BRITAIN'S UNEMPLOYED

Taranaki Daily News, 11 February 1928, Page 13

BRITAIN'S UNEMPLOYED

ADDRESS-IN-REPLY DEBATE LABOUR AMENDMENTS MOVED STATE OF COAL INDUSTRY Bj Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. Received Feb. 10, 5.5 p.m. A.P.A. and Sun. London, Feb. 9. In the House of Commons, Mr. Arthur Henderson moved a Labour amendment to the Address-in-Reply. He declared that a quarter of a million miners would never again be required in the coalfields. The position in South Wales was unprecedentedly bad. The Eight Hours Act was the direct means of adding 100,000 to the unemployed and without its repeal there would never be good relations between the miners and the mine-owners. Personally, he believed the nation as a whole was in a worse position than in 1914.

Mr. Neville Chamberlain, in replying, said it was fallacious to blame the Eight Hours Act for the increase in unemployment. The Act reduced the price of coal 2s 8d a ton and resulted in more being mined and marketed. Unemployment was not general but was concentrated in the basic industries—coal, iron and steel—in which there was a permanent surphis of labour. The Ministry of Labour was operating with several training schemes with a view to the transference of men from the black spots of unemployment to other districts and other employment. Ninetytwo per cent, of those trained to woodwork, plastering and painting had obtained work. Nearly 1600 miner trainees had gone to the Dominions, Mr. R. C. Wallhead said “it was a rather cruel joke to throw the trainees into the competitive market after a week’s training in the new occupations.” Sir William Joynson-Hicks, while sympathising with the recommendation of the grand jury at Birmingham that the convictions recorded against soldiers and sailors killed in the Great War should be erased, regretted that he had been unable to discover a practical method of giving effect thereto.