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Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 106, 31 October 1931, Page 13

TURNED DOWN

J. H. THOMAS AND N.U.R

IMPASSIONED PROTEST

HEARD IN STONY SILENCE

DECISION CONFIRMED

United I'rcss Association—By Electric Tele* erapb—Copyright. (Received 31sl October, 11 a.m.) LONDON, 30th October. A delegate conference of the ISalional Union of Railwaymen by 75 voles to 5 endorsed the executive's decision that Mr. J. )\. Thomas was not entitled to a pension. Mr. Thomas, accompanied by his wife and son and daughter, attended the conference, and in an impassioned speech protested against the executive's ruling. Pointing to his family sitting in the back of the hall, he exclaimed: "After all niy services to railwaymen why should they allow them to suffer?" He contended that he had never done more on behalf of the railwaymen's standard of living than when he threw in his lot with Mr. MacDonaid. The delegates listened in sloney silence and subsequently requested Mr. Thomas to withdraw. They announced the decision i'oui? hours later.

Mi-. <T. H. Thomas, whose career hrus been bound up with the railwaymen,was fascinated by engines when a "boy. He became an. "engine cleaner while ail youth, and led an engine-cleaners •■ strike when, he was not yet nineteen. By his twentieth year he was a, delegate to the National Conference, and1 for 35 years he has been, prominent in the councils of the National Union of Railwaymen. He began as organisei" for the union in 1905, and at the age o£ 32 he became a member of Parliament^ and president of the A.S.E.S. in tha same year. By 1916 he was general secretary of the N.U.R., and he couducted the great strike of 1919. lii 1926, he was one of those responsible for calling off another general strike, and met with much abuse because ■of that fact. When ho followed Mr,, Ramsay MacDonaid into the National Government and deserted his party, he resigned his position as political and general secretary of the National Union of Raihvaymen, which paid him £1150 a year, and declared that his political action was taken in the sincere convie^ tion that he was rendering not only the best service to the railwaymen but also to the nation. The union unanimously; demanded his resignation from the National Government. His resignation, from the union was the answer. "Compliance with your request would brand me a co ,'ard and a cad," he wrote to his jolct organisation. The Trades! Union Congress thereupon decided that Mr. Thomas was not entitled to a pension. The Dominions Secretary wai greatly affected by the severance of[ his relations with his old fellow-work-men. Tears streamed down his faeij as he left the meeting.

"I have resigned rather than be dis* missed," he said. The Derby Labouf Party, by 103 votes to. 4S, withdrew itsf endorsement of Mr. Thomas as a Labour candidate, but ho was elected by a; majority of 27,000.