LABOUR AMENDMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 32, 7 February 1935, Page 11

LABOUR AMENDMENT

DOMINION STATUS

VOTES FOR WORKERS AND

PEASANTS

(Received February 7, 1.15 p.m.)

LONDON, February 6. 11l the .House of Commons, Major Attlee (Lab.), following Sir Samuel Hoare, moved Labour's amendment-re-gretting that the Bill failed explicitly to recognise India's, right to Dominion status or provide for the enfranchisement of workers and peasants to enable them constitutionally to work put their own social and economic emancipation.

Major Attlee complained that: the Bill gave representation to land and capital, but very, little to labour.. It would establish in India a House' of Lords more powerful and more .reactionary than Britain's and a bank similar to the Bank of England.

Sir Herbert Samuel N (L.) said that the Liberals welcomed the iill as based on the best principles of the British political system. . It was interesting to hear a Conservative statesman preaching the pure doctrine of Liberalism in the matter of Imperial Government. He regretted that the. Bill did not mention Dominion status; .■:■-."•'■■ . ■-,•.i ■!■.• I.

Sir Samuel Hoare interposed to say that he. undertook at a later stage: to' embody Dominion status in a preamble from the Government, 'of India Bill, 1919. :. : - '.-:.-.,,-.■■ -. , :.; ~: ;'

Sir Herbert Samuel said that the only alternative to the Bill, was coercion, a revival of civil disobedience, and commercial boycott, to which Mr. Winston Churchill's policy would inevitably lead. "The real ; issue was: Can.democracy maintain an Empire? Only an Empire treating all citizens with equal justice, irrespective of race and colour, could endure. .-? ... v....... ... ■_;..-.