the contrary, protect [...] but he appealed to hon. Members [...] ll [...] who by reason of their number were unable by physical force to keep down an opposition. He was not opposed to heckling; as a speaker he rather revelled in it, but he did protest against a group of bullies—often hired by people on the other side—attending meetings with the sole view of preventing the speakers being heard.

MR. W. THORNE

said he was rather surprised at the attitude taken up by Members on both sides who, he was sure, if they had read the Bill would never have voted for it. No men in that House had been through the mill more than he had in regard to political meetings. On one occasion at Camborne he got an awful bashing, yet he was not prepared to vote for a Bill which would prevent anyone making inter[...] such gatherings. It was for those who organized the meetings to make proper provision against those who would try to prevent the speakers being heard. It was the duty of the stewards to find out the interrupters, and there was an end of it. It had been successfully accomplished on more than one occasion. The most important part of the Bill was undoubtedly the second portion, and hon. Members would do well to consider what it involved. During a Parliamentary election a candidate's friends might at a meeting of his opponent utter a few interjections and the candidate would be held liable for their conduct and would be penalised in consequence. There never had been, so far as he remembered, such a Bill rushed through the House, and if the hon. Member for Sutherland would press his objection to a division he would tell with him.

MR. PICKERSGILL (Bethnal Green, S.W.)

supported the protest of the last speaker, agreeing with him that the second part of the Bill was the most vital. He had no objection to the first subsection, but the second certainly required more consideration than it had yet received. There were already sufficient pitfalls for a man who desired that an election should be conducted in a proper manner, and this would make a very serious addition, to them by constituting interruptions at the meeting of an opponent an illegal practice in a Parliamentary contest. He should vote against the Bill.

MR. HEMMERDE (Denbighshire, E.)

strongly supported the Bill, and with regard to the second subsection—as to which extraordinary legal opinions had just been expressed—he pointed out that there was no single illegal practice from which the election Judges could not relieve a candidate. They might rely upon it that both magistrates and Judges of the High Court would place a reasonable construction on acts such as this. As a matter of fact, it was the duty of candidates to see that they did not have with them people who would be capable of breaking up the meetings of their opponents. He could not understand any number of the Liberal party standing up for either a man or a woman who would deliberately go to a public meeting and make it impossible for anyone to air his grievance or opinions, and if a meeting were arranged in order that a Cabinet Minister might speak it was absolutely intolerable that a small body of persons should prevent his being heard. Why, in the name of freedom, should they put up with that? Minorities ought not to be allowed to adopt disorderly tactics in order to force their views on a reluctant majority. It was intolerable that those responsible for forming the public opinion of the country should be tracked all over the place by foolish men and women and interrupted on every possible occasion. It absolutely destroyed freedom of discussion, and he ventured to suggest that those who were afraid of the Bill were those who did not believe in free discussion. There was more interruption of public meetings by women and Socialists than by any other class of the community, and his personal experience had frequently been that meetings were attended by persons sent with questions already prepared and written with instructions to ask them in season and out of season. "Disorderly conduct" had been discussed times out of number. Were they so timid that they could not allow this matter to be decided by the magistrates and the Judges? It was the duty of candidates to keep their followers in order, and if those of his followers who were colourably his agents, in the exuberance of their spirits caused the opposing candidate to suffer, then if such an occurrence formed part of a petition the Judges of the High Court would be perfectly well able to deal with it. Freedom of meeting was the important question they had to consider, and he therefore supported the Bill with the greatest possible pleasure. He gave the noble Lord hearty thanks for having brought forward this measure in order to give them a chance of clearing public meetings and public discussions of what was rapidly becoming an intolerable nuisance.

MR. MADDISON (Burnley)

, while agreeing that they owed a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone, said he hardly liked Bills of this kind being rushed through so quickly as this one had been. Nevertheless, he thought that now they were face to face with the measure its provisions were such that it would in a fair way protect free speech and right of meeting. In listening to the hon. Member for South West Ham he thought he was speaking rather of a bull fight than of a public meeting, because the picture he drew did not appear to have anything to do with an ordinary public meeting. The Bill, as far as he could see, made it plain that there must be a deliberate purpose to prevent the public meeting from conducting its business. Throughout this short discussion there had not been a single statement to show who would suffer by reason of the Bill becoming law. Who was the sort of person, who would suffer by the enactment of this measure?

MR. CROOKS (Woolwich)

My experience has been that it was the Liberals who broke up my meetings.

MR. MADDISON

said that only proved the necessity for the Bill. The sort of persons who would suffer were those who, before a speaker rose, deliberately told the chairman they did not wish to hear that speaker. He himself had experienced a case of that kind at Bristol, where it was said; "We will listen to anyone else you put up, but we will not hear Maddison." Did his hon. friends opposite think that such action should go unpunished by the law? He admired the Labour candidates for the simplicity of their electioneering methods; he was proud to pay them that tribute, and to say that they spent very little money on their contests; but why they should be afraid of this measure he could not understand. No Labour Member need fear a Bill like this. The hon. and learned Member for Denbighshire had set at rest their doubts as to how far a candidate might be affected by this legislation, but he was none the less prepared to take the risk that might lie in that direction, because he held that if a candidate knew that certain things were going on at the meetings of his opponents and he allowed his followers to continue them, then such a candidate deserved more punishment than he got. He supported the Bill with great heartiness, because it would restore the right of public meeting which had been largely lost.

LORD R. CECIL

, in regard to the observation about rushing the Bill, said he had endeavoured to make the Bill known to every Member of the House. He had adopted the rather unusual course of making public its terms before it was circulated in the House, and he had done his best to let everybody know its provisions. Of course if hon. Members had come down to the House to object to the Second Reading that would have been a different matter altogether. But no objection had been taken to either the Second or the Third Reading, and he thought that there was no ground for saying that it had been rushed through the House without the consideration of hon. Members. The point of the Bill was this. They all knew that difficulties arose at public meetings, sometimes very serious. They had all been present at public gatherings where a small knot of men or women had combined to shout, scream, and sing without any reference to the business of the meeting at all, but merely for the purpose of preventing that business from being transacted. He was quite sure that they all thought that ought to be stopped. If the small knot of people were not stopped it meant the denial of free speech, or if the other members of the meeting endeavoured to stop the interrupters it meant a free fight. Lynch law or the denial of free speech was the alternative with which they were confronted. That was a very serious grievance which he was sure every hon. Member desired to see remedied. He had drafted the Bill as carefully as he could, and the Law Officers were good enough to agree with him that it was efficiently drafted for the purpose of confining the measure, as nearly as they could by the English language, to that case and that case only. There would have to be proved, first of all, disorderly conduct, and secondly, a quite distinct thing, that such disorderly conduct was intended for the purpose of preventing the meeting from transacting its business. Unless they proved that it was for that purpose then there was no offence committed under the Bill. The only possible criticism was that the definition was so narrow that the evil might not be altogether stopped by the terms of the Bill. He hoped that hon. Members in considering the measure would see that it was framed from the point of view he had explained. He would be the very last person in the House to propose anything that would be an infringement of personal liberty, but he was quite convinced that the Bill was for its maintenance and not for its infringement. As to the election point, that had been dealt with by the hon. Member for Denbighshire in a perfectly admirable manner. He thought that there was not the least prospect under the second subsection of the Bill that any injustice would be done If there should be a candidate—he did not think there would be—who allowed his followers to break up the meetings of his opponent, then it ought to be considered an illegal practice at least as serious as many an illegal practice put into the Act of Parliament.

MR. CROOKS

thought the House was indebted to the hon. Member who had proposed the adjournment of the discussion until they had some idea of what was in the minds of hon. Members. He felt some alarm about the Bill. To him interjections appeared to be the salt of public meetings. Did the Law Officers for the Crown say that an interjection was a disturbance?

SIR S. EVANS

The word "disturbance" does not occur in the Bill at all.

MR. CROOKS

said that anything might be construed into a conspiracy to do something. His experience of public meetings was nearly equal to anybody's in the country. He had been assaulted, carried away, and had his meetings broken up. He did not suppose anyone organised mobs for the purpose of breaking up meetings. Suppose he himself held a meeting in one corner of Beresford Square and another person held a meeting in the opposite corner, would he be held responsible if the crowd around him went across the square to "boo" the crowd at the other meeting? The President of the Local Government Board had had as much to do with public meetings and had been as much subjected to disturbance and interruption as any of them. He well remembered at one meeting how it was shouted: "Let us throw him in the Thames." The right hon. Gentleman simply jumped up and said: "No; I am responsible for the purity of the river." But under this Bill he could not have hon. Gentleman on "Bastard Imperialism," and in the midst of it he was interrupted by being asked whether he had declared in the County Council that Lachmere allotments were only fit to grow consumptive cabbages on. There was an uproar. Would similar circumstances lead to a prosecution under this Bill? [Cries of "No."] He was anxious that public meetings should be conducted with all the joy of public meetings but without the row. If the noble Lord was addressing a public meeting and the word "rot" was interjected, could that word be used without the person who uttered it being charged? In discussions in that House he had himself jerked off words which were on his tongue, but could it be pretended that to do so would be an offence in a public meeting? Perhaps the learned Solicitor-General would satisfy him on those points. ["No."] The hon. and learned Gentleman would try, and perhaps he would be as successful as the hon. Member in explaining things. He wanted to know whether they would be allowed to make a casual interjection at a public meeting as they went along, without any wilful desire to smash up the meeting. If that was so, then he did not mind the Bill a bit. But he wanted to be clear on that point. If they could not do so, then he doubted whether a political fight would be worth anything at all.

SIR S. EVANS

I can answer the questions of the hon. Member in the affirmative on both points.

MR. W. THORNE

Is it possible for a man to take out a summons under this Bill, and do you mean to say that a magistrate would grant a summons?

SIR S. EVANS

said before anybody could be touched under this Bill it must be shown that he had been guilty of disorderly conduct at a public meeting for the purpose of preventing the transaction of the business for which that meeting was called. The Bill really did not touch any of the cases which had been put by the the hon. Member for Woolwich. It would not prevent any interjection or heckling or anything of that kind which tended to the enlivenment of a meeting.

* MR. BYLES (Salford, N.)

said he was very glad the Bill had had an opportunity at last of being debated and that they had the opinion of Members on both sides about it. If it was only to elicit from the Solicitor-General the explanation which he had just given and which he thought ought to disarm the opposition which had been so vigorously expressed, he thought the House was to be congratulated on the opportunity for debate. He felt rather in the position of one who had to defend himself against his friends, but really there was no great difference between them except as to whether the method and the language of the Bill were adequate to do that which they all, he thought, Wanted to do. Members on both sides of the House had expressed the view which they all held that free speech and free opinion freely expressed, either in the Press or on the platform, was the most priceless liberty that we English people enjoyed. It was to protect that, and with no other object whatever, that he had agreed to associate himself with the noble Lord opposite, who had paid him the compliment of inviting him to put his name on the back of the Bill. He did so with great readiness because he had found all through this Parliament, that the noble Lord himself, although belonging to a party to which he (Mr. Byles) was generally strongly in opposition, had proved himself a stouter defender of liberty than some of his hon. friends on that side of the House. The language of the Bill really did not in the least justify what some objectors had feared. Many speakers had seemed to suppose that any disorderly conduct at a meeting would subject a man to prosecution, but that was not so. It was not only disorderly conduct but disorderly conduct for the express purpose of preventing the transaction of business. If anybody went deliberately to break up a meeting he ought to be subject to law, and his hon. friends were championing the rights of those blackguards who came on purpose to prevent the object of the meeting being carried out, and who were the only people who were attacked in the Bill.

MR. ROWLANDS (Kent, Dartford)

asked the Solicitor-General to give them his views with regard to subsection (2). That was the particular portion of the Bill to which he had the strongest objection, and with all due respect to the hon. Member for Denbigh, who, he knew, had great experience of electioneering, he thought his electioneering experience went back further than the hon. Member's. While he might not be a lawyer he had had to consider from time to time questions of agency and how agency could be proved, and anybody who had wide experience knew how risky was the definition of agency. It did not mean at all that the chief agent appointed by the candidate should go and deliberately break up a meeting, but there was such a thing as members of a committee or other people who might be indirectly brought into the question of agency, and he still thought there was very great danger indeed in the sub-section. Even if agency was not proved, the poor candidate might have to stand all the racket of a petition, which was not an easy thing for him to stand, because there was a colourable assertion of agency on the part of the parson who was charged with having broken up the meeting. That candidate was at once penalised under the existing law and was liable to an enormous expense which he or his friends might not be able to meet. He, therefore, thought under these conditions they had a right to some modification

of the law, and he was sorry it was too late to put such a modification into this sub - section. Those who might think it necessary to criticise the Bill were not afraid of public meetings, nor were they the persons who had ever deliberately organised opposition. They were the persons who through a long political career, going back to the old jingo days, had stood on platforms when it wanted a vast deal of courage to do so. But while they had had to face these things in the past they looked with some anxiety on any alteration in the law which would interfere with freedom of speech. It was a great misfortune that the Bill was brought in so late, and he was sorry the debate had not arisen on the Second Reading, hat before the Bill got to the present stage, there might have been modifications which while carrying out the desire of the noble Lord, would have protected freedom of speech as well as the right of meeting.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes, 61; Noes, 21. (Division List No. 462.)

AYES
Balcarres, Lord Jones, William (Carnarvonshire Robson, Sir William Snowdon
Bowles, G. Stewart Laidlaw, Robert Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh) Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester) Samuel, Rt. Hn. H. L. (Cleveland
Burns, Rt. Hon. John Lambert, George Scott, A. H. (Ashton under Lyne
Cameron, Robert Lewis, John Herbert Stewart, Halley (Greenock)
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.) Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David Straus, B. S. (Mile End)
Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S. Mackarness, Frederic C. Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)
Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham) Maclean, Donald Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinst'd M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) Thorne, G, R. (Wolverhampton)
COX, Harold Maddison, Frederick Thornton, Percy M.
Craik, Sir Henry Mallet, Charles E. Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Dobson, Thomas W. Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston) Ure, Alexander
Elibank, Master of Micklem, Nathaniel Verney, F. W.
Essex, R. W. Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall) Vivian, Henry
Evans, Sir Samuel T. Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent)
Fuller, John Michael F. Pease, Rt. HnJ. A. (Saffron Walden Whitbread, Howard
Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham) Radford, G. H. Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Gurdon, Rt. Hn. Sir W. Brampton Rea, Russell (Gloucester) Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarth'n
Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro'
Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mpt'n TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. Hemmerde and Mr. Byles.
Illingworth, Percy H. Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)
NOES.
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch) Hart-Davies, T. Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)
Barnes, G. N. Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.) Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Carr-Gomm, H. W. Horniman, Emslie John Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Cleland, J. W. Nolan, Joseph
Cooper, G. J. Norton, Capt. Cecil William TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr. Morton and Mr. Charles Duncan,
Crooks, William O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)
Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N. Pickersgill, Edward Hare
Halpin, J. Rowlands, J.
Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r) Thorne, William (West Ham)

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Lords' Amendment considered, and read a second time.

Motion made, and Question put, "That this House doth agree with the