§ The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir William Joynson-Hicks)I beg to move,
That the Regulations made by His Majesty in Council under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920, by Order dated the 28th June 1926, shall continue in force, subject however to the provisions of Section 2 (4) of the said Act.I think it will be for the convenience of the House if we give more time to 1766 the discussion of the individual Regulations, upon which there are, I know, very divided opinions, than to this Motion itself.I see that on the Order Paper there are Amendments down in the names of various hon. Members. They deal with Regulations 21, 22, 33 and 34.I quite realise that it is only right and proper that those Amendments should be debated, and I shall, of course, be prepared to deal with them in due course, and to the best of my ability. In view of that I do not propose to make a long speech now, and shall content myself by merely moving formally the Motion that stands in my name.
§ Mr. SPEAKERSir Henry Slesser.
§ Sir HENRY SLESSER rose—
1767§ Mr. BUCHANANI should like to ask a question—
§ Mr. SPEAKERMr. Thurtle—
§ Mr. THURTLEOn a point of Order. Are we going to have any opportunity of discussing generally the necessity for continuing these Regulations, irrespective of the particular Regulations that are to be considered?
§ Mr. SPEAKERWe did discuss that on Friday. We can perhaps see how long it takes to deal with the Amendments, and see if there be time, after the. Amendments have been disposed of, for the general discussion. But I thought it right to call upon the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for South-East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser).
§ Mr. LANSBURYOn a point of Order. Are we to understand that the right hon. Gentleman has moved those Regulations en bloc, and that we are not to be allowed to discuss generally the need for them? As I understood it on Friday we discussed an Amendment dealing with the coal mines situation: we dealt with that and that alone. Some of us want to discuss not merely the general policy, but we want to discuss them in detail; to take the regulations one by one. I do not know whether that would be in Order?
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSOn a point of Order. May I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that the debate which hon. Members desire can take place on Regulation 21, raising important matters. They contain the general question on that Regulation, and practically all the Regulations. That, T think, would meet the point.
§ Mr. LANSBURYThe right hon. Gentleman is probably right up to a certain point. But we cannot go back on the Regulations. I am sorry to be persistent, but some of us do want to discuss the general policy of bringing forward this proposal.
§ Mr. BUCHANANThe House will perhaps remember that the other day I raised the point of the whole of the Regulations being delayed on the ground that the Government ought to take certain steps. I was not then criticising the Government one way or the other in regard to the Regulations, but I 1768 raised the question of their postponement. The point I want to put now is that we never reached the stage or the question of delay; it was never allowed to be discussed. We ought, I submit, to be given the opportunity of a general discussion apart from Regulation 21 or 22, as to the desirability of delay in these Regulations.
§ Captain WEDGWOOD BENNMay I submit, Mr. Speaker, that it is the custom when a Motion is moved that it should be discussed in general terms before the Amendments are called.
§ Mr. SPEAKERI think it is very much a matter for the House itself. My only desire is to assist hon. Members to come to the points they wish to discuss. I made certain suggestions through the usual channels, which I thought had been acceptable. I was prepared, on the first Motion, or on Regulation 21 to allow a more general discussion if that would meet the views of hon. Members.
§ Mr. WALLHEADThe point I should like to discuss is the necessity for the regulations at all. Many of us on these benches hold that the necessity for these Regulations has entirely passed away. The country is perfectly peaceful. Although the miners are suffering they are suffering in peace. There is no disturbance of the peace anywhere, and it is an insult to the people that these Regulations should be continued. As a matter of fact, it is asking for trouble.
§ Mr. THURTLEMay we understand, if the first Amendment be taken now, that on it we can discuss the general question as to whether all or any of these Regulations shall be imposed now?
§ Mr. SPEAKERThat will depend on how hon. Members use the time. I am most anxious to meet hon. Members' wishes, and to give them reasonable opportunities for discussion of all points which they desire to raise.
§ Mr. LANSBURYBut, Mr. Speaker, I put it to you that it is the Government who have put these. Regulations down at this very inconvenient hour. We want to discuss the general policy of the Government in bringing them forward at all. If we go to No. 21, I understand you to say it will depend on "how we use the time." I again very respectfully submit that with 1769 a bunch of Regulations like this, dealing with an emergency proclaimed by the Government, the. House, and certainly the Opposition, are fully entitled to discuss them, no matter at what hour, and that we ought not at the outset to have to discuss how much time we are going to give to them.
§ Sir H. SLESSERWill it satisfy the House if I open generally on the whole matter now, instead of moving my Amendment? I think I shall be able to say on the general Motion what I should be able to say on the Amendment.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI am afraid that on that point of Order I must be allowed to say, Mr. Speaker, that you called on the hon. and learned Gentleman, as I understood it, for the purpose of moving his Amendment, and he rose for that purpose. The hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) really must not arrogate to himself the right of controlling the business of the House.
§ Mr. LANSBURYHas the right hon. Gentleman the right to say that I am trying to arrogate to myself the right to dictate to the House of Commons? Have I not as much right as any other hon. Member to put a point of Order?
§ Mr. SPEAKEREvery hon. Member has a perfect right to make a suggestion.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSIf the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley does not like the word "arrogate" I withdraw it. May I point out, Mr. Speaker, that you have already called upon the hon. and learned Member for South East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser) to move his Amendment. May I also remind the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley that we had a general debate on Friday, but I think the hon. Member was engaged at a meeting in Manchester.
§ Mr. LANSBURYI was here a part of the time.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSIf the hon. Member had been here he would have known that the Main Question was Debated.
§ Mr. SPEAKERSome considerable time was devoted on Friday to the general questions, but I have now called upon the hon. and learned Member for South-East 1770 Leeds to open the debate, without moving his Amendment if he so please
§ Sir H. SLESSERThese Regulations, which we are asked to consider to-night, are based on the Emergency Powers Act of 1920, an Act that only allows the Regulations to be put into force if it appears to His Majesty that action has been taken or is immediately threatened by any body of persons on such a scale as to interfere with the supply to the public of fuel or light. These Regulations came into being when the strike was a very extended one and long before the dispute was confined to the existing miners' lockout. Whatever may have been the reasons at that time—to some of us they seemed quite inadequate—for pressing on these Regulations, it is my submission that now that time has entirely passed away. The extreme importance of the matter is that if it is to be held that this particular dispute in the coal industry justifies this alteration in the administration and content of the common law it follows that every time there is a trade dispute in this country the Government will similarly alter the law. Only a month ago the right hon. Gentleman said the Government needed these powers because of the continuation of the situation then existing and he asked the House to pass these Regulations for another month. Since the last time these Regulations were passed we have had a whole month to test, whether there is in this country during the lockout—[HON. MEMBERS: "Strike" and "Lockout"]—I welcome this opportunity of settling once for all whether this is a strike or a lockout. [An HON. MEMBER: "It is a stoppage."] A strike is a cessation of labour or a threatened cessation in order to better labour conditions. Nobody would hesitate for a moment to say it was a strike if men left their work in order to better their conditions. In this particular case of the miners it is conceded that the men are willing to work, on the old conditions but the employers are refusing to allow them to work on the old conditions. Therefore this is legally and in fact a lockout and not a strike.
§ Mr. SPEAKERI do not think we need waste time on terminology.
§ Sir H. SLESSERI had not the slightest intention of embarking on 1771 these elementary legal definitions if I had not been challenged on the point. Perhaps I may be allowed to return to the observations I was making. I was saying that, whatever might have been the position a month ago, when it might conceivably have been argued that a residuum of disturbance was left over from the General Strike, another month has passed, and it is absolutely evident to every fair-minded person in this country that there is not to-day any such state of emergency as requires this special interference with the common law of the country. A most extraordinary situation has arisen in this House when the Government, who, in industrial matters, are always proclaiming themselves individualists, and are so concerned with the freedom of the individual, come here day after day and night after night and ask for more and more powers to enable the State to restrict the liberty of the individual. To-day they have been spending their time in seeking to suppress the local authorities, and to-night they come again to strengthen the power of the State—which, in this connection, is themselves—to alter the old Common Law of this country in order to deal with disaffection, sedition, and the other matters contemplated by these Regulations.
The right hon. Gentleman, I think, will admit—because, if I may say so with every respect, he is extremely frank in his admissions, and never seeks to colour the facts—that at the moment the country is in a state of complete peace. It is true that, industrially, a large number of persons are out of work. It is true that a large number of people are unemployed, but to say that there is any disaffection or sedition, or that any of these circumstances which could justify the continuation of these Regulations exists to-day, is a statement which it is impossible for the right hon. Gentleman to make. If that be so, what does it mean? It either means that the Government are now so enamoured of this idea of executive and bureaucratic coercion that they never mean to let this country have its common law again, or it means something rather worse—it means that they cannot trust the operation of the ordinary law, they cannot trust the sense of the ordinary citizen to behave himself ender that ordinary law; and I look upon it as an insult to the people of this country that 1772 it should be suggested that it is necessary at this time to have these regulations at all. I do not speak so much of these Regulations which directly relate to the handling of coal as such, though on a previous occasion we did object, and I think with some force, to the fact that the regulation limiting the supplies of coal was being used to extort indemnities from the coal dealers; but I am concerned primarily with these Regulations which interfere with the liberty of the subject, and it does so happen that one of the first of these Regulations which in my submission is objectionable is Regulation No. 21.
I would point out that., before the present Emergency Powers Act, 1920, although there were many seditious-minded persons in this country, mostly on the benches opposite, it was found quite possible to curtail their seditious exuberances at the time of the threatened Ulster Rebellion without the use of the Emergency Powers Act at all, and, whatever their sentiments were, they were kept in order by the operation of the ordinary law. May I remind the right hon. Gentleman of that very apposite passage from Juvenal, "Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes?" It really rather sickens us when those who have been concerned in something very like sedition ask us to pass these Regulations.
With regard to Regulation 21, it is vicious for two reasons. First of all, it deals with the ordinary law in what I submit is an entirely unjustifiable way, and then it adds to the objectionable manner of dealing with the ordinary law a new offence. The first part of this Regulation provides that if any person attempts to do any act calculated to cause mutiny, sedition or disaffection he may be charged and tried before a magistrate, which does not mean even a stipendiary magistrate but any two county magistrates who happen to be sitting on any Bench in some rural area. During the last hundred years there have been very few prosecutions, I am glad to say, for sedition. They have been treated by the Courts as very delicate and difficult matters. Judgments have been given, notably the judgment of Mr. Justice Cave in the Burns case, showing how subtle is the distinction between sedition and proper criticism or correction of the 1773 Government, and in those good old days when people still believed in liberty the jury acquitted Mr. Burns. It is a very difficult matter to say just where the line comes where honest and legitimate criticism of Governments and Governmental Institutions ends, and sedition, in the legal sense, begins. It is a matter that requires the trained mind of a judge to direct the jury very carefully lest they make a mistake and come down on the wrong side of the line. Just because sedition, disaffection, and all these Public and State offences have been so difficult to define are so liable to abuse until the coming of this Emergency Powers Act, 1920, the law had always said these matters must go before a Judge of the High Court who would there direct a jury on the nicety and difficulty of the situation. Every man charged with sedition was able to know that he would get a proper and a fair trial, and just like treason and other offences against the State, the law was so tempered to the individual that it was careful to protect him against a sudden rash or prejudiced judgment which might be given by some incompetent magistrate. These Regulations destroy all that protection. It is enough now summarily to charge. There is no grand jury, there is no indictment, there is no consideration before a petty jury and there is no direction of a jury. The whole matter is treated as a police court offence and put in the same category as a man driving a motor car at an excessive speed.
Quite apart from this particular case, I look with great anxiety on this tendency to treat lightly and as of no account those old rights of liberty which the old Common Law has built up after so many years. Here it is all thrown away. The right hon. Gentleman might say the emergency is such that we need what is practically Martial Law. This is the sort of thing we got from the Defence of the Realm Acts when the country was at war, but now the risk of disaffection and sedition is not such that the Regulations ought to be continued. But observe the difficulty into which the right hon. Gentleman gets if he pursues that line of argument. If there is disaffection or sedition we may assume that it is due to the lock-out. It would be due, I suppose, to some agency which was operating among the
1774 people. Directly this lock-out ends, directly any stoppage or strike ends, the right hon. Gentleman is unable under the law to continue the Regulations, so that however great may be the sedition or disaffection he can only use these Regulations if they coincide with period of the lock-out or strike. That shows, in my view, that it was never intended by Parliament that the Act of 1920 should be used in this way at all. I know that the Act says that Regulations may be made for the preservation of the peace, but I do not believe it was ever intended by Parliament that that power to make Regulations for the preservation of the peace should mean that the State should take power to make Regulations to deal with serious offences of a treasonable or semi-treasonable character which are already dealt with by the law. You have, for example, at the present time various offences for which corroboration is required, as in the case of treason. In this case there is no such protection, no such safeguards exist at all. Really, I do ask that the right hon. Gentleman, who, I believe, is concerned for the maintenance of the common law, should object to this bureaucratic interference, and see whether it really is necessary now, two months after the General Strike, to continue these Regulations once again.
That, however, is only the smaller part of my criticism. Not only- does this Regulation make the offence of sedition triable by a magistrate, but it goes on as the right hon. Gentleman is perfectly aware—it creates a. new offence, that is greater in extent than sedition itself, There is an offence here for which you could not be indicted at common law The second paragraph of Regulation 21 says,
If any person prints, produces, publishes or distributes any document containing any report or statement, the publication of which would be a contravention of the foregoing provisions of this regulation, or if any person without lawful authority or excuse has in his possession, or on premises in his occupation or under his control any sub-document, he shall be guilty of an offence against these regulations, unless he proves that he did not know and had no reason to suspect that the document contained any such report or statement.That is going very much further than the old Common Law for sedition, even in the time when people were most sensi- 1775 tive about it, as in the time of Henry VIII. Even at that time it was not considered necessary to have the power indicated in this Regulation. When one reads the old Whig historians, Macaulay or Hallam, one learns how outrageous it was that a man should be deemed guilty of sedition if there was no other evidence except the finding of a document. You will find in Macaulay's "History of England" in the Trial of Algernon Sidney a passage that very point. All the Liberal, Whig and Tory lawyers of the nineteenth century condemned this, and yet it is in this Regulation, giving it the new force of law. It says:If he did not know and had no reason to suspect that the document contained any such report or statement—he has committed an offence. That is simply a form of martial law. It is a condition that is possibly justifiable when you have a country on the verge of insurrection, when you have really turmoil and disturbance—such a Regulation may be justifiable. See how difficult it is to consider these Regulations fairly. Reference was made in the House the other day to a speech by Lord Runsdon, who is the chairman of a certain Conservative Association. He is reported as having said—I assume the report is correct for my point—that the miners were our enemies and ought not to be fed. That was the gist of it. Is that disaffection or is it not? If a miner were to get up in the market place and use the remarks that the mine owners were the enemies of the people and ought not to be fed, surely the magistrate would have no compunction at all in convicting that man. Then I ask, why is not Lord Hunsdon similarly prosecuted under the same Regulation? I do not think it matters what the Noble Lord said. These Regulations do interfere with normal freedom of speech. You do lay yourself open to the suggestion that it has been used against one party and not against another. The restriction should be taken off altogether and people allowed to say what they will; let us rely on the Common Law of the country to bring people to book who really do promote sedition or do other unlawful acts.So much for Regulation 21.There are other Regulations which have the 1776 same intention, with which my hon. Friends will deal. The intention of this power law is to prevent the clear expression. The curious thing is that under the Act—I remember that it was put in the Act by the Labour party—peacefully to persuade a person to strike is not to be an offence. What sedition or disaffection does the right hon. Gentleman apprehend? Is it not this, that at the back of his mind there is a suspicion that, there is something in the nature of sedition or disaffection about the mining stoppage? What is the occasion which necessitates these Regulations in connection with the present stoppage? When the general strike was on there was discussion in this House and elsewhere as to whether or not the strike was legal. I will not argue that point now, except to say that a thing may be illegal for breach of contract and may not be illegal in the constitutional sense of the word. That does not arise now. We have only left now this bare stoppage in the mines. There is a peaceful population, and it is for the right hon. Gentleman to justify this departure from the ordinary law. It is a very bad example. The day may come when the right hon. Gentleman and his Friends may wish to have certain liberty of opinion. It may be that persons will sit on the Front Bench opposite who will not be as concerned for the sanctity of the common law as I am. There may be a Government of a bureaucratic type; it may be a Fascist or Bolshevist, which wishes to utilise the State to quell opinion, and it could point to the right hon. Gentleman's Regulations as a good reason for preventing him from expressing his opinions, although his opinions might not go as far as the opinions expressed by Lord Hunsdon. It is the effect of these Regulations on public opinion and on opinion in this House that is so bad. They give the feeling that we cannot trust the ordinary law and the ordinary people, and arouse suspicion that somebody in some way is going to break the law. If these restrictive Regulations have any effect they can only have the effect of producing the very disaffection which the right hon. Gentleman desires to see ended. The purpose of the Regulations is well expressed by Bottom, the weaver: their purpose is to
Quail, crush, conclude and quell.1777 12 M.I appeal to the Home Secretary to say that while certain Regulations for controlling the price of coal may be necessary these Regulations which deal with liberty of opinion and speech and movement are now unnecessary and need not be repeated.
§ Captain BENNI should like to associate myself with everything which the right hon. and learned Member has just said. He has expressed a view for which the Liberal party has always stood in this House. We suspect that the party opposite wish to alter the law relating to freedom of speech. For the unanswerable reasons given by the right hon. and learned Gentleman, freedom of speech is itself a great element of safety in the State. The Home Secretary is seeking to restrict freedom of speech. I rather agree with the Prime Minister when he said that the way to meet had opinion was by advancing good opinion, but I have noticed that the Home Secretary in several speeches has indicated an intention of altering the law relating to freedom of speech.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSindicated dissent
§ Captain BENNI will refresh his memory. I am a closer student in reading his speeches than he is in preparing them. In one of his speeches he told his audience that a touch of Mussolism would do them good.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI am sure the right hon. Gentleman does not wish to misquote me. A gentleman in the audience interrupted me and I said that a dose of castor oil would do him good.
§ Captain BENNThat means that the Home Secretary favours the methods of the Fascists and is not afraid to say so in public. That is a reason for our suspicions of his intentions. In his speeches he has indicated a desire to alter the law and repress freedom of speech, and if he challenges me I will give him two examples. In November in a speech at Liverpool he said:
We shall have to consider what things are necessary, and that they may he introduced into Parliament as soon as it meets. If they were going to get a real change in the fundamental doctrines they had to he sure that the country was behind them.In the same speech he said:This country had long been noted for its freedom of speech. If they were going 1778 to effect a real change in its fundamental doctrines they had to be quite certain that the whole country was behind them.What does that indicate but a desire to alter the law as regards freedom of speech? Therefore, we view with great suspicion all these exceptional instruments, which were never heard of before the War, and are quite, unnecessary now, and brought forward by the Home Secretary, who has expressed himself as desirous of curtailing a fundamental doctrine, as indeed it is. To the layman, the case presents itself in this way. If a man is brought before a magistrate ho is apt to be brought before an individual who is biased. In the dining-rooms and drawing-rooms of the upper middle class, when there is a trade dispute, does any one ever assume anything except that the men are wrong I have never heard in such society any view expressed except the view that ex hypothesi the men must be wrong. That is the frame of mind in which people of a certain class approach these things. We see it reflected even in judgments given in Courts of law. Take a significant case—the Pollitt case. What did Mr. Justice Fraser say?It would be a most disastrous thing if this man, admittedly a Communist, did not get, as he was entitled to get, fair justice.Although the facts were proved, the persons guilty of the offence—I do not hesitate to say they were guilty—were acquitted. Take the case of the Fascisti and the "Herald" van. What was said by the hon. Member for the City of London (Sir V. Bowater)—who, incidentally, was present during Lord Hunsdon's speech with the other hon. Member for the City of London (Mr. E. C. Grenfell), and made no sort of protest as far as the newspaper reports show? I quote from the "Times."Sir Vansittart Bowater said their efforts to ho good loyal citizens might be advanced by their joining the police reserve.In face of these things, who can doubt that there is a tendency on the part of people in a certain station of life to view a certain class of alleged offence with bias? That is the real danger against which we have to protect ourselves. The hon. and learned Gentleman has quoted many seditious remarks and speeches made by the Home Secretary and by others, along the whole fighting front of the Tory party, 12 years ago. 1779 They are well known and are not worth requoting. What is worth requoting is the fact that these hon. and right hon. Gentlemen drew a distinction between the sort of sedition which they taught and the sort of sedition alleged against the Communists, or whoever these Regulations are directed at. I came across a very striking passage in a speech at that time by a very responsible Member of the present Government—the Postmaster-General—who was selected by the Prime Minister to be Chief Civil Commissioner. The Postmaster-General took a very active part in the sedition campaign of 1913, like the Minister of Transport, who said the other day that he had buried his revolver in Ulster, but, if the same circumstances occurred again, he would use it again, and he was not ashamed of it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] That is the whole case. Hon. Gentlemen opposite think that sedition is patriotism for them, but is disloyalty and a punishable offence for others.
§ Captain BENNHere we have the hon. Member for St. Georges (Mr. Erskine) who does not consider it sedition in- the case of his party. He is too frank a friend of the Government and he does not consider it seditious to set up an alternative Government in Ulster, to drill forces in Ulster, to utter every sort of disloyal expression—
§ Mr. J. JONESGo to Marie Stopes.
§ Captain BENNThe hon. Member says of course that the circumstances are entirely different—
§ Mr. TAYLOROn a point of Order. Is it in order for an hon. Member to say he does not care a damn for a certain celebrated lady doctor?
§ Mr. SPEAKERIt does not seem to me a very choice expression, but I did not hear it. The hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn) is generally so careful in his language.
§ Captain BENNOn a point of personal explanation. May I say that I do not think my hon. friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. Taylor) attributed the remark to me.
§ Mr. TAYLORI rise to say that the observation did not fall from the hon. and gallant Member for Leith.
§ Captain BENNThat having been cleared up, I may say that I did not expect the adventitious and picturesque assistance of the hon. and gallant Member for Westminster (Mr. Erskine).
§ Captain BENNSt. George's in the West. I am prepared to support my case with a quotation from the Minister selected by the Government to be the Chief Civil Commissioner, the Postmaster-General. I see he is present now. He was an active man and an avowed supporter of the revolutionary movement in Ulster in those days. I am not complaining about that. Personally, I think it is, better, if people use foolish language in the heat of political excitement, to pass it by. As a general rule, the wisest and common-sense course is to leave it alone. That was the course pursued, and I think rightly pursued, towards the Postmaster-General and his associates in 1913. What I am concerned with, however, is the point of bias. To quote the remark he made at that time; be made it at a meeting—I have the quotation—it was a meeting at Bangor. I suppose it was Bangor in Ireland. Mr. J. W. Leggat explained the arrangements made to enable the clan to attend the Balmoral demonstration. The local ladies had agreed to provide the men with sandwiches, and flasks were being kindly supplied by Mr. Corbett. In these convivial circumstances, the Postmaster-General made a speech, and it contained, of course, the usual blasts of sedition common with members of his party at that time. Having made his peroration, he went on to say—
He wanted to say this clearly, once for all, that there was a great distinction, and people who used language like that should not forget the difference between the case of a Socialist and the ease of a loyal Ulsterman.That precisely is the argument, as I see it, against sending men who have made foolish remarks in public before people who have a class bias. The bias exists. 1781 and it is because of that bias that I oppose the particular procedure laid down in these Regulations. I do not believe that the circumstances justify a general continuation of these harsh powers. We had many disputes in this country before the war, and I think I am right in saying that these powers never rested in the hands of the Government. We are not dealing with a general strike to-day, but with a coal dispute. There have been many coal disputes, transport disputes and railway disputes, but in no case was it necessary for the Government to arm itself with these extremely dangerous powers which might be just as well used against hon. Gentlemen opposite as against hon. Gentlemen on this side or their friends. With a view to seeing what is the real danger of turmoil, I have been reading, not only speeches of the Home Secretary and others as to the general good behaviour of the public, but also impartial speeches by the chairman of an insurance company, and this is what he said:It must have produced a steadying effect to read in official publications that insurance companies were covering riot, civil commotion and such like risks, in some cases at threepence per cent.Surely if an insurance company, which is there to get business and to make a profit, can offer to cover the risk of civil commotion at threepence per cent., it is not necessary to have 41 Regulations threatening the ancient liberties of the subject.
§ Mr. GROTRIANThe company would not be liable. The community would be liable. The insurance company is running no risk.
§ Captain BENNI do not understand. The hon. Gentleman presumably speaks for insurance companies. Surely he would recommend his company to pay, if they guaranteed to make good any damage?
§ Mr. GROTRIANNot if they are not liable legally.
§ Captain BENNThat throws a sidelight on City methods. The Common Law and the ordinary procedure is quite sufficient to deal with these cases. If hon. Members imagine that people who make foolish disloyal or seditious speeches cannot be dealt with without these Regulations they should read their 1782 newspapers more carefully. They will find that almost every week, certainly every month, some person is prosecuted. I give as an example Mr. Guy Aldred, who makes what in my judgment are remarkably foolish speeches, but he is summoned for inciting a breach of the peace. Communists are being brought to court under an Act of 1797 and there-are plenty of Acts of Parliament for dealing with these things. I make an appeal to common-sense and the tradition of the people of this country. It is an appeal from one who disapproves entirely of incitements to sedition whether from Ulstermen or Communists. I submit the common-sense thing for us to do and the thing which is in accord with the traditions of this House is to refuse to right hon. Gentlemen all these powers which are an encroachment on the ancient rights of the subject.
§ Mr. THURTLEI do not know what justification there ever was for these Regulations during the general strike but I am quite certain whatever justification there may have been then there is no shadow of justification for them at present. In my view the continuance of these Regulations is a gross reflection on the character of the British people. One would imagine looking through these regulations that the British people are a very wicked scheming people, prone to sedition and riot, and only to be kept in order by drastic restrictions. The record of the people during the-general strike and since, is a complete refutation of that suggestion.
It is unfair, not only to the people of this country, but to the reputation abroad of the British people, that we should continue these Regulations and thereby suggest to the world overseas that our people are such a turbulent, riotous kind of people that even during the course of a coal lockout we can keep them in something like peace and order only by the imposition of these very drastic Regulations.
I suggest that there is a very much stronger reason indeed why we should not continue the Regulations. If you consider their character, you are bound to come to the conclusion that the kind of emergency with which they are intended to deal is one very different from that which obtains now, and in order to establish how remote these Regulations are 1783 from existing state of emergency, I propose to review a few of them very briefly. I take, first of all, Regulation No. 1, which gives power to the Government to take possession of land. As the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn) remarked, certain of these Regulations may militate just as strongly against hon. Members opposite as against hon. Members on these benches, and this particular Regulation is likely to militate much more strongly against Members of the Conservative party than against Members of my own party, because, if there is a land-owning class in this House, it is to be found in the Conservative party. In any case, what reason is there for the Government, in the course of this peaceful coal lockout, to take powers to take possession of land? I suggest that there is no reason at all, and why should a sensible House of Commons give the Government such a power?
Then there is a Regulation dealing with the taking over of road transport. Has anyone noticed during the progress of the lock-nut that there has been any need whatever for the Government to take possession of road transport? So far as I can see, the Government are not lacking in road transport in the least, and I am certain that, if the Government realty did want road transport, they would find sufficient owners of road transport among their own supporters to get all that they required. It is, therefore, totally unnecessary for them to utilise this particular Regulation. Another Regulation which is also totally unnecessary, and which shows how entirely remote these Regulations are from the situation as it confronts us to-day, is Regulation No. 5. which takes power to direct the traffic on highways. Has anyone noticed any particular difficulty, while the coal lock-out has been on, in regard to the traffic on highways? I submit that since the General Strike came to an end there has been absolutely no difficulty whatever in that respect. So far as any reasonable person can see, there is no likelihood whatever of any such difficulty arising. If that be the case—if it is not the case I hope some hon. Member opposite will get up and contradict me—there is absolutely no reason at all for this particular Regulation. Again I ask the House, why should we be hemmed in, as 1784 it were, by so many supervising Laws and Regulations; why should another be fastened upon us?
There is one Regulation that really is most immoral. I cannot understand what could have prompted the Home Secretary to include this. It is No. 6 which gives to the Minister of Transport power to grant to every person a licence to drive a motor car during the period for which the Proclamation or emergency powers are in force. I trust someone will explain this. I, like my hon. Friends here, are open to conviction, and I should like to hear the reason or justification for the insertion of this Regulation. If a case can be made out for it, then, speaking for myself, and also, I think, for the Members of the Party, we will very gladly withdraw our opposition to that particular regulation. Regulation 11 puzzles me. It is one which gives the Board of Trade power to commandeer shipping. There is no lack of means for the transport of commodities from one part of the kingdom to another. Since the general strike there has been no difficulty whatever. Therefore there seems no need for this power over the loading and unloading of cargoes or for water carriage. Are the Government expecting future difficulty in this respect? Do they think they will be unable to get ships by appealing to the shipowners and therefore under the necessity of seeking for powers? Until we can be persuaded of the need for this, there is no necessity, we believe, forpassing it. I go on and find another most extraordinary Regulation, 13A. This deals with the question of moneys sent to this country from abroad. It gives the Home Secretary certain powers of prohibiting the bank, or the person, by whom the moneys are to he administered, to have them transferred or other-wise to deal with them. What is the reason for such a regulation as that? Is it seriously suggested that working class comrades of other countries, seeing the acute distress, bordering on stavation, in this country, are to be prevented from sending moneys to mitigate that distress? Will the House of Commons take up that brutal and inhumanitarian attitude, or will it not?
I submit that the Home Secretary, in introducing this Clause, is doing something contrary to the good sense and best feelings of the British people. I do not 1785 believe that the British people as a whole wish to see the miners' wives and children starved into submission. There is someone in a position of great eminence who has given a lead to the people in that respect, and has indicated that it would be entirely undesirable if the miners had to give way and submit to injustice because of the starvation of their wives and children. I believe I am speaking within the facts when I point out that the great bulk of the people of this country, so far from resenting money coming from abroad for humanitarian purposes, welcome it. The Home Secretary, in his attitude towards this money from abroad, does not realise what is the real nature and spirit of working-class solidarity. There are thoughts in the minds of the working classes of all countries which are not dreamed of by people like the Home Secretary—there is a great conception of international working-class solidarity which forgets distinctions of race and language, and overlooks frontiers, and sees only the fact that the working class of one country is engaged in a very similar struggle to the working class of another country. Strange though it may be to us who have strong national feelings, it is a fact that many of the working classes of this country feel they have more in common with the working classes in Russia than with some of their own nationals. I feel I have a great deal more in common with the Russian miners, who have made their modest contributions to keep the women and children of the miners from starvation, than I have with the noble Lord Hunsdon. If the Home Secretary were ready to consider the wishes of the great mass of people of this country in regard to this Regulation, he certainly would not ask the House to pass this Regulation—No. 13A.
Then I find there is another Regulation—No. 17—dealing with the question of motor spirit. It says "The Board of Trade may by order prohibit or regulate the sale, supply, delivery, or use of motor spirit, and require any persons owning or having the power to sell or dispose of motor spirit to place the same at the disposal of the Board or of any person authorised by them."
I do not understand that there is any shortage of motor spirit in this country. So far as I can gather from things I have heard said in this House, there is an excess of motor spirit at the present 1786 time. I believe there is a great deal of motor spirit coming from Russia which is not very welcome to the die-hard supporters of the Government, and indeed there are ample supplies from America, Persia, and other sources. Therefore there is no shortage whatsoever, and there is no prospective shortage of motor spirit. I would like the Home Secretary, because there is no Amendment dealing with this particular regulation on the Order Paper, when he gets up to reply to this general discussion to state what is the reason he has that it is necessary to take powers to deal with this question of motor spirit. If he puts forward a convincing argument, and shows that it is necessary for the Government to take these powers, then I am sure the House will not offer any opposition to this particular regulation.
Then we come to an extraordinary Regulation which shows, if anything can show, how remote these Regulations are from the actual situation. It is the Regulation dealing with the question of illegal drilling. It prohibits the public from indulging in unlawful drilling, and it is Regulation No. 23. I think the House is entitled to get some explanation from the Home Secretary as to the genesis of this particular Regulation. I heard all sorts of wild and incredible stories about what happened during the general strike—and there is great capacity for imagination on the part of some people to tell stories about the general strike—but I have never heard it suggested by the most imaginative, and even the Home Secretary has never suggested, that there has been any kind of unlawful drilling in this country during the past two months. The Fascisti may be drilling now, but it is not that kind of drilling with which the Home Secretary wishes to deal. If he has a soft section in his heart I am sure it is for the Fascisti. I would like him to give the House some solid reason far introducing a Regulation like this. I am sure he is familiar with the history of the French Revolution, and remembers the stormy days of the Convention and the critical days of the Terror. If he throws his mind back to that period, and considers the kind of regulations the Committee of Public Safety thought fit to introduce, he will not find anything so ridiculous and so far fetched as this Regulation dealing with unlawful drilling. There are a number of other 1787 Regulations which call for similar comment, but I will leave these to be dealt with by my hon. Friends later on in the discussion. I will conclude by saying, as I began, that these Regulations which I have referred to have no justification whatever in fact, and there is no reason at all why the House should pass them. The situation in the country at the present time does not warrant their being passed, and there is no likelihood of the situation in the country changing in the near future so as to make them necessary. For these reasons I am quite convinced that we on this side of the House are fully justified in opposing them, and that we are reflecting the wishes of the great mass of the people in the country when we object strenuously to the whole of these Regulations being continued.
§ Mr. BUCHANANI rise to put one or two points—points which I raised on the first occasion when these Regulations were passed, and when the Attorney-General was in charge. I then raised the question of Regulation 20. I may say that I do not want to raise here anything that will be raised at a later stage, but on this Clause there is no definite Amendment on the Paper. I wish, if I can, to confine myself to the portion of the Regulations which have not been dealt with by Amendments. The House remembers that during the stoppage of work, known as the General Strike, I raised this question of Regulation 20, and I want to raise again that passage dealing with "known character." The Home Secretary will remember that I raised the question of who was a person likely to be proved a "known character." I am pleased to see the Secretary for Scotland in the House, because he is responsible for these Regulations quite as much as the Home Secretary, for in every one of the Regulations when the Home Secretary is involved that is also to be taken as meaning the Secretary for Scotland.
In Scotland—and I think the same applies in England—you have already more than ample power to deal with known characters in the criminal sense. At the moment in Scotland, if a person is convicted a certain number of times for being a criminal and committing criminal offences, that person can be 1788 dealt with under the Prevention of Crimes Act in a more summary fashion than these Regulations allow. Therefore, if the law of England allows the known criminal to be dealt with by a lengthy sentence, it follows that these Regulations are not meant to deal with the known character in the criminal sense to which I have referred
Having regard to that I want to ask the Home Secretary what is really meant by "a known character?" It cannot be a criminal, for you already have more powers to deal with him than is asked for in these Regulations, so a known character must he a person who has a relationship to the dispute now going on. The only thing I can think of is that a known character is a man or a woman who is an active trade unionist and can be punishable under this Regulation No. 20. I want to submit that the term "known character" ought not to include as those who commit a crime an active member of a trade union, such as the secretary or chairman of a branch of a trade union. He has as much right to be proud of his connection with the trade union movement as the Home Secretary has with his connection with his colleagues in the Cabinet. A person may approach the neighbourhood of a mine or the place where the manager of a mine resides and he can be arrested under the Regulations as a known character because he is an active trade unionist and placed in gaol having committed no offence at all. I suggest that this is not a desirable state of affairs.
Then I want to refer to a Regulation already referred to by the previous speaker—that dealing with the granting of motor licences. So far as my knowledge goes, I understand that this regulation has never been actually put into practice, but I want to submit to the House that already the country is suffering not through too few motorists, but through too many. It is a crime that we are giving out licences to drive motor vehicles so easily without giving the Home Secretary power to refund it to any person without proper investigation or capacity to drive.
Now I turn to the general aspect before us. The hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn) says that persons convicted under these Regulations are 1789 apt to go before biased magistrates. The Secretary for Scotland knows that in the big towns in Scotland, whether for good or ill, local government is now run on party lines. It may be our fault or not, but in places like Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, you have now got in the town councils the Moderates and the Labour people. The Moderate is merely a new name for the Conservative, and there you have the Council run by a party. In Scotland the appointment of what you term judges is by the magistrates, and very often a person appears before the magistrates. In the great majority of the cases the predominant people on these local bodies are Conservatives, who appoint magistrates of their own political complexion. I have no complaint to make against them. If we had the majority we would appoint a Labour majority, but these magistrates are men before whom the people convicted would appear. In Edinburgh and Glasgow the magistrates are appointed by Tories who could not, even if they tried, have a neutral mind in regard to these matters. But even take the case of the Sheriffs in Scotland, where the case is not so bad. No one will deny that to-day, owing to the development of political democracy, Sheriffs and judges are appointed in most cases, not because of their knowledge of law but, generally speaking, because of their political influence. Take people like the judges—the Lord Justice Clerk for Scotland was appointed because of his services as Secretary for Scotland. It was his political services more than his knowledge of law that led to his appointment. The same thing applies in regard to the Sheriffs. We are asked to believe that men and women who are alleged to have committed offences under this Regulation can have a reasonable or a proper trial under conditions of this sort. During the general dispute many men were arrested and tried, and almost all of them in Glasgow and Scotland were men who had never committed any particular offence before, but had done so in the heat of the moment. They were imprisoned for these alleged offences. I am going to suggest that placing these general regulations in the hands of sheriffs who start with a bias and into the hands of magistrates and even of judges of the Court of Session who 1790 almost always start from a political bias against the men is giving them far too great a power.
I want to ague this last feature. When the Message of His Majesty was before the House I made an appeal on that point. I want to-day to appeal to the Home Secretary that we ought at least to delay this matter. We have the coal dispute going on it has been going on for a great many weeks. In 1921 you had a dispute lasting 15 weeks, and during that' time you never needed those regulations, and, mark you, it was a very much worse time because, as the Home Secretary will admit, every day that you were nearer the War you were living at a time when because of the War passions were more easily inflamed. Yet in the 1921 dispute during the Coalition Government, during the Government that had the name of being one of the worst and most corrupt Governments of its day—certainly it cannot be the worst, this is the worst—it earned one of the worst names, but yet with a Prime Minister like the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), for 15 weeks during the 1921 dispute not a single one of these Regulations was required. Further than that, although the main Act that gave the Home Secretary the power to evoke these Regulations was passed in 1990, and, if my memory serves me right, the Coalition Government a year before that dispute, of which the Home Secretary was a Member. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Well, that is at least one crime that he has escaped. But even he was one of its supporters for a period. The Prime Minister was one of them, and even during that time—Lord Birkenhead was one of the Members, the Foreign Secretary was a Member—and yet all those Members then, who were die-bards of a very mixed type, even they never needed to evoke these Regulations during the 1921 dispute.
Take the present dispute, here you are in the 9th or 10th week of it. Go to any part of the country, whether it is Scotland in the north, or Northumberland, or down in the Forest of Dean in the south, go anywhere you care, and the remarkable thing is not the riot or the sedition but the absolute calm and peacefulness wherever you go. I think myself 1791 that the tragic feature of it is not the disturbance, but the peace of it. It seems to be how calmly men and women see each day their dwelling places being sold off, as they are being sold off, the bits of furniture, the children in some cases not getting the clothing they need, and the thing that amazes me is not the trouble, but the absolute calm under which the people can go on. Here is the Home Secretary now, coming with these Regulations and giving his friends the power to suppress and imprison their political enemies. That is the meanest thing of all. I think that where you do not raise political issues as when a man commits a burglary you can very often get justice in this country. But I do not think that where it raises a definite political issue you can get anything like justice. Most of your Judges, and in Scotland most of your Sheriffs, are appointed because of political services. Here is the Home Secretary invoking these Regulations which give to his political friends this power. In addition to starving the miners, to-day they took the power of refusing them relief. Last week they took the step of giving them an hour of additional labour. The question of sedition is very intimately bound up with this. What I think might be sedition, might to the Home Secretary not appear to be sedition at all. In my own view, the time is past for these Regulations. I think the Home Secretary ought to use his influence not to have these Regulations passed. I say that the time has come in this coal dispute when we ought to declare an armistice. We did that with Germany during the War. We ought to declare for the status quo, allow the miners to go back and see if they cannot come to some arrangement. That would be a wise and statesmanlike policy. That would appear a much better move than this method of using the club, and I hope the Home Secretary will not only justify these Regulations, but will also show to the House of Commons some real reason why he should seek these powers; and particularly I ask him to direct his attention to Regulation 20 which defines "a known character" as no other person than a person connected with the labour movement or a trade union.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI am afraid I cannot follow the hon. Member for 1792 Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) into the suggestions he made for the conclusion of the coal stoppage. My duty is to deal here to-night with the Regulations. The hon. Member eulogised the country and the way in which no trouble had taken place, no riots, and no prosecutions, or anything of that kind.
§ Mr. BUCHANANI did not say there had been no prosecutions. I said the amazing thing up and down the country was the quiet and peace. Unfortunately there have been prosecutions and there always will be while you are there.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI accept the hon. Member's suggestion that the amazing thing is the peace throughout the country, but then he went on to say that I am asking that these Regulations should be put in force. He seems to forget that these regulations have been in force for nine weeks throughout all this period of quiet. He might in his speech not only have eulogised the country but also the Home Secretary who has had these powers for nine weeks. He says that I am going to take these political powers to prosecute my political enemies. He proved in his own speech the peacefulness and quiet of the country during the nine months. I accept that not only as a testimony to the country—
§ Mr. THURTLEThe right hon. Gentleman said that the Regulations had been in force for nine months. He surely made a mis-statement.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSThe hon. Member is always so accurate. I meant nine weeks. The hon. Member for Gorbals has raised the same point with regard to "a known character." In regard to that question, I can really only make the same explanation to him that the Attorney-General made to him in May last. It means that he is a man of a criminal character. For instance, taking the same suggestion that the Attorney-General took: Suppose a man is found at night on a railway bridge with a crowbar in his hands and he is accused under these Regulations of being there to commit an offence. The Regulation says he must be "a known character." They might go into Court and say of him that he has been prosecuted 1793 and convicted before for pulling up a railway line. He is a known man for that reason—that is "a known character"; he is quite a man of a criminal disposition.
§ Mr. BUCHANANWill the Home Secretary excuse me. The Attorney-General never said he had been convicted before. If he had said that, I would have accepted it, and would not have raised the point. The Attorney-General never agreed that a man had to be convicted first before he was a known character. He totally denied that he had to be convicted before.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI have the Attorney-General's speech here on column 478, and I have been reading it. He says:
Previous convictions of acts of violence you certainly may prove. The question might be whether the man had gone there for the purpose of destroying or setting fire to a railway or building, or whether he had gone there for some perfectly innocent purpose. The fact that he was a man who had been previously guilty of trying to wreck railway trains or setting fire to buildings would be relevant. The only object of this provision is that, inasmuch as it would not be otherwise clear whether his known character as proved'—which means as proved in the court—was to be admissible evidence, this Regulation puts this point beyond doubt. It does not mean that if you prove a man is a known criminal, therefore he must Fe convicted." [OFFICIAL REPORT, 6 May, 1926; cols. 478–9; Vol. 195.]All it means is that you may adduce the fact that he has been caught at the same trick before, and, although he has not set fire to the wood of the railway this time he is a "known character," and it may go before the court that he was attempting to do it. That is the answer the Attorney-General made. There is another answer, and that is to refer the hon. Member to the hon. Member below the Gangway, because these Regulations are the Regulations of the Coalition Government.
§ Mr. BUCHANANBut they never invoked them.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI agree. The Regulations were passed in 1920, when the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) was Premier. They were not enforced in the coal stoppage of 1921 and they were not enforced in 1924. But all these Regulations—if the hon. Member will take the trouble to look it up he will see—were 1794 passed in the House of Commons in 1921 and I am surprised that the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn) should make an attack on the Regulations because he was in the House at that time and was a loyal supporter of the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs. Whether he is to-day I do not know.
§ Captain BENNIt is a matter of small importance, but the Home Secretary must know that during the whole of the Parliament of 1918–22 I sat on that bench doing my best to prove that it was one of the worst Governments that had ever existed.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSThen I shake hands with the hon. and gallant Member. We appear to agree in that particular as to 1921. The hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. Thurtle) has referred to the earlier Regulations. Regulations 1 to 3 refer to food and were not put into use during the past month. But they are in the interests of the consumers in this country and only the other day I heard a question in the House when someone on the benches opposite was proposing that the President of the Board of Trade should prevent profiteering. These are the Regulations that give me necessary power.
Then Regulations 4 to 9 relate to the control of Transport by road, rail and canal. They have not been used during the past month but they are valuable, and if the hon. Member read them carefully he would see that there is no ground for the complaint which was contained in the main point raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Leith—that there is infringement of the rights of the free subject. They are regulations necessary at a time of great difficulty but which are to be carried out for the benefit of the people as a whole. [An HON. MEMBER: "If they are unnecessary why have them?"]—I did not say they were unnecesary. I said we have not used them during the past month. But if they are used, they will be used in the interests of the whole community; in the interests of the consumers, not against the miners or anything of that kind.
§ Mr. WALLHEADWhy not keep them in perpetuity?
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI have sometimes thought it might be desirable. I do not want to bring a Bill into this 1795 House which would offend hon. Members, but certain of these Regulations have nothing in them which, if hon. Members would read them carefully, they would find unacceptable. Regulations 10 to 13 establish a prohibition on the export of coal. In the interests of the whole community it was desirable that we should as far as possible, keep as much coal in the country as we could in the interests of the railways, electric light, gas works and so forth. Regulation 13A is a restriction put on money coming from abroad. We had a big Debate on that a fortnight ago. I quite frankly say that is a new Regulation passed at my instance in order to give me powers to find out what communications of a financial character there were between Russia and this country, or Russia and the Trades Union Council or the Miners' Federation. I say it is desirable that we should know what was coming from Russia. I do not think the hon. Member of Shoreditch called it his spiritual affinity or his spiritual home as has been said on a previous occasion, but he said he cared more for the friendship of the Russian miners than for some Noble Lord—Lord Hunsdon I think.
I am going to say, on behalf of the community, that if they or any other people are getting money from Russia we are entitled to know it, and it is in the interests of the country that I should know it. The Government have decided, and I think wisely, not to prohibit the importation of money for the wives and children of the miners, but, at the same time, it is desirable that should know when it does come, and from whom it comes.
This Regulation I shall certainly ask the House of Commons to confirm as believe it is not only desirable but essential when there are financial communications of this kind passing between a country—I do not want to raise the Russian question over again — which takes a different view of matters politically here than that taken by His Majesty's Government. It is desirable that His Majesty's Government should be in possession of the fullest information in regard to these actions.
Regulations 14 to 16 restrict supplies of coal and enforce economy in the use of lights, which is most desirable in the 1796 interests of the community, and to make stocks of coal go as far as they possibly can. Regulation 15 enables the Government to limit the use of lights, and it has been used in the last month. We have had to stop some of the flaming advertisements in London. Forty-eight cases of infringement of coal directions and use of light have been reported during the month. I shall be pleased to give any information I have in my power as to the working of the Regulations. Regulation 17 regulates motor spirit. It is quite true that there is plenty of motor spirit in the country. At the same time it is highly desirable, as it may be the only alternative form of transport were the supply of coal to cease altogether, that without having to come to the House to make arrangements to enable us to take control of motor spirit. Then under Regulation 20, mentioned by the hon. Member for Gorbals there have been 28 prosecutions undertaken in the course of the month. On the whole, there have been very few prosecutions indeed during the month, and I hope as the months roll on, however long the coal stoppage may take, we may have as peaceful a time as we have at the present moment.
But I will deal with the immediate argument raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Leith and the hon. and learned Member for South-East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser). The hon. and learned Member referred to the Common Law. The old Common Law has been altered a good deal. The Trade Disputes Act, of which the hon. and learned Member was a strong supporter, altered the Common Law very much. If he is going to take his stand on the Common Law, then he must eliminate those Statutes which cut across the Common Law principle. The hon. and learned Member turned to Regulation 21 relating to sedition, and he quoted the second Clause, which I admit was not in the Regulations of 1921. The hon. and learned Member dealt with, the wickedness of prosecuting a man because he had in his possession, in his pocket, a document containing wrongful statements unless he could prove that he did not know and had no reason to think the document contained any such report or statement. But he did not go on to read the next sentence—
or that he had no intention of transmitting or circulating the document or distri- 1797 buting copies thereof to or amongst other persons.I will show where this Regulation came in. We all remember the lying statement published by certain small rags during the general strike that some of the Guards had mutinied. We did find the document in the handwriting of a particular person in his possession. He was the originator of that statement, and he was prosecuted and convicted. But I still think that if he had been able to prove, under this provision of this last sentence, that he had no intention of transmitting or circulating it, he would not have been convicted. He was in possession of an untrue document for the purpose of transmitting and circulating it in a period of grave anxiety. It is rightly named as a criminal act, and the man who did it was very rightly convicted.
§ Sir H. SLESSERI was saying we are not in that condition now.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSIt is quite true that we are to-day in a peaceful state but these Regulations are largely a matter of protection. They were as I have said, in force all through the fifteen weeks of this trouble in 1921. It is quite true they ware not used to any extent. They have not been used to any extent during the last month. [An HON. MEMBER "How many prosecutions?"] There have been 28 prosecutions under No. 20 and 40 prosecutions under No. 21. There have been no prosecutions under the earlier Regulations and I think with no prosecutions under the late ones—none under 22, 23, 24 and 25.
§ Mr. WALLHEADIs that during the past month?
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSYes, during the past month. It does show the peaceful character of the population during this month and I claim on the other hand the moderation and the fairness with which these Regulations have been carried out. No action has been taken under 22; no meetings prohibited during the last month.
§ Major CRAWFURDCan the right hon. Gentleman tell me whether there have been any prosecutions under 15?
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSNo prosecutions have taken place yet; 48 cases of infringement of coal direction or restric- 1798 tion of light have been reported during the month. I put it to the House as a matter of necessary precaution in all this trouble. These Regulations have been put in force; they are being used very much less and I hope they will continue to be used very much less. I hope they will not be necessary. But do not let the House forget that there are people who are trying to stir up trouble. I do not want to say anything of a controversial character, but Mr. Cook devoted one of his speeches—Lord Hunsdon has been quoted and I am going to quote Mr. Cook—Mr. Cook only last week quite definitely stated that if an attempt were made to open the mines the Home Secretary might take his blacklegs or his military, but no single man would go down the pits.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI did not know I had any influence upon Mr. Cook at all. That is the reason why I want these Regulations.
§ Captain BENNOn a point of Order. The Home Secretary has just told us that he wants the Regulations for the possible prosecution of Mr. Cook. I desire to ask you whether the Home Secretary is entitled to take advantage of his position here, as he has done on earlier occasions elsewhere, to create prejudice against Mr. Cook should he happen to be prosecuted.
§ Mr. SPEAKERI think it would be desirable not to mention any names where a question might possibly arise later on.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSThe hon. and gallant Gentleman has just made a statement which is quite definitely untrue.
§ Mr. STEPHENIs the right hon. Gentleman in order in referring to the hon. Member's statement as "untrue." Has it not been ruled that he is only entitled to say that it is incorrect.
§ Mr. SPEAKERI hope all hon. Members will follow the point raised by the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen), and use Parliamentary expressions.
Mr. BECKETTIs it not a fact that the right hon. Gentleman alluded to a Member of the House in that way some few months before he was sent to prison?
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI will substitute the words "utterly incorrect." I did not say that the person whose name I have given was to be prosecuted. If the hon. Member looks at the OFFICIAL REPORT to-morrow he will see what I was saying.
§ Captain BENNI remember the gross offences under this head which the Home Secretary has committed before.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI was going to warn the House that the reason why these Regulations are necessary is that in the event of advice of anybody being followed by unfortunate men in the country, and their being led into riots to prevent men going down the pit, these Regulations would come in useful, and they will be used.
§ Mr. MORGAN JONESHas the right hon. Gentleman quoted this gentleman textually when he says that the miners should not go down the mines, or did he say they would not go down the mines?
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI have not his speech by me. If a question is put down to me to-morrow I will have the speech. I think I have given a quite accurate description of the speech which was made.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSDo you want to know? I said in my speech that any man—and I repeat it here to-day in the House of Commons—that any man who desires to work will receive the fullest possible,protection of His Majesty's Government and the whole of His Majesty's forces. [Interruption.] I have said that, I hope it will not be necessary to use these Regulations more than they have been used. I have explained why I want them, and the hon. Member will gather why we want them. They have always been granted to the Government of the day during periods of emergency. They were granted in 1921 and in 1924, and they were granted early this year. I now ask, not for fresh Regulations, but to have them renewed for another month. 1800 I may have to come at the end of this month to renew them again for another month. Having regard to the way in which they have been carried out—
§ Mr. STEPHENThe right hon. Gentleman says that these Regulations were passed in 1924.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSA state of emergency was made in 1924. The Regulations were coming forward, and the strike collapsed.
§ Mr. STEPHENThe Government nearly collapsed at the time.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI was not a Member of the Government at the time; it was the hon. Member's own Government. I have tried to keep my temper under provocation, and I hope that hon. Members will now, having received this explanation of the reason why the Government desire these Regulations, allow us to get on with the discussion, so that we may close the Debate at an early hour this morning.
§ Mr. RHYS DAVIESThe Home Secretary has been asked to-night to justify the continuation of these Regulations, and I submit that he has done nothing of the kind. In fact, if he has accomplished, anything at all in reply to the speeches from this side of the House, he has undoubtedly convinced most of us that he is a very dangerous Gentleman indeed to have these Regulations in his hands. Not only are these Regulations very dangerous instruments in themselves; they will unfortunately be in the hands of one of the most dangerous statesmen of the day. I want to test the Home Secretary on his own showing. These Regulations were brought forward by him several weeks ago and I suggested then—and I will put his actions to the test to-day—that the issue of the Regulations in themselves was not really the thing that mattered; that what really mattered was—and what matters now—is the administration of the regulations by the local authorities and our benches of magistrates. Now let us see what has already happened. The Home Secretary was perfectly right in saying that he does not prosecute anybody; what he is doing by the issue of these Regulations is to invite some of his political friends to prosecute his 1801 political opponents. That is exactly what is happening.
If I wanted to give a classical example of how these Regulations are enforced, I could give one from my own Division. No one has yet mentioned the provisions of Regulation 26. The Home Secretary will find that Regulation 26 gives him power to transfer police from one area to another. I take it that there ought to be very good reason for such transfer. In the Westhoughton township for illustration, with a population of about 15,000 inhabitants, there has been no difficulty of any kind—there has been no disorder, no attempt at riot, no seditious speech of any kind, though I have spoken there. In spite of all this calm, we have in the township of Westhoughton a large force of extra police, and, strange enough, they are billeted in the local Conservative Club.
That cannot be an indication that all is fair and square and above board. I submit that that is an offence to the people of Westhoughton. It is really an offence to their intelligence. I do not know how much profit will accrue to the Tory party from their billeting; but apart from party bias at all it is wrong to billet police on the premises of any political party.
These Regulations, I venture to submit to the right hon. Gentleman, are after all only the culmination of several attempts on the part of the Government to bring the people of this country under the control of the Home Secretary. Nobody has yet mentioned the two ominous Circulars which were issued and which led up to these Regulations. I have here Circular 636 issued from the Ministry of Health and the other from the Home Office. Neither of the Circulars bears the name of any Cabinet Minister. The persons who signed these documents are distinguished civil servants, but they have appended their names thereto presumably on behalf of the Government of the day. It would be much better if the Home Secretary had himself fathered this document entitled "Intimidation and Molestation," and not used the name of a civil servant to cover a document which actually comes from the Home Secretary himself. These two documents contain the whole spirit of the Regulations we are now discussing. I would therefore like to get some more enlightenment on the subject. The Home Secretary told us that 1802 26 cases had arisen under one Regulation and 40 cases under the other, and he used the argument that as the 40 cases had arisen during the last month or so he required the continuation of the Regulation. Do I understand that the 40 cases arose during last month, or did they arise prior to last month, the prosecutions taking place during last month? I think that is a very vital point.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSThe prosecutions were instituted last month and some of them were for offences before that.
§ Mr. DAVIESI think that very important, because everything the Home Secretary has told us to-night warrants us in asking that the House shall not give its sanction to the continuance of the Regulations. It is quite possible that every one of the 40 cases were offences committed prior to last month, and all that happened was that the cases were tried last month. If that assumption be correct, and there is good ground for believing it to be so, there is no justification whatever for the continuance of these Regulations.
One of the strongest objections we have to the Regulations, apart from that given by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South-East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser) is, that there is no doubt at all that without the issue of these Regulations the chief constables of the land would do their duty quite well. I submit, however, that they took it for granted, when these Regulations were issued, that it was the desire of the Home Secretary and his Government that they should do something extraordinary in spite of the fact that nothing extraordinary transpired in the localities. I think too that the Home Secretary, by the issue of the Regulations, gave an incentive to the chief constables of the land because if these Regulations were not in force, and exactly the same offences were committed, they would not get the same number of cases of offences that have been brought within the Regulations.
Another complaint we make is this—that under these Regulations one offence may be committed in one town and a similar offence committed in another. In the first case the magistrates are sensible people, representing may be all political parties, and there was no conviction regis- 1803 tered. In another town, however, for exactly the same offence, men have been sent to gaol for three months. Surely there is something wrong in such a state of affairs. I will give a case in point. The police arrested five young people in Openshaw, Manchester, because they dared to have a printed statement in their possession that the working class organisations of this country ought to come to the aid of the miners in their dispute with the employers. That was all. They were taken to Court under these Regulations, but the magistrate declined to convict, and actually rebuked the police for bringing the cases forward. In the neighbouring town of Salford a man was brought into Court for possessing exactly the same document and, so far as I remember, he was sent to prison. I say, therefore, that in their operation these Regulations have proved to be unequal and unfair. After all, in the administration of justice it is not sufficient that the magistrate should feel that he is administering justice. The offender must also feel that he is treated in a proper manner. He must feel that although he has committed an offence, the penalty inflicted upon him is that which justice demands and is not that dictated by bias and prejudice arising from political animosities. I want to carry my point a step further, and with this I sit down. The Home Secretary, I think, has received more than one deputation asking him if he will be good enough to remit some of the sentences that were imposed under these Regulations. I do not know whether I am right or not, but I very much doubt whether he has made any remission in any single case.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSIf the hon. Member asks me, I will tell him at once. I have reduced some sentences. I have remitted others.
§ Mr. DAVIESIt just depends, I suppose, on who represents the Division. He has not remitted the Horwich sentences. [An HON. MEMBER: "That is political bias."] The Home Secretary has done one great service this morning. He is always frank; he is brutally frank. He has told us one thing that will always stand to his credit or otherwise. He has told us he would very much like to see these Regulations made permanent. I hope he will not have the power to do that 1804 for very long. I hope we will soon have another Government to sweep them away. [An HON. MEMBER: "What a hope"!] I feel sure the right hon. Gentleman is not helping the cause of justice by asking us this morning to continue these Regulations in operation. All the necessity for them has passed, as he himself has proved. I say, therefore, that he has not justified his case in asking for the continuation of these Regulations, and we shall do all we can, however long it may take, to oppose the Regulations and try and prevent their continuation in the hands of the present Home Secretary.
§ Mr. MORGAN JONESI desire to move, in line 2, after "1926," to insert the words "other than Regulation 21."
In the course of the discussion tonight—
§ Mr. BATEYOn a point of Order. There are some of us who have waited all night wanting to get into the discussion on the whole of the Regulations. We are going to be cut out, especially after the speech of the Home Secretary.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThat is not a matter for me.
§ Mr. MORGAN JONESIn the course of the discussion to-night many of us have waited for the Home Secretary to give an adequate defence—
§ Mr. MORGAN JONESI am within the knowledge of Mr. Speaker.
§ Mr. MORGAN JONESI have no desire whatever to interfere with the right of my fellow Members to address the House, but, as you are well aware, Mr. Speaker, I waited for you for the time to move this Amendment.
§ Mr. MORGAN JONESI was here throughout the discussion and have not missed one single minute of the discussion. I was going to say that the House has awaited the statement from the Home Secretary as to why this particular Regulation has been included for the approval of the House to-night. It appears to me that the Home Secretary 1805 has in some measure mis-stated the facts in regard to the reason why the 1921 Regulations were in fact carried. If I remember aright, there was the threat in 1921 of a general strike, just as we had this year when these regulations were carried. That general strike did not materialise in 1921, though it is perfectly true that the regulations were kept in being. I submit that the Regulations, therefore have been carried on each occasion to deal with a special circumstance, an exceptional occasion, and in my submission, as in the submission of others of my hon. friends, the exceptional circumstances have passed. We have now returned very largely to the normal condition of the country. There still remains, of course, the mining crisis, but from the point of view of the conditions which actuated the framing of these Regulations, I submit that there has been a substantial change. In the particular Regulation with which we are now concerned we are confronted with an attempt to interfere with what some of us regard as a legitimate expression of opinion upon public questions. What is the fact as it now obtains? The subject under discussion mainly in the country at this moment is an economic subject, economic conditions, and it is when the country and the public generally comes to discuss economic questions that people's sentiments and people's tempers are apt to he somewhat heated. But in spite of that, in spite of the fact that it is the economic issue which has been before the country for the last nine weeks, the Home Secretary himself, as indeed the Prime Minister himself on a previous occasion, have both been compelled to admit that, on the whole, the conduct of the mass of the people of the country has been exemplary in every respect.
Since this economic issue is one that touches almost every homestead in the country, it is therefore in the highest degree essential that the Government should do nothing that would interfere with the right of the private individual to express his criticism of the Government's action at any particular moment. Even normally, when economic conditions are under discussion there is enough material abroad for the creation of bitterness, for the accentuation of antagonisms between one side and the other. But when the 1806 Government of the day uses exceptional legislation such as this in order to hamper and restrict the expression of private judgment upon public questions the inevitable consequence is the creation of further suspicion and the engineering of far greater antagonism than need be the case. I ventured, when discussing these Regulations last, to ask the Home Secretary to tell us how many prosecutions had taken place under this particular regulation in various parts of the country. He was forced to admit even then, more than a month ago, that comparatively speaking even in the mining areas there were comparatively few prosecutions having regard to the density of the population in those areas. I ask the House to bear this in mind, as I did on that occasion. This is not the first mining crisis we have had by a long way in this country. I venture to assert with some assurance, knowing as I do mining communities that the miners of this country are as law abiding a community as any other section of the community in the country. Therefore, in the carrying on of this special legislation, this special set of regulations, now, it makes one feel that they are specially directed against one particular section of the community who, I suggest, are as law abiding as any other. There is another portion of this Regulation which I would submit is extremely hard. Ever since Milton wrote his "Areopagitica" the right of the Government of the day has been accepted by most people as an elementary right of criticism, and at a time like this, when the government of the day is every hour, rightly or wrongly, laying itself open to the charge of taking sides in the dispute, and, naturally, it is highly regrettable that these Regulations should be kept on the Statute Book, where they excited indignation and exasperated public opinion.
There are two or three people who will be involved in the application of this particular Regulation. There are, first of all, the police. There are large areas in the heart of the mining districts of this country where the Chief Constable of that particular area, being a person of moderation, being a person of discretion, being a person who is circumspect in his outlook, so conducted affairs in his area that not one single prosecution took place within the area under his control. I give a case in point. 1807 In the City of Cardiff I believe there were extremely few, if any, prosecutions at all. In the County of Glamorgan, on the other hand, there were quite a number; all that arises from the difference in the mentality and outlook of the two chief constables. The one has a sort of patriotic feeling that he is not doing the patriotic thing unless he is prosecuting people whom he regards to be hot heads or extremists. On the other hand, the circumspect chief constable says, "Oh, let them blow off steam," and he allows them to speak in the public park, to deliver themselves of the burden of their message, and he feels that having done so, no harm is done anyone. I submit it would be a good thing for the Government to have taken a similar line and allowed people as much latitude as possible to express themselves upon these subjects without interfering unduly with their liberty. Similarly with the magistrates.
We have had a discussion already, and on a recent occasion in regard to this question of "known character." The Home Secretary will not be able to deny, I think, that in the course of the last eight or nine weeks, the fact that a man was known to belong to a Communist organisation was stated in Court as if it were a statement of a heinous offence, and that was accepted as being a contribution to the knowledge of the magistrate was to the character of the person so prosecuted. When these people have appeared in Court, over and over again, we have had obita dicta from the magistrate here, there and everywhere, up and down the country, concerning Communism and other subjects of public discussion—statements utterly irrelevant to the issue, utterly unnecessary and indeed, doing nothing except proving the political bias of the person sitting for the moment upon the magisterial bench. What actuates these people, I submit is this: it is not that they want deliberately to do the person prosecuted a personal injury, only they have a sort of feeling that the Government of the day expect it of them, as a patriotic act, to punish these people who are regarded as being somewhat extreme in these days of industrial crisis. I submit to the House therefore that from the point of view of political ex- 1808 pediency, from the point of view of preserving industrial peace, from the point of view of avoiding the development of political, personal, and social antagonism it would be worth while abandoning these Regulations. But far more would it be worth while for another reason. Because it is infinitely better for the State to run the risk of having some few dozen people expressing unpopular opinions rather than that the State should embark on the dangerous practice of limiting public discussion which is the inalienable right of every citizen. Therefore on the ground of the desirability of preserving liberty for the individual, and indeed on the ground of temporary expediency, I submit the Amendment which stands in my name.
§ Mr. STEPHENI want to address myself to the Secretary for Scotland in regard to what is happening under these Regulations in Scotland. We have had certain figures given to us to-night by the Home Secretary, and I would like to get from the Secretary for Scotland the corresponding figures for Scotland. The Home Secretary told us these figures were for England and Wales. I am hopeful that the Secretary for Scotland will be able to give me the corresponding figures for Scotland. It. seems to me, from what I have heard, that the situation in Scotland has been pretty much similar to that in England. I do not know with regard to the action of the Minister in giving something of an amnesty to people concerned because so far as I can make out, if I am right I think the figures I have already been able to get show that the Secretary for Scotland was able to take a merciful view in about five cases. I myself brought several cases before him and was disappointed that he did not take a more sensible view with regard to them than was the case, and I hope we shall get a figure from him to-night for the first month of these Regulations and then for the second month. I also want to say in that connection that I was disappointed that the Home Secretary was not a little bit more accurate in his statement. I am sorry he is not here. He stated to-night that there were no meetings prohibited during the last month. Well, I myself have been unable to get an opportunity of hearing the Member of Parliament that represents my district—the Member for North Battersea (Mr. Saklat- 1809 vala). A meeting that he was to address in his constituency has been prohibited. I take that instance because I want to protest here on the Floor of the House against this action of the Government in prohibiting a Member whose views are not Conservative from being allowed to address his constituents.
§ Mr. SPEAKERI do not see the bearing of this on the Amendment.
§ 2 A.M.
§ Mr. STEPHENI am taking it that, seeing the discussion on the general question was cut short, although some of us had waited long to speak on various points, I should not have been drawn up in this fashion.
§ Mr. SPEAKERIt is quite possible that hon. Members may have difficulty in discussing all these Regulations together. I have no objection, but in guiding the discussion the House cannot arrange it both ways. If that be the desire in this instance, I will allow the widest discussion to cover the general point.
§ Mr. STEPHENI gather from my comrades on these benches that we would much prefer the general discussion to continue, and then with regard to the Amendments that they should be taken without discussion.
§ Mr. PURCELLOn a point of Order. I think, Mr. Speaker, you might let us know exactly how we stand on this point.
§ Mr. SPEAKERIt is rather for hon. Members to tell me what they want than for me to tell them. I am quite willing to allow the continuance of the general discussion, but they cannot have it both ways.
§ Mr. LANSBURYMay we take Regulations 21 and 22 together? That would give us pretty wide latitude to discuss practically everything that we object to in this part of the Regulations.
§ Mr. SPEAKERI am quite prepared to adopt that suggestion.
§ Mr. PURCELLI hope my hon. Friends will not do that. If you limit me to Regulation 21, I cannot get to 13A.
§ Mr. LANSBURYI understood that 13A would be taken after 21.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThere is an Amendment on the Paper dealing with Regulation 13A, but, apparently, it is the desire of the House to discuss the Regulations as a whole. I will not stand in the way of that. If hon. Members desire to do so, the best way would be for the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) not to second the present Amendment, and then the discussion can proceed on the widest basis.
§ Mr. LANSBURYThe only point is that supposing we go on for a certain time on a general discussion, it is open for the right hon. Gentleman to move the Closure. As long as it is understood that the Closure will not be moved, then I think it is all right. I am only wanting that no one shall be closured out of discussing any one of these particular Regulations that they may wish to discuss.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThat is a matter at my discretion in which I must make up my mind beforehand. I take it that it is really the desire of the House to continue the general discussion.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI wish it to be made quite clear. if this Amendment is not seconded and so falls to the ground, you continue for some time the discussion upon the general Motion, which will allow hon. Members to discuss each individual Regulation at their own sweet will, that you will not allow Amendments subsequently to be moved dealing with the individual Regulations.
§ Mr. SPEAKERI said that Members cannot have it both ways.
§ Captain BENNWill not this deprive us of our right to put quite detailed and specific points on the Amendments that are on the Paper?
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe hon. and gallant Member has already spoken. My desire is to meet the general sense of the House. I think they would desire a general discussion, and then take the Regulations separately.
§ Mr. STEPHENI was referring to the statement of the Home Secretary that there had been no meetings prohibited, 1811 and I was protesting against that information. A meeting was prohibited, and I was debarred from the opportunity of hearing the hon. Member for North Battersea, who is my Member in this House of Commons. It seems to me from that very fact that these Regulations are being used to bar an hon. Member of this House from addressing his own constituents. That in itself is a sufficient argument to show that these Regulations should not be reimposed. I just wonder if one could draw the deduction fairly from the fact that as this action has been taken there is going to be, or at least there is the possibility of, the Home Secretary and the Secretary for Scotland carrying this policy out on a wider scale. We in Glasgow have already had, not under these Regulations, but previously, difficulties with regard to free speech, and to-night or this morning I want to enter a vigorous protest against the action of the Home Secretary in this respect.
It is true, no doubt, that the Conservative candidate in that division will be fairly active in the meantime. If a General Election is not far off, as appears to some people to be very probable, for I do not think the miners are going to be forced into the position the Government evidently contemplates, and if the miners do not give way and that leads to a General Election, then this policy of repression on the part of the Home Secretary is possibly going to result in the electorate acting somewhat in the same way as it did on the last occasion. I dare say the Government could win another election if they clamped down the propaganda of their political opponents—
§ Mr. STEPHENI would point out to hon. Members that I did not clamp down the Press; unfortunately I had not that power. I am quite willing that you should have your Press on conditions. I am dealing with the present time, not with any past action on the part of certain trade unions. I am dealing with the action of the Home Secretary and this Government and the way in which they are acting in order to shut out their political opponents from getting 1812 an opportunity of expressing themselves. Regulation 21 hits already been used most unfairly with regard to creating disaffection. If someone on the Home Secretary's side of the House makes a speech which is quite obviously provocative—if Lord Birkenhead or the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes a speech which is grossly unfair in its terms, and provocative so far as the mining community is concerned—if a statement is made concerning the leaders of the miners by those Members of the Government and it leads to disaffection, then there has been no evidence on the part of the Government of taking action in that respect. But whenever anything is said contrary to the opinion of this Government, not in any way in opposition to the constitution of this country, but some criticism of the present Government, then it is no doubt regarded by the Home Secretary as seditious. What will be called "seditious" depends upon the point of view of the individual, and if one takes, for example, what the Home Secretary thinks seditious in the various documents included in this Communist collection then there is hardly a Member on this side of the House—not even the most moderate—who would be safe because the Home Secretary has got the most perverted idea of what is sedition. I would like him to give me information as to those meetings which are being prohibited.
I want to get some sort of assurance that this is not another step being taken by the Government to make it impossible for its political opponents to have a square deal and to prevent them having an opportunity of putting their views before the people of this country. We have had various illustrations in other countries—in the development of Fascist regulations in the various countries on the Continent—of the way in which Parliamentary institutions have been thrown overboard as well as the various rights enjoyed in this country. It seems to me that we are possibly tending in the same direction, and that the extraordinary zeal of the Home Secretary in regard to these Regulations is simply marking such a step in this country. It has been said that he is very frank. I have heard one Member describe him as "stupidly honest" in his declarations. I am inclined to agree with that sometimes; 1813 at other times he is possibly not just as frank. I would like him to give some little information regarding this action taken in shutting down a Member of this House from expressing opinions. I would like a guarantee that there is to be no attempt to shut clown any other Member in expressing his opinions and criticising the Government.
There is one other point I want to make. I do not think the record of the Government in the handling of the industrial crisis has been honest and straightforward. I think that, there has been an extraordinary amount of equivocation on the part of the Government in the handling of the whole situation. Now that the Government has definitely allied itself with the coal-owners I am more concerned now about these Regulations than I was even two months ago. They have put on the Statute Book this Eight Hours Act, and it seems to me that if the Government were really sincere and honest in their dealings they would be willing to throw overboard these Emergency Regulations during this month. H it is true that there is a tremendous disposition upon the part of the miners to get back to work, and that it is only their leaders who have been misleading them, and that they are anxious to work eight hours, as we have been assured in the House that the great majority of the miners are—that they wish to hurry back to their work—there is no need for this extraordinary legislation to-day. If the Government is acting on the assumption that there is widespread disposition on the part of the miners to get back to work there is no need for these Regulations. I fear the Government know there is going to be no such widespread desire on the part of the miners, and that the desire exists only in a very small number here and there, and that these Regulations are going to be put into operation even more blatantly and callously than they have been. We get nearer, possibly, to what has been in the mind of the Government if we recall that they were taunted by the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) some 11 months ago with a reference about "cold steel." The way in which the Home Secretary speaks and the general tenor of his address to the House, suggested to me that we are come 1814 to a more brutal epoch in this struggle, and, as a member of the Labour party, I want to protest against these Regulations. I hope I aid going to get an answer from the Home Secretary, if he has heard what I have said, in spite of the strange sounds from below the Gangway.
§ Mr. PURCELLWhat I want to say as regards these Regulations is that the continuance of them was quite to be expected. The attitude of the Government all the way through has not been in the direction of settling this dispute or getting an amicable settlement. It has been in the direction of assisting the coalowners to force the miners back to work under conditions which would be regarded by the labour movement in this country as highly detrimental. So I say, because of that, it was to be expected that their continuance would be asked for. I do not think any one of these Regulations assists in keeping the peace. On the contrary, they are provocative, because, as I have seen in many places, policemen who are friendly with the local agents are now separated from them. In many cases the police in a district were extremely friendly for many years with all the workmen in the district, but now that Regulations of this kind have been sent out broadcast, it naturally influences what people in the district call aloofness of the police, and there is, in my view, the position now created that the Regulations have become provocative where there was no provocation at all, and in Many instances there would be no bad feeling except for the existence of these Regulations. The right to search cannot be regarded as a thing that will be helpful in maintaining peace in a district. When people who are locked out know the possibility of being searched by certain people they naturally become suspicious of them, and it becomes provocative.
I do not want to use my time up on that. I wish to use it for Regulation 13A, because I think the Home Secretary is highly mistaken as to the information he can get with regard to this matter. I am hopeful the Russians will send millions more money to this country. I not only hope they will send that money but that we shall be successful in raking up tremendous sums of money from the American continent, and I hope we shall 1815 decide within the next few days to send a delegation with the object of securing the maximum amount for the miners. What I want to say is that I hope we shall succeed in getting the full measure of support from the working classes of the world. I am not concerned, or very little concerned, whether the money comes from the Government of Russia or any other Government. We have no complaint on our side in regard to that. We have no right to complain even against the Soviet Government in view of the fact that we printed rouble notes in this country and printed a newspaper in this country for Russia. In addition to that we sent enormous quantities of khaki to the counter-revolutionaries, the cost of which was borne by the taxpayers of this country. We did worse than that. We printed posters in this country saying that if people in Southern Russia would go on the side of the Wrangels and Denikins we would see that the Vodka saloons were opened. Many of the members of this House were Members of the Government at that time. I do not say the Home Secretary was in the Government at that time.
§ Mr. DIXEYI would like to know whether we are entitled to have a complete discussion on Russia at this time?
§ Mr. SPEAKERI think Regulation 13a may have some application to Russia. That, I take it, is the case.
§ Mr. PURCELLI take it the Home Secretary said his desire was to know what was coming from Russia. Otherwise I would not have raised the matter. I hope we shall send representatives to other parts of the world to get money, but I also say we have no complaint against Russia any more than a complaint against Mexico or the United States. In the case of Russia I say we have less to complain of in that regard because of the fact that we spent £120,000,000 of British taxpayers' money for the purpose of destroying Russia, and by the very same people who purchased arms in Germany for the use of Ulster—the party opposite. I can quite understand why they object to money coming from Russia. The very man who did their dirty work at the last moment was executed in this country, namely, Sir Roger Casement, who was the emissary and was a traitor on either side as far as I can gather. I understand why 1816 people in this country oppose money coming in. I welcome the money because if it assists us to beat the mineowners I should be glad to get money from anywhere. That is our attitude. But what I want to get at is that by this Regulation the Home Secretary or the Government think they will prevent the money coming into this country. I do not think they will do anything of the kind. The same means that are used for getting money out of this country when it suits the purpose of the Government can be used on occasions of this kind to bring it into the country. I am bound to confess I have had to bring in money for the trade union movement, and I suppose we can resort to these means again. Because of that I oppose this Regulation in common with other Regulations. P want to say in a general way that the whole of the Regulations, including even the eight-hour proposal, which will soon he an Act of Parliament, together with the reconstruction Measure that is being promoted, cannot get us out of the present difficulty. Though I still believe that every effort we put forward should be in the direction of assisting the miners to win this dispute, yet I am bound to confess that the ineptness and want of foresight seems to be on the side of the Government of the day. Seriously, I am surprised that some one has not been able to indicate the proper course to deal with this matter. Nearly every dispute where politicians have interfered has been a very bad thing for the industry. That is what is the matter with the coal dispute. I have never been able to understand why some one from one side or the other has not tried to arrange a round table conference to try to hammer out what would be a satisfactory settlement. My own view is after long experience in regard to these matters—
§ Captain P. MACDONALDOn a point of Order. Has the hon. Member the right to discuss the coal situation at this point?
§ Mr. SPEAKERThat really is not in order to-day, except as a helpful suggestion. I am reluctant to interfere, but I must ask the hon. Member not to pursue it.
§ Mr. PURCELLI submit that here we are discussing questions that arise out of the coal dispute. Of course, if it is not in order, I must drop it. But here we 1817 have all these Regulations designed for the purpose of helping some one in connection with this dispute. If you like, they are helping the Government in this dispute. But if there were no dispute, you would not want them. What I am urging is that something should be done to end the dispute.
§ Mr. SPEAKERI certainly should not take exception to a single sentence like that. All I meant to say was that the hon. Member should not pursue that line on the present occasion.
§ Mr. PURCELLI must bow to your ruling. I think the Government are making a great mistake in continuing Regulations of this kind because what they are doing, as far as the organised workers of this country are concerned, is in a sense provoking them to disregard many of the Regulations and getting people into trouble who certainly had no intention of getting into that position at all, and then that is used against them for further strengthening these Regulations. I oppose them on these grounds. As I said on a previous occasion, I shall do all I can to render them nugatory, and I shall do all I can to show that they are designed for preventing the miners from getting what they desire, and to further strengthen and back up the mineowners against, the miners, and I hope that they will he broken down as speedily as possible.
§ Mr. SAKLATVALAAs I had the opportunity of taking part in the general Debate last. Friday I do not intend to detain the House long now. But I should like to draw the attention of the House to the particular Regulation which rather points out, the intention of having such extraordinary legislation at the disposal of the Ministers and also the methods of using them, apart from the general principle involved. First with regard to the new Regulation introduced, No. 13A, with regard to moneys from Russia. Let me again take the parallel. Here are two sides to a dispute. Arising out of a disagreement, they enter into a struggle. On the one hand, the coal miners say to the coalowners: "If you disagree with us and are not prepared to give us our fair terms we are not ready to give you the supplies of coal for your commercial purposes and consumption." On the other hand, the 1818 coalowners go to the miners and submit that if they are—
§ Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted; and 40 Members being present—
§ Mr. SAKLATVALAI. was pointing out with reference to Regulation 13A that the miners, according to their right, are saying to the owners that they would cease to supply them with the necessary amount of coal. The mineowners, on the other hand, say: "In order to make you surrender to our dictation, we shall hold back your food supplies, practically threaten your very lives and the lives of your dependants." Foreign countries like America or Germany can send, their coal to the mineowners and the coal merchants, and that is considered a patriotic act—the legitimate assistance given to the coal merchants and to the mineowners by supplying to them coal from outside this country. On the other hand, when the miners are deprived of their livelihood and their means of purchasing food, if their friends and the friends of their class supply them with money from abroad, then that is wrong. This clearly shows the Ministers of the Crown are not holding the balance of justice, but are seeking revenge on the miners and supporting the mineowners in their unrighteous attack on the miners. The new Regulation makes it perfectly plain that if the miners hold back the coal from the mineowners and coal merchants, any foreign merchants should be allowed to provide unlimited supplies, but if the coalowners hold back the sources from which the miner purchases his food, and the miner receives money from abroad then that is an act of treason and must be stopped. I further draw the attention of the Home Secretary to the manner in which he is cutting across the whole system of banking. T fail to see that there should be any distinction drawn between foreign money and home money. How can it he right to use home money for a certain purpose and wrong to use foreign money for the same purpose? It is also a great puzzle to understand which is home money and which is foreign money. I think most of the wealth earned by the British people is originally foreign money and afterwards becomes home money.
1819 I do not see, if the Home Secretary really is seeking powers to hold the balance of justice, why he should not take hold of the wealth of the wealth owners of Britain who are employing their wealth deliberately for the purpose of crushing the miners. We had an instance of it last week. There had been glowing advertisements from some impartial gentleman telling all about the coal. That is a fair example of how British wealth owners are here using their wealth for the explicit purpose of creating a prejudice against the miners and of breaking the peaceful atmosphere in which the miners are facing the situation. Why is the Home Secretary not worried about that use of money with a definite object of hurting and injuring one side in the dispute? So I am objecting to. this Regulation on the general principle, not that it is against gold or money or assistance coming from Russia —that in itself is a notorious bias in the mind of the Home Secretary—but on the principle that the same Government which is allowing assistance from abroad in the shape of coal to one side in the dispute is also trying to corner the other party to the dispute in a way in which they are not entitled to do.
Then I come to Regulation 21, and I do so because it is likely to cause sedition. I would say, again, that the Conservative party and the Home Secretary are entitled to display their mentality to the best of their ability, but to talk of sedition and seditious intentions and seditious methods in 1926 is not only to display terrorism but it is also falling back on what. I may call a baboon mentality. Does it really come to that; to tell the human mind that, after all the progress we have evolved, any educated, sensible person in 1926 should go out and say: "I am afraid of sedition; I am afraid of you inviting other people to go wrong," as if other people had not got the sense to discriminate between right and wrong, and as if the Ministers of the Crown have the monopoly of judgment, and anybody who disagrees with them is a weak-minded person, who desires to incite? If they incite the working classes, then it is inculcating democratic principles, but when anybody wants to take up the cudgels on behalf of the working classes with a view to putting an end to the 1820 present state of affairs, then it is said to be sedition. What is sedition? It is not a scientific fact but a mental notion. As a speaker has pointed out, as the situation stands, every magistrate comes from that particular type of man who is haunted with the same cause—the law of sedition. It is all mental interpretation. If you go to the public masses and tell them to follow you, and you are trying to get opinion for a new thought, you are supposed to be sowing seeds of sedition; and if you go and cultivate as insistently and vigorously a doctrine, asking human beings to follow you back on some old-age superstition, then it becomes a virtue.
Coming to Regulation 22, I ask the Home Secretary not to take offence if, at certain parts, I would hypothetically put to him the case in its worst aspect, in its worst possibilities. The Regulation is put forward very humourously:
Where there appears to be reason to apprehend"—Everything makes each stage more indefinite than the previous stage. It might as well read:If there appears to be reason in the opinion of unreasonable head.''They would apprehend because of their nervousness or blind prejudice against the working classes. You pretend to apprehend when you do not apprehend, and if you do apprehend it may be the sign of a decaying moral something in you rather than a fault on the other side. Then the Regulation goes onthat the assembly of any persons for the purpose of the holding of any meeting or procession will conduce to a breach of the peace and will thereby cause undue demands to be made upon the police, or will promote disaffection, it shall be lawful for a Secretary of State, or for the mayor, magistrates, or chief officer of police"—I think the remedy is a very simple one. If the Home Secretary will order the police not to go near any meetings or processions organised by the working classes of this country there will he no undue demand on them, no disturbance of the peace, and no apprehension in the mind of anybody as to what might happen, because nothing will happen. But here you are putting a string of words together in order to find an excuse and in order to give an appearance of law to what you are doing. I will now refer to an incident which has 1821 been already mentioned. There was a. meeting announced in my constituency for last Friday. The meeting was to take place at 7 o'clock, and about 5.30 the organiser of the meeting received this notice from the Commissioner of Police, Sir William Horwood:I William Thomas Francis Horwood, Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, in pursuance of Section 22 of the Emergency Regulations, 1926, and in accordance with the expressed authority of the Secretary of State, do hereby prohibit a meeting announced to be held 'by the Communist party at the Latchmere Baths on 2nd July, 1926.There was another letter received a few minutes later from the Town Clerk of the Battersea Borough Council. It was addressed to the Small Hall, Latchmere Road Baths, and ran:I have just received intimation from the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis that the meeting which you are proposing to hold at the above hall to-night has been prohibited under the Emergency Regulations 1926.That was signed by the town clerk. In the first place, if I may correct the Home Secretary, I will point out that, the Regulations we are discussing to-night have not yet been passed. So neither the Police Chief Commissioner or the Home Secretary or the tows clerk would have stopped the meeting under these Regulations that we are discussing to-night, hut which we have not sanctioned.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSThe Regulations under the Act are good for seven days without being passed. They are now being continued.
§ Mr. SAKLATVALAAm I to understand that this meeting was stopped in anticipation of the Regulations which we are now discussing being passed at the beginning of July?
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSWhat was the date?
§ Mr. SAKLATVALAThe 2nd July.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSThat meeting was stopped under these Regulations. The Act of Parliament is good for seven days.
§ Mr. SAKLATVALAThere was this advertisement in the "Daily Herald":
Saklatvala in Battersea to-night at 8. Small Hall, Latchmere Baths. Meeting of 1822 sympathisers of Communist Party. Roll up early.I dare say that the writing of advertisements is an art which was taught to us by the Conservative party. There was nothing very extraordinary about the meeting, and under the peculiar circumstances in which we are working it was quite obvious to anybody. In the first instance, responsible authorities like the police might have easily inquired that in the small hall of Latchmere Baths permission is granted only for 200 persons. It was a small hall taken for a small meeting. It was no sort of public meeting where even the police could have the excuse that they might think there was reason to apprehend an assembly of persons who would burst out into a formidable revolution which the whole of the Army of this country would not be able to quell in time. They make no inquiry why this meeting was held, why it was called, the purpose of it or how the apprehension arose. They merely came a couple of hours beforehand to say this meeting shall not be held. The worst pretence put forward was that an undue demand would be made on the police. There was an unduly large number of police parading the streets to see that the meeting did not take place. That was a wanton waste of public money. I will not tire the House, but the position as arose is this. It has become quite notorious that a very large price is put, not on my physical head, hut on my political head in my constituency and any Tory gentleman who will oust me and win back the constituency for the Conservative party will have a niche as a saviour of the Empire. There is a great amount of activity displayed and this activity is riot always along the right lines from my point of view: but perfectly right lines from the other people's point of view. About the end of March and April it was becoming evident that I should take necessary steps to have my organisation tightened up and put in proper order, and that feature has been well known to our local Conservative friends. By the end of April there is disturbance arising out of the Liverpool Conference resolution in the Labour ranks and one has to appeal under such circumstances to such members of the Labour movement who are sympathisers with the Communist 1823 movement. In these circumstances we were contemplating holding a series of meetings asking friends in the Labour movement who have no prejudices against the Communist party to come and strengthen my political organisation. That was the meaning of a small meeting of sympathisers to be called together. There was nothing to indicate that this meeting was going to be a large demonstration which would get out of hand, and that there was likely to be trouble. I do not know why the Home Secretary prohibited this meeting, but the fact remains that it was prohibited. Information came to hand that according to instructions every meeting that is called by the Communist party will be prohibited.
§ Mr. HANNONThese Regulations are not intended for Battersea only. They apply to the whole country. Is it not a little too much of the personal note?
§ Mr. SAKLATVALAIt was only applied to Battersea. They are used to suit the political convenience of the Tory party, and they are not applied in an impartial manner to the whole country. The local police informs me that they are going to prohibit and suppress every meeting that I am going to address. There is a democratic understanding as far as-I am concerned—it is a definite pledge which I have observed and kept—to at least once a month render an account of what has gone on in Parliament. I do not see why suddenly all such meetings of a general character —which in the past in no single instance have put any strain upon the police — should be prohibited. That shows the great. danger and the great temptation that we are putting in the hands of a Home Secretary, who has confessed himself rather weak in that direction and prone to yield to temptations when they overwhelm him. I put it quite seriously that if these sort of Regulations are passed there is a tendency to make some use of them, and when the tendency is existing the general inclination is not to use the Regulations in a case which really and genuinely seems likely to respond to the conditions laid down, but to use them in a case where the Home Secretary or his subordinate officials think on the whole it 1824 will be a popular thing to do, and there will be no unpopularity coming out of such and such a situation. There is the other point which I wish to submit to the House very seriously. We hear very often about the administration of justice and the public administration of justice carried out in Britain on a cleaner basis as compared to the administration of justice and law in many other countries.
3.0 A.M.
I do not for a moment believe that Britain has preserved a certain amount of freedom from corruption, and from undesirable practices in the administration of the law, because the people of this country are heaven-born or divinely directed; it is because the general practice and system of the law is arranged so as to make the opportunities for corruption, and temptations for it, few and far between. It is only by these disciplinary measures that we arrived at a standard not of perfection, but very near perfection, as you might say. It is this kind of law that I suggest might easily take you back to the undesirable types from which you have come out with an effort. What would be the effect when members of certain parties are at the mercy of local police to strengthen their Parliamentary position, or weaken it? It is not merely the higher authorities who are concerned. There are, after all, subordinate servants, and they are human beings. It is this sort of law which leads to corruption. A Member might go to a Government official and give him dark hints that he would be a good friend to him if he suppressed a meeting of his rival. There is reason to apprehend that there is danger that he will do the good turn and hope that it will not be forgotten. These are the things that ultimately lead to corruption and actually poison public life altogether as they have done in other countries. We cannot claim that we are immune from it in this country because we are Anglo-Saxon. We know that from America, where they have not been able to preserve complete purity against corruption. I submit that the whole of these Regulations, numbers 21 and 22, are of a dangerous type, and that they really bear no relationship to the present dispute, or the present position. There is nothing in the existing laws that would not enable the authorities to cope with any deliberately planned mischief, and 1825 especially with sedition and public meetings. The ordinary laws are quite elastic enough, and this Clause, if carefully looked into, can only be called into requisition for the purpose of abusing power rather than using power.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThe hon. Member is probably not conscious of it, but I must remind him that he is repeating himself very frequently.
§ Mr. SAKLATVALAI am not opposing these Regulations with the ordinary argument that they are not necessary. I further claim that the bringing in of these Regulations is a menace and danger to the constitutional progress and development of this country, and to the stage at which we have arrived in keeping the administration of justice free from corruption. I also repeat emphatically my objection to the whole of these Regulations.
§ Miss WILKINSONMy object is to bring before the House some cases that have been brought to my notice, and the way in which this legislation actually works. It is perfectly possible, when you are discussing these things in the leisure and decorous atmosphere of this House, to think that there is nothing very serious in these Regulations; that they may be useful, and that it does not matter if they are not. One can get into the habit of giving the Government powers like this without realising what they are actually like, when they are put into operation not by the Home Secretary, or the Under-Secretary, but by the local police, and, still worse, by the magistrates, who have shown themselves in many districts completely prejudiced and acting with political bias, and the bias dictated by their own pecuniary interest. I have, through the Class War Prisoners' Aid Association, come in contact with a number of these cases, and it has astonished me the number of magistrates who are themselves coal-owners, or large employers of labour, who have not hesitated to take their places on the Bench and to deliver judgment in cases when their own property was concerned, and certainly where their own interests were concerned. The Under-Secretary shakes his head, but I think he will hardly deny that there is a number of cases. It is the custom in this country to give the 1826 magistracy into the hands of the local gentry, and there is case after case where men and women have been prosecuted, fined, and even imprisoned for little more, or anything more, than would, in ordinary eases, have been considered peaceful picketing. I have cases in Peterborough—all men concerned in trying to persuade other men who were drivers of omnibuses and other vehicles not to work. Had this been a purely local strike, this would have been considered peaceful picketing. They are now imprisoned for periods from six weeks to three months. I have other cases too which give some idea of how these things work. In a London street there was picketing going on during the general strike and six girls came out—I can give the Under-Secretary the name of the street and the girls concerned came out of a local clothing factory. They had no concern in the dispute whatever, but when they came out there was a fuss going on in the street and they became interested spectators. The police made a raid on the street and arrested people right and left, one of them being a woman. She was brought before the magistrates and remitted three times. There was not a jot or tittle of evidence against her to associate her with what was going on in the street, but she was lectured on her trade union activity—she was a. member of the Tailors' and Garment Makers' Union—and she was fined £5. That is a case which would not have occurred but for this emergency legislation when people are tried in a general atmosphere of panic.
I will take another case. One of the things that are disturbing decent people at the present time is the growth in the activity of the secret police in this country. Many of us who have thought ourselves private citizens have been astonished to find we have been honoured with the attentions of these gentlemen. I have had to bring a case of this kind to the notice of the Home Secretary. When you get people trying deliberately to get others to trap themselves under the Emergency Regulations, the country has a right to he suspicious. May I give an instance. In Northumberland or Durham, I think it was Durham, the chairman of the Urban District Council was a very active worker in connection with the dispute. He was a miner. He 1827 was accompanied by the miners' official, who went into the local public house by himself and met his friends as usual. I imagine this House is not going to take a teetotal attitude. The chairman of the Urban District Council, who was a strict teetotaller, did not enter the public house. The miners' official was engaged in conversation by a man who was in the public house and who cleverly led him to make certain statements. I must admit he foolishly brought in the Chairman of the Urban District Council to bear out what he was saying. [An HON. MEMBER: "What, the teetotaller?"] I am not aware that he partook of alcoholic refreshment. The result was that without any specific charge except that of sedition both of these men, responsible people, one of them a highly responsible person elected as a local government representative and the other a miners' official, were imprisoned. One would suppose that, hon. Members would feel somewhat shocked at the regrettable fact that these men are now in prison instead of treating it as the subject for joking. It has caused more bitterness and dissatisfaction than almost anything that has happened in the area. One can go to case after case. Over 2,000 men and women I understand are now in prison under this Emergency Powers Act, many of them for offences of the most trivial character. But what is stiill worse is that many of them, obscure persons, were imprisoned for offences which are nothing like as serious from the Government point of view as the offences for which people were imprisoned in the general strike.
I made a particular point of repeating in public the remarks made by obscurer persons who had been sent to prison for these same remarks. Nothing was done because Members of Parliament were concerned, but obscure members of the Transport Workers' Union or the National Union of Railwaymen were treated differently, and everything was done to intimidate these people. That is the kind of thing that happens when you get panic legislation of this kind. I think everybody will admit that there never has been a country that has gone through such a period of great crisis with such quietness as this country, and no thanks to the Home Secretary and his immediate officials. Whatever provocation has 1828 been given has been given by the Home Secretary, but in spite of that the trade unionists have remained wonderfully quiet, and have conducted their case with dignity and reserve. I would remind hon. Members that this is not something that will continue in the face of provocation, such as the statement we had from the Home Secretary before the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Saklatvala) was put into gaol. Apparently, the Home Secretary regards it as part of his duty to prosecute people, but I suggest it is not his duty to go out of his way and look for offences, or employ an army of spies such as is employed in connection with the mining dispute, and then expect that people will put up with it. Making speeches in this House is like talking to a stone wall. It is talking to a stonewall majority. If there was a democratic majority in this House, one would think they would hesitate before giving the Home Secretary, who is liable to lose his head, such powers as those contained in this emergency legislation.
Mr. BECKETTI listened very carefully to the statement made by the Home Secretary, and to the statements made by his supporters on the benches opposite, and I am still at a complete loss so far as the statements made on the other side of the House are concerned to know why they are supporting this legislation to-night. But I am at no loss in being able to give my own reasons for the re-introduction of these proposals. The two miners' officials who were mentioned by the last speaker are both men living within a very short distance from my own constituency. These men are having plenty of time for reminiscences. These two men, one of whom is a member of the executive of the National Labour party, after they had been arrested on the trivial faked-up offences which the hon. Member for East Middlesbrough (Miss Wilkinson) has adequately revealed, were brought to Gateshead for their trial and tried before a bench of magistrates which included Sir Alfred Palmer, one of the largest coalowners in our district. At a time when feeling was running high in the coalfields, as it is at the present moment, to arrest men, rightly or wrongly, for what the law may consider too active a part in this dispute, and to have them tried by the people they are fighting, is tantamount to altering the rules of cricket so as Jack Hobbs 1829 is to decide whether he had his leg before the wicket. I had hoped after the Amendment that would have corrected this that I would have got in to speak. It is surely totally unnecessary when the State, rightly or wrongly, takes an active part in this dispute, and arrests people who are fighting according to their lights on one side of the dispute, to have them brought into Court and tried by people on the other side of the economic war.
It would be better for people interested in the coal industry not to act in their capacity as magistrates in cases arising out of this dispute. It seems to me that that would be such an elementary proposition of decency and fairplay that hon. Members on any side of the House might accept it as a fair and honourable suggestion. But after the last speech of the Home Secretary, I feel it is almost impossible to expect fair play in this country. The right hon. Gentleman congratulated himself on his moderation after having put so many people in prison for taking what is considered to be too active a view in the interests of their class. Most of it is done, according to the Home Secretary, under Regulation 21. I have seen just a. little of this Regulation at work because, like the hon. Member for East Middlesbrough, during the general strike I found the general public much more useful to appeal to than my colleagues in the House of Commons. I have seen the results of this constant policy of suspicion and of watching and of creating offences and doing everything, possible to make offences in Newcastle, during the general strike, I saw the special police on their duties. The accounts of the riots and troubles in Newcastle were very much exaggerated, but there were riots and anyone who saw the way in which boys hardly out of school, dressed in the most unsuitable manner, were swaggering about the streets with special constables' amulets on their arms could only wonder that the workers of Tyneside showed so much discretion and gentlemanliness.
We have the further Regulation, which is very dangerous indeed, with regard to the employment of outside police. That is probably the worst thing you can possibly do in any industrial area if you want to avoid any considerable trouble. In my own constituency, the 1830 largest industrial constituency in the country, we went all through the general strike without any trouble and without a scratch or brawl of any kind. But three days after the general strike was over, we had a demonstration held in the town. Police were imported from other districts and at once we had trouble and two policemen and other people were hurt. That was purely because the police in our own town and the chief constable of the town understand the people with whom they have to deal and the people understand them and can get through the biggest demonstration or procession without the slightest trouble. But as soon as you get strange police in who do not understand the temperament of the people you get trouble and all these things happening. We have also suffered under Regulation 22. We have had our processions banned and stopped. It reads most absurdly:
It shall be lawful for a Secretary of State, or for any mayor, magistrate, or chief officer of police who is duly authorised by a Secretary of State—to ban any procession for any reason he considers likely to cause trouble. I would suggest, as moderately as I can, that however efficient and however capable for many things a great number of the mayors and magistrates of our towns are, they are riot so free in many cases from class bias and class prejudice that they can be relied on to be the sole arbiters of whether a procession is likely to lead to disorder. You have also the right to search. If I make a speech in some street corner or hall and a policeman is listening and understands as little as some Members of this House, then, if he does not like what I say, he goes away and represents that a seditious speech has been delivered and the police come and search my house If your houses were searched, even a Tory Member, there would be found in those houses specimens of literature that could easily be dubbed revolutionary literature. I take it that Conservative or Liberal Members of Parliament who wish to understand the cases they have to make in argument and debate will do the same as most of us do on these benches and read the literature on the other side in order to meet their case. If that is clone on the other side of the House, there are 1831 very few of us who could stand the kind of search for revolutionary literature which many of those men and women now imprisoned happened to have in their homes. [Interruption.] I know there may be some Members who never read anything, but I am speaking for the majority of us. And then we get in the final phrase of the Home Secretary's speech a remark which really makes you think—and if there is one Member on the benches opposite whom I think less biased by personal interest it is the Home Secretary; in many things I think he is a very charming person. This is more than I can say for many of his followers. [HON. MEMBERS: "What about the "Under-Secretary?"] The Under-Secretary has shown in this House a certain sense of what is called cricket, and that is why I am surprised, or shall be surprised, if he has his own way, if he remains entirely deaf to our plea that where miners are had up for illegal actions in this dispute they shall not be tried by mineowners but by more impartial people. That seems to me to be cricket, and I hope it will appear to the Parliamentary Secretary in the same way. But to revert to my speech when I was reminded by hon. Members opposite, and I am obliged to them, of the very obvious virtues of the Parliamentary Secretary, I would rather deal, if I may, with the end of the speech of the Secretary of State himself. In that speech he showed himself, as he shows himself in every public utterance, and has done before by any previous utterance in this House, entirely lacking in every sense of public decency. To the mind of any man not entirely biased it is positively indecent for the Secretary of State to speak of a man one day and say his fingers are itching to arrest him and then clap the man in prison the next. It is positively indecent to speak of a man who has a greater reputation among the masses of the people of this country than anyone who speaks on the benches opposite—[Interruption.] Well, go to the country and see; this is a thing which can only he proved when you Gentlemen opposite give us a chance. Provocative things are said every day by prominent leaders on your side, and to get up here and threaten the greatest trade union leader 1832 this country has seen for a very long time. [HON. MEMBERS: "Name[...] name!"] It may be news, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, if I may just mention this subject—it may be news to many Members to know that a few months ago a poll was held by a Labour paper, with a certain number of labour leaders and trade union leaders, to decide who were the twelve most popular leaders in the labour and trade union movement.
Mr. DEPUTY - SPEAKER (Captain FitzRoy)I think the hon. Member had better not continue his anecdotes.
Mr. BECKETTI am sorry; I was diverted from the strict subject of the argument, but I was brought to it by the fact that the Home Secretary to-night informed us that he wanted these Regulations passed in order that he might be able to imprison a man who has been pronounced again and again one of the 12 most trusted and popular leaders in this country. [HON. MEMBERS: "Name, name!"] I would say this, as I am sure Mr. Cook would say it—that he would rather have the respect of one workman than he would have the respect of the whole of the Conservative Members of this House. Finally, we get a suggestion—a continual suggestion—from those unfortunate individuals who have to make speeches instead of zoological noises from the benches opposite. We get continual suggestions from them that it is very unfair of Members on these benches to continually accuse the Government of being partial, biased, and solely acting with one side in this dispute. The other night one gallant Gentleman on the other side came to me and said, "I will flog you within an inch of your life."
§ Mr. ALBERYOn a point of Order. Is it in order to tell another anecdote?
Mr. BECKETTI shall be quite content, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to speak in accordance with your discretion. This is not an anecdote. This is an account of the behaviour of one of the hired bullies of the party opposite.
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERI do not see what that has to do with the Debate.
Mr. BECKETTIf the hon. Gentleman opposite will wait I will tell the House what it has to do with it.
§ Captain WATERHOUSEIs it in order to refer to hon. Members as hired bullies?
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERIt might be in order or it might not.
Mr. BECKETTAnd all this proves that these Regulations are part and parcel of a continual campaign by the party opposite, which makes the country as a whole disbelieve their continual assertions that they are fair-minded and impartial. It is not a bit of good, while you go on passing the kind of legislation you are passing now, to threaten to flog Members who tell the truth. That has nothing to do with the case. What Would have far more effect in convincing the country of your good will—because they do not have to sit opposite you like we do and may believe you have some—would be if the Government, instead of making verbal assertions, would give us some kind of solid proof that they are in earnest in their desire.
The best way that they could do that would be by the withdrawal of these Regulations, which, except for the doubtful virtue of enabling the Home Secretary to impress Mr. Cook, have nothing whatever to be said in their favour. If, as has been said earlier in the Debate, it was the slightest use of appealing to the chivalry or ordinary decency of the party opposite, we should see that the workers in this dispute are already sufficiently handicapped. You have the money, you have the Press, you have a great majority, and you have every advantage, electorally and industrially, on your side. If you have any kind of case at all you can well afford not to go ahead with the unfair political instrument which these Emergency Regulations grant you, and you cannot do anything else but substantiate the charge we have made in this House that you are legislating solely in the interests of the people who draw money out of coal and minerals.
§ Mr. BATEYI am going to oppose these Regulations, and I want to do so as a miners' representative. I believe these Regulations are aimed at the miners. No miner has spoken to-night, and that is the reason why I am speaking. As a matter of fact, there is no one else they can be aimed at this month nor last month, and why the Government should select the miners for their bitter hatred, is one of the things I cannot understand. Why the Government 1834 should use their strong power to oppress the miners is beyond my comprehension. The Prime Minister said during the general strike that the miners should have a square deal. Well, this is not giving the miners a square deal. This is really an insult to the miners, and I want to submit that the conduct of the miners during the dispute in 1921 and in other years was such as not to warrant the reimposition of Regulations like these. The Home Secretary to-night in his speech never attempted to justify these Regulations. As a matter of fact, the Home Secretary's speech justified the Opposition in opposing these Regulations as strongly as ever they possibly can. Had the Home Secretary been here I should like to have asked him this—as to how long he means to continue these Regulations. We have had these Regulations continued for one month. The hon. Members on the other side do not expect the coal dispute to end in a month. If they do, then I think they are under a delusion. In my own county we have some thousands of men who have been locked out for the last 12 months, and I am quite certain of this, that you will not find these men ready to go back to work as Members on the other side seem to think. Unless the Government does something differently than at present, these people will be in the lock-out at the end of this month and at the end of next month. What is the Home Secretary going to do at the end or beginning of next month. It is reported in the Press that the House is likely to rise before the end of this month. If the House rises at the end of this month or before the end of this month, what is he going to do at the beginning of September. Oh, I can well imagine hon. Members on the other side being quite willing to be recalled from their holidays to come to the House of Commons for the purpose of voting again to re-impose these Regulations upon the miners. It seems to me that the Home Secretary, if he is justified in having these Regulations this month, then he is justified in having the Regulations next month and the month after. It seems to me that the Home Secretary has two things in mind in re-imposing these Regulations. The first thing he has in mind is this. On Wednesday we are going to he asked to vote money for the purpose of bringing 1835 blackleg coal into the country, coal purchased by the Government.
§ Sir FRANK MEYEROn a point of Order. Is it right that the hon. Member should refer to working men in other countries as blacklegs?
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERThe hon. Member had better wait until Wednesday to debate this question.
§ Mr. BATEYI am quite willing to wait until Wednesday for the Vote of the money. I am using it as an illustration to show what is in the mind of the Home Secretary in imposing these Regulations to-night.
§ Sir H. SLESSERMay we be allowed to have the Debate without constant interruption?
§ Mr. BATEYI am glad the Home Secretary has returned. I hope that he has had a good breakfast, and that he will be able to enjoy the Debate. [Interruption.] I am not in the least objecting to the interruptions, but they are wasting time. What I was saying was for the benefit of the Home Secretary, and I want him to hear. I want to repeat it for his benefit. I was saying that there were two things in the mind of the Home Secretary in his action in desiring to re-impose these Regulations.
Mr. ERSKINEOn a point of Order. The hon. Member has admitted that he is repeating just what he told us five minutes ago. He says he is doing it for the benefit of the Home Secretary, but is it in order to repeat what he has already said two or three times?
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERIt is not in order to repeat.
§ Mr. PALINIs it not in order when a speaker is asking a definite question for information, and the person who has the information is not in at the time? Is it not in order to repeat the question when the Minister referred to returns?
§ Mr. BATEYI was endeavouring to read the mind of the right hon. Gentleman and to show that there was reason to believe that he had two objects in view in re-imposing these Regulations. One of these is that the Government is going to buy coal; is going to bring in 1836 coal which is blackleg coal. [Interruption.] If you do not want the Home Secretary to hear, I do. I was saying that the Government was going to bring in blackleg coal, if it possibly can, for the purpose of defeating the miners. One of the things that naturally will arise is this: That the miners in order to defen[...] themselves will try to prevent blackleg coal being imported. Naturally the miners will try to get the transport workers and the railwaymen not to handle coal. [Interruption.] Now that I am on my feet I am in no hurry. I think the Home Secretary will understand the line the miners will take. It is natural for them to do everything they possibly can to prevent coal coming in. Is it the intention of the Home Secretary when he has reimposed these Regulations to say that if the miners attempt to persuade the transport workers or the railwaymen he will deal with the miners under these Regulations? I believe that is one of the objects in the mind of the Home Secretary in pushing through these Regulations. I think the other idea in the mind of the Home Secretary is this: He succeeded last week in pushing through this House the Eight Hours Bill, and he did it in the expectation that once that Bill has become an Act of Parliament the miners will rush back to work. If there is any intimidation it will come from the friends of the other side, it will not come from our friends, the workmen. We never find intimidation necessary. In past years we have always had to fight against the intimidation of the owners, whom you are backing at the moment. You have got the impression that the miners will rush back to work, and is it your intention in getting these Regulations that you will be better able to protect the miners from those who do not go back to work? The Home Secretary, in his speech to-night, dealt with the leader of the Miners' Federation. The leader of the Miners' Federation, the right hon. Gentleman said had made a speech, and the Home Secretary inferred that the leader of the Miners' Federation had said something that would almost bring him within the four corners of these Regulations. The speech that was delivered by the official of the Miners' Federation was a speech delivered in answer to the Home Secretary himself. The first person guilty in that respect was the Home Secretary, and 1837 not the official of the Miners' Federation. The Home Secretary used these words:
Any man who wanted to work would receive the protection of all His Majesty's Forces.4.0 A.M.It is two or three weeks since the Home Secretary made that speech, and I want to ask him if he has had to protect anyone since? Was there a rush into the pits by blacklegs; has he found that there has been such a big demand on the part of the blacklegs to go to the pits? As the weeks and the months go on he will find it. Unless the Government are prepared to do something different from what they are doing at present, it may develop into years. The Home Secretary up to the present time has found no great desire since he made his speech on the part of anybody to blackleg the miners in spite of the protection offered to them by the Home Secretary. I am objecting to these Regulations, because we have an experience of them. These Regulations have been in force eight weeks, but I wonder if the Home Secretary can tell us how many miners have been arrested within the last four weeks in order to make these Regulations necessary to-night. I could well understand the Home Secretary coming to the House last month to get the Regulations, because of the experience of former months, but I cannot understand the Home Secretary coming for them this month, because last month, so far as I am aware, there was not a single miner arrested. If that he so, these Regulations are totally unnecessary.
We also oppose these Regulations because they make it so easy to have men arrested and tried and convicted and sent to prison during their enforcement. These men have never been in prison before, and some of the men, we believe, were unfairly sent to prison. We believe that if they had been tried before an unbiased bench of Magistrates they would not have been sent to prison. Some of them were sent to prison with the coalowners in the chair on the magisterial bench. They were not only sent to prison, but had a lecture delivered to them by the coalowners. That is what you can expect from the Tories. I come from a county which is a large mining district. There we have scarcely any representation on the magisterial bench. We have only 30 Labour men on 1838 the magisterial bench, and against that number we have 300 reactionaries.
§ Mr. HANNONOn a point of Order. Are objections as to the magistracy allowed on this Debate?
§ Mr. THURTLEIs it not a fact that it is within the right of hon. Members of this House to comment upon the political opinions of magistrates?
§ Mr. SPEAKERI think the hon. Member should confine himself to what is actually part of the Regulation. These questions can be brought before a higher Court of Judges.
§ Mr. SPEAKERThat is not a question for me to answer.
§ Mr. BATEYI hope you are not going to lay any blame on my shoulders for this discussion on the magistracy. What I was pointing out was this that under these Regulations it is so easy for men to be arrested and tried and sent to gaol in cases where there is no justification. We believe they would not have been sent to, prison if it had not been that the magisterial bench was composed of members of the opposite party.
§ Mr. BATEYThey did not have the money to pay for an appeal. I was arguing that in the big mining district it is a big disadvantage when people have to be tried in local courts. When our men have got to be tried before men opposed to them, then these Regulations become to us a very serious matter. Seeing that hon. Members are not in a hurry, I want to deal with two or three of these Regulations. I want to ask the Home Secretary if it is necessary to have Regulation 18? It is a very short Regulation, and it reads:
It shall be lawful for the Postmaster-General to direct that telegraphic messages 1839 of such classes or descriptions as he may prescribe shall not be accepted for transmission.May I ask the Home Secretary whether that Regulation is really necessary to-day? Is it fair? Suppose, for example, the Miners' Federation decides to send out telegrams to each of the mining districts not to resume work under the Eight Hours Act and the new terms posted this week by the Mining Association. The Postmaster-General can refuse to allow those telegrams to be sent. It is putting far too much power in the bands of the Postmaster-General to give him such power as that. There is another Regulation, No. 26. It deals with the importing of police from one district into another. We had an experience up in Durham County of the importing of police during the general strike. Near my own division there was a baton charge.I believe that —[Interruption].
§ Mr. J. JONESYou know more about a bacon charge, some of you.
§ Mr. HANNONOn a point of Order. May I call your attention to the fact that under Standing Order 19 an hon. Member is not allowed to use statements produced in the House before. The hon. Member for Spennymoor (Mr. Batey) is repeating what has been said before.
§ Mr. MARDY JONESFurther to that point of Order, is it not a fact that we are discussing these Regulations afresh?
§ Mr. SPEAKERIt is not a question of previous Debates at all. There has been a good deal of repetition. Standing Order 19 states that a Member must not repeat his own arguments or arguments used by other Members.
§ Mr. STEPHENWas not the hon. Member referring to a specific baton charge near his own division, which was not referred to to-night by any other Member?
§ Mr. SPEAKERMy remark was a general one. There has been a good deal of repetition. I will bear what the hon. Member has to say.
§ Mr. BATEYI was rather surprised that that point was raised because this is the first time I have raised the matter. I draw attention to this Regulation simply for the purpose of referring to that baton charge. It was made near 1840 to my own division.I believe there would have been no trouble if it had not been for the imported police brought into Durham county. One cannot understand the Home Secretary clinging to this Regulation now that the general strike is over and only the miners' lockout in existence. If there had been the slightest need for this Regulation with the idea of putting police from one district into another district, then I should have understood it, but in my opinion it is one of the Regulations which the Home Secretary need not think about. With regard to the Regulations about prohibiting money from abroad, I feel strongly that this Regulation is here for the purpose, as the Home Secretary said to-night, that he could get to know what money was coming from Russia or any other country to the miners. I believe that if he could get the power he would gladly use this Regulation to prevent the money coming for the miners. Although it is coming for the purpose of helping to feed miners' wives and children, the Home Secretary and the Government would prevent it coming if they dared. I think this is a dangerous Regulation to put into the hands of the Home Secreary, because if he can get the least excuse to stop the money coming from Russia or any other country he will do so. I would accept this money coming from Russia, and as much money as ever Russia could send, in order to feed our wives and bairns. I would accept money from Germany and Austria, or from wherever it might come. I would take all the money—[Interruption]—yes, I would even take it from you, and it is going a long way when I would take it from Tories. There is another Regulation, which I would have been glad to support if I thought the Government would use it. It is Regulation 14, which is one of the best in the whole bunch. But it is too good for the Government to use. It says:
The Board of Trade may take possession and may from time to time, as may be deemed expedient, relinquish and resume possession of,and then in Section (d) it continues:any plant, machinery. … as may be deemed requisite for the purposes of maintaining the supply or distribution of coal.I take it that they could take possession of the coal mines. That is a good Regulation, but it is too good for the 1841 Government to use. It is the one Regulation they ought to use. The Eight Hours Bill is no solution. The Government ought to take possession of the coal mines and work the coal mines because the owners will not do so. I can not understand why the Government are so bitterly opposed to the miners and are using their strong power to oppose the miners. [HON. MEMBERS: "They are not!"] They are not? Why, during the general strike I sat here and heard hon. Members opposite say, "If it was not for this general strike we would have sympathy with the miners." But since the general strike they have not shown the least sympathy with the miners. Everything the Government is doing—and every Member of the Conservative party is responsible for the Government's actions—everything that
§ the Government is doing is to oppress the miners and push the miners further down. I want to ask the Home Secretary as to whether that is a wise policy on the part of the Government. You may do it and succeed, but as sure as ever you do it there will come a time when you will wish you had not, and you will be full of regrets for the position you have occupied and the policy you have pursued towards the miners of the country.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
§ Question put, "That the Question be now put."
§ The House divided: Ayes, 180; Noes, 65.
1843| Division No. 320.] | AYES. | [4.20 a.m. |
| Acland-Troyte, Lieut.-Colonel | Fanshawe, Commander G. D | Monsell, Eyres, Com. Rt. Hon. B. M. |
| Ainsworth, Major Charles | Fermoy, Lord | Moore-Brabazon, Lieut.-Col. J. T. C. |
| Albery, Irving James | Fielden, E. B. | Morrison, H. (Wilts, Salisbury) |
| Alexander, E. E. (Leyton) | Ford, Sir P. J. | Morrison-Bell, Sir Arthur Clive |
| Alexander, Sir Wm. (Glasgow, Cent'l) | Fraser, Captain Ian | Nall, Lieut.-Colonel Sir Joseph |
| Allen, J.Sandeman (L'pool, W. Derby) | Frece, Sir Walter de | Nelson, Sir Frank |
| Amery, Rt. Hon. Leopold C. M. S. | Fremantle, Lieut.-Colonel Francis E. | Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. L. (Exeter) |
| Applin, Colonel R. V. K. | Gibbs, Col. Rt. Hon. George Abraham | Nuttall, Ellis |
| Ashley, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Wilfrid W. | Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John | O'Neill, Major Rt. Hon. Hugh |
| Astor, Maj. Hn. John J. (Kent, Dover) | Goff, Sir Park | Pennefather, Sir John |
| Balniel, Lord | Grace, John | Penny, Frederick George |
| Barclay-Harvey, C. M. | Greene, W. P. Crawford | Percy, Lord Eustace {Hastings) |
| Barnston, Major Sir Harry | Grotrian, H. Brent | Perkins, Colonel E. K. |
| Betterton, Henry B. | Gunston, Captain D. W. | Peto, G. (Somerset, Frome) |
| Bourne, Captain Robert Croft | Hacking, Captain Douglas H. | Pielou, D. P. |
| Bowyer, Capt. G. E. W. | Hall, Capt. W. D'A. (Brecon & Rad.) | Pilcher, G. |
| Boyd-Carpenter, Major Sir A. B. | Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry | Pownall, Lieut.-Colonel Sir Assheton |
| Braithwaite, A. N. | Harland, A. | Preston, William |
| Brittain, Sir Harry | Harrison, G. J. C. | Price, Major C. W. M. |
| Brocklebank, C. E. R, | Hartington, Marquess of | Radford, E. A. |
| Brooke, Brigadier-General C. R I. | Harvey, G. (Lambeth Kennington) | Raine, W. |
| Buckingham, Sir H. | Harvey. Major S. E. (Devon, Totnes) | Ramsden, E. |
| Bullock, Captain M. | Hawke, John Anthony | Rawson, Sir Cooper |
| Burton, Colonel H. W. | Henderson, Capt. R. R. (Oxf'd, Henley) | Remer, J. R. |
| Campbell, E. T. | Heneage, Lieut.-Col. Arthur P. | Rhys, Hon. C. A. U. |
| Cazalet, Captain Victor A. | Hennessy, Major J. R. G. | Roberts, E. H. G. (Flint) |
| Christie, J. A. | Hogg, Rt. Hon. Sir D.(St.Marylebone) | Ropner, Major L. |
| Clayton, G. C. | Holland, Sir Arthur | Ruggles-Brise, Major E. A. |
| Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. D. | Holt, Captain H. P. | Rye, F. G. |
| Cockerill, Brig.-General Sir G. K. | Hope, Capt. A. O. J. (Warw'k, Nun.) | Salmon, Major I. |
| Cooper, A. Duff | Hopkins, J. W. W. | Sandeman, A. Stewart |
| Couper, J. B. | Howard, Captain Hon. Donald | Sanderson, Sir Frank |
| Courtauld, Major J. S. | Huntingfield, Lord | Shaw, R. G. (Yorks, W.R., Sowerby) |
| Crookshank, Col. C. de W. (Berwick) | Inskip, Sir Thomas Walker H. | Shepperson, E. W. |
| Crookshank,Cpt. H. (Lindsey,Gainsbro) | Joynson-Hicks, Rt. Hon. Sir William | Skelton, A. N. |
| Cunliffe, Sir Herbert | Kidd, J. (Linlithgow) | Slaney, Major P. Kenyon |
| Curzon, Captain Viscount | King, Captain Henry Douglas | Smith-Carington, Neville W. |
| Dalkeith, Earl of | Knox, Sir Alfred | Smithers, Waldron |
| Davidson, J. (Hertf'd, Hemel Hempst'd) | Lamb, J. O. | Somerville, A. A. (Windsor) |
| Davidson, Major-General Sir John H. | Looker, Herbert William | Spender-Clay, Colonel H. |
| Davies, Dr. Vernon | Lougher, L. | Sprot, Sir Alexander |
| Davies, Maj. Geo. F.(Somerset,Yeovil) | Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh Vere | Stanley, Lord (Fylde) |
| Dawson, Sir Philip | Luce, Maj.-Gen. Sir Richard Harman | Stanley, Col. Hon. G. F. (Will'sden, E.) |
| Dixey, A. C. | MacAndrew, Major Charles Glen | Stanley, Hon. O. F. G.(Westm'eland) |
| Eden, Captain Anthony | Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.) | Steel, Major Samuel Strang |
| Edmondson, Major A. J | McLean, Major A. | Storry-Deans, R. |
| Erskine, James Malcolm Monteith | Macmillan, Captain H. | Stott, Lieut.-Colonel W. H |
| Erskine, Lord (Somerset, Weston-s.-M.) | Macquisten, F. A. | Streatfeild, Captain S. R. |
| Evans, Captain A. (Cardiff, South) | Manningham-Buller, Sir Mervyn | Strickland, Sir Gerald |
| Everard, W. Lindsay | Merriman, F. B. | Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn) |
| Fairfax, Captain J. G. | Meyer, Sir Frank | Styles, Captain H. Walter |
| Falls, Sir Charles F. | Mitchell, S. (Lanark, Lanark) | Sueter, Rear-Admiral Murray Fraser |
| Sugden, Sir Wilfrid | Warrender, Sir Victor | Wise, Sir Fredric |
| Sykes, Major-Gen. Sir Frederick H. | Waterhouse, Captain Charles | Withers, John James |
| Thompson, Luke (Sunderland) | Watson, Sir F. (Pucisey and Otley) | Womersley, W. J. |
| Thomson, F. C. (Aberdeen, South) | Wells, S. R. | Wragg, Herbert |
| Thomson, Rt. Hon. Sir W. Mitchell | Wheler, Major Sir Granville C. H. | Yerburgh, Major Robert D T. |
| Titchfield, Major the Marquess of | Williams, A. M. (Cornwall, Northern) | |
| Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement | Williams, Corn. C. (Devon, Torquay) | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.— |
| Vaughan-Morgan, Col. K. P. | Williams, Herbert G. (Reading) | Major Cope and Captain Margesson |
| Wallace, Captain D. E. | Wilson, R. R. (Stafford, Lichfield) | |
| Ward, Lt.-Col.A. L. (Kingston-on-Hull) | ||
| NOES. | ||
| Adamson, Rt. Hon. W. (Fife, West) | Hall, F. (York, W. R., Normanton) | Scurr, John |
| Alexander, A. V. (Sheffield, Hilisbro') | Hall, G. H. (Merthyr Tydvil) | Shaw, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Preston) |
| Ammon, Charles George | Hayday, Arthur | Short, Alfred (Wednesbury) |
| Barr, J. | Henderson, Rt, Hon. A. (Burnley) | Sitch, Charles H. |
| Batey, Joseph | Henderson, T. (Glasgow) | Slesser, Sir Henry H. |
| Beckett, John (Gateshead) | Hirst, G. H. | Smith, Ben (Bermondsey, Rotherhithe) |
| Broad, F. A. | Hudson, J. H. (Huddersfield) | Smith, Rennie (Penistone) |
| Buchanan, G. | John, William (Rhondda, West) | Spencer, G. A. (Broxtowe) |
| Charleton, H. C. | Jones, J. J. (West Ham, Silvertown) | Stephen, Campbell |
| Clowes, S. | Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly) | Taylor, R. A. |
| Compton, Joseph | Jones, T. I. Mardy (Pontypridd) | Thurtle, E. |
| Cove, W. G. | Kelly, W. T. | Townend, A. E. |
| Crawfurd, H. E. | Kennedy, T. | Varley, Frank B. |
| Dalton, Hugh | Lansbury, George | Wallhead, Richard C |
| Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton) | Lawrence, Susan | Walsh, Rt. Hon. Stephen |
| Day, Colonel Harry | Lindley, F. W. | Wilkinson, Ellen C. |
| Dennison, R. | Lunn, William | Williams, T. (York, Don Valley) |
| Dunnico, H. | Paling, W. | Windsor, Walter |
| Gibbins, Joseph | Pethick-Lawrence, F. W. | Young, Robert (Lancaster, Newton) |
| Gillett, George M. | Ponsonby, Arthur | |
| Greenwood, A. (Nelson and Coine) | Potts, John S. | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.— |
| Grenfell, D. R. (Glamorgan) | Purcell, A. A. | Mr. Charles Edwards and Mr. Hayes. |
| Grundy, T. W. | Saklatvala, Shapurji |
§ Question put accordingly, "That the Regulation made by His Majesty in Council under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920, by Order dated 28th June, 1926, shall continue in force, subject,
1844§ however, to the provisions of Section 2 (4) of the said Act."
§ The House divided: Ayes, 181 ; Noes, 64.
1845| Division No. 321.] | AYES. | [4.30 a.m. |
| Acland-Troyte, Lieut.-Colonel | Cunliffe. Sir Herbert | Hartington, Marquess of |
| Ainsworth, Major Charles | Curzon, Captain Viscount | Harvey, G. (Lambeth, Kennington) |
| Albery, Irving Jumes | Dalkeith, Earl of | Harvey, Major S. E. (Devon, Totnes) |
| Alexander, E. E. (Leyton) | Davidson, J.(Hertl'd, Hemel Hempst'd) | Hawke, John Anthony |
| Alexander. Sir Wm. (Glasgow, Cent'l) | Davidson, Major-General Sir John H. | Henderson, Capt. R. R. (Oxf'd, Henley) |
| Allen, J.Sandoman (L'pool, W. Derby) | Davies, Dr. Vernon | Heneage, Lieut.-Col. Arthur P. |
| Amery, Rt. Hon. Leopold C. M. S. | Davies, Maj. Geo.F. (Somerset, Yeovil) | Hennessy, Major J. R. G. |
| Applin, Colonel R. V. K. | Dawson, Sir Philip | Hogg, Rt. Hon. Sir D. (St. Marylebone) |
| Ashley, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Wilfrid W. | Dixey, A. C. | Holland, Sir Arthur |
| Astor, Maj. Hn. John J. (Kent, Dover) | Eden, Captain Anthony | Holt, Capt. H. P. |
| Bainlel, Lord | Edmondson, Major A. J. | Hope, Capt. A. O. J. (Warw'k, Nun.) |
| Barclay-Harvey, C. M. | Erskine, James Malcolm Monteith | Hopkins. J. W. W. |
| Barnston, Major Sir Harry | Erskine, Lord (Somerset, Weston-s-M.) | Howard, Captain Hon. Donald |
| Betterton, Henry B. | Evans. Captain A. (Cardiff, South) | Huntingfield, Lord |
| Bourne, Captain Robert Crott | Everard, W. Lindsay | Inskip, Sir Thomas Walker H. |
| Bowyer, Captain G. E. W | Fairfax, Captain J. G. | Joynson-Hicks, Rt. Hon. Sir William |
| Boyd-Carpenter, Major Sir A. B. | Falls, Sir Charles F. | Kidd, J. (Linlithgow) |
| Braithwalte, A. N. | Fanshawe, Commander G. D. | King, Captain Henry Douglas |
| Brittain, Sir Harry | Fermoy, Lord | Knox, Sir Alfred |
| Brocklebank, C. E. R. | Fielden, E. B. | Lamb, J. Q. |
| Brooke, Brigadier-General C. R. I. | Ford, Sir P. J. | Looker, Herbert William |
| Buckingham, Sir H. | Fraser, Captain Ian | Lougher, L. |
| Bullock, Captain M. | Frece, Sir Walter de | Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh Vere |
| Burton, Colonel H. W. | Fremantle, Lieut.-Colonel Francis E. | Luce, Major-Gen. Sir Richard Harman |
| Campbell, E. T. | Gibbs, Col. Rt. Hon. George Abraham | MacAndrew, Major Charles Glen |
| Cazalet, Captain Victor A. | Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John | Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.) |
| Christle, J. A. | Goff, Sir Park | McLean, Major A. |
| Clayton, G. C. | Grace, John | MacMillan, Captain H. |
| Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. O. | Greene. W. P. Crawford | Macquisten, F. A. |
| Cockerill, Brig.-General Sir G. K. | Grotrian, H. Brent | Manningham-Buller, Sir Mervyn |
| Cooper, A. Duff | Gunston, Captain D. W. | Merriman, F. B. |
| Couper, J. B. | Hacking, Captain Douglas H. | Meyer, Sir Frank |
| Courtauld, Major J. S. | Hall, Capt. W. D'A. (Brecon & Rad.) | Mitchell, S. (Lanark, Lanark) |
| Crawfurd, H. E. | Hannon. Patrick Joseph Henry | Monsell, Eyres, Com. Rt. Hon. B. M |
| Crookshank, Col. C. de W. (Berwick) | Harland, A. | Moore-Brabazon, Lieut.-Col. J. T. C. |
| Crookshank, Cpt. H.(Lindsey, Gainsbro) | Harrison, G. J. C. | Morrison, H. (Wilts, Salisbury) |
| Morrison-Bell, Sir Arthur Clive | Salmon, Major I. | Thomson, F. C. (Aberdeen, South) |
| Nall, Lieut.-Colonel Sir Joseph | Sandernan, A. Stewart | Thomson, Rt. Hon. Sir W. Mitchell. |
| Nelson, Sir Frank | Sanderson, Sir Frank | Titchfield, Major the Marquess of |
| Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. L. (Exeter) | Shaw, R. G. (Yorks, W.R., Sowerby) | Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement |
| Nuttall, Ellis | Shepperson, E. W. | Vaughan-Morgan, Col. K. P. |
| O'Neill, Major Rt. Hon. Hugh | Skelton, A. N. | Wallace, Captain D. E. |
| Pennefather, Sir John | Slaney, Major P. Kenyon | Ward, Lt.-Col. A. L. (Kingston-on-Hull) |
| Penny, Frederick George | Smith-Carington, Neville W. | Warrender, Sir Victor |
| Percy, Lord Eustace (Hastings) | Smithers, Waldron | Waterhouse, Captain Charles |
| Perkins, Colonel E. K. | Somerville, A. A. (Windsor) | Watson, Sir F. (Pudsey and Otley) |
| Peto, G. (Somerset, Frome) | Spender-Clay, Colonel H. | Wells, S. R. |
| Pielou, D. P. | Sprot, Sir Alexander | Wheler, Major Sir Granville C. H. |
| Pllcher, G. | Stanley, Lord (Fylde) | Williams, A. M. (Cornwall, Northern) |
| Pownall, Lieut.-Colonel Sir Assheton | Stanley, Col. Hon. G. F.(Will'sden, E.) | Williams, Com. C. (Devon, Torquay) |
| Preston, William | Stanley, Hon O. F. G. (Westm'eland) | Williams, Herbert G. (Reading) |
| Price, Major C. W. M. | Steel, Major Samuel Strang | Wilson, R. R. (Stafford, Lichfield) |
| Radford, E. A. | Storry-Deans, R. | Wise, Sir Fredric |
| Raine, W. | Stott, Lieut.-Colonel W. H. | Withers, John James |
| Ramsden, E. | Streatfeild, Captain S. R. | Womersley, W. J. |
| Rawson, Sir Cooper | Strickland, Sir Gerald | Wragg, Herbert |
| Remer, J. R. | Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn) | Yerburgh, Major Robert D. T. |
| Rhys, Hon. C. A. U. | Styles, Captain H. Walter | |
| Roberts, E. H. G. (Flint) | Sueter, Rear-Admiral Murray Fraser | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.— |
| Ropner, Major L | Sugden, Sir Wilfrid | Major Cope and Captain Margesson. |
| Ruggles-Brise, Major E. A. | Sykes, Major-Gen. Sir Frederick H. | |
| Rye, F. G. | Thompson, Luke (Sunderland) | |
| NOES. | ||
| Adamson, Rt. Hon. W. (Fife, West) | Hall, G. H. (Merthyr Tydvll) | Shaw, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Preston) |
| Alexander. A. V. (Sheffield, Hillsbro') | Hayday, Arthur | Short, Alfred (Wednesbury) |
| Ammon, Charles George | Henderson, Rt. Hon. A. (Burnley) | Sitch, Charles H. |
| Barr, J. | Henderson, T. (Glasgow) | Slesser, Sir Henry H. |
| Batey, Joseph | Hirst, G. H. | Smith, Ben (Bermondsey, Rotherhithe) |
| Beckett, John (Gateshead) | Hudson, J. H. (Huddersfield) | Smith, Rennie (Penistone) |
| Broad, F. A. | John, William (Rhondda, West) | Spencer, George A. (Broxtowe) |
| Buchanan, G. | Jones, J. J. (West Ham, Slivertown) | Stephen, Campbell |
| Charleton, H. C. | Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly) | Taylor, R. A. |
| Clowes, S. | Jones, T. I. Mardy (Pontypridd) | Thurtle, E. |
| Compton, Joseph | Kelly, W. T. | Townend, A. E. |
| Cove, W. G. | Kennedy, T. | Varley, Frank B. |
| Dalton, Hugh | Lansbury, George | Wallhead, Richard C. |
| Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton) | Lawrence, Susan | Walsh, Rt. Hon. Stephen |
| Day, Colonel Harry | Lindley. F. W. | Wilkinson, Ellen C. |
| Dennison, R. | Lunn, William | Williams, T. (York, Don Valley) |
| Dunnico, H | Paling, W. | Windsor, Walter |
| Gibbins, Joseph | Pethick-Lawrence, F. W. | Young, Robert (Lancaster, Newton) |
| Gillett, George M | Ponsonby, Arthur | |
| Greenwood. A. (Nelson end Coine) | Potts, John S. | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.— |
| Grenfell. D. R. (Glamorgan) | Purcell, A. A. | Mr. Charles Edwards and Mr. Hayes. |
| Grundy, T. W. | Sakiatvala, Shapurji | |
| Hall, F. (York, W. R., Normanton) | Scurr, John |
§
Resolved,
That the Regulations made by His Majesty in Council under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920, by Order dated the 28th June, 1926, shall continue in force, subject however to the provisions of Section 2 (4) of the said Act.