REDUCTION OF WAGES (PREVENTION). (Hansard, 25 June 1930)

§ Mr. KIRKWOOD
I beg to move: That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make the reduction of wages illegal. In introducing this Bill, I am asking the House to agree to one partial solution of the problem of unemployment. My proposal is that there should be no further reduction of the workers' wages in Great Britain. It is possible that there will be opposition, one reason being that a Bill of this description has never before been put before the House, and therefore, because there is no precedent for it, there is a certain mentality, not only in the House but in the country, which considers that it is no good. There is also another type, again not only in the House but also in the country, which always considers, when 1155 we are in any industrial trouble, that the way out of that trouble is a reduction in wages. Thirdly, there are amongst my colleagues those who say that this is not a question for this House, and that we politicians should leave it to the trade unions and the employers. I have been a member of a trade union, the Amalgamated Engineering Union, for the last 37 years, and I am satisfied, as I go all over Britain, that it is not the workers who will object to my introducing this Bill, that if they had thought, as some trade union leaders think, that this is a business for the trade unions, there would have been no use in their financing the Labour party. It is because I, as a Labour Member of Parliament and a Socialist, believe that we are here giving political expression to the great trade union movement, that this Bill going through this House will leave the trade union movement free to fight for better conditions of labour and reduction of hours, aye, and increased wages.
My own union is a clear example of what I mean. For years, and not a matter of months, we have been negotiating, through the Engineering and Shipbuilding Federation of Great Britain, for increased wages for the shipbuilding and engineering workers of the country, and, after years of negotiations, and with all the power of the unions behind the negotiations, all that we were able to get was a farthing an hour. What is pressing me on to introduce this Bill is that we are faced in this country at the moment with the fact that the great trade union movement was not able to save a great reduction of wages in the cotton industry, and it is not able to save a reduction of wages in the woollen industry. Now I fear that, unless the Government safeguard the workers by the passing of this Measure, we shall be confronted with a reduction of wages in engineering and general shipbuilding, iron and steel, coal mining, and, immediately before us, the great building industry. I always have at the back of my mind that it was my great colleague, the late Minister of Health in the Labour Government of 1924, who gave the building industry in this 1156 country a fillip at that time, and I see nothing in the immediate future that is going to save it than for the Government to push this Bill of mine through the House immediately.
We are faced, as has been said by all authorities and all parties in this House, with a serious world-wide unemployment problem, not with a scarcity of anything, but all over the world a superabundance of shipping, of coal, of food and clothing—in fact, of all the necessaries and even the luxuries of life, and, alongside of that, millions of hungry men, women and children, not only hungry but unemployed. Along come the experts, and now there is suggested to us an Economic Council to deal with the situation. Why, the Tories had all these experts and so had the Liberals! These are the men, if there are any to blame, who have brought us into this mess, and it is because I believe that the only solution for the strange phenomena before us at the moment, is the Socialist solution. Since 1920, the weekly reduction in the workers' wages in this country amounts to the colossal sum of £11,808,850. Britain should take the lead in this matter. That is why I am bringing in this Bill.

§ Mr. SPEAKER
Who is prepared to bring in the Bill?

§ Mr. KIRKWOOD
Mr. Maxton, Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Stephen. Mr. Sandham, Mr. Brockway, Mr. Wallhead, Mr. Kinley, Mr. Beckett, Mr. Brown, Mr. Kelly, myself, and a host of others.