ANOTHER EMPIRE TOUR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20060, 29 March 1927, Page 10

ANOTHER EMPIRE TOUR.

REV. JAMES BARR, M.P. A WELL-KNOWN SCOTTISH LECTURER. (From Odh Own Correspondent.) LONDON, February 11. Another parliamentary recruit to the principle oi Empire travel is the Rev. James Barr, Labour member for Motherwell, a congested working class district seven miles south of Glasgow. Mr Barr might have visited the dominions with the parliamentary delegates, but he desired to make his tour ifioro leisurely and to see something of New Zealand. Since his election to .. seat in the House no Labour member has taken his duties more seriously, so that, although he will be away from the sittings of the House for a time, he goes on his travels with the cordial cons-ent of his colleagues and his constituency. Mr Barr, who is 65 years of age, is the son of an Ayrshire farmer. His choice of a scholastic career was a happy one, for at the Glasgow University he took prizes in every one of the seven subjects, which at that time constituted the arts course. He was almost equally distinguished in classics, mathematics, and philosophy. He won the Gartmore Gold Medal, open to the university, for an essay on political economy. Pofessor Veitch offered prizes for vocation work in five different subjects, in one summer, and Mr Barr was first in each of the five. He stood first in both the honours logic and the honours moral philosophy classes, and graduated M.A. with first-class honours in mental ohilosophy. Before he entered politics Mr Barr held two important ecclesiastical posts in Glasgow, and from 1920 to 1925 he was home mission secretary of the United Free Church of Scotland. Now that he is a member of the House of Commons he has not given up his preaching. Every Sunday he preaches in some part of England or Scotland, and he lectures frequently. His famous lecture on Burns he has given 700 times in this country. It is as a lecturer that the people of New Zealand will come in contact with him. for he intends to give a number of lectures on Scottish subjects in all the centres of the Dominion, and he hopes to preach every Sunday. EDUCATION AND NO-LICENSE. Education and no-license are two subjects in which I.lr Barr has taken a special interest. He was for 11 years a member of the School Board of Glasgow, on three occasions first on the poll. On one of these occasions he polled 22,000 votes more than the next candidate. He was in at the beginning of the no-license movement in Glasgow, and during the last no-license campaign he was released from his ministerial work for five months in order to lecture throughout the country. “I was bred on the soil,” Mr Barr remarked when I sa him at the House of Commons, “and I naturally take a great interest ’.n agriculture and the general land policy. I was a member of the committee which recently prepared and issued the agricultural policy for the Labour Party.” Mr Barr mentioned that it was somewhat on the lines of the Lloyd George land policy, but it crosses it in several particulars. j subject one hears little of is Home Rule for Scotland, bi * the member for Motherwell had the honour last session of introducing t». the House the Scottish Home Rule Bill. “It is a very popular measure in Scotland,” said Mr Barr, “and is supported by the Labour Party as well as by a number of Conservatives.” Mr Barr has a brother in Otago who is particularly interested in Clyd. dale horses. Mr Tom Barr, who runs the Ayrshire farm, is a noted authority on stock. Incidentally, Mr James Barr told the story of a man who left the United Presbyterian Church to join the Free Church under his ministry. Questioned as to his reasons for making this change in his religious beliefs, he replied: "A’ weel, the meenister’s brither has an awfu’ skill wi' beasts." Mr Barr will be going out to New Zealand about the middle of June, and he will be away until the end of the year.