BRITISH POLITICS

Grey River Argus, 1 February 1946, Page 8

BRITISH POLITICS

COAL NATIONALISATION. BILL READ SECOND TIME. LONDON, January 30. T?o Coal Nationalisation Bill was read a second time without a division, after the Commons by 356 votes to 181 rejected a motion by Mr Eden Hia. the Bill be committed to a committee of the whole House. The political correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph News Agency slated- Relaxation of Labour Party discipline to allbw individual members of the Commons greater freedom o. action was agreed upon by the Parliamental?/ Labour Party. The party reduced the number of standing orders providing for parly discipline from ’ten to three. It made it clear that the motive behind the experiment is belief that the “building of a tradition of free discussion combined wi+h the true spirit of good fellowchin co-operation and comradeship m the great cause, is to be preferred to written standing orders.’ Air Vice-Marshal Sir Roderick Hill advocated a strategic dispersal of Britain’-; population and industries on an Empire-wide scale. He said Bntain was “like the stomach of the Empire . T-fe c aid: “Britain is suffering rrom social economic and industrial indigestion. Common sense suggests k would be to the mutual advantage oi members of the Commonwealth if we did what we could to spread out moie Sen y It is surely crazy to go on bunching'up with a kind of gnomic corpulence. In the unhappy event ot peace breaking down, it would be much harder for an aggressor to inflict crippling damage on a system without such a super-sensitive solar plexus.’’