HC Deb 05 July 1928 vol 219 cc1721-32

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Mr. SEXTON

I beg to move, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three months."

It is with considerable regret that I find myself opposing a Bill of this character, but in the circumstances I have no alternative. There is nothing in the Bill which appears to me to be of an objectionable character, but it is not so much what the Bill contains as what it does not contain that I object to. It proposes to take over certain works, roads, bridges, etc., which are now in the possession of private enterprise. What we are concerned about is whether, before the negotiations took place for the taking over of these concerns, there was any consultation with the workpeople who are employed under a private employer. I find nothing in the Bill to that effect, and from the past record of the Southampton Corporation I am inclined to doubt very seriously whether anything will be contemplated to consider the position of the workmen who have been taken over. The reason why I say that, is that the record of the Southampton Corporation in this direction is a bad one.

For three years we have been endeavouring to reach the potentates of the Southampton Corporation, with the object of securing fair play for the servants of the corporation, who have been victimised since the General Strike. Over and over again we have asked these people to follow the example of almost every corporation in the United Kngdom and to accept the suggestion of the first commoner in England, the Prime Minister, and to bury the hatchet; but they have arrogantly refused even to discuss the question. Therefore we are compelled to take advantage of the only privilege we have when people like these come pleading to the House of Commons for privileges, and ask them to meet us and to discuss what we think ought to be in the Bill for the protection of the workmen. We have done our best to approach them in all humility and all seriousness, and all we get is arrogance. They will not talk to us; they will not consider the question. At the present time some of the biggest capitalists in this country are sitting down side by side with ordinary workmen's representatives and coming to an agreement to create an industrial council. They have passed a resolution to wipe out the events of 1926 for the sake of a better understanding in the industrial world, and have expressed the hope that efforts will be made to restore pre-1926 conditions. We do not ask for the restoration of pre-1926 conditions at Southampton. The reinstatement of the men is impossible. Some of them have found other jobs and some of them are still idle.

What we asked is that the, example shown by other corporations should be followed, and that these men should be put on a list for vacancies, and that when vacancies occur each case should be reconsidered on its merits. But we have had nothing but an arrogant reply from these people. They will not even consider the matter. The potentates of Southampton Corporation may be very important persons. The mayor, I suppose, is, and so is the Town Clerk. They are simply the instruments for carrying out the wishes of other members of the Council. But the tramway men and scavengers are equally important. It may be possible to carry on the work of the town in the absence of the mayor or Town Clerk for a month or six weeks, but it would hardly be possible to go on for that length of time without the scavengers. Therefore we say that these men are equally as important. We ask that they should get fair play. They may have been wrong in 1926; as to that I now say nothing. All that has been wiped out. Yet these men are being persistently penalised by people who profess to speak in the name of the people of Southampton. All we ask is that these people shall at least fall into line with all other corporations and that these men shall not be persistently victimised.

Mr. SHORT

I beg to second the Amendment.

Owing to the abnormal procedure of the House we are being asked at this late hour to consider vital and important matters affecting the welfare of Southampton and the commercial prosperity of the town. Had we been met with courtesy instead of arrogance, had we been received by the promoters of the Bill, had our complaints been listened to, had they tried to disperse our fears and redress our grievances if they are real, we should not be keeping the House at this late hour. But the promoters have treated us with contempt and have disregarded our pleas. That should not be the attitude of any popularly elected body like the Corporation of Southampton. We do not ask that they should agree with us, we do not ask that they should grant what we ask, but we are entitled to ask that they should listen to our objections with patience and bring reason and judgment to bear upon the questions which we think worth consideration. Under this Bill the Corporation seeks to obtain powers to acquire what is known as the Northam Company, the proprietors of the Northam Bridge, whose legal rights are incorporated in an Act which was passed in the year 1795.

We are not told anything about the amount of money involved in the transaction, although I admit that provision is made for the purchase to be made by arbitration. The same thing does not apply to the purchase of the Itchen Floating Bridge Company. There is ample provision for safeguarding the rights of directors and shareholders. Line after line, sentence after sentence, Clause after Clause, tell us how the winding-up of the company is to be carried out, and we are told that the Council may decide at some date to discontinue the tolls. We are not told anything about the workmen, about the employés. There nothing about safeguarding their interests, nothing about taking them over, or compensating those who are dismissed. These are questions; upon which the promoters should meet us. They are reasonable questions. Are we not entitled to ask the promoters what they propose to do. If they had come forward and said, there are no workmen involved, no employés who are likely to suffer, we are going to take them over, we should not have been opposing the Bill.

These are questions of vital importance and if we give powers to the corporation to take over these undertakings, we are entitled, in the exercise of our rights as Members of Parliament—[Interruption]. I shall wait until I get attention from hon. Members. I am stating a case and I intend to be heard. If they are acquiring these undertakings and if workpeople are to be affected, then as they have provided for shareholders and directors, they ought to provide for the employés. It is an outrageous proceeding to refuse even to meet us and discuss the matter. I have been in the House 10 years and have had considerable experience of Private Bills but never once have I known of a refusal even to discuss a question of this kind. Only recently my hon. Friends and I withdrew opposition to Bills as a result of negotiations.

There is another aspect of the matter. The corporation refused to meet the trade union representatives—the accredited representatives of the workpeople. No wonder they refused to meet even Members of Parliament. It is in line with their general attitude. We do not object to progressive measures. We do not object to undertakings being taken over by a corporation when we believe it is for the advantage of the community. But we ask that a corporation of this standing, an elected body, should be prepared to meet their employés or their employés' representatives and lift the bar of victimisation which they have erected against men who have served them faithfully in the past. But they are inclined to be vindictive and resentful of these matters. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens (Mr. Sexton) has mentioned that there is a movement to-day in industry to secure terms of peace, and one of the main conditions involved is the removal of victimisation. If private employers of standing in our industrial life can go so far, we are entitled to ask a publicly-elected body like the Southampton Corporation to act in a similar manner.

Our plea, I am afraid, has fallen upon deaf ears. The corporation seek powers, to which we have no objection, for the laying clown of a tramway and its maintenance at a cost of £51,200. Workmen will have to be employed in that work and we wish for an assurance that these men will be treated properly. We should like to know that their representatives will be received by the corporation. When the tramway has been completed, tram drivers and conductors will be employed. We should like to know what attitude the corporation will take towards those men who have been victimised because they stood by the miners. We have not asked the corporation to reinstate them. All that we have asked is that the small number remaining, a very small number indeed, because others, happily, have found work in other industries, should be put on a waiting list and so be able, possibly, to find employment again under the corporation. We are not even heard; we are not received. We are told it is impracticable to arrange a meeting, but I suppose their representatives are here to-night. I have no doubt that they have found their way into the House of Commons or near by, and if they could do that, they might have seen my hon. Friends and myself to discuss these matters. These are things to which we attach vital importance and we are not going to be treated like this without raising our voices in protest. We shall exercise to the full our powers as private Members unless we are going to be treated with that courtesy which becomes the promoters of the Bill and Members of Parliament.

Lord APSLEY

Before dealing with the speeches of the hon. Members for St. Helens (Mr. Sexton) and Wednesbury (Mr. Short), which I do not think bear any very direct relation to the contents of the Bill, I think I should do well to explain, briefly and concisely, what is intended in the Bill. As hon. Members, no doubt, know, Southampton lies between the rivers Itchen and Test. As all hon. Members representing boroughs know, the very life and prosperity of a borough depend very largely on its communications, internal and external.

Mr. SEXTON

And its workpeople too.

Lord APSLEY

As far as the external communications of Southampton are concerned, on the South there is the sea; on the North-west, the West, and the North the communications are good, but to the East, where they cross the river Itchen, they are impeded to a considerable extent by tolls over one of the bridges and the ferry, over which a toll has to be paid. This bears with considerable hardship on the town in two ways. First of all, the inhabitants of that part of Southampton which lies on the East side of the town, notably Woolston, Sholing, and other places where most of the shipyards and manufactories are situated, have to pay every time that they cross to the town, a penny one way and a halfpenny the other, and for a car a shilling one way and sixpence the other. This is a direct charge, first of all, on the workpeople and their families, and secondly on the companies, because a great many of the companies pay the fares of the men who happen to live in the other parts of the town. Further, the northern bridge bears with considerable hardship on the town because it interrupts direct communication with the East, including Portsmouth. By this Bill the Corporation are seeking power to buy up the undertaking known as the Itchen and Northam Floating Bridge Company, and ultimately, or as soon as they can possibly do so, they intend to free the Northam bridge from the toll. That bridge is to be bought compulsorily, and having done that, they will then by agreement buy up the Itchen bridge and run it as a Corporation undertaking, reducing the fares, if they can, at a later date.

Hon. Members might ask why this was not all done before, as it has been done in many parts of the country. Southampton Corporation having been a very progressive body all through history, and having been very careful in considering the rates and the economic running of their borough, had no wish to buy up these undertakings until the prosperity of the town, which is increasing every year, would warrant it, and until the decreasing prosperity of the toll bridges would enable them to get them at a cheaper price. Then suddenly came the motor car, which revolutionised the whole situation, and instead of being an almost moribund company, like most of the toll companies were at the end of last century, this company increased in prosperity. If you are going to purchase an undertaking you must bear in mind the profits that are made, because that naturally affects the price. Consequently they had put forward the proposition, which is before the House, to buy up half the undertaking straight away, and, as soon as they can do so, to free the tolls and buy up the other half of the undertaking by agreement. That is a proposition which, I think, will meet with the unanimous assent of all parties.

Mr. SEXTON

We do agree with the principle. What we want to be assured of is the fate of the workmen.

Lord APSLEY

I agree, and I am not surprised that the hon. Gentleman does agree with the principle. When this came before the Town Council, all the members of the Labour party voted for it, and the resolution was passed unanimously. It is practically, therefore, an agreed Bill. There is no opposition except on the point which the hon. Members who moved and seconded the Amendment put forward. Those Members who watch the Debates on private Bills are accustomed to seeing a small knot of hon. Members on the Benches opposite, who are the more Conservative-minded members of their party, and who still cling to the venerable and rather threadbare doctrine of Socialism, gather together to oppose private Bills on the ground that they are favourable to private enterprise at the expense of municipal or State control. This Bill, however, has not been brought forward by a private undertaking, but has been put forward by a municipal Corporation to take over the affairs of a private undertaking. Yet we had a small group of Members opposite opposing it.

Mr. SEXTON

Not the principle.

Lord APSLEY

But the hon. Members support the Amendment to reject the Bill. I confess that I had misgivings about the frequently expressed keenness to support municipal trading which we hear from the Benches opposite. I begin to wonder what can be at the bottom of this. Here we have a municipality wishing to exercise its legitimate functions, a municipality democratically elected, and hon. Members opposite are putting forward an Amendment to block their wishes, and I begin to ask myself why. Can it be that they wish to control the municipalities themselves by political or even possibly by direct action? I ask myself this question, and I think the municipal and cooperative trading organisations will ask this question too. Is it possible that this fledgling which they are tending so carefully may turn out to be a cuckoo?

I will now deal briefly with the questions of hon. Members. The tramway men who were not reinstated after the strike had been allowed a considerable interval of time in which to report back for work, and the reason why they were not reinstated was either that they did not come forward or that they had disobeyed the rules of the company. I have here a report from the manager: It is a regulation that men reporting back for duty after being absent for any reason must do so by noon of any day, to resume duty on the following day. They were given the opportunity but they did not turn up. There are 68 of them who did not return at all. As the hon. Member for Wednesbury said, most of thorn got other jobs and they do not particularly want to go back; but the hon. Member for Wednesbury made it a particular point that they should be added to the waiting list. They are on the waiting list. Councillor Smith has got up a waiting list and 48 of them have put their names down, and their chances of being employed now hinge very largely on the last Clause in this Bill, which is a Clause to extend the tramways. The Corporation have no particular desire to bring this Clause forward. There is a strong body of opinion in Southampton, as in other boroughs, that tramways may be becoming obsolescent. There is an idea that six-wheel double deck buses may perform the work of the tramcars. They have a greater flexibility and a greater speed, and they impede traffic less, and there is an opinion in the towns that quite possibly they may replace tramways in the future. On the other hand, the Council, taking a broad-minded view, feel that other developments may occur—perhaps in conjunction with the electricity supply schemes which the Minister of Transport piloted through Parliament last year—which may make tramways more economical than motor buses. Therefore, keeping in view that there are still a number of men to be re-engaged, they have put in this Clause asking for powers to extend the tramways to a certain extent. The reason they have not consulted the hon. Member who moved the Amendment and his union and the hon. Member for Wednesbury is not to be found in any arrogance or the adoption of a stiff-necked attitude on their part; the simple explanation is that none of the men in the tramways department at the present time or working on the Itchen floating bridge belong to that union. With apologies for having kept the House such an unconscionable time I now venture to ask hon. Members to pass this Measure.

Mr. SEXTON

I am obliged to the Noble Lord for the explanation, and may I say that if it had been conveyed to us through the usual channels——

Mr. SPEAKER

The hon. Member can only speak again by leave of the House. He has already exhausted his right.

Lieut.-Colonel WATTS-MORGAN

Municipal corporations all over the country wiped out, many months ago, the unfortunate incidents of 1926, and we are now only asking the Southampton Corporation to follow that example, whether the men are in the union at the present time or not. [HON. MEMBERS: "Agreed."] The Noble Lord has put some sort of case for the corporation. He has remarked that sometimes hon. Members on this side stay late to oppose private Bills. Nobody has yet tried to oppose this Bill, but only to ask that Southampton should now make the same gesture to settle the incidents which were the outcome of 1926. They have now fallen into line, and we are hoping to see a better spirit. All we ask is: "Why cannot we bury the past?" Surely, some of the criticisms which have been made are not very appropriate at a time when we road such glowing accounts of the conference held yesterday which may be the harbinger of peace, and may lead to a better understanding between employers and employed in all the industries of this country. If the Noble Lord the Member for Southampton (Lord Apsloy) had said that the Corporation were prepared to meet any representatives of trade unions whom they were asked to meet all this discussion would not have arisen.

Lord APSLEY

The Corporation would be willing to meet the representatives of any trade union of which the workmen in their employ are members, but the men concerned are not members of any union at the moment.

Mr. ERNEST BROWN

I understand that these men have now got their names on the waiting list, and that if any of them should be selected the representatives of the unions of which they are members would be allowed to speak for them?

Lord APSLEY

Certainly.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

It being after half-past Eleven of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at a Quarter before Twelve o'clock.