IMPERIAL POLITICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15982, 16 July 1912, Page 7

IMPERIAL POLITICS.

THE FRANCHISE DEBATE. United Press Association —By Eiectrio Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, July 14

Mr Balfour, in the franchise debate, said that the Premier occupied an absurd position. While bis colleagues defended the measure on the ground that it gave everyone an equal right, the ■Premier was of opinion that to grant women a voto would bo a national disaster. If the House accepted women’s suffrage, the Premier was hound to use tho parliamentary machinery to effect what ho considered a disaster.

Mr Asquith repudiated the charge that the Bill was introduced to catch votes. It expressed a policy that the Liberals had advocated for thirty years, and he did not think the House would stultify itself by reversing its previously expressed judgment regarding women’s suffrage. Sir E. Grey, Lord Robert Cecil and several Liberals tabled amendments admitting women. THE INSURANCE ACT.

Over half a million workmen have applied for unemployment books for the payment of contributions under the Insurance Act.

Mr Lloyd George in his speech said that he did not claim that the Insurance Act would bring the millennium, but it brought it nearer. To-morrow would bo known in the annals of tho sick and distressed as a red-cross day. Already nine and a half million of new members had joined the approved societies, and more new members had joined the friendly societies in the last three weeks than in the whole of the past twenty years. The Government would fulfil every pledge. The newspapers announce that similar meetings projected by the Liberal insurance coterie throughout the country to celebrato the enforcement of tho Act wen* largely abandoned owing to the outcry against tho measure and the ■Opposition newspapers ridiculing the so-called Joy Day. HANLEY BY-ELECTION. LONDON, July 15. Mr Arthur Henderson, in an interview, attributed the result of the Hanley by-election to lack of Labour organisation, also the electorate’s desire to keep a Unionist out.