§ 63. Mr. WIGNALLasked the Home Secretary if forty-three members of the Exeter City Asylum are on strike owing 1439 to the dismissal of an old servant of twenty-eight years' service, who is a trade union official, on a charge arising from a dispute between this servant, in the exercise of his duties as a trade union official, and the medical superintendent of the asylum; whether a public meeting of Exeter citizens held on Sunday, 4th May, after hearing the strikers' statement of their case, unanimously declared its belief that the dismissal of P. Glanville, the union official, was unjustifiable; and that the Exeter Trades Council has recommended its affiliated unions to refuse to handle goods for the asylum until Glanville is reinstated; and what action he proposes to take to secure an amicable settlement of this dispute?
§ Mr. SHORTTI am informed that the cause of this strike is the dismissal by the Visiting Committee responsible for the management of the asylum of a member of the staff for insubordinate conduct when fault was found with his work, and that at the time of the dismissal neither the Visiting Committee nor the medical superintendent were aware that the man in question was an official of the trade union. The facts have been reported to the Ministry of Labour, which is investigating the dispute.