BARMAIDS RESPITED.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 143, 16 December 1908, Page 2

BARMAIDS RESPITED.

. m CHANGES IN ENGLISH LICENSING BILL. RESTAURANTS AND SUNDAY CLOSING. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, 6th November., Under the Government Licensing Bill a bar was to be placed to the employment of barmaids. But that has now bsen dropped. On Monday the Prime Ilinister, after listening to an attack by Mr. -Wilfred Ashley (M.P. for Blackpool) on the Unionist side, and Mr. Horatio Bottomley (M.P. for Hackney) on the Liberal side, agreed to knock out of clause 20 of the Bill the subsection by which it was sought to give local magistrates • the power ie ' abolish all the barmaids ill their die- ( trict. MR. BOTTOMLEY'S STATE^ MENT. "The arguments in support of this I clause are mero cant," said Mr. Horatio Bottomley, rising from his usual corner seat «-\rd attacking his own lead ers on the Trr-sury bench. He moved to omit certain proposals, and said they would throv. 100,000 women out of I employment. "You create a democratic eleotciate," he exclaimed with scorn, 1 gibing at the Liberal principle of the j democratic voice, "and you tell it that Jt holds in its hands the destinies of the greatest empire the world has evo' seen, and yet you rush to Parliament to prevent it getting drunk on pollingday ! ° The Liberals laughed their \oudest when Mr. Bottomley implored his leaders to pause on their "downward career. "As an unfashionable, uninfluential, and perhaps unrespected member of the Liberal Party," he said, "I mix among the working classes, and, speaking as a it in of the world and not an armchair politician, I say the provisions have shocked the whole sense of the cemmunity, and have reduced the member of Parliament to the level of the temperance t tub-thumper and his constituents to that of the beasts of the field. Then the Prime Minister gave his concession. So many representations about the barmaid proposal have reached him from so many parts that he was willing to drop it, he told the House. After careful consideration, -I havo determined to ask the committee 'o strike out the whole paragraph relating to women and children." SUNDAY CLOSING. "As regards Sunday closing," said Mr. Asquith, "the House on Friday agreed to a very considerable restriction of tho hours on which publichouses are now open, but' the Government feels that the Justices in particular localities should have the power to determine whether the necessities of the case required the opening of a particular house for even that limited period of time, subject to the right of appeal to quarter sessions. With regard to polling days, I am quite prepared, if it is the unanimous wish of the House, to make the closing of publichouses a statutory enactment." RESTAURANTS SAVED. Later in the evening Mr. Asquith, made a very important announcement. Mr. Balfour and Mr. Lyttelton had pressed him to define the exact position of restaurants with regard to Sunday closing. "The Government," replied the Premier, "have no intention of ir.tereferenca, with., the legitimate con-^' duct on the present lines of hotels and restaurants. Without committing myselt to tho actual form of words, the Government propose to introduce a proviso _£o the following purpose :—"Nothing in the provisions of the Licensing Acts or this Act with respect to closing shall prevent the supply of intoxicating liquors on any licensed premises on Sunday during the hours for which the premises could have been open for t' c supply of intoxicating liquor immediately before the operation of this Act to any person who is bona fide taking a meal on the premises in a room set apart for this purpose."