HOME SECRETARY'S SPEECH. (Hansard, 18 June 1925)

§ Mr. BATEY
I desire to utilise the short time available for the purpose of directing the attention of the House to a speech delivered last Saturday by the Home Secretary at Chatsworth. The part of the speech to which I take exception is this. The Home Secretary said: Who was trying to prevent peace at the present time between the coal owners and the miners? He answered that question by saying: The Socialists and Communists. I am taking it for granted that this report is correct. I have seen, up to the present, no contradiction of it.

§ The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir William Joynson-Hicks)
May I now intervene on that point?

§ Mr. BATEY
If the right hon. Gentleman is going to deny the accuracy of the report, he had better do so now.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
I am not going to deny the report, I am only going to say that the "Sunday Times" is the only paper which reports the word "Socialism." If the hon. Member will do me the honour of reading the whole speech—which I have read myself, though I do not always read my own speeches—he will find that there was a long attack on the National Minority movement and Communism. I am not going to say I did not use the word "Socialism," but I can only find it in one paper. With regard to Communism, and the National Minority movement, I am fully prepared to meet the hon. Member.

§ Mr. BATEY
I first read the speech last Sunday in the "Sunday Times," but when I got the North Country papers on Monday I found the same statement, and not only the word "Communists," but "Socialists" appeared in the North Country papers, which circulate among the miners in the County of Durham.
I would like to ask the Home Secretary to give us the grounds for that statement. He says he is not sure that he did not use the word Socialists, but whether he did or did not, I am going to bracket the two words, Socialists and Communists, together and ask him to give us the grounds why he made the statement that either Socialists or Communists are trying to prevent peace at the present time between the coalowners and the miners. I know he may say that Mr. Cook, the Secretary of the Miners' Federation, delivers speeches that he does not like, but the Home Secretary cannot rise to-night and give any proof that even Mr. Cook is trying to prevent peace between the coal-owners and the miners. As a matter of fact, he is engaged in very delicate negotiations with the coalowners, and there is no man, in my opinion, who is striving. harder to keep the peace than is Mr. Cook. The Home Secretary cannot read into that answer any one particular person. It meant more than one, and I think he should tell us, and be frank with us, of any Socialists or any Communists—there is one in front of me who never hesitates to say he is a Communist—either inside this House or outside, who are trying to prevent peace at the present time between the coalowners and the miners.
One has to remember this—and it is perhaps this recollection that makes us so anxious to deal with remarks like 949 these—that this speech of the Home Secretary was delivered at a political meeting, where there would be the regular adherents of the Conservative party, wealthy men and wealthy women. In fact, the whole of the audience at Chatsworth would be wealthy men and wealthy women, and I want to say this, that, having heard that statement of the Home Secretary, they would say at once that the statement was true. They heard what the Home Secretary said, and whatever other people might say, they would think that the statement of the Home Secretary was true, because the Home Secretary made it. My experience has taught me that there is nothing that can compare with the colossal ignorance of the wealthy classes of this country on industrial questions, and, knowing that, we are extremely anxious that no prominent member of the Government shall go to a political meeting and make a statement that we believe to be so untrue.
I think the Home Secretary ought to have remembered when he was dealing with the question of miners and coal-owners, that the present National Agreement ends at the end of June, when either the coalowners or the miners can give a month's notice to terminate that Agreement, and he ought to have remembered that just at the present time it is in the balance as to whether or not that Agreement will be renewed. That fact ought to have prevented the right hon. Gentleman from butting in and interfering in such a delicate question. If there is an industry in this country at the present time that needs peace, it is the coal industry. There is not an industry suffering like the coal industry at the present time, and there is no industry that ought to be helped more by Members either on this side or the other side. I would, therefore, ask the Home Secretary to-night to prove his statement, or else be frank and withdraw it. I say there is not an atom of truth in it.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
I am very much obliged to the hon. Member for having given me the opportunity of amplifying the statement I made the other day at Chatsworth. I think I know an audience well enough to be able to say that in that audience there were a large number of working-class people, trade unionists among them. When I 950 mentioned the names of several leaders of the Labour party, with, if I may say so, approval with regard to their conduct in the matter, such names as those of the right hon. Members for Aberavon (Mr. R. MacDonald), Platting (Mr. Clynes) and Derby (Mr. Thomas), their names were received with cheers. The whole speech was to support leaders of the Labour party to come to a settlement on labour questions, and against the Red propaganda emanating from Moscow in conjunction with the National Minority Movement in this country. That was the object of the speech.
The hon. Member has asked me for evidence. Let me state exactly the position. The Red International Labour Unions passed a Resolution at the third World's Congress of the Red International in July, 1924, as follows: The opposition in the British labour movement is led by adherents of the Red International of Labour Union. In certain regions (South Wales) our adherents are in the majority. I am quoting from documents which I am bound to take as representing the views of the National Minority Movement. The work of the opposition is closely connected with the Communist party. A conference was held at Battersea Town Hall of the British Minority Movement and the Red International and Labour Union on 23rd August, 1924, and at that conference one of the main resolutions passed was in favour of forming one Revolutionary Trade Union International, and they said the International Minority Movement shall elect delegates to attend the conference of the Red International at Moscow. The National Minority Movement was then constituted. [An HON. MEMBER: "HOW many were there?"] There were 267 of them there, and at the last conference this year there were 590. Men are named who carry a certain amount of weight, I will not say in the trade union world, but in the Communist world, at all events—the President of the Executive Committee, Mr. Tom Mann, the General Secretary, Mr. Harold Pollitt, and others to whom I will refer in a minute. The declared objects, further on, of this Minority Movement were against the present tendency towards false social peace and class collaboration, and the delusion of a peaceful transition from capitalism to Socialism. I said at Chatsworth quite de- 951 finitely, that if the Socialists can by argument or by a majority vote get a majority for their theories, they were perfectly entitled to do so. I said that openly and I say it again here. If by a majority of votes in this country they can transfer from a Capitalist to a Socialist system, they are perfectly entitled to do it. What I said they were not entitled to do was to do it by revolutionary methods. That body has maintained the closest relation with the International Labour Movement. The Miners' Minority Movement is a section of the National Minority Movement, the names of whose leaders I have just given, and these are their aims: To carry on a wide agitation for the principles of the revolutionary class struggle and to work against the present tendency towards a false social peace and class collaboration and the delusion of a peaceful transition from Capitalism to Socialism. That is one of the quotations which I used there. I have no objection, if you can do it, to a peaceful transition from Capitalism to Socialism, but that is not the idea of the Miners' Minority Movement.

§ Mr. DUNCAN GRAHAM
Would you mind telling us what connection the gentlemen whose names you read out have with the miners' members who are conducting the negotiations at the present time? That is the information which we want.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
The hon. Member is quite mistaken. I say that there are men in this country connected with Moscow who are deliberately trying to prevent the hon. Member himself carrying out the negotiations successfully.

§ Mr. D. GRAHAM
And I say that you are more dangerous in this connection than are the men at Moscow.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
I was hoping that the hon. Member would allow me to answer the questions that have been put to me by one of his colleagues.

§ Mr. GRAHAM
That is what we are asking you to do.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
The "Mine Worker" especially represents this particular movement. The hon. Gentleman may have nothing to do with it, but the paper is there pouring this out week by week, as it has been for months past, and doing its utmost to prevent friendship between the miner and the mineowner.

§ Mr. D. GRAHAM
The "Sunday Times" is owned by a South Wales coal-owner, and I have nothing to do with it.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
On 21st February the "Mine Worker" wrote: The demand for the 'Altogether' struggle is growing in all parts of the country. That is all to the good. But in war time is everything. Necessity knows no law and no sentimental attachment to the old leaders "— That is the leaders of the Labour party— must be allowed to stand in the way. The "Mine Worker," in relation to the Conference at Blackpool in May, suggested that all the miners could do was to accept the decision, and resolve to carve a way out of the terrible situation for themselves.

§ Mr. LAWSON
What has all this nonsense got to do with the matter?

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
The paper said that the great issue for the miners going to the conference must be nationalisation; and that means without compensation. [Interruption.] I am beginning to think that there are some Members of this House who might be quite willing to give me the necessary quotations from their own speeches. After the Blackpool Conference the "Mine Worker" dealt with the shortcomings and difficulties of the conference and of the decisions, and said it was black in a real sense and was the herald of "a rotten compromise and peaceful surrender." [Interruption.] That is not my statement. It is the statement of a paper that is issued by the National Minority Movement, and we are told now apparently that the National Minority Movement is friendly to a peaceful settlement between employer and employed.
The gentlemen to whom I referred just now are Mr. Arthur Horner and Mr. Nat. Watkins, who are the heads of the miners' minority movement and who speak for them. [Interruption.] Whether they are large or small is not the point. The point is, I say I was justified in saying there were men in this country, and newspapers in this country, who were doing all they possibly could to prevent compromise between the employers and the employed in the mining industry. These two men issued a manifesto in the Blackpool Conference of 30th May.

§ Mr. J. JONES
Are there only two?

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
They are the leaders of the particular union, and they signed the manifesto on behalf of the union. [HON. MEMBERS: "Not the union."] Well, the minority movement. They complain of A policy of procrastination and postponement. A defeatist policy, and declare the situation to be one demanding immediate action. The manifesto calls for an active fighting policy, and says that the only party to gain by further delay will be the owners. Then there is the new conference which is to be held.
This extract is from a much more important paper than the "Mine Worker"; it is from the "Workers' Weekly" of 4th June. This is what it says about the June conference, that is to take place, and has been taking place, this month, between the mineowners and the miners. The "Workers' Weekly," which has at least a substantial circulation throughout the country, says: The June conference must prepare to mobilise the whole power of the working class, so that if the various sectional demands that have been made by the workers are refused the organisations can be prepared to carry out mass strike action. There is another paper besides the "Workers' Weekly." But before I deal with that I want to refer to another copy of the "Workers' Weekly," in February this year, calling upon the unions to organise a stoppage of work in support of their respective demands, and to give each other a guarantee to remain out on strike until the demands have all been conceded, and to bring pressure to bear upon their officials in favour of a Committee of Action.

§ Mr. MACKINDER
Can the right hon. Gentleman justify his speech, and not give us all these extracts?

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
These are the justifications I said that there was a body of Communist opinion which was definitely doing its best to prevent peace in the labour world.

§ Mr. D. GRAHAM
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Sir Robert Home) is going about the country making statements without knowledge, having nothing to do with the negotiations, making statements which are intended to 954 prejudice the public against any settlement being arrived at. Why do not the Government deal with the men on their own side? I can give the House any number of names. [Interruption.] You are evidently amongst them.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
It really is not any use the hon. Member being angry. I am challenged, and I am giving the information which I think and hope the country will believe to-morrow is ample justification for the statement I have made, and which I shall make again—that there is a distinct effort being made by the extreme Communist party here, in touch with the Communist party in Moscow, to prevent peace in the labour world.

§ Mr. LUNN
I am not at all angry with the right hon. Gentleman, but is it right that one in the position of Home Secretary should, instead of trying to foster peace, endeavour to defend a movement of this kind by such quotations as we have been listening to to-night? After the speech of the Prime Minister, asking that there should be peace in our time, and considering the delicacy of this question at the present moment, would he not have been better employed in encouraging some sort of peaceful settlement, than in trying to foster the position which he has been endeavouring to do? [Interruption.]

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
The hon. Member has appealed to me, and I think it is perfectly justifiable for hon. Members to ask me to justify my speech, and I was prepared to come down and do so. I do, however, ask hon. Members to read the whole of that speech, because it has an appeal for peace in the labour world. I have a very great objection to the efforts of the Communist party in this country, and I think I am quite entitled to hold that view. I made an appeal to the trade unions not to be led aside by the Communist element.

§ Mr. LUNN
We are not.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
I know you are not, but there is a large number likely to be influenced by speeches of that kind.

§ Mr. SAKLATVALA
May I point out that only a few days ago the London Trades Council decided to affiliate with the Minority Movement, and that the 955 Home Secretary is quite right in saying that the Minority Movement is gaining great importance in the trade union world? [Interruption.]

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
I do not think I need give much more justification of my speech. I trust that the miners will abide by the wishes and leading of the senior members of the Labour party and will disregard what the hon. Member has just said. I should like to say, in conclusion, that I did appeal to them to back up those leaders of the Labour party whom I mentioned by name in my speech, and I appealed to the trade unions. I appeal now to the trade unions of this country to stand by their tried leaders. They and I hold different views on 956 political questions, but I met, the other day, the leaders of the Trade Union Congress at the Home Office, where we were for nearly two hours discussing together in amity and friendship various matters of a non-political character, and on many points we were able to arrive at conclusions which I hope were satisfactory. My appeal is to the Labour party to abide by the leadership of their well-tried leaders, and not to be influenced by people like the hon. Member for North Battersea (Mr. Saklatvala) and others who are directly controlled by the Minority Movement.