MARRIAGE REFORM BILL

Evening Star, Issue 22688, 30 June 1937, Page 11

MARRIAGE REFORM BILL

SECOND READING IN LORDS LMO DAWSON'S STRIKING SPEECH (British Official Wireless.) Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright RUGBY, June 28. The Marriage Reform Bill to amend the British law of divorce passed the second reading in the House of Lords without a division'. The most striking speech was that made by Lord Dawson of Penn, who saii that it must not be thought that an increase in divorce meant a corresponding increase in marriage failures. Women in the past had not more freedom in sex than they had under the law, but in the years succeeding the war women had enjoyed a freedom of companionship hitherto unknown, and with the freedom of equality had come an increase in sex-consciousness. Lord Dawson said he regretted the omission of inveterate alcoholism and drug-taking as grounds for divorce. " It is only members of our profession who have known the desperate state of fear in a home in which one of the partners is a victim,” he concluded. 1 The Bishop of Birmingham (Dr Barnes) said he supported the Bill because it seemed to be in accordance with the. spirit of Christ.