SOUTH WALES COAL STRIKE. (Hansard, 23 March 1911)

§ Mr. KEIR HARDIE

I rise to introduce a different topic to the House. The matter is one arising out of the Metropolitan Police having been sent into the Welsh coalfields during the recent dispute. I do not intend to raise the reasons for the police having been sent nor to discuss the authority by which they were sent. I wish to enter here a word of explanation that if I do not deal with the report issued by the Home Office in a Blue Book entitled, "Collieries Strike Disturbance in South Wales," it is not because there is not matter contained in that report for discussion but because I hope on the more suitable occasion of the Home Office Vote to have that matter brought up. Whatever authority there may have been for having the Metropolitan Police in South Wales or whoever the request may have come from, the police certainly found themselves there, and the innkeepers and others in the Aberdare Valley, where a contingent of the men was allotted, at once began to supply them with rations and sleeping accommodation and other necessaries. Those innkeepers and others did not stop to haggle about who was to be responsible for the payment of their accounts. The magistrates for the district had anticipated that the military would be sent, and they had written making inquiries as to who was to be responsible for the cost of feeding the military. The Home Secretary replied that up to a certain point the county would be responsible and beyond that point the War Office. The innkeepers did not stop to make terms, but at once supplied the men with the necessaries of life, and I hope of comfort. In all probability they were relying upon certain correspondence which had taken place between certain people and the Home Office. I find in the Blue Book, page 4, No. 10, the Home Secretary, in a letter to the Chief Constable of Glamorganshire, said:— Seventy mounted constables and 200 foot constables of the Metropolitan Police will come to Pontypridd by special train, leaving Paddington 4.55 p.m., arriving about 8 p.m. They will carry out your directions under their own officers. And then followed the words:— The county will bear the cost. I am quite sure that those in whose interests I am speaking took that as an assurance that the indebtedness which the police were about to incur would be met by the county authorities, and they did so on the authority of the Home Secretary. In the Blue Book, page 5, No. 11, there is 660 a further reference to the provision of forage and rations, and there is an even more emphatic reference in the communication No. 31. The reference here is to Aberaman Colliery, to which men had been sent, and the Home Secretary, in a communication, again to the Chief Constable of Glamorganshire, said:— The War Office has been asked to supply rations and forage for the police in the district, thereby clearly implying that he, as Home Secretary, was taking the responsibility for the forage and rations being supplied. On the strength of that the innkeepers and others supplied the Metropolitan Police with rations and lodgings. It now transpires that the Home Secretary or someone else responsible had made a mistake on some of the law in the matter. Those who supplied the police in due course presented their accounts to the county authority, but they were repudiated by that body. They say they are not responsible, but that the Home Office is responsible. Since then I have tried to obtain an assurance from the Home Secretary that, pending the decision of the legal point at issue as to whether the Home Office or the Glamorganshire County Council is finally responsible, that the right hon. Gentleman should authorise the Treasury to make payment of the accounts so as to obviate the inconvenience, and, in some cases to my own personal knowledge, the financial embarrassment which those innkeepers and others are suffering owing to their having supplied the Metropolitan Police with their rations. If those innkeepers had acted as the colliery companies attempted to do, and whose property was being guarded, very likely they would have obtained satisfactory assurances before going on. As the right hon. Gentleman will remember, the Powell Duffryn Company, when the colliery was being guarded, found themselves under the necessity of providing temporary accommodation for the men sent to guard the collieries. After a day or two the company sent what practically amounted to an ultimatum to the Home Office, that unless they had an assurance that all the cost which they were incurring in providing accommodation for the constabulary was at once guaranteed by the Home Office they would turn the men out and leave them to forage for themselves. The innkeepers did not act in that fashion. They assumed when they supplied the constabulary with rations that the Home Secretary would see to it whatever the county council might do, and there had been trouble with the county 661 council on a former occasion that they were not going to lose in consequence.

Yesterday or the day before the Home Secretary informed us that he takes full responsibility for having sent the constabulary into South Wales. That being so, I hope he will also take full responsibility for the payment of the accounts in question. In the end there could be no loss incurred by the Treasury. If the accounts are met now, and if the Glamorganshire County Council is finally held responsible for their payment, then the Treasury will have no difficulty in recovering from the county council. I hope the justice of the case is so apparent that there will not be any difficulty in the Home Office meeting it. The total sum for which accounts have been rendered amounts to £497 18s. I am not to be taken as guaranteeing that all the items contained in the accounts are correct. That would require to be ascertained by the responsible persons before the accounts are paid. But I do claim since these people, who are my constituents, came to the rescue of the Government in finding accommodation for the police sent down and since they acted under what they believed to be the authority of the Home Office in giving credit to the constabulary that the obligation now rests upon the Home Office not only to see that those men are not actual losers by what they have done, but that they should not be called upon to incur either embarrassment or inconvenience. The only way in which that can be done is to have the accounts paid promptly. If the Home Office have made a mistake that is no reason why those men should suffer. All I am asking is that the Treasury should now be authorised to pay such of those accounts as are found due. So that the embarrassment and the inconvenience which I know those people are suffering may be at once remedied.

§ Mr. CHURCHILL

We acted in good faith, and to meet a great emergency we 662 sent our police to aid the local authorities to maintain order. In the same "way police were sent from seven or eight other districts all round to assist in the maintenance of order. The local authority, the county council, are I understand, proposing to pay the expenses of all the other districts, but they propose to resist any charge for the Metropolitan Police, and I presume they reconcile that proceeding in their consciences by the fact that they thought apparently that they could have had the services of as much of the British Army as they might find necessary without any charge upon their rates. And so as the Metropolitan Police were a substitute for soldiers they propose to repudiate the signature of their officer that the county would bear the cost. Those matters have got to be tried in their legal aspect and without prejudice to their hearing on this question, because nobody is dealing with their own money as it is public money, and the question has to be settled according to the regular principles of law. It is quite clear that there are two perfectly separate sets of disputes. There is the dispute as between the Government and the county council, and there is also the dispute as between the individuals who have supplied goods and the persons who ordered them to be supplied. I am considering these two sets of disputes in their legal aspects in view of the opinions which have been and are being expressed by the Law Officers of the Crown, and I have not yet come to a decision which I can announce to Parliament. It may be that one method of asserting the equitable rights, as I consider them, of the central Government in this matter is the bringing of actions by individuals in the district against the parties who actually gave them the order for the goods. That may be a method by which the merits of the case may, apart from any larger action, be decided. But I do not prejudge the case, and I have not yet come to a decision. I agree that that decision ought not to be, and I do not think it will be unreasonably delayed; but having regard to the public interests concerned I must claim the opportunity to look at the complicated legal questions involved from every point of view. The hon. Member asks what is to happen meanwhile to the very poor tradesmen and innkeepers who have supplied goods to comparatively small amounts, which would make no difference whatever to the wealth of the county council or of the Imperial Government, but which, perhaps, are nevertheless 663 sufficiently large to expose the tradesmen to actual hardship or pecuniary embarrassment. I am very glad that the hon. Member comes forward on every occasion when he is able to do so as a staunch defender of the rights and interests of property, and nothing on my part shall lead me to fall behind the high standard which he has set. I agree that it would not be a possible position for a Minister to take—that, pending the decision of these grave questions of litigation or the decision whether or not there should be litigation, inviduals who, in good faith, have supplied goods or given value to the police should come to grief. Without prejudicing at all the general question, without in any way admitting that the liability belongs to the Imperial Government and not to the county authorities, I shall be prepared to arrange, as an interim measure, either by way of payment or by way of advance, that the cases of those tradesmen who would be put to some inconvenience by the delay shall be dealt with. I think that this should specially apply to the number of small accounts. They should be cleared out of the way. But I am prepared to consider any hard case of difficulty which may be brought to my notice with a view to securing from the Treasury prompt payment by way either of loan pending a decision or of full payment without prejudice to the ultimate power of recovery by the State. I think that that is the only course that could be taken under the circumstances.

As I have been called upon to speak again on this subject I would like to make an appeal to the House to consider in the next few weeks the thoroughly unsatisfactory position which, from the point of view of any party, the Imperial Government is in at the present moment, in regard to the question of the expense of military supplied by the central Government in connection with local disputes. At any moment there may arise in any part of the country a dispute calling for the intervention of the military. I agree that the judges of the necessity of that measure must be the people on the spot. I do not say that they are the final judges, but they are the prime judges of that matter. But it is not fair that they should have the decision as to calling in the military without any consideration to restrain unnecessary demands. There is only one proper and effective check upon unnecessary recourse to the military instead of to the police from surrounding districts or to 664 other methods of dealing with disorder, and that is the simple but effective check of expense. At the present moment there is actually a premium on calling in the military in any trade dispute, and a heavy drawback on calling in the police from the surrounding districts. That, I am sure, is not a good arrangement from any point of view. It might easily lead to something which all parties would agree ought, if possible, to be avoided. I hope there may be some opportunity in the course of no unreasonable length of time—I will not say more than that—to secure at any rate that soldiers, while they are used by local authorities in any local disorder, shall be paid for at the charge of that authority, and not at the Imperial expense. If that were the case I think that in many cases the police would naturally be used where soldiers are now asked for.