I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."

This new Clause raises a question directly germane to the Bill and is an attempt to add something constructive to the scheme of our industrial arrangements in this country for settling disputes. The Bill, as the Attorney-General has informed the Committee more than once, and as we on this side of the House agree, leaves industrial strikes proper unaffected by the provisions of Clause 1, which are directed against what we have, for convenience, called the general strike. That is a view which is not entirely shared on the Opposition benches, but it is the basis and intention of the Bill. The intention is to leave industrial strikes unaffected, even though they may be sympathetic in character; that is to say, not affecting directly those engaged in the industry which strikes, and even although that industry may be an essential service—a service which is essential to the life of the community. None the less, much harm may be done, and this is common ground, to everybody by a strike of a purely industrial kind, whether it be in an essential service or not, and, particularly in essential services, much harm may be done to those concerned in the industries, employers and employed, to other industries, and to the community in general. Last year's experience has illustrated the possibility of harm which lies in strikes or lock-outs—I am not using the word "strike "as meaning a strike caused by labour-to everybody. I observed in last month's "Ministry of Labour Gazette" an account of the total number of working days lost by stoppages, whether strikes or lock-outs, over a long period of years. Last year it was 162,000,000 working days, and in the seven preceding years ending 1925 there was a total number of working days lost of 104,000,000. These figures are portentous.

Can the right hon. and learned Member divide the figures as between strikes and lock-outs?

I am not dividing them for my purpose, because my point is the loss to the community caused by stoppages, whichever side is to blame. My criticism is addressed to employers just as much as to employed.

Would it not be fairer to the employés if you gave the number of days lost by stoppages and the number lost by strikes?

:If it were a question of assigning blame to any one party, it would be the fairer thing to do, but I am not assigning the blame. What I say, and I hope the hon. Member will agree with me, is that a state of affairs in the industrial organisation of this country in which this number of working days is lost, with its consequential loss to the community at large, is inconsistent with real civilisation. That is the fundamental proposition, and I feel certain that there is no division of opinion on that question. If the damage done by strikes and lock-outs be as serious as we know it to be, then I think it follows, necessarily, that the community is entitled to intervene by legislation to prevent it, if it be possible to do so with success. The right to intervene cannot be challenged, nor can the duty of this House to intervene, if it can do so with success. The question is, can it be done successfully? Is it possible to prevent stoppages of work, and at the same time to do justice to both sides, the attainment of which is the object of any stoppage whether it be a lock-out or a strike? Is it possible to take one step further than we have yet gone in legislation, is the assumption which underlies the new Clause to which the hon. and learned Member for Swindon (Mr. Mitchell Banks), the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Rentoul), the hon. Member for Stockton (Captain Macmillan), and the right hon. Member for Carmarthen (Sir A. Mond) and myself have put our names.

We all recognise the value of the voluntary principle in industrial affairs. We recognise that whatever can be done by agreement will be much better done than by intervention and compulsion. Industrial bargaining of any character is none the less based on agreement, and, so far as you can achieve the ends by agreement, obviously nothing should be done to prevent that process. But it is the fact that in the many voluntary schemes for conciliation that exist in industry today, provision is often made that no stoppage of work shall take place pending a reference of the dispute to the Conciliation Board which is arranged between the parties, an obviously wise arrangement, and one that I believe has been honoured consistently, or practically so. During the War, when conditions were exceptional, compulsory arbitration was introduced by the Munitions of War Act, and strikes and lock-outs in certain circumstances were prohibited. The conditions then were abnormal, and I am not suggesting that today this country is ready to accept compulsory arbitration as a method of legislation. I believe there is general agreement against compulsory arbitration at present. Whether things will develop sufficiently to make it possible in the future is not germane to the present discussion. In the Industrial Courts Act of 1919, which superseded the Conciliation Act of 1896, although there is a provision for settlement by arbitration, and the Minister may refer a dispute for settlement either to the Court or to an arbitration tribunal, yet he can only do so if both parties consent. Consent is a condition precedent to successful industrial arbitration.

In Part 2 of the Industrial Courts Act, 1919, there is a provision for the Minister referring any matter connected with a trade dispute for inquiry, and he may do that on the request of one party or without the request of either party, on his own initiative, but that power has been very sparingly used. Last year I do not think it, was used at all, and the total number of times on which it has been used are 15. It is a spasmodic power, exercised occasionally, and solely on the discretion of the Minister. But that Act contains no provision that, while a reference for inquiry is proceeding a stoppage of work shall not take place. A stoppage can go on, a lock-out or strike can go on, in spite of the fact that the Minister has referred the matter for inquiry.

The right hon. and learned Member suggests that no occasion occurred last year when that Court was formed, but does he remember that the year before a Court was set up and was totally ineffective.?

I said, particularly, that there was no occasion last year. There were two inquiries, one in 1924 and one in 1925, and it is a matter for consideration as to the reasons why those two inquiries were not more fruitful than they were. That is a most important aspect of investigation. I wanted merely to recall the legislative position up-to-date, for the purpose of considering the mise en scène, the circumstances, in which this new Clause is suggested. The net result is that there is no legislative prohibition of a stoppage of work during conciliation proceedings. In Canada, however, there has been for 20 years past such a provision under an Act known as the Lemieux Act, which was passed in 1907. That Act is the basis of the new Clause and of the Schedule which we propose to add to the Bill. I may say for the information of the Committee that we have taken the Lemieux Act itself, without any alteration of the language, as the basis of the proposed Schedule. We do so in order to present something to which practical experience has extended rather than to put before the Committee a new and untried scheme.

It may be that the provision, as a whole, is unsuitable to this country, or it may be, as we think, in general principle suitable to this country. It may be that in details it can be altered with ad vantage, but we think it convenient to put something actual and practical before the Committee for their consideration. That being so, it is worth while considering the history of the Lemieux Act. In 1912, the present Lord Askwith went to Canada at the instance of the Ministry of Labour to make an investigation of the working of the Lemieux Act. He reported favourably, though expressing doubt as to whether the aspect of compulsion in that Act was then suitable to this country. In 1924, Lord Askwith himself introduced in the House of Lords a Bill to amend our Industrial Courts Act of 1919 by adding certain Sections taken from the Lemieux Act. The largest addition which he proposed was that it should be illegal for a period of 30 days after the reference of a dispute to a conciliation tribunal under our Act of 1919, for any strike or lock-out to take place. The Bill did not go further, and there the matter now rests. In 1925, the Canadian Act was declared by the Privy Council, as the ultimate legal tribunal, to be void on the ground that it was a Federal Act which purported to deal with provincial matters, that those matters were not within the jurisdiction of the Federal Legislature and ought to have been dealt with by the provincial legislatures. The Act fell to the ground as a result of the judgment of the Privy Council that it was ultra vires.

What happened in Canada then is very instructive. There was a strong demand at once for the re-enactment of the same provisions in several of the Provincial Legislatures. I have the authority of a leading Canadian stateman, who was in this country recently and who had much to do with that Act, for the statement that the demand for its re-enactment came equally from the labour side and the employers' side. The result was that in several Provinces it was re-enacted and it was re-enacted in the Federal Legislature, so far as industrial questions fall within Federal legislation—in regard to railways and so on. So that we have this position—that in Canada they tried the Act for 18 years. It then by accident, so to speak, fell to the ground, but they were so satisfied with its good working that they asked for its re-enactment. I am not suggesting that Canadian experience is directly applicable in all particulars to Great Britain. Neither employers nor employed are organised in Canada to the extent to which they are in this country—and we rejoice to know that they are so well organised in this country. The machinery for collective bargaining is nothing like as effective in Canada as it is here, with the existing trade union organisation that we possess.

Therefore, in applying the Canadian precedent to this country I concede at once that questions may arise as to whether, in this or that particular, it is suitable to English and Scottish conditions. But, surely, this proposition can be accepted—that there should be a delay of a month, or some short period, whilst conciliation is going on and whilst a real investigation into the facts on which the merits of the case depend is going on, in services which are essential to the life of the community and in those only. Such a provision is not an extravagantly wide departure from the principle of voluntary conciliation to which we are so much attached in this country. It is not a long step away from it. It is a step which, if accepted by the trade union movement of this country, would in no way interfere with the real voluntary attributes of our procedure, and it would protect the community from strikes which, once begun, tend to become bitterer as they proceed.

That is the fundamental purpose of the Clause. These essential services are already in this country treated exceptionally. Under the Act of 1875, in regard to gas services, it is a criminal offence for a workman, in breach of his contract, to leave his post of duty, and there is a similar provision in the Act of 1919 in regard to electricity. The principle is accepted that essential services stand on a footing different from others and that the community is entitled to make special regulations in regard thereto. I, therefore, submit that a principle, which has been accepted for many years in the legislation of this country, is the principle underlying the new Clause. Let me explain shortly what that principle is. It is contained in the Schedule which appears on a subsequent page of the Order Paper: The first paragraph of the proposed Schedule, following the precedent of the Lemieux Act, provides that where a dis pute exists between employers and employed, either party may ask the Minister of Labour for the appointment of a board of conciliation and investigation.

The next three paragraphs provide for the appointment of such a board consisting of three persons, one named by the employers, one by the employed and a third by the two jointly or by the Minister. But the important provisions in the Schedule are those contained in paragraphs 5 to 9. Paragraph 5 provides that it shall be the duty of the board expeditiously and carefully to inquire into the merits of the dispute and the right settlement thereof and to make all such suggestions and do all such things as it deems right and proper for inducing the parties to arrive at a fair and amicable settlement. Paragraph 6 provides that if a settlement of the dispute be arrived at by the parties, a memorandum shall be drawn up and if the parties choose they may make it a binding agreement. Paragraph 7 provides that if a settlement be not arrived at—and I ask the particular attention of the Committee to this—the board shall make a full report setting forth the various proceedings and the steps taken and all the facts and circumstances and its findings therefrom, including the cause of the dispute and the board's recommendations for the settlement of the dispute, according to the merits and substantial justice of the case. Paragraph (8) says:

"The board's recommendation shall deal with each item of the dispute and shall state in plain terms, and avoiding as far as possible all technicalities, what in the board's opinion ought or ought not to be done by the respective parties concerned;"

and they may make suggestions as to the length of time during which the settlement shall remain in force.

Paragraph (9) is of vital importance. It provides for publicity.

"For the information of Parliament and the public the report and recommendation of the board and any minority report shall, without delay, be published."

When a dispute takes place in this country, there is a great deal of publicity in one sense, because the newspapers make it their business to publish a great deal about it, but the Committee will probably agree that the facts published in one set of newspares are not always identical with the facts published in another set of newspapers. Two views of the facts are put before the public, and the public find it difficult to make up their minds as to where the true merits of the dispute lie. If we can have an investigation of an impartial character by a competent tribunal and a dispassionate statement of the facts, it will enable public opinion to form much more rapidly and to decide what are the true merits of the case. I recognise that I am talking in ideal terms, and that we never get perfection, but, if we can go some way in that direction, it will be of great assistance to the formation of a sound and forcible public opinion. In the case of most industrial disputes, once the real facts are known there is not much doubt as to which side is right and which side is wrong, although it may be that one side is not right on every point. If the public once make up their mind about a thing, a settlement very quickly arrives.

Paragraph (10) says it shall be unlawful for an employer to lock-out or for men to go on strike. Paragraph (11) provides for 30 days' notice of an intended change. Paragraphs (12), (13) and (14) provide penalties. Here, again, I express no opinion as to whether this is precisely the best way of enforcing an Act of this kind. It is a matter for consideration. Finally, paragraph (15) provides that the parties may, if they choose, give to the conciliation tribunal the powers of an arbitral body, so that the result arrived at by the tribunal shall operate as a binding award.

In the Clause standing in my own name which incorporates the Schedule we have given a list of essential services, and included coal-mining as being essential to the industries of this country to such an extent as to make it really an essential service. In Sub-section (3) we have excepted railways. Whether that be right or not is for the Committee to consider. It was done because on the railways the machinery of conciliation which is incorporated in the Railways Act, 1921, is working so well that we felt that it was probably best, in the first instance, to leave things alone. In most essential services there is already an extremely good voluntary conciliation machinery at work, and it may well be that, subject to some certificate from the Ministry, the official conciliation tribunal erected by an industry voluntarily should be treated as the conciliation tribunal under this Bill. That, again, is a matter for consideration.

I have explained the new Clause as shortly as I could. Let me add two observations for the particular attention of His Majesty's Opposition. They have expressed the fear that Clause 1 would stop strikes of an industrial character, although it might not be intended to stop them. I do not agree with their view, but I will assume for the moment that they are right, and would point out to them that this machinery for securing an impartial investigation and a public report on the merits of the case will to a very considerable extent meet their difficulty by providing an alternative remedy. Secondly, in a general strike there are a great many of the rank and file who do not strike in order to coerce the Government, who do not think anything about the Government, but who strike because they think they can improve their own lot or out of sympathy with people in another industry. To that section of the rank and file the procedure and the remedy offered by our new Clause and Schedule should be of real advantage. I ask the earnest consideration of the Committee for this proposal. I am not tying myself down to all the details of it, and am ready to consider any better alternative; but I do most earnestly ask the Committee now, at this stage of our post-War experience, after the losses of industry through the stoppages of the last eight years to see whether we cannot take one small step forward beyond the Industrial Courts Act, 1919, in order to protect the community from the grave injury which is caused by stoppages, whilst ensuring justice both to employers and employed.

It may be said of the Mover of this new Clause that he has addressed himself to the subject in the spirit which he has shown in regard to the general question of industrial relations before they were further embittered by this Bill. While we on this side recognise that as a loyal party man he has given some general support to the Bill we appreciate the spirit and the motives which have prompted him to put down this Clause. I do not regard this very late stage of our proceedings as the appropriate time for raising the subject with which the Clause deals. If the Government had had a desire to extend industrial peace, they would have approached the question somewhat in the terms of this Clause, and would have asked the country to turn from the mood in which we found ourselves following the industrial troubles of last year, in order to search for some way out of those troubles and to prevent a recurrence of them. Instead of taking that course and asking us to devote our energies to providing helpful measures and better machinery for producing industrial harmony, hon. Members opposite, by the force of party demands and by what I fear has been a deepening class antagonism among a considerable number of Government supporters, have been driven, mainly by these propelling forces, to the introduction of the Bill which we have been considering so long.

The excuse for the Bill is that we must not have another general strike. If that were the only consideration in the mind of the Government, the Bill would have been limited to that subject, and would not have covered the innumerable other questions, industrial and political, to be found in it. It would not have sought the vindictive forms of punishment, financial and physical, which are threatened in the different parts of the Bill. Therefore, I say that, if a subject such as this new Clause raises had been submitted as a separate issue for independent consideration and discussion, we on this side of the House would have been quite ready to debate the issues raised, and we should have been eager to support even better conciliation machinery than is now afforded for the prevention and termination of stoppages in the affairs of industrial England.

Without any offence, I suggest to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the Exchange Division of Liverpool (Sir L. Scott) that the terms and spirit of this new Clause have no relation whatever to the Bill. Of course, the Clause is regarded as being in order, but we cannot regard it as being in its proper place in relation to this particular Bill. At the same time, we welcome the opportunity which it gives of debating both the provisions in other countries, and those in our own, relating to industrial trouble. This Bill has gone very far to crush in a large measure that spirit for conciliation which was being developed before it was introduced, and it clearly will make it more difficult for a long time to come for us to pursue the efforts which we were previously anxious to pursue in order to prevent a recurrence of industrial disputes. But that must not be taken as meaning in any degree that we shall ever be prepared to forfeit the right of work-men to strike if they believe that they cannot secure just and reasonable terms in any other way. The strike weapon has been most serviceable in the past, and, if that weapon had not been so much a part of the armoury of the organised workers of this country, their appeals for justice would rarely have been granted.

Before the War and before the weapon of a general strike had been developed, the prosperity of this country was evident all round. The official figures and returns relating to revenue and income showed that the better-to-do classes, in spite of their conditions of living and in many cases in spite of their extravagance, continued to add, to their store year by year. Take those years when British trade was bringing gains to those on the employers' side in their businesses. In those years there was scarcely ever an occasion when the employers of labour in any industry voluntarily offered to their workers some little addition to their wages, or showed any anxiety to concede to their employés anything at all without the threat of a strike. During those years employers did not give any share of their increasing gains in British industry and business to their workpeople. Therefore, I say that, however much we may try to do in the way of providing conciliatory machinery, that machinery, when provided, will afford a very small contribution towards industrial peace, unless we deal with what is the fundamental of this question, namely, a more equitable and fair distribution of the yields of labour and of the general gains which industry brings. If one side is being literally robbed of its right and at the same time the other side enjoys undue gains through British industry, no amount of conciliatory machinery will be able to maintain a state of industrial peace.

At the same time, the facts of the situation show that our industrial troubles are often grossly exaggerated and used for unworthy purposes. The normal state of British industry is one of peace. It has always been true that the good work which these trade, unions are doing never finds mention in a newspaper. The good deed is not covered by a line of print; but let there be a little trouble with a trade union, no matter in what form—let a trade union, for instance, seem to spend its money upon salaries, and not in paying benefits—and that is made the theme of speeches in this House, and efforts are made to mislead the public mind as to what is the real position of trade unions.

If the whole of the trade union income were spent upon official salaries, management expenses, and maintenance, that money would be well spent if, in exchange for that service, the members of the union enjoyed the advantage of advances in wages secured by the labours of the trade union officials, or enjoyed the advantage resulting from reductions prevented by them. In short, a trade union contribution is paid for services, and not necessarily for the handing back of benefits in the form of strike pay or lock-out pay, which are only secondary purposes for which trade union contributions may be. paid.

4.0 p.m.

My right hon. and learned Friend gave to the Committee figures representing the number of days lost in relation to industrial disputes, and I accept them, on my own part, at any rate, as being given not to apportion blame among either employers or employed. But I would ask his attention to the fact that it is not in that way that those figures are commonly used. On public platforms and in the Press, when the country is reminded of the number of days lost through disputes, that reminder is usually accompanied by the information that the workers are to blame, that it is organised labour which is the cause of this kind of disaster falling upon the country. Indeed, we have had Ministers holding very high offices in the State, in their public speeches roundly condemning the working classes for the loss of those days. If I stop for a moment, and in a spell of silence ask for an answer to a question I will put, I doubt whether there is a Member here listening to me who can give an answer. Setting aside the national strike of last year, I say that since the Armistice there has not been in this country any strike of considerable dimensions inflicting real loss on the country or community, a strike, that is to say, in the sense of a stoppage due to workmen trying to force some new claims or demands on employers. The Minister of Labour is here, and I understand will take, part in the Debate later on. I ask him to name, apart from that strike of last year, any stoppage that would really threaten the life of the community, or even inflict extensive inconvenience upon the people, anything national or extensive in the way of a stoppage due to the initiative of the workmen or of their leaders?

There have been hundreds of stoppages, of course, though even that number on public platforms, again, has been exaggerated. There have been hundreds of stoppages' since the Armistice which, collectively, have undoubtedly caused very great financial and industrial suffering, but I assert—and I think the Minister of Labour cannot disprove it—that with few exceptions these innumerable stoppages, or, at any rate, stoppages running into many hundreds, over a period of years, have all been due to the initiative of the employers, who have proposed worse conditions, or sought to inflict reductions in wages. So that, in short, these stoppages have been, in the main, due to a necessary resistance, on the part of the workers, to the endeavour of employers to make their conditions worse. We might allow some blame to the working class for its resistance, if it were not that, again, the facts show that the only class in these years of trial and industrial trouble which has made a real sacrifice in the interest of British trade, which has endured personal sufferings in the form of sacrifices, has been the wage earning class. All the facts, with the exception, perhaps, of the Chancellor's Budget of the present year, from the Armistice onwards, prove that while the workers' wages were coming down every year, the incomes of the better-to-do classes were going up and up. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) shakes his head which, I know, as a rule, is full of facts. I ask him to cite the facts against my statement, and I say he cannot get away from the figures that, while there has been, as I say, a, decline— almost an uninterrupted decline—in the wages of the wage-earning class, there has been an uninterrupted ascension, an uninterrupted increase in the incomes of the Income Tax paying class and the Super-tax paying class of this country.

If the right hon. Gentleman takes some of the largest industries in this country, he will find that not only have dividends been going down, hut, in certain large industries, they have disappeared altogether.

Of course, I quite agree there are instances of big industries, indeed, where the dividends have gone down.

And disappeared.

We must take these things, if I may say so, in the lump. Take the working classes in the lump, and take the Ministry of Labour figures in the lump, and they show us how much the workers' wages have gone down. We must also take in the lump the incomes of other classes, and not seek to prove a general argument or a general fact by citing isolated or single instances.

Take the industries in which the troubles have arisen.

That still does not materially affect my argument—certainly it does not disturb it. I am not arguing for trouble; I am not arguing against conciliation. I am in favour of peace, but not peace at any price. I am in favour of peace with justice and righteousness.

Hear, hear!

Peace under conditions of industrial slavery or submission we shall not endure, and that is why I say the retention of the strike weapon, which has been, indeed, the only effective shield against the employers' recurring attacks, is a weapon which the organised workers must retain. If they are deprived of that weapon, the tendency will be for them to drift again into a state of serfdom. The retention of that weapon is a sign of the industrial worker's real freedom, and to the degree in which he is deprived of the use of that weapon, when he thinks it proper and right to use it, so is he driven again nearer to the condition of slavery from which his ancestors emerged. While we have, as we all admit, these instances of industrial trouble, I think it will be true to say there is no industrial country in the world better provided with conciliation machinery than this country, and I would claim a great deal of the credit for that extensive provision for those who sit on this side of the House. If we go back to the last effective reminder which can be found in this matter, that is, to the Debates which took place in this House during the discussion on the Industrial Courts Bill, it will be found that the attitude of those of us who then constituted some part of the Opposition, was an attitude of helpfulness, of constructive endeavour on our part to make that Bill serve its purpose. Since then it has been from this side of the House that appeals have often had to be addressed to the Government to use that machinery. On several occasions the right hon. Gentleman, who has had power of a kind to use that machinery, has, for such reasons as he thought proper, refused to use it. So that appeals for conciliation have been addressed from this side of the House, while all our leaders have for long endeavoured to make that machinery as useful and serviceable as possible.

During the long coal stoppage of last year, let us not forget that while that struggle was deepening in its bitterness, and while the workers who were suffering because of it had their sufferings intensified, even then, while feeling ran so high, the miners' leaders twice suggested, virtually, arbitration as a settlement for the troubles existing between the mine-owners and themselves. To a great extent, proposals of this kind in principle and in the main amount, as far as we are concerned, to the forcing of an open door. As I have said, if we had been called upon to discuss this matter altogether apart from the Bill to which the Clause relates, our attitude would have been a frank avowal of the wisdom and of the great advantages that lie behind the machinery of conciliation. I understand the right hon. and learned Member to be against anything in the nature of compulsory arbitration. Even if Labour were in favour of compulsory arbitration, which, of course, it is not, employers of labour are against it, and I daresay for every instance where it can be shown that the workers refuse to go to arbitration, that instance could be matched by an instance cited from the employers' side. This is not a country where either party will listen to compulsory arbitration, and, therefore, naturally it is a country in which no Government could commit the folly of proposing it. But all of us may make some little effort towards what I may call the cultivation of a predisposition on the part of both employers and employed to a thorough use of the voluntary conditions of arbitration, which, for the advantage of both, they might more fully employ. But to do that we should have to drop a Bill like this, for this Bill creates a feeling and a mood of distrust and suspicion.

How can the right hon. Gentleman opposite expect trade unions, if this Bill becomes law, any longer to believe these empty platform professions of a desire to have industrial peace in this country? I repeat that the underlying and unmistakeable cause of industrial conflict is to be found in the inequitable and unjust way in which the profits of industry and the rewards of service are distributed, and, until we face these questions more from the standpoint of a fair deal as between employers and employed, it will be futile to force through any further provisions for conciliation machinery. Therefore, if the Government are to display a sympathetic attitude towards this Clause we are now discussing, let it not be a hypocritical attitude, but let it be a genuine and an honest frame of mind, tending towards the bringing about of peace in industry by fairness and equity. If we can trust the workers to work for us, to produce our necessities, we ought to be able to trust them to use their organisations fairly, to allow those organisations to work upon the same principle, the same rule which governs every other institution in the country, namely, the rule of the majority. Why do the Government single out the trade unions as being alone those organisations which must not have the right to work upon the basis of majority rule in relation both to their industrial and political activities? I do not see how a Clause of this kind can be discussed for very long with any great advantage unless we have a complete reversal in the mind and policy of the Government in relation to organised Labour.

I should like to associate myself with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Platting (Mr. Clynes) in regard to the very sympathetic way in which the Mover of this proposed new Clause placed the case before the Committee. He always approaches this question in a very broad-minded spirit, and he has certainly done so on this occasion. I also agree that it is very unfortunate that we should have to discuss the question of machinery for conciliation in connection with so provocative a Bill as the present one. It makes it very difficult to give the subject fair and calm consideration. Indeed, I would go beyond that, and say that, even if it be incorporated in the Bill, the mere fact that it is part and parcel of an Act of Parliament which is undoubtedly regarded by millions of organised workpeople as an attack upon their organisations will make it of less value as a means of promoting conciliation in labour disputes. All the same, I am very glad that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the Exchange Division of Liverpool (Sir L. Scott) has raised this issue, as probably this is the only opportunity which he would get, and it is the only opportunity, I fear, that the House of Commons has had of discussing it; and in the House Commons my experience teaches me that you must take the opportunities when they come. This is the only opportunity which I fear we shall have in this Parliament of discussing a matter of vital importance to the trade and industry of this country, namely, whether there is no means of setting up some machinery which will put an end to these very disastrous conflicts.

Take the conflict of last year. The conflict that was really damaging to industry was not the 10 days' general strike, but the bona fide struggle between employers and workmen over a question of wages and the hours of labour—something which by common consent was perfectly legal. All the same, it provoked a struggle which lasted for seven months, which has cost the people of this country scores, if not hundreds, of millions, and from the effect of which we have not yet recovered. I agree with my right hon. Friend that it would be quite impossible to prohibit strikes altogether, that the weapon of the strike must be held in reserve. That is true, but my right hon. and learned Friend does not propose to prohibit strikes; his proposal is to promote conciliation, to make those strikes as difficult as possible, and to force a recourse to every means where reason can prevail before the mere conflict of two organised forces is resorted to. It is the same principle as that of the League of Nations. The League of Nations does not propose altogether to prohibit war; it is a means of making war as difficult as possible. As a matter of fact, the knowledge that war is in reserve, and that a nation can resort to it, is, in itself, a source of strength to the League; and the knowledge that in the end, if means of conciliation fail, the workmen can fall back upon strikes and the employers can fall back upon lock-outs will be in itself an argument which would be ever present to the minds of those who are attempting to achieve settlement by reason.

Therefore, nobody proposes that all strikes should be made penal; in fact, if that were proposed, it would be bound, in my judgment, to break down. It is one of the questions which every Minister has had to consider. I considered it when I was President of the Board of Trade; it was considered when the question of the Canadian Bill came before us which I think was originally the Mackenzie King Bill, when the present Prime Minister of Canada was good enough to come over and assist us. There they did not pass the prohibition of strikes, and that is a proposal which I think no one would contemplate, because I think it would simply end in a penalisation which would be quite impossible. We found it very difficult to work that prohibition even during the War, under the Munitions Act; indeed, we found it in one or two cases quite impossible to do so. I do not believe it can really be accomplished. What is wanted is some machinery that will force the parties to come together—a machinery in which there is confidence.

If I may say so to my right hon. Friend, it is not enough to say, although it is perfectly true, that the conflicts of the last three or four years have been due to a resistance on the part of Labour to pro- posals for reducing their wages or making their conditions worse. The stoppage of last year was attributable to that, and I believe the great struggle of 1921 in the mines was also attributable to that. But that was inevitable. You were dealing with a falling market. Prices were falling, and the only issue, therefore, that came into being was an issue with regard to the reduction of wages. That, however, does not mean that there is no possibility of exactly the same conflict if there is an improvement in the market. At present we are still dealing with a falling market, but that, I hope, will in good time change, and in the course of, it may be a few months, it may be, perhaps, a year or two—I do not know how long—you may have a change, and you may have a rising market. Then you will have demands for an increase in wages. That is inevitable. You may have a demand for a rise in wages which employers say is beyond their capacity to meet, and then you will have a conflict upon these issues. Is it not desirable that we should be prepared for the changes of the future by means of some sort of machinery that will promote conciliation and prevent these disastrous conflicts?

Anybody who has been studying the figures of the conflicts of the last 21 years will see how they are becoming more damaging each decade. There was that remarkable speech delivered by my right hon. Friend the late Minister of Transport, which I had the pleasure of hearing, in which he pointed out how these conflicts were on a very much larger scale than they used to be, because both Labour and employers are organised for conflict on a very much more considerable scale than they used to be. In the old days the trade unions were comparatively small, and the employers' organisations were comparatively small; but now the federations of the employers include a very large number of industries which used to be organised separately, and the associations of the workmen have had to meet that condition of things by federating amongst themselves. Therefore, when you have a conflict now, it is a conflict on a very much wider front than it used to be; and that is bound to go on. The employers are undoubtedly widening their front, and Labour is doing the same—

And bringing the Government in with them.

The Government cannot possibly avoid it. Whatever one may say about Government interference, it is folly to imagine that the Government can keep out of these conflicts; but I will say that it is very much better that these things should be settled by some kind of machinery which is acceptable to both parties than that the Government should come in. There is no doubt at all about that. Take the two or three industries which have had machinery which has on the whole been successful. There is, first of all, the boot and shoe trade, where there has not been any very serious conflict for about 50 years. There you have an organisation which commands the confidence of both sides, and, when they come to a pass at which one of the parties demands a reduction or the other demands an increase, there is complete confidence on both sides; the accounts are presented on both sides in such a way that for 50 years there has been confidence on the part of the workmen that nothing has been kept back. That tribunal has established confidence in the hearts of both employers and work-people. Of course, there is constant bargaining between labour and employers, just as there is constant bargaining between anybody who sells a commodity and the purchaser who purchases that commodity, and there may be disputes and difficulties on both sides; but when you have confidence in the body that, I will not say adjudicates, but the body that determines—the body that examines, the body that reports, and the body that recommends to both parties—you settle.

That is in the boot and shoe trade. The same thing applies to the iron and steel trade. There a body was established, and it included two very remarkable men. There was Mr. John Hodge, one of the most remarkable of trade union leaders, who fought a very fine battle for his men; and there was Sir David Dale, who was one of the most remarkable employers of his day, and who, I believe, was one of the chairmen. That body commanded the confidence of both sides, and there were no difficulties there. In the case of the railways, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hill-head (Sir R. Home), Sir Eric Geddes and myself, with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas) on behalf of the workmen, managed to set up a tribunal which has commanded general confidence. There is no doubt that there has been a reduction there, but it has been a reduction upon a principle accepted as a perfectly fair one, and, when there is a reduction there, the facts are presented and there is a long discussion between the parties; but there has been no strike upon an industrial question. The railwaymen were involved last year in the general strike, but that was something which was outside a mere industrial dispute.

There you have three of the greatest industries in this country, and I am not sure that it does not apply to the textile industry in Lancashire as well to a very large extent. Is it not possible that something of that kind could be done with regard to great industries like the mining industry, which is a basic industry. I regret that my right hon. Friend has turned this down, though upon a ground which I can thoroughly understand and appreciate. I can see how he must abominate this Bill, and there are millions of workmen in the country who do the same thing. It is a very great mistake to imagine that workmen are not concerned about it. I could see that for myself when I went down to the Bosworth Division; there was absolutely no doubt of that. There was not the same excitement that you sometimes get, in the shape of great agitations and shouting, but an employer of labour came to me after I landed there, and said to me that one of the difficulties—from the Liberal point of view—was that a considerable number of Conservative trade unionists were going to vote Labour for the first time, because they disliked the Trade Unions Bill. It is a very great mistake to imagine that workmen are not very indignant about this Bill because there has not been any great excitement. I can, therefore, well understand the feeling of my right hon. Friend and those associated with him about having anything incorporated in this Bill at all. But will he not take into account the fact that this may be the only opportunity? There is a lull at the present moment. Workmen and employers are very tired and very exhausted with the terrible con flicts of last year and of preceding years; but, if there is any change in trade, either for the worse or for the better—and we all hope it will be for the better—we shall be confronted by the same kind of dispute again.

Would it not be desirable that we should have some machinery of this kind? I am not committing myself to the exact proposal of my right hon. and learned Friend; he is only moving the Second Reading of a Clause, which means that we are simply accepting the principle of some machinery being set up. Once you get a Second Reading, you can examine the Measure itself in detail. My right hon. Friend himself did not condemn the principle of this Clause. On the contrary, as I understood him, he was on the whole favourable to something of this kind being done so long as it was not associated with this Bill. I therefore take it that it would be desirable if the Government were to incorporate some means of conciliation. The Bill, as it stands, is purely an attack. It is a very great misfortune when they had to deal with the situation of last year that the Government did not take a survey of the whole situation, and that they did not take account of all the difficulties and see what was the best thing they could do to prevent conflict of this kind without raising suspicions in the minds of the working population of this country. This Clause, if carried, would have been worth tons of Bills of this kind. A Bill of this kind is purely mischievous. If conciliation had been introduced into the Bill as a whole by the Government, no one could have regarded that as an attack upon organised labour. There would have been a general feeling that the Government, instead of throwing away the good will growing in the country, were trying to foster it and promote it. It is not too late for them to do something of that kind now, and, if instead of pressing forward these provocative proposals they were to bring in a Measure to promote conciliation. it would be really a good end to a bad Bill.

As one of those who has put his name to this new Clause, I think we have no reason to complain of the way in which it has been received by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Platting (Mr. Clynes) and the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). On the whole, we can only say that they have treated our proposals with understanding and sympathy. The right hon. Member for Platting, in an extremely interesting speech, opened up a wide field of a very tempting kind, but I will restrain myself from following him into the whole question of our industrial position. There are just one or two points which I should like to make. The right hon. Gentleman emphatically stated that, in his view, a Clause of this kind was entirely inconsistent with the nature of the Bill. I respectfully beg to differ from him. I am not going into a discussion of the Bill itself. But I will say that, whatever view you take of the Bill or its objects, it certainly does not leave the position, either of the employers or the employés, as they were before. They are both placed in a different position, and it is really the question as to what extent the position should be changed that has been the subject of most of the controversy. It is, therefore, reasonable to go a step further, and in the same Measure, which is intended to avoid the evil of a general strike, we should also deal with the avoidance of strikes occurring in essential services.

The proposals we make are confined—and, to my mind, perhaps too limited—to such essential services. What we are trying to do is to avoid such strikes taking place by adopting the machinery, the result of well-tried legislation for 20 years, in one of our Dominions. The results were well ascertained by investigators in this country and other investigators, and have been proved to be successful in averting strikes in numbers of cases. It is one of the best pieces of legislation ever brought into operation. Although we have known and recognised frankly the feeling of hon. Members opposite on the whole subject of the Bill, our proposal is not inconsistent with the Bill. When feeling has died down a little and hon. Members opposite realise that this Bill is not such an undesirable thing, I think they will regret that Measures of this nature, upon which we seem on principle to be agreed, should not have formed a complement to the Bill.

Surely, there is no one sitting in any corner of this House to whom our method of dealing with a strike or a lock-out does not commend itself as being archaic and entirely out of date and as brutally inflicting suffering, and, still more, inflicting suffering on the great mass of the community. The millions of people in this country are really the people to say what is to happen in this country. It does not lie with employers of labour or labour leaders to say what they will or will not have. Labour leaders should not imagine that the public outside is going to allow them to obstruct the traffic by disputes any more than obstruction of traffic would be allowed by brawling in the middle of the road. That being so, surely we ought to advance. I do not abandon my hope that some day we will accept compulsory arbitration, such as has been accepted in Australia, but I am not going to push my own views on this occasion. Our proposal provides for delay, consideration, attempt at conciliation, and publicity. [An HON. MEMBER: "And penalties!"] This country is the most law-abiding country in the world, and its citizens are the most law-abiding. The great mass of the population of this country carry out legal decisions, and penalties are a last resource. Let us deal, therefore, with the intermediate position—the work of conciliation.

I would like to give the Committee just a few figures to show the working of the Act in Canada between 1907 and 1926. The number of applications to Boards arising in the industries was 642, and the number of strikes was 77. That is a very remarkable result, and I would like to point out that 71 of these disputes took place in that stormy petrel of industry, the coal industry. Those who have investigated the machinery state that it has worked well and that it has been beneficial to the State. I would like to deal with one point which has been made to me personally by an employer to whose opinions I attach some weight. His view was that any provisions of this kind might disturb or destroy existing conciliation, and that, instead of trying to settle a dispute, both sides might hang back. Personally, I cannot see the logic of that argument. It is extremely curious logic. As a matter of fact, it has been found in Canada that, far from producing that result, the opposite has happened. A great many more strikes have been averted and settled outside the Conciliation Boards than inside. Therefore, that fear on the part of many men may be dismissed. What stands in the way, if that fear is an unfounded one? I can think of no reason. After all, public opinion must be the final arbiter in modern civilised society in all classes. In the complicated matter of trade disputes, it is always difficult for the public to formulate any kind of view of the justice or injustice of the case as put forward by the contending parties. The disastrous coal strike of last year was an illustration of that. The average man or woman really understood very little as to what the dispute was about, much less the rights or the wrongs of it. I am not speaking of those who were in the dispute, but of public opinion formed outside it, which is a different thing. Here you have machinery which would provide an enormous safeguard for justice being done. We are essentially a fair and just nation, and public opinion would never sanction what it considered a gross injustice to any class of the population.

I cannot see any conceivable reason why this Clause should not go into the Bill. What has the public gained by delay? Why should we always stand hesitating on the brink? The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs pointed out, and those of us who have been here many years know, how few Parliamentary opportunities there are and how many Measures are delayed from time to time. The occasion is here and now. Let hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite forget for a moment their dislike of the Bill, and let them think what will happen when the Bill, as I hope, becomes law. I am one of those most anxious to promote in every sense the spirit of industrial peace in this country. Unless you get a loyal population anxious to avoid every possibility of labour disputes and industrial dislocation, I say deliberately that this country will not be able to maintain its economic position in the world struggle to-day. This new Clause has been put down with the desire to lay, even at this moment, the foundation of an edifice—a temple for a league of industrial peace which is unfortunately more important to the future welfare of this country than the League of Nations is to the world.

I am very pleased that at any rate at one stage in this discussion we are getting on to the policy of conciliation as opposed to the policy of hostility. I have always held that there are two possible policies for establishing relationships between the employers and the working classes of this country. One is described sometimes as conciliation, and the other is the policy of hostility. I am one of those who believe that one of these policies should be adopted in its entirety and entirely free from any contact with the other. I have always advocated the policy of conciliation, a policy which would carry us along the way towards establishing a friendly relationship and a spirit of cooperation between the employer and the workman in the best possible interests of industry. But there is another policy, and a number of people in this country, both employers and workmen, believe in that policy. On our side, there are men who say that the right relationship to exist between employers and workmen is one of open, determined, unflinching and uncompromising hostility. There are men on the employers' side who believe the same thing. This Committee ought to make up its mind which of these two policies it is going to run. It cannot run both—at any rate I cannot run both. If we were faced to-day with a discussion, apart from this Bill, by which the Committee was seeking to set up machinery to create a real spirit of conciliation, and for dealing with the problems which confront us to-day in that spirit, then as far, as I am concerned, I should go all the way in lending any assistance I could in hammering out an effective policy for that purpose.

It is nothing short of sheer imbecility to say that we are pursuing a policy of conciliation when, as a matter of fact, all the provisions of this Bill are associated with the policy of hostility. This Bill from beginning to end is calculated to create class war, class hostility, class bitterness, to a greater extent than anything that has been done in my lifetime, and at this stage to be mixing up these two policies is not common-sense or a realisation of the real situation in this country, but is a mere trifling with the very serious situation with which this country is at present confronted. If the Government are disposed to accept this new Clause—and I quite agree that it has been proposed in a spirit of conciliation—none of us can find fault with them, but if the Government are disposed to follow on the lines along which this new Clause proceeds, then they ought to scrap this Bill from beginning to end, and say to the Opposition, "Let us see if we cannot find a better way of dealing with the troubles that confront us than that in which we have dealt with the troubles of the past."

I am not one of those who want to see more strikes or lock-outs. We had a bitter struggle in the mining industry last year, and it is as certain as death and taxes that we shall have another struggle in the mining industry in the immediate future, or, if we do not get a struggle, at any rate, we shall get a disaster the magnitude of which no man can tell. Last year's struggle did not settle anything in the mining industry. We shall be up against the whole thing again in the future, and we have to determine whether we are going to approach the problems that will confront us in the future in the spirit of co-operation and friendly relationship, and to work co-operatively for the overcoming of these difficulties, or whether it will be another attempt on the part of those in power to impose hostile conditions on the workers—to run a policy of hostility and expect the workers on their side to follow a policy of conciliation. I have a deep-rooted conviction that the right policy for the workers of this country, from the standpoint of national interests, is a policy of conciliation, but I should not succeed if I went among the workers to advocate their adopting such a policy in the face of this Bill and the hostile feelings engendered by the Government. I would say to the Government, in all seriousness, that I have realised all along that this Bill was going through; I realise, also, what will be the developments resulting from it, when it does get through, and I think there can be no doubt about it, that the relations between employers and employés resulting from it will not be such as will further the national interests.

I do not know whether the Government at this stage are prepared to reconsider the whole question of policy. We have to determine whether it is to be a policy of conciliation or one of hostility. I am prepared, and those associated with me are prepared, to hammer out a scheme based upon the principle of a policy of conciliation; but, if it is to be a policy of hostility, let that policy be given a free rein, and let both sides act upon it, and then the best interests of this country will go by the board. If we hammer out the scheme based on the conciliation policy, we will say to the Government, "Are you prepared to accept that or not?" The right hon. Member for Platting (Mr. Clynes) declared that if the proposal contained in the new Clause had been put forward apart from this Bill the party, which he has the honour to lead, would have been prepared to give it their consideration in an, entirely different attitude from that which we are adopting towards the Bill itself. I think that any attempt to mix up conciliation or the idea of conciliation with a Bill, the fundamentals of which are associated with a policy of hostility, is to ask the Members of this Committee to do a most illogical and irrational thing. If we are to have one policy, we should abandon the other. I cannot understand how any man can stand up in this House and seek to embody two policies in the same Bill. For that reason, I hope the Government will stand by their policy of hostility pure and simple, and have nothing to do with the policy of conciliation, or that they will abandon the policy of hostility entirely and adopt the principles of conciliation, in dealing with our industrial problems. If they take the latter course, they will have the good will and the best efforts of which we on this side are capable. If they do not adopt the policy of this new Clause, the policy of hostility must prevail on our side as well as on their's.

I hope the Government will stand firm on this matter. We only require to consider what may happen under the conditions which would prevail if the new Clause were passed in order to see how perfectly futile the system would be which it is proposed to set up. On one point, I think, most of us will agree in relation to the Industrial Courts Act of 1919. It was passed with the best intentions and with good will on all sides of the House, but it has not, on the whole, been successful in the last few years. It is quite useless to bring forward the example of the railways, because experience has shown that in the railways we have an admirable system of conciliation, but the net result has been that the people concerned—I am speaking of those who are shareholders in the railways and those employed by them—have been able to combine together to be perfectly conciliatory one to the other, and thoroughly to disregard everybody else's interests.

5.0 p.m.

In the same way, wherever there is the possibility of monopoly in industry and you can get a conciliatory attitude between capital and labour in that industry, it is invariably the wretched consumer who has to pay. I do protest against any policy on the part of the Government which will facilitate that syndicalisation of industry which is the greatest danger to the country at the present time. We had one example during the lifetime of the Socialist Government. In that case, a huge monopolistic combine was finding its monopoly trenched upon by certain independent persons, and, apparently in complete collusion with the trade unions concerned, who also objected strongly to these independent persons because they were not members of the trade unions, they induced the Government of that day to pass an Act of Parliament which levied upon the greatest city of the world the burden of a great monopolistic combine as regards its traffic. That is the danger we have to fight against in industry. The instigator of this new Clause is one who personally I regard, and many others regard in this country, as one of the greatest dangers in industry at the present time, simply because his policy, both now and in the past, has been towards the formation of monopolies of one kind or another.

This particular new Clause is intended to apply to the essential industries. Let us take into consideration what would have been the case in the dispute in the coal industry supposing this new Clause had been enforced. It appears that, as a preliminary to the setting up of the courts, the employers concerned appoint a representative to be a member of the court and the workmen concerned appoint another representative, and if these two representatives can agree upon the chairman, their decision appoints the chairman; but if they cannot agree, the Ministry of Labour is to impose a chairman upon the two dissenting parties. In the case of the late dispute in the coal industry, what would have happened? Who would have been appointed as the representative on that court by the Mining Association except their president, Mr. Evan Williams, and who would have been appointed as the representative of the Miners' Federation but Mr. A. J. Cook, their general secretary? It is perfectly clear that a court of that composition, with those two men confronted with the task of appointing a joint chairman, would have failed to agree, and the Government, through the Ministry of Labour, would have had to impose an outside chairman, and exactly the same process would have been gone through as occurred in the appointment of the Royal Commission. They unsuccessfully asked everybody they could think of to be Chairman, and, as a last resort, they appointed a Radical politician to that position. Therefore, if this new Clause had been the law of the land before the trouble in the coal dispute last year, we should have had a conciliation court with Sir Herbert Samuel as Chairman and consisting, for the other part, of Mr. Evan Williams and Mr. A. J. Cook. I ask the Committee to imagine if any more preposterous suggestion could ever be made than that a satisfactory issue could be reached by such a court.

But the real sting of this new Clause lies in the last part of it where it details the method of procedure. First of all, at least 30 days' notice of an intended change affecting conditions of employment has to be given, and then, if one of these courts is set up, there must be no change in the conditions of employment until the court has given its decision. What does that mean? Let us take a case that would come under this Bill, the case of the Welsh anthracite coal industry, where, unhappily, considerable disputes have taken place and are likely to take place in the future. Suppose there is a strike or a lock-out being drifted into in that industry; 30 days' notice is given by the owners of the collieries, and that notice will certainly not he given by them, if it is a case of demanding a decrease of wages, unless the colliery owners themselves feel that they cannot go on much longer paying the rate of wages that exists, otherwise they would not take the first step in what might be a very bitter and prolonged struggle. They give 30 days' notice when it is quite evident that they cannot go on paying the minimum wage much longer. That means that every week the smaller concerns in the anthracite district will be getting nearer to the end of their tether. Their difficulties would get worse and worse before the 30 days have elapsed, 30 days during which those in charge of the weaker concerns have been spending most of their time with the managers of their respective banks trying to raise the wind to enable them to carry on a little longer. At the expiration of these 30 days the court is set up, and still these concerns have got to go on employing all their men at the existing rates of wages, with all the loss that is entailed, until a decision has been come to. If there is any considerable delay, what is to be the position of the smaller and weaker concerns? If, in a district where there are one or two very large concerns with enormous capital behind them and enormous resources, and there are a few financially rather weak concerns, what earthly chance would these independent concerns have against a combine or a trust that is intending to set up a complete monopoly in the district and which would first ruin and then absorb them, thus completing the corner. That is really the sting of the new Clause, and I think it shows its real danger.

I am not so enamoured of this new Clause as some hon. Members appear to be. It seems to me that it has some quite dangerous aspects from the point of view of the Labour movement. I would like, before I make one or two general observations, to call attention to these aspects of it. The Board of Conciliation to be set up under the Clause may be set up on the application of any one party to the dispute. It may, therefore, be set up on the application of the employers in any dispute, and then both the employers and the working people have to appoint their representatives; but it is provided that, if the working people do not appoint a representative, then after a certain amount of delay, the Minister of Labour may appoint a representative in their place. The workpeople may not be in agreement for the appointment of the Board, but the Minister exercises his power under the Clause, and the Board is appointed and proceeds to investigate the matter in dispute. The Clause provides that while the investigation is going on, it shall be illegal for a strike or a lock-out to take place. You may therefore get this situation. The Conciliation Board is appointed; the workers refuse to have anything to do with it; and, while the investigation is going on, although they have not acquiesced in it in any shape or form, it is to be illegal for the workers to engage in a strike. That is why I drew the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carmarthen (Sir A. Mond) to the part of the Clause which deals with penalties. There are provisions which show that, in a case like that, if any strike be carried out while investigation is taking place, you may have penalties imposed upon workpeople of not less than £2 and not more than £10 a day for each day or part of a day that such employés are on strike. You may get the extraordinary situation that the workers, having refused to have anything to do with the Conciliation Board and proceeding to strike, may have enormous sums imposed upon them by fines. The Labour movement must look carefully at such proposals before they support them.

I gathered from the mover of this Clause that the main object of it was to avoid national waste or national loss due to strikes and lock-outs. He dwelt at great length upon the number of days' labour which had been lost during a given period of time, but I would like to point out that, in considering the question of idleness, hon. Members opposite never take a fully comprehensive view of the situation. When they think of national loss due to idleness, their minds turn automatically to the workers, but, if idleness be a crime and an offence against the national well-being, we ought to look all round the question and to consider other persons who practice idleness very often during the whole course of their lives. If, instead of being in this rather gloomy chamber, I had been at Ascot this afternoon, I would have seen a very considerable number of people who are in idleness for the greater part of their lives. Why should we confine our attention to the idleness of the workers who are striving by means of their idleness to get better conditions? I want to deal with a few remarks which were made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carmarthen. I gather that his object is to have the workers happy and contented, willing to work year after year and generation after generation. I am sure he regards it as the ideal of British industry that we should have, on the one hand, a body of employers, a body of directors, and, on the other hand, a great mass of contented workers who are willing to go on generation after generation earning huge salaries and huge dividends for these directors.

I would like to tell the hon. Member that that is not my ideal of industry at all. My ideal of industry is that the workers should be provided with work under good conditions for generation after generation which would enable them to achieve higher positions for themselves.

I am glad at least to have drawn that statement from the right hon. Gentleman. He cited the boot and shoe industry and gave results of conciliation in that industry which had maintained peace for 50 years. Peace is all very well, but we want peace with honour and peace with fair play. I, for my part, and I think I speak here the real mind of the Labour party, do not envisage the industrial future as a situation in which you have got that clear division between employers on the one hand and employed on the other hand. I cannot imagine industry going on for generation after generation and finding the workers willing to accept a definite position of inferiority, in which they have to go on working for wages and seeing a great part of what they produce being reaped by a comparatively small section of the community. The right hon. Gentleman said that the methods of settling disputes in this country are bad. I am prepared to agree with him. It is archaic that we have to have the kind of struggle we had last year in the mining industry in order to settle a dispute of that kind. But from the point of view of the conception of the workman of the twentieth century, the whole method of industry at present is archaic. The workers who are engaged in industry, before they are going to give the permanent peace the right hon. Gentleman wants, want to see the issue faced much more squarely than he is prepared to face it. He says he is prepared to see the workers come and take their position even on the board of directors, and take their part in determining the policy of a given industry. That is a good concession. That is something to be welcomed.

There is something much more than that. The real issue between the workers and their employers is as to the proportion in which the results of their labour are going to be divided. If the right hon. Gentleman will go further than that and say, "I am prepared also, as a representative captain of industry, to say that we ought to accept a limitation of dividends, that we ought to accept in a non-speculative industry, 6 per cent., 7 per cent. or 8 per cent. as our maximum dividend, and be content with that, and see that all the rest of the profit accruing in that industry is shared among the workers," he will be putting up a much more reasonable proposition. I would go further and say there is no reason at all why that 6 per cent., 7 per cent. or 8 per cent. should not be guaranteed. There is no reason why the workers should not be prepared to have an equalisation of dividend fund which would enable the industry to put aside a certain amount during fat years in order to provide for the lean years. But let it be accepted as a definite principle, that, after the capital in an industry has received a certain amount, the workers employed in the industry and sharing in the management of it shall get all the rest. If the right hon. Gentleman would really face up to that—and that is the kernel of the situation—he would stand a reasonable chance of getting peace in industry, but until he is prepared to do that he is crying for the moon in expecting that the, workers are going to sit down contentedly for generation after generation while he and other employers are reaping great profits out of their labour.

Peace in industry depends, after all, upon the contentment of the workers, and the contentment of the workers depends upon their spirit and the standard of life they demand. It is my business, and I hope that of the rest of the Labour party, to persuade the workers that they have not yet achieved anything like a proper standard of life. We do not want them to accept the state of life in which they find themselves as being ideal and satisfactory. We want to induce them to think that they have a right to a much better standard of life than they are getting at present, and, if we can inculcate that spirit into them, as we believe we can, if' is quite evident that you are not going to have a. frame of mind in which you can get peace in industry based upon the conditions the right hon. Gentleman opposite wants. I entirely endorse what has been said by our Front Bench and other speakers as to the utter inconsistency and incongruity of the right hon. Gentleman opposite introducing a Clause of this character into a Bill of this nature, because it is the very antithesis of the spirit of the Bill as a whole. I hope we on this side are not going to have anything to do with it. I do not imagine for a moment that the Government will accept the Clause, and I hope, while they are prepared to assist in this very tyrannical and iniquitous Bill as a whole, we are not prepared to accept even this Clause added to it.

I have listened with very considerable attention to all the speeches that have been made, except that of the hon. Member for Mossley (Mr. Hopkinson) when I was called from the Chamber. I can understand, and I sympathise with, the motive of the right hon. and learned Member for the Exchange Division of Liverpool (Sir L. Scott) who proposed the Clause. If there be one thing that has been brought home to all of us, it is that we are sick of industrial disputes. We want a settlement, and we want a settlement without strikes. It is a mere platitude to say the more disputes we have the poorer the country is as a whole, and of course the greater the misery inflicted on certain classes in it. I quite agree that that is a mere platitude, but the greater the platitude, the greater the truth. Of course, there is this to be said from the point of view which the right, hon. and learned Member who introduced the Clause has urged, that it may quite well be that the whole existence of the community may be threatened equally if there should be an industrial struggle in an essential industry, just as much as it might be by a general strike. That is true, and consequently, under such circumstances, it is only natural that those who would like to see industrial life and production go on wish to find any method that is reasonable and practicable and likely to have the desired result of preventing disputes in essential industries from coming to a head. So far I am with him entirely, and I am with the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carmarthen (Sir A. Mond).

But I have two difficulties which would prevent me, on behalf of the Government, from definitely accepting the Clause. The first is that I agree, though for reasons quite different from those stated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Platting (Mr. Clynes), that it is not in place in this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Hartshorn) and others who have spoken have said that it is not in place because the Bill is an attack, a measure of war and class hatred (and he used other expressions of the same kind), and therefore, in his view, a proposal for conciliation is an entirely contradictory line of policy, and the two cannot be put together in the same Bill. I do not in the least degree concur in any such argument. This is the last controversial word I hope to say to-day. Hon. Members opposite have always assumed that in this Bill the Government, so to speak, are the attackers, whereas precisely the contrary is the case. I have to be controversial, because I cannot let these repeated statements pass un-challenged. It is impossible to pretend that we can behave as though no general strike whatsoever had existed, and as though no Government had to deal with the situation that had arisen from it. Therefore, it is perfectly right and perfectly compatible, on the one hand, to deal quite definitely with such a situation as was created by the general strike, and on the other to do everything possible to develop any means of conciliation in the future. They are perfectly compatible policies, and they can both be pursued at the same time and in the same spirit—the spirit that wishes to preserve peaceful industrial life.

My reason why I would hesitate to accept the Clause is different. It is that which was stated yesterday by the Attorney-General and in which I heartily concur. As a Government we felt quite distinctly that we had to deal with the question of the general strike, but, just because we felt that we had to deal with it, we did not wish to go further in preventing the right to strike than was necessary in order to preclude the possibility of a further general strike. I should like to quote the words my right hon. and learned Friend used yesterday in a different connection:

"Whereas we regard the use of the strike weapon as a means of bringing pressure on the employer as a perfectly legitimate although regrettable necessity, we regard the use of the strike weapon as a means of bringing pressure upon the State as illegitimate. We only refrain from dealing with it in this Bill in the cases in which it is plain that its use is primarily for the purpose of furthering a trade dispute, and in that case, although, it may be, pressure inevitably results on the community, we have not thought right to forbid its use."—[OFFICIAL Report, 13th June, 1927; col. 802, Vol. 207.]

It is for precisely that reason that I would not wish to complicate this Measure by creating, with the best intentions in the world, a further category of possible offences. We felt that we had to deal as an offence with the general strike, and we did not wish to go further, either before or now, with creating another category of offences relating to disputes which might be confined to the single industry in which the people striking were participating. For that reason, we do not think it is right in its place in the present Bill.

That is one of the two difficulties I have in accepting the Clause. The other is that when I come to the Clause itself, as distinct from a general sympathy with the spread and development of conciliation, I have more than grave doubts as to the actual applicability of the Canadian procedure transplanted without change into this country. Nearly every speaker to whom I have listened to-day, apart from the mover and the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carmarthen, has dealt in general principle with the question of conciliation. But, of course, before this Clause can be added to the Bill, what we really have to consider is whether the precise procedure embodied in it is applicable to trade disputes and trade negotiations in this country, and here, I fancy, those who have had most experience of negotiations in industrial matters, whether on the workers' or the employers' side, will have grave doubts as to whether this Clause itself, and the machinery contemplated under it, would really be a benefit to the country instead of prejudicing the practicability and usefulness of the existing machinery. The difference, as my right hon. and learned Friend who introduced the new Clause has already pointed out, between the conditions in Canada and the conditions in this country, industrially, are enormous. There are comparatively few trades there organised to the same degree as nearly all the big trades of this country are organised. There are distances there, as well, far greater than there are in this country, so that people have to make several days' journey in order to meet, whereas here the principal parties on either side in any great industry can meet within 12 hours' journey in order to negotiate any matter in dispute. Therefore, the Canadian machinery is not necessarily applicable. Another point I would urge on the attention of the Committee is that the Canadian Act is largely worked upon a voluntary basis. They have not applied the obligatory power which they possess. They have used it where it has been successful in a way which is comparable to the actual machinery at present existing in this country. Thus, in so far as it has been successful, we have the actual machinery at our own disposal.

Let me, however, come to the main difficulties which I feel. Here, in each of the big trades, we have, to start with, highly developed negotiating machinery. Again, in reserve, we have the power to appoint a court of inquiry in order to elucidate facts if it be necessary. Under this Clause, the appointment of a court of inquiry might be made obligatory. Either side could claim to have it appointed. I would ask the Committee to consider how that would actually affect negotiations. I am quite sure that any responsible negotiator on either side of industry will agree with me in this. If we take the normal course of negotiations, neither side, as a rule, generally wants to have trouble. If we are on the rising tide of industrial prosperity the one side may want to get a rise of wages. If we are on a falling market, the other side may want to get a reduction of wages. But on the whole in 99 cases out of 100 neither side really wants to have trouble. They want to get what they are entitled to, but they want to get it, if they can, by settlement. From that point of view, when you come to actual negotiations, what happens? The representatives of the two sides who are authorised to meet make tentative proposals one to the other—and I am sure officers of trade unions on that side will agree absolutely with what I am saying—without prejudice. And so they go on. They go on, because they hope that they may themselves arrive at an agreement, and they are impelled to go on because, not wanting industrial trouble, they do not know whether they may not be landed into it. At the present moment I have a discretionary power of intervention by setting up a court of inquiry. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Platting says that sometimes I have not used it, and I have carefully refrained from using it. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Kelly) says that I might have done. In their heart of hearts many Members on that side of the Committee, as on this side, know quite well that, while it is often difficult to refrain from assenting, it is often much better to refrain than to give way and say "Yes" when one is asked to set up a court of inquiry.

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether the claims for the setting up of these courts which emanated from labour have been turned down and whether those emanating from the employers have been granted?

I cannot give figures at this moment, but I can give a type of dispute. I hardly like to prejudice any future negotiations, and, therefore, I ask Members to have some patience with me if I do not give names. It is all a matter of practical experience. If either of the two sides, or both of them, think that a Court of Inquiry is inevitable, there is a great probability that at that moment they will stop genuine negotiation and will manœuvre for position against the time when the Court of Inquiry is set up. The hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Mr. Bromley) smiles, but he knows it is perfectly true. The hon. Member for Rochdale knows that it is perfectly true, and so do others. I had a trouble which, fortunately, came to nothing. I was asked by both sides to set up a Court of Inquiry. I knew that both sides had got fully developed industrial machinery and were in touch with each other. There were no facts in dispute. The facts were clear and known. What was the need for a Court of Inquiry? I said "No" and, as the possible time of trouble drew near, the friends of both employers and workmen came to me and asked me to set up a Court of Inquiry, and again I said "No." The time for the running out of notices came, and, when they found that a Court of Inquiry was not going to be set up, they came together and settled by midnight. I give that as a case out of my own experience. In cases of a similar kind in Canada, where you do get a developed industry, it has been found that to have too many Courts of Inquiry does not promote industrial peace but hampers the possibility of it. Let me give an extract from Sir Andrew Duncan's Report of the Provincial Royal Commission set up in Canada to go into the coal-mining industry in Nova Scotia. Sir Andrew Duncan, as everybody knows, is a very experienced negotiator in industrial matters. I quote from his Report:

"It seems to us on the evidence we have heard that it is not an accident that the history of this coalfield for so many years back has been a record of Conciliation Boards and Commissions. It was most unfortunate that such outside help was so accessible to the industry, for what happened constituted, in our view, an abuse of conciliation machinery. Reliance upon outside persons and influence was developed to such an extent that both sides ranged themselves as two separate forces, and abandoned any attempt to see what was reasonable in the contention of the other. Worse still, a policy of this kind within the industry was bound to lead to a game of tactics, and we have evidence from witnesses on both sides as to the practice of tactics, which could only result in a graver misunderstanding of each other. It is not necessary for us to enumerate all the directions in which this misunderstanding developed and strengthened."

From these and similar cases, I contend that it is quite clear that the moment you get an obligatory power to demand a court of inquiry, when you have got negotiating machinery, you may stultify the working of it. That is one reason which would make me hesitate in apply ing the Canadian method without change in this country.

I wholly and entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Platting when he says it is because these disputes get into the papers that the attention of the public and the attention of those in the political world are directed to them. What the public does not generally realise is the vast number of troubles which are settled without ever attracting public notice or coming to their knowledge at all. Ninety per cent. of the possible troubles in the industrial world are never mentioned in the daily Press. These disputes are settled peaceably by negotiation, and because they are settled peaceably by negotiation, no one knows about them. They are the cases in which the ordinary normal voluntary machinery has acted successfully, and, again, I would submit to the Committee that disputes like the coal dispute of last year are absolutely abnormal cases. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Bill"?] I do not wish to be diverted except to make this reply. I am talking about the industrial strike and not the general strike. What I would ask the Committee to be careful about is not to prejudice the success of machinery, which without question, operates successfully in 90 per cent. or more than 90 per cent. of the cases.

There is one further fact that appeals to me. I am not certain whether Members opposite will agree with me but I think so. I am a novice as compared with them in the question of trade union management, but it has always seemed to me, trying from the outside to understand some of these questions, that what is really necessary on the workers' side in this country is to try to maintain discipline within a trade union by the trade union officials. It must, from time to time, be an extraordinarily difficult thing for the trade union officers to do so. I think the reason is obvious. When you get a person who has risen in the trade union world and occupies a very responsible position, the strain upon him is often very much greater than it is on many other people in other positions. Many of us would find it hard to say "No" if it meant losing a position to which we attached value. But I should think it would be much more difficult in many cases for the trade union official to say "No" when it might mean that he would not only lose his position to which he attached value but would lose his livelihood as well.

I say this from both points of view, but more from the trade unionist point of view than from that of the employers. Suppose you get a demand—I take the trade union side but it applies to the other side also—for a rise in wages, or a demand of some other kind put forward by some branch of the trade union. It might quite well be, as is often the case, that the demand might not be justified or advisable. Normally speaking, in some cases, when an unauthorised strike has occurred, the trade union official would recognise perfectly well that he ought to tell the men that, in his opinion, because he has knowledge of circumstances which they do not possess, they ought to go back to work, or accept some settlement which he knows is either a right settlement or the only settlement that there can be. But it is not always easy to give that advice. In these circumstances, I put it to any thinking person that it is not a good thing to be able to point to an obligatory court of inquiry as an easy way out of the difficulty. It is an easy way of shouldering the responsibility on to someone else. I put it to any thinking person, irrespective of politics, that it would be a wrong thing to prevent responsibility from being shouldered by those by whom it ought to be shouldered, even though the stress of it may be great.

I have put forward some of the difficulties which I think would apply to the Canadian system in this country as compared with other countries. I think that the possible advantage of publicity has been greatly overstated. We have been given as an argument in favour of introducing the Canadian system into this country the publicity that might have been given to the facts in the coal dispute. Gracious Heaven! I should have thought that if there was ever one dispute in all the world in which there has been publicity enough, it was in the coal dispute.

But not on the right items.

The publicity in connection with the coal dispute, complicated as that industry is, has been more than has been given in any other industry in the whole history of this or any other country. The accounts are audited by auditors of both sides, who gave the figures. There was a court of inquiry in 1924, a court of inquiry in 1925, and there was the Coal Commission set up in order to go into the matter.

The right hon. Gentleman has made an important statement regarding the coal dispute. Had the accountants any power to investigate what were the prices of the coal sold by the colliery companies to subsidiary companies?

I am not for a moment asserting that the accountants had that power. What I am saying it that there was much more information in regard to the coal industry than there was in regard to any other industry under Heaven. There have been courts of inquiry one after another, there was the Coal Commission, and no possible new system in this country could ever have deluged the public with more information than has been given about that particular industry. That leads me to the conclusion that it is not so much the lack in this country of adequate conciliation machinery—I do not pretend for a moment that it is perfect—but what I think is needed more, in the employers' federation or in the trade union as the case may be, is a development of the machinery actually down in the factories and workshops. I am inclined to think that a good deal is needed down there.

We sent a Commission to the United States, and they came back, after having had a most useful investigation there. Nearly all the experiments tried in the United States have a counterpart in this country in some industry or another; but that we can generalise good practices more if industries would learn from one another I have no doubt whatever. That is one of the ways in which advancement could be made. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) spoke of the iron and steel industry. That points along another line. In that industry, as he said quite truly, there has been no dispute for 50 years. It is so in the boot and shoe trade, and to a very large measure in the cotton trade, and we have other trades with similar records. In what respect do those trades differ from the trades in which there have been disputes? They have similar difficulties, but it has been much more a question of the spirit which has been in those trades than the machinery by which the differences have been handled on either side.

On both sides.

On both sides. We have a highly-developed negotiating machinery, although I do not say that it is perfect by any manner of means. We wish, if possible, to find some way of avoiding a repetition of the national disgrace of last year. I am not now apportioning the blame, but that the country as a whole was disgraced is beyond question. If it be possible to devise any other form of machinery, well and good, let us try it! I would say to the hon. and learned Member who moved the new Clause, and to those who have supported it, that I will do anything in my power to see whether, as far as machinery is concerned, there are any improvements in our conciliation machinery that we can explore. I would say to the hon. Member who interrupted me, and to the right hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Hartshorn), that this Bill may be a matter of controversy—it is a controversy between us as to who was responsible and what was responsible—but leaving aside the question of this Bill, let us have conciliation. I would gladly see that a really good investigation by a Committee or some body of a similar kind should be instituted in order to try to see what improvements in connection with industrial disputes can be suggested. I am loth to accept the Canadian form, without amendment, for the reasons which. I have stated, and I am equally loth to believe that no improvement in machinery is possible, although I do say, in the long run, and of this I am convinced, that machinery by itself will not accomplish the ends we have in view; there must also be the will to work it.

The right hon. Gentleman said that he would be glad to see a court of inquiry set up. Am I to understand that the trade unions are in the habit of rushing to him before they have exhausted their machinery for settling disputes?

No, Sir, they are not, and the employers are not, and one reason why they are not is that there is no certainty of a court of inquiry being set up. My argument is that if it were possible for either side to have a court of inquiry set up on demand, it would very likely short-circuit or stultify the negotiations that might otherwise take place.

May I clear up one point in the right hon. Gentleman's speech?

I very much deprecate the habit of asking questions immediately a Minister has finished his speech.

On a point of Order. May I explain the position? The right hon. Gentleman said that he would gladly explore the position, and appoint a Committee. I think it would be for the convenience of the Committee if he could give us an opportunity of a little further talk as to the kind of Committee he would appoint. Obviously, the attitude of the Mover of the Amendment depends upon that.

The right hon. and learned Member can rise again on that point, but I do deprecate the habit of speakers on both sides putting questions to a Minister immediately he has sat down.