HC Deb 25 June 1924 vol 175 cc538-56

Motion made, and Question proposed. "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. F. Hall.]

Sir KINGSLEY WOOD

I propose to detain the House only a few moments, but I think hon. Members will agree with me that the matter is of some urgency, as it affects the action of the Government in regard to a body of 50 or 60 men, and, I think, a larger body still. The matter was raised on Tuesday, when I asked the Civil Lord of the Admiralty whether he proposed to discharge any examiners or other employés in the Naval Inspection Department at Woolwich Arsenal, and, if so, whether he proposed to offer them any further employment. This was the reply that I received from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty: It has become necessary to discharge a number of men who have been employed on examination work, there being no longer work for them, and in these circumstances I regret it is not possible to offer the men further employment.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th, June, 1024; col. 267, Vol. 175.] I may say that the hon. Member, replying to my question, rather limited it. I asked whether further employment was going to be obtained for these men, but I did not confine his efforts to his own Department, but wished to know whether anything could be done in any other direction. Unless the Government can give some undertaking to-night, I understand these men, some 50 in number, have been discharged and are out of employment. They are heads of families, and the majority of them are ex-service men. Naturally, everyone is concerned about these men, and, as I have said many times in this House about men employed under any Government, the Government ought to set an example in this matter. That, however, is not the end of it. I understand that the discharges of another body of men, some 200 in number, I believe, are contemplated by His Majesty's Government. It is a very serious thing. In this particular district at Woolwich, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Woolwich (Mr. Snell) knows, we are suffering more unemployment than in almost any other part of the country. Not only is there the ordinary amount of unemployment, but, owing to other discharges that have taken place under the auspices of the Financial Secretary to the War Office, whom I am glad to see here to-night, because he knows all about it, a very large number of discharges have taken place there.

When I asked a question the other day as to how many men have been dismissed by the Secretary of State for War since he took office, I was told that the number reached nearly 500. It will not, therefore, be surprising to the House to learn that the attitude of the Government, or of any Government which is causing discharges to this extent, in a district already considerably overburdened, is creating a great deal of anxiety. I hope the hon. Member who speaks for the Admiralty, in consultation with the Financial Secretary to the War Office, will be able to make some reassuring statement and to indicate, if these men have been discharged, or if others are going to be discharged, what efforts the Government are going to make to find them employment, not necessarily at the Admiralty or in the War Office, but elsewhere. I had a letter the other day from one of these men, in which he said: I wish you would look and see what the present Prime Minister said when he came to Woolwich and corrested the East Division"— which is now represented by my hon. Friend opposite— about discharges in Woolwich Arsenal, and what he would do. I look to you to remind him of what was said on that occasion. I have looked this matter up, and I may tell the House that on that occasion the constituency of East Woolwich was asked to "Vote for MacDonald and a full Arsenal," and when the present Prime Minister was challenged about this matter, he made a suggestion as to what he should do if only he represented East Woolwich in Parliament and discharges were taking place. He said this—and I commend it to the members of his Government to-day. There was a suggestion attributed to me on that occasion that I should object to having him as my colleague in the representation of Woolwich, and that I might have some difficulty in going with him to the War Office to demand employment for men discharged, and the present Prime Minister said: You can perfectly well understand that when I go to the War Office, and they say, 'No work for Woolwich.' when I say, 'Are you perfectly sure there is no Post Office work it can do, no demands of the municipalities that can be supplied if you made inquiries, have you not an Intelligence Department that will be active in getting Woolwich work? if they say 'No.' then I say, 'All right, wait until the War Office Vote conies up in the House of Commons, and you will find out what I will say to you.' I therefore invite hon. Members opposite, who can apparently find no work for these men, to go to the Post Office, or to see whether any of the municipalities require work, and I also inquire whether they have an intelligence department such as has been suggested by the Prime Minister. In conclusion, I wish to make this further inquiry. Another matter is the demand of the semi-skilled and unskilled men at Woolwich to have their wages raised to the, same proportion as the wages of the skilled men have recently been raised by an Arbitration Tribunal. We are very anxious to know whether the Government are prepared to adopt the recommendations in accordance with what the Arbitration Tribunal have done. I hope these wages will be raised, as I think they ought in justice to be done, inasmuch as an Arbitration Tribunal has fixed them, but even that would be very little consolation to the men who are going to be discharged. No doubt it will be a measure of satisfaction if certain wages are raised, but it by no means gets rid of the responsibility of the Government, at this particular hour, in a very difficult constituency, where unemployment, is so rife, at any rate to do something for these men at the present time, and I appeal to the Government to do something on their behalf.

Mr. SNELL

I am personally concerned to do what I can to help these men who have been discharged, and not at all interested in trying to score party points or in quoting election speeches. If such a thing helped, I could quote speeches from other electioneering literature, not far removed from the division which I represent, but I would like to associate myself very sincerely with the appeal that has been made, that the position of these 50 or 55 men should be considered. We have done our very best over a series of years in Woolwich to try to meet the very exceptional circumstances and the very exceptional distress, but, in spite of every effort that we have made by private negotiation with the Government to stabilise employment in the Arsenal, we have these recurring panics at unexpected moments, and we cannot help feeling that, if we could have financial foresight in the proper allotting of financial supplies, we could get some kind of a system of employment in the Arsenal, and other national yards, whereby, when a man was employed, he could feel reasonably safe that his employment would be secure. That is what makes the matter so distressing, for we find the men walking about, skilled men, men of high character and capacity, and then suddenly, without a word of warning, they are thrown on to the streets at a time, too, when there is only the remotest chance of that kind of skill which we had in the arsenal being re-employed. I should like the House to remember what are the conditions of work there. We employ skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled men, but, in any case, their employment is in relation to certain specific things which probably is not useful to them outside the gates of the arsenal or the national yards. It is because of this very great difficulty that the workmen have in getting work outside, that the Government has a real moral responsibility to try to stabilise employment in their own national yards so that calamity should not come upon these deserving men.

In addition to this there is the distressing condition of the borough in question. I have before in this House told the story how, during the War, the Government brought into that area some 100,000 men to meet the emergencies of the nation. The work which they did received not only the spoken gratitude of Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), but in every direction there came words of thanks for the service that these men did. Yet directly the War is over the Government seem to feel no responsibility. I refer not specially to this Government, but the previous Government, and the Government before. They seemed to feel no responsibility whatever for this district into which they had piled an enormous number of people to suit their own convenience. When this convenience was satisfied, then those concerned could go without any help whatever! That is the situation. It is extremely distressing. We have over 12,000 men on the unemployment roll in the borough at present, and yet the Government turn out, on occasions such as this, 50 or 100 men, adding thus to the very great existing distress.

I know it is an easy thing to complain. It may be a hard thing to satisfy any claim that is made, but we do feel that some kind of alternative work should be provided. We do feel in our minds that some effort should be made to provide this, so that men need not be turned away when these crises of unemployment recur. I do not want to particularise, but I understand we are going to have a good many houses built pretty soon. These houses will require fittings, metal fittings, which can be produced in the Government's own national yards—locks, bolts, window sashes, and articles of this sort. These things could be done if the Government of the day were willing td approach the matter in the proper spirit. The workers themselves have made suggestions of this kind to me, and whilst I do not for a moment associate myself with any suggestion that this Government has done worse than any other Government in the matter—personally I believe it has done a great deal better—for the workers in Woolwich Arsenal have received some increase in wages since this Government came into office, and for that they are grateful—but I do say that it ought to be possible for the Government to set a great example in the stabilisation of employment, and so endeavour to arrange for less of this dreadful distress that comes upon men so suddenly discharged from their work.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Mr. Ammon)

At the outset. I have to apologise to hon. Members that I am not so well prepared as I might have been for this Debate, because it was expected a little later, and perhaps another representative of the Admiralty might have had the duty of replying. I need, perhaps, hardly assure the House that the matter under discussion, the discharge of certain men, would not have been decided upon until we had explored every possible avenue to see if it could be avoided, and in the hope that we might be able to find some work to keep them going, for some time at least. But as has been said before, in the Governmental dockyards and other establishments of the sort, where the manufacture of war material has been going forward, that work has gradually been ceasing until there is little or no work to be done. We are now unloading the War establishments that were gathered together during the. War. I am afraid that I should only be deceiving hon. Members—and I do not want to do that— if I said that there was any possibility of keeping these men on, or of preventing the discharges taking effect if not now, at a little later date. I have to-day discussed at the Admiralty if any means can be found of putting work in hand for them to do.

Rear-Admiral SUETER

May I make a suggestion to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty He says he has been all through the Departments in endeavouring to find, if possible, work for these discharged men. Might I suggest that the hon. Gentleman consults the Government about the Lower Thames Tunnel. There is a scheme going through to build a tunnel beneath the Loner Thames, between the Medway and Tilbury. I do not quite agree with the hon. Gentleman opposite, who has just suggested that work should be found in the manufacture of house fittings and so on for these skilled men, but there is always the steel works needed in tunnels. If this is taken up by the Government there might be work done at the Woolwich Royal Arsenal by these men. I desire to associate myself with the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Woolwich who spoke so ably on the subject: and here I suggest there is a case where you can give these men steel work. Why, therefore, not do it?

Mr. AMMON

I shall be glad to consider the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman or of any Member. In respect, however, to the men under discussion, they are examiners of explosives. We are now manufacturing fewer and fewer shells, and therefore it is obvious that their work is growing less and less. I do not know how many hon. Members would suggest that you should keep these men on when there is nothing for them to do? Still I will bear in mind the suggestions that have been made.

Mr. B. SMITH

I should like to ask the Deputy-Leader of the House whether he could not consider now many of the statements which were made by people on these benches as to the utilisation of Woolwich Arsenal for civil work. There is a great work to be done in London. The River Thames al the present time has 13 bridges, and work in connection with some of these bridges, or a good deal of it, could be done in Woolwich Arsenal. Two of these bridges are absolutely out of repair for traffic, namely, Waterloo and Lambeth. Two more of these bridges, Battersea and Wandsworth, at the present time allow no vehicle ever two tons to pass over. This leaves nine bridges out of 13 for the ordinary traffic of London. I think if you compare this city, with its 7,000,000 population, which serves an area covering over 11,000,000 of population—that is, from the docks upwards—if you compare it with Paris, with its 21 bridges over the Seine, I think you will see that this is a city which, as I suppose, is the most congested in the world. It is suffering from an absolute paucity of bridges.

There may be a question of a tunnel from Tilbury, and other tunnels, but it does seem to me, having regard to the discussions taking place this week, and which will be continued to-morrow, on the question of traffic control, that here with proper and sufficient bridges there would be given the greatest fluidity and mobility to the traffic in and about London that could possibly be given. I could mention bridges that could go right away from Hendon, and of bridges necessary at Nine Elms to carry away the great goods traffic direct along the North and South loads which would relieve the present approaches. There is the question of the Channel Tunnel. I understand that in France already it is agreed upon and the men and the money are ready, and the same applies in this country, and all that is wanted is power to commence the tunnel from this side. All these things could be developed along the line of constructional steelwork, and Woolwich Arsenal could be utilised for that purpose, because it is work which it is absolutely fitted for. I am glad to know we are not making shells there, but that is no argument for repeating what has happened at, Gretna, where we have been shutting down the works wholesale and discharging men when we could have utilised both the men and the plant for the development of London, which is much in need of better bridges for giving facilities for traffic.

    cc545-9
  1. HOUSING. 1,506 words
    2. cc549-55
  2. AFFORESTATION. 2,302 words
    3. cc555-6
  3. ORDNANCE DEPOT, CHILWELL. 473 words
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