§ Mr. J. H. THOMASI crave the indulgence of the House to make a personal statement with regard to the action of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants in connection with certain mortgages held by its members, my reason being that whilst I claim that the whole of the business is of a purely domestic character and ought never to have been mentioned in this House, in view of the questions asked and the various statements made, wherein, it is alleged that I attempted to mislead this House on an important question of fact, I desire to submit a statement of the case in order that the House itself may judge my action. Following the strike of August last, the executive committee, at their September sitting, decided to instruct the trustees to foreclose mortgages of those members who were not loyal to the executive committee's instructions. [An HON. MEMBER: "That is liberty."] In accordance with this resolution I issued a letter to the branches of the society which had members who held mortgages. In this letter I asked the branch secretaries to give the necessary information as to the action these members took up during the strike. The trustees then would be in a position to consider each case with the full information before them. The result of the letter shows that there were ninety-two members affected by this resolution, and, on the trustees reporting the full facts to the executive committee the latter body decided that no further action should be taken. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"]
It appears, however, that on 5th December the society's solicitors received from the solicitors of a member residing at Enfield a letter intimating they had received instructions to transfer the mortgage. On 8th December I informed the society's solicitors that no notice had been given to this member to foreclose; but, it appears, he having arranged to raise the money from the Great Eastern Building Society, the transfer was completed. Briefly, these are the full facts of the case, and, in view of the statement which appeared in a newspaper on 11th March, wherein Mr. A. E. Beck, of the Trade Unionists' Defence League, stated—
'that many cases of a serious hardship had occurred as a result of these mortgages being called in,'1544 and, further—he did not know the number of mortgages that had been called in, but he knew that they numbered hundreds,I will leave the House to judge as to whether, having regard to the fact there were only ninety-two cases involved, and, further, that the only one redeemed was done by the member himself entirely on his own initiative, I was not justified in saying that the statement appearing in this paper was a malicious attack on a trade union, and without foundation.