§ The following question stood on the Paper in the name of Mr. OUTHWAITE:
§ 38. To ask the Home Secretary whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that recently a meeting at Llandrindod Wells, addressed by a blind preacher, the Reverend J. P. Jones, was broken up, and that when subsequently speaking in the town the Under-Secretary to the Home Office expressed gratification that the pacifist meeting recently attempted in the town was broken up; and if he will state whether it is the policy of the Government to provoke or condone the subversion of law and order?
§ Mr. OUTHWAITEIn the question which I drafted I said that the statement of the Under-Secretary was "as reported in the ' Western Mail.'"
§ Sir G. CAVEMy attention had not been drawn to this matter, but I have made inquiries, and I find that the proceedings at this meeting were stopped by the authorities of the chapel in which it was held on the ground that they had been deceived, and that the chapel, which had been lent to the promoters for a religious meeting, was, in fact, being used for pacifist propaganda. My right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, in his subsequent speech in the same town, did not express gratification that the earlier meeting had been broken up, and a contradiction of this statement has already appeared in the paper concerned. The answer to the third part of the question is in the negative.
§ Mr. G. THORNEIs the right hon. Gentleman aware that the meeting arranged for the Parliamentary Secretary was counter-attacked by the forces inside?