BRITISH COAL STRIKE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19906, 28 September 1926, Page 9

BRITISH COAL STRIKE

VIEW OF FEDERATION. SETTLEMENT ESSENTIAL. IMPORTANT EVENTS PENDING. (Pren Association—By Telegraph—Copyright.)

LONDON, September 26. After tabling the Emergency Regulations motion, the Government intends tomorrow to move the adjournment of the House in order to provide an opportunity for a general debate on the coal dispute. Mr Baldwin will make a general state-

ment dealing with the recent negotiations. Mr Ramsay MacDonald and Mr Lloyd George will lead Labour and Liberal attacks. _ _ It is an open secret that a majority of the Miners’ Executive has concluded that the time has come to obtain some sort of settlement in order to save the existence of the federation. The executive will meet the Parliamentary Party on Monday, the council of

the Trades Union Congress on Tuesday, and the Miners’ Delegate Conference on Wednesday. Mr Ramsay MacDonald, in an interview with the Daily Herald, said that the Government must be made primarily responsible for the situation that the industry is now facing, but the Labour members would continue their efforts to secure a settlement. . Mr Cook, speaking at the Memorial Hall, said he wished Mr Baldwin to remember that he was the Prime Minister, and not a coal owner. The fact that over 300,000 miners seldom brought home £2 per week was at the bottom of the present struggle. The coal owners would have been beaten long ago but for the protection of the State. It would be many weeks yet before the struggle was finished. Starvation might do it, but a settlement thus imposed would be broken down as soon as possible. He concluded by saying that every Labour member would be in his place in the House of Commons on Monday and Tuesday, and there would be a memorable scene.—A. and N.Z. Gable.