§ Mr. HaleI beg to present a Petition to this honourable House from approximately 15,000 of Her Majesty's loyal subjects resident in or about the county borough of Oldham and the urban district of Chadderton in the County Palatine of Lancaster.
The Petition recites that the petitioners are concerned about the large number of persons who are wholly unemployed or temporarily stopped, which has grown from less than 200 in November, 1951, to over 3,000 in November, 1952, and which has involved the closing down of two factories belonging to the Textile Machine Makers Ltd. which have 809 operated in Oldham for upwards of a century. Your petitioners pray, briefly, that modern factory accommodation should be supplied within the borough; that steps should be taken to open full trade relations with all the countries of the world without regard to political ideology; that trade with Brazil should be reopened, thus providing a special market for the products of the county borough; that legislation should be introduced preventing factories from being sold for storage purposes only; that Her Majesty's Government should be pressed to make special allocations of Government orders for the distressed areas; that an immediate survey should be made of world textile markets with a view to planning of exports, and a special survey made of textile machinery in the industry.
The Petition closes with the words:
And your petitioners…will ever pray, …etc.
§ To lie upon the Table.