§ I will put one or two other questions to the Leader of the House. The first is a practical question in relation to the next General Election, which may be upon us very soon after the Recess, and we may have very few opportunities in this House of discussing either the procedure of that election or the Government policy in relation to it before we go to the constituencies. The first question I have to ask is one which concerns the President of the Local Government Board. It relates to the arrangements which the Government have in contemplation for the purpose of securing to soldiers their votes in that election. In the days before the Representation of the People Bill was before Parliament, and in the course of the Debate, when the Bill was under discussion, there was a great deal of enthusiasm shown in various quarters in this House for the cause of the soldier's vote. Many hon. Members were anxious that the right of the soldier to vote should be secured in that Act, but what we are now face to face with is the much more immediate and practical question whether the right which was conferred upon the soldier by Statute is going to be exercised by him when the election comes There are many formidable difficulties, and it is well that the House should face them. At the same time the House should insist that the Government take measures to deal with these difficulties. We have to remember that between 2,500,000 and 3,000,000 of the new electors are men in the fighting forces of the Crown, and every hon. Member in this House will agree that an electorate in which these men were not consulted or were inadequately consulted would give a misleading representation of the will of the people of this country.
§ The first thing which must be taken into consideration in obtaining the soldiers' vote, so far as the Western Front is concerned, because on the other fronts it will be done by proxy, is that the period of the election should be so chosen as to coincide with a quiet period of fighting activity. We know that until the end of November there will be active 1667 fighting conditions on the Western Front, but after that period there is a strong probability, wherever the lines may be drawn, that warfare will have settled down for a period of two months at least to something in the nature of the trench warfare with which we have been familiar for the last two years. If the Government desire to have the votes of the soldiers it would be advisable to choose a time for the election when such conditions of warfare as I have described prevail. But that is merely a matter of time. There are certain other considerations. There is, first of all, the problem of seeing that every individual soldier gets his ballot paper. It is a formidable problem from the point of view of the War Office. They will have to localise every individual voter at the time of the election. I hope that measures are being taken to consider this and that arrangements are being made to deal with it. It is a question of having a kind of register so that the soldier can be found at the time that the election is taking place. There is, secondly, the point as to what measures are being taken for the purpose of seeing that the ballot-papers are duly transmitted to the soldier and are duly collected and brought back for the purposes of counting. Everybody is aware that is a formidable problem in transport. I do not think that the great majority of the Members of the House quite realised how great that problem was at the time that the Representation of the People Act was passed, but it will undoubtedly mean for the time being a very considerable modification of the normal conditions of communication between the people in this country and the soldiers at the front. I hope that the Government have not only that in view, but that they have also in view the question whether the transmission of the ballot-papers to the voters and the collection of them and their return to this country can be carried out within the time fixed in the Representation of the People Act.
§ There is a further question which rather concerns candidates than the machinery of the election, but it is a matter of essential importance. The candidates who are soliciting the suffrages of these men should have an opportunity of placing their views before the voters to whom they appeal. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to get an intelligent vote from the electorate. The ballot-papers will go 1668 forth with, it may be, 2, 3, or 4 names, without any indication whatever what those various names represent. You may, indeed, with so many new constituencies, have particular constituencies with new candidates unknown to the electorate, and whose views are a complete mystery, especially to the soldiers who have been away from the localities for two or three years. It is, therefore, essential, if the soldier is going to give a vote such as he would desire to give, one based upon policy and to some extent upon the personal views of the candidate, that he should have an opportunity of at least seeing the views of the candidates in their election addresses. I think that is a fair claim to make. I hope that the President of the Local Government Board will be able to state whether any arrangements can be made for that purpose, and, if so, what the arrangements are, and whether there is going to be any assurance at all that the election addresses will reach the voters, because if there is none there is a very serious risk that you may have a complete falsification of the views of the soldiers. I know, for example, that in Canada, as a result of the recent election, there has been a good deal of recrimination regarding the methods whereby the soldiers' votes were obtained. Nobody in this country desires anything like that to occur. Everybody is agreed in the desire that the election, when it does come, should be an honest and clean election in which, so far as it is humanly possible, the views on public policy of the electors of all classes and of all callings will have an opportunity of being expressed. These are practical questions on the procedure of the election with special reference to the soldiers' vote to which I hope my right hon. Friend will be able to give an answer.
§ I had hoped to put a question to the Leader of the House on a larger matter, but he has apparently departed. I am, however, going to mention the matter all the same. I think it extremely important that we should at the earliest possible moment have a clear and definite statement on economic policy from His Majesty's Government. It is true that some statement has been promised when the Exports and Imports Bill is reintroduced, but that Bill may be reintroduced only a week before the election when there is really no opportunity of discussing and arguing these questions with the electors. This is a question upon which, above all 1669 others, clear and early notice should be given to the country. We want to know definitely these things: First of all, is His Majesty's Government committed to a policy of industrial protection for our industries in this country? Is it committed to a general protective tariff? There are some indications in the Prime Minister's speech to the manufacturers that that is in their minds, because he said that he was in sympathy with the speeches of the manufacturers. We want to know from the Government whether that is so, whether, for example, their view of the policy is that of the Minister of Pensions who says that not a ton of steel is going to be imported if it will throw a single blast furnace worker out of work. That is an intelligent policy, but it is not a policy with which I would agree, because I believe it would be fatal to many of our industries. I believe, for example, that it would be absolutely fatal to the shipbuilding industry of this country. Mark you, your shipbuilding industry after the War will have to fight for its life against American competition. If you are going to handicap it, by a policy of this kind, in a way in which it was never handicapped before—namely, by a policy of industrial protection, you may make dyes in this country sufficient to incarnadine the whole ocean, but if the British flag is driven from the seven seas it would be a poor consolation to the British Islands and the British Empire.
§ The second question I desire to put is, If we are going to have a policy of Preference, what is to be the basis of that Preference? When Mr. Chamberlain proposed Preference he stated honestly and candidly what the basis of it was to be—a tax on food. He said that if you are going to give a preference to the Colonies, you must tax food. That was an honest thing to say. Is the present Government going to be honest and tell us the basis of their policy? The third question I desire to put is, Are you going to have, in addition to your home protective tariff and your preferential tariff for the Colonies, another tariff for the benefit of the Allies, as is indicated by some speeches that have been made on the possible policy contained in the vague things known as the Paris Resolutions? What is even more important than that is, are the Government going to have an economic conference in which America is represented before this policy is adopted and before the country is committed to this 1670 policy at a General Election? We are entitled to an answer to that question also. Making one's way through this maze of tariffs, we want to know if there is to be another set of tariffs for neutrals—one set for the neutrals that have been friendly during the War, a still higher tariff for those who have not been friendly? Finally, are we to have the highest tariff of all against enemy countries?
§ Colonel WEDGWOODProhibition!
§ Mr. PRINGLEYes, or prohibition. All these questions are not dimcult to answer if the Government is going to be honest with the country. That is the point. We want to know whether they are going to be honest. We had a very interesting controversy yesterday, in which two members of the Government that was in power when War broke out rather differed about the situation at the outbreak of war. The Prime Minister said there was a pact with France. He subsequently withdrew the word, but there was some difference of opinion between my right hon. Friend the Member for Cleveland (Mr. H. Samuel) and the Prime Minister at the end as to the substance of the transaction. That would have been a very serious matter for the people of this country had it not been for the action of the Germans in going through Belgium. I think it would have turned out to be one of the gravest disasters for this country that there was in existence an undertaking so loose in its terminology, and so vague in its effect, that there was a possibility of two constructions being placed upon it by the people of this country at the very moment when the legions of Germany were on the march. That was a situation which might have been positively disastrous but for the action of our enemies. It was due to the vagueness of the policy of the Government at that time. Having in the past had to confront a possibility of that kind owing to vagueness in view of the outbreak of the War, the people of this country will be very well advised, when looking ahead to the years of peace, in seeing that their Government are committed, as far as the peace policy is concerned, first of all to nothing of which they are not aware, and, secondly, that they are only committed to a policy which is clear and definite in its character, and whose effects can be fairly judged and appreciated by people both here and elsewhere.
Mr. H. SAMUELMay I interrupt my hon. Friend to say that there was no 1671 undertaking of any sort except such as was presented to Parliament in the White Paper published at the beginning of the War. There was no secret undertaking or agreement reached that was not published in the White Paper.
§ Mr. PRINGLEI do not wish to enter into that controversy, because it is somewhat academic, and it never came to a practical issue, but I think it is safe to say that on the question of carrying out that undertaking the division of opinion was so great in the late Liberal Government that it was threatened with serious resignations up to the morning of Sunday, 2nd August, and that one of the people among the possible resigning Ministers was the present Prime Minister himself. I am not going into the question of what was the exact effect of the understanding, agreement, or undertaking, or whatever you choose to call it. The effects proved that it was vague, and the situation which we had to confront has shown that that vagueness was fraught with disaster. In the face of the outbreak of war we have been narrowly saved from a disaster. Let us not, in relation to peaceful policy, risk a disaster which might be equally serious, because if anything is done without the knowledge of the people of this country, if, for example, a blank cheque is given, you may have this country committed to a policy which will settle the whole lines of international relations not only for this generation, but for much longer. It will depend on their decision whether you are going to have a permanent grouping of the Powers of Europe supported during years of peace by these economic barriers, or whether you are to have this chance of a peaceful and progressive development, which the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs so well and eloquently described in his speech this afternoon, in which you will have the freest communication between nations and in which each nation, while preserving its own traditions and its own individuality, will in common make its contribution to the common stock of the civilisation and welfare of mankind.
§ The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Hayes Fisher)The question that has been addressed to me as President of the Local Government Board is what arrangements have been made by the Local Government Board for 1672 securing the votes of soldiers and sailors. My hon. Friend (Mr. Pringle) undoubtedly stated what was manifest to us all, that however much we might have differed during the passage through this House of the Representation of the People Act as regards votes for women, or proportional representation or the alternative vote, or anything of that kind, there was a unanimous expression of opinion by this House that every soldier and sailor, if possible, should be placed upon the register, and not only that, but that every facility should be given to him to record his vote. The Local Government Board has fallen in with the spirit which was prevalent in the House of Commons at that time, and we have done every single thing we could possibly devise to secure that the soldiers and sailors shall find themselves, wherever qualified, upon the register, and we are now busily devising plans and methods by which they will be enabled to give their votes should an election take place.
Have we been successful in securing that the great bulk of our soldiers and sailors at the age of nineteen have found their way on the register? That is a matter on which it is impossible to express more than an opinion, but I believe, from all I know about the registers as they at present exist, it will be found that the vast majority of our soldiers and sailors will have found their way upon the register. What are the methods? First of all, a pink paper has been left at almost every house. There was a house-to-house delivery, and the householder was asked to fill up on the pink paper the name and qualifications of every soldier or sailor so far as known to him. Secondly, post-cards were sent out both by the Army, Navy, and Air Authorities to every soldier and sailor whose address was known to them, and those soldiers and sailors were asked to fill up the postcard and say what was their qualification and for what place, and return the postcard direct to the registration officer. Where the soldiers and sailors were at a long distance, not in France or Belgium, but in Mesopotamia or Fast Africa, the War Office and the Admiralty have done their best through the Record Office to supply registration officers direct with the name and qualification of the soldier and sailor. Just at the very time when these millions of post-cards were to go out, a very big push took place, and all electioneering matter had to be put aside for 1673 the greater purpose of fighting. Then it was suggested to me in my office that the post-cards should be regarded as claims for the registration officer, and in thousands of these cases the vote has been saved to the soldier and sailor by the registration officer taking the post-card, although it arrived too late for the actual publication of the list, as a claim, and acting upon it and putting the soldier or sailor on. From all the information that reaches me, I have every reason to believe that the vast majority of our soldiers and sailors will find their way on to the register.
7.0 P.M.
Will they be able to vote? That is a much more difficult question. It will depend very much on the time that is chosen for the General Election. I know no more than any other Member of the House as to when a General Election will take place. It must depend on a variety of circumstances, but if we do not have a General Election before the end of January the House of Commons must consent once more to prolong its life. Whether or not these millions of soldiers will be able to vote depends very much on the time that is chosen for a General Election and whether there is a lull in the fighting. If you ask any commanding officer, he will say he will have nothing to do with an election. "Do not trouble our men with an election just at the time when either the Germans are making a big push, or, as I think is more likely, when we may be making a very big push to push them back again from territory which they ought never to have occupied." Therefore, it is very important, from the point of view whether soldiers are able to vote, that the time should be chosen when there is a lull in the fighting, and it is possible for the Post Office to deliver the ballot papers and return them to the registration officer. On that point of view, I am now in communication with the Post Office, and asking it to frame its regulations now in order that we may have an early opportunity of seeing them. I have gone into the matter as accurately as I can, taking the possible dates of elections and looking at it in all its stages from the date of the Proclamation to the date of the nomination, which is eight days, and then to the date of the election, which is another nine days; and adding another eight days as a possible time for the extension of the period in which the votes can be counted, 1674 because we had in mind some of these difficulties at the time the Bill was being passed through the House, and it provided for the possibility that the time between the nomination and the election might not afford a sufficient opportunity for the ballot papers and election addresses to go out to the soldiers in France and Belgium and return, and having that in mind as a possibility, it put into the Act of Parliament the power by Order in Council to fix the date for the counting of the votes as many as eight days after the closing of the poll in older that the ballot papers of the soldiers and sailors might be returned and be counted amongst the votes. I am talking now entirely of those who vote as absent voters and not those who vote by proxy. An Order in Council has already been issued enabling all sailors afloat and all soldiers who are serving or will be serving at the time otherwise than in France and Belgium to vote by proxy. All soldiers serving in Mesopotamia, or East Africa, or Salonika, or India, will be able to vote by proxy. Soldiers serving in France or Belgium will vote as absent voters. It is to them that I am alluding when I say it is necessary to keep the counting of the votes open another eight days in order that their ballot papers may come back and be counted in the ordinary way. I agree there are many formidable difficulties. If the Post Office is to make itself responsible for carrying these millions of ballot papers it will inevitably hold up the normal correspondence of the Army for some considerable time. However, I have asked the Postmaster-General to produce a set of model Regulations. I have had the advice of a representative of each of the large parties in the House in framing these Regulations. The envelope containing the ballot paper will contain only the ballot paper and the identification paper. I am asked, "How are you going to ensure that the candidates will be able to make known their general views to the electors?" I believe it is quite impossible for the Post Office to undertake to carry more than one election address by each candidate. It will be impossible, so far as I can see, that more can be done than that.
§ Mr. PRINGLEWill they do that?
§ Mr. FISHERThat is a matter which is now being carefully studied by the Post Office from the point of view of what the number of election addresses is likely to 1675 be, what is likely to be their weight, and how far the Post Office can frame Regulations for the purpose. Numerous difficulties have to be faced. We all want the same thing, fair play for everybody who is going into this election. So far as I am concerned, I shall endeavour in every possible way to see that no party has an advantage over any other party so far as the Regulations are concerned. It will be a fair, clean, and honest contest so far as it can be managed. Hon. Members will find that they will have to post their election addresses before the day of nomination if they are to secure that the Post Office will be able to convey those addresses in time for them to be of any practical effect, in influencing the voters.
§ Mr. P. A. HARRISWill it be possible to take advantage of the free post before the nomination day?
§ Mr. FISHERThe hon. Member is a student of these matters as I know from old times. If he looks at the Act, Clause 33, Sub-section (2), he will see that it says:
Any candidate at a Parliamentary election shall, subject to regulations of the Postmaster-General, be entitled to send, free of any charge for postage, to each registered elector for the constituency, one postal communication.… Provided that a candidate shall not be entitled to exercise the right of free postage conferred by this provision before he is duly nominated, unless he has given such security as may be required by the Postmaster-General for the payment of the postage in case he does not eventually become nominated.I should advise everybody who wants to make certain or to make as nearly certain as possible that his election address will reach the men at the front to see to it that he posts his election address before the nomination if he wants to secure free postage, and that he will give that security which the Post Office under the Act are properly entitled to require, and that he will forfeit that deposit in case he does not go to nomination.
§ Mr. GULLANDWill the Post Office guarantee that the addresses will be delivered?
§ Mr. FISHERI would remind the right hon. Gentleman that there is a war on. I do not say that in any insulting way. The Post Office cannot absolutely guarantee delivery. There may be very bad weather, there may be air raids and all sorts of things, but the Post Office will guarantee in normal circumstances that, if 1676 addresses are posted by a certain date, they will be delivered, so far as they are concerned, to the individual soldier. That guarantee is, of course, subject to the various accidents that might take place. There will be great difficulties as to the addresses of the soldiers. The soldier is constantly on the move. There, again, the War Office will have to assist us as well as they can through their record offices. What we have to hope for is that the War Office will see that there are other fights besides the fight in which they are engaged, and although their fight must come first, after all our fight must have proper consideration given to it, and the War Office will, I hope, through its record offices, be able, directly an election is coming, to revise its lists of addresses, and to send as perfect a list as possible to each registration officer so that the registration officer may have the most up-to-date list of those who are entitled to vote at the election.
This is all we could have done up to the present at the Local Government Board. The matter is still engaging our most earnest attention, and the next move lies with the Post Office. It is for the Post Office to frame their Regulations and to submit them. I have asked them to submit their Regulations to me as President of the Local Government Board, and I shall take an opportunity of consulting Friends of mine on all sides of the House who are conversant with election matters. With regard to soldiers who are in the proxy areas, outside France and Belgium, they will be able to obtain proxy forms, and I have not the slightest doubt that even if an election comes soon that most of these soldiers will be able to obtain their proxy in ample time to enable their proxy to vote for them. Already before the lists are completed where we have any reason to anticipate that a soldier in Palestine, Mesopotamia, East Africa, or Salonika is likely to qualify for any place, we have sent out a shoal of proxy papers to these remote areas, and have asked the commanding officer to distribute them amongst the soldiers, so that they may have the very earliest opportunity of making application for proxies. They may make application through their wives, their brothers, or some friend, or make an application direct to the registration officer himself. I want to help hon. Members as much as possible, and I propose to issue a circular or White Paper as soon as possible, informing them, not 1677 in the language of the Statute, but in more popular language, what methods ought to be adopted by the soldiers and sailors, or by their friends in order to secure their votes. Of course, if they are not on the register now it is too late to take any steps to get them on the register, but we shall do everything we possibly can to see that these absent soldiers, by proxy or otherwise, may record their votes.
§ Sir W. ESSEXWill the right hon. Gentleman say whether he has obtained from the Post Office an arrangement which will permit the separation in date of posting those circulars which have to go to soldiers and sailors abroad, so that the free postage accorded to candidates under guarantee against possible loss to the Post Office in the event of a prospective candidate not passing on to nomination may be secured, but will be a smaller amount than if it applied to the total flight of circulars to those at home as well as abroad?
§ Mr. FISHERI will consider that.
§ Colonel WEDGWOODThe more we hear and see of this approaching election, the less I like it. We have an awful prospect of the men at the front just before Christmas, when there is a lull in the fighting, having all their parcels and letters stopped in order that our literature may be carried to them. I hardly think our literature will be popular under these circumstances, or that it will be put to the best use. Add to that the probability that the lull in the fighting over there will be accompanied by a lull in the firing there, that things will be cold from every point of view, and that when people are cold they are more annoyed than when they are hungry, and they have a way of being annoyed with the Government. All this will be accompanied by the dangerous probability that the lull in the fighting out there will mean that the soldiers in the field will get our literature and lose their Christmas parcels.
A short time ago, at the time of the crisis, we passed legislation which, to my mind, was a real blow at our financial stability and at the moral of the whole people of the country. There was an urgent demand for more men for France, and, therefore, they raised the age from forty-two to fifty-one. At the time it looked as though everything would have to be sacrificed to our chance of carrying on the War—our financial position must be prejudiced, and even the sense of gross in- 1678 justice must be planted in the minds of the people in order to find the one way necessary, men—to stop the gap. Had I been at home at the time I should have voted for it, clearly as I see the result, as one must, upon the foreign trade of the country, upon our financial position, and our moral.
But the crisis of March is no longer with us, and those men who were over forty-two are still being taken into the Army, and when in the Army are still being employed on jobs which would be much better carried out by other people, while the work which they were doing for the country was of more importance for the national welfare. If we are to have a long War we should see that our financial position is the best possible. Hitherto it has been better than that of Germany, not because we are more economical than Germany, because we are not, but because we have been able to carry on our foreign trade and to keep up our exchange, not by financial jugglery, but in sending out from this country in exchange for foodstuffs and munitions the goods manufactured by our people. We have sent out coal, cotton goods, hardware, all manner of products, and have thus kept the exchange right and our finances sound. More than that, by being able to carry on our export trade we have enabled our trade to get in where Germany was before. It has put us in a position to beat that German trade after the War. In considering our financial position, we must not merely regard it during the War, but we have to think of it after the War. Germany knows that very well. But that is only one side. It is enormously important, as I say, that our financial position should be maintained, but even more important is it that a sense of injustice should not be roused among the people of the country. There is no doubt that this raising of the age from forty-two to fifty-one has hit the people of the country more than Conscription has hitherto. These people between forty and fifty are the men who have made little businesses; they are the men with small shops, with jobs as clerks, and who were considering the possibility of retiring from work. These people, whose whole life had been spent in making a home, find suddenly their whole work and prospects are swept away, that they have no compensation with the exception of the 1s. 3d. a day, and that their whole chances for the future are 1679 ruined. When you see one man taken and another left behind to draw his £300 a year, although the other man has just as much claim on society but has to be swept into the net, it cannot fail to rouse an enormous sense of injustice throughout the country.
Since March last the position has been saved by America and by German mistakes. We are no longer in danger of being pushed off the coast of France. Moreover, we are beginning to realise—I do not know why we did not realise it before—that these men between forty-four and fifty-one are not good material for any Army. They may be all right for garrison duty, but for actual fighting at the front they are all more or less useless. I want to appeal to the Prime Minister and to the tribunals of this country, knowing that the crisis is past, knowing at the same time the importance of keeping up our export trade, and of creating as little injustice as possible, to slacken down in their efforts to rope in these men over forty-four years of age. It can only be done if the Minister of National Service or the Prime Minister will see that the tribunals are informed that the position is no longer so desperate and that they may deal easier with these men. If that were done it would even now save the situation. Once these homes are broken up it will not be easy after the War to start them afresh; once the manufacturing trades are destroyed it will not be easy to start them afresh. We have heard of the possibility of restoring non-essential industries on preferential terms after the War, but if this system goes on, it will be an end of our chance of recovering after the War and that would be a very serious position.