Women’s Views

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 96, 18 January 1938, Page 5

Women’s Views

Labour Party’s Conference in London

''Dominion" Special Service.—By Air Mall. Ixnidon, December 24. Many controversial topics of the day were discussed at the annual conference of the Women's Advisory Committee of the London Labour Party this week —the war in Spain, the Population Statistics Bill (popularly known as the “Nosey Parker” Bill), and the Government’s Physical Fitness campaign.

The president, Miss Grace Coleman, said that Labour found it difficult to be optimistic to-day. “It seems,” she explained, “that the aggressive nations of the world have learned very well the lesson we have been teaching them since 1931—that aggression pays.

“People in this country are becoming war-minded,” was her conclusion. The delegates by a large majority voted in favour of a resolution calling upon the Parliamentary Labour Party to oppose vigorously the Population Statistics Bill, which will enable the Government to put questionnaires to every woman about the size of her family and other intimate details. The conference was of the opinion, the resolution stated, that no useful purpose could be served by questions of an intimate nature which would require mothers under penalty to divulge the most secret and private matters relating to family life. It was also felt that any necessary statistics could be obtained by other methods.

One speaker, seconding the resolution, said that there was already enough prying into private affairs of the workers.

“We do not want any more nosey parkers coming into our homes,” she said emphatically. “Already in certain hospitals in Loudon, before a woman is admitted for her confinement, she is required to show her marriage certificate.” In the matter of the Government’s campaign to encourage the wider use of national health services, the meeting was of the opinion that this would do nothing to raise the general standard of nutrition, which was the basis of the nation's health, while the rapid rise in the cost of living, for which the Government policy was largely responsible, was increasing the already serious amount of under-feeding