DEFEAT AVOIDED

Taranaki Daily News, 29 January 1931, Page 5

DEFEAT AVOIDED

BRITISH LABOUR CRISIS decision of the liberals TRADES DISPUTES DEBATE “NO PRINCIPLE AT ISSUE” NARROW MARGIN PROBABLE British Wireless. Rugby, Jan. 27. It is now regarded as practically certain that the Government will avoid defeat by a narrow margin when the division is taken to-morrow night on the Trades Disputes Bill. It is understood that the chief Liberal whip, Sir Archibald Sinclair, anticipates that no fewer than 12 Liberals will vote against the second reading, the majority of the party abstaining from voting. Sir 11. Samuel at Port Sunlight last night declared that the Bill raised no momentous .question of principle and its second reading defeat would be regard-, cd by the working classes in the light that Parliament was not even willing to listen to such a case as they might present. He was of opinion that no issue of principle warranting the ending of the present Parliament was at stake. Considerable significance is attached by the to the motion on unemployment tabled by the Liberals in the House of Commons, forestalling the Conservatives’ intended vote of censure on the unemployment question, which it was anticipated would be so worded as to attract Liberal support. The possibility of the Government accepting the Liberal motion and then ensuring an extension of its term of office with Liberal support is much discussed by the newspapers. The House of Commons to-day continued the debate on the second reading of the Trades Disputes and Trades Unions Amendment Bill. The speeches centred mainly on the legal aspect of the measure.

Sir Boyd Merriman, a leading Conservative lawyer, declared that his party and the country generally desired that the measure should be clearly phrased to ensure that no Government was ever again harassed by such an event as the general Strike of 1926. The Lord Advocate, Mr. C. M. Aiteheson, maintained that the measure simply amended the injustice which the 1927 Act bad imposed on trade unions and declared that it contained nothing which interfered with the ordinary common law.

Mr. G. D. Simon asked the Government to state whether, if events of 1926 recurred, the present Bill would make them legal or illegal. The debate is continuing. Sir John Simon said that the Government had two enormous questions on its shoulders —unemployment and India —yet it chose at this time of crisis to introduce a complicated Bill which could only have been intended to facilitate the" evils which th© country had resisted in 1926. The Government well knew that the Bill would never become law. It would be discussed and emasculated for months, but honour would be satisfied; the Government would have done its duty to the Trades Union Council. Mr. Lloyd George was right in declaring that the Ministry had given attention to everything except the question for which it had been elected to deal —unemployment’.