POLICY OF PROGRESS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 August 1940, Page 2

POLICY OF PROGRESS

IN BRITISH TROPICAL COLONIES. IMPROVEMENT IN LABOUR CONDITIONS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, August 5. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary Air the Colonies, Mr G. H. Hall, in the opening address in a second course of instruction for administrative and labour officers at the Colonial Office, said that three years ago there were only seven colonial dependencies who had either separate labour departments or had appointed full-time labour officers and inspectors. Today the number of such territories was 27 and the number of full-time labour commissioners, advisers and inspectors was more than three times the number in 1937. A large volume of labour legislation of every kind, he added, had been enacted during the last few years. The conditions imposed by the war necessarily entailed some slowing-up of the social progress which had been made, but the Government was determined that no one should have grounds for saying at the end of the war that every thing possible was not clone to maintain vital social services. The trade union movement, concluded Mr Hall, had in the last few years developed with amazing speed in some of the colonies. Tnree years ago there were practically no trade unions at all in most of the colonial dependencies, though the laws permitted their being formed. Today nearly 200 unions had been registered, the majority of which were in Ceylon. Mauritius. Cyprus and the West Indies, though several unions had already been registered in the West African colonies and one or two in the East African dependencies.