I beg to move, That the Regulations made by His Majesty in Council under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920, by Order dated the 22nd day of September, 1926, shall continue in force, subject, however, to the provisions of Section 2 (4) of the said Act. This is the sixth time, I think, that I have moved this Resolution to confirm the Regulations made under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920. On the last occasion when I submitted this Resolution to the House I was accused of having made too lengthy a speech, and I am sure it will be for the convenience of the House that I should not speak so long this time. I do not think it is necessary. [HON. MEMBERS: "Go on!"] A month ago the main accusation against putting these Regulations into force was that there was no real need for them, because the country was so quiet. The House knows, in the main, why, in the view of His Majesty's Government, it is necessary that these Regulations should be passed. We have the Act of 1920 before us, and we are of opinion—and for that opinion we are responsible—that a condition of emergency has arisen, and when such a condition arises it is the duty of the Government to put such Regulations as they see fit into force, subject only to the assent of the House of Commons.

We have from month to month put these Regulations in force and they have from month to month received the approval of the House of Commons. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no!"] At any rate they have been passed by the House of Commons and a majority of hon. Members have expressed their approval. In a House of Commons constituted like the present one very few things could be unanimously passed. I do not intend to repeat the observations which I have made before on this subject. [HON. MEMBERS "Why?"] I will not repeat them out of deference to the susceptibilities of hon. Members opposite. On each occasion I have thought it my duty to give the figures for each month in regard to cases which have come under these Regulations. I am very sorry to have to announce on this occasion that the cases which occurred last month have been much more frequent than in previous months, with the exception of the month of the General Strike. From the 22nd August last to September 22nd, 309 cases have occurred and 212 of them were under Regulation 21; 50 under the Regulations relating to the supply of coal and so forth, and 19 were under Regulation No. 20. I am sure the House will be pleased to know that in regard to these prosecutions there were only 13 cases where the magistrates thought it necessary to inflict the punishment of imprisonment. There were 189 cases in which fines were inflicted, and there are 61 cases still pending.

Has the right hon. Gentleman used his powers under Regulation 33, relating to arrest without warrant?

Those are not powers to be used by me, but they are powers given under the Regulation to the police, and a very large number of those cases have occurred.

May I draw the Home Secretary's attention to the fact that part of Regulation No. 33 can only be used with his assent?

I apologise to the hon. and gallant Member, because I am mistaken. My powers under Regulation No. 33 have not been used at all during the last month. I was confused on this point by the sudden jumping up of the hon. and gallant Member.

I will send the right hon. Gentleman a copy of the Regulation.

The hon. and gallant Member is always very courteous, and I shall be much obliged to him for helping me or correcting me in any way that is necessary. In previous Debates the fear has been expressed that when the miners began to return to work there would necessarily, or at any rate very probably, be steps taken to prevent them going back to work, and that cases of intimidation and even instances of violence would occur. The figures unfortunately prove that this month a number of cases have occurred in those particular districts where there has been more or less a return of the men to work. I will take four counties, namely, Nottingham, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire, where the return to work has been most pronounced.

You are making out a case for the coalowners.

On the 24th of this month there were 17,678 miners at work in Nottingham. In the previous month there were only about 600 at work: there were no cases under the Regulations at all, and this month there are 20. In Derbyshire the number at work has risen from 6,000 to over 20,000, and the number of cases which in the previous month was only four has increased during the last month to 131 cases. Similarly, in Staffordshire, where the rise in the number of miners at work in round figures has been from 10,000 to 16,000, the number of cases under the Regulations has risen from six to 13. In Warwickshire, where the increase in the number at work has been from 5,000 to nearly 12,000, the number of cases under the Regulations is 21.

Will the right hon. Gentleman say where he gets his figures of the number of miners at work?

I get them from the Mines Department, and I get the figures as to the number of cases from the police.

The right hon. Gentleman has given certain figures. Can he tell us what proportion of those totals relates to safety men?

Very roughly speaking, the number of ordinary men at work is something over 100,000, and the safety men must be between 50,000 and 60,000.

The Home Secretary says there are over 100,000 men at work in the mines. Has he made any investigation to ascertain how many of those men were never down the pit at all until the stoppage began?

The right hon. Gentleman said he was dealing with the period between the 22nd August and the 22nd September. Is he dealing with precisely the same dates now?

I am dealing with the period between the 22nd August and the 24th September.

Mr. GRUNDY rose —

I must ask the hon. Member not to interrupt.

I am giving such information as I have in my possession. Perhaps hon. Members will allow me to complete my statement, and they can ask any further questions, because practically every Regulation can be raised in the form of an Amendment, and then I shall be glad to answer questions more fully. The point I was making is that as a larger number of men are going back to work, there has been an increase in the cases occurring under the Emergency Regulations. In the four counties I have mentioned the number has increased from 11 to 191 in one month. I think that disposes of the suggestion that there was no need for these Regulations.

In the previous month, it is quite true that there was a very small number of cases, but, human nature being what it is, it is not surprising that, if miners who are out of work to-day see large numbers of their friends and colleagues going back, they should endeavour, as far as they legally can, to prevent them from doing so. They are, of course, quite entitled—and I do not for a moment say otherwise—they are quite entitled, within the limits of the law, if they can, to persuade any of their colleagues not to go back to work. On the other hand, the responsibility is equally great upon myself and upon His Majesty's Government to see that those limits are not exceeded, and that, if the limits of the law are exceeded—if peaceful persuasion degenerates into intimidation or, even worse than intimidation, into riot—it is the duty of the Government of the day, and it would he the duty of any Government of the day, to step in. It would be the duty of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, if he were in control of the Government at this time, and I am sure he will agree that, if the law were disobeyed he himself would be one of the first to enforce the law as the law stood. We have had his speeches and his professed opinions, and I am quite sure he would not deny that that is the position. An that is solely the position that His Majesty's Government takes up to-day. The law regarding the right of men to work must be maintained, and it is for that purpose, and for that purpose only, that these Regulations are now being laid before the House.

I know there will be questions with regard to one of these cases. The hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. Paling) has very kindly given me notice that he proposes to raise the question of the action of the police at the Bullcroft Colliery. That being so, I think it would be more courteous to him that I should allow him to develop his case against me, and then supply the answer, which I think the House will deem to be a sufficient one. There is only one other point that I should like to mention, and that is with regard to Regulation No. 22, as far as it affects processions. On the last occasion I was asked many questions with regard to my action under this Regulation. There has been only one case during the past month in which I thought it my duty to consent to the application made to me by the Chief Constable of Glamorgan, I think it was to authorise him to prohibit a procession, in which, I believe, an hon. Member opposite was announced to speak. I am always sorry to prevent an hon. Member from speaking, but, in the particular circumstances of the case, I felt it my duty, having regard to the strong case made by the Chief Constable, to grant his request that he might be impowered to prohibit these processions during the particular period in question. That is the only case in which the Regulation has had to be enforced during the past month, and, as all the other cases are the subject of separate Amendments, I will content myself at this moment with moving that the Regulations be accepted.

The Home Secretary began his speech by reminding us that this is the sixth time he has moved this Resolution. It is the sixth time that I am going to oppose it. The Home Secretary was quite under a misapprehension, however, when he said that he felt last time that we objected to the length of his speech. Indeed, we did not. All that we objected to in the right hon. Gentleman's speech last time was its irrelevancy, and to-day his most captious critic could not raise that objection. Last time, when he defended his Regulations, he said: "Give me these Regulations again, because, you see, there are no cases worth speaking about under them. I am asking that these Regulations should be renewed because the country, really, is so quiet." To-day he changes his position, and says: "I have actually got 309 cases." Just think of it—309 cases, with over 1,000,000 men out of work and going through a most critical time. When, as he says quite rightly and as we have to recognise, there is a certain breakaway in certain districts—a condition of affairs that will give him and his police a most trying time—there are 309 cases from John o' Groats to Lands End.

There are two observations that I would make on those cases. First of all, the Home Secretary admits that, of the 309, no fewer than 212 are for sedition. He knows as well as I do that sedition is a thing that is undefinable—that anyone getting up in a temper may utter a few sentences which have no effect at all upon anybody, the worst effect that they have being upon himself, and he regrets them as soon as he has uttered them. [ Interruption .] Really, I am not going to sneer at the Home Secretary. He quite rightly says that we arc human. He knows that what. I am saying is perfectly true, that, on occasions like this, when men have to be got together and when the conduct of a dispute has to be seen to, if he liked to apply that Regulation, instead of 212 cases, he could have had 2,212 cases during the last month; and when he had them there would not be a single case that a man of common sense would think of handing over to the police. That is the situation—309 cases, of which 212 are under Regulation 33—[HON. MEMBERS: "Twenty-one!"]—I get mixed up, like the Home Secretary—under Regulation 21; and only 13 of the cases that have come before magistrates and have been settled by magistrates have been sent to gaol. Really, I was hoping that, before the sixth time of asking came, the Home Secretary would have taken a broad, common-sense view of the matter and stopped the whole thing.

4.0 P.M.

My second observation is this: It may he 309 cases, or it may be 3,009 cases, but that is not the interesting, the sug- gestive and the enlightening figure. What the Home Secretary ought to have told us, and what I should like him to tell us, is how many of the 309 cases could not be dealt with by the ordinary law. That is really the point. The Home Secretary is not justifying prosecutions of evil-doers. No one is asking him to do that. He is not asking the House of Commons to enable him to do that. If he were, I do not know that I would stand here and refuse his Resolution. But what he is asking the House of Commons to do is to say as a preliminary, "We know that the ordinary law is not effective. We know that, if the Home Secretary and the police forces of the country were left with the ordinary law in order to meet the difficulties of this coal dispute, they would be thwarted again and again, to such an extent and in such a number of instances that the whole nation would run the danger of lapsing into a serious state of lawlessness and disorder." That is his case, and, if he cannot make that case out, then he has not: made a case out for his Regulations. If he looks through his 309 cases, he will not find half-a-dozen that could not have been dealt with quite as effectively under the ordinary law as under his Regulations. During this last month, having had a little more leisure than usual, I have been trying to read the cases and to get put into my possession local reports of some of the chief cases that have been tried, some of which are included in the 309 cases, and some of which are cases reported to us last month. I am bound to say that I have not yet come across a case that could not have been dealt with under the ordinary law. Since I started this investigation about a month ago I have not come across a single case that I venture to say, in the opinion of anyone with an absolutely impartial mind, could not have been dealt with under the ordinary law

I have, however, come across evidence by witness after witness—some of them men I know personally, who have been up either as accused persons, or as witnesses—which, though I should not like to say what view I should have taken if I had been on the bench and heard the statements made, judging as a news- paper reader, have impressed me with this, that the existence of these Regulations does give the police force, the chief of police and his subordinates, men who have very difficult work to do, a sort of assumption that the law is rather lax for them as well as for the magistrates who are going to apply the Regulations. I am quite sure that the Home Secretary sees the psychological point that I am making. If he and I have to administer the ordinary law, there is something rigid and severe for us, and we feel that we have to be tremendously careful how far we go, whereas, if Parliament says to us, "This is a special time; this is a special occasion" and if there are Regulations which practically hint to us to this effect—"Use your powers and when you have used them there will not be too rigid an enquiry into the conditions under which you use them," the psychological effect is looseness in the administration of the law.

The right hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that I have said that?

No.

I wanted to he quite clear. It is only hypothetical?

I hope that no one will get that impression from what I am saying. I say that when the House of Commons opens up the law as it were, loosens its rigidity and its sort of be-wigged formality, which is a very important thing to be attached to the administration of the law, and makes it more of an ordinary, casual affair by passing these Regulations, it does have that psychological effect upon what I would call generally the police forces of the country, and consequently, if hon. Members will read those reports as I have read them, they will find very convincing evidence both by witnesses and accused persons to show that when there has been disturbance it bas ant always been solely caused by those who have been brought before the magistrates. Therefore, these very Regulations are multiplying the cases. If the right hon. Gentleman trusted to the ordinary law, first of all, the ordinary law would be good enough for him, and, secondly, his cases would not be so many, and yet not a single criminal would escape. That is my case against him. I respectfully submit to the House that the Home Secretary has not made out a case for his special Regulations. He has made out a case for the law. He has made out a case for the ordinary law. He has made out a case for policemen. He has made out a case for magistrates. He has made out a case for fines and imprisonment. But who asked him to make out a case for that? He is knocking at an open door. He has got to make out a case for special law, special administration, special sentences, and special arrests, and I venture to say that he has not uttered one single sentence that justifies the Resolution that he has now moved.

The right hon. Gentleman, neither on this occasion nor on any other of the six on which he has introduced this Resolution, has attempted to justify it on the only ground on which it could be justified. Not only so, but he admitted to-day that Regulation 33, which gives him the most objectionable power of arrest without warrant, has never been used at all. Is it to be supposed that this House wishes to endow the Home Office with power, which even they are not called upon to use? Surely the power given to the Home Secretary should be adequate for dealing with crime, but not more than adequate, and certainly should not allow him latitude to deal with things which in the judgment of many people are not crime at all. As regards Regulation 21, may I remind the House that the right hon. Gentleman has declined to put at the service of Members even the words of the charge in these cases. I pressed him two months ago, inasmuch as it is almost impossible to get them from the newspapers' reports of these cases, to give us the actual words of the charge, so that we should know what it was people were doing which rendered them liable to fines and imprisonment under Regulation 21. The right hon. Gentleman has declined to put that elementary information at the service of Members of the House of Commons. It leads us to suppose, and rightly to suppose, that the charges are intended to be vague, and that the law is intended to be vague in order to give an opportunity for putting down move- ments and expressions of opinion which in themselves no one would regard as being criminal.

We are sliding into regarding these Regulations as part of the normal law. It is a pitiable thing to see the Home Secretary or the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department getting up month after month and saying, "I have spoken so often about these Regulations; what is the use of saying anything more about them?" The right hon. Gentleman ought to justify them more vehemently and cogently, if he can, every month in, which he continues Le exercise these powers. Hon. Gentlemen opposite are making a great mistake in permitting the Executive to seize these powers. It must be remembered that the day may come when they will not be supporters of the Government but will be Members of the Opposition. Under these powers all the processes of legislation are suspended, and a simple Resolution of the House enables much to be done which in the ordinary course would require sanction by Statute. These Regulations do not merely affect personal liberty, but also personal property and personal conduct. My right hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) yesterday advised the use of one of these Regulations for bringing the coalowners, who are standing in the way of industrial peace, to reason. If the Conservative party insist month after month on passing these Regulations, it will be useless for them to rely upon the vote of the House of Lords in any subsequent Parliament to prevent similar Regulations being put into force again. There will have been a strong precedent. Six times the House of Commons and the House of Lords have consented to these Regulations. The Home Secretary professes to see in them a code.

Hon. Gentlemen opposite may find that the time will come—I will not say it "will find," because I value liberty greater than the power in the hands of any Government—when their acquiescence and their subtleness to-day and on all these occasions in giving the Home Secretary these powers may turn very much to their disadvantage. The Regulations also affect personal liberty. They provide for arrest without warrant upon such charges as attempting to induce someone to do something calculated to cause disaffection among the civilian population. There is much in these Regulations which has no specific meaning at all, and must be interpreted according to the prejudices and political opinions of the bench. Last time we were told by the Under-Secretary of State that nearly every Justice on the benches before which these cases come is interested in the coal industry.

That is a fact.

That is a very interesting admission. Someone moved an Amendment providing that Justices with a financial interest in the coal industry should not try these cases. What was the reply? It was that practically all the Justices had a financial interest in the coal industry. In fact, the Under-Secretary of State said that, if the House passed the Amendment, it would be impossible in some cases to fill the bench. What a bench before which to bring a man charged with attempting to persuade someone to do something calculated to cause disaffection among the civilian population! I see the junior Member for the City of London (Sir V. Bowater) in his place to-day, and I have long wanted the opportunity of asking him a question. He is a magistrate, and sits on the Bench as these other men sit on the Bench, and our case is that, before many of these Benches it is impossible to get a judicial and fair interpretation of such vague charges. About a year ago the hon. Gentleman had brought before him a young man charged with having stolen a newspaper van. The hon. Gentleman first of all congratulated the accused upon the leniency which had been shown—he was one of those who are called "British patriots"—by the Public Prosecutor, an official of the Home Office. That was a strange statement to come from the Bench. Then, in binding him over, he went on to say: "Young fellows like you ought to be in the police force." These are the people who are to be turned into police constables, and who, in the judgment of the hon. Member for the City of London, are to write down in their notebooks what words they consider are calculated to cause disaffection. "Your efforts to be good citizens"—that was the description from the Bench—"would be best promoted by joining the police force." Is the hon. Gentleman surprised that there are people who object to putting these powers into the hands of magistrates who exhibit such bias?

Who are the Ministers who are claiming these powers? There is the Under-Secretary of State. I take him first. He is of the opinion that the people of this country have a selection. They can either be loyal to the King and Constitution, or loyal to the Red International, but if they are loyal to the King and Constitution they must be Conservatives. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] If hon. Members question that, let me give a quotation: Captain Hacking, M.P., and Two Loyalties. A person whose loyalty to King and Country and Parliament in which the country had grown great, and through which we had evolved to our present structure. That was loyalty to the Conservative party. The other loyalty was the loyalty to the Red International. What are unhappy individuals like myself—[ Interruption .] That is the mentality of hon. Members. They go to meetings, and explain that the War was fought on behalf of Tariff Reform and the Safeguarding of Industry Act. Now let me take the engaging and always courteous and sportsmanlike figure of the Home Secretary. He has a very strong following among the Conservative party. He is very modest. I notice he told them at Hounslow, "I am not the only strong man in the Government." I will quote his words: I do not want you to believe that the Home Secretary is the strong man of the Government. I am only one member of His Majesty's Government. What modesty! The right hon. Gentleman is about the only member of the Government who has any achievement to his credit. He got a charter for Twickenham.

Is that under these Regulations?

I am afraid that is merely an obiter dictum , or a gloss, as to the right hon. Gentleman's credit. But although he is a stern figure, he is not unbending. I do not know—this is strictly relevant to Regulation 21—how hon. Members have been spending their holidays, but the Primrose League has been giving a great deal of entertainment to the electors of the country. I remember Lord Curzon stating, in propagating the Consumers' League, "Wherever the population is densest, there form a branch." The Primrose League has now a new attraction for the wavering voter. It is called the Cabinet film. I am going to quote a sentence from this film which, believe me, is strictly relevant. When those who enter these fetes and so forth have enjoyed the ordinary round of gaiety, and sung the National Anthem, they are admitted to the film. The film they see is a picture of the Home Secretary on horseback, and then follow these words—relevant to Regulation 21. People who waste their time reading Milton's "Areopagitica" under the impression that it has something to do with free speech should listen to this poem. I am not good at reading poetry, but I should like to read this. These are the words published by and with the authority of His Majesty's principal Secretary of State for the Home Office: Jix the boy for work, Jix the boy for play. Notice the cumulative literary effect of the repetition of the word, Jix the lad when times are bad To keep the reds away. [HON. MEMBERS: "Author!"] It is published by the official organisation of the Conservative and Unionist party, and I say the time has come to put a stop to the performances of this buffoonery, fiddling away the great Charter, and playing chuck-farthing with the Constitution of our country.

I beg to move, in line three, after "1926," to insert the words "other than Regulations 21 and 22."

These are the Regulations with which we are principally concerned. The Leader of the Opposition has already said that the real charge we make against these Regulations is that all the offences they deal with can actually be dealt with to-day properly and efficiently under the existing law. That is a very important question. If it be the truth that the existing law is competent to deal with all these offences, a very large part, if not the whole, of the justification for the continuance of the Regulations disappears, and I want, in the first place, therefore, to follow up what my right hon. Friend said and show that it is actually the fact that the subject matter of Regulation 21 can be and is dealt with by the existing law. It starts off dealing with the question of sedition. Although my right hon. Friend said these offences were dealing with sedition—that is the sidenote of the general Regulation—I think the right hon. Gentleman, as I understood him, indicated that the bulk of them were really cases rather of impeding or interfering with men going to work rather than sedition in its true sense. I did not understand him to say, specifically, that any case actually of sedition had come under these Regulations during the last month at all, but let me assume that it has. We have had in this country a law against sedition. I think the memory of man knoweth not to the contrary. We have laws dealing with treason, with treason, felony and with sedition, and there is inserted into this Regulation the rather dangerous term "disaffection"—dangerous in this sense, that while it is true that causing disaffection is one clement of sedition, it is treated here as a new offence altogether and as something beyond sedition, It is rather interesting to observe that when the discussion on this very Regulation took place under the Emergency Powers Act at the time of the general strike, the Attorney-General told us that disaffection might mean something rather more than sedition at Common Law, that it was not a mere synonym and was, therefore, I understand, to that extent actually extending the law.

My case is that the present law dealing with sedition is quite competent to deal with all seditious utterances of any kind whatever. It deals with any acts calculated to cause disaffection or ill-will, and it only has this distinction from the Regulation, that a person charged under the existing law must be tried before a judge and jury. If the right hon. Gentleman is to make out his case, he has to say, in substance, that there is something in the existing coal stoppage which makes it inexpedient that a man who is seditious should be charged before a jury, because that is the only difference made, that the jury drops out. I should like to know whether the right hon. Gentleman really is prepared to say that, supposing someone is ill-advised enough to make a speech which the police think to be seditious, its effect on coal being won at present is a reason for denying that person the right of trial by jury, because I want to get at the concrete difficulties and mischiefs to which these Regulations are directed. So far as sedition is concerned the only change is the denial of trial by jury. I do not know on what ground that can be justified. A man can be arrested and can stand his trial, he can be committed, the powers of the police to stop him uttering seditious words can all be exercised without prejudice and without doing away with a jury. He can be arrested and committed and brought before a magistrate, and in extreme cases bail can be refused, and yet he may have the right of trial by jury preserved side by side with the removal of a man from the sphere of his seditious operations. I take the strongest ground that can be put against us. On no ground is there any case for removing from that man, even if he is a probable danger, the right of trial by jury.

May I point out the enormous advantage there is in having this trial by jury. I have pointed it out before, but as I have been unsuccessful in converting the Home Secretary, I will point it out again. You get the direction of the Judge. You get that careful consideration of all the elements of the case which must be missing in a rapid trial before a bench of magistrates. Sedition is an offence of so serious a nature that the law has always regarded it as a matter for a jury. The right hon. Gentleman told us on a former occasion that he was only half a lawyer. I am going to say he is three-quarters, if not a whole lawyer. He will remember that in the 18th century one of the great subjects of dispute was the treatment of seditious libel. Was it to be tried by a Judge or by a jury? Were the jurors to be judges of the fact? That was the great question that was raised by Fox's Libel Act. Under that Act, which chiefly dealt with seditious libel and libels of that kind, there was a right to a jury. Under this Regulation, not only is the right to a jury removed, but instead of putting back the law in the position it was before Fox's Act, that a Judge instead of a jury should hear a case, you are now substituting a bench of magistrates for a Judge. So we are actually worse off under this Regulation than before the middle of the 18th century. Then at least you had determination by a jury. Now you have determination by worthy, honourable, conscientious, but legally ignorant gentlemen who serve their country by sitting on a bench of magistrates and who never were intended before these Regulations were passed to exercise any such functions. So much for sedition.

I pass now to that Section of the Regulations the object of which is to prevent people interfering with the right of others, and impeding the distribution of food, and so on. I have pointed out before to the right hon. Gentleman and I pointed out to the Attorney-General at the time of the general strike, that the words in the Regulation: Nothing in these Regulations shall prevent a person peacefully persuading another to strike, must mean something. Whatever the Regulations may mean, they do not destroy the rights, whether they are wise or unwise rights, which exist under the Trade Disputes Act, permitting peaceful picketing. The Attorney-General, in answer to me, agreed with my proposition. No Regulation can make it an offence for any person to take part in a strike by peacefully persuading any other persons to take part in the strike. Regulation 21 provides: A person shall not he guilty of an offence under this Regulation by reason only of his taking part in a strike or peacefully persuading any other person to take part in a strike. In the absence of any Regulation to that effect, the law as it stands to-day in regard to peaceful persuasion is unaffected. Tinder the existing law, directly persuasion ceases to be peaceful the offender falls under the penalties of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, 1875. As the Home Secretary has said, and I agree with him, directly persuasion ceases to be anything but absolutely peaceful, it falls under the Act of 1875. Therefore, the existing law is adequate to deal with these cases. There is nothing to justify the existence of an extraordinary law.

May I now deal with a point which is even more fundamental? The Emergency Powers Act as a whole can only be used when there is a state of general emergency. When you have any dispute which is not of such wide dimensions as to constitute a general emergency, you cannot pass these Regulations; you cannot alter the law. You have to rely upon the Act of 1875. In other words, you are in this absurd position, that if the whole of this dispute were limited to the Midlands area you could not use these Regulations, but because other men are out of work in other parts of the country you have a dispute of such general dimensions that in the Midlands area you can use these particular Regulations. That is a wholly illogical position. I do not believe that it was ever intended by the authors of this Emergency Powers Act that these sort of Regulations should ever be drafted. I have read the discussions which took place on the Second Reading of the Emergency Powers Bill in 1920, when the late Mr. Bonar Law and the present Home Secretary spoke. On that occasion the right hon. Gentleman was by no means so sure of the expediency or the validity of these Regulations as he is to-day. He got up, I will not say in a captions spirit—perhaps that is not the right word to use—but in a guarded, careful, and criticising mood, and I do not blame him. On the Second Reading of that Bill in 1920, under which the present Regulations are made, he said: I have felt a real anxiety with regard to this Bill, not because some such Bill as this is not needed. … My anxiety is of an entirely different character. It is an anxiety as to any alteration in the constitutional position of the House of Commons. I am not arguing that powers should not he given, for the Leader of the House has convinced me that powers should be given to the Government; but this Bill, in effect, rivets for all time the previsions of these Defence of the Realm Act Regulations on the country, and does it without any interference by Parliament. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will not want to run away from his own Language— The Leader of the Opposition told us that the Regulations made by the Government might last for fourteen days. Under the provisions of this Bill, if it is passed and Parliament is not sitting, the Government may declare that an emergency has arisen, and then Parliament need not be summoned for fourteen days, during the whole of which time the fresh powers under this Bill, and any Regulations made under them, could be put into operation, and then when Parliament meets there is a further fourteen days during which the Regulations apply until a Resolution is passed by the House to the contrary. So it is clear the Government may make any Regulations they like within the four corners of this Bill. Heaven knows, the Bill is wide enough, and those Regulations may enure, whatever Government is in power, for 27 days at least if Parliament is not sitting. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say: I am not at all sure as a Member of the House of Commons that it is wise to give any Government such enormous powers as those uncontrolled by the action of Parliament.

I was not dealing then with this Bill.

The right hon. Gentleman was dealing with the power which exists under this Act of putting Regulations into force before they obtain the consent of Parliament. He went on to say: This Bill deals with the preservation of peace, with questions of food, light, transport, in fact everything which conduces to the well-being of the people of this country. The Government can make any Regutions. They may commandeer under these Regulations any man's property—it may he right or wrong—food or coal, and the Government have the power to do that without the intervention of the House of Commons. I am not at all sure that under the Bill as it is now drawn they cannot go further and make Regulations—I believe they can—declaring enforced labour on any one of us in regard to the distribution of coal, transport, or what not."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th October, 1920; cols. 1420–1421, Vol. 133.] I do not propose to read the whole of what the right hon. Gentleman said, but I think he will agree with me that he did feel at the time that Regulations under this Act should be used with extraordinary caution and care, not merely with the consent of the House of Commons, but that the use of them altogether should be a matter of extraordinary care. I want to lay down this proposition—I know it is useless to expect the right hon. Gentleman to accede to it in the middle of this dispute—that on another occasion the right hon. Gentleman should reconsider these Regulations and delete all those which are really unnecessary. Take the law as it exists, confine his disciplinary Regulations merely to those cases which he thinks go beyond the ordinary Common Law, and not abolish the right of trial by jury. If he does that, then I think that if we are brought face to face with such a situation again, it will not be necessary to have six or seven debates on these contentious Regulations.

I have never heard the right hon. Gentleman give an answer to my question as to why he wishes to dispense with the right to a jury. I have asked that question six times, and I ask it for the seventh time. I have never had an answer. If and when the right hon. Gentleman does answer, will he say in what way the present law is inadequate? Will he point out in what way the present law is not adequate to deal with the matters contemplated in Regulation 21. It will be idle for the hon. and learned Member for Argyll (Mr. Macquisten) to give us a general speech on the deficiency of trade union law. That may or may not be the case, but it has nothing to do with these Regulations. This Regulation does not deal with the question of strikes. It only deals with what we may call. criminal acts. If those are dealt with by the ordinary law, then, in Heaven's name—if I may quote the hon. Member's pious ejaculation on the last occasion—why not resort to the general law? I have also an objection to Regulation 22. That Regulation deals with public meetings and processions. There the right hon. Gentleman may say that he is taking powers which are not covered entirely by the ordinary law. I hope hon. Members will bear in mind this fact that it is only when you get an enormous cessation of labour which practically spreads over the whole kingdom that these Regulations come into operation at all. You may have an area teeming with sedition, full of disaffection and where all sorts of violence and riot is going on, but you cannot use the Regulations under this Act, because the whole thing is covered by the provision that the trouble must be of such a general nature that it imperils the supply of food, fuel, etc., for the whole country. The whole thing is illogical. Emergency arising from want of food, fuel, etc., is one thing, while emergency arising from riot and disorder is another. Some hon. Members seem to think that in any limited area these Regulations can be brought into force. Let me refer to the governing words of the whole matter. It is only when it appears to His Majesty that any action has been taken or is immediately threatened by any persons or body of persons of such a nature and on so extensive a scale as to be calculated, by interfering with the supply and distribution of food, water, fuel, or light …. that action can be taken. That means that the emergency must be something in the nature of a general cessation of labour. You can have a general cessation which is absolutely peaceful, and you can use these Regulations. On the other hand, you can have a partial cessation which is absolutely violent, and you cannot use these Regulations. If we consider what was the intention of Parliament when it passed the original Act, we shall find that it only uses the words "preservation of peace." The whole of this vast mass of Regulations is like a pyramid depending upon the words "preservation of peace." I cannot believe that it was the intention of. Parliament, when it passed the Act, to preserve peace by doing away with the trial by jury. How do you preserve peace by doing away with trial by jury?

When the hon. and learned Gentleman refers to these Regulations as a pyramid depending upon the words "the preservation of peace," I would point out to him that if he looks at Section 2 of the Act, he will see that it provides that Regulations may be made where His Majesty may deem it necessary for the preservation of the peace, for securing and regulating the supply and distribution of food, water, fuel, light, and other necessities, for maintaining the means of transit or locomotion, and for any other purposes essential to the public safety and the life of the community.

I am much obliged to the right. hon. Gentleman. Of course, the main object of these Regulations, and that is my case, is to preserve the supply of food, fuel, light, etc. I agree that the words "essential to the life of the community" are inserted to ensure that the people should get food, fuel and the necessities of life during the cessation of work, but it is important to note that these Regulations depend upon the words "preservation of peace." I have not dealt with those things not relevant to Regulation 21, concerning the supply of coal. This Regulation is mainly designed for the preservation of peace.

Regulation 21 deals not merely with sedition, but with any Act likely to impede, delay, or restrict the supply- or distribution of food, water, fuel, light, or other necessities. The very Regulation which the hon. and learned Member suggests does not deal with these matters does, in fact, deal with them.

What I was saying was that the Act itself cannot make it an offence for a person peacefully to persuade another person to take part in a strike. You come down to this: The existing law, under the Act of 1875, makes intimidation or molestation already an illegal act, and the only thing that this Regulation does is to do away with trial by jury.

This is summary jurisdiction, not an indictment. In the old days you would have had an indictment and a very heavy penalty. Here you have a penalty of only three months.

That is an entirely different point, and I quite agree with my hon. and learned Friend. When he says that this is summary jurisdiction, not an indictment., he is saying what I am saying. The hon. and learned Gentleman will agree that the fact of indictment necessitates a jury. The fact of summary jurisdiction means no jury. Therefore, the effect of the Regulations is to allow a person to be tried otherwise than by a jury.

What would be the effect if the Home Secretary found that "it appeared to him" that there was a state of general disaffection, and it was entirely local, and it "appeared" to no one else? Is the Home Secretary's view sufficient?

My hon. and learned Friend should put that question to the Home Secretary. One of the advantages of sitting on the Opposition side of the House is that one has not to answer questions. I think the answer is that the thing is so loosely worded and so contrived that it has only to appear to the Home Secretary that such and such a state of affairs is so, and it is so. He has merely to contemplate a state of affairs, and it is so. The hon. and learned Member will remember that the Early Fathers spoke of the Deity contemplating, and it was so. These Regulations go very much beyond "the preservation of the peace." If the Home Secretary will read the speech which was made by the late Mr. Bonar Law in introducing the, Emergency Powers Act on the date I have mentioned, he will find that there was not a shadow of a suggestion before the House of Commons at that time that the general structure of the law or the nature or ambit of offences was to be enlarged or altered in any way. The Whole of his speech was devoted to the emergency which he said was very critical, because it would deprive the country of its fuel supply. He said it did not apply to fuel only. He spoke of huge stocks of coal. He said: It, is obvious that we must have under our control the means of transferring those necessaries of life.''—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th October, 1920; col. 1400; vol. 133.] Then he went on to give details, and one was the preservation of the peace. There was not a suggestion of an extension of disaffection, not a suggestion of persons being arrested, "because a situation has arisen, etc." It was the "preservation of the peace." What can that mean? It can only mean that where people commit specific breaches of the peace they may be specifically dealt with under the Regulations. I believe that this whole matter and the tendency of legislation in recent years is to take an Act, and with slender authority to build up a whole mass of bureaucratic Regulations. To such Regulations right hon. Gentlemen opposite do not object when they deal with the liberty of the subject, but they are the first to object when they deal with the liberty of capital. Yet the principle is exactly the same. The liberties of persons should be definitely secured in legislation, and if legislation does not completely and definitely say what the rights of authorities are this House ought to look with the greatest jealousy on interferences such as are here suggested. It is for that reason that we oppose and shall continue to oppose such a Regulation as this. If there were any Conservatives on the other side of the House—I do not believe that there are—they would agree with us in this protest against this needless and reckless destruction of the Constitution.

I beg to second the Amendment.

The Home Secretary seems to have changed his ground somewhat to-day. On previous occasions he has argued in favour of these Regulations on the ground that there has been comparative peace throughout the country, and that that was due to the Regulations being in operation. He told us that the Regulations had prevented trouble. To-day he argues that we should have the Regulations continued because a greater number of cases of disturbance have occurred during the past month than during any previous month. I am interested, however, in bringing to the notice of the House what has occurred in my own constituency. No doubt the Home Secretary will have received a letter from the Urban District Council of Adwich-le-Street, in whose area a baton charge by the police took place. The letter reads: A meeting of the Urban District Council of Adwich-le-Street was held at the Council Offices on Tuesday, the 21st day of September, 1926. There followed a list of those who were present and a record of the passing of the following resolution: Mining Dispute. It was resolved that. this Council strongly protest against the action of the police in batoning innocent men, women, and children in a most callous and cowardly way at Carcroft on the evening of Wednesday, the 15th instant, and that copies of this resolution he forwarded to the Home Secretary, the Chairman of the Standing Joint Committee, and the Member of Parliament for the Division. The resolution was supported by all the members present with the exception of one who voted against it. I do not quote the names because I do not think they are necessary. For some time past, at the pit mentioned, there has been a difference of opinion as to whether safety men should be allowed. This question has caused some heat among the various factions. Some were in favour and some against. I believe that the colliery company could have avoided all the issue if, when they got consent for the safety men to work, they had used the power judicially. They did not do so, and the result was that the men were withdrawn and a certain amount of temper was created. The police, who have such an idea of their duties, and seem so anxious to carry them out as regards working men, would create a better impression if they were as anxious to carry out their duties with the managers and the people who may have been responsible by their injudicious statements for creating heat and temper amongst the working-class people. I leave the matter at that.

This trouble occurred a week last Wednesday night. Several hundred men and women were congregated before the pit gate. They did not get off the main road, for the pit gates are on the main road. Certain blacklegs were at work. The meeting passed part of its time by singing the "Red Flag," and a certain amount of booing was indulged in when some of the men came from work. I grant that, after the Home Secretary's statement last month that in his opinion booing was unlawful, and after the people had been warned, they ought not to have booed. But they did boo. I suppose that that will be counted an offence against them. These were the only two things that could be levelled against them. Police were brought from Doncaster. It was stated by one of them that two minutes would be allowed for the meeting to disperse and that then a charge would he made. All the evidence that I have been able to collect seems to suggest that although the intimation was given that a charge would be made in two minutes, the two minutes were not allowed, but the charge was made almost immediately after the intimation, and as a result many men and boys suffered grievous bodily injury.

I know the people down there. I have been brought up among them, and I worked for years amongst them as an organiser and a man in the pit. I know that there is not a better body of law-abiding citizens in any neighbourhood in this country, and I am convinced that if the police, or the man in charge of them, had gone to that meeting and had stated simply that the people were meeting unlawfully and would have to disperse in two or three minutes, every man, woman and boy in the crowd would have gone home peacefully and there would not have been the slightest trouble. But these Regulations give the police a licence. Here are some of the cases of injury. The police were not content with batoning men. I have here details of two cases of boys, 16 years of age, who Suffered as a result of this charge. I have been down to the district and personally investigated the cases. I saw one boy. He does not work at the pit at all. He was going home at the time of the charge. I believe he had been to the picture palace. He was struck twice on the back of the head, knocked down, and left unconscious on the road, until another man picked him up and got him home. I went to see him two days afterwards and he then bore the marks of the batoning upon his body very plainly. When he was knocked down he fell in the roadway on his face. He had a huge scar over his eyes and on his nose and down the whole of his cheekbone where the flesh had been scraped off when he came in contact with the road.

5.0 P.M.

Another ease is that of a boy, 16½ years of age, who was batoned on the shoulders and arms, and bore the marks of it in the shape of a huge black bruise. Another case is that of a young man whom I have known personally for 12 years. He is a man of the most pacific disposition, who was going home with a child, nine weeks of age, in his arms. He was batoned by the police and he carries; the marks. He was hit over the eye and in the wound several stitches had to be inserted. I have a mass of evidence here from various individuals who suffered. Here is the evidence of a man who lived near the scene of the charge. He says: On Wednesday night, 15th September, about half-past ten, my daughter and myself were surprised by a rush of people, men and women, bursting into the back yard in an awful state of excitement. I went to the door and invited them all to come into the house, and then went to the back yard door to look outside. Here I was met by six policemen. I was never outside my own back yard, but one of the policemen ordered me to go inside. I said, I am all right, I live here,' and he said, 'Go inside and don't look outside,' and he pushed me across my back yard, through the kitchen door, and banged the door to. The language he used was as bad as ever was used at Billings-gate. My next door neighbour was bludgeoned while standing at his back door, the bludgeon being broken over him. The cries of men and women were agonising outside for some time, and I had some people here till after midnight, frightened to go home. This is a true statement, and I can substantiate it by a lot more witnesses if needed. The secretary of the local branch of the Miners' Union says: The worst case that I know of was that of the old gentleman, Mr. Raybold, who was having a casual walk with his sons. They knew nothing of the events, the old man is almost blind and is over 65 year old, and this poor fellow was struck several times by the police. I have a mass of 10 other cases almost similar, varying from these of men 25 to those of men of 70. I saw a good many of these men at the meeting I went down to. There is no question of the fact that they were batoned. Some of them pulled their coats and shirts off to show me what had happened. I saw one who was a mass of bruises up to the shoulders.

I suggest, to the Home Secretary that this is not the best method of carrying out these Regulations, and that if he knew of the kind of people who had suffered he would not refuse the request which I shall make to him to day, that an inquiry shall be made into this business. I know he will have the report of the whole proceedings from the police, and that it will probably differ from the account of the facts as I have stated them. I may be accused of being biased on the side of the men. It is natural that we should all have some bias. The statement of the police will be equally biased, so that the best way of getting to the truth of the is whole business is to have an inquiry into it. I will guarantee that those people, whose evidence is written out here, will be brought before the inquiry. Is it in order, for instance, for a imbue inspector to say, when certain people visited him, "If I had been down there, you would not be at liberty now." Is that within their duties? Is it within the province of a policeman or of an inspector to go to the house of a Communist and tell him he will probably get arrested, and try to get him to make a statement?

The Home Secretary is an intensely religious man. I remember reading a speech made by him at the Albert Hall, in which he criticised Members of the House of Commons and the Bishops for not being on the platform with him to issue a clarion call. He would be the first man then to disagree with bad language on the part of the police. In nearly every case I have investigated these people have complained of the bad and filthy language used by the police when this baton charge took place. I suggest that that is not proper. It may be that in the course of their duties they lose their heads somewhat, but they should control their tongues better than they have done. The Home Secretary ought to inquire into this matter. I should also like him to inquire as to whether the windows of a man who lives near the pit gates were all broken by the police on that night. The evidence that can be laid before him from scores of men and women who were in that crowd, and from those who suffered from the batoning, warrants an inquiry into the whole business, and the Home Secretary should grant my request. He need not take my evidence, but I ask him equally not to accept the evidence of the police as the last word in accuracy. I ask him to hold a judicial inquiry into the facts. Such an inquiry would tend to placate the feelings of the people down there and to make them think that these Regulations are not always being used against them and for the benefit of the owners, but that in spite of these Regulations there is some justice still left in his country.

I have listened with great attention to all the Debates upon this question, which have, curiously enough, faithfully repeated themselves on each occasion, but there was no greater instance of absolute fidelity of repetition than in the speech which was delivered a. few minutes ago by the late Solicitor-General, who, having brought his charges and made his appeals, did not think it worth while to wait to see the result of those appeals and charges. I listened also to the speech of the late Prime Minister, and he, with equal fidelity, rested his chief charge against these Regulations upon exactly the point which was reiterated and insisted upon by the late Solicitor-General, namely, that all these matters might equally be dealt with by the common law. He quoted, with great triumph, certain words used by the Home Secretary in quiet, calm, considered language, language which was proper to be used by any Member of the House. Of course, we are all equally jealous of the liberties of our fellow-subjects, and it is absurd to think that we rashly subscribe to these Emergency Regulations from the simple love of placing a new instrument of tyranny in the hands of the Government. But the late Solicitor-General thought he would make a tremendously impres- sive charge against the Home Secretary when he accused him of rank inconsistency for having uttered these cautions when it was his place to act as a critic of the Government of the day. We are all equally jealous of any infringement of the liberties of the subject, but the late Prime Minister waxed quite eloquent on the subject of the infinite wrong that was done by introducing these new Emergency Regulations instead of doing all that one had to do by the common law. He said that these alleged offences could be equally well brought within the range of the common law. It was a sort of invitation to the prosecutors to try if, by some ingenuity, they could find something in the common law which would enable them to convict.

Nothing more fundamentally and permanently dangerous could be imagined than to suggest that the Common Law should be twisted, perverted and exaggerated in order to catch these offences. Surely we are preserving the law much more by making these times of distress and disorder the subject of specific Emergency Regulation and by not attempting to deal with them by the ordinary Common Law. We have just listened to a long list of alleged errors in justices, cruelties and outrages from the hon. Member. The hon. Member knows perfectly well that we can call an equal number of witnesses to give an exactly opposite account to that which he has given. This is not the place to hold an inquiry. The Home Secretary can hold an inquiry if he thinks it proper, but to attempt to constitute this House, on the evidence of one single witness, into a court of inquiry and to attempt thus to dispose of the charges made against the guardians of the law, only shows how dangerous this state of emergency is. I do not wish to keep the House long, for I have listened long to these Debates and have never intervened in one before, but I do again urge that nothing could be more misleading than the chief argument urged by the late Prime Minister and by the late Solicitor-General, neither of whom has taken the trouble to be present to listen to any argument that may be used against their speeches. Nothing could be more dangerous than, instead of resorting to Emergency Regulations in order to meet an emergency state of disorder, to try and strain the Common Law beyond its limits and then to leave that strain on the Common Law as a permanent strain upon the future.

I ought to remind the right hon. Gentleman that the Amendment has been put, and that speeches must be confined to that particular Question.

It was in moving the Amendment that the late Solicitor-General especially insisted on this point. I thought it my duty to show that it was a fallacy of the worst type, and a danger to the future of England.

I do not think the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken really does justice to the arguments to which I listened of the late Solicitor-General. I do not desire to say much on these Regulations, but the Home Secretary will agree that Regulations 21 and 22 enable very special provisions of law to be put into operation, and that all such matters as the ordinary offences of doing acts likely to cause sedition, of publishing matter which is of the same character, and of holding public meetings with a view to sedition, are covered now by the ordinary law. It is true that to bring this ordinary law into play is, at the moment, cumbersome. It is also true that under it there is the security offered to the delinquent of having a jury. I quite understand that in a state of emergency it may be advisable to give more summary powers, but surely there must be a case of real emergency to justify such action. You cannot claim that at your own sweet will, you can put into force Regulations which have the effect of wiping away the ordinary protection which a jury and the necessity for an indictment give to the offender.

We have to ask ourselves: Is there really at this moment such justification as was contemplated by the Act, for putting in force these two Regulations? What was the justification contemplated? It was that there should appear to His Majesty, which of course means to His Majesty's advisers—to put it shortly, that it should appear to the Home Secretary—that action was immediately threatened which was calculated to interfere with the supply and distribution of food. The right hon. Gentleman has to be satisfied himself that action is now impending and is now threatened which tends to interfere with the distribution of food. Is there any such justification at the Moment? This is the sixth time that the Proclamation has been put in force. I do not suppose the right hon. Gentleman would say that as long as the dispute lasts we ought, automatically, to continue the Regulations. That would be contrary to the Act. You have to show in reference to each proclamation that at that particular time there exists a state of danger of the distribution of food being interfered with. Is there any such danger now? What evidence has been brought forward to show that on a real, extended scale the distribution of food is threatened? I know of none.. One reads the papers day by day and sees a little case here and another there, such as exist in ordinary times. But can any fairminded person say that at this moment there is a general threat among the disaffected in the community to interfere with the distribution of food? If there is not, then, unquestionably, this is undue and improper interference with the liberty of the subject and takes away, in reference to offences already covered by the law, the protection which is offered by having a jury and having an indictment. Therefore, I ask the right hon. Gentleman to withdraw these two Regulations as unnecessary.

I have listened with considerable interest to this discussion and to several of those which have preceded it, on the same subject, and I think the right hon. Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir H. Craik) hardly did full justice to the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for South-East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser). The right hon. and learned Gentleman spun an even larger net of legal cobwebs for the entertainment of the legal Members of this House—because I feel sure that the majority of the lay Members of the House were not particularly interested—than he did on the last occasion. The hon. and learned Gentleman made a great song about the fact that a man under Regulations 21 and 22 does not get a trial by jury. Of course he does not for the offence of sedition, and he should be very thankful. If he were to be indicted and tried by a jury he would probably get penal servitude instead of three months—indeed, I am not sure that the penalty, in some cases, is not death. Apparently, the Regulations are not severe enough for the hon. and learned Gentleman, who wants something far more drastic.

With regard to the statement that the common law adequate for these offences, he threw doubt and derision upon the points which I have put on former occasions but I may say, with all respect to him as an ex-Solicitor-General, that I think he is misleading the House. Everybody knows that if the 1906 Trade Disputes Act had not been passed, these Regulations would never have been necessary. Never, on this side of Jordan, would they have been needed if the trade unions, instead of being put up above the law, has been made liable for torts and faults. It is because they have been into the position which the priesthood occupied prior to the Reformation that they are not so responsible under the ordinary law of the land and that these Regulations are necessary so as to get at the individual members more efficiently than they could be got at under the ordinary law. If the trade unions and their funds were liable then trade unionists would be kept in order by them instead of being incited to breaches of the law.

The hon. and learned Member is now embarking on the discussion of a rather wide question and one which is same way off these particular Regulations.

I was dealing particularly with Regulations 21 and 22, and I was replying to what I might almost describe as the provocation of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for South-East Leeds. The point taken against these Regulations by the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn) was that they endow the Home Secretary with powers which he will never use. There are many powers which are never used. That only goes to show the sanity of the ordinary administration of the ordinary policemen. You may give all kinds of powers in this country to various authorities, but they are never exercised to the maximum. They are used with discretion by those who have the duty of administering them.

We have heard an hon. Member in the course of this discussion refer to some cases of disturbances with the police which came under Regulation 22. I say that there is an alteration in the law in Regulation 22—and in that respect I differ from the ex-Solicitor-General—because this Regulation covers a procession which may lead to a breach of the peace. Everybody knows of the processions which take place and which are intended to be a form of peaceful picketing. Some of these are huge processions, but according to the 1906 Act any n amber can picket, and as long as the picketing is peaceful and orderly there is to be no legal objection. It is obvious, however, that if a gigantic procession goes to a particular pit with the intention of peaceful persuasion, that will almost certainly conduce to a breach of the peace or cause under demand to be made on the, police under the Regulation. A large body of police will have to accompany them. We have seen again and again what has happened in various strikes as a result of the 1906 Act. Poor young lads are incited to go out on what they believe to be a legal picket—a picket of such enormous numbers that it is certain to lead to a breach of the peace. Then we have cases of the kind to which an hon. Member on the other side has recently referred, where young lads are badly hammered. They are led into this trap by the unfortunate state of the law.

If hon. Members opposite would be content to put their institutions on the same. level as the associations of other citizens, then these Regulations would never be required. For my part, I do not welcome these Regulations. The statement is made that they are being passed by the Government in the interest of the owners because the Government are on the side of the owners. There is no foundation for that statement. What has the Government allowed to be done? The miners all along have had an enormous sum of public money given for the relief of themselves and their dependents while they were striking and saying to the community, "We will deprive you of coal." If the mineowners had been paid by the boards of guardians proportionate sums in lieu of profits, at the same time as the miners were taking money in lieu of wages, then it might be said there was some equality—

I hope the hon. and learned Member will confine his argument to these particular Regulations.

A previous speaker said that the Regulations were being passed in the interest of the mineowners and I was controverting that statement.

I ought to point out that when a hon. Member is moving an Amendment to a Motion of this kind he is still speaking to the main question, but once the Amendment is proposed from the Chair the discussion has to he confined to the Amendment.

I may say, Sir, that, I think is a new point of Order to most Members of the House. I was always under the misapprehension that when a Member made a speech, another Member was entitled to reply on the particular points which had been raised. However, I submit that these Regulations—which nobody dislikes more than myself—are necessary in this particular crisis. There is no doubt whatever that, as the law at present stands, when you have bodies like, the Miners' Federation, with which it seems impossible to make any settlement, something of this kind is required which will give the ordinary workman liberty and the right to work and the assurance that he will not be interfered with, possibly by a tyrannical minority of the workers themselves. Something of this kind is necessary to protect the liberty of the subject. Nothing could be more preposterous than the speeches to-day of hon. Members of the Labour party and the hon. and gallant Member for Leith and others who have been responsible for weaving this web which trammels the ordinary working man to-day and prevents him having the liberty to work, or to employ himself as he wishes. For them to pose as defenders of liberty while they are opposing these two Regulations which are meant to secure economic liberty is wholly inconsistent and illogical. The biggest enemies of the liberties of the working classes sit on the benches opposite.

I gather that the hon. and learned Member for Argyll (Mr. Macquisten), who dislikes these Regulations intensely, is going to vote for them. I dislike them intensely, and am going to vote against them.

We might pair.

I would not like to pair with the hon. and learned Gentleman until I have made quite clear to him my reasons for taking, in the Division Lobby, a different view from himself on this question. This Debate, although it is the sixth Debate on the same subject, has been a very useful one and not the least useful contributions have been the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and my hon. and learned Friend the ex-Solicitor-General. I think it just as well that the Labour party should make it quite clear that, whether they are in opposition or in power, they look upon Regulations 21 and 22 as not being wanted in an emergency in this country. There can be no justification for such a form of legislation as this. I have spoken at about 40 meetings during this dispute and I take it that all the speakers at those meetings except myself have rendered themselves liable to arrest under Regulation 21. All, with the exception of myself, sought to excite disaffection against His Majesty's present Government. I, have been very careful always to say that the right hon. Gentleman, His Majesty's principal Secretary of State for Home Affairs is doing his best; that he is, of course, a strong man and that his impartial attitude towards this dispute cannot be questioned. I have even included the Prime Minister in that exordium. But even I, have, I believe, caused disaffection towards the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because I have expressed the view that when the right hon. Gentleman was turned down by the rest of the Cabinet he ought to have resigned. The fact of the matter is that these Regulations are so widely framed that everybody who has taken a side in this dispute, whether with the men or with the masters, could be brought within Regulations 21 and 22.

That is what I object to in this form of legislation. There is an infinite number of potential criminals who have tried to restrict the supply of fuel, and the police are left free to select which one they want. That is not a form of justice which will ever appeal to the English people. Here you have a general decree throwing outside the law everyone who is trying to restrict the supply of fuel of the country, and you leave it to the police to use their unaided intelligence as to whom they shall proceed against before a bench of magistrates, who are as partial as any other person taking part in the dispute. That is bad politics and bad morality. It reminds one of the decree issued, I think, by Philip II of Spain when he sentenced everybody in the Netherlands to death. He could not put it into operation, but he left it in the hands of Alva to arrest and burn anybody he liked. Here the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary outlaws many of the population and leaves it to the police to select their victims as they choose. I think the police have been extremely moderate, but I am afraid the figures given by the Home Secretary to-day show that the powers given under these Regulations are getting better known to the police— l'apétit vient en mangeant . They find it so easy to run in anybody who is inconvenient, and therefore the increase of crimes under Regulation 21 may not be due to increased criminality, but to an increased familiarity of the police with the powers they possess.

I am all for law and order, but let us know exactly what the law is, so that a man may know when he is going to cross the line. The danger of this sort of legislation is that so many people, knowing themselves to be within the net, may say, "Well, I may as well be hanged for a man as for a sheep," and they go further than they would otherwise go. I urge hon. Members opposite to use their influence to suppress this particular form of legislation. It can only do harm to the attitude of citizens generally towards the law. There is also the other reason which I have already referred to. The real value of this Debate has been to make quite clear to the House and to the country the attitude of the Labour party towards this form of legislation. We nearly had to introduce something like these Regulations when we were in office, but Regulation 21 was never embodied in any emergency powers brought before this House by the Labour Government, and I hope it never will be.

May I ask whether the right hon. and gallant Member is now giving to the House a statement as to what was in the Emergency Regulations proposed by the Labour Government? I have been very particular in making no statement as to those Regulations, and I thought it is only fair that the same course should be followed on both sides of the House.

I am saying that we never introduced this particular form of legislation in any Regulations we brought forward. I do not propose to say what Regulations we should introduce if we had to do so. But we did not introduce Regulation 21 or Regulation 22, or advance any arguments in their favour. Now we have had a statement from the Leader of the Opposition and from the ex-Solicitor-General making quite clear their hostility to this form of legislation, and in spite of the temptation there may be to use this particular kind of legislation, not against the workers, but against the masters, I trust that their opposition will remain to any form of legislation which can be used in this particular way, incriminating a large number of people and leaving it to the Executive to decide which particular persons are to be proceeded against. If we are to have this sort of legislation, let us have it in black and white so that the House can go through it in detail. Let us know where we are; let the potential criminals know where they are; but do not leave the use of this power in the hands of the executive police forces which will be out of the control of this House, and may act in a manner which everyone would deplore. I do not think this Regulation has been of any assistance to the Government. It has created in the minds of the workers themselves a feeling of absolute hopelessness as to what the law is. Over and over again I have been asked whether something is or is not illegal. You cannot tell them. Everything is illegal under this Regulation. It would be much better if people knew where they were, if they had a Statute saying exactly what they are entitled to do and what they are not to do. At the moment they are in a com- plete haze as to what the law is or how any bench of magistrates will interpret the law, and you get a state of exasperation which is deplorable and which does not lead to peace in the country.

I do not desire to take up much time of the House in considering these Regulations, but it is important, as we are passing Emergency Regulations, which are a departure from the common law of the land, that the House should fully consider them. Therefore, I make no apology for intervening in the Debate. I am as jealous as the ex-Solicitor-General for the Common Law of this country; it is the citadel of our liberty. But no one sitting on the benches opposite can deny that a strike of great magnitude is an emergency—[An HON. MEMBER: "It is not a strike."] I beg the hon. Member's pardon. Let me say that an industrial dispute of great magnitude, which causes feelings to run high, is such a situation that certain powers must be given to the Executive. It is, of course, open to the hon. Member to say that there is no emergency; that a strike or lock-out, or industrial dispute, does not create such a state of emergency. But hon. Members opposite cannot say that, because the hon. and gallant Member who has just sat down has said that the Labour Government proposed to enact, and would have enacted, Emergency Regulations on the occasion of a trade dispute during their short tenure of office. If a state of emergency exists when it is the case of a transport dispute, how can hon. Members opposite say that a state of emergency does not exist when it is the case of a dispute which goes so nearly to the life of the country as the present coal dispute?

My suggestion is that, though a state of emergency may require Regulations dealing with the supply and distribution of food and fuel, it does not require Regulations interfering with the liberty of the subject.

It is quite clear that when you have one of these gigantic disputes, when tempers rise and there is a great deal of hot blood, ordinary and respectable people do things which ordinary and respectable people would not do in ordinary times; and what is the good of shutting our eyes to that fact? I do not care whose fault it is, I will give hon. Members opposite the case that it is entirely the masters' fault. Suppose it is. It is still the duty of the Government to maintain law and order in this country. I do not propose to follow the hon. and learned Member on the subject of Fox's Libel Act, but let me refer to the point he made about trial by jury. May I tell the House how this question strikes me as one who has had some experience of the law. It is true that you allow magistrates to deal summarily with cases of sedition whereas under the Common Law the person accused has the right of trial by jury. He elects to be tried by a jury, and in many cases has to wait some time before the trial takes place. There is delay. He has to wait the coming of the Judge for assizes. Under this Regulation you get a speedier trial, and I do not see why that should be a disadvantage to the person accused. I have often heard people declaim against the verdict given by a jury. I have heard them declaim against the decision given by a bench of magistrates, and even against the decision of a Judge. Judges are not infallible. I have often had occasion to try and convince three Judges that one Judge was not infallible, and occasionally I have had to make visits to another place in order to find out whether four Judges who have previously decided a case have decided it properly. When you have these kinds of offences committed in hot blood, not sedition in the ordinary old sense of sedition—a considered writing against the Government of the Crown—but offences which are of a seditious nature and can only be described as sedition under our legal phraseology, causing disaffection which is intended to bring about a stoppage in the essential services of the country, you have a kind of minor sedition which is not in the least contemplated by the common law of sedition.

In such cases it is right and proper that the offence should be dealt with by the quickest tribunal you can find, with strictly limited power of punishment, and, let me add, with a right of appeal. Anyone convicted under these Regulations has the right of appeal to a higher Court, and I suggest that that is an answer to my hon. and learned Friend's complaint as to the abolition of trial by jury. It is not the abolition of trial by jury in cases of sedition; if so, I should object to it; but it is simply that, in cases arising under these Emergency Regulations, the police authorities are not bound to put the accused to all the delay, expense, and, probably, long imprisonment before trial, without bail, which sometimes amounts to two or three months, and then a long and solemn trial before a Judge in a red robe, who, if he finds a man guilty of sedition, might give him two or three years' penal servitude. I suggest that this is rather favourable to the men who are accused of these minor offences.

Does the hon. and learned Member suggest that there is a right of appeal under these Regulations where there would not he a right of appeal under the common law? Supposing a person is tried for sedition, and not imprisoned, and there would he no right of appeal under the Summary Jurisdiction Act, does the hon. and learned Member suggest that the right of appeal would exist here?

No, but if a man were fined such an inconsiderable sum as would deprive him of the right of appeal, surely there is no very serious grievance.

When my hon. and learned Friend said there was a right of appeal in every case of sedition, that was not correct. If there is no right of appeal under the Summary Jurisdiction Act, there is no right of appeal for sedition under these Regulations.

I quite agree, and I accept the correction. In trifling eases, where some small fine is imposed as a punishment, there is no right of appeal, but in all cases where the liberty of the subject is involved, in all cases of imprisonment—that is the point—there is a right of appeal. It seems to me that these Regulations serve this useful purpose—Regulations 21 and 22 among others—that they are a deterrent, as the right hon. Gentleman said. I do not think that when people contemplate a doubtful act and say: "I wonder if it is within the four corners of the law"—

Let us have the Spanish Inquisition then!

The hon. Member can go to Russia if he likes, and then he will have the Russian Inquisition. Let him go to Russia, and then he will satisfy all his ambitions for inquisitorial methods. The preventive quality of these Regulations is undoubtedly to my mind their most useful characteristic. Can anybody—can hon. Members, some of whom are themselves, I believe, strike leaders—doubt that the very presence of these Regulations upon our Statute Book has prevented many outbreaks of crime?

It has incited to crime.

Does the hon. and learned Member say that the mere existence of a strike justifies these Regulations, or that a mere strike is equivalent to this, that there is immediately threatened action calculated to interfere with the supply and distribution of food?

It entirely depends upon the magnitude of the strike. If the profession of which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Harney) is an ornament, and of which I am a member, were on strike, that would not create a state of emergency. But when the whole of the coal miners go on strike, it does create an emergency, and it has been decided by this House many times over that a state of emergency does exist. I suggest that, in these circumstances, it is far better to have Regulations like this, which can be held up as a warning to those who might break the peaceߞ—

Terrorise!

Yes, if you like. The terror of them is far better than having another Featherstone case.

The hon. and learned Member then admits that the Emergency Regulations are to terrorise?

I do not want to enter into too keen a controversy with my hon. Friend, but I would suggest to him that there are times when terror, or fright, if you like, is a very useful thing. We have escaped the use of the military in all this long-continued strike. We have had no shooting—God forbid that we should have any shooting—and I suggest that, by passing these Regulations as they stand, we shall be doing a great service, not only to the general public, but to the miners and their dependants themselves.

I support the Amendment to omit Regulations 21 and 22. My reason for doing so is not only one of general principle, but even of the actual manner in which, up to now, these two Regulations have been made use of to serve ulterior motives and for purposes other than those ostensibly stated in the Regulations. I do not suggest that a gross abuse of these Regulations has been committed through personal wickedness, but there is no doubt that it has been committed through ordinary human weakness. I think the Home Secretary, with regard to Regulation 21, has this afternoon almost confessed to the grossest abuse of it, and that it has been used for furthering the objects of the masters against the ordinary rights of the miners.

We are told that there have been only 309 cases, but I submit that, by the very nature of the Regulation, which states that if there is reason to apprehend that there will be trouble in a given section of society, and so on, any person accused is guilty. Take the position of a poor magistrate. He sits there, and a responsible police officer or Home Office official goes to him and says, "I have reason to apprehend that, although it has not created trouble, it is likely to create disorder." What has the magistrate to do? He has to take the word of that officer. There is no further proof necessary, there is no further argument needed, and the Home Secretary's confession to-day, that only 309 cases have occurred, in almost all of which only small fines were imposed, shows that the magistrates have no heart in it, but that the wording of the Regulation does not permit a magistrate to call for proofs or use his judgment. He has only to take the word of the officer who comes before him, and says, "I have reason to apprehend that, although nothing has happened, serious disorder might come out in some section of society," and the magistrate says, "Very well, if that is your reason, I will fine this poor fellow and warn him not to do it again." The result is that this Regulation is used for the purpose of spreading terrorism among the miners, and the Home Secretary confessed to-day that this Regulation during the past month has been used for the sole and exclusive purpose of spreading terrorism among the innocent miners, to push them to work in those counties where the masters are pretty successfully pushing them.

The right hon. Gentleman says that actually the cases have risen in number. What has risen in number? It is not the guilt of the persons, but wherever the masters have been active and fairly successful, what have risen in number are the cases in which the police also have set themselves actively to terrorise over the miners. That is the sole use made of this Regulation, according to the Home Secretary's confession that all throughout the last month the authorities have kept their eyes wide awake, under orders from the coalowners, and wherever the coalowners have been able to pitchfork the men into work, this Regulation has been most actively used. That is ample proof that, in the main, it is an abuse of the legal power of the authorities rather than an instrument for the protection of society.

If the Home Secretary will pardon me, and the Deputy-Speaker will not mind, I will point out an earlier case that has reference to an argument used by the Home Secretary to-day. I know of a very high Government official getting into trouble, and rightly so. I am talking from memory again, but about the year 1899 or 1900 a high official in the Punjab Government was responsible for rendering an account of his Department. He was the head of the Public Health Department, and he wanted to go away on a holiday rather prematurely, so he left a note to his assistant, as follows: "Wait for the health figures of such and such a dispensary, and then frame a report in my name. If the number of patients is less than last year, put down as my report that it is owing to the good work done by the dispensary. If the figures are higher than last year, then put forward as my report that it is owing to the growing popularity of the dispensary." The poor innocent clerk published the whole of the note as it stood.

6.0 P.M.

There was serious trouble for the junior officer who tried to use this argument. The Home Secretary to-day has presented to the House exactly the same line of argument. Last time he said, Regulation 21 is very important, for its very existence terrorises people and prevents them from spreading disorder. To-day he says that the last time he told us its existence was very important, and because it has existed the disorders have taken place, and they have been running after them. It is a line of argument which cuts both ways. I submit that the miners are convinced that during the past month the use made of these Regulations has been to increase the terrorism of the miners in those districts in which the coalowners are interested in pushing the men to work.

With regard to Regulation 22, if the Home Secretary to-day submits as an argument in support of the Regulation that there were 309 cases in a month, and on a previous occasion there was one occurrence when the Regulation had to be used, then Regulation 22 is really not required for any national good. But I would again submit, that on the two occasions when I was involved in the exercise of Regulation 22, if not from political wickedness, at least in spite of the right hon. Gentleman being the strong man in the Cabinet, he made a wrong political use of this Regulation pure and simple. The Home Secretary referred to a procession being stopped when I was billed to speak. I submit I was billed to speak and the advertisement was out, as I pointed out on a previous occasion when this Regulation was used against me, about a week or ten days before the Regulation was put into motion. The meeting was advertised at the end of August for the 8th September, and it was to take place under the management of the South Wales Miners' Federation, and not the Communist party. On the late afternoon of the 7th previous to the day of the meeting, the local agent of the South Wales Miners' Federation at Bridgend was informed verbally by the Superintendent that the next day's meeting would be cancelled, and notices were being printed. The agent pointed out that there were possibilities of organising two or three meetings. The Superintendent said that the meeting at Hoelycue had to be abandoned and the processions cancelled. The miners' agent only wanted to know what would be his position if he ran a meeting outside the prohibited area. He was informed at 5 o'clock that the local authorities did not know which were the prohibited areas, but by about midnight they would have some printed circulars or orders, and early in the morning there would be a large squad employed to post up those notices. The first part of the notice referred to the procession, but the last part to this particular meeting: The holding of any meeting at or in the vicinity of Hoelycue on Wednesday, 8th September, 1926, is also prohibited. One can imagine the position of a miners' agent organising a meeting and a speaker who has no desire to come into clash with the most arbitrary and despotic dictation of the authorities. What is "the vicinity of Hoelycue"? Does it reach as far as London, Bristol or even Moscow, if the Home Secretary has his way? One naturally conjectures that one town has got its vicinity in its outlying districts, and that at least when you enter another town, the vicinity of the first finishes and the next begins. That is the commonsense argument. So the miners' agent, at about 11 o'clock in the morning, again telephoned to the superintendent pointing out that they had another meeting, on which considerable expense had been incurred, at a place a few miles away from Hoelycue. He said, "I cannot tell you whether that also comes within the word 'vicinity' or not." If this is the way this thing is to be put into execution, it means that a chief constable or police officer can say, "I am going to pursue you. You can go where you like, and I can arbitrarily, at the last moment, decide that your meeting is to be broken up. You can incur expense, travel about and advertise, and I have authority to come along and say, 'This place is also covered by my circular.'" Seeing the indefiniteness of it, I wired to the Home Secretary, drawing attention to the wording of the circular prohibiting that day's meeting, and asking him to clear up the matter of the "vicinity." I also wired to the Chief Constable: With reference to the circular, should you not define 'vinicity of Hoelycue' in actual mileage radius, if you do not desire unnecessary harassment of Labour speakers? The Chief Constable of Glamorgan was kind enough immediately to send out somebody. I had to keep running about in order to avoid the so-called area, and the Government agent had to go about on a motor cycle to find out where I was. At about 3.30 he discovered me about 12 miles away, because the South Wales Miners' Federation were determined to have that meeting and had it, but we had no desire to walk into the provocative trap of the constable, or to come into clash with anyone.

A good meeting?

A very good meeting. The Chief Constable's deputy gave me a verbal message: "We are very sorry we have put you to so much trouble. We ought to have said how many miles radius. We give you the limit five miles from Hoelycue." We, therefore, avoided the five miles' radius. The other method adopted was this: The authorities had a notice of the particular meeting and the procession a few days before. But the police did not give us five minutes to inform the public that the meeting was cancelled. They simply rushed the people hither and thither, and sent out of the area even the chars-a-bane in which some of the people arrived. [An HON. MEMBER: "Chars-a-bane?"] Yes, the miners have as much right to sit in chars-a-bane as you have to sit in Rolls-Royces. I mention the methods employed as definite proof of the wrong motives underlying the suppression of these meetings. Ten days after the meetings were suppressed, the Home Secretary in this House wantonly charged two or three Labour Members with having gone to Hoelycue and spread an atmosphere that would lead to riot and disorder. Unfortunately, I was not in the House, but having carefully read what happened, I could see that the suggestion was resented by the hon. and gallant Member for East Rhondda (Lieut.-Colonel Watts-Morgan), who is vice-chairman of the watch committee, and who said the Home Secretary was making random suggestions and remarks. The Home Secretary first makes a false charge that some Members made speeches and created an atmosphere of danger, and then he arbitrarily acts under the Regulation, and, to prove he was right that there was reason to apprehend this disorder, mentions these 309 prosecutions. If that was the way in which Regulation 22 was used, it was a wrong way politically. I think the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn) told us that one of the ambitions of the Home Secretary, as proclaimed by his own followers, is that "Jix is the lad to keep the Reds away," and if he is simply making use of that Regulation to keep up that reputation, he is making gross abuse of his position in Parliament. If he were ashamed of that not being acted upon, and felt he must do something to keep the Reds away from the meeting, it was not a proper use of his powers.

But now I am talking on a more delicate subject, and I hope the Home Secretary will be good enough to clear it up. If he exercises his rights under Regulations 21 and 22, it is not a joke but a very serious responsibility that he is undertaking. If the newspapers give a certain interpretation to his action, it becomes his duty either to allow that interpretation to remain or to take immediate action to contradict it. There was an interpretation on the 8th September given to the Home Secretary's action in regard to this. The local police and the chief constable did not say what the Home Secretary said. They did not say they "requested," but the information was that the Home Secretary sent a telegram cancelling this meeting. It was said by the hon. and gallant Member for East Rhondda that the Home Secretary was attempting to create a feeling in the minds of the people that there was danger and that it was done for their protection. Some members of the Communist party suggested to me that the Home Secretary was trying to enveigle the local leaders into it, which I discountenanced. To my surprise, when I reached the station on the night of the 8th September I saw in an evening paper—I did not buy it, but some other person had it and allowed me to read it; it was the "South Wales Express and Evening News"—a notice of the Chief Constable's action, which said that the Home Secretary had taken this action quite rightly and to the satisfaction of all the moderate and wise Labour leaders in the locality, because it had freed them from the embarrassment of having to attend a conference organised by the South Wales Miners' Federation without consultation with those wise and moderate leaders and so on. There was there a distinct inference that the Chief Constable had acted on behalf of those very Labour Members who a week ago repudiated the statement of the Home Secretary that the Chief Constable was acting according to the necessities of the case. I would like to ask the Home Secretary to contradict that report in that newspaper, and also to instruct his constables to contradict all such reports which do by inference indicate a collusionary movement between the Chief Constable and those very Members of the Labour party who a week ago flouted the Home Secretary and repudiated what he had said. I say again that I object to Regulations 21 and 22, not only on general principles, but because I am convinced from the reports of the Home Secretary himself that in the main and on the whole he has done nothing but make a wrong political use of them in order to satisfy certain people hungry for strife.

I have listened to the Debate for some time, and I think it right for me now to say a few words on behalf of the Government in reply to the Amendment to omit Regulations 21 and 22. Hon. Members will perhaps forgive me if I do not deal with all their speeches, but I propose to deal with the speeches of the hon. Member for North Battersea (Mr. Saklatvala) and the hon. Member for the Doncaster Division (Mr. Paling) and, I need hardly say, of the hon. and learned Member for South-East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser). The first part of the speech of the hon. Member for North Battersea was, if he will forgive me for saying so—I desire to speak within the limits of courtesy—a travesty of anything I have said to-day. When he reads the OFFICIAL REPORT to-morrow, he will see that I never mentioned anything about using the police for purposes of terrorism. In fact, the whole of the first part of his speech bore no relation—

I did not say that the Home Secretary said so. The Home Secretary tried to varnish the fact with words which would not say it, but the underlying confession was there.

I can only say that I do not in the slightest degree agree with the hon. Member. Nothing I said was intended to varnish the facts or to lead him or any other Member to think I meant anything such as he has suggested with regard to the second part of his speach, dealing with the particular case where I prevented him from speaking at a meeting at Hoelycue, he is entitled to an answer. Under the Regulations I have the right and the power to prevent meetings or processions being held if, in my opinion, they are likely to cause a breach of the peace or to promote disaffection. If I am convinced of that, it is within my power either to prevent a meeting myself or to authorise the mayor, magistrate, or chief officer of police to do so. The hon. Member, if he will forgive me for saying so, rather flatters himself if he thinks I have nothing better to do than to watch where he is going to speak, and prevent him from doing so, because he hapens to be of a particular red colour. That is not the duty of the Home Secretary. There have been 18 cases in which this particular Regulation has been utilised since the beginning of the general strike on the 1st of May until now. Every one of those cases came before me as a proposal from either the chief magistrate or the chief police officer of the district. In no sense of the term was there a suggestion by the Home Secretary that any particular meeting should be stopped. In the month of September there has been only this one case—that of which the hon. Member complained. As I say, I knew nothing about his movements, nor was it necessary that I should; but the Chief Constable of Glamorgan, who is the chief police officer of that area, received information that there was to be not only a meeting but a huge procession to concentrate upon Hoelycue, where a number of collieries were beginning to work, with a view to stopping that resumption of work. That was the information which the Chief Constable had received, and he wrote to me and said that in his view, as the responsible police officer for the County of Glamorgan, if this procession and this meeting were held, they were likely to lead to a breach of the peace. It is the duty of the police to prevent breaches of the peace. It is the duty of the Secretary of State not to encourage breaches of the peace, not to encourage baton charges, or anything of the kind, but to prevent the possibility of such an occurrence if it can be done.

When I got that statement from the Chief Constable—without my having had any personal knowledge of the movements of the hon. Member—it would have been almost impossible for me in view of the Regulations—passed with the authority of Parliament which put upon the Home Secretary the obligation of carrying them out—to say to the Chief of the Police "I do not think the hon. Member for Battersea is likely to hurt a fly. I do not think he is likely to make a speech which will do any harm to anybody. He will only blow off a little steam. I think you had better let him hold the meeting." The answer of the Chief Constable might have been "You may know the hon. Member for Battersea, but you do not know South Wales. I am responsible, as Chief of the Police, for telling you quite definitely that this great procession, coupled with a meeting, would be likely to endanger the peace at Hoelycue and the vicinity." Therefore, I authorised the order prohibiting not merely the speech of the hon. Member—that is only a secondary matter—but prohibiting this great procession, and, as the hon. Member says, he went away and made his speech elsewhere. Sometimes I do myself the privilege of reading the hon. Member's speeches. I read one the other day which was of great personal interest to myself because of the abuse which he showered upon me—a speech made in London a few weeks ago when he went so far as to say that whatever the Home Secretary might do, he was going to speak as and where he liked. Well, he did not speak at Hoelycue, at all events. I do not object to his speaking where it will do no harm, and, as he has said, he went off some few miles from the danger area, where there was no procession, and made the speech; and he has told us just now, in reply to the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Harney), that it was a good meeting, and I hope that, from his point of view, it was a good speech. At all events, no harm has come from it, and nobody has been put into prison or got into trouble through having been stirred by the hon. Member's eloquence to do something wrong. That is the end of the matter, and it is hardly worth while to have brought it to the notice of the House of Commons.

The hon. Member for the Doncaster Division raised a much more important case. He said that the action of the police—not necessarily under the Emergency Regulations at all—in a baton charge at the Bullcroft Colliery near Doncaster was very gross indeed. He told us there were a certain number of men, some boys and an old man, who were very grievously hurt in that baton charge. He ought to have told us that the baton charge was utterly unjustified. There would have been a point in that, because, of course, where a baton charge takes place, assuming it to be justified—where there as a conflict between 25 police and 2,000 rioters—

Two thousand?

That is my information. Where a baton charge takes place a certain number of people are bound to be hurt. I am not disputing that. I will accept the statement of the hon. Member that some boys, an old man and various other men were hurt in that charge. You cannot make a baton charge without people being hurt. The only question for the consideration of the Secretary of State and the House of Commons is whether the baton charge was justified, or whether, in the case of a justified charge, the police used greater force than was proper to meet the needs of the case. The hon. Member has not given me a single word suggesting that the baton charge was unjustified in the circumstances of the case.

When you do get a case, you do not take any notice of it.

That is not at all a fair statement.

We told you of a case in London.

The hon. Member is going back to a case which occurred in his own district some months ago. I saw him then, and I read a great deal of information which was put before me. To say I took no notice of it is, if he will forgive me, not quite in accordance with Parliamentary tactics. I did take considerable notice of it, and I have given my decision in regard to that case.

The same decision you gave—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order!"]

Let me tell the House the facts in regard to the Bullcroft Colliery. It is an important matter. There is a colliery which has employed a great many hundreds of men. What are known as gob fires broke out under ground, and a large number of men were required to deal with the danger. Some 40 officials were obtained from the neighbouring collieries, and the local miners' lodge was approached with a view to allowing some of their workmen to assist in putting out those very serious fires. Permission had been granted for 12 men, but it was withdrawn, and the colliery proprietors had to do their best to deal with these very serious fires under ground. The miners' lodge in the district would allow no further men to go down.

Was it stated why the 12 men were withdrawn?

Because of some dispute between the miners' lodge and the colliery in respect—

No, there was no dispute at all. Herbert Smith went down to the colliery and held a meeting of the men, and got the men to agree to certain safety men going down. Mr. Smith, along with local officials, had been down the pit and made an examination of the points of danger, and had come to an agreement with the colliery management that 12 men were necessary on each shift. These men were sent down. On the very first inspection that the local secretary made as to whether those men were carrying out the agreement, it was found that the men had been sent to other points absolutely different from those provided for in the agreement which had been reached with Herbert Smith. The local secretary came to the conclusion that the management had flung the whole thing in his face, and had treated the agreement with contempt, and the branch fetched the men out.

This is a free country.

The men said the management had absolutely refused to honour the agreement, and, that being so, they had no redress but to withdraw the men.

I really do not mind very much which view is taken. Here is the fact that the pit was on fire. Here is the fact that ordinarily hundreds of men would be employed in working in that particular pit. As a result of the action taken 1,200 yards of the working face have been sealed up. I may as well conclude the story now. That fire has gone on, and for all time—for all time—in consequence of the action taken in refusing to assist in the fire being put out, there will be 500 miners fewer employed in that colliery. [ Interruption .]

That statement is absolutely untrue.

The hon. Member has raised this particular case, and he must be content to hear the answer, although he may not agree with it.

The information I am giving is taken from the report of the responsible official, and it states definitely that there will be 500 men gut of employment as a consequence of this action, even when the stoppage is over.

Mr. GRUNDY rose —

The hon. Member must not remain in the House if he cannot refrain from interrupting.

The colliery people are doing their best to protect the men who are at work. In this case, on the 15th September the police superintendent had information that there was likely to be a determined effort made to attack these men when they were leaving work changing their shift. They were due to leave at 9.20 in the evening. It has been stated by the hon. Member that the crowd was not 2,000, but my information is that upwards of 2,000 assembled there; they were waiting for the safety men coming off the first shift, and the police did their best to deal with the crowd. The superintendent of the police himself went among the crowd and tried to persuade the men to go home and not to make any attack on the safety men. According to the report I received, the crowd were in a dangerous mood and were anxious to prevent the safety men going in to take the places of those who were coming out. The superintendent did his best to get the crowd to disperse, but his efforts were unavailing, and he was responsible for the safety of these men. The police and myself are responsible in such cases whether you call the men blacklegs or anything else, and that was our responsibility to see that these men were not set upon by a crowd of 2,000 men. The superintendent was there in charge, and he did his best to persuade the crowd to go away, but they were in an angry condition and would not go away, and the superintendent was afraid that serious damage would be done to the property and afraid for the safety men coming out of the mine. Under these circumstances, the superintendent said that he made up his mind that it was necessary to disperse the crowd for the safety of these men, and therefore he ordered a baton charge.

I say it was an unjustifiable charge.

The hon. Member for Doncaster gave instances of two boys of 16, an old man over 60 years of age, and a man carrying a child who were batoned by the police. I would like to know if the Home Secretary is prepared to answer that charge?

I do not know whether the hon. Member who has just interrupted me was present when I began my speech. If so, he must have heard me admit that these men were hurt in the baton charge. But the whole case I am putting is that if men are there when a baton charge takes place, they must accept the consequences unless they prove either that the baton charge was unjustifiable or that unnecessary violence was used. All I can say is that the hon. Member for Doncaster has not proved to my satisfaction either of those two charges. The hon. Member simply made a statement that a baton charge took place and certain people were injured. I agree that such a charge was made and that certain people were injured, but the hon. Member must give me more information on these points before I can agree to call for a public inquiry. The hon. Member may contradict what I have said. He has seen me more than once in regard to many cases, and I am sure he has never found me unwilling td hear what he has to say, and if he can give me any more information in justification of the argument that the charge was unnecessary or unjustifiable, or that more force was used than was necessary, I will certainly consider the advisability of holding a further inquiry. I cannot say more than that, and the hon. Member must not assume that up to the present I put any blame whatever on the police for what they did on that occasion.

The Home Secretary says that it was round about 9.30 when the shifts were being changed. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that these safety men who came out in that way actually went through the crowd, and not one of them was touched, and the baton charge took place half an hour after that?

That is not my information. I do not think I need to repeat what is stated on this point in the report which I have already quoted, but I am quite prepared to receive any information which the hon. Member can place before me, and I am sure he has never found me unwilling to make inquiries. With regard to the speech made by the hon. and learned Member for South-East Leeds, I have often listened to him dealing with these particular Regulations, and it was interesting to find something fresh had turned up. Perhaps I may be allowed to deal with what was said by the hon. and learned Member for South Shields (Mr. Harney) at the same time. After the Act of Parliament dealing with these cases of emergency had been passed, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon (Mr. Lloyd George) actually made a speech supporting this Act which gives power to the magistrates or His Majesty's adviser, in cases where any action has been taken or is threatened by a person or body of persons of such a nature and of so extensive a scale as to be calculated to interfere with or prevent the supply of food or fuel. The right hon. Gentleman made a speech on this question, and he said that there is nothing in the present situation which prevents the supply of food.

I would like to point out, however, that the Act does not deal only with food, but with water, fuel, light, the means of locomotion, or anything which tends to deprive the community of the essentials of life. Under such circumstances, His Majesty may by proclamation do so and so, and when the emergency is there the Government can make Regulations to deal with it. Those are the Regulations which we are discussing this afternoon, and I really cannot believe that the House of Commons is going to say that there is no emergency at the present time, when there are over 1,000,000 men out of employment in a stoppage in the most important industry in the country.

It is not a stoppage; it is a lock-out, and, perhaps, the right hon. Gentleman will use the proper word.

No one will suggest that there is not an emergency on so extensive a scale as to be calculated to interfere with the supply of food and fuel. The House knows that, under the provisions of some other Emergency Regulations, restrictions have been put upon the consumption of coal, and they can only he put into force under the provisions of this Act of Parliament. If the Act of Parliament was not there, the Regulations which everybody agrees are necessary, could not have been brought into force. The hon. and learned Member opposite must not assume that there is no emergency because he is able to get his cwt. of coal every fortnight.

But there must be some immediate threat of some of the things referred to.

With regard to the supply of fuel, the hon. and learned Member must agree with Regulations 21 and 22, and he cannot say that there is no emergency under the Act otherwise, all the Regulations referred to could not have been put into force. I think I have now established the point that there is an emergency, and that we are not acting ultra vires . Now we come to Regulation 21 which has been attacked largely in regard to cases of sedition. The Act deals with persons who do any act likely to cause sedition among any of His Majesty's forces or among the civilian population and so forth. The hon. Member who raised this question made great play about sedition, and said that we were depriving a man accused of sedition of the right to go before a jury of his countrymen. The hon. and learned Member did not give me notice that he was going to raise this particular point; otherwise, I would have found out whether there have been any cases of sedition. I telephoned to the Chief Constable of Derbyshire, where I know there were the largest number of cases during the last month. I know there were 12 cases, and there was no case of sedition at all, although there were the proportion in Derbyshire, where 124 cases of impeding the supply of fuel. I think that answers the hon. and learned Gentleman's argument, and, if that is the proportion in Derbyshire, where 124 out of 129 cases were charges of impeding the supply of fuel, I think we may assume that a like pr9oportion took place in other districts, and that there was not a single case of sedition in the 129 instances.

I include in the definition of sedition "causing disaffection," which is one of the conditions of sedition laid clown in a recent case.

Could the right hon. Gentleman give us some plainer definition of what he means by "impeding the supply of fuel"?

Are the coalowners impeding the supply of fuel?

May I give an illustration?

The hon. Member may have an opportunity of speaking later. I think I had better try and complete the case which I have been putting. It is quite true that there were five cases of inciting to disaffection, and the hon. and learned Gentleman has complained that there was no right of trial by jury in those cases. That is very largely answered by the speech of an hon. and learned Member below the Gangway, and I am bound to say that I think that in a matter of this kind, when we are all hoping month by month, week by week, and even day by day, that the stoppage will end, it is very much better that cases of this kind should be dealt with summarily. There is then, at the outside, only the possibility of three months' im- prisonment, and in only 13 of the 309 cases was the penalty of imprisonment imposed, the others being dealt with by small fines. It is very much better that that should be the case, not merely in the interests of the men themselves, but in the interests of peace as soon as the stoppage is over, rather than that a lot of cases should be sent to the Assizes, perhaps long after the stoppage is over, and that people should be prosecuted in these cases at the Assizes.

I am now going to tell the House something with regard to the trial of these cases. I have had to go into a great many appeals which are made to the Secretary of State to advise His Majesty to exercise the Royal clemency, and I have seen many hon. Members of this House. I had a deputation the other clay from outside the House, including the solicitor in one of the biggest cases that has taken place since the beginning of May. He came to me to ask if I would go through a very large number of cases of individual men who had been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, and this is what he said—and it was supported by one of the leading Members of the Labour Party in this House. He said that these men had had a perfectly fair trial, and that he did not want to say one word against the trial or against the appeal—they went to Quarter Sessions by way of appeal. I said, "Have you a single suggestion to make that the men did not get a fair trial?" and he said. "Not one. We merely come to you admitting their offence, admitting that they were properly tried, and asking whether, after all, you cannot advise His Majesty to exercise his clemency in regard to them." That was a very proper attitude for him to take. I can assure the House that one of the most difficult and onerous matters with which I have to deal is the question of cases of this kind. It gives me an enormous amount of work. I go into them personally with a very great deal of care and attention, and it is, of course, quite right that hon. Members, if they think that certain cases are fit subjects for the Royal clemency, should Dome and put their case before me, as they are entitled to do. But in all these cases, with the exception, I think, of one, with regard to which a statement was made in this House a few months ago by the hon. Member for Doncaster or one of his colleagues, in which a complaint was made about a certain justice, no case at all has ever been made that there was unfairness in regard to the trial. [HON. MEMBERS "Hear, hear!"] The hon. Member opposite confirms that. Therefore, I think I am right in saying that it is better that they should be disposed of quickly, as they are under this procedure.

There is only one other point to which I desire to refer—a new point which the hon. and learned Member made in his speech. He dug out a speech of my own, made in this House some six years ago, when the Emergency Powers Bill was passing through. I do not for a moment complain of what he read to the House. He said, quite truly, that I was then in Opposition, and viewed this Measure with grave anxiety, and that I put my views before the House with regard to the anxiety I felt. But what was the anxiety that I felt? It is in that speech. It was not that I was opposing the Bill; it was not that I objected to the powers being given to the Government; but the Bill as it was brought provided that there should be power for the Government of the day, the Coalition Government, to put these Regulations in force for 14 days without the assent of the House of Commons, and then, when the House of Commons was called together, it need not be called together for another 14 days under the provisions of the Bill as it was brought into this House. It was that that I attacked. If the hon. and learned Member will look at the latter part of my speech, which he did not read to the House, he will see what it was that I complained of. I said: I would ask the Home Secretary, who is in charge, whether he would not consent to some modifications in this Bill. First, that Parliament should meet, not within 14 days, but should be called together the moment this necessity arises. I went on to say: I hope that the Government will assent to an Amendment in the Committee stage that the moment, that Regulations under this Act are made by any Government and Parliament is not sitting, Parliament shall be summoned at once. It could be summoned within three days. It certainly could be done within seven."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th October, 1920; col. 1422, Vol. 133.] I concluded by saying that no House of Commons would refuse, when an emergency had arisen, to give these powers to the Government.

I was not complaining of the Act, but I said to the Government, "Do not give the Government powers without the assent of Parliament." I do not pretend to say that my speech on that occasion had any influence on the Government, but the Government of the day did alter their Bill, cutting out the 14 days and directing that the Act should take the form it has now, so that the Regulations would only have effect for seven days without the consent of the House of Commons, and that they should be forthwith laid on the Table of the House. In accordance with that provision, the Regulations come before the House to-day for its approval. That was the meaning of my speech, and these were, indeed, its very words. I stand by that speech in essence and verbally. I believe it was right. I am jealous, and always have been, of the rights and powers and privileges of the House of Commons, and I would not agree to the Government of the day imposing Regulations of this kind. The present Government have brought these Regulations six times before the House of Commons. Five times the House of Commons has approved of them, and I now ask the House, once more to give the Government these powers, which I, as the responsible Minister, say are necessary for the preservation of law and order.

Mr. Spencer.

Before the Home Secretary sits down, could he tell me—