Lords Sitting of 30 October 1918

PETROLEUM PRODUCTION BILL.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I desire, with your Lordships' permission, to put a question to my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal. It has reference to the Petroleum Production Bill, which was down for Committee stage yesterday and was postponed on Monday. I need not tell your Lordships that that is a proceeding which, though it may have been right, necessarily involves a considerable amount of inconvenience. I know of cases of noble Lords who came up specially to London for the purpose of taking part in the consideration of the Petroleum Bill in Committee, and it was not until they opened their Paper on Tuesday morning that they were aware that the Bill had been postponed. I am sure that my noble friend and the Government will sympathise with the feeling of surprise, and to some extent of annoyance, which this occasioned, and I should like to ask my noble friend if he can tell us what was the reason for this postponement and what are the future prospects of the Bill. I am quite aware that Amendments were put down in the name of one, certainly, of my noble friends—there may have been more—just before. I think they were put down so that they appeared on the Paper on Monday; and this may be the reason for the postponement. But I do not think any blame attaches to my noble friends. The time between the Second Reading and the Committee stage was short, and it was not possible for them to consider their Amendments with the necessary care which is due to the respect they owe to your Lordships' House under the two or three days which were expended in that process. Therefore I do not think that would be a sufficient answer. But I am quite sure my noble friend will be able to enlighten the House upon this, and also as to the future prospects of the Bill.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (The EARL of CRAWFORD): My Lords, I greatly regret the inconvenience which was caused by the rather sudden postponement of this Bill. A certain number of Peers who were directly concerned in the discussions fortunately were informed, but I am sorry that others whom it was impossible to
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notify at such short notice should have come here and found that the measure had been put off. I think my noble friend has explained in his remarks the cause of this action. The Duke of Northumberland had very little time to put his Amendments on the Paper, and he was only able to get them circulated to your Lordships on Monday last, and they were very important Amendments. The Ministry of Munitions—the Government, indeed—desire to give very careful consideration to those Amendments, and themselves found it impossible to do so yesterday. Accordingly the Bill was put off. It now stands on the Paper for Wednesday of next week, and that, I think, can be taken as the accepted date for the Committee stage. My noble friend assures me that he has every hope of being able to take the Bill in Committee stage effectively on Wednesday next. Beyond that, I am afraid I can give no further explanation.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: Has the noble Earl considered, besides the points which were put by the Duke of Northumberland, the point as to research? That is tinder consideration, I take it?
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: That is a most important point, of which my noble friend is fully conscious.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 2) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 3) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 7) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 8) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order): Bills reported without amendment.

THE METROPOLITAN POLICE STRIKE.
LORD STUART OF WORTLEY LORD STUART OF WORTLEY rose to call attention to the recent strike of certain members of the Metropolitan Police Force, and to the statement made by the Secretary of State on October 24; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I desire to say, at the outset, that nobody could have imagined for a moment that it was not only proper but highly necessary and no more than just that a great body like

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the Metropolitan Police Force should participate to the full in all increases of pay or allowances which might be deemed to be equitably due as arising out of the enhancement of prices or other conditions of war; and the only points which could possibly give reason for doubt in your Lordships' minds in connection with such a matter would be whether such concessions as had been made were adequate and whether they had been made with sufficient grace and alacrity, and without an undue amount of official obstruction or procrastination.
In taking a short retrospect of this rather unhappy incident, the only grain of comfort that I can extract is that the Secretary of State in another place described it as a matter of "very grave importance." That is very far from being an exaggerated phrase. But, unfortunately, it remains almost the only indication, so far, of the existence of anything like a true and proportionate sense of that which has taken place. The Home Secretary had to exonerate Scotland Yard and his own Department, and no doubt the blame for this, I might almost say, terrible occurrence should rest either wholly on the Home Office and the Commissioner of Police on the one hand, or wholly on the strikers, or should be divided between the two. The case for the Home Office appears to be that in December, 1917, certain increases of pay and other improvements in the conditions of service were granted avowedly as arising out of the war, and no doubt they were substantial. The case for the Home Office is that then and thereafter, until the time of the strike, no representations asking for more than those concessions amounted to were received at the Home Office; and your Lordships will perhaps observe that the statement was not that they had not been received, but that they had not been received at the Home Office.
It is said, however, that in February, 1918, a letter was addressed to the Commissioners of Police by a body calling itself the Executive of the Police Union, thanking them for the concessions which had been made but practically asking for more. It may well have been that in that communication the thanks for the favours granted came in the forefront of the letter, and possibly overshadowed what came afterwards. It may have been that the subsequent request for more was read by the officials to whom it was addressed as
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being no more than a more or less perfunctory move on the part of an official of an outside body, who probably was an outsider to the Police Force, and bound to justify his existence and actions by always asking for more, however much might be granted. That may have been the view. Whatever was the view, I suppose we may take it that for some reason, good or bad, the communication in question was not handed over to the Home Office, and therefore the Home Secretary was within his rights in saying that during the period named no further communication was received at the Home Office. But there were not wanting speakers in the debate in another place on October 24 who said that, if not by letter, certainly by Question in the House and representations made in Parliament, indications of dissatisfaction were undoubtedly made during the earlier part of the session of 1918, and that those representations made it abundantly plain, or should have done, that the concessions given had not been sufficient in quantity. I by no means wish to say that those representations made in Parliament were just or unjust. My point is that they were made.
Then, lastly, we were told in the same debate—I do not know whether we are asked to treat it as a serious matter, but it comes from an hon. Member connected with trade union organisations very closely—that on the Tuesday in the week in which the strike commenced there was a similar letter addressed from the Police Union, and that that letter never received any answer at all. During the short time that I took part in official life, I did my best to secure that in the case of all communications addressed to the Department in which I had the honour to serve it should be an inflexible rule that an acknowledgment should be sent by return of post, so as to make it impossible that it should be said that no answer had been received.
In face of these statements and counter-statements it is rather difficult for your Lordships to know where and how to apportion the blame for what has happened. The more you exonerate the Home Office and Scotland Yard the more you must blame the strikers, and of course vice versa. I must not be taken for a moment to admit that, if you are prepared to blame the Home Office, even in a high degree, you are thereby justified in exonerating entirely those who took part in the strike. Any-

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how, there remains to be apportioned a very heavy responsibility for events which perforce have left a most painful impression. It is best, perhaps, to leave this question of the apportionment of the responsibility there, for there remain two matters which are quite serious enough. One is the strike itself, that it did take place, and that it should have taken place; the second is the debate, and the character of the debate, which is all we have had by way of commentary upon it since in another place.
I am sure, my Lords, you will not think it undesirable that we should give our minds for a few minutes to considering what it is that makes a strike of anything like a Police Force so very undesirable. I think a few moments may be spent in amplifying the considerations which apply to that question. Amongst ourselves in conversation we should probably dispose of it quite shortly by saying that it is not desirable that any country, least of all a highly civilised and free country like this, should be governed by a band of Prætorians, but there are a good many people who would not understand you if you disposed of it by a short argument of that kind. Nor is it quite sufficient to say that the question is disposed of merely by describing the Police as a disciplined force. Any one who has seen an armour plate rolled by free labourers will have seen how absolutely vital it is for the whole process, in order to save life and property, to depend upon each man falling into the proper place assigned to him and obeying what must be discipline bred of long experience and practice. That is not enough. It does not convey enough to the popular mind to say that the Police ought not to strike because they are a disciplined force.
Let us take the analagous case of the soldier. Why is it that you require for the soldier such exceptionally high standards of conduct in almost all things? You entrust the soldier with lethal weapons, you teach him combined action and skill in the use of his weapons and in the tactics which arise out of the combined action in which he is practised, and all these things are entrusted and imparted to him at the expense and at the instance of those by whom he is employed, and they are intended to enable him to be, should occasion arise, a terror to his country's enemies and to his country's enemies alone. We know what happens to him in case of failure of duty in the face of the enemy, and we all know
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what would happen—or rather we do not like to think of what would happen—in the almost unthinkable case of his deciding to turn his weapons and skill in any case against his own countrymen. For these reasons it is that we require of the soldier—I should say that outside Germany there are required of the soldier—higher standards of duty towards his country and Sovereign, of forbearance towards the weak, of chivalry towards women, and of honour in all matters for which he may be called upon to exercise responsibility. The case of the policeman is not the same only because you do not entrust him with the same lethal weapons. In all other respects I shall be prepared to say that the case of the policeman and his duty is a case a fortiori against him as compared with the soldier, because, although you do not give him the same weapons, he at least has the same organisation and the same opportunity of misusing it if he should be so disposed. Indeed, he has more opportunities of so misusing it, because it is only his own fellow-citizens against whom he is capable of getting the opportunity to misuse it. It is only those among whom he lives that he can terrorise by misusing the opportunity, and that terrorisation he can resort to by the mere act of withdrawing his services in concert. That is only another way of saying that the policeman always acts in face of the enemy. He is always in face of the civil and social enemy, against whom he has sworn, and is paid, to protect those amongst whom he lives, both rich and poor.
I said that the other grave matter with which we have to deal is the debate which took place in the other House, and I think those of your Lordships who read it will wish, as I do, that there had been fewer exonerations of the strikers, fewer searches for pretexts to blame the Government, fewer invocations of the purely doctrinaire panacea of what it called municipalisation. For many years municipalisation has been put forward with fluctuating insistence as a remedy, not only for anything unsatisfactory in the organisation of the Police, but also for all forms of discontent in the ranks of the Police themselves. One speaker argued that they ought to have civilian heads, and that promotion ought to be open from all ranks to all ranks. If you go about among the provincial Police Forces of the country I think you will find a good many under

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civilian chief constables, but also not a few others where the Police authorities have, probably with great wisdom, found and engaged ex-Army officers who are very admirably doing the duties entrusted to them; and I should not be surprised if you found a large number of provincial Forces of Police, which are patterns to the municipal Forces of the world, in which there has been promotion to the chief office, and it has not been from the ranks of that particular force itself.
Supposing that we propose to municipalise the Metropolitan Police Force—and this is material to our considerations to-day, because it was openly said that so to do would remove discontent not only in the Police themselves but in the ratepayers who support the Police and in the citizens who are entitled to their services I presume it is imagined that you would get a closer criticism, better opportunities of ventilating grievances, if it were all done in the arena of the County Council than if it is done as things are now. Owing to the foresight of Sir Robert Peel in 1828, the Metropolitan Police district was stretched over an area which, perhaps your Lordships do not know, extends to Bushey on the north side, Erith on the east, Staines the west, and Epsom on the south, with a very large zone of country, rapidly being filled up with residences and buildings, outside of the area of the jurisdiction of the London County Council, so that it is impossible to find—you have not got—any municipality in existence which is capable of exercising jurisdiction at the present time over that very large area which, for very good reasons, which have not in the least disappeared, Sir Robert Peel saw fit to make the area, of jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police.
If there is one thing more certain than another it is that the local authorities of the outside areas would stoutly and persistently refuse to allow their police arrangements to be governed for them by the London County Council. As an alternative, what have you got at the present time? As things are, the Metropolitan Police are governed by a Commissioner. He is responsible to the Home Secretary, and therefore they are practically governed by the Home Secretary on all difficult cases. The Home Secretary is responsible for their finance, and therefore you have practical responsibility to the House of Commons, which can at any
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time by a breath remove the Home Secretary, or censure him and make him feel the weight of its wrath. But that is not all. Is the House of Commons inaccessible then to the Metropolitan Police? Let your Lordships remember that every member of the House of Commons, from the fact of his position and duties, is a resident in the metropolis. I took out figures some years ago, from which I discovered that this wide metropolitan district of fifteen miles from Charing Cross was represented in the House of Commons under the old Redistribution Act of 1885—it will probably be in the new House of Commons under the last Reform Bill still more striking—by a body of upwards of eighty Members, to any one of whom any policeman with a grievance as to pay, any ratepayer with a grievance as to the extravagance of the Force, or any householder complaining of insufficient protection can go and address direct his complaints and make sure that they should be pressed by Questions in the House of Commons.
Who can compare the arena of the House of Commons for its conspicuousness and the interest taken in its proceedings by the Press and by all onlookers, with that of the proceedings which take place in the London County Council? It is no disrespect to the London County Council to say that the opportunity of questions and censures and motions to control expenditure in the House of Commons are a far better example and exercise of all the advantages, rights, and privileges that you hope to seek by municipalisation than you would have if you actually had to go through the form of municipalising the Police Force itself. I think it is a thing to be regretted that in the House of Commons an ex-Cabinet Minister, himself a member of the London County Council, should practically have made it clear that he thought that all grievances would disappear if you handed over the government of the Metropolitan Police to the London County Council, that there was a great deal of seething discontent, and that, unless more things were conceded than had been conceded in the present case, we were going to have more trouble of the same kind. I impute no intentions, but I say any man will judge for himself what the probable effect of words of that kind is likely to be.
There remains only the question of the recognition of the Union of the Police. I believe Sir George Cave rather plumed

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himself on the fact that he had not granted recognition to the Police Union. But he has allowed the existence of the Union; and when you allow the existence of a Union, indeed bring it into existence, it is rather futile, certainly very late, to say that you do not recognise it. Mothers generally recognise their own offspring; and in this case it seems to me that recognition has come by the operation of inevitable facts. For my part I may say that I attach very little importance to the question of recognition, because in my experience—and I have had some experience of trouble as between employer and employed—recognition inures generally to the benefit of the outside agitator, the man who has managed to fasten himself upon the trade union in question, who acts as their advocate, and who stirs them up to allow him to ventilate grievances which he says are theirs. When you get into the employer's room, or into the conference, or into the arbitrator's room, you find there is a vicious circle of two opposing principles of distrust. On the one hand you have the employers' doubt whether the demands put forward really have the support of the men whom they affect; whether, in fact, the demands put forward are really demands intended to improve the condition of the men in question, and are not rather demands put forward for the purpose of creating a number of jobs for the working class as a whole. On the other hand you have the distrust—it is a very natural distrust, and one with which I have a great deal of sympathy—on the part of the men that unless they are allowed a special advocate to speak for them they are in danger of what is called victimisation. Recognition does not get rid of that kind of thing, and the man who can get rid of that kind of thing will confer a benefit upon this country with regard to future labour troubles which it is difficult to estimate.
I do not think there is anything more to be said, but I believe your Lordships should sieze every opportunity to repudiate with all the vigour you can the doctrine which seems to obtain increasing acceptance—that wherever a body of men can use their organisation to compel satisfaction of their demands, they should use their opportunity to the hilt, even where their very status and organisation are themselves matters of trust which impose upon them in honour and morals the highest degree of obligation to restraint and forebearance in the use of those opportunities.
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Those, who make that sort of claim are riding trade unionism into an abyss; they are holding up the democratic principle to execration, because they remind us how even the democratic principle itself is capable of being abused, how it is after all but the principle of numbers, and therefore of might, and that When used against right it is a truly German form of frightfulness and nothing better. It means in the end the negation and destruction both of order and of security, and even the ruin of liberty itself. I beg to move.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, before the noble Lord speaks for His Majesty's Government, perhaps I may be allowed to say one or two words with reference to the important subject which my noble friend opposite has brought before the House. I think we must all be grateful to him for having brought it forward this evening, for it is one which has given rise to the greatest anxiety in the public mind. I will not attempt to follow what my noble friend said with regard to the apportionment of the blame for this most unfortunate episode; I am content to leave that where he left it. But I want to say a word about what seems to me to be the wider aspect of this question, for it is a one which concerns not only the Police Force and its conduct on this occasion, but the conduct of other bodies of organised people and their right to dictate terms to the public and to enforce the terms which they desire to dictate by withholding their services.
We have had a series of most regrettable affairs of this kind since the war began. We have had a strike of railway employees at a time when it was of the utmost importance that the means of locomotion should not be interfered with; we have had a strike of miners at a time when every ton of coal raised from the bowels of the earth was a matter essential to the progress of the great war in which we are engaged; we have had a strike in the shipyards at a time when our shipbuilding operations were falling lamentably into arrear; and now, as a kind of climax, we have had this strike amongst the men who are responsible for maintaining law and order in our midst. That seems to me to be a most serious occurrence. I have heard, I must say, nothing which seemed to me to be a complete defence either of this Police strike or of any of the other strikes which I mentioned just now. I do not mean to

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suggest for a moment by this that there may not have been a grievance on the part of the men who struck. What I take exception to is not that they should feel a grievance and assert it, but that they should resort to the means to which they actually did resort for the purpose of bringing that grievance to the public notice.
I do not think that I judge these people hardly, because those who were best able to judge them virtually admitted what I have just said. I dare say that some of your Lordships may have read the scathing words addressed by a very much respected Labour member of the House of Commons to the railway workers at Cardiff. I forget the exact date, but your Lordships will remember the event. This is what Mr. Thomas said—
"Before Saturday there would be a food famine in South Wales; foodstuffs were rotting at Newport—"
And then, addressing the strikers, he added—
"You have by your action destroyed the good name of your union. You have by one fell stroke destroyed all the influence railway men ever had. You have driven public opinion—which, after all, does count in these matters—never to forgive you."
And coming to the Police strike I see that Sir George Cave, speaking with authority, said that in his opinion the strikers had been misled, and that by their conduct they had forfeited a public confidence which they had so long and deservedly enjoyed. He added—I hope with truth—that the majority of the men regretted their action. I think this justifies me in saying that these strikes are strikes which ought never to have taken place.
But to my mind the most serious feature in the whole thing is that in spite of all, I believe in every one of these cases the strikers have really compelled the acceptance of the terms, or the greater part of the terms, which they were out to ask. There is always a good deal of brave talk. A Minister is generally sent down to conduct negotiations, but the whole thing ends in a very thinly-disguised capitulation. I do not think that I exaggerate when I say that this description applies to what took place in connection with the Police strike. I gather from Sir George Cave's speech, that during the year 1917 these men were receiving a total wage of 47 s. a week. At the end of 1917 it was increased to 69 s. 9d., and a scheme was under consideration for a further revision.
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Would it be believed, my Lords, that on the 28th of August these men put forward a demand for an increase of pay, a further bonus of 12½ per cent., the recognition of the Police Union, and the reinstatement of one or more dismissed constables, and that because those terms were not immediately accepted, on the very next day (August 29) 22,000 of them went out on strike? That seems to me to have been a most aggressive and wholly unjustifiable proceeding. Remember that they did this in spite of the rule, which I understand exists, under which every one of these men is bound to give one month's notice before giving up his work as a constable. As usual a Minister came in. This time it was the Prime Minister, and the result was that the men's pay was increased to a sum, including rights of various kinds, equal to £4 6s. 10 d. a week, which, unless I am mistaken, represents an annual emolument of about £224, and the men were allowed to join the Police Union. I rather think—my noble friend will correct me if I am wrong—that there was also a reinstatement of some of the dismissed men. I venture to say that all this really raises the great question whether we are to remain exposed to this kind of—I can only so describe it—blackmail. In war, as my noble friend truly says, this is conduct which would be equivalent to desertion and would be treated as such, but even in time of peace is it tolerable that the whole community should be held up to ransom in this way by a comparatively small body of organised men?
I hope that the House will not misunderstand me or think that I desire in any way to deny to these men, or to any other men, the right to combine, or the right to refuse further employment if they find that the conditions offered them are not sufficiently attractive. But what I wish to deny to them is the right, on the spur of the moment, to "down tools" and put the whole community to the greatest suffering or inconvenience. This is, I think, the more reasonable because of the length to which we have gone—I am not talking now so much of the Police as of other organisations—in recognising the rights of trade unions and bodies of that kind. Surely it is fair to urge that by conferring these great privileges we have acquired for ourselves a corresponding right to expect from the men a greater sense of their obligations to the public than I am afraid they very often exhibit.
I urge upon His Majesty's Government

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that they must take steps, not only in regard to this Police strike but in regard to all movements of the same kind, to protect the public against what I cannot help calling very grievous illusage. It seems to me reasonable to urge that the amount of protection to which the public is entitled must vary according to the nature of the service which is being performed by the persons who go out on strike. One can easily imagine a strike which might cause some trilling inconvenience but no really deep or general suffering—a strike, for instance, in any of the so-called luxury trades. But when you come to occupations upon which the public depends for the means of moving from place to place, for the fuel with which we warm our homes, for the light which enables us to get through the long hours of the winter nights, it surely is intolerable that any organisation should be in a position to pass what is, in effect, a sentence upon the rest of the community that they are to be deprived, of the fuel that they want, of the light that they need, and of their means of locomotion, in furtherance of some trade dispute; and surely the strongest case of all is this case of the Police which we are now discussing, because the one thing, after all, which we cannot do without is the maintenance of law and order. If that goes, everything goes; and I do not see how we can possibly sit down under a state of things which enables the people whose duty it is to maintain law and order to spring upon us, all of a sudden, a condition of things in which law and order will remain uncared for altogether.
I may be asked how I think this risk, which is a tremendous one, can be guarded against. I think that there are very obvious ways of dealing with it. In the first place, it will be necessary to distinguish, as I suggested a moment ago, between services which are essential and services which are less essential. In regard to the essential services, it seems to me that the one thing obviously required is to insist that the person who is dissatisfied with the conditions of his employment should not be at liberty to leave it without ample notice, and that if he fails to give that ample notice he shall be held guilty of a criminal offence and dealt with accordingly. In cases where the man serving is acquiring a right to pension or other deferred advantages, it would be perfectly reasonable to mulct him in respect of some of those advantages; and in addition to that, I
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hope that in all businesses, whether they concern trade or Police, or anything else, there will be set up proper machinery for the examination of these disputes and for their adjustment if possible by amicable means, before either side proceeds to extremities.
The suggestion that conduct of this kind might be made a criminal offence is not altogether a novel one. I do not know whether my noble friend who will reply has paid attention to an Act of the year 1875, called the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act. Its object is to fix upon certain kinds of workmen criminal responsibility for wilful breaches of contract. It is evidently aimed primarily at two kinds of employment—employment in the production of gas and in the distribution of water; and the Act contains a clause under which a man who by a breach of conditions deprives the inhabitants of the city or borough of their supply of gas or water, is liable to a fine of £20 or three months' imprisonment, wtih or without hard labour. That singles out specially these two particular services. But there is another clause which enacts that where the probable consequences of a withdrawal of labour are to endanger human life or to expose valuable property to destruction or serious injury, there also the man who breaks his contract shall be liable to a fine or to imprisonment. And if under this old Act it is thought necessary to prevent risk to valuable property and human life, surely that brings within the spirit of the provision the conduct of men whose duty it is to provide security for life and property, but who by their conduct suddenly take that security away.
I do not expect to have a full or complete answer to the question which I have raised tonight, but I feel very strongly that the whole of this question of breaches of contract, of an attempt to penalise and blackmail the public by abrupt cessations of labour, requires very careful examination, and hope that I shall be told that the Police strike has brought home to His Majesty's Government the need of investigating the subject very thoroughly indeed.
LORD WITTENHAM: My Lords, it is with the greatest possible diffidence that I rise to say a few words—not in criticism; I should not venture to criticise the noble Marquess—but to try and show that I look upon this matter from a somewhat

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different point of view. The noble Marquess just now made me think for a moment that I was living in the old days of profound peace. Then I should have agreed with every word that fell from his lips. But we must get out of that illusory state of mind. We are still in the midst—ay, at the very acme—of the greatest war in the history of the world. And, however able the noble Marquess's remarks may have been—and they were able—we must get out of his atmosphere and more into the atmosphere of reality. So I would ask the noble Marquess what he would have done in the presence of a threatened railway strike, of a threatened coal strike, of a threatened Police strike. He may answer me by saying, "Prevention is better than cure," If he said that, I should agree with him. On that I may venture to have a word with the Government. Prevention would have been better than cure; but suppose that you have got beyond that point—and the community had got beyond that point. We were in the immediate presence of those strikes, which would have certainly paralysed and perhaps stopped those industries.
I hate weakness. The Government have been very weak on many occasions, but I always try to put myself in this position—if I had had to do it, what should I have done? Should I have done any better? And I think the noble Marquess must put that question to himself. Would he have done any better had he been in the presence of that strike? He may answer, "Yes; if what I have proposed in my speech had been carried into effect, we should have been in a better position." But should we? If the men were determined to strike, how could this Government have stopped them? I think, having got to the point of the strike, that the Government were bound to meet the men—ay, I will go further—were bound to give way to the men.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: No.
LORD WITTENHAM: Yes; up to a certain point they were bound to give way to the men. If not, what then? How could you prevent them striking? Will the noble Earl tell me how you could prevent them striking?
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: I will answer you presently.
LORD WITTENHAM: It is easy enough to say that the Government are weak. Anybody can say that. I have said that myself. They were weak, perhaps, in ever having allowed it to get so far; but, having allowed it to get so far, they were bound to patch it up as best they could because, if they had not, they would have gone further and have fared worse. If you want to get at the head and source, the fons et origo mali of these strikes, put your heel upon the head of Bolshevism. There are healthy strikes and there are unhealthy strikes. These have been unhealthy strikes. Stamp out Bolshevism, and you will have no more of these unhealthy strikes. Stamp out Bolshevism and that even more sinister power that lies behind—that is, the enemy in our midst. Get the enemy in our midst by the throat, and get Bolshevism by the throat, and you will have no more of these strikes whose end and aim and object have been to paralyse the war.
And so with the Police strike, I feel that there was something behind. I will never believe that the Police would have taken the extreme step that they took, the terrible step, unless there had been some sinister force behind that got hold of them and drove them on—the enemy in the midst and Bolshevism. Because I cannot believe that the Police would have done this thing, thereby undermining the whole safety of the community, unless they had either been got at, or unless they had a very much greater, a more intolerable, grievance than has appeared, at any rate on the face of it. That they had a grievance we all know. They say that they pressed it. The Police in these buildings have told me, and told me within the last forty-eight hours, that their grievance was well known to the Home Office, and that it had been pressed again and again; I do not say pressed in the House of Commons, though to a certain extent it was pressed there. I mean that the Home Office were well aware of the Police grievance. If they were, a great burden of responsibility and of blame lies upon the Home Office. And there I do not think the reply made by the Home Office in another place was sufficiently exhaustive; it was not sufficiently satisfactory because it was not made absolutely clear, so that he who runs may read, that those complants had not been brought before the head of the Police and before the Home Office, which ought to be one and the same thing, because

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those two heads are acting, or ought to be acting, in connection with each other. Therefore I hope that when the noble Viscount replies on behalf of the Home Office he will make it clear that the Home Office did all they could in the circumstances of the case to meet t he men's known grievances, and make it clear that really the men had no excuse whatever for taking the step that they did take. May we all exclaim, quis custodial custodes, what is going to be the sort of society, what is going to be the effect on those whom we trust to maintain order at the crucial point? Therefore in distributing the blame, I distribute it in three portions—the Home Office, unless it can exonerate itself; the Police, unless they can show that they had some tremendous reason for taking the course they did; and, thirdly, Bolshevism, if it was behind it, and I believe it was.
I feel that there is a great deal behind this. And I end by assuring the noble Marquess that I listened with the greatest possible interest to what he said to-day, as I have often listened, when I was a Member of the other House, from that Bar, to the many wise words he spoke in the old days. It is only because I do not think that his remedy is practicable here and now that I said what I did. If, and when, we get back to the piping times of peace and are able to take the strenuous measures which he has indicated, he will have no more fervent supporter than my bumble self in trying to arrive at a conclusion in which Capital and Labour, the governors and the governed, shall live in coordination with each other, a state in which disputes shall never get to the point of strikes, but will be settled amicably by some board able to exercise supreme and entire control over both parties to disputes, so that society may get on happily and favourably together.
VISCOUNT SANDHURST: My Lords, the debate has ranged, as not infrequently happens in your Lordships' House, over considerable ground, and subjects involving important principles have been dealt with. My noble friend the noble Marquess made some suggestions as to what steps might be taken, and he inquired if I was familiar with an Act of Parliament of 1875. The noble Marquess knows that my position with regard to the Home Office is not that of an Under-Secretary or an official in that
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Office, and he will not be surprised to hear me say that I am not familiar with the Act to which he refers. But in regard to the comments he made on the contents of that Act, and in regard to other matters that he laid before your Lordships by way of suggestions, perhaps he will allow me to say that I will faithfully report what he has said, and bring Hansard to the notice of the Secretary of State.
I cannot say I am at all surprised that my noble and learned friend opposite, Lord Stuart of Wortley, should have brought this matter before your Lordships' House. He has had a considerable administrative experience, some of which, as I think he reminded us, was passed in the Home Office, and he is, if I may say so, fully qualified to speak on the subject. I can assure him that I in no way quarrel with him as to what he said in regard to the Police. The Home Secretary described the strike as deplorable. If that is the right term to use, it certainly is not too strong.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: Hear, hear.
VISCOUNT SANDHURST: I think it is no exaggeration to say that London, and districts far beyond London, were dismayed when they learned of the Police strike. The Metropolitan Police has been for so long, not only in its organisation but in its methods, the admiration not alone of this country but the pattern and the model of foreign capitals; and it was with a feeling going far beyond surprise that we learned one morning that the men had gone on strike. The position of the Police in London has always struck me, if I may say so with great respect, as a very remarkable one. They have to deal with very large crowds of a very difficult nature; they have to deal with what I might call, polite crowds—and I am not quite certain that, in a sense, they are more easy to deal with than others. The Police are the friend of every person, rich and poor, high and low, as we have daily testimony when we see them regulating the traffic and escorting infirm and aged persons through the dangers of that traffic. The patience we have observed, in crowds and in traffic, has been, I think I voice the view of your Lordships in saying, beyond all praise; and it was indeed, if I may use the term, a shock to find that these valued and honoured servants of the State had gone out on strike.

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In the course of his speech my noble friend Lord Lansdowne rather anticipated what I had to say, because I thought it would be necessary, out of the respect due to your Lordships, to give an account of those increases of pay. Of course, noble Lords who taken in interest, or are going to take or have taken a part in this debate, will no doubt have read the Secretary of State's speech carefully, but from what I have learned in the course of the afternoon there are a good many noble Lords who have not perused that speech. So that perhaps I may be forgiven if I repeat one or two figures to make the matter clearer. My noble friend who spoke last stated, indeed, that these grievances had been repeatedly put forward, but that no attention had been paid to them whatever. To take the House back for a moment, I wish to say clearly that the statement that the strike had been preceded by many applications, and that either the Commissioner of Police or the Home Office had refused to listen to them, is not correct. As Lord Lansdowne stated just now, in December of 1917 the bonuses were raised from 8s. to 12 s. per week, and the bonus for children from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. This was, of course, in addition to the pensionable pay, which was fixed then at 30 s. and upwards. That amounted to an average of 37 s. 2d., and was in addition to pension rights, which are estimated to be some 25 per cent. of the pay, and of which the constables' portion is estimated at 2 per cent. Then there was a new grant in December. The total pay and allowances, including full pension rights, was raised to 68 s. 9d. instead of 47 s. per week, and the rise was much appreciated. As was stated by Lord Stuart of Wortley, in February, 1918, a letter did come from a Police Union conveying thanks for what had been done and suggesting that, I think it was, pensionable pay should be put on a level with other services. Since that no application by letter or otherwise has been made to the Commissioner, and with certainty none to the Home Office, and that is the statement which I make in regard to the alleged refusal of repeated applications.
Now, this is true, my Lords, that in consequence of certain provincial arrangements for increasing pay which had been submitted to the Secretary of State and sanctioned by him—and this was stated in the House of Commons, I believe—the Commissioner was considering a scheme for
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increasing pay, but the Commissioner was anxious to combine with the proposal for an increase of pay a scheme for the pension of widows. This required Parliamentary sanction, and of necessity involved certain actuarial calculations as to its effects upon the Pension Fund, and this Report was expected just, about the time when the strike took place. It was a singularly unfortunate coincidence that the delay in the increase of pay, which was put about as the cause of the strike, may have been owing to the Commissioner's great desire not only to make an improvement in the men's conditions but also that it should be accompanied by the widows' pension arrangement to which I have referred.
Since February no communication of importance reached the Commissioner or the Home Office, and to show how little ground he had for anticipating trouble of any kind the Commissioner when the strike took place was absent on holiday, I think in Ireland. The notice of strike was extremely short. On August 28 the Home Office received a letter from the Police Union which demanded three things—namely, reinstatement of a dismissed constable; complete official recognition of the Police Union; and a war bonus of 12½ per cent. These demands could not be granted, and the strike took place the next day, as Lord Lansdowne reminded us, setting aside the engagement which provides for one month's notice if the men desire to give up their engagements. There is reason to believe—at least, I know that it is the Secretary of State's view—that a number of men were misled by inaccurate statements, and that there is considerable regret at the course which has been taken. The Secretary of State also wishes to recognise the fact that the Special Constabulary rendered very conspicuous services on this occasion. There were some collisions between the strikers and special constables, which were deplorable; at the same time, he believes that the feeling of regret which I have just mentioned is shared by great numbers of the Police Force.
The pay now, as has I think been stated by Lord Lansdowne, is increased, including all pension and other allowances, from an average of £3 13 s. 4d. to an average of £4 4s. 10 d. I believe this is the correct figure. The Police Union cannot be recognised, but on the advice of the Commissioner police officers are allowed to join any

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union so long as they do not claim or attempt to claim to interfere with discipline or induce the withdrawal of services. The union to which the police officers belong, the Police and Prison Warders' Union, is not recognised as competent to put forward representations for the Police. For this purpose an elective body of the Metropolitan Police has been formed as a representative board of the Metropolitan Police. That is established within the Police Force, and all representations as to conditions of service and general welfare are to be made by this body. It is already a going concern, and when the Police and Prison Warders' Union attempt to make representations as to the conditions of pay, and so on, of the Police, they are told that such representations should be made by this representative board.
As your Lordships all know, the Commissioner of Police resigned. If I may be allowed without presumption to say so, he had rendered great services to the Police and to London. I have seen notices of him in the Press in which there is reference to "sunbaked Indian civilians." Those who have been in India know pretty well that India is a great and stern school of administration. Sir Edward Henry passed nearly thirty years of his life in the Indian Civil Service and fifteen years as Commissioner of Police, and if there was one thought that he had nearest to his heart beyond the public safety it was the welfare and the contentment of the large force of men under his control.
As regards the Motion of the noble Lord, I do not know whether he meant it as a request that Papers should be produced, or whether he put it down, as sometimes is done, in order to have the right of reply. As to the actual wording of the Motion, I have made inquiry and I do not understand that there are any Papers to lay before the House. The only Papers concerned are Proclamations in regard to Police pay and allowances, which have been already published. My answer no doubt runs, to some extent, on the lines of that of the Home Secretary in the House of Commons; at the same time, perhaps your Lordships will see that one of the reasons of my being here is to represent what the Secretary of State says.
LORD HARRIS: My Lords, if I may intervene for a moment I would say that I sympathise very much with my noble friend who has answered for the Government
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in having to reply for a Department with which he has really no such official connection as enables him to reply completely to any question connected with the Home Office. He has not even got a room, perhaps not even a box in which to carry his Papers, and therefore if his reply is incomplete it is no fault of his, but entirely the fault of the Department which he is told off to represent in this House. But I confess I was unable to follow the figures that he gave as regards pay. I heard something of 36 s.
VISCOUNT SANDHURST: 37 s.
LORD HARRIS: It may be 37 s., with a rise of from 8s. to 12 s. That would apparently have very nearly corresponded with another figure that I heard him give—the pre-war pay of 47 s., raised sometime, either this year or in 1917, to 68 s. 9d., which is, of course, something between 40 per cent. and 50 per cent. increase of pay. Then there were other figures, with which I do not think I need trouble myself. The main point is that during the course of the war, from 1913 to 1918, the normal pay of the Police—I take it that it is the normal pay, and not the pay plus war bonus—has been increased from 47 s. to 68 s. 9d.
I am very thankful that my noble friend opposite has not asked us to come to any conclusion ourselves upon this most regrettable incident, because personally I should be excessively reluctant to set up myself as a judge as to where the blame lay for what was practically a mutiny. What outsiders find is that the Chief Commissioner resigned at once, or was relieved of his command. I do not know that it very much matters which. Evidently the Government recognised that at the moment he was no longer competent to keep command of this most important Force, and, at his age, I do not think that that is any discredit to Sir Edward Henry. At any rate, it does not detract from his meritorious career, here and in India and other parts of the British Empire, in connection with the Police.
Several NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear.
LORD HARRIS: But what I should like to have seen supplied, in response to the Motion of my noble friend opposite, is some State Paper telling the public what were the causes of this strike, because I think we are entitled to know. Has there been

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no Departmental Inquiry? We know, of course, that the Prime Minister was brought in, and that he settled the thing off-hand by, as far as I can make cut, giving very nearly 100 per cent. increase on the 1914 figures. But surely there must have been some Departmental Inquiry? I confess that the explanation that has been put into the mouth of my noble friend does lead me to this inference—that the Police have a great grievance. It is a grievance which permeates the whole of society—that is, those who are paid fixed wages. It is that wages have not corresponded rapidly enough with the rise in the prices of all commodities, and this is at the bottom of all these strikes from which we are suffering.
Now, what is the excuse put forward for the men? They says—and there, again, we have no information—that they did represent their grievances to the head of their Department. It was hung up. Hung up where? In the office of the Chief Commissioner or in the Treasury? I wish very much that this could be cleared up, because I have a very strong opinion, from personal and official experience, that it is possible for a great deal of delay in financial matters to be imposed on all Departments by arguments from the Treasury. In this care there was a proposal before the Commissioner for a further scheme of pay connected with the men's pensions. May I observe at this point that the prospects of a pension are of no earthly use to men whose families are suffering from a shortage of food owing to rise in prices? The prospect of a pension does not help them the least in the world.
I am so far justified in rising to trouble your Lordships on this occasion that, in connection with another very important Government Department, I was called upon at a moment's notice to have ready a number of Volunteers to take the place of certain officials, who, if they had struck and deserted their posts, would have placed the civilian population in almost as great danger as they were placed in by the strike of the Police. At a moment's notice I, with other commanding officers of Volunteer regiments, was called upon to provide Volunteers—in their civil capacity if you please, but in uniform and with side arms—who were to have civil pay to supplant or be substitutes for these officials whom it was apprehended might strike. Therefore I had some little experience at that very anxious moment of the confusion and the danger to the public that were possible.
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Here, upon the statement of the Home Office itself, was a scheme before the Commissioner of Police, which had been evidently before him for some time, comprehending an increase of pay connected with pensions and connected furthermore with widows' pensions, all very admirable objects, I admit, but all of them—the whole thing—requiring Parliamentary sanction, and of course, preliminary to that, Treasury sanction. Cannot you imagine the inter-correspondence going on between the various Departments, the Home Office, and the Chief Commissioner of Police, upon this subject, and meantime the men's immediate grievance—assuming there was a grievance—of not getting enough pay compared with the rise in the cost of all the commodities that go towards keeping a man alive. All that was suspended because there was this other scheme on foot. That is the impression which is left upon my mind by the explanation put into the mouth of my noble friend by the Home Office; and if that is the explanation of the ignoring of a petition which the men themselves say to my noble friend on the back bench was put forward over and over again to the head of their Department, then it is not a satisfactory one, and I think that the public is entitled to some explanation as to what were the real causes that lay underneath this mutiny.
I yield to nobody in condemnation of every one who is under contract, whether he be a civil workmen or an official, who "downs tools" before the notice which he is bound to give. If your domestic servant leaves your service he can be sued in a Civil Court; I am not sure, but I believe he can be prosecuted if he leaves your service without giving you the notice to which you are entitled. He in his turn is entitled to claim from you due notice, or the pay for the period which is usually allowed for notice. Everyone of these men in the Police Force would be as insistent upon their rights as regards the period of notice to which they are entitled for their discharge as anybody else; yet they ignore the rights of the public and "down tools" without giving the notice to which the public is entitled. I am as strong as my noble friend below the gangway in condemning in the most criticial terms the Metropolitan Police for ignoring that condition of their service. I do not think that any condemnation can be too strong for them.

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But I confess that the answer of the Home Office does not satisfy me that the grievances of the men had been properly met. I should want a great deal more from the Home Office before I was satisfied that the men had been met in this essential particular. With regard to the index figures, I spoke upon this subject a year ago with regard to agricultural matters, and I said to my noble friend Lord Milner, What is the good of putting 25 s. into your Corn Production Bill, making a fixed amount, when prices are varying perpetually, and when under the custom of the country wages have corresponded more or less correctly with the cost of living; what is the good of putting a fixed figure into your Bill, and then six months, or at any rate a year, afterwards, the fixed figure has to be swept away? It must be swept away. Wages must correspond, roughly, with the cost of living.
I am not satisfied, from the figures given by the noble Viscount, that the rise in wage in the case of the Metropolitan Police anything like corresponds with the cost of living. If it did not so correspond, then I confess that I am not prepared to stand up as a judge of what are the merits of the case. I am prepared to judge them upon having ignored one of the important items of their agreement—namely, that they ignored the period of notice; but I am certainly not prepared to condemn them on the information which we have been given to-day as regards the grievance under which they suffered, or to say that the heads of the Departments, and perhaps the Home Office itself, were not in the main responsible for the strike.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend who has just sat down that it would be more satisfactory to this House and to the public if the Government, even yet, could tell us a little more than they have done in connection with that part of the Motion of my noble friend which consists in a request for Papers. My noble friend Lord Sandhurst says that there are no Papers. Will he tell us whether there has been no Inquiry into the causes of this lamentable occurrence, or whether there is going to be no Inquiry, and whether there will never be any Papers which can be laid before Parliament on this subject? I wish he would be a little more explicit on this point, because I entirely agree with my
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noble friend who has just spoken that we have not the material on which to express any opinion at all as to the merits of the case of the Police for an increase of pay. I wish to express no opinion on that. Nor, in my judgment, have we the materials on which finally to decide whether the Home Office, or the Chief Commissioner of Police, or the Treasury, or some other Department of Government, must bear a share of the responsibility in this matter. We have not the material; therefore we cannot attempt to formulate a judgment.
I am very grateful, nevertheless, to my noble friend behind me (Lord Stuart of Wortley) for having brought this very grave matter before your Lordships' House. I do not share the view of my noble friend opposite about what the noble Marquess said. The noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, passed to consider this strike as part of a larger subject. I do not propose to follow him in his general survey of the question of strikes, but I am sure that what he said will always be a valuable contribution to the solution of what is, perhaps, the most difficult of all our social problems. I propose to confine my remarks almost exclusively to this particular strike.
Before I say what I think ought to be said, I want to make it perfectly plain to everybody that during the whole of my life I have had the most profound admiration for the Metropolitan Police up to the occasion of this strike—an admiration so profound that I am not exaggerating when I say that it is part of my pride in being an Englishman that I am the fellow-countryman of the men of the Metropolitan Police. I feel about them exactly as I feel about the men of the Navy or of the Army. Therefore to have to say what I am going to say is a matter of profound grief, but I think it is also a matter of public duty. I wish to say further that, except in the case of certain public officials, of which the Navy, the Army, and the Police are the most important, I not only am not against trade unions but I think trade unions are absolutely necessary, and that if they did not exist they ought to be invented. It is impossible for the ordinary wage-earner to assert his just claims without the machinery of a trade union. A trade union implies the possibility of the threat to strike, and the ultima ratio, in certain cases, of a strike.

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I have already said that I am going to pronounce no judgment as to the merits of the case of the Metropolitan Police for an increase of pay. Still less am I going to pronounce any judgment on the merits of any of those other strikes to which the noble Marquess referred—the railway strike, or the miners' strike. What I want to say here and now is that in my opinion no strike of any sort or kind, and no threat of strike, is legitimate in time of war. When the country is battling for its life these strikes and threats of strikes are nothing but stabs in the back to the men who are fighting in the ships and in the trenches. This is true in time of war in all trades. I go further and say that never can it be legitimate for the Police, not in peace even, to strike or to threaten to strike. And if it is not legitimate for them to do so in time of peace, how deplorable and how wholly unjustifiable must we consider this sudden strike, and these threats, in the month of August, at a critical period of the war. It is the first blot on a hitherto noble escutcheon.
The Police are the penultimate foundation on which the whole basis of the law and order of the State stands. The ultimate foundation is the whole mass of citizens of whom the Army are a part, but, till you get down to the duty of every individual citizen to keep the law and order of the State, the paid public servants, held in high honour by all their fellow-countrymen for that very reason, are the Police, and there can never be true security for the State or true stability for law and order if there is any suggestion that in any circumstances it is legitimate for the Police to strike or to threaten to strike. My friend opposite provoked me to an interruption. I did not intend to be discourteous, but I could not withhold an ejaculation when I understood him to say that the Government should have done nothing less than what they did in connection with this Police strike.
LORD WITTENHAM: Not when once the strike had arisen.
THE EARL OF SELBORNE: I profoundly disagree with my noble friend. It is quite impossible for disagreement to be more profound than mine with him over that. I should not have presumed to say what I think ought to have been done had my noble friend not said what he did; but now I am going to say that in my opinion
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the moment that the Government were faced with the ultimatum they ought at once to have announced the machinery which they proposed for an examination of the grievances of the men, and at the same time to have given the men twenty-four hours to return to duty, and made an appeal to all citizens to come and support them. Had they done that there would have been such a manifestation of public opinion, such a rally of the whole male population on the side of the Government, that you would never have had a Police strike again, or a threat of it. I am afraid that the Government missed one of the greatest opportunities that Government ever had of squelching a grave public danger such as this threat of a Police strike.
In conclusion, I cannot help lamenting the course that the Government have taken about the union. They tell us that they have not recognised the union, but they have done something that is very difficult to distinguish from recognition, and I am afraid that they will find in the future that the limits they have imposed to the action of this union are not recognised by those who want to manipulate the union, and that, having gone as far as they have in recognising its existence, or the existence of some body to which they assign limits of function in their own mind, the day will come when they will find that their interpretation of the legitimate functions of the union are disputed, and the battle which might have been settled in August last will have to be fought again—I mean the battle of principle, because a great principle is involved. Nothing can be more deplorable or more hateful to every public citizen than the idea of any conflict between the citizens as a whole of the Government and that body of Police for which, as I have said, we always have had the most profound admiration and affection. I do not think that my noble fiend proposes to press for Papers, but I hope that the noble Viscount who spoke for the Government may have something more to tell us about the possibility in the future of further light being thrown on this understanding.
VISCOUNT SANDHURST: My Lords, I should like to repeat what I said just now in regard to the applications by letter or otherwise relating to grievances. What I meant to convey was that no application had been made by letter or otherwise to the Commissioner, and certainly none to the

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Home Office, to which there had been repeated refusals. As to the further point mentioned by my noble friend who has just sat down, I have nothing more to say at this moment, other than what I have already explained to the noble and learned Lord opposite; but in view of what has been said by the noble Earl, I will, of course, communicate with the Secretary of State and see whether there is any further information to be given.
LORD STUART OF WORTLEY: I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD FINLAY): My Lords, I rise to ask your Lordships to give a Second Reading to this Bill, which has passed through the House of Commons with an absence of criticism, or at all events of any considerable criticism, and has, I believe, met with general approval in Scotland. The object of the Bill is to make adequate provision for the organisation of national education in Scotland, short of the Universities. Your Lordships are aware that in the month of August last a Bill for a similar purpose in England and Wales became law, and of course it was felt in Scotland that it is not for Scotland to fall behind in the race to achieve a thoroughly efficient education. The object being the organisation of national education—primary, secondary, and technical—it is obvious that you have to devise machinery which would be adapted for that purpose in the shape of local education authorities. Then, having done that, you must have provisions as to the duties of those local education authorities, and the changes in the law which they are to administer. Lastly, but not least, you must have provisions for advancing the scheme, which will be most valuable in its results but must cost money.
I propose to divide the few remarks that I am going to make under the three heads which I have mentioned. In the first place, as regards the machinery to be provided, it must be settled what the area is to be. In Scotland there has hitherto been a system of school boards. School boards have been elected by each parish
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and by the various burghs scattered throughout Scotland. It is quite obvious, I think, that for such a scheme as that which I have indicated it would be impossible to take these small areas. Many of the burghs are too small, and the majority of the parishes are too small, and you could not, even with the powers of amalgamation which exist, make a satisfactory job of it if you proceeded on the lines of the existing divisions for the purpose of education. For that reason it has been determined that the areas for this purpose should be the five large burghs—Edinburgh, Leith, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen—which are of a very considerable size, a size suitable for the matters to be dealt with; and throughout the rest of Scotland that it, should be according to the division into counties. Various suggestions have been made as to forming special areas for the purpose of education, but I think your Lordships will agree with the view that has been taken that the multiplication of special areas for particular purposes is inconvenient, and that it is much better to proceed on lines which are already thoroughly familiar. I may add that since 1908 the county secondary education committees have discharged not unimportant functions with regard to secondary education in Scotland under the Act of 1908. And therefore I ask your Lordships' approval of the course that has been taken in adopting the counties, with the five large burghs which I have mentioned, as appropriate areas for this purpose.
The second point which arose with regard to machinery was, What body are you to have? Are you to have a body elected ad hoc, or are you to throw the functions under this Bill upon the existing councils—the county councils and the burgh councils? The Bill as first introduced in December last year proposed to throw it upon the existing councils, but the opinion of Scottish Members and of Scotland was so unmistakably manifested in opposition to that proposal that the Government determined to re-introduce the Bill, which they did shortly before it came on for Second Reading in June last, making the authority not the existing councils but education authorities to be elected ad hoc. In Scotland there has always been a great liking in matters of education for an authority elected for that purpose and for that purpose only. The next point with regard to the education authority was how it was to be chosen, and this Bill pro-

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ceeds on the lines that it ought to be chosen by direct election. I need not waste time in recommending that course, for I do not think that any other would satisfy the people of Scotland. Further, some provision must be made for securing adequate protection to minorities. There is at present in force in Scotland the cumulative vote, by which, where a man has the right to give several votes, they may be bestowed upon one candidate, and by arrangement with his friends the great mass of votes may be concentrated on behalf of a minority numerically not very strong. The cumulative vote for that reason has fallen into disfavour in Scotland, and the opinion is held, and I believe justly held, to some extent at all events, that the cumulative vote gives more protection to minorities than is their due. It is therefore proposed, instead of the cumulative vote, to have the transferable vote, by which the voter may indicate the order in which he desires that his vote should be utilised for candidates. If his vote is not wanted for one owing to his having got a majority without it, the vote may be given in the order indicated by the voter to another candidate who is in the field. It is hoped in this way that due protection will be given to minorities, but that the undue favour to minorities involved in the cumulative vote will be put an end to. So much with regard to setting up the machinery for administering this Bill.
With regard to the duties of the new education authorities and the changes in the law which they will have to administer, I will first say this. There are a certain number of very necessary duties to be performed in connection with schools for which a central authority for a comparatively small area is not particularly competent. You want local management for schools in certain particulars, always subject to strong central control, and the Bill contains provisions for the appointment by the local education authorities, according to a scheme framed by them and approved by the Scottish Education Department, of school management committees, which it is hoped will be of an efficient and representative character, with knowledge of all the local conditions, and on which the various interests will be adequately represented. This system will combine the advantage of local knowledge with adequate central control. The more important duties of the education authority may not be transferred; there is an enact-
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ment mentioning them and forbidding that they should be thrown into the hands of a committee.
I will say a few words first about the duties of the education authority with reference to public schools, and then I will proceed to consider their new duties altogether with reference to the proposed transfer of what are called the voluntary schools to the education authorities. The first duty, and one of the most important, which the education authorities will have to discharge is to prepare a scheme for the approval of the Scottish Education Department for providing adequately within the area for primary, intermediate, and secondary school education. And with regard to that matter some points of importance may be briefly noticed. Your Lordships are aware that in Scotland, by what is called "use and wont," the education authorities have always been in the habit of providing for religious instruction in the schools. There was no enactment in the Scottish Education Act of 1872, now nearly fifty years ago, to that effect. In the preamble it is recited that there was use and wont with reference to religious education, and that, coupled with the determination of the Scottish people that the religious element should not be eliminated from the schools, was quite sufficient; it has always been provided. And it has been thought that, inasmuch as a change is being made to new authorities, it would be a proper thing to indicate to these authorities that they are to have the same powers in this most important matter that the school boards have always exercised. That is provided by the eighth clause, which confers on the education authorities under this Bill the power to provide religious education. It does not make it compulsory. Some ardent friends of religious education, I believe, were desirous that it should be made compulsory, but I suggest to your Lotdships' judgment that it was probably much safer to recognise the power, trusting the people in whose interests the power is to be exerted to give effect to what was entrusted to them.
The next point which I think is of some importance is that the local education authority have power to make provision by way of scholarships, or bursaries, as they are called in Scotland, and by making other payments, to enable promising of poor parents to get the advantage of education in secondary schools,

917
and, in suitable cases, in Universities. The children to whom this assistance is to be given, must, of course, be carefully selected. The responsibility for the selection will rest with the local education authority, who no doubt will act upon the information laid before them by the teachers as to the capacity of the child. Of course, unless the child is likely to take advantage of such facilities, it would be a waste of time and money to send him on to the University, he is much better doing that work for which he is fitted. But you have in every rank of life boys and girls of great ability who only want the opportunity to show what is in them. I believe it was a motto of the great Napoleon that a career should always be open to talent; and as far as legislation can achieve it, we hope that this Bill may serve to open the way to any sphere for which his abilities fit him to any child in Scotland, however poor his parents may be.
Certain changes are made in the law which the authorities are to administer. In the first place, the age for school attendance is raised from fourteen to fifteen years. In the second place, the power of exemption, which under the law as it has hitherto existed was to take effect when the child was twelve, is now to be at the age of thirteen, so that it is a year later. The power of exemption which was introduced by the Act of 1901 is an instance of that power of selection which plays an essential part in the formation of every well-balanced scheme. There are on the one hand, as I have indicated, children of exceptional powers, and on the other hand there are children who are so backward with their books that after a fair opportunity of being tested in the matter we must conclude that further time spent in book learning is really time wasted. In that case it is much better that there should be the power of exempting such a child from further attendance at school, and letting him go to the work for which he may be perfectly fitted, and which, in itself, will be a better education than poring over books which, to him, may mean little or nothing. The power of exemption is to be subject to attendance at the continuation classes which are to be set up under this Bill.
The continuation classes are a most important part of the provision made for education by this Bill. It is proposed that there shall partial attendance—for two hours. I think—up to the age of six-
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teen at continuation classes in the evening, and that power shall be conferred by the Bill when it becomes law upon the Education Department to extend the age for these continuation classes ultimately to eighteen, proceeding by steps if they please. These continuation classes will help the boy and girl to keep up their general education and prevent the young person from forgetting what has already been learned; but, they will also, I trust, in very many cases give special instruction bearing upon the handicraft which the young person is pursuing. Instruction of that kind may greatly increase the efficiency of our work, and, if well judged, and put in terms which the young workman can appreciate, it may be an education more valuable than learning of a more abstruse character ever could be.
And then, in the third place, these continuation classes may discharge a most important function in having the physical well-being of the young persons thoroughly well seen to. They are most important years in the life of a boy or a girl, and there will be, under this Bill, provision for medical examination, for the supervision of health, and for physical education and training. I need not dilate on the importance of that. Any one of us who has seen the effect which the physical exercises that a country lad goes through, or which a town lad goes through, on enlisting in the Army, can appreciate what a change it makes in the physique and in the morale of the person subjected to these influences. I regard it as most valuable if, as an important part of the education, the young person is subjected to influences at that time, which tend to there being a sound body, and which tend to there being a sound mind in the body. The continuation classes will prevent the minds from rusting, and will enable any boys or girls who are fit for the Universities to qualify for passing on to them. They may have gone to their work, they may not have been able to go to a secondary school, but in the hours in which they attend continuation classes they may be able to do enough to prepare them for going, as they get a little older and as the opportunity serves, to the University.
There is, of course, one matter which always should be borne in mind, and that is the importance of the power of selection in any sound system of education. You must begin by educating all children, but

919
you must endeavour to pick out those cases in which it is worth while to push education further and to give the young person the opportunity of rising, it may be, to a very different sphere from that in which he may happen to have been born. There is, of course, the same power of exemption with regard to the continuation classes provided in the Bill as that to which I have referred in regard to elementary education.
The second point on which the local authority will be entrusted with important duties is in the matter of what are called voluntary schools. In Scotland you have a large number of children who, owing to the religious views of their parents, are not able to take advantage of the education provided in the public schools. As your Lordships know, the greater part of the population of Scotland are really of one faith, so that the religious difficulty with regard to the great majority does not arise; but you have a certain number of Episcopalian schools and a large number of Roman Catholic schools. I think it has been estimated that of the children who are of age to go to school in Scotland about one-seventh are children of Roman Catholic parents, whose principles prevent them from allowing their children to go to any schools where there is an absence of religious education, however much the children may be protected by conscience clauses. That is a fact which must be recognised, and you cannot in dealing with this subject leave unnoticed those children who, owing to the pecuniary difficulty in thoroughly equipping and running these schools, have to be content with education in many cases very inferior to that which the public schools would be able to give them.
It is proposed to deal with this question in this way. The local education authority are required, on the request of the managers of any Roman Catholic or Episcopalian school, to take the school over. If no request is made for two years to take it over—unless the time is extended and there is power to extend it—the grants will cease to be paid to that school. If they prefer to continue on their own account they will have to do so, but it is apprehended that the proposed powers conferred on the local education authority of taking over such schools on request will be a power brought into constant exercise. It will work in this way. When the school is taken over the secular education will be under the control of the local education authority,
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but the religious education will be left entirely in the hands of persons representative of the religious body to which the parents of the children belong. That is a provision which I hope will work well in practice. It seems to be a provision of a reasonable nature, and it is difficult to conceive that you could have a better way of filling up a great gap in your educational system, which otherwise would exist owing to there being a large number of children whose parents think it wrong to let them go to the public schools in Scotland.
I desire to say a few words on the most important subject of the financial provision made by the Bill. There is to be for every local education authority an education fund to be administered by the local education authority. Into that fund will be paid all the grants and sums raised by loan, or otherwise, available for education purposes, and then if there is a deficiency it is to be made good out of the rates. The total deficiency for the area is to be apportioned among the parishes comprising the area according to their valuation, and is to be raised as provided. This may not be an ideal system, but it is one which is in force and one which it is believed will work well in practice.
In the second place, provision is made for the grant of a general fund for Scotland—the Education (Scotland) Fund. Into that fund for Scotland generally there will be paid all the sums which are payable under the 15th section of the Act of 1908; secondly, a sum equal to the grants which were made in 1914, which is taken as the standard year; and, in the third place, eleven-eightieths of the excess of the amount paid for education in England and Wales over that spent in 1914, the standard year. The explanation of that fraction is simply this. It was computed that the relation of the contribution by Scotland to the contribution by the rest of the kingdom for taxation was eleven-eightieths, and that has been adopted on other occasions as an index of the share which Scotland should get in any grant, and it is proposed to adopt it here. That central fund will be applied in making grants to the several education authorities according to minutes to be drawn up by the Scottish Education Department; and if one might anticipate, I should think that those minutes should be drawn up on the principle of measuring the grant according to the amount properly expended on education

921
in the area, with special consideration for districts where, owing to exceptional circumstances, the pressure of the rate is exceptionally heavy. That is a matter which must be left to be adjusted by minute, and I think that the Department may be trusted to discharge this duty in seeing that the grants are properly apportioned.
One thing is to my mind most satisfactory about this scheme. It will sweep away the whole apparatus of payment according to passes and results. I believe there has never been a greater mistake in any system of education than making grants according simply to the number of passes in particular subjects. It is fatal to the full idea of really good education, and I trust that in Scotland we shall have seen the last of it when this Bill comes into force. There are one or two other matters in the Bill which I really shall not dwell upon. Provision is made for an advisory council for the Secretary of Scotland in educational matters, and for an advisory council for the local education authorities themselves.
There is only one other point I will touch upon, and that is the provision which is made with regard to the remuneration of teachers. The salaries are to be not less than a sum fixed as a minimum according to a scale drawn up under Clause 7 (c) of the Bill. It was said long ago by Sir Walter Scott, with reference to the old parish schoolmasters in Scotland, that Scotland owed more to these men than to any other class in the community and treated them worse than any other class. I hope we are in the way adequately to recognise the service which the teaching profession can do to the country. That really is all I have to say in commending this Bill to the favourable consideration of your Lordships. It comes to you stamped with the approval of the House of Commons, and I submit to your Lordships that, if passed into law, it will do a great deal to help on the cause of education in Scotland. In these circumstances I trust that your Lordships will give it a Second Reading, and I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: My Lords, I cannot think, after the full and exhaustive analysis of the Bill which we have just heard from the noble and learned
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Lord on the Woolsack, that it is necessary for me to say very much, but having regard to the fact (which I have no doubt is in the minds of many of your Lordships) that I was responsible for eight years for the Department which is concerned with this Bill, I think it would be a lack of courtesy on my part if I did not offer to the Bill a very cordial welcome in your Lordships' House. I am not altogether out of sympathy with the view that to some extent the great changes foreshadowed in this Bill have been sprung upon the people of Scotland without full discussion and preparation, but, as the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has told you, the first draft of the Bill, introduced at the end of last year, did not meet with approval so far as the authorities were concerned, and those who were responsible for this Bill have done their very best in the meantime to consult the opinion of the people of Scotland, and I believe, so far as this important question is concerned, the Bill will receive practically unanimous support.
Another reason why I think we should not pay too much attention to the criticism is that it would never be possible in these times to take a General Election turning largely upon the question of an Education Bill. More than that, we are face to face with many after-war problems, with great policies of reconstruction and changes, and I think it is of the very greatest importance that the foundation should be laid in time, and that we should proceed with this reform of our educational system while we have the opportunity of doing so. The noble and learned Lord has made it perfectly clear that the school board system and organisation will not do for solving the educational problems of the future.
The conditions have entirely changed from the time which even I can recollect—and which, along with me, the most rev. Primate on the Bench opposite and the noble Viscount behind me will also recollect—when the age of entry into a Scottish University was about fifteen, or even lower in some cases. The essential feature of change in the last half-generation in Scotland has been the raising of the age for entrance into the Universities. During this time, as we all know, education has made great advances, and much higher attainments are now required for entrance into Universities, training colleges, and other similar institutions than was the case fifteen or twenty years ago. If one thing

923
is more certain than another it is this, that the parish is no longer possible as a basis for the organisation of education, as it was someyears ago.
It is eighteen years since I myself was enthusiastic enough to propose a Bill of reform. Lord Dunedin, my successor in office, followed in 1904, but it was not till 1908 that any emendation of the old system, established in 1872, was found possible. Even that was essentially a compromise, and I can truthfully say it was a compromise which prepared the way for the present Bill. As the noble and learned Lord has told you, the object of Part I of this Bill is to set up a county authority for education, and that county authority will amalgamate and centralise both the powers of the school board and the secondary education committee. I entirely agree with what was said, that the one possible area for education in Scotland is the county. It is not perfect—there is some difficulty in certain places owing to the divisions of counties, the merging of populations in valleys, and the difficulties of transference across country for education—but, taking it all round, I am certain that no other area is possible.
I am very glad indeed that the authority is to be an authority for educational purposes alone, and that it will deal with education as a whole in all its aspects, primary, secondary, and technical. The noble and learned Lord passed over one point. He very rightly condemned the cumulative vote, but he did not explain to your Lordships as fully as I should have liked that the system of election for these new secondary education authorities will be that which is known as proportional representation. It will be a very interesting feature of this Bill, when it becomes an Act, to prove, as I humbly think, how excellent a method that will be of getting an exact reflex in the authority of the proportions of opinion among the different divisions in the electorate.
As the noble and learned Lord said, the second Part of the Bill is strictly educational. It raises from fourteen to fifteen the normal age for leaving school, but I am glad it continues the power of exemption from the full obligation of attendance. The idea, I think, which underlies that proposal is that those who are excused from full-time attendance, in order that they may engage in work useful for themselves, are to continue under the obligation to give
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a certain attendance in each year at continuation classes in order to prevent what has been acquired being lost and forgotten, as has been too often the case in existing circumstances. Personally, I find it impossible to attach too much importance to that safeguard, and I sincerely hope that in its main features it will be preserved in this Bill. But, on the other hand, those who have shown a real aptitude for education will under this Bill have much greater facilities for continuing their studies. Then again it is perfectly obvious that, as there cannot be a suitable school in every parish to carry the children up to the age of seventeen or eighteen, it most be under the larger area of the county. I need not go over the point again, but the noble and learned Lord made a most satisfactory allusion to the liberal provisions which are made in Clause 5 of the Bill for enabling a clever child to pursue his or her studies.
On one point in regard to this matter of attendance I think we might have a little more elasticity than is given in the Bill. I will not go into details now, but I shall give notice of Amendments with a view of making the transfer from the present system to the new one a little more gradual and a little more elastic than it is under this Bill. I hope that the precedents of the English Bill will be followed in one important particular, and that the period of bringing the new scheme into operation will be extended to seven instead of three years. And I really think that if more trust, more power, more authority, are given to the local committees they may be thoroughly trusted in Scotland not to use their power in a wrong way.
Another important feature of the Bill, to which I for one give my most cordial welcome, is that bringing in of the voluntary schools under the education authority. The noble and learned Lord said that about one-seventh of the school population belonged to those two Churches whose members have found it difficult in some cases to send their children to the public schools. So far as the Roman Catholics are concerned, that difficulty, of course, is almost universal; but I am glad to think that in many districts the Episcopalian children have been able to take their education in the public schools under proper safeguards for religious instruction. I think in this case in Scotland we have never been quite so dogmatic or quite so divided

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into sections as has been the case in England. I remember in one case, when I was Secretary for Scotland, visiting one of the Western Islands, in which 75 per cent. of the population was Roman Catholic There was a Protestant majority on the school board; the head teacher was a Roman Catholic; the religious education in that school was given in different rooms; and the whole staff, without regard to creed or other differences, took part in the secular education. That may have been an exceptional case; but I saw it myself, and know that it was carried out with success.
But the real reason for this change is a very important one. It is the growing cost of education which makes it necessary. This improvement in education and its consequent cost imposes a continually increasing burden upon these communities for maintaining their separate schools. The result is—I use these words with no reproach to them; they are the victims of circumstances for which they are not responsible—that they have been quite unable to keep pace with the public schools as regards efficiency and remuneration of teachers. If it is the case that the education given in these voluntary schools was really inferior to that given in the public schools; the lower standard was therefore unjust to the children concerned; and I say frankly and fearlessly that it is in the national interest as well as in the interest of these children themselves that a cure should be found for that difficulty. I believe that no other way of effecting this object can be made available than by bringing these children compulsorily under the new authorities, and that this will secure adequate maintenance from the rates and from the grants. But at the same time this Bill provides, as it ought to provide, efficient safeguards for the continuance of the distinct religious instruction which they rightly value so highly.
There have been other points involved in this discussion. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack explained to your Lordships what is known in Scotland as "use and wont," and some people think that use and wont, the prevailing form of religious instruction in Scotland, is put at a disadvantage under this Bill; that it is voluntary only, whereas the other two Churches have obtained a certain amount of compulsory power. It seems to me that under Clause 8 those of us who are Pres-
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byterian have obtained as much as is necessary for our protection. We are in a large majority, and if the majority want to continue the system of use and wont they have power to do it. I know enough of my fellow-countrymen to know that if they are told they can have a thing if they want it they will very likely take it, but if they are told that they must have it whether they want it or not they are likely to rebel, and to look upon the system with less favour than they otherwise would. But I do not think that the majority in Scotland can complain if they are given the power to do a thing when it rests with them whether or not they will have it carried into effect.
There are some subordinate provisions in the Bill for setting up what are called advisory councils—one to the Department and one to the education authorities. I think I should not be wrong in saying that these provisions are rightly and purely experimental. I hope I am not going too far when I say that I am not in the least in love with them. I think that if you have a right selection of the people concerned the councils will not do much harm, and it is possible that they may be helpful in some way. At all events, they will perhaps do something to allay a sort of feeling in the country that they are being too much governed from a central authority. But I have an apprehension that the class of people who will find seats on these advisory councils will be those who will occupy their time in giving advice without regard to the possibility of always carrying it into effect without other difficulties; and I have a great dread—perhaps it is gained from official experience—of people who have power to give advice but not responsibility for the result of the advice which they give. However, the Department and the House of Commons have resolved to have these advisory councils, and probably what is brought into force permissibly in these circumstances it is better for us to leave alone.
I do not think that I need say more about the Bill. There are some details to which I shall want to call your Lordships, attention when we get to the Committee stage, but it will be only waste of time to go over the ground now. I will end, as I began, by saying that as far as I am concerned I give a cordial welcome to this Bill.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, I see that the noble and learned Viscount (Lord

927
Haldane) is going to say something, and I will not stand for more than a few moments between the House and him. I should like to add my tribute to the admirable character of this Bill. I have read it with care, and I find it extraordinarily interesting, apart from the technical points of administration, as a contribution to the discussion of the larger educational problems with which both in England and in Scotland we have been trying to deal. It covers, of course, a wider area of what have been, in England at all events, controversial elements of educational polity and discussion than the recent Bill passed through Parliament. Some of the provisions which this Bill contains seem to me to be likely to be of exceedingly high value when the time comes—as it must come—for dealing with those parts of our English educational problems which were quite rightly left outside the purview of Mr. Fisher's Bill when it was going through Parliament.
I believe that Mr. Fisher acted rightly in the course he took in leaving out from his Bill some matters which would inevitably have caused considerable difference of opinion. But I believe when the time comes for handling the matter, no small help will be discovered in the provisions which have been with great skill and perfect fairness drawn up in this Bill for dealing with a corresponding problem in Scotland. I say "a corresponding problem in Scotland"; but it is, of course, as the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has reminded us, on a much smaller scale—that is to say, the number of what are called voluntary schools is a very much smaller affair in Scotland than in England. But none the less the principles laid down with great clearness and lucidity seem so absolutely fair in the provision they make that the educational efficiency of the schools shall be in every way tested, and yet that the religious wishes of parents shall be considered, that I feel most thankful that this is likely to become law before there arises the question—which will have to be considered before very long—with regard to English educational matters.
The clauses in many sections which deal with the continuation classes seem to me, again, to be admirably drawn, and calculated to meet their purpose in a very remarkable way. If I am not mistaken—I say it with all respect—I think that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack accidentally
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made one slip in what he said in describing the Bill in his very lucid account of it. He spoke of the continuation classes being held in the evening. I am glad to say that the Bill provides that they should not be held in the evening, unless by special sanction given in special circumstances. It is of the greatest possible importance, as we all know, that continuation classes shall not be held at an hour when they would be attended by those who are already tired by a day's work. As in England, so in Scotland. The continuation classes must be attended during what are called the ordinary working hours of the day, and not when those working hours are over and the young person receiving the continuation class help is already fatigued. The provision is quite clear as it stands.
I should like to call attention to what seems to me—I do not know whether I am mistaken—a novel and certainly most striking addendum to educational legislation, the provision for providing books not only for children but for grown-up people in a parish. Nothing could possibly be better or more characteristic of Scotland's wisdom in educational matters than to extend the educational period to the end of a person's life. Any adult inhabitant of any parish may have the advantage of having his or her education continued, up to four score years if need be, by the aid of what this Bill empowers the parish to provide in the way of literature. It may be allowed to subscribe to libraries. That is continuation carried out in its true sense. It is education which is not to end at any special period of life, but to be carried on throughout all the years that the man or the woman needs for adding to the knowledge which he or she already possesses. I do not want to detain your Lordships at this hour, but I should not like this Bill to pass its Second Reading without saying, as one who has been keenly interested in educational matters for a great many years, how admirably it seems to me to have been drawn up, and how well calculated it is to fulfil the purpose which is in view.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: My Lords, my attitude towards this Bill is as friendly as that of the most rev. Primate who has just addressed the House. I do not propose to follow the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, or my noble friend who sits near me, over the points of the Bill. It is not necessary. I only wish to make a few observations. The real im-

929
portance of this Bill is not its clauses and provisions, taken by themselves, but the fact that it provides a skeleton on which a living organisation develops. The organisation is a very living one in Scotland, and the framework of this Bill is what it is because Scotland has reached the point which has not been reached in England, which has not been reached easily even in Wales, with the result that you could not have brought forward this Bill in either of those two parts of the United Kingdom.
I will make good in a moment what I have just said, but I wish to say first that I think this Bill would have been better if it had been possible for the Government to adhere to the first form in which they brought it in. The first form in which they brought it in, instead of setting up ad hoc school authorities in the different counties and county boroughs, proposed to do what was done with the Education Act in England in 1902—to take the borough and county councils and to give to statutory committees of those councils the powers of educational authorities. The great underlying advantage of that was that it gave a new importance to the county borough and county councils. It made them more akin to local parliaments, with living things to talk about.
What we in Scotland have suffered from, and are suffering from horribly, is that our county councils and even our town councils are in too many cases run in the counties by factors and farmers and people who do not trouble themselves about the most idealistic side of social organisation, and in the towns and cities by persons who have not that keenness which we could desire, and one of the things which I looked forward to when I read the first form of the Bill as it was brought in was that the Government were at last in earnest with the policy of devolution from Parliament to subordinate local authorities which thereby would get a new life, acquire new living interests, and develop into an importance which would tend to relieve Parliament of much that overburdens it to-day. That course was not taken because of the outcry of what is called "our people." I have been in Parliament thirty-three years, and I have never known any good thing carried without the voice of what is called "our people" coming in and being a source that marred it. You attend to what a few very earnest
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people say, professing that they speak in the name of the whole community, and they only speak in the name of the whole community because, owing to the absence of instruction, the people do not understand the point put to them. I feel confident that if the people of Scotland had understood that this Bill was the beginning of the enlargement of the functions and importance of the town and county councils you would have had a very different attitude towards it from that which has resulted from the question being treated as merely one of education. However, there are the bodies. They are not wholly new, because there were county committees on higher education before, and I have no doubt that the thing will work very well. But for myself, I think that a great opportunity of the wider problem being dealt with of relieving Parliament has been missed by the departure from the course which was taken, doubtless because the Secretary for Scotland could not bring himself to do otherwise in the face of the only public opinion that he had to deal with.
The Bill as it stands is a very good one. And why is it a very good Bill? Because it unifies the whole system of education, as the most rev. Primate has pointed out, even to the provision of books for adults, bringing something of the beginning of adult education, a subject which has been taken up by the Workers Education Association and other bodies in this country, but which up till now has received no support from the State except what is given in this Bill. That is not all. The Bill recognises the unification of the whole system of education in Scotland. The Act of 1908 had gone a good way towards breaking down altogether the supposed line of demarcation between primary and secondary education. We do not know what that line of demarcation means in Scotland, and this Bill obliterates anything there was before.
Moreover, besides this Bill and alongside it, and in anticipation of its passing, great changes have been going on. The noble Lord who sits near me (Lord Balfour of Burleigh) spoke of the extension of the period of being at school and the consequent retardation of the age of going to the Universities. That is quite true, and it is because of the very inportant system which is largely due to the labours of the Scottish

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Education Department. You could not have brought forward this Bill, you could not have had the life and vitality that there is in Scotland in the whole educational system, were it not for the fact that in Scotland you have a really excellent system of secondary schools. I wish we had it in England. We have not even approached it. In Wales the situation is far from perfect, but in Scotland secondary education has developed, and the functions of the State in connection with secondary education are constantly developing also. What has been the result? Why, lately the whole of the teachers in Scotland, elementary and secondary and some of the University teachers, came in and unified themselves into one great organisation. The teaching profession in Scotland has not got any of the trade unionism which is apt to result when you take a section of the elementary teachers and band them together, almost exclusively concerned with questions of salary. You have there a much larger body with a magazine which is a perfectly admirable production, and showing a guiding spirit in education which is of the utmost importance to the State.
On the Table of this House there has lain for some time an Ordinance which was made under the provisions of the Scottish Universities Act, 1889. It has lain on the Table, and I am confident that there are only two of your Lordships who have read it—my noble friend who sits here (Lord Balfour of Burleigh) and myself. The purpose of that Ordinance was to make a revolution in the relation between the schools and the Universities in Scotland, and it has now received the Royal Assent and the revolution will take effect. Because we have a good system of elementary schools we have been able to abolish altogether what is understood in England by matriculation examinations. In Scotland a normal mode of access to the University will be the record of three years' attendance in one of these secondary schools of which I spoke and with which this Bill deals. And on the certificate of the teacher—on what the teacher records of his observation of the pupil, countersigned by the observation of the inspector—will depend the right of access of that pupil to the University. The young man or the young woman will be taken in the University on that certificate without any matriculation examination. The boundary of the University, in other words, is made to join on to the boundary of the secondary school. This
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is a great step that could only have been taken because of the development which has taken place in secondary education in Scotland, and which this Bill recognises and stimulates, and I think it is an object lesson to the whole country. You could not do that in England, because you would debar a very large number of people from access to the University. You have not got the secondary schools to make it possible. You would shut out the lower-middle and poorer classes altogether.
But that is not all. Right through the tendency is to make the whole of education one in which the passage from elementary to higher forms is a matter of course. With the bursaries of which my noble friend spoke, and with the new arrangements that are taking place in the country, a great change is in operation. If you go to a Scottish railway station near a village any morning at half-past eight you will see the platform of the station crowded with children who are going into the nearest town where they can get the higher form of school than the School Board school in their village, and the system is developing of sending the children to the neighbouring secondary schools at every turn. That will be stimulated and developed by the provisions of this Bill, and with its stimulation and development come the raising of the level of the whole system, because the requirements of the secondary school react on the efficiency of the elementary school.
There has been some reference to the continuation school, and I was glad that the most rev. Primate interposed to make clear what the continuation system means. It means in Scotland what it means in England. It means that when education stops in the ordinary sense then the boy or girl going on to the workshop is going to be instructed compulsorily during the day and instructed compulsorily in a way which I think it is to our credit in this country to have introduced. Compulsory schools—trade centres, as they used to be called—were well known on the Continent, and it was from the Continent that we borrowed the idea, but we have taken a method of our own in connection with these schools. Instead of their being simply schools where a trade is taught this Bill enables you, if you look at the general words and the etceteras which have been put in, to teach almost anything in the continuation schools.

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First of all, great stress is laid on English language and literature. That is quite right. It is the subject with which you can do most under these conditions. But you may add almost anything else you like that is suitable for a general education. Then comes in the reference to the special education of the young workman and the young workwoman. But this gives room for the teaching being what is called in technical language significant teaching—that is, teaching by which you can get in a great deal of science, perhaps a great amount of literary excellence, and many things which do not come under the head of technical training at all, giving life to the work of a young person, who is naturally interested because it bears closely on the interpretation of what he or she is concerned with in daily life. So that the continuation school is much more than a technical school; it is really a continuation of primary education, and it has the possibility of crossing over, by means of bursaries, to the full secondary course and the University course beyond that.
I do not desire to occupy your Lordships' time any longer with a Bill about which, I think, we shall probably all be agreed. Only one word about the religious question. A very sensible settlement has been made. We always make sensible settlements on questions of this kind in Scotland. If the advice of those had been taken who wanted to make religious education compulsory in the schools you would have had an outcry, an uprising from the teachers. You cannot do it without imposing indirectly, however little it may be, a test upon the teacher; the education authority is bound to look to their religious instead of their technical qualifications. With the voluntary system you avoid that difficulty. The authority takes these things into account, but it is not under the same kind of obligation as if a duty is imposed by Statute.
Another admirable feature of this Bill is the way in which it has dealt with Cat hobo and Episcopalian schools in Scotland. They are denominational schools up to the eyes, but we have taken them bodily over in Scotland without winking in the process. That could only be done by people who regarded these things with, I think, a certain sense humour. There was a great jest really in the old Scottish Education Act of 1872, to which the noble and learned Lord has referred. The
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preamble said that whereas it was desirable to continue the system of religious education according to use and wont in Scotland and to make provision for it in the Act—but then comes the Act with a great many clauses and not one single word about it. This time it is still more subtle. You have it in an Act that the education authorities may, if they like, continue to educate people according to use and wont. Let nobody say that a Scotsman cannot understand a joke when the whole people has accepted a Bill which contains such a clause. But it is just the sort of Bill the people want; it will work out quite smoothly; they will take what they want, if they can get it, but if you had tried to force it down their throats, as I think some rather wanted to, they would have objected; the people of Scotland would not have had it. Anyhow, we have got a very sensible Bill, on which I think we can whole-heartedly congratulate the Government, and I hope that this will be the view which your Lordships will take.
LORD PARMOOR: My Lords, may I make one remark as regards the provisions for religious instruction which are contained in this Scottish Education Act? I have always upheld that religious instruction is not only the most important element in education, but that it could be settled satisfactorily if you approached the problem in a tolerant, wide-minded spirit. It appears to me that an admirable solution has been made in this present Bill, and I agree with what the right rev. Primate said, that when the occasion arises to settle the question in England I hope that similar proposals may be made. The noble and learned Lord on the woolsack who called attention to Clause 19, which deals with voluntary or denominational schools, pointed out the conditions under which they might be taken over. I should like to emphasise what he said as regards teachers, because, after all, the question of religious instruction depends on the character, capacity, and qualifications of the teacher by whom that instruction is given. And the provision under subsection (3) (ii) of Clause 19 appears to me to be a solution of the whole matter on wide-minded and tolerant principles. It is this—
"All teachers appointed to the staff of any such school" [that is denominational school] "by the education authority shall in every case be teachers who satisfy the Department as to qualification—"

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And then these words appear—
"and are approved as regards their religious belief and character by the representatives of the church or denominational body in whose interest the school has been conducted."
From a very considerable knowledge of at any rate lay opinion with regard to denominational schools in England, I am sure I may state that a provision of that kind which will safeguard the teaching in these schools by the approval as regards religious belief of the teachers by representatives of the church or denominational body in whose interests the school has been conducted would, I believe, be accepted as a satisfactory settlement of this difficult question.
And not only is there that provision, but there is a further one. In order that the religious education may be a reality there is also power to appoint a supervisor who, again, is to be approved as regards his religious belief and character by representatives of the church or denominational body. And therefore you have the two-fold guarantee—first of all, that the teachers themselves shall be properly qualified, and then that the teaching shall be supervised by a representative approved by the church or denominational body in whose interest the school has been conducted. It appears to me that by those two provisions you get a tolerant solution of any religious difficulty. It has been pointed out that perhaps the religious difficulty has been less in Scotland than in England, but I do not think that affects the principle as regards its proper solution. And, of course, it is known that in Scotland there has not been the same statutory disability as in England with regard to the method of religious teaching to be given by the local authorities.
There is only one other provision of the Bill to which I wish to call attention and that is Clause 24. Attention has already been called to it, but I am sure it is in accord with the suggestions which were adopted on a wider scale in this House as regards the electoral machinery for Parliamentary purposes. Here we have no politics to trouble us, and, as the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has pointed out, he desires that there shall be equal representation, and not the undue representation of minorities which may arise from the cumulative system. Scotland, as the noble Viscount has said, is a country of great good sense, which looks out for its
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own interests. What do we find? Clause 24 runs—
"The voting at any contested election of members of an education authority shall be according to the principle pf proportional representation, each elector having one transferable vote as defined by this Act."
That is exactly the provision in terms which many members of your Lordships' House sought to introduce for purposes of Parliamentary representation, and I certainly congratulate Scotland on having, as I understand, unanimously introduced it into their Education Bill, thereby getting the best possible system o fair representation of the persons concerned.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

PRIVATE BILLS.
[From Minutes of October 29.]
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificates from the Examiners that the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bills have been complied with:

Commercial Gas.

Portsea Island Gas.

The same were ordered to lie on the Table.

SHEFFIELD CORPORATION (CONSOLIDA TION) BILL.
Report from the Committee of Selection, That the Lord Carnock be proposed to the House as a Member of the Select Committee on the said Bills in the place of the Lord Queenborough; read, and agreed to.
LONDONDERRY AND LOUGH SWILLY RAILWAY BILL.
SOUTH SUBURBAN GAS BILL.
LANCASTER CORPORATION BILL.
Committee to meet on Tuesday next.

LONDON UNITED TRAMWAYS BILL.
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.

SOUTH METROPOLITAN GAS BILL.
Reported, with Amendments.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 2) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 3) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 7) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 8) BILL.
Reported, without Amendments, and re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House to-morrow.
House adjourned at twenty minutes before eight o'clock.