PUBLIC HOLIDAYS.

HC Deb 30 May 1911 vol 26 cc910-5

Mr. LANSBURY

I beg to ask leave to, introduce a Bill "To secure one day's rest in seven for all work people; to make the-first day of May a Bank Holiday throughout the United Kingdom; to secure a week's holiday for work people; and to secure payment of wages for Public Holidays."

I am sure that the House of Commons will not need much persuasion to allow this Bill to be introduced. We end our labours on Friday afternoon at five o'clock and resume on Monday. I cannot help feeling that hon. Members will realise that though our labours are heavy they are not to be compared with the labour of a miner working underground or a navvy, or with the ordinary work of ordinary working people, and if it is advisable that we should rest two days in a week, I am quite certain that everyone will agree that ordinary working people should have one day's rest in seven. There is also another reason why this provision should be made. Sunday in England is gradually being lost as a day of rest. The working people of this country will make a great mistake if they allow work of all kinds to creep in on Sundays, as apparently it is creeping in. It would be a very disastrous thing indeed for the country if such a thing happened. I myself spend Sundays away pretty considerably in industrial parts, and I am surprised to find the extent to which in such religious countries as Scotland and Wales industries are carried on on the Sunday. It is just the same as in our own country here. I understand that the reason is that there might be a loss of profits if works were closed down. I contend that if it is necessary to keep these places running for seven days, the only right thing to do is to insist that the working people should get another day off some other time. Therefore there is no valid objection to that part of the Bill. The next part of the Bill is that the 1st of May, which I believe is a holiday in Scotland, should also be a Bank Holiday throughout the United Kingdom. Some of us who sit here, as the House well knows, are Socialists, and the International Labour and Social Congress have for the last thirty years asked that the workpeople all over the country should hive one fixed holiday in the year, which should be their own holiday, and one which they can choose for themselves. We have chosen the first day of May, what is essentially a day which we in England ought to keep as a holiday. It is in the springtime, and it is the kind of holiday which lives in the memory of people as old as myself. At present it is not kept in any sort of way, excepting to cart round guys. Not so many years ago it used to be a really pleasant holiday, when the people could enjoy themselves in a way which I cannot help thinking was much more rational than that which we follow at the present time. But beyond that the International Congress have long proposed that this should be a special holiday throughout the whole world. It is kept in Australia, on the Continent, and in America, and we desire that it should be established in this country as the day on which those of us who believe in peace and brotherhood should at least declare to the whole of the world that if there be quarrels, the quarrels that are indulged in are not the quarrels of working men against one another.

That is the sort of First of May which we desire to see, a day on which we can proclaim the solidarity of labour through- out the world. Members of this House are going away almost directly for a little over a week. We had a holiday a little while ago; we shall come to the Autumn Vacation, when we shall have some weeks' holiday, and in between we shall have the Coronation holidays. I cannot help but think, when you realise the kind of work that the average workpeople have to carry through, that the number of their holidays is very small indeed. I have always regretted myself that the old saint clays, which used to be kept as holidays, have now died out. We might in some small way endeavour to bring about an enactment by which the workpeople shall have at least one week's holiday in every year. The proposition is, whenever a man or a woman has worked for an employer during twelve months that he or she should be entitled to a week's holiday. Now comes the question of payment. I know that payment for holidays is a very sore subject with some people; but I have put in this Bill definitely that the holidays fixed by Parliament shall be paid for by the employers. I do that for two reasons. A holiday would be no holiday at all for the people if they were to lose the money which they would otherwise obtain on that day. I do not know what this House would think if, having voted ourselves salaries, those salaries were to be reduced in proportion to our holidays. [Hon. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I at least feel that those who vote against this Bill must logically vote that when Members of Parliament are not here they are not to be paid. I carry that a step further, and I would like to see, when the great officers of State, the Gentlemen who sit on the Treasury Bench, are not here, or are not attending to their work, that they also should not be paid. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I am glad to hear the cheer of the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury), and probably he will help me to get the Bill through.

Sir FREDERICK BANBURY

No, no.

Mr. LANSBURY

The principle that the people are not to be paid for holidays ought to be applied all round. Of course, it is not applied all round. The best-paid people are those who receive salaries from which there is nothing stopped. But we all of us here represent workpeople, what ever our constituencies. I forgot the Universities; still, I suppose they work in a sort of way. The great majority of us, at any rate, represent workpeople, and it is about that class and their holidays that I am speaking. From what I know, from what I have heard, and from what I have come up against in my own life and in the lives of hundreds and thousands of people all around me, this business of holidays which are not paid for is a serious one to women and children. You are going just now to have a Coronation holiday in London, and I am not saying a word as to whether you should have it or not; but this is the kind of thing that is happening, and this, mark you, is by a big firm of Government contractors, who literally have drawn millions of money from the pockets of the taxpayers of this country; I know that they have done work for it; but this is how they propose to treat the Coronation holiday:— The Coronation of His Gracious Majesty the King. The Royal Procession through London is to take place on Thursday and Friday, June 22nd and 23rd. The factories will be closed also on Saturday. June 24th. That is three days— and reopened on Monday, 26th, at the usual hour. when the punctual attendance of persons employed therein is expected. In order to commemorate the Coronation, all persons will receive one day's pay for Coronation Day, according to their usual earnings. There will be no excursion this year. So that this generous firm is going to celebrate the Coronation by compelling the workpeople to take three days' holiday, and are going to cancel the annual excursion of the firm to pay for the one day out of the three. I venture to say that every London employer here—I speak for London—knows perfectly well that the rule is not to pay workmen for their holidays, of either workmen or workwomen, and the result must necessarily be, when factories are closed in that kind of way, intense hardship on the women and children for the next few weeks. Therefore I ask the House, without detaining it longer, to give a First Reading to this Bill.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY

I am very sorry to rise to oppose a measure introduced by the party with whom for reasons over which I have no control I have the honour and privilege of associating myself in a geographical point of view. It is an apt illustration of the point raised at Question time as to the inadequacy of accommodation for the Independent party in this House, because but for the courtesy of the hon. Members of the Labour Party, the Independent Party in this House would be without a seat. I rise to oppose this Bill not because I do not sympathise with its object. I sympathise, if I may say so, with the hon. Member in what he said as to the lot and hard conditions under which the average workman in this country labours. But for the life of me I do not see how any such measure, based on such a principle, could be workable, or how it could be reconciled with the principles of free government. It seems to me that this Bill really contains in a condensed and crystallised form, all the worst features of that growing disposition on the part of modern workmen, especially of some of their leaders to cling to the apron of that mystic entity called the State, as a remedy for all their woes. The hon. Member suggests that every public holiday should be paid for by the employers. Fancy bringing the whole of the employers of this country into conflict with the National sentiment on the occasion of some great festivity. We have the Chairman of the Labour party present. I remember that the hon. Gentleman yesterday, in the Debate on the Insurance Bill, put his plea in this way, that there was no logical reason why the employers should make any contribution to the funds.

Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD

No.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY

No economic reason.

Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD

dissented.

4.0 P.M.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY

I understood the hon. Member to say that from an economic point of view the employer ought not to find any money towards insurance. Looking at this matter from another point of view, every man who has been continuously employed for twelve months, said my hon. Friend, is to have a week's holiday free. But what is to prevent the employer who resents this kind of legislation from getting rid of every workman in the last week of the year and re-engaging him the week after. The Bill says that every man will be paid by the employer for a State holiday. Surely the House will follow me here when I say that if this House says, or Parliament says, or if the King in Council says that there should be a State holiday, then let the State pay the workman and not the employers. It has nothing to do with the employers. Many employers, though I am happy to say that I do not happen to be amongst them, lose money every week on their business, and it is a horrid thing to suggest that they should have this additional burden thrown upon them. My hon. Friend says, take Members of Parliament— that they go away for holidays; why, some of us at least when we are away from this House under the technical guise of holidays have the only opportunity we get of doing our work. I have been struggling, along with many other Members for the last few weeks, for an opportunity of reading the State Insurance Bill, but we have had no time to do our work. We are not all in the position of my hon. Friend, whose sole business consists in attending to the affairs of the Nation, which is a most honourable and noble occupation, but some of us are compelled by force of circumstances to the ignoble occupation of looking after our own affairs. Therefore we welcome a technical holiday, in which we have an opportunity of attending to our own concerns, and of keeping ourselves from the bankruptcy court.

I am sorry to oppose the Bill, but I stand for that party which says the less the State interferes in the relations between the employers and workmen the better for both parties. The more you rely on your own trade unions and on your own associations of labour to make your conditions better for the workmen the better for the State. It is rather a poor compliment to the present power and position of trade unions and societies that you should come to Parliament and ask for legislation of this kind, which is equivalent to saying that your trade unions are impotent to insist upon fair treatment between employers and workmen. For those reasons, and because instinctively I am opposed to this grandmotherly interference with the affairs of the people, and because I prefer to see legislation which promotes self-reliance and independence and self-respect rather than a helpless child-like dependence upon a mythical entity called the State, that most reluctantly and with many apologies I must oppose the introduction of this Bill.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 11.

Question agreed to. Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Lansbury, Mr. Pointer, Mr. William Thorne, Mr. Keir Hardie, Mr. Barnes, Mr. Adamson, Mr. John Taylor, Mr. Tyson Wilson, Mr. Gill, and Mr. Crooks. Presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Thursday, 15th June, and to be printed.