HC Deb 15 December 1916 vol 88 cc1072-83

Resolution reported,

2. "That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £178,880, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1917, for the Expenses of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland, including Grants-in-Aid of the Teachers' Pension Fund, Ireland."

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution."

Mr. DEVLIN

I apologise for again intervening so soon and occupying the time of the House, but I want to raise once more the question of the financial position of the national teachers in Ireland. We were conceded a bonus—not a very substantial bonus—by the Treasury for the national teachers. It was a very inadequate concession to a very just claim, but I do not desire to press that point just now. What I want to do is to point out to the right hon. Gentleman that the position of the pensioned teachers in Ireland is an extremely important one, and one, I think, that ought to receive more sympathetic consideration at the hands of the right hon. Gentleman and the Treasury. He gave me an answer the other day that nothing further could be done, but I think, as the representative of the British Government in Ireland, he ought really more, sympathetically to consider this matter. We have now a new Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am delighted to see the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House in his place, not so much as the Leader of the House, but as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because we are always told that the responsibility for refusing just concessions to unanswerable claims is due to the hard-heartedness of the Treasury. The right hon. Gentleman is new to his office, and, up to the present I hope, he has a soft heart, and has not reached that cold stage which is the natural development of a generous spirit which sometimes gets destroyed in the atmosphere of the Treasury. These teachers' pensions have been calculated upon very small salaries. At the present time the pensions of these teachers are scandalously small. I think it was the Prime Minister who stated that the salaries of Irish teachers were simply scandalous, and upon those salaries, so denounced by the Prime Minister, these pensions were based for those poor old people who have rendered great service to the State. I do not want once more to state what I have repeated over and over again that there is no more important function in the State than the teaching of children. These teachers have the moral and mental develvelopment of the future citizens, and yet in their old age they are given a miserable and an inadequate pittance, on which it is impossible for them to live. Therefore I would appeal to the right hon. Gentle- man to use his influence with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and before the Chancellor of the Exchequer becomes possessed of the usual zeal for saving for the Treasury what is due to the people who are entitled to it, and that he will give sympathetic consideration to the subject. He will have done no more meritorious and humane service than if he grants something to these pensioned teachers. We are all united on the question. I myself attended a meeting not long ago in the Ulster Hall, Belfast, at which the speakers were the Moderator of the General Assembly, one of the leading Catholic priests of the City, the Lord Mayor's representative, men of all religious persuasions, employers of labour, and representatives of labour. All classes and sections of the citizens in Belfast, and indeed in all Ireland are united, and if we are united in a matter of this sort, surely it is mean and niggardly to refuse to do this act of simple justice to this body.

I come to another question which, I think, is important, and that is with regard to an answer which the right hon. Gentleman gave yesterday to a question of my hon. Friend the Member for West Kerry (Mr. O'Donnell) in regard to the decision of the National Board not to allow school teachers who have been appointed magistrates to sit upon the bench. I do not want to enter into the question of magistrates in Ireland. I have got my own opinion as to the value of unpaid magistrates, but what I say is this: There has been something like eleven teachers appointed magistrates in Ireland. The Lord Chancellor has laid down the principle—I do not know whether it is a good one or a bad one, but I think it is a good one—that he will only appoint to the bench teachers who have been past presidents of the congress, men who have been selected by the great elementary teaching body to be the president of their congress. They must be men of culture, of wide experience, and with a large grasp of affairs, and not only possess the confidence of the teachers but of the general body of the public. Those men are appointed to the magistracy by the Lord Chancellor. What right has a non-elected body like the National Board to declare that those men are not to be allowed to perform the functions that they have been appointed to discharge? What seems the scandal of it is that the most influential and potent forces on the Board are Irish judges. What Irish judges know about elementary education in Ireland I do not know. What Irish judges know about anything I do not know. It is not so very long since we had a judge in Ireland—he only resigned the other day—of whom it was said he represented a case where justice was both blind and deaf. Those are the men who are sitting upon the National Board, and yet they tell us the most cultured, the most public-spirited, the best educated people from a practical point of view are not fit to sit upon a bench. It is said that it will interfere with the due discharge of their duties. If those men do not perform ther duties, let the National Board call attention to it and deal with them. The National Board, if my hon. Friend wants to know, is an anti-national Board. If the National teachers who are appointed magistrates fail to discharge their function of teachers the National Board can deal with them. There are any number of magistrate in Ireland employed by private persons, and they can do their work in private business concerns, and yet sit upon the bench and discharge the functions of magistrates. Teachers have leisure on Saturdays and holidays, and can be of service in many ways, and they are the best educated members of the community. Why, then, should they not be allowed to sit upon the bench? I think this is a scandalous abrogation of their functions by the National Board. I do not care what the reason is; it ought not to be tolerated, and I trust the right hon. Gentleman will not continue to give us the answer he gave to the hon. Member for West Kerry, namely, that there are some statutory reasons why these gentlemen should do as they have done. When we complain of the National Board here we are told Parliament has no control over the Board. If the right hon. Gentleman declares here to-day, as the head of the Irish Government, that the Irish teachers when they are appointed by the Lord Chancellor shall sit on the bench and discharge the functions of magistrates, I do not think the National Board will intervene.

Mr. DILLON

The hon. Member who has just spoken has raised two very important questions, and I desire to say a few words in support of the plea which he has just made. First, in regard to pensions. The case of the Irish teachers is quite acute. I know the ground on which the Chief Secretary and the Treasury on previous occasions refused to consider the claim of the Irish pension teachers to participate in a war bonus, and that was that there were a great number of other positions in the Civil Service of this country that were not paid a war bonus. That at first sight appears to be plausible, but when you look into the history of the Irish teachers the cogency of that defence disappears, because the ground on which we base this strong appeal for extending the war bonus system to the Irish pension teachers is that the pensions have been calculated on a scale of salary which stands condemned. Everybody admits— indeed, I know the Chief Secretary now admits, as all his predecessors who have come into contact with Irish affairs have admitted—that the scale of salaries of Irish teachers is wholly indefensible. Some improvements have been effected in recent years, but that improvement did not affect the vast majority of pension teachers. Their pensions were calculated on the old and wholly indefensible and condemned scale of salaries. That is the ground upon which the pension teachers of Ireland have a claim quite apart from the claim of other pensioners in the Civil Service, and it is on the ground that they were a grossly underpaid class, and consequently their pensions are calculated on salaries grossly insufficient. Their pensions are extremely poor, amounting to some £40 a year on the average, and that is a very small sum. That is a sum on which nobody can support his family—in fact, he can hardly keep himself upon it.

That constitutes a very strong claim, precisely of a similar character to the claim made by the women teachers to have the same bonus as the men. Even that claim was opposed by the Treasury on the ground that it was not in accordance with the precedents in other branches of the Civil Service, but when we induced the Chief Secretary to look into the question he was so deeply impressed with the character of those salaries that he very generously exercised his pressure on the Treasury, and we secured for women teachers the same bonus as the men. On precisely the same ground we base the claim for the extension of the bonus system to the pension teachers in Ireland. It is a very small matter, amounting to something like £12,000 or £18,000 a year, but it is a very important question for these people who are struggling in these very terrible times to keep their heads above water. I cannot understand how the right hon. Gentleman, or the Irish Government, can tolerate for a single moment this new departure on the part of the National Board in refusing to allow teachers who have been appointed magistrates by the Lord Chancellor sitting on the bench, and I may say to the right hon. Gentleman that knowing, as I do personally, some of the members of the National Board, I am absolutely convinced the Board are not unanimous in that decision of the Board. I would like if he could tell us what the vote of the Board was. I cannot believe that the Board would unanimously agree to such a monstrous proposition. Just for a moment examine what it means. The Government of this country, through the Lord Chancellor, decided after very careful consideration of the circumstances that national teachers in Ireland ought to be placed on the same footing as the teachers of this country—in other words, their claim to representation on the magisterial bench should be recognised. It is really a question of importance from this point of view. All my life I have held the view, and I have frequently advocated it and I hope to advocate it still more strongly in the future, that one of the curses of England has been that all branches of the teaching profession, teachers of secondary schools and teachers of primary schools have not been recognised in their true social position in this country at all, neither from the point of view of salary nor social standing, and that is one reason why the education is so thoroughly unsatisfactory. The teaching profession is a very great one, and ought to be and would be far more efficient if it got fair play. In this country, in Great Britain, primary teachers are admitted to the bench and a very considerable number have been appointed magistrates, and what would be said in this country if the local educational authority after the Lord Chancellor had appointed a teacher to the bench said, "We will not allow him to sit," and that after the Lord Chancellor had declared him to be a magistrate? Here this Irish Board decided that, although the Government has said that teachers shall be magistrates, we, the National Education Board, will not allow them to act. I think the National Education Board has done many things in its somewhat eventful history, but this beats the record, and I think it is the most extraordinary and audacious proceeding that this remarkable body has ever been guilty of.

So far as we can gather from the reply of the right hon. Gentleman, this action is not based on any claim that the teachers would necessarily be absent from or neglect their duty. As far as I can gather from the right hon. Gentleman's answer, the attitude of the National Board is that "we know more about the position of Ireland than the Government, and we are better able to judge—the Government has made a blunder; they have allowed these men to become magistrates. We say it is injurious for the peace and harmony of Ireland that they should act." Was ever a Board called into existence for such a purpose as that? They have degraded these teachers and laid down that they shall not take part in any public proceedings, and there is a great deal of dissatisfaction about not allowing them the ordinary status of citizens. Now they have gone a step further, and when the responsible Government of the country say that these teachers shall be appointed magistrates, the National Board say "the Government may appoint magistrates, but we will not allow them to act," and I assume that if a teacher, in pursuance of this commission, acts and sits on the bench as a magistrate, the Board will dismiss him from his employment. There is not the slightest use in telling me that this Board is an irresponsible board and the Government has no control over it. That is true to a certain extent. It is one of the things that has destroyed education in Ireland, and it is a consequence of the shocking state of the Government under which we live that you have to set up a system unparalleled in the civilised world, and which no other civilised nation would submit to for an hour, namely, an educational system responsible to nobody, and when any change or improvement is suggested to this House by the representatives of the people, we are always met by the statement that the Government have no control over the National Board at all. That has always been the state of things, and it has been most disastrous to the education of the country. This is a matter really outside education. It is a matter that does not concern education, and therefore, I say, the Board has no right to take up a position of defiance to the Government of the country and say, "We will penalise these men." It is the duty of the Chief Secretary to tell the Board that they have to let the men act on these appointments or clear out. That is the ultimate power of the Chief Secretary. I quite understand that would be an extreme course, but it would not be necessary to exercise it. If he conveys to the Board to-morrow that in his opinion this thing should not be, it would not be—that is, if he has any authority at all. I am in doubt whether he has any authority. But if he can speak on behalf of the Government and say that, in his opinion, this is an improper order and that the Government is not going to stand it, the order would be rescinded forthwith. Before I sit down I would like the Chief Secretary to state what his authority is. He is still Chief Secretary for Ireland, but he is not in the Cabinet. Has he the same authority now that his predecessor had, or that he himself had in his previous capacity? We are living in the most marvellous times. Men suddenly appear before us in wholly different capacities to those which they occupied a fortnight ago. A week ago the Chief Secretary for Ireland was a Cabinet Minister. Now he is not a Cabinet Minister, and I do not know with what authority he speaks. Is he bound, before he can exercise his authority as a representative of the Government, to bring this question of whether Irish teachers can act as magistrates before the Cabinet? If the Chief Secretary is entitled to act as the chief authority for Ireland, I do appeal to him to tell the Board that this thing must be dropped and the order rescinded. If he does that, I promise him that within a week we shall hear no more about the matter.

Mr. R. McNEILL

It is so seldom I have the pleasure of finding myself in agreement with regard to Irish affairs with the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken that when such a rare occasion does arrive I do not like to remain silent. I do not mean that I altogether agree with the constitutional doctrine which was implied in the last few sentences of the hon. Member who has just spoken, because I do not think that the authority of my right hon. Friend is in any way affected by whether or not he is included in the Cabinet. I do not think our recollection would have to go very far back to find more than one precedent for the Chief Secretary for Ireland not being included in the Cabinet, but what I do agree about in the speeches of the two hon. Members is in regard to the point raised as to the employment of teachers in Ireland on magisterial benches. I confess I have not myself a very high estimate of the body known as the National Board, but I cannot believe that even that body could have taken the step they have taken without some better reason than appears on the surface, and I shall listen with great interest to see whether my right hon. Friend can indicate any reason which cannot be defined by any of us as to why they have taken this course. It appears to me to be a very objectionable course from two points of view. First of all, from the point of view of the magisterial bench, and secondly, from the point of view of the teaching profession. I speak with some knowledge and experience of the magisterial bench, and I think it is a body which might very well be strengthened and improved. I will not put it higher than that.

4.0 P.M.

I believe that it would be a very great advantage to the administration of local justice in Ireland if from time to time members of the teaching profession, such as those referred to by the hon. Gentleman behind me, acted as members of the local bench of magistrates, It would be for the advantage of the administration of justice. It would, I think, raise the opinion held of the bench, and rightly raise that opinion, and, therefore, be of very great advantage in the locality. It would also be of advantage, I think, to the teaching profession. I absolutely and entirely agree with what was said by the hon. Member for Mayo with regard to the bad treatment which the teaching profession have for a very long time past received not only in Great Britain, but also in Ireland, and I agree with him that both in regard to salary and still more in regard to social recognition that it is a very great disadvantage to the public education of the country that teachers are not regarded as being upon a higher plane than they are. In Ireland, for some perfectly unintelligible reason, the rank of a justice of the peace is a rather sought-after rank. It is regarded as more or less of a social distinction, for some reason I have not been able to fathom. Therefore it would be a good thing, from the point of view from which the hon. Member for Mayo spoke that from time to time this social rank of J.P. should be conferred upon members of the teaching profession. It would raise the teaching profession, and at the same time it would be a good thing for the bench. I think from both these points of view it is an extremely unfortunate thing that after the responsible authority have decided that these men are fit to discharge, as of course they are honestly fit to discharge, the functions of a magistrate, they should be debarred from doing so by the action of the National Board. I cannot see where the authority of the National Board comes in for this purpose. Therefore it seems to be so extraordinary that I cannot help thinking there must be some reason the right hon. Gentleman would be able to give which none of us have been able to think of, but unless some such defence as that is forthcoming, I desire as strongly as possible to add my protest to that which has been made already by the hon. Gentleman behind me and appeal to my right hon. Friend to see that these men who have been appointed, rightly, to such a position shall be able to discharge the functions of their office.

Mr. DUKE

The absolute agreement of the hon. Members for Mayo (Mr. Dillon) and West Belfast (Mr. Devlin) and the hon. Member for St. Augustine's (Mr. McNeill) is a very remarkable occurrence. I think the agreement of these three hon. Members marks the seriousness of the situation. I must remind the House how I stand in regard to this matter. The House has thought fit, by statutory law, to place the control of the teaching profession in Ireland under an authority which does not form part of the machinery of any Board of Education such as exists in this country, and which does not act in obedience to, or recognise dependence upon, the general administration of Ireland. The hon. Member for East Mayo {Mr. Dillon) stated, with perfect accuracy, the policy of Parliament with regard to Irish education. Ordinarily matters of Irish administration, if properly brought to the notice of the Chief Secretary, are dealt with by him according to his light, but, as has been said by the three hon. Members who have spoken, there is a differentiation between members of the teaching profession in England and those in Ireland in this matter. I am not surprised that it should be regarded by the teaching profession in Ireland as a grievance. But in the circumstances in which I stand in regard to the administration of Ireland I have no more power of interference in this matter than the Secretary of State for War or the Home Secretary or any other member of His Majesty's Government. Now I shall take this course, I shall direct that copies of the Debate which has taken place upon this matter shall be furnished to the Board of Education, and the weight which usually attaches to representations which have been most temperately made, and with a good deal of knowledge of the teaching profession in Ireland, by the three hon. Members who have spoken, will have its full effect in the consideration of this matter, to which I will undoubtedly invite the Board of Education to give attention. The hon. Member for East Mayo raised a question of constitutional interest. He asked me to define my present Ministerial authority. I am satisfied by my experience of it up to the present time that it is at any rate as sufficient for the care of the interests which are entrusted to my charge as was the authority which I had before the recent changes. I will say no more upon that.

Mr. DEVLIN

Could the right hon. Gentleman also give us his view on this question affecting the teachers, so that the National Board may read it as well as the views expressed by myself and by my hon. Friends?

Mr. DUKE

I think that I shall best consult the interest of peace and the satisfactory disposal of this matter by not pursuing the discussion further at the present time. With regard to the other matter which was raised by the hoc Member for West Belfast, and where he was reinforced by the hon. Member for East Mayo, there is very great difficulty. It is impossible, as far as my experience has gone, to differentiate the position of the teacher pensioners in Ireland from that of any other class of pensioner. The hon Member for East Mayo pressed upon me—and it was a perfectly fair advantage to take—the fact, with regard to the rate of bonus for the women teachers in Ireland, that distinctions had been discovered and recognised which admitted of effect being given to the representations which the hon. Members and those who usually act with them have made to the Irish Administration. The distinctions which existed there, I can assure the hon. Member, did not depend upon the inadequacy of wages, either past or present. It was a distinction—it is only proper that I should state this, having regard to the dissatisfaction which might otherwise exist among Civil servants—which arose, and which I found to be perfectly plain and easy to ascertain, with regard to the actual personal position of the women filling the office of teachers in the Irish schools, which was not a position identical with or in any degree similar to the position of the ordinary Civil servant. If there had been such a mode of differentiation with regard to the teacher pensioners as that which the hon. Member has pressed upon me, I confess that I should have been very glad to have recognised it. With the ordinary feelings of the social human being one cannot fail to appreciate that these are hard times for people with small fixed incomes, but a Minister has some disagreeable things to do and one which I have had to do and still have to do is to say that I cannot at present differentiate the position of the teacher pensioners in Ireland from the position of the multitude of servants of the State to be found upon pensions, and that it does not seem practicable to make the concession which is desired. It would be idle for me to offer words of sympathy, but it is out of the question and with great regret I have to state that it is impossible at the present time to depart from the decision which I have had to announce on previous occasions, greatly as I might wish to do so.

Question put, and agreed to.