BRITISH POLITICS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21243, 26 January 1931, Page 6

BRITISH POLITICS

Members of the Socialist Party at Hoine seem to be apprehensive 1 lest the Government should suffer defeat on the Trades Disputes BilU The decision of the Liberals to abstain from voting on the second reading should ensure that the measure will pass this stage. If, however, the Liberals do not vote against the Bill this week' they will press for amendments in it when it has reached the committee stage. The measure proposes, among other things, to restore to industrial unions the power, withdrawn from them in 1927, to apply members’ contributions to political purposes. The legislation of 1927 prescribed that contributions could not be so applied unless the member expressly, sanctioned it. The Bill that is now before Parliament will permit the application of contributions to political purposes unless the member expressly requires that they should not be so used. Other provisions of the existing law that were enacted in consequence of the general strike in 1926 —provisions relative to intimidation and picketing —are also to be repealed or modified if the measure now before Parliament is accepted. It may be expected that the full strength of the Conservatives will be exerted against the measure, and if the Liberals, as a party, offer opposition to any of the provisions when the Bill is being considered in committee, the Government cannot escape defeat.. It is probably in the expectation of a reverse that Sir Oswald Mosley is now credited with having suggested to the Prime Minister that the Government should submit a programme on Socialistic lines with a view to an early election. An appeal to the country at no distant date seems likely enough in any case, but the Government has not much cause to' anticipate that the result of a general election would be favourable to it in present circumstances, and it would have even less cause if it met the electors with a programme more pronouncedly Socialistic in character than that with which it went to the polls in 1929.