COAL DISPUTE

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 10 December 1926, Page 7

COAL DISPUTE

TERMS OF SETTLEMENT. LABOUR’S CENSURE MOTION GOVERNMENT CRITICISED/ BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. LONDON ,Dec. 8. In the House of Commons, Mr Ramsay MacDonald, leader of the Opposition, moved a censure motion complaining of the Government’s disregard of the Royal Commission’s findings, the Ministry’s partiality to the owners, and the latter’s imposition of harsh terms, the only remedy for which consists in the nationalisation of the industry.

Mr MacDonald said that even one of the Conservative amendments to his motion failed to congratulate the Ministry on what it had done. He recalled that at the Chelmsford by-election recently a Conservative majority of 2000 liud been changed into a minority of 1000, and it was in that form that the Opposition would like to test' the motion, viz., at the ballot box. Mr Baldwin had alienated the confidence which in 1!>24 had brought the country to his feet, while the Ministry had failed to get anything, advantageous out of the money spent on the Royal Commission on the coal mining industry. The offensiveness of Mr Evan Williams, chairman of the Mine Owners ’ Association, had defied the Cabinet, while the incompetence of Mr Cook, the secretary of the Miners’ Federation, had baffled it. The Cabinet became a mere spectator, interfering only as the owners asked.

The country had lost £500,000,000 while the owners were being given time to win. The miners had been taught that might is right, and extremism could be the only fruit of the Cabinet’s policy. It was the duty of the Government at once to go to the country to receive the doom it had earned. Mr Baldwin, in his reply to Mr MacDonald’s accusations when moving the move of censure, said the first crucial blunder made by the miners’ leaders was the rejecting of Sir Herbert Samuel’s report. The men’s loyalty and fortitude was a tragcdv, for it was exploited by incompetent leadership. The Prime Minister criticised the Labour leaders’ lack of courage in not pointing this error out, knowing that men were being fooled by a slogan. The Labour Party was on the horns of a dilemma. It must either throw in its lot with extremism or cut loose from it. Extremism might win them a few industrial seats, but it would never win the country.

Mr Lloyd George blamed the Eight Hours Bill for prolonging the dispute, but Tie asked why Mr MacDonald had not devoted a single sentence to the most important reference in his motion, namely, that of nationalisation. Mr Lloyd George said he could not vote for such a proposal. Mr Winston Churchill (Chancellor of the Exchequer), who was greeted with Labour hisses, said that Mr MacDonald had referred" to Mr Cook’s incompetence, but he (Mr Churchill) was doubtful whether incompetence was an exhaustive description of Mr Cook. He noticed, however, that Mr MacDonald had allowed Mr Cook to get as far as Moscow before he uttered a word. If Mr Cook was incompetent, why should the Government be censured? Mr Churchill ended by deprecating the association of the trade union movement with ordinary party politics. The motion was rejected Ijv 339 votes to 131.

PREPARING FOR NEXT STRIKE. LONDON, Dec. f>. The Daily Telegraph’s Riga correspondent reports that after a four hours’ speech from Mr A. J. Cook, 1 the Trade Union Communist International in Moscow decided to start, preparations for the next British eoaJ strike, and to establish an international fund for this purpose without delay.