§ Mr. WEDGWOODI wish to express my sincere regret to the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) that I did not give him notice of this question which appears in my name on the Paper. I assumed, from the appearance of the manifesto in a leading Scottish Labour newspaper, that it had been sent by the Administrative Council of the Independent Labour Party with his approval. I wish to ask whether the Home Secretary's attention has been called to the current number of "Forward," a weekly journal published in Glasgow, in which is set out a manifesto purporting to have been drafted by the hon. Member for Leicester and issued by the National Administrative Council of the Independent Labour Party, in which manifesto is an appeal to soldiers not to shoot strikers if ordered to do so; and what steps he proposes to take?
§ Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALDPerhaps the House will permit me, in a sentence, to say, as my name is associated with this, that I did not draft the manifesto, that the manifesto was not issued by the National Administrative Council of the Independent Labour Party, and that if my hon. Friend had done me the courtesy to ask me the question before, I could have given him the whole of the facts of the case, and not made it necessary to give full circulation to this report.
§ Mr. McKENNANo, Sir. My attention has not been called to the passage in the journal referred to.