ATTITUDE RESENTED

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 51, 1 March 1934, Page 11

ATTITUDE RESENTED

MACDONALD EXPLAINS

NOT SOLVING PROBLEM

(British Offlclai Wireless.) j (Received March 1, noon.) RUGBY, February 2S. The House of Commons last night defeated by 270 votes to 52 an adjournment motion moved by Mr. Buchanan (Labour) to call attention to the refusal of the Prime Minister to receive a deputation of unemployed marchers or to allow them to proceed to the Bar of the House of Commons. Mr. Buchanan contended that the marchers had acted peacefully and constitutionally. Sir Herbert Samuel, Liberal Leader, supported the motion. The Prime Minister in opposing the motion said that his refusal to see the marchers' deputation implied no lack

of sympathy with the unemployed. Every. Government, including Labour Governments, had received and refused similar requests, and the Trades Union Congress had also refused to receive the marchers' deputations! While agreeing that the men had behaved in an exemplary fashion, he declared that the marches had been arranged by a small body in:an attempt to spread an unconstitutional agitation and so disrupt organised labour. It would not help the practical problem of unemployment to allow a deputation to come to the House of Commons, when the House .was actually engaged upon, a comprehensive Bill on the subject. He maintained that it was adding to the distress to induce unemployed people to march to London and. no Government would countenance such a propagandist move. Last night the marchers hejd various meetings in different parts of London, but no disorder of any kind occurred, and the audiences were in some cases so small that the meetings were abandoned.