WHAT IS THE PRICE?

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 37, 6 May 1927, Page 11

WHAT IS THE PRICE?

TRADES UNION BILL WILL COST MORE THAN STRIKE MR. PHILIP SNOWDEN’S PROPHECY By Cable.——Press Association.—Copyright Reed. 2.15 p.m. LONDON, Thursday. All the galleries were crowded for the final day of the Trade Union Bill debate. Long queues in the lobbies vainly tried to obtain tickets. Mr. Philip Snowden said that ordinarily he was not disposed to use provocative language and invective, but he confessed that he felt restraint most difficult in dealing with the present Bill.

Sir Douglas Hogg had shown that he was either ignorant of the provisions, or the clauses had been deliberately and ambiguously drafted in order that the magistrates might interpret them in accordance with their own prejudices. Mr. Baldwin had told them that last year’s events and the prevention of general strikes were the mandate for the Bill. But' even a legal luminary like Sir John Simon was not sure whether it made all sympathetic strikes illegal. Those with practical experience did not doubt that it did. “The Bill makes it a criminal offence to coerce the Government,” said Mr. Snowden. “What do governments exist for except to be coerced. It is the Opposition’s duty to coerce- and harass Governments. I can imagine only two circumstances in which a general strike would succeed. The first, if the Government entered a war obviously against the wishes of an overwhelming majority of the people, and secondly, where Governments sought without a mandate to pass a measure against the wishes of the great majority of the people. Do you think a declaration that the general strike Is illegal if it is going to prevent one? “Of course not. All your pains and penalties will not have the slightest effect. How are you going to deal with 5,000,000 strikers. Bring them all to the law courts?”

A Conservative interjector: We’ll take the leaders first.

Mr. Snowden: The Bill says nothing about dealing with the leaders.

“The Bill will not prevent general strikes, but it will prolong them if they occur. There cannot be Imagined anything more likely to promote a general strike than the Bill. As in his famous declaration last year Sir John Simon told them that the. general strike is at present illegal. Sir Douglas Hogg quoted Justice Astbury’s judgment to the same* effect. Why in the name of common-sense arouse such bitterness and turn the country into a cauldron of political controversy, merely in order to declare the existing State law the only reason for the Bill. “It is the ‘Diehard’ Conservatives who have forced it on tile Government. “Sir Douglas Hogg told us that inclusion of employers would be useless and Inequitable. I agree that no language in any Act can place the workers and employers on an equal footing. Employers have a thousand means of coercion at their disposal which the legislation does not affect. They can close down their works, go short-time and dismiss men without reason. The industrial history of Britain has furnished no more glaring instance of organised coercion of the Government than the Mine Owners’ Association practised last year.

“Would to God the Government instead of throwing his apple of discord had provided machinery to settle disputes by reason instead of force, but it be forced through and it will cost the country more than a general strike.”—A. and N.Z.