asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if a decision has now been given as to the eligibility of the trial shipment of Canadian-grown wheat per steamship "Laconia," via Buffalo and New York, to Liverpool for the preference accorded to Empire wheat?

asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether a decision has yet been reached as to the preference on Canadian wheat shipped in bond through American ports?

The documents accompanying this cargo establish that the wheat was of Canadian origin. My right hon. Friend is advised, however, that they do not afford the evidence necessary to prove that the wheat was consigned from Canada to this country as required by the Ottawa Agreements Act, 1932, and consequently this shipment cannot be admitted to preference.

Having regard to the fact that those decisions will cause very serious dislocation in an important trade, with consequences unfortunate to the grower in Canada as well as to the consumer in this country, will the hon. Gentleman be willing to receive a deputation in order that he may be seized at first hand of the importance of the matter and find some way of overcoming a technical difficulty?

I should always be glad to receive my hon. Friend, or any representation that he desires to make, but he knows that this is the law and that no deputation would be successful in persuading me to go outside the law.

Will the hon. Gentleman remember the difficulty of ice and fog?

Is it the case that, under the procedure laid down in the newspapers this morning as issued from the Treasury, it will not be at all difficult for the original consignors to make it clear that the wheat came from Canada and was consigned to people in this country?

I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for reminding the House of the full statement that has been issued.

Is my hon. Friend aware of the effect of this decision on American opinion?

asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury if he is aware that since the reduction of the duty on pottery from 50 per cent. to 20 per cent. the imports from Japan have increased by 500 per cent.; and whether, having regard to the crisis in the pottery industy, he will urge the Advisory Committee which received the appropriate application last April to issue their report at the earliest possible moment?

I am aware that the imports from Japan of certain types of pottery have shown a heavy increase in recent months as compared with the first four months of this year. I have no doubt that this fact is fully appreciated by the Advisory Committee.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that not only is this excessive dumping taking place, but that our designs are being copied and our trade marks infringed, which is resulting in a position that is jeopardising the whole prosperity of this important industry?

asked the. President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that large quantities of French wheat flour and of German oatmeal, rolled oats, and pearl barley are being imported into this country at very low prices under the export bond system, to the detriment of British millers and farmers; and what action the Government propose to take in the matter?

With regard to the first part of the question, no system comparable to the export bond system is at present in operation in France so far as I am aware. As regards the German system, it is maintained by the German Government that the modifications introduced in March last have removed the element of export subsidy. The situation is being watched.

Does not the hon. Gentleman remember that only a month or two ago, in reply to a question, it was admitted that there must be Government co-operation in this system, and I ask, therefore, if the exports to our country are not in fact State-aided.

Actually there is encouragement of exports only in so far as imports of the same products take the place of the exports, because the export permit has no value except to secure the free entry of the products in respect of which they are issued.

Is it not a fact that, although Government co-operation is admitted in the answer I received, these commodities are being sold in this country very much below the price at which they can be remuneratively sold here and, I believe, below the price at which they are sold in the country of origin.

The statistics do not disclose the enormous decrease in price that the Noble Lady suggests, but the situation is being watched for that purpose.

asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he will give the House an estimate of the number of persons directly employed in the sugar-beet industry in raising crops on the land and in the factories since the factories were first established?

The average number of persons directly employed by the factories in the manufacture of sugar from homegrown beets, from the commencement of the subsidy period in 1924 to the end of the 1931-32 manufacturing season, was 7,136, of whom 5,356 were employed seasonally and the remainder whole-time. Figures for the current manufacturing season are not yet known. Precise information as to the number of persons employed in the cultivation of the beet crop is not available, but it is estimated that during the subsidy period the field work has provided on the average 692,000 man-weeks of employment each year.

asked the Minister of Agriculture whether the returns made to his Department by the sugar-beet factories in this country show the tonnage of raw and manufactured merchandise, respectively, passing in and out of the factories, and give details of the coal and limestone used in the production of sugar; and, if so, whether he will give the latest returns he has in connection with these matters?

The returns received by my Department from the beet-sugar factories show that, during the year ended 31st March last, the quantities of (a) raw material used and (b) the resulting manufactured products, were 1,951,844 tons and 782,033 tons respectively. I have no information as to the quantities of coal and limestone used in the manufacturing process, but the values of these commodities so used were £239,108 and £48,320 respectively.

Will my right hon. Friend consider the desirability of issuing, in the form of a White Paper or similar statement, the figures he has given in answer to this question and to No. 23, so that the House may consider the advantages of the beet-sugar subsidy in regard to employment, as against the alternative method of paying unemployment relief?

The figures will be available to hon. Members in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

If the right hon. Gentleman is going to consider the issuing of a White Paper, will he at the same time give the amount of the subsidy that has been paid during the whole period?

I have just said it will be unnecessary to issue a White Paper as the figures will be available in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is aware that a body called the Empire Farmers' Co-operative Society claims to be operating in consultation with his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter?

I understand that it has been suggested that the society is operating in consultation with my Department, but I am informed that the society itself has authorised no such statement which, so far as I am aware, is wholly without foundation.

asked the Secretary of State for India whether he can give the number of persons at present in prison in India in A, B and C classes, respectively?

I regret that the statistics supplied to me do not show the classification of prisoners, and I have no information later than that supplied to the hon. Member on 28th November in regard to civil disobedience prisoners.

Cannot the right hon. Gentleman give an undertaking to the effect that if the civil disobedience movement is called off those political prisoners will be immediately released?

asked the Secretary of State for India if he is aware that 21 British military officers disembarked at Bombay on 8th August from the Lloyd Triestino steamship "Viktoria"; and whether, in view of the fact that British shipping companies have recently reduced their fares to the same level as Con- tinental companies, he will now issue instructions that British officials whose passages are paid out of public funds must travel on British steamships?

I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington North (Mr. Bracken) on 12th December, 1932.

Is my right hon. Friend aware of the very serious proportions of this diversion of traffic, and that it is causing what is calculated to be a loss to the steamship companies of Great Britain of about £100,000 per annum; and is it not to all intents and purposes a subsidy by the British Government to foreign steamship lines?

My hon. Friend had better look at the answer I gave on the 12th December.

Will my right hon. Friend apply the principle of be who pays the piper calls the tune?

I could not hear that question.

Mr. Rhys.

I rise on behalf of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House to invite the House to consider with me for a few minutes the subject of the present situation in regard to India. It is some months since this House had an opportunity of a formal kind of discussing this subject. Whether, therefore, the party for which I speak agrees or disagrees with the policy of the Government as unfolded, this, I think, we can claim, that the Government have not been in any way embarrassed by any discussion that we might have initiated in this House. Nevertheless, the situation at this moment is such that it would be a serious failure to discharge our obligations, in our opinion, both as an opposition in this House and also as Members with other Members in all parts of the House, as Great Britain is responsible still for our relationship with that great sub-continent of India, and in discharge, as we deem it, of that obligation, we have thought it desirable to raise, before we adjourn for the holiday, the subject once again.

I want to discuss the matter under two heads. First, I would like to discuss the internal situation as it now presents itself to us in India, and later, and in a more emphasised way, the present situation in regard to the Round Table Conference. It will be clear to everybody that it is at all times difficult to know precisely the exact situation in India. Many of my hon. Friends and I have deemed it our duty to address to the right hon. Gentlemen week after week questions bearing upon specific aspects of the problem of Indian Government, but in spite of that, however full may be the information which the right hon. Gentleman has been able to give to us, there must necessarily still remain a feeling that we are not quite able to get a very clear view of the situation in India by reason of the fact that we are 6,000 or 7,000 miles away from this very large territory.

I should like to address to the right hon. Gentleman one question in regard to the economic condition of the people of India. The House has been assisted in its study of Indian conditions by a very compendious report presented to it by the late Speaker of the House of Commons, Mr. Whitley, and his Commission. The disclosures in that Commission's Report were such as to make every one of us, no matter in what part of the House he sits, feel his cheeks blush and glow with a sense of shame. Let me give one or two facts as I cull them from that Report. Here are a few facts in regard to Bombay City. Seventy per cent. of the houses there are of one room. Ninety-seven per cent. of the working classes of that city are accommodated in one room tenements, with as many as six to nine people living in one room. The infantile mortality in the city is as high as 268 per thousand births. This is an appalling recital of facts which none of us dare ignore if we have in mind clearly our much-vaunted responsibility for that great Continent. In Karachi, one-third of the whole population is crowded at this moment into tenements where there are six to nine persons in one room. Similar conditions prevail in many other cities.

Not only are we told these facts by the Whitley Commission Report, but similar statements as to economic depression are made in a volume which is issued for us, called "A statement as to the moral and material progress of the condition of India." In that volume, for the year 1929–30, on page 115, there is the following statement:

"The most characteristic feature of the teeming masses of India is, of course, their poverty."

On page 116 we have this statement:

"In any case, it is clearly the fact that a large proportion of the inhabitants of India are still beset with poverty of a kind which finds no parallel in Western lands, and are living on the very margin of subsistence."

That statement is made in what I suppose is an official document, and we may take it that it is not an exaggeration but probably an under-statement of the actual situation. I need not dwell upon that point, except to turn to the economic situation as it is revealed in the factories. Again, I turn to the Whitley Report. They speak of the infants that are taken to the factories by their mothers:

"They can be found lying on sacking, in bobbin boxes, and other unsuitable places, exposed to the noise and dangers of moving machinery, in a dust-laden atmosphere, and no year passes without a certain number of serious and minor accidents and sometimes even of deaths occurring amongst such children."

I will not develop that point further beyond saying that I should like an assurance from the right hon. Gentleman that, in spite of his many preoccupations concerning the political situation in India, the India Office is not overlooking its responsibility for seeing that some advance is effected in the economic situation in that great territory.

I turn to another aspect of the situation. We have repeatedly in this House during the last 15 months raised the subject of the ordinances of India. Those ordinances have been in operation for 13 or 14 months. I have made certain representations to the right hon. Gentleman across the Floor of the House on information presented to me, and from time to time the right hon. Gentleman, out of a sense of loyalty to his staff—a loyalty which we naturally expect from the right hon. Gentleman—has felt obliged to repudiate the allegations which I made. It is very difficult for people who live here and have never been in India to be able to support these statements from any first-hand information, but I submit that while the right hon. Gentleman is in his office in Whitehall he is under the same disability, because he is confined to England and depends upon information from India, provided for him by other people. There has been an unofficial delegation, not an official Labour party delegation, recently in India, composed of three people, two of whom have been Members of Parliament and one has been a Parliamentary candidate. They may, therefore, be presumed to be people of some substance and some reliability. They come back and tell us that, having made, within the limits of the time at their disposal, as impartial inquiry as they could, many of these allegations seem to them to be founded upon good ground.

The right hon. Gentleman gave a reply the other day in this House to the hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. Molson), on this subject. I shall not dwell upon that answer beyond saying that I owe it to these people, who happen to be personal friends of mine, to make a statement across the Floor of the House, so that it, may have as much publicity as the answer which the right hon. Gentleman gave. The point was made by the right hon. Gentleman that no great effort was made by that delegation to secure interviews with official people. He said that the hon. Member of the Viceroy's Counsel was seen by Miss Wilkinson. I am authorised by the delegation to say that they saw the Viceroy himself, the Home Member and the Law Member of the Council of India. They interviewed at least four Governors of Provinces. Miss Wilkinson was the guest for a week end of a distinguished Governor in one of the most disturbed areas. They were escorted to the North-West Frontier by a highly-placed officer of that particular area. They interviewed Indian officials and British-Indian officials, and took, as far as they could, fairly elaborate steps to get to know not only what is called the Congress side but the Official side as well. It is fair to these people to make that point, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend will not object to my making it, because it would be undesirable for the impression to go abroad that they deliberately went out with the intention of presenting a biased report in favour one particular side. Having said that, I leave the matter.

I could recite a number of incidents that have been reported to me, but I will not do so. I will merely take a reply which the right hon. Gentleman has presented to the House and placed on the table in the Library. The hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Rhys Davies) asked the Secretary of State for India, on the 31st October last:

"Whether he can give a list of the newspapers in the various Provinces from which a deposit of security has been demanded by the Government as a condition of their being allowed to continue publication."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st October, 1932; col. 1413, Vol. 269.]

The right hon. Gentleman said that he would furnish the information, and he has fulfilled his promise by placing in the Library a very formidable list. Here it is, page after page, giving the names of newspapers in India which have been called upon to present deposits as a guarantee of their good behaviour. A better interpretation would be—a guarantee that in the future their matter would be innocuous. Really, we are up against a very important principle, the right of free speech, the right to discuss public affairs in the Press. However well managed and well governed a country may be good government, in my judgment, is no adequate substitute for self government, and, whatever form of government may be, unless there is freedom to discuss the actions of the Government of the day without fear of suppression or repression then clearly a very substantial element of freedom is removed and the consciousness of the removal of that element does not make for cordial co-operation between the Government and the public. Since the days of John Milton the question of the freedom of the Press has been fought out in this country. Some Milton may yet arise in India and write an Aeropagitica in the defence of the right of the Press to discuss the actions and activities of the Government of the day. I submit that this formidable list indicates that the powers vested in the authorities in India would seem to be used not merely to deal with delinquencies but largely to suppress what is a legitimate right to discuss the actions of the Government.

I do not want to exacerbate opinion in this matter. I want to make an appeal to the right hon. Gentleman—I could dwell upon this much longer, but I forbear for a specific reason. We are to-day taking leave of each other for the Christmas season, and I wonder whether I might appeal to the right hon. Gentleman in all sincerity that he should examine this question of the retention of the Ordinances in the light of the sentiment which pervades all our hearts at this time. Of course, it is possible for the Government to say that they are willing to forgive if the Congress people will give formal expression of their wish to withdraw the civil disobedience movement and abandon it. The Government claim—I will not controvert the claim at the moment—that they have largely destroyed the effectiveness of the civil disobedience movement. The Government can, of course, crush by force movements of this sort, but as the Government claim that it has crushed the movement then they can now afford to do the generous and big thing. I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the time has not now come when the Government, as an act of grace, could make a generous gesture in India.

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will not dispute this proposition. His problems are difficult enough and if he can get in India a willingness to listen to what he has to say, a preparedness to consider any proposal he may make, his task will be made considerably lighter. A very substantial contribution towards the creation of a better atmosphere in India would be for the right hon. Gentleman at this Christmas time to declare to India that the Government are prepared, shall I say, to bury the hatchet, to let bygones be bygones and invite these people in a generous spirit to co-operate with the Government in the severe and heavy tasks which are imposed upon them. I hope that appeal will not fall upon deaf ears, because I am sure that there is not a single Member on this side of the House who takes any sort of joy in having to recite the various cases they have had to bring forward during the last 12 months. We have only done so through a deep sense of obligation and duty, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will take it that we are making this present suggestion in all good faith and with a sincere hope that he will give it his most sympathetic consideration.

I turn to the question of the Round Table Conference. I want to ask in the plainest possible terms what is the present position? First of all let me recall the very important White Paper which contains the pronouncement of the Prime Minister on the 1st December, 1931. In that White Paper the Prime Minister stated explicitly the policy of the Government and, broadly speaking, it was largely the same as that of the preceding Government. We have now lived 12 months longer, and we have a gathering called the Round Table Conference meeting within the precincts of this House. Is it a Round Table Conference in the same sense as the old Round Table Conference? Does the pronouncement of the Prime Minister still hold? Is it still the policy of the Government to implement in spirit as well as in letter the statement made on behalf of the Government by its head some 12 months ago? May I put it more particularly? What is the view of the Government concerning provincial self-government and responsibility at the centre? This is a most serious question; and we deem it necessary to repeat it. I feel that the situation is such that we are entitled to ask for a repetition, a re-endorsement, of the declaration made on behalf of the Government. This question is justified by one or two facts.

In the first place, there seems to be a change in the constitution of the Conference. I make no reflection on the honour of the gentlemen who have come all the way from India. No sort of personal reflection is implied. But even these gentlemen will not controvert this proposition, that they are here strictly in their personal capacity and that they cannot be regarded as delegates representing a point of view and speaking authoritatively on behalf of groups of opinion. That, I think, is a substantial change. Not only is there change in that sense, but there is also change in method. During the last Conference there was a considerable degree of publicity regarding the proceedings. Here are we, Members of the House of Commons, very largely in the dark as to what, has been happening in the last month or five weeks. All we know is from bits of gossip that dribble out from the Conference room. Of course the Government must decide for itself, and it may be a wise decision—

It was the Conference that decided.

The Conference, I am told, has decided. From the point of view of the general public and especially from the point of view of Members of this House, it is very unfortunate that we have not been able to get official information or communiqués from time to time, if not daily, indicating not in the brief and somewhat brusque tenms—

I do not know what the hon. Gentleman means. Every day a full communiqué has been issued. Has the hon. Member not read the "Times"?

Perhaps the Noble Lord will keep himself in patience. I was in the middle of a sentence when he interrupted me. I want communiqués, not of the brief kind that have appeared in the Press, but of a more detailed kind giving us some idea as to the pros and cons of the discussions, a fuller account by far flan that which has appeared in the Press from time to time.

A communiquë has been issued every day.

Cabinet secrets.

They could not be Cabinet secrets. The Conference is not a Cabinet meeting. These people attending the Conference are important in their private capacity, but they have no more right there, and no more responsibility there, than I have, except that they happen to be members of the Conference. Can we get to know to-day what conclusions, if any, have been reached? This may be an inconvenient time to ask the question —I do not know. As the Secretary of State knows, we presumed that the Conference would be over yesterday or the day before, and we hoped to-day to be in possession of full information about it. Still this is the House of Commons, and we are entitled to ask whether any conclusions have yet been reached upon any of the subjects which have been discussed. Secondly, if conclusions have been reached or are to be reached, may we anticipate an agreed public statement, either in the form of a White Paper or in some other form, concerning the matters that have been decided?

Thirdly, I want to ask, as a corollary to the point I have made concerning the personnel and change of method, what the Government had in their mind in convening the Conference on this occasion. Were the Government merely seeking to ascertain the opinion of these people as people of substance and authority in their respective spheres in India, or was this Conference convened for the purpose of seeking agreement? The information I have is that up to now all that has happened for all practical purposes is that speeches have been delivered on one side or the other, but I understand that there is no practical issue coming out of these discussions. Those attending the Conference merely listen to each other. What is the object aimed at? Is the Round Table Conference to be brought to an end after these respective speeches without focussing the discussions to a definite conclusion, or is it the purpose of the Government, having heard opinions, to retire as a Government to Whitehall and to frame proposals with a view to presenting those proposals later to a Joint Select Committee of both Houses?

We are now some three days away from Christmas, two days beyond the date which we were told was to see the windup of the Conference. It is a most serious situation if these people, who have been brought some 6,000 or 7,000 miles from their country, are to go back without anything definite and substantial to show to their people. They have made great sacrifices in coming. They have taken great personal risks to their own reputations. Surely they are not expected to go back to their native land without being able to say, "This has been settled in this way and that is that. Such and such have been achieved. Such and such have been postponed." Surely the Government have not brought these people all this way merely to hear their opinions expressed formally, since they are fairly well-known people in India and their opinions broadly would be known before they arrived?

Was not the Conference called at the express wish of the leaders themselves?

The hon. Gentleman is able to answer that question better than I am, and I leave it to him. I say to the Secretary of State seriously that it would be a disaster if the Conference were brought to an end without some definite issues having been finally recorded.

Does the hon. Member mean settled without the consent of the House of Commons?

Nothing of the sort. I am not implying that decisions arrived at would be final for all time—obviously not. What I suggest is that before the Conference has formally concluded those who are members of it should be able to say, "This and this and this have been decided." That is all I am asking. I mean decided for further recommendation to Parliament in one way or another.

The decisions would not be definite. Therefore nothing could be definitely decided.

This matter cannot be pushed off. Let me remind the House of a report which appeared in the "Manchester Guardian" on 6th November, of a speech delivered by Sir Arthur Watson, editor of the "Statesman" of Calcutta. Here is one passage in that speech:

"He was convinced that the one alternative to a constitution that would be accepted by a large body of Indians would be a doubled British army in India, a trebled police and a trebled Civil Service. For these things India could not pay. Great Britain would have to find the money, and after 20 years of resolute Government she would still be faced with the problem which confronted her to-day."

This is not a statement of a partisan of my party but of a person who has occupied high journalistic office in India, addressing the Conservative Members of this House recently. It is as clear as the noonday sun that we cannot allow this problem to be indefinitely postponed. We must settle it and the Government must come to some final conclusions concerning it. Finally, I remind the House that in 1921 the Duke of Connaught speaking in India on behalf of the King used these words:

"For years, it may be for generations, patriotic and loyal Indians have dreamt of swaraj for their motherland. To-day you have the beginning of swaraj within my Empire and the widest scope and amplest opportunities for progress to the liberty which my other Dominions enjoy."

Those words were spoken on behalf of His Majesty the King in 1921; they were a pledge and a promise, and I invite the Government to-day to indicate that there is not the slightest ground for supposing that this Government has departed in the slightest degree from the full implications of that speech made 11 years ago.

Let me say at the outset that I in no way resent this Debate. Indeed I welcome it, for I think it will be the means of clearing up a number of misunderstandings. The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Morgan Jones) always puts his case in a very reasonable and sober way and I think I shall be able, in my answer, to satisfy him that there is little ground for a great many of the anxieties which he has expressed. Let me begin by dealing with two or three of the more detailed points which he raised at the beginning of his speech. First, he raised the question of the disgraceful conditions, in many parts of India, under which industrial labour works and lives. I agree with everything he said. My difficulty is this, that the administration of labour questions is, as he knows, a provincial subject and we here have, therefore, little or no direct control. But I can tell him that my advisers and I here are fully alive to the need for a great improvement in labour conditions. I have had more than one talk with Mr. Whitley on the subject and all the influence that I can exert here is exercised in the direction of helping both the central government and the provincial governments to do everything they can to raise standards generally.

Next the hon. Member raised, in connection with the present state of affairs in India, the evidence that has just been brought back by two or three friends of his own and of hon. Members opposite. I do not want this morning to get into anything in the nature of a bitter wrangle as to whether the evidence which they brought back is reliable or not. I will just give him one or two examples that convince me at any rate that these people, excellent as they may be in many respects, only saw one side of the picture and that they were, during the whole of their visit, very much prejudiced against seeing the other side of the picture. For instance there was the fact quoted the other day by me in the House that a large proportion of their expenses apparently were paid from Congress funds. There is no doubt about this. I have the particulars.

I am not doubting that but if that argument is to be relied upon, then let it be remembered that every member of the Round Table Conference has his expenses paid by the Government.

I do not think the two things are on the same footing. We have had a large body of evidence taken from Congress sources showing that, from the very start, Congress made it its business to stage-manage the kind of picture which they wished this delegation to see. Here is an extract from a document from one of the principal Congress headquarters. I quote the exact words:

"The delegation that is coming from England is one which may carry impressions of an important nature. We are hound therefore to try our best to place before them all that we wish to reach people outside India. It would be effective if Congress activities like processions, picketing, etc., dispersed by lathi charges happen to be seen by them or even if the things occur during their stay such things leave a better impression if seen than heard of."

There is in addition to that extract, a large body of evidence and I could go further into the matter to show that scenes were stage-managed for this delegation and that from start to finish they saw this carefully arranged side of the picture. While I quite agree that they had talks with Government officials and one or two governors, the impression which they left upon every one of my correspondents in India, from the Viceroy downwards, is that from start to finish they were biased in the views which they took.

The right hon. Gentleman has quoted from some document which is in his possession and is, presumably, official. In those circumstances, I take it he will lay that document on the Table of the House in order that we may be, able to judge it.

No, this is not an official document at all. It is a letter from Congress Headquarters.

These documents have come into the hands of the right hon. Gentleman in his official capacity as Secretary of State. He has quoted them here in support of the case which he is putting to the House and I submit that under the Rules of the House he must lay those documents on the Table.

May I point out, Mr. Speaker, that this is not an official document but a quotation from a communication from Congress headquarters.

Before you give your decision, Mr. Speaker, may I submit that it is a communication supplied to the right hon. Gentleman officially and that he is acting in this matter not as a private citizen but as Secretary of State.

It is the ordinary rule, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, that when a Minister or anybody else quotes from an official document the document has to be laid on the Table, but the House has had nothing to show that this is an official document.

Are we to understand, then, that the Government may quote from documents officially in their possession and make a case—I am not saying this in any offensive sense—against certain people whose conduct is called in question and that we are not entitled to treat those documents as official? Are we to understand that it is for the Government to decide whether they will lay a paper on the Table or not and what papers shall or shall not be laid on the Table. It seems to be quite a new procedure.

On a point of Order. Is it not very clearly defined, may I say with respect, that there is an official document and a non-official document? There is no suggestion that this is an official document. My right hon. Friend has said that this is a statement issued by Congress.

The right hon. Gentleman has quoted from documents received from official sources. I have a great respect for the Noble Lord and his knowledge of procedure, but the right hon. Gentleman has quoted an official communication which he has received, especially in regard to the money which has been subscribed, as he says, to pay this expense and so on. They can only have come into his possession officially, and certainly must have come in the ordinary official manner. If he quotes them here in support of his case, I submit that they should be laid on the Table. Very respectfully, I do not think that it is within the discretion of the right hon. Gentleman to withhold them or submit them.

Again let me say that these are not official documents.

They must be.

There are two reasons why this Debate, as I understand, could not usefully be carried further today. One is that the right hon. Gentleman himself has to attend a meeting of the Round Table Conference this afternoon, and, also, we on this side want to raise a domestic question, and there are other Members who desire to raise other domestic questions. He will allow me to say on the question of the papers that I am obliged to him for his courtesy in offering to show me the paper he thinks I refer to, but before settling my mind on the subject I should prefer to look at the OFFICIAL REPORT, because I think that —perhaps it is from my side—we are misunderstanding each other as to the particular paper to which I refer. The only other thing I want to say is that I hope the right hon. Gentleman, when he comes to consider the question of good will and an amnesty in India, will keep in mind the fact that his position is that of representing authority which has really impressed itself—if his statement is correct —upon the mass of opinion in India, and that if there is any giving way to be done it should be done by the strongest side. Most of the leaders who are in prison are personal friends of mine, and I think many of them are personal friends of many other Members in this House and in another place. Very nearly a year has passed since Gandhi was put into prison, with a number of others, and he has been kept there waiting for pledges. I do not think pledges to be extracted from people under those conditions are much use.

I ask the right hon. Gentleman to remember that if Mr. Gandhi died tomorrow every kind of tribute would be paid to him by opponents as well as by friends. I ask him to consider between now and Sunday whether it would not be worth while, seeing the conditions prevailing in India to-day, to make a big gesture, to have a gaol delivery and free these men on their own sort of responsibility. If what he said is true—and of course we accept the right hon. Gentleman's statement about the provincial assemblies and the general spirit of good will—why not add to that good will by setting this man and his friends free? The right hon. Gentleman will agree that no one accuses him of anything but the most honourable and patriotic intentions towards his own people. Having said that I will just leave the matter there, and hope the right hon. Gentleman will give our appeal his best consideration.

The subject that I want to bring before the House is that of the case of Mr. Tom Mann and the other person who are at present detained because they refused to give sureties. Mrs. Duncan was also charged in South-East London, as well as Tom Mann and his friends. I hope that the Home Secretary will consider this matter very carefully. We are of the opinion that during the last few years—I raised this question when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) was Home Secretary—that the police authorities generally and the Metropolitan Police especially have taken up an attitude towards public meetings and processions, which is, relatively speaking, new.

The start of these restrictions took place during the Home Rule discussion and during the unemployment meetings after 1886. Anyone who is acquainted with the history of public meetings in London knows that until 1886 there never was any question of note-takers at open-air meetings or of police note-takers at indoor meetings. I am sorry that there is no representative here of the Liberal party, because the Liberal party and the Home Rulers who were in this House at the time raised the question and brought before the House the new position that had arisen. I called attention to it because I thought that it was the beginning of spying upon political opponents. Those who raised the question at that time said that they did so because it was the sort of thing that was bound to grow. The practice has grown, until to-day the most innocent meetings in London are subject to it. If you look round in those meetings you will find someone there representing Scotland Yard, as if it were the business of Scotland Yard to know what people's political opinions are. We used to think that that kind of thing only happened in despotic countries.

I repeat that in London this sort of thing only started after 1886. I am quite certain that Conservative meetings, official Liberal meetings and official Labour meetings are not dealt with in this fashion. It is only what are considered to be, in the police's judgment, if you please, a sort of outside or left-wing or Communist meeting that is so dealt with. It is no business of the police to know what any of the citizens are thinking about or what they are talking about. The present Home Secretary and other Home Secretaries have again and again, in answer to questions, said that the advocacy of Communism is not an offence against the law. What do the police want to attend Communist meetings for, or have spies at Communist meetings, or at Independent Labour party meetings or at meetings of the Socialist League for? What is it to do with them? Let them mind their own business and look after burglars and people of that kind. It is not their right to know what a man is speaking about or what theory is being advocated.

It may be said, "Oh yes, but we do not go there for that purpose; we go there for the purpose of hearing whether people are saying anything seditious." I have been a victim of these gentlemen who go to inquire as to what we say at meetings. The late Lord Brentford read a statement late one night of something that I was alleged to have said. After the Adjournment, because there was no time to discuss the matter before, he was good enough to show me the document. Everybody who knows me knows that I never said anything of the kind. The gentleman who took the note must have written it out of his imagination, because if there is one thing that my worst opponent, either Communist or Tory, will not charge me with it is the advocacy of violence. I am known as a person who gets shouted down at meetings because I denounce violence, and yet here is a police officer giving information which put into my mouth words that I had never uttered. I am sure that the gentleman who did it wrote it in longhand and had no knowledge of shorthand. It would be interesting to know how many of these note-takers are expert shorthand writers. Everyone knows that reporting is a very skilled business. You can miss a word or you can put a word in.

The police authorities in London have been permitted to arrogate to themselves the right to go about and discover when meetings are being held and who is going to conduct them. I attended one meeting and the police came—this was a year or two back, but it is being done now—and they wanted a list of people who were going to speak. I raised a question in the House, and I was told that no one had instructed them but that they wanted to know. I expect that there was a burglary going on round the corner, or perhaps a murder, but, instead of the police attending to their own business, they were interfering with something that was absolutely no concern of theirs.

Then there is the growth of what we consider as militarism in the police. I have raised this question before, and no one yet has answered it. I raise it again to-day, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary will give me an answer. In 1886, when there were disturbances, and in the year or two that followed, you could not have had a charge of the police or of the military as you can to-day. You could not have the sort of charge by the police that you have nowadays, when they plunge into a crowd on horseback armed with long sticks. That never happened. When there was danger of a riot, the Riot Act was read, and the people were warned to disperse. There is no warning to-day. I am speaking of what I know. No one rides along and says to the people on the pavement, "You must clear off," but they just gallop along and charge into the people. I have been ridden down myself when walking along Roman Road at Bow by patrols on the pavement, and no notice was given that we were doing anything—in fact we were not doing anything—illegal. We were just charged by the police.

I want to know why it is that the authorities have taken this power. They apparently have the power because they do not use firearms. You may not fire on the people, but you can injure the people just as much by riding them down with horses. Some of the stories that are told about what happened in Hyde Park on that particular Sunday, and about what happened during the disturbances outside this House in October, go to show that the police to-day imagine that they have the right to disperse a crowd anyhow. If you compare the manner in which they disperse a Labour or Socialist crowd with their manner of dealing with a crowd which assembles to see a great wedding outside the Abbey or St. Margaret's, and which is equally a nuisance, there is a great difference. It does not matter that there is inconvenience to the general public who want to go about their business, that the road is blocked and people have to go round, and so on; the treatment is altogether different.

We feel that the police authorities in London, under the control of military people, of people who are accustomed to order people about, have got it into their heads that they are the masters of this city; but they are no more the masters than anyone else, and they have no right to do anything in the way of ordering the citizens hither and thither just as they please. Certainly no set of people has the right to ride down the general public without having given any notice whatsoever that they are called upon to disperse. Not so long ago, a justice of the peace had to be present to read the proclamation calling upon the citizens to disperse, but, under this military autocracy in London, power has been taken to deal with the public in an altogether different manner. The Communist party and ourselves have nothing in common so far as tactics are concerned. We shall denounce any attempt to incite people to violence under any sort of conditions. That is a matter about which we are denounced by the Communist party, and it is not in defence of this order that we are raising the question to-day. It is because official appetites grow with what they feed on. It is the Communists to-day; it may be ourselves to-morrow. We say that because there is no sort of equality of treatment in this matter.

I should like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that there is a Fascist organisation in London to-day, which makes much more seditious speeches than are made by any Communist in the country. But no one takes any notice of them; no one has yet attempted to stop the drilling of the Fascists. The example, to which I will call attention later, of Lord Carson's agitation in Ireland, is being followed in London. During one of my elections—I think it was the election before last—a set of able-bodied, well-fed, well-groomed, well-to-do young men marched through my division, for the purpose, if you please, of preserving order. I took no notice of them, because the women took them in hand and smacked their faces for them. But I am perfectly certain that, if they had been 20 or 30 Communists, in red shirts instead of black shirts, who had gone into a Tory constituency, the police would have dealt with them. This matter, really, is entirely a class business. The black-shirts in London are being organised, and they may make their speeches. I notice that hon. Gentlemen smile, but one of these days, when Mosley marches up here, they will, perhaps, smile the other way.

I come to another fact. In dealing with these particular cases, so far as I can understand, the right hon. Gentleman and those who advised the prosecution have not prosecuted for anything that has been done, or anything that has been said; they only anticipated that something might be said or something might be done. Before I proceed to that subject, however, I should like to say a word about Tom Mann. I have no personal knowledge of either of the two other prisoners but Tom Mann is my friend. I have known him practically all his life, and I know him as a man who is rather different from the ordinary agitator. He has not, from agitation, become a Member of Parliament, and from a Member of Parliament a member of the Government; he has remained an agitator all his life. I do not think that that is any discredit to him; I think it, is greatly to his credit.

I have never known him—the right hon. Gentleman and his advisers might look up their records—I have never known him to advocate violence. I have never known him to advocate that unarmed men should go against armed men. He may have done what Sir Oswald Mosley is doing now, that is to say, talked about the day when the workers would probably have to fight for their rights; but I never remember him urging men to throw themselves against the police or the military. In any case, what has he done all his life? What has been his job in life? He has simply been working for poor people, and his position to-day is that he is a very poor man indeed, so that no one in this House can stand up and charge him with being "on the make." That may be done with people like me; it has been done sometimes—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] Those of you who are not "on the make," look in a looking-glass. The fact is that he is a very poor man, and he is a poor man, not because he has not brains enough to be a rich man, but because he chose to give his life in that particular way to the people to whom he belongs. Therefore, I think he is entitled to some consideration at the hands of this House and of the Ministry.

There are one or two things that he has not done, and this brings me to another matter on which the Solicitor-General may have something to say if he is going to speak. Tom Mann has never yet led a riot at a church, such as has taken place at St. Hilary, in Cornwall, within the last few weeks. Apparently the Solicitor-General does not know anything about that case. They were only Protestant agitators; the Solicitor-General only knows about Communist agitators. The police do not trouble about such people, which shows that there is only one particular set of law-breakers in this connection that they know anything about. It has been referred to in all the newspapers, and I do not understand the hon. and learned Gentleman not knowing anything about it. Why did he not prosecute them? Everyone knows when people are told that they are to assemble and prevent Mass from being said—I am not talking about moving the ornaments, but about what happened within the last three weeks, when, during a service, the people were incited to go—

The right hon. Gentleman has raised this topic and has challenged me. Will he permit me to say, first of all, that the police were present, and, secondly, that they are prosecuting?

Yes, but you took no steps to prevent the disturbance taking place. One would have thought, when you were going to have a disturbance in the church, you would have used these powers that you are using against Tom Mann to prevent the scandal and the outrage taking place. You have not the pluck to do that, because they have very powerful friends, and you only attack those who cannot hit you back. Tom Mann has not organised a volunteer army yet; he has not imported arms into the country, and he has not yet started drilling, as do the Fascists. I intended to refer to the Elias case, but I understand that there is an appeal and that I must not touch it.

Let me come to the case of Mrs. Kate Duncan. I am going to speak now with very great deference in the presence of my hon. and learned Friend and of the Solicitor-General, because I suppose this is very much a matter of law. This woman was a disturber of the peace and an inciter of others to commit crime and, as such, subject to the provisions of the Statute of 34 Edward III. What is this Statute? I was a victim of it. You may have this lady in the House as well as myself one of these days and, having been prosecuted, she may even speak from this Box. Here is the sort of thing that this Act was passed to deal with. Last year this same public Department had great trouble in dealing with the opening of cinemas and such places on Sunday because of a silly old law, and everyone stood up and said, "These laws ought to be swept away." Of all the tomfool laws to apply in modern times, this one takes the biscuit.

"That in every county of England shall be assigned for the keeping of the peace, one lord, and with him three or four of the most worthy in the county, with some learned in the law, and they shall have power to restrain the offenders, rioters, and all other barrators and to pursue, arrest, take, and chastise them according to their trespass or offence."

Of course, now you are not allowed to chastise them. I should like to see you start chastising them. It means that you can flog them before you imprison them:

"and to cause them to be imprisoned and duly punished according to the law and customs of the realm."

There is no law and custom now to allow the police to chastise anyone.

It is all obsolete.

This is the Act under which they are put away.

A historical document.

Member will restrain his impatience and allow me to read it so that the House can decide:

"according to the law and customs of the realm, and according to that which to them shall seem best to do and good advisement; and also to inform them."

It reads like a novel and an ancient one at that—

"and to inquire of all those that have been pillors and robbers in the parts beyond the sea"—

Is it charged against Tom Mann and Mrs. Duncan that they are robbers across the sea?

"and be now come again and go wandering"—

Tom Mann has a residence. He does not wander. He is not a vagrant.

"and will not labour"—

There is no charge against him that he will not labour. He is six years older than the old age pension age. He has committed no crime and even if he had he does not work.

"as they were wont in times past."

No one accuses him of not having worked. He was an engineer—

"and to take and arrest all those that they may find by indictment, or by suspicion, and to put them in prison; and to take of all them that be of good fame."

There was a great controversy about the word "not" which has been interpolated here when I was before the court. The judges decided that it did not matter whether the Act of Parliament had been altered or not. They said, "This chap has to be put away and put away he must be." When you come to interpret the law, you lawyers are wonderful people, especially when you become judges. You really make law. A very learned counsel, Mr. Montague Shearman, argued that this word "not" having been interpolated into the Norman French, which I cannot read, really vitiated the law so far as I was concerned. The judges said, "No one took much notice of it in the past, and we are not going to take any notice of it to-day," so I went down. It reads without the interpolation:

"and to take of all them that be of good fame"—

That is not very good sense, so some johnny put in "not" in order to make sense of it. He said, "This is what they meant and I will make the law read what they meant instead of what they said." I do not think that is good enough.

"nor put in the peril which may happen of such offenders: And also to hear and determine at the King's suit all manner of felonies and trespasses done in the same county according to the laws and customs aforesaid."

I do not think I need read any more. I suggest that this would be good bedtime reading for anyone who really wants to see the kind of law under which Communists and other people are dealt with. You only deal with Communists and common people under this law. You dare not bring it into operation against the Kensitites, the Mosleyites or Carson and company. No one can deny that. It is only poor people. Mrs. Kate Duncan was charged. Let us see the evidence that she was a killer, a robber, a wanderer and a vagabond, and that she had done something she ought not to have done. The right hon. Gentleman may have a longer report of the case. I am only able to quote from the report in the "Times." Mr. Clayton, the solicitor, said that in a speech in Bermondsey Town Hall this lady spoke in a manner calculated to create a breach of the peace, that the defendant seemed—not that she had—to have taken a very prominent part, and that she repeated these words at subsequent meetings as well:

"The public assistance people should be held personally responsible."

I have said that myself many a time and have never been proceeded against. Then Mr. Clayton gives evidence. He is a solicitor. He makes a statement. Mr. Clayton said that he thought that Duncan was then speaking about a Bermondsey murder case. What right has he to pretend to say what he thought. What a solicitor thinks is not evidence, however distinguished he may Be. He says that "he thinks" that she was referring to a Bermondsey murder case.

"The public assistance people should be identified and their addresses found in order that pressure can be brought to bear upon them."

Pressure is brought to bear upon me every day. Numbers of people come to my house when I am at home asking me and begging of me to bring pressure to bear upon this House and upon other people, and, no doubt, bringing pressure to bear upon me to do my job. And why should they not?

What about the tariff people?

The tariff people come here. She says that it is the duty of the workers to do this. Is that wrong? What is there in that?

"Every member of a local public assistance committee who refuses relief to unemployed men or who wants to send an unemployed man to Belmont must be identified so that he can be intimidated."

[An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] Wait a minute. Mr. Clayton said that the Director considered that those words were calculated to provoke a breach of the peace, and that there was no doubt that Duncan had personally endeavoured to carry out those threats. But wait a minute. The fact that the solicitor said that is not evidence that the woman said it. It was much too previous. Detective Inspector Jones, of the Special Branch, said that he was at the meeting in question and heard Duncan use the words alleged. He did not take a shorthand note. He made a note soon afterwards. There is an outrage. That proves exactly what I was saying about myself. I feel strongly about this matter, because, as I have said, the late Lord Brent-ford stood up in this House and said that he had a note of something which I had said at Poplar Town Hall, and I had said nothing of the kind. There never had been a shorthand note taken. It was a longhand note written afterwards. This man was honest enough to say that he wrote down afterwards what he thought the woman had said.

Then the magistrate lends a hand in the giving of the evidence, and I call attention to this fact. The magistrate said:

"I see that you have been merciful to this woman."

He looked at the officer's note-book, and said:

"Besides what you have given in evidence—"

what he had remembered, but not what he had written down at the time—

"I see you have got in your note 'These people are not necessarily local and can walk about under the Common Law without being hissed, booed or spat upon by the workers.'"

The workers are very peaceful and law-abiding, and, if she said it, it only means that she told them what, apparently, everybody knew. Then Detective Phillips said that he saw Duncan at a demonstration in Hollydale Road, Peckham, outside the works of Mr. Evan Cooke, a borough councillor:

"The demonstrators—

not this woman—

"used filthy and insulting words. They then went to Camberwell Town Hall where they were refused admission."

Meetings have been held outside my house and most uncomplimentary things have been said about me by Tariff Reformers. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] Oh, yes, I have had men outside my door calling me everything from a pickpocket to the Lord-knows-what. Do you think that I care? It does not make any difference to me at all, but I would not dream of asking that somebody should be locked up because he was intimidating me. The point is that there is not a scrap of evidence that the woman used any of this filthy language. The right hon. Gentleman has perhaps a longer note of it than I have, but in the report in the "Times" there is not a word of evidence that this woman used this language at all. This is how the Press reports a poor woman. I have read this sort of thing about myself, and, therefore, I repeat that I feel very keenly about it:

"Duncan, in a long rambling speech, denied that she had used any insulting words or conduct likely to provoke a breach of the peace. She had been a public worker for five years and would not do anything so foolish."

There is not a scrap of definite evidence against the woman. She gives her own version of the case, and she has as much right to be listened to as those people who did not write down but merely remembered. Mr. Campion, the magistrate, said that he would be willing to take Duncan's word. That shows the impression which the woman and the evidence had made upon the magistrate. He said that he would take her word that no such conduct would happen again, and would bind her over in her own recognisances to keep the peace for six months. Mrs. Duncan said "What if I refuse?" and Mr. Campion said, "You will have to find a surety of £50." Mrs. Duncan: "I do not want any surety." I want to say on that point, that when I was before the magistrates I could have gone free by finding sureties, but I would not find sureties and pledge myself to do something which I had no intention of doing. I considered it a gross insult and denial of justice to ask me to give such pledge. This woman was in the same position. I call the attention of the Home Secretary to the fact that the magistrate was willing to let her off on her word without any sureties at all unless this report is wrong. I will read it again:

"He would be willing to take Duncan's word that no such conduct would happen again."

Read the next few words.

All right.

"That no such conduct would happen again."

The next few words.

"And would bind her over in her own recognizances to keep the peace for six months."

That meant herself. She said:

"What if I refuse?"

The magistrate replied:

"Then I shall want you to find a surety."

When she refused to find sureties she was ordered to go to prison for a month in default. According to the magistrate's own statement he was willing to take the woman's word in the matter. That being so, it must have been in his mind that there was some doubt as to whether she was the kind of woman stated by the prosecution. Unless the right hon. Gentleman has some evidence which is not given in the report in the "Times," I say that there is no evidence against the woman. It is not worth the paper that it is written on. I should like the Home Secretary or the Solicitor-General to give us some reason why the woman cannot be released forthwith and allowed to go free.

When we come to the case of Tom Mann and his friend it is a little complicated because of the Act of 1817. Here is what Mr. Wallace said for the prosecution:

"He would ask that the accused men be ordered to enter into their own recognisances and to find surety or sureties for their future good behaviour and to keep the peace. The court had power to make such an order under a very old Act, the Act of Edward III, and the Seditious Meetings Act, 1817, which said that meetings of more than 50 persons within a mile of Westminster, during the sitting of Parliament or of the Superior Courts, for the purpose or on the pretext of considering or preferring a petition, complaint, remonstrance or address to the King, or either House of Parliament, for alterations in matters of Church or State, were deemed to be unlawful assemblies."

I would point out that part of that Act is already obsolete. The Courts of Justice were formerly alongside Westminster Hall and were part of this building. Now they are situated in the Strand, and any procession at any time can go past the Law Courts. I came past the Law Courts with a great procession when the Poplar councillors were tried. We were escorted through the City of London and treated quite properly by the authorities. We marched right up to the courts. Nobody thinks now of stopping a procession simply because it is passing the Law Courts, but this Act says that you must not take a procession past the Law Courts.

I am advised that unlawful assembly —I hope the Home Secretary will pay attention to this point—does not constitute a breach of the peace. Therefore, whatever the charge was against these men it could not be a charge concerning a breach of the peace. Unlawful assembly is mentioned in the, Act of 1817. Therefore the right hon. Gentleman must prove something more than was proven at the court. Mr. Wallace went on to say:

"The accused men were well known members of the Communist party"—

It is a matter of agreement between us that to be a, member of the Communist party is not something illegal. I should, however, like to ask the Home Secretary a question on that point so that that position may be affirmed. Membership of the Communist party or of the National Committee of the Unemployed is not illegal. They have not been proclaimed illegal organisations. We have not come to that yet. Therefore, there is nothing against the men because they are members of the Communist party. The statement proceeds

"or were two of the four national officials of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement."

That is not illegal. That is no crime either against the common law or against any particular law.

"In the 5th December issue of the 'Daily Worker,' the organ of the Communist party, there was an article which began: Unemployed! Call for action on 20th December. Fight for petition to be presented to Parliament."

I have written that sort of thing many times. So has the right hon. Gentleman, when he has asked the electors to fight for tariff reform and the Conservative party. It does not necessarily mean that you are going to fight in any other sense than we fight one another across this piece of oak furniture, or whatever furniture it is.

"Appeal to trade unionists. Starvation is attacking every working-class home."

Is anyone going to say that that is an illegal statement? It may be an illegal statement in the minds of the Metropolitan police officials, who are now all military gentlemen and want to use the British public as if they were private soldiers in their charge.

"We are facing the blackest winter in history, with the National Government launching more vicious economies and reducing the working classes to slave conditions."

Is there anything illegal in that statement? Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what there is criminal in these statements.

"The call to action calls for mass action to secure winter and Christmas relief, abolition of the means test, and for the right of hunger marchers to present tile means test petition to Parliament."

What is there illegal or unlawful in that? The right hon. Gentleman has to prove that these men were guilty of inciting people to do something that was unlawful. They have done nothing of the kind. There is nothing in that article which incites anybody to do anything that is illegal, and the right hon. Gentleman knows that as well as I do. There is not a scrap of evidence to show that Tom Mann or Llewellyn ever wrote that article or were employed on the "Daily Worker." There is not a scrap of evidence that they had any connection whatsoever with it. You might as well say that I am responsible for what appears in the "Daily Herald" because I am a member of a party—

They are bad enough, but they would not go to that length.

I subscribe to the people who represent the Labour movement on the board of the "Daily Herald." Suppose the "Daily Herald" libelled somebody. I should not be personally responsible for that any more than the noble Lord the Member for Southampton (Lord Apsley) is responsible for the "Morning Post." I believe he is a director, or was a director, of the "Morning Post," but he was never responsible and could not be responsible for the editor. Because Tom Mann is a member of the Communist party he cannot be held responsible for what every writer in the "Daily Worker" writes. When I edited the "Daily Herald" I had to be responsible for what others wrote, and I was never allowed to shirk my responsibility. I was editor.

Tom Mann is not the editor of the "Daily Worker" and as far as the evidence goes there is not a scrap to show that he had anything to do with the "Daily Worker." There is no evidence that he or Llewellyn wrote the article or had anything to do with it. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not ride off on this matter, because this is really the gravamen of the case. There is nothing else against them except that in some way they are linked up with this article in the "Daily Worker." I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to prove any connection other than that they were members of the Communist party, and that they were officials of the National Unemployed Workers Society. On 9th December a letter headed "The National Unemployed Workers' Movement, the National Administrative Council"—those are not very revolutionary words—was delivered to the Prime Minister at the House of Commons. It described the officials as Mr. Elias, Mr. Wal Hannington as the organiser, Mr. Tom Mann as the treasurer, and Mr. Llewellyn as the secretary. The letter was as follows:

"Following our request prior to Tuesday, 1st November, to you and the Speaker of the House to allow a deputation of the unemployed and employed representatives to present a petition to which we have one million signatures, and also to allow this representative delegation to state their views before the House, we are going to make a similar request that you meet this deputation on 19th December. The deputation will also present the million signatures petition. It is our opinion that the Government, and particularly yourself as responsible head of the Government, should have regard to the views of over one million people in this country who have signed this national petition, which we desire to present and await your reply to this request."

What is there illegal in that? I should have thought it was a respectable, courteous and gentlemanly letter, written in the best Oxford and Cambridge style. I want someone to tell me any particular sentence in this letter which is illegal. Mr. Wallace, in his submission, said that the letter clearly connected the National Unemployed Workers Movement with the publication in the "Daily Worker," and that the people responsible were Mann and Llewellyn. Is there a shred of evidence of any connection between the two? I have read what the "Daily Worker" said. They called for mass action, a gathering of the unemployed, not specifying where, and this letter was written asking the Prime Minister to receive a deputation. In 1922 I remember that I raised the question as to the then Prime Minister, Mr. Bonar Law, receiving a similar deputation. I went to Downing Street and saw Mr. Bonar Law. He met the deputation and prevented a great deal of trouble. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) under much more difficult circumstances received a very big deputation in Downing Street, and it is a pity that succeeding Governments have broken with that procedure.

The representatives of people who are suffering as the unemployed ought to be heard. I am not arguing as to whether these people are the best or the worst representatives; that is not the point. They represent, however, a considerable feeling in this country, and they have a petition which they say is signed by one million persons. They have a right to bring that petition to the House and to ask for permission to present it, although the House can deny them the right to come to the Bar of the House. But there is nothing criminal in all this. Mr. Wallace in his speech went on to say this—and I ask hon. Members to take particular note of this assumption of the lawyer to give evidence on the matter:

"These articles and letters clearly indicate that the mass meeting which was to take place was to enforce the receiving of the deputation."

How did he know that? There is not a word in the article or in the letter about it. He went on to say:

"It is well known, from what has happened on former occasions, what is likely to happen when large numbers of unemployed and other people as well get together on instructions to present petitions to Parliament."

Really we must look at this matter very closely because if this is going to hold then when the Labour people hold their demonstrations in February and want to send deputations to the House to interview Members the same treatment may be meted out to us. At any rate we ought to have the same treatment if this policy is right. You have no right to deal with us differently. Therefore, I hope we shall face the situation. There are many precedents for sending men and women to the number of five to this House to see hon. Members to put before them any statements they want to make.

The Government base their action on what happened in November; once bitten twice shy, these people called a demonstration and attempted to get into the House. But see what happened on this occasion—and what right have you to assume that it would not have happened with Tom Mann. He was one of the first to help to organise a May Day demonstration in this House when we split ourselves into groups of five and interviewed individual Members. We got one of the best interviews on unemployment with the late Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour and Mr. Gladstone arid one of the Liberal Peers. That is the policy which Tom Mann might have followed if he had been given the opportunity, but as it was he was in prison. Mr. Saklatvala came to the House, brought his friends with him, and tried to see the Minister of Labour. He could not ask to see the Prime Minister because he knew that he was not here. What right had he for his assumption where is the evidence upon which he based his assumption, except what had happened before. There is no evidence in the letter or in the article that this demonstration might not have been carried out in an entirely different manner. I defy the Government to produce any evidence of the kind. We have the evidence of what happened after the action of the Government. Mr. Saklatvala came here in a perfectly orderly manner and attempted to get an interview. Detective Passmore gave evidence as to what happened at the last demonstration, but there is no evidence that Mr. Mann was there and no evidence was given that his friend was there. They are mere statements, no evidence at all. Tom Mann made his speech, and this is what he said—there is not a scrap of evidence to contravert it—

"He did not participate in violence but merely took part in meetings which were admittedly within the right of citizens. He held that these proceedings were entirely unwarranted. He looked upon them as part of the general procedure of the authorities against the workers' committee. His aim and object had been to get legitimate grievances remedied in a fair, straightforward honest and becoming fashion."

Llewellyn addressed the magistrate in the same way. He said:

"No violence had ever been advocated by him, and what violence had taken place was against innocent demonstrators."

That is all the evidence. Here is what the magistrate said, and I commend it to the notice of the Solicitor-General and the Home Secretary. Sir Chartres Biron, in making his decision, said:

"There had been a misapprehension as to the nature of these proceedings. No criminal charge had been made and there was no question of imprisonment. The proceedings were merely putting in force the law which had been the law of the land from time immemorial and which had been held by Judges on very recent occasions to be for the protection of public order. It was merely a preventive measure. In any condition he imposed on the defendants there would be nothing which would in any way interfere with their legitimate activities. The only undertaking he called upon them to give would be merely in the interests of stopping disorder, of which both men said they entirely disapproved."

As no one had proved anything to the contrary against them, why should the magistrate want them to enter into recognisances? There was not a scrap of evidence against them, and he accepts their word.

"It was clear that there was a mass meeting announced and arranged for Monday, which was to present a petition to the House of Parliament. In his view there would be a mass mob within the vicinity of the House of Commons."

How does he know? There is no evidence about it except what has happened on some other occasion. But he charges the two men in some way with being responsible for this without a scrap of evidence that they were responsible. I come back to that again and again, because that is the gravamen of our charge against the Government on this matter. Then he went on:

"There is nothing to prevent anyone presenting a petition to the House of Commons, but it is most undesirable that such a petition should be presented by an organised mass of people marching on the House of Commons."

Certainly, but there is no evidence to show that Tom Mann and Llewellyn had any such intention, and my case is that unless you can prove that intention you had no right to arrest. Then he went On:

"It is common knowledge that this mass of people were meeting on Monday to make this mass demonstration under exactly the same conditions as a meeting in October, when there was great disorder."

I may be a very ignorant person, but until Tom Mann was arrested I had no knowledge whatever that this demonstration was to be held, and I believe that the arrest of Tom Mann gave all the publicity that the Communist party desired; it gave the meeting just the advertisement that it wanted. Here is the most astounding statement of the magistrate:

"He did not say that the present defendants were responsible for that."

The magistrate admits that they were not responsible. Why should he have called upon them to enter into recognisances

"But it showed what such meetings were likely to produce and against which had sworn to preserve the peace."

But they have not produced a scintilla of evidence that these men were responsible in any way, and it is the magistrate who said it. What I want to ask is, is it the law of the land, and does the Home Secretary consider that he is really going to maintain respect for the law, if a man can be put away in this way It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to say, "No honourable man would refuse to enter into recognisances." The right hon. Gentleman knows very well that if any one of us was charged under these conditions we never would give the undertaking. We have become very mealy-mouthed in these days in the Press. In the old days "Reynolds's Newspaper" used to publish much more seditious matter than this and never be attacked. The "National Reformer," which was a Republican paper, used to attack the Crown and the Princes and the Princesses when they were getting married, used to attack the allowances, and so on. "The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick" was published, also the "Secret History of the Court of England," and last "The Carson Campaign."

It is all very well for hon. and right hon. Gentleman to laugh about it now, but in those days it was a serious matter, and when I say that this is class persecution I am stating only what the facts prove. I was a Member of this House during most of this period, and everyone knows that at that time the Government did not dare to interfere with a test mobilisation of the Ulster volunteers, who landed a huge consignment of 40,000 German Mauser rifles at Larne. I do not know what the position of the present Home Secretary was in those days. If he was in the Tory party he was up to his neck in it, and he is no sort of judge in this business at all. Under the able leadership of the late Lord Londonderry the Ulstermen, with the assistance of Lord Carson, organised an army of 100,000 men. They set up a provisional Government. They told the people in Ulster that the German Kaiser would come and help them if ever they were handed over, and so on. They organised a mutiny in the British Army which caused one War Secretary to resign and the Prime Minister to take his place. All this was done, and I believe it was the beginning of the sort of action that you are complaining about to-day. It proves that in this country there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. It shows that right hon. Gentlemen like the Home Secretary and those who acted together in the years 1910 to 1914 to stop the Home Rule Bill passing did not mind what they did, and no Government dared inter- fere. Here is what one of the leaders said:

"At the present moment the weapons are under the control of the leaders. The moment a raid for arms is made there will be an order for a general assembly."

Here is what Lord Carson said, and he was never prosecuted:

"I do not hesitate to tell you that you ought to set yourselves against the constituted authority in the land."

No Communist has stated anything worse than that.

"We will set up a Government. I am told it will be illegal. Of course it will. Drilling is illegal. Volunteers are illegal. The Government know they are illegal. The Government dare not interfere with them."

Of course they dare not, because they were rich and well-to-do and powerful people.

"Do not be afraid of illegalities. Illegalities are not crimes when they are taken to assert what is the elementary right of every citizen, the protection of his freedom."

It is the doctrine of the Communists to-day—and it is my doctrine—that the first elementary right of a man is that he shall be able to earn his daily bread and live in decency and comfort. These other people were only fighting for political rights but they were not interfered with. It is only a crime to commit illegalities when you commit them for bread. But that fight is over. The people who fought that fight under Lord Londonderry and Lord Carson won. They won because they took advantage of the fact that this nation was at war, and they brought about by their action the terrible conditions that prevailed in Ireland during the last years of the War and immediately afterwards.

If this is going to remain the law of the land then the people of the world will know that this great and powerful nation has one law with which to deal with poor people struggling for the right to earn their daily bread and another law for the well-to-do. I do not agree that the Communist party represents more than a small fraction of the people but they and those who gather around them are calling attention to the fact that in this the richest country in the world there are about 3,000,000 people, sometimes more, sometimes less, living on the verge of destitution. The Government are doing in this matter what all cowardly Governments do. They are resorting to suppression. They are mix ing suppression with a sort of pseudo-charity. The Prime Minister's broadcast defined the Government's policy as a policy which said: "We are going to rely on private charity and private benefactions." That speech was made over the wireless and it has been impossible to reply to it, because the British Broadcasting Corporation arrogates to itself the right to decide who shall speak over the wireless, when they shall speak, and what they shall say on political questions of the day. If the Prime Minister and the Government had chosen they could have used the good will in the country, the real downright generous feeling that exists among multitudes of men and women to deal with the momentary difficulties which are being suffered to-day by so many people. If the Prime Minister had been true to any of the teachings which he himself has taught in this country, if he had been true to the faith he held for many years, he could also have harnessed that good will to fundamental changes in the conditions that produce poverty and distress.

The organised workers have a right to say to the Government that they will have nothing to do with this attempt to put on to the shoulders of decent generous-hearted people a responsibility which belongs to the Government. In dealing with these people as the Government are dealing with them, the Government are accentuating class hatred and class bitterness by proving once more that you treat the weaker people, the Communists, the Labour people—even when they break the law ever so little—in a fashion altogether different from that in which you deal with the rich and well-to-do. The history of the last 20 years proves it, and the example of the right. hon. Gentleman himself proves it. It is no use saying: "That was a good cause and this is a bad cause." Illegality is illegality whether it is committed by a Lord of Appeal, Lord Carson and the Home Secretary or whether it is committed by Tom Mann and Llewellyn.

I think the right hon. Gentleman has covered almost every aspect of this question, but there are one or two matters to which I should like to direct the attention of the House. In connection with the case against Mrs. Duncan I wish to mention what occurred in a case heard at Birmingham a few weeks ago. I, of course, am not going to discuss here the details of that case in Birmingham, but it was a trial for murder, the most serious indictment that could be laid against any citizen. I say this to the credit of the legal profession that in that case a learned counsel for whom we have very high regard and who formerly sat with the Liberal party in this House—Mr. Birkett—went down to defend in that case. I suggest that the two gentlemen in charge of this Debate ought to have regard to what happened in that case at Birmingham.

Incidentally I would say to legal gentlemen that they ought to have a very deep regard for the rights of the people in carrying out the law. I think if a man has dislikes, and we have all our likes and dislikes, he ought to take all the greater care in seeing that justice is carried out in the cases of those for whom he may have any dislike. I remember a Home Secretary who is a Jew saying to me that he was very diffident about acting in a case of a member of his own race, but in the cases of other people he went to the utmost extremes to give them the benefit of the doubt, and I think that that was good. In this Birmingham case to which I have referred, certain notes were given in evidence, and the judge in summing up pointed out that the notes had not been taken at the time of the alleged statement, but had been written afterwards. Mr. Birkett for the defence was able to convince the judge and a jury of his fellow countrymen of the righteousness of his case on this point, and the judge made some very pointed remarks on the nature of the evidence and gave a certain instruction to the jury.

I do not wish to labour the point, but I would point out its application to the case against Mrs. Duncan. In the case at Birmingham it was only a matter of a short conversation and a comparatively few words. But when a person is charged with making certain statements in a speech lasting perhaps an hour, the point is even stronger. How is evidence to be given of that except by means of notes of the whole speech? One may get two or three words exactly as they are spoken in a speech, but the context may entirely change the meaning of those words. How often in this House do we hear a Member following another Member in Debate and unintentionally taking quite a wrong meaning from some words of the previous speech. But here you have an instance of the liberty of the subject being jeopardised because of evidence of that kind being laid against a defendant. I say that to imprison anyone, and to ask for security on evidence of that kind, is entirely wrong.

I am not a lawyer, but I think I know just a little about it. Hitherto, in the courts which I have attended—and I have watched some of the so-called worst criminals being tried—I have constantly watched the judge being fair to the defence. In Scotland we lay it down that it is the Procurator's duty not to prosecute, but to see that the facts are brought out. Particularly is that impressed upon him in the case of people who are poor. It is constantly emphasised that everything in favour of the defendant shall be stated. Here, not one single thing was brought out in the case of Mrs. Duncan; nothing about her past life. As the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) knows, she is Scotch and has a good record of public service. Nothing of that was brought out. All that is allowed in a court of law is evidence. I have been in a court when the Recorder at the Old Bailey has said: "We are not here to deal with what you think; we are here to deal with evidence. You can say what you like, but you must say it on oath." The notes of the case are handed up to the judge. Judges may be great, but they have no right to take into consideration a single thing unless it is sworn on oath.

I do not share the contempt about solicitors and counsel that is often popularly voiced. I am indebted to the man from Birmingham I spoke about for defending a constituent of mine—possibly the kindest thing a man has ever done without fee, without press, without anything. I have seen even poor solicitors working night and day for people from whom they have no hope of getting any reward. I appeal to them, for the sake of their profession, to see that people are properly tried and given justice. How can you get it when the evidence is not real evidence? What right has the learned magistrate to read from notes not sworn on oath? What right have you to cross-examine on that? The trial of that woman would never have been tolerated in any court if the charge had only been ordinary theft, or even a grave charge of murder. The whole thing was done in an atmosphere of sentence before trial.

There is another point. It is no defence to plead ignorance of the law in this country. On the other hand, it is constantly being taken as good law that the law has a reasonable chance of being assimilated by the citizens. How could anybody say that a Statute of King Edward III—I forget the date quoted—could with any shadow of reason be known by any poor person. It had hardly ever been invoked within recent times. While judges may have given decisions on certain matters, that Statute had not been invoked, and no poor man had a reasonable chance of assimilating the law, or of understanding even that there was such a law, and yet the prosecution was taken under it.

I do not want to bear out the characters given by the previous speaker other than to say I know Llewellyn and I know Tom Mann. He was general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineers' Union. I am chairman of the Pattern Makers', and he and I were associated for some years and worked together. I do not know much about his speaking. I never heard him speak on a public platform. But he was a most moderate man when I met him, and was looked upon as a much more moderate man than I was in the councils of the engineering trade. He was looked upon as capable, and clean in conduct. Llewellyn I have met many times. He is an ordinary decent Welsh chap, with no side about him, an ordinary man of the sort that might be taken from the Welsh coal-fields any day in the year. I say the whole attitude is wrong about this so-called disorder outside the House recently. I was present. The hon. Member for Bridgton would have gone with me but for the fact that as his appearance is so well known the crowd would have known him. I went down to the crowd just to see what was happening. I went through Whitehall right from Trafalgar Square. I met the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern), and he and I took diverse ways and met again. We went down to Victoria and along the Embankment. I have seen many Orange demonstrations in Glasgow 60 times worse than anything connected with that demonstration, particularly at night when two or three spirits get to work. That is nothing against the organisers, who are clean and decent men. I have seen Orange demontrations in Glasgow where there have been dozens of ambulances out. I have seen them at Anderson Cross. I went through the whole thing when the demonstration was outside here, and the only untoward incident I saw—and I think a. Conservative Member would bear me out in this—was a special constable acting in a manner most—well I cannot properly describe it. I say this to the credit of the police, that they took the matter in hand and acted with discretion. That demonstration was nothing to be annoyed about.

I think you have lost your nerve. You are in a funk. There is nobody who has any shred of imagination but knows that the Prime Minister has left us because he does not want to come. In seven weeks he may feel better. Why should we not say it? If a man who was unemployed made the journey to Lossiemouth overnight, hundreds of miles, they would not under the National Health Insurance scheme, accept that as a reason for giving benefit, and it is no use our treating well-to-do men differently from the way in which we treat poor people. The whole thing is wrong. I know the Home Secretary better than does the Leader of the Opposition. He and I are kindred Members, and have been associated for many years in public life, and I know there is not much use making an appeal to him, but I do appeal to the legal people, not because they are Members of the Government, but for the sake of their profession. I earnestly appeal to them to see that the liberties of these men and women are safeguarded at this time.

After all, you would not have done it to the leaders of the Labour movement, because if you had, you know you would at once have made these men the greatest men in the movement. It is done because these people are in a small minority, or it is thought they are. It is thought they are unpopular, and you are taking action against them that is fundamentally wrong. The thing that arouses me is this, that it is not done fairly and with decency and credit. None of those people got the trial that they should have got, and I hope the Home Secretary will say that he thinks this prosecution was mistakenly undertaken, and that the trial of Mrs. Duncan was not conducted in a way that did credit to law and justice in this country. I hope that, as Home Secretary, he will take the necessary action to overturn those decisions and that he will act a manly part, not only for his own sake and for the sake of his office, but above all for the sake of giving justice a decent name in this country.

The last thing I should desire to do would be to introduce any heat into this discussion, but the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan), who has just addressed the House, has, as he frankly said, been known to me, and we have known each other and represented constituencies in Glasgow alongside each other, for a number of years. He has said a great many things to-day about the proper conduct of trials, and anybody might be in agreement with perhaps a great deal of what fell from him, but I must join issue at once with him when he asks me to say that the trial which was conducted in dealing with Mrs. Duncan was improperly done, or that there was distinct unfairness on the part of Mr. Wallace. I would say frankly that this is not the place in which trials before courts should be reviewed. It is most unsuitable, and I suppose that at any rate it will be recognised that men like Mr. Wallace, who have these grave responsibilities, have every right to be protected against assertions to which they cannot reply.

Are you supposed to defend them?

I was given notice by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, at a late hour last night, of this particular case. I immediately, of course, made inquiries and obtained, within the time at my disposal, such information as I could about the case. Whether it be this case or the cases of Tom Mann and Llewellyn, I want to bring the House back to the position in which any officer in any executive position stands who has to deal with these problems at the present time. I for the time being occupy this post, and I want to assure the House of Commons, and any who may be critics of what I may do, that the one thing above all which I desire to avoid is to allow circumstances to develop into a position in which I shall require to use the forces at my disposal and not only involve my executive and my officers in grave risks, but bring about a conflict and a clash of forces in the streets of this metropolis which can only end in bringing disaster to many people, not only those who are guilty of incitement, but those who in many cases are the dupes of those people.

It is no use saying to me that the action which has been taken is based upon some ancient and antiquated law. It is based upon the practice of many generations, it is true, and it is linked, no doubt, with ancient laws, but it is connected and linked also with the practice of the law coming right up to modern times.

How can you say that?

It is clear that in certain cases which have taken place in this country in recent times, to which the right hon. Gentleman opposite referred, those cases were restated by the law at that time. This House knows well the possibilities of those outside coming to this House and presenting petitions, and it was only on the occasion of the last disturbance that the hon. Member representing the Shettleston Division of Glasgow (Mr. McGovern) got into touch with those very people upon this particular subject. He was prepared to place his services at their disposal in order that they might, through the proper channels, make their representations. We all know that the statement which that hon. Member made to this House was a thankless and, if I may say so, a proper appreciation of the situation which was greatly to his credit. The fact remains—

The people wanted to do it themselves.

But they wanted to do it in a manner which is well known as contrary to the Rules either of this House or of decent, orderly methods.

No, nothing of the sort. These men took the view that, if this petition was to be presented here, they were going to do it through their own organisation and not through any assist- tance from us or hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway. It was a perfectly legitimate view.

Let me quote the words of the hon. Member for Shettleston:

"Having met Mr. Wal Hannington and Mr. Harry McShane on Friday, and made that offer to them, on behalf of the unemployed hunger marchers I have been informed this morning by Mr. McShane that their council discussed the offer yesterday, and decided to reject this necessary medium and to rely on their massed strength to force Parliament to allow their deputation to appear at the Bar."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st October, 1932; col. 1445, Vol. 269.]

You rely on your massed strength.

I want the House to realise the position of responsibility in which I am placed by such words. This is not my interpretation, but the interpretation of the hon. Member for Shettleston, which was made to this House and is on record. That mass force and that large concourse of people led, as we know on the previous occasion, to grave disorders in the streets of London.

Where?

It led to disorders in Hyde Park; it dislocated the whole of the traffic throughout London; it led to the necessary calling out of large numbers of police and special constables; and it involved the necessity of envisaging, on the part of those responsible for law and order, that if the forces that were called upon were unable to cope with the large masses of people, it would be essential to call out the military. The House will believe me when I say that neither this Government nor I personally have the slightest desire to employ repressive measures either against freedom of speech or the proper passage of regular and orderly processions; but, when I am told that these processions are being deliberately organised for the purpose of avoiding the proper presentation of their petitions, and that they intend to come in such large forces as to intimidate this House, I am bound to take action.

Some reference has been made to some of my colleagues and myself as having got cold feet. My responsibility is to see that law and order is kept, whatever class is concerned, and I want to say that I make no differentiation between the orderly conduct of people to whatever class they may belong, and those who break the law and disobey the orders of the House are bound to be dealt with.

Except Ulstermen.

Let me deal with what is before the House. The fact remains that this body, the National Unemployed Workers' Movement, did organise a mass procession. The House is aware of the result. We saw the disorders, we saw the train of trouble and difficulty which arose from them, and we saw the deluded people who were carried in the train of that disturbance. If I am convinced of one thing more than another, it is that the methods of disorderly concourse which were arranged by the organisers and members of that body are out of tune with and against the interests of the decent working-man. What the unemployed want is not mass demonstration but work, and it is not by disorderly or intimidatory methods that they are going to get that out of this Government or, indeed, of any other Government. Those who take part in such proceedings defeat their object.

With regard to the case of Tom Mann and Llewellyn, all I can say is that they were asked, as many other people may be asked, either now or in the future, to give an undertaking that they will not conduct themselves or incite others to conduct themselves in a manner other than orderly and properly. Is it to be said that it is not proper to ask these men to give this undertaking? If that be so, the only alternative which the Executive has is to recognise, well knowing that these disorders are bound to come, that they must leave the methods of the organisers to develop, and to bring out the police force again and again in order to carry out the orders of this House. Within the precincts of the Houses of Parliament the police are directed under my care to see that no disturbance occurs. If this House is going to abrogate its rights to issue those instructions, good and well, but as long as these instructions are issued to me it is my duty to see that they are carried out; and the only way in which I can carry them out is by inviting those who have published that they are going to bring people in a demonstration in large masses within the precincts—

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman kindly to tell the house what evidence he has connecting Tom Mann with the "Daily Worker," what evidence there is that he had anything to do with writing or publishing that article, and what there is wrong in the letter that he wrote to the Prime Minister? Does the right hon. Gentleman maintain that he must take people up without giving evidence of intent on their part or of any action that they have taken which leads him to think that they ought to be put under recognisances?

When the last disturbance occurred, the step which has now been taken was not taken. These disturbances led to very grave disorder and they placed a great strain upon the police and upon law and order. When it was apparent, from information of which I was made aware, that there would be another demonstration, which was announced in the Press, which was in fact a repetition of the attempt to bring this petition signed by a million people to the precincts of this House, not through the ordinary methods of which the House is well aware, but by exactly the same methods as on the previous occasion, it was obvious that the attempt was being organised and directed by the association of which Toni Mann and Llewellyn were members—

You have not a scrap of evidence of that.

Let me put this to the House. This particular case was taken through the proper channels. The defendants were brought to the court, and, as far as I know, they never denied that there was justification for their being brought into court. What they refused to do there was to give a plain and perfectly simple undertaking that they would not carry out what the law said they ought not to do.

They were not charged with that.

Of course, they were not accused of that, but it was made clear that all they were asked was that they would behave themselves as orderly citizens of this country.

The point is, the right hon. Gentleman has built up his case against these two men on what happened previously. The magistrate himself said that he did not, hold these two men responsible for what happened in November.

Whether that was so or not, the whole position is this: that if we had a repetition of what happened before it was going to lead to very grave disorders. In an endeavour to prevent it these men are asked to give undertakings that they will not incite or take part in any such disorderly proceedings. Is it too much to ask? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes!"] That is the object with which this action was taken—to prevent a repetition of these disturbances, which I think are contrary to the desire and wish not only of the unemployed but of every decent citizen in the country. All I have got to say is this, that I believe that we were within our rights, that what we did was calculated to cause less disturbance—it was done for that reason and that reason alone—and that these men could have given the undertaking, which was no outrageous undertaking and one which they could have given without any dereliction of their position, without giving away any right of proper free speech or attendance at political meetings. They refused to do it, and they have suffered the consequences. In both cases I have no reason to think that justice has not been carried out, and I do not propose to release them.

What about Mrs. Duncan?

I do not propose to continue the exhaustive discussion, which has been carried on during the last few hours. I had intended, at one time, to raise a very controversial issue, the question of the publication of Cabinet documents, but, having regard to the correspondence which has passed between my right hon. Friend the Member for Hill head (Sir R. Horne) and myself, I do not propose to challenge that position at the present moment. I might have passed it by completely in silence had it not been for something which occurred in another place. I cannot refer to the proceedings there, and I cannot refer to the discussion, but I would like to utter just two or three sentences. The question is not whether a Minister is entitled to give publicity to what happens inside a Cabinet. The question is, when a Minister or ex-Minister does publish a one-sided account of a transaction, whether the other Ministers concerned are not entitled to publish the whole of the proceedings in order to make quite clear what did happen. That issue has been raised more than once in the course of the last two years. It was raised in reference to what happened with my hon. and right hon. Friends sitting round me. There were very partial disclosures; and the whole issue is whether, partial disclosures having been made which would mislead the public as to the transaction, the others are not entitled to publish the whole of the transaction, especially if there is documentary proof. That was the issue in October, 1931, and it was more or less the issue with regard to the recent Debate.

There is no doubt at all that a very partial account of the instructions that were given by the Cabinet was published. It may be said that under those circumstances it is open to a Minister to go to the Sovereign and ask his permission. As anyone who knows the Constitution will understand, that really means going to the Prime Minister. The Sovereign is constitutionally bound to take the advice of his chief Minister, and therefore if the chief Minister, who is—I will not say more or less implicated—he is bound to be more or less partial in the matter—gives advice to the contrary, then the person who is damnified, as it were, by the partial disclosure has no remedy at all—none. Therefore, I beg to say that if partial disclosures of this kind are given again of transactions which occurred during the time I was at the head of a Government I should without any hesitation take the responsibility of publishing the whole transaction—without any hesitation.

I know a good deal was said last night about liability to two years' imprisonment. Well, it is rather a new thing when the House of Lords begins to threaten Members of the House of Commons, but, apart from that altogether, if I were sent to gaol I should be sent to gaol in company with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead. He and I might pass a very merry Christmas there. And may I just say that there are two or three Members of the present Government who would also have to go there, because I have seen no end of disclosures of Cabinet secrets by them. I therefore give fair warning that, whatever the threat may be from Peers, whether Peers I created or Peers created by my successors, it will not have the slightest influence upon my conduct in that respect, unless I am given an opportunity which I ask for the publication of the whole of the proceedings. Having regard to the last letter which came from the right hon. Member for Hillhead, which does not leave quite as much in dispute, I do not propose to continue this subject, but I was bound, in view of the discussion yesterday, just to make this statement.

I mean now to raise once more, before we part for six weeks, the very grave position regarding unemployment, and to ask Ministers one or two practical questions. There is no doubt at all that the position is definitely worse this Christmas than it was last. The total unemployed are up by another 114,000—the total unemployed men are up by 228,000 but that is not the most serious aspect by any means. A still more serious figure is the increase in outdoor relief by 250,000—that means those who cannot pay under the new regulations and who have to go outside insurance altogether to save themselves from starvation. So we are worse by about 364,000 than we were this time last year. As mentioned by the hon. Member in his speech on Monday there is the steady growth in the numbers of the unemployed who have been out of work for 12 months. He said they had grown rapidly, and were still growing. I think that is about the most serious fact of all. I would just make a reference to the very remarkable letter written by the Bishop of Durham, whose See is devastated by unemployment—probably the worst unemployment anywhere except conceivably in South Wales. He calls attention not so much to the distress there but to the effect of unemployment upon adolescence. He says:

"There is a general agreement in the view that unemployment has a debilitating effect on the moral and religious life of the whole community. Its worst effect is on adolescents who tend to become listless, discontented and unruly and to fall out of good habits and drift into crime."

The Bishop is talking about his diocese, and he is summarising the reports which he has had from his clergy. He took steps to ascertain from the clergy in his charge what the effect of unemployment was, and he is just summarising it in that terrible sentence. He points out that it is not so much charity that they need. It is not so much that they need even sustenance, although their condition is pretty bad. What they need is work, as the Home Secretary said when he told the House that you want, not more demonstrations, but work, and it is equally true that the unemployed do not want charity so much as work.

What is the prospect? I would like to know. I have asked the question before as to whether the Government have taken the whole situation into account, and whether they have any definite plans for dealing with it. Are they relying upon the kind of thing that has been put into speeches, maybe sometimes deliberately in order to cheer people up and to create an atmosphere of confidence? A very mistaken policy. It was a very mistaken policy at the beginning of the War when things were not going well to go round and say: "Everything is going quite right. We are nearly turning the corner. We have driven them back a few kilometres, and it will be all right in a very short time." I thought then that that was a very mistaken policy, when you are dealing with people who want to be told the whole truth before they can put the whole of their strength into any enterprise. It would be far better to tell the British people exactly what the situation is and what the prospects are, and then to call upon them to do something which would be a real contribution towards solving this extraordinarily grave problem, the gravest social problem that this country has faced, certainly for very nearly 100 years.

What are the prospects? I have asked a great many people, and the answer that the best-informed give to me is that they really cannot tell. They have predicted good times coming so often, and have been disappointed that now they despair. There is no better proof of that than what the Government themselves say. I read the speech of the Minister of Labour. He said that he had underestimated the number of unemployed. He estimated on the basis of something between 2,400,000 and 2,500,000, and he found that the average was nearly 2,800,000, that is to say 2,777,000. That was an under-estimate. That means that at this time last year we were expecting far better things than have actually occurred. Are the Government quite sure that they are not making the same mistake again? There are several things which are fairly encouraging, but there are other things which are not. I do not like the decrease in the traffic returns. I am told that there is a great increase in production in this country, and then I look at the traffic returns—in the matter of passengers I can understand the decrease being an effect of motor cars and other arrangements—in respect of goods and coal. There is not a single week in which there is not a drop of something between 170,000 tons and 200,000 tons in the goods traffic. Part of that is due to road traffic, I know. I asked somebody who knows the subject very well. He was connected with a railway company, and his estimate was that 20 per cent. of the decrease was due to road traffic, and that the rest was due to bad trade. I think that he was under-estimating the amount of road traffic, but he was a man who knew the question very well. That is what is happening every week.

I ask hon. Gentlemen who say that more goods are being produced in this country to look at that index. The railway returns do not indicate it. Instead of indicating an increase in production, the railway returns are going down. There may be some trades which are doing better, naturally. I have always said that Free Trade and Protection was a question of striking the balance, and that you want to discover, as was said by the Lord President of the Council, where the balance rests in the end, and whether you are not losing more in one direction than you are gaining in another. That is the whole issue. You are losing in many trades, there is no doubt. I have been making inquiries in regard to shipping, and the answer I get is, "Perfectly appalling." The Port of London is in a very bad state; it has never been worse, or, at any rate, it has never been as bad.

If that is so, do let us face the facts and then grapple with them. The Minister of Labour said what has been said many a time before, that we are in. a better position than other countries. Then he quoted very facile figures to show how exports in other countries had gone down by 60 per cent. and 40 per cent. and how ours have only gone down 33 per cent., although in America they are really not very bad. These were not very fair figures. It was values that he was comparing. He was comparing the trade of this country—where values had gone down by 33 per cent. because they are all in sterling at 20s. in the pound as against sterling at 13s. 4d. in the pound elsewhere—with the trade of Gold Standard countries. That is not very fair.

The right hon. Gentleman will, I am sure, forgive me for interrupting. I took very great pains to avoid that very error. The figure that I gave was of the volume of British exports. I said that the corresponding period of the 1931 index number of the volume of our exports had, if anything, slightly increased.

I was quoting figures given, not by the hon. Gentleman, but by the Minister of Labour and I looked at them a minute ago among my notes of the Debate last Monday. I was not referring to the hon. Gentleman's speech, but to the speech made by the Minister of Labour at the beginning. I particularly marked it; in fact, I underlined it. The word he used was "values," and he used the figures. In a moment or two, I shall be able to find my notes. At any rate, I make that point now, and, if I am wrong, I shall be only too glad to be corrected. I marked it carefully; the right hon. Gentleman used the word "values." The second point is still more important. The House of Commons must remember that we never recovered our export trade. You can reduce the whole thing to 1913 values, which is the best method of doing it, or you can take quantities. I do not care which it is; I am using the same test, whether for this country or for any other country. We have never gone beyond 1913. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour said:

"If you take another test, you will find that the value of the exports of this country, in the past 11 months, compared with the same period of last year, has gone down by 6.9 per cent., in the United States by 35.7 per cent. in Germany by 41.1 per cent.…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th December, 1932; col. 775, Vol. 273.]

He uses the word "value."

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will look at the end of my speech, where he will see the figures for volume, which are really the important ones.

The hon. Gentleman, naturally, thinks that his speech is more important than that of the Minister—

Because it deals with the point which the right hon. Gentleman is making—with the question of volume.

I am entitled to take the speech of the chief of the Department, and that is the figure with which I am dealing at the present moment. If the hon. Gentleman calls my attention to that point, I shall examine it, but I have had no opportunity of examining it. I have, however, examined the figures given by his chief, and I am giving the answer.

I will give another answer. Will the House kindly listen to these figures? By 1928, which was more or less the great boom year, the exports of the United States of America, in comparison with 1913, had gone up to 164½; those of France to 148½; those of Italy to 132. That is to say, they exceeded their export trade of 1913 by, respectively, 64½ per cent., 48½ per cent., and 32 per cent. I found it difficult to include Germany, because Germany has been torn up. Considerable portions of her territory have been taken away, and I find it impossible to get a comparison, but, as a matter of fact, the figure for Germany was 86, even though Alsace-Lorraine and other parts have been taken away. Our figure was 84½. When the drop came, naturally it was very much greater from that height than from the very low position which we had attained, and, therefore, a comparison with the last 11 or 12 months is not a fair comparison; you must take for your comparison comparable years, between 1913 and the last boom year, which was 1928 or 1929, and then compare with the present conditions.

What is the position beyond that? There is a great fall in re-exports. New industries have employed less than 10,000 —I think the figure given by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade the other day, in answer to a question, was 9,361. The loss in the handling of re-exports is infinitely greater. What is going to happen that is going to put things right? Whether international debts are important or not—and there seems now to be a dispute about that; President Hoover does not seem to think that so much importance ought to be attached to them, though others think differently—whether they are important or not, it is quite clear, after the declaration of the President-designate yesterday, that they cannot be handled until after March.

A far more important question is the instability of the exchanges. It is not so much that we are 13s. 4d. It is that we are 13s. 4d. to-day, we were 13s. yesterday, and we may be 14s. to-morrow, and no one is able to base his contracts upon any stable assumption. The other is undoubtedly the fact that you have built up these high tariff walls everywhere and that, therefore, international trade has gone down throughout the world. Those two items are probably far more important than international debts. When are you going to deal with them? I have heard the Prime Minister, who seems to know less about what is taking place than anyone in the House, affirm most emphatically that we were going to meet immediately and that before Christmas we should have six week's discussion of general principles, which would have been very useful. Where is that meeting now? Are we going to meet before the dog days? Is there any anticipation that we are going to have a meeting before June to consider these vital issues? You will not settle them in a day if you settle them at all. When you have settled them and begun to build up your trade, you may be able to reduce the tariffs of the world by common agreement and to stabilise things generally with regard to security, but you may not. Great conferences have not been a very great success in achieving definite practical results.

That is where we are, and I should like to know how we are going to deal with the situation. We had a discussion here on Monday. I read it very carefully—I think I read it twice over—because it was very important. I also read what the Prime Minister said. I think we are entitled to make a protest about that. If he was really ill, no one will have a word to say about it, but, if he was well enough to travel all the way to Lossimouth, which is a pretty long distance I understand, and speak on unemployment on the very night when there was a discussion in the House of Commons, to which he owes his first responsibility, I think it is an insult to the House. But it is a little worse than that. It is proof that he has no sense of the great responsibility of his position in reference to the worst crisis that the country has passed through in times of peace, I will not say within living memory but almost within historical memory. He said that the problem of the better use of enforced leisure is a practical one of supreme importance.

The thing that is of supreme importance is to provide work. What does the Prime Minister propose—the creating of small handicraft industries and turning land into allotments and playing fields, without any indication where you are going to get the land or how you are going to do it, reclaiming slag heaps, making a paddling pool, restoring an old Roman bridge, and making mats out of bits of old rope. That used to be called picking oakum. That is the work of the unemployed. That is what he calls the problem of the better use of enforced leisure, which is one of supreme importance for 3,000,000—and over 3,000,000, because the 250,000 black-coated have to be added to your 2,800,000—and your black-coated man is not even in the list. The right hon. Gentleman went to Lossiemouth to file his petition in bankruptcy and to declare that there were no assets worth realising. What is £10,000 worth of charity? Where we have 50 or 100 people, as we have in some of our little villages in Wales, we can deal with them quite easily. By means of subscriptions we are fairly able to cope with them. In Guildford, near where I live, we have very great encouragement arid enterprise, but after all there is no great unemployment there compared with what there is in Durham and South Wales.

Or even in the Prime Minister's own division.

That is right. There is no great unemployment in the Guildford district, and there are fairly wealthy people who are showing extraordinary enterprise and who can afford to do it. But when you come to those districts where you have almost half the population out of work, where there are no wealthy people, and where the municipalities are bankrupt, what is this £10,000 to spend on charity'? Ten thousand pounds is £80 for each county and county borough in England and Wales. Glamorgan, with nearly half its people out of work, will get, under this beneficence, the sum of £110 to provide work for the unemployed. It is really trifling with the problem. I do ask the Government during the coming six weeks to think out something upon a greater scale than this.

We have put forward our schemes. I am told that they are no good. What are your schemes? Do let us have them. You have had your Tariff. You put a false bottom on your economic structure. It may have been necessary. I am not arguing that. That is beside the mark at the present moment. You have it there, but why do you not build something upon it? What are you going to build upon it? Other and poorer countries are making a real effort. The "Times" has already been advertising what Signor Mussolini is doing in the way of reclamation. He was opening yesterday a town built upon a waste swamp which has been reclaimed. Italy is a poor land. It is a poorer land than ours. That is what he is doing. He has shown courage. He is facing his difficulties. He has reclaimed hundreds and thousands—and, I am not certain that there are not millions—of acres. He has put, at any rate, hundreds and thousands of people upon the land. In Germany they are going to take 1,300,000 acres in East Prussia alone in order to settle the population upon the land where 30 per cent. of the population is already on the soil. All the towns there are doing exactly the same thing—in one area alone 1,300,000 acres—and we are only talking about reclaiming waste land. We are treating the matter as though we were bankrupt. In Germany the difficulty is that they have very little land to spare. They have 10,000,000 people on the soil there. They have very little land to spare, and practically no money. In this country we have £1,800,000,000 of depreciated money rusting in our hands, worth less by one-third to-day than when the Government came into power. Every sovereign that was worth 20s. then is now worth 13s. 4d., and if you go on leaving them rusting there, what guarantee will you have that they will not go down and down again?

I wonder how many hon. Members read that very remarkable article by the agricultural correspondent of the "Times," in November, as to the conditions in the East of England. He said:

"One landowner told me that he has 1,200 acres on his hands for which he cannot find tenants. The farms lie in five different parishes and he will have to make shift to get the land cultivated somehow, so that it does not become derelict. Where forced sales have taken place farms normally worth £20 an acre have sold for £4 an acre and even as low as 35s. an acre. There are no buyers."

There is land there, and you need not use compulsory powers to take it. Can the Minister of Agriculture name any country in Europe where you can buy 1,500 acres of land at 35s. an acre, or £4 an acre or £20 an acre, with farm buildings attached, except in this country. Why is that? Because we are not making proper use of the land as they do in other countries. That is the real reason.

I hope that we shall get something from the Minister of Agriculture. I put this suggestion to him. If they cannot borrow money at the present moment, why do not they do what the Mayor of Godalming, who is a business man and has been a farmer, suggests. I heard him say at an agricultural dinner the other night that he had made money out of his farm. That shows that he is a very exceptional man. He suggests that you should say to the locality, "We will lump the dole and pass it on to you, providing you employ people on tasks which do not enter into competition with ordinary industry." I thought that an admirable suggestion. What kind of things are there that would not enter into competition with ordinary industry—public improvements, reclamation of waste, drainage of land, allotments, smallholdings, slum clearance, opening up roads to environments of cities with a view to garden cities. None of these things would enter into any sort of competition with ordinary industry. Therefore, you would not be subsidising one class of business as against another and you would undercut nobody. You would pay them the ordinary trade union rate of wages, and their dole would go towards that. If you were to do it in the case of anyone who had a leather factory or an iron and steel factory it would be helping one business as against another, but if it is for the purpose of the reclamation of land, and things of that sort, you would not be helping any industry. You would be giving the dole as a contribution towards getting work in that particular neighbourhood.

Instead of that we prefer to ladle out all this money in sheer idleness. The Mayor of Godalming told me that if he could do this he could provide work for every man in the area. There are a considerable number of towns in this country where this policy could be adopted, and by this means you could reduce the number of unemployed by at least 25 per cent. I ask the Government to consider this possibility. May I remind the right hon. Gentleman that no legislation is necessary. There is an Act of Parliament on the Statute Book; you can do it by an Order in Council ordering that the machine should go. You can reclaim land, set up small holdings and allotments, cottage holdings and schemes of that kind, under this Act. There is another point I wish to put to the Government. The Minister of Agriculture can order a thorough survey of two or three typical counties to show the possibilities. The Home Secretary made one or two good surveys in Scotland, and he could have gone further, but at that time it was not linked up so much with unemployment.

There is a new situation. Why should you not take two or three typical counties and have a thorough survey by practical men of the conditions to see whether there is land which is derelict which can be reclaimed. I think it is possible to reclaim in some counties tens of thousands of acres, perhaps more in larger counties with a view to land settlement. First of all, there is the pure waste, the swamp area. I could give the right hon. Gentleman instances where the soil is good, but no individual landlord can possibly spend the money upon it; and it is difficult to get the combination which is necessary. You may have 50 landlords adjoining a particular swamp, but they have not the money. In the next place, there is the land which is under-cultivated, large areas in this country, and an area which is growing. Why could we not have a survey of two or three counties to see what are the possibilities? If those who talk about reclamation and under-cultivation, and the reconditioning of land are talking nonsense then the sooner it is shown to be nonsense by careful examination by experts the better. We could then turn our minds to something which is more practical. But let us find out first whether there is anything in it, and whether this is the only country in the world where you cannot reclaim land and settle people upon it.

I come to the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health. During the last Government I pressed the Minister of Health and the Lord Privy Seal to have a survey made. In this matter I had the advice of some of the ablest town planners in the Kingdom. It was not my suggestion at all. I say that in order to avoid undue prejudice against the suggestion, which came entirely from practical men whose politics I do not even know. Right hon. and hon. Members opposite cannot, therefore, say it is merely a Radical stunt. The suggestion was that there should be a survey of the possibilities of opening up the suburbs in London—the Lea Valley was one of the places indicated—with a view, not to pulling down the slums in the East End of London and rebuilding new slums, but with a view to getting the population right out into the country so as to give them the same advantage of good healthy country air as the middle classes and the well-to-do have at the moment. It is done in all the well-constructed towns and cities of the Continent, everywhere, with access to the docks and to places of business through broad avenues, sometimes by light railways, sometimes by tube, sometimes by tram—what New York does for a uniform five cents fare. I am not asking the right hon. Gentleman to commit himself to the policy. I am asking him whether what was undertaken by the late Government in the way of investigation can proceed. It cannot possibly cost more than a few pounds. The last Government also undertook to examine these possibilities in some of the distressed towns of the north, to see whether something could be done. The Government fell before I knew what had happened to these schemes. Perhaps they had no time to put them into operation, but they did agree to do so.

Those are the suggestions which I put forward to the Government. I have heard many a time that the present Government have pulled us through. Pulled us through into what? Into over 3,000,000 of unemployed, maintained at a cost of £130,000,000 a year, and nothing to show for it. The Employment Exchanges are fuller, the docks are empty, the factories and workshops and railways empty. The weekly returns for goods traffic are down; the unemployment figures are up. There is land lacking drainage, more water-logged than ever; there are more labourers leaving the soil, more ships rotting for want of cargoes. We have the same old slums getting shabbier and more and more overcrowded, and nothing done to improve them. The Prime Minister leaves all this to the Department, and with a fine gesture to charity. I wonder how long the nation will stand it.

Before the Minister replies there is one point to which I wish to draw attention. I wonder if the House clearly understands the fact that during the last year unemployment has entered upon a new and a terribly menacing stage. It was my gloomy duty on Monday to draw attention to those figures which have been mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) and emphasised by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour, that during the last 12 months the number of unemployed who have been out of work for 12 months or more, has increased from just over 100,000 to 480,000. I ask the House to mark what that means. Before the War there were what were called cycles of unemployment. Since the War we have had persistence of unemployment, but up to now the elements of that unemployment were changing and, until the last year or so, we could say that there were no more than 100,000 or so permanently unemployed in the sense that they had been idle for 12 months or more. Within the last year that figure of 100,000 has leapt up to nearly 500,000.

The Government may do as they did on Monday last, I do not suppose that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs expects any reasonable answer to the suggestions of schemes which he has put forward. If he does he shows even more optimism than we expect from his own optimistic self. All this kind of thing was debated in this House for three days. Members of the House were supposed to pool their ideas on this subject and even Members supporting the Government pleaded with the Government to do certain things. What happened? The Government have not been decent enough even to give us an answer. Now, as I say, unemployment has entered on a new and menacing stage and we have this terrible corps of men permanently unemployed.

The Government gave £10,000 for the work of the National Council of Social Service and on Monday we pointed out the danger that this would be taken as a Government policy. The Government said, "No!" but they did not tell us what was their policy. They have no policy. But the Prime Minister went to Lossiemouth and almost at the very time when the subject was being debated here in this House he made a speech to the country which gave the impression that he was stating Government policy. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition as well as the right hon. Gentle man the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs criticised that speech, in terms which I felt were weak, as an insult to the House. It is more titian that; it is a very grave danger to this country for the Prime Minister to do things of that description. I said on Monday—and I confess that the idea has got hold of me—that there is at present in regard to this matter throughout the country a kind of brooding quiet. It is what I should describe as a terrible quiet, a dangerous quiet, one of those quiets which history speaks of as preceding very dangerous human upheavals.

The Government may state nothing here to-day, they may have no policy of their own, they may think that charity will suffice. But the Government will get the surprise of their lives unless they are prepared to face this problem, particularly in some of the areas of which we know. It will not be the Home Secretary who will reply to it, because if it does happen, there will be no Home Secretary to reply at all. I do hope that the right hon. Gentleman will at least have something to say. The Prime Minister, I think, has destroyed the scheme of the National Union of Social Service doing anything at all effectively. We on this side of the House want to see that work successful, and want to see the splendid work done in almost every part of the country continued. These men and women are labouring all over the country, and have been for some years doing first-class work in their own humble way. They have never pretended that they could be a substitute for active Government work. They do not do so now, and say so definitely. But by the gift of £10,000 they have been linked up with the Government, and by the speech of the Prime Minister not only their future possibility of good work has been torpedoed, but it looks as if even the good work that has been done has been endangered, That is what has been done by a speech on Government policy from Lossiemouth. Now that we are going to adjourn for six weeks, and when up and down the country there are great masses of people, very patient, very decent, some of whom are at this Christmas time, as the Prime Minister himself said in that speech, wanting the very elements of covering, I hope the right hon. Gentleman is going to have something more to say than his predecessors at the Ministry of Labour have had. If not, I can only finish by repeating the warning that there is in this country grave possibility of trouble, which will not be handled easily.

It is not easy in the Debate on the Adjournment Motion before the Christmas Recess to respond to all the appeals which have been made. It is quite true, as the right hon. Gentleman the Father of the House said, that it would not be possible for me to touch on any projects involving legislation. Yet the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) seemed to expect that this afternoon I should develop some great Government programme, which certainly could not be done without legislation, and which, therefore, would be out of order. He seemed to take exception, and so I regret to say did the Father of the House, to the Prime Minister not being here to develop some such programme on the Estimates of a Department. But as everybody knows, it would have been totally out of order for the Prime Minis- ter, or any other Minister, to develop on such an occasion any scheme involving legislation of any kind or description.

Does the right hon. and gallant Gentleman say that with the consent of the House the Prime Minister could not have made any statement, and has the House ever refused that consent?

I say, without a. moment's hesitation, that the consent of the House would not have made any difference whatever. The consent of the Chair is what is necessary, and the Chair would have ruled—as the Chair always rules—that on Departmental Estimates it is utterly impossible to introduce any subject demanding legislation. Well, the Leader of the Opposition has a right to his own opinion, but I have heard, and we have all heard, Members and Ministers called to order at this Box, and forced to resume their seats, because on Departmental Estimates they were broaching on subjects requiring legislation which would have been out of order in the circumstances.

Not when there has been consent asked and given.

I do not wish to enter into a Debate upon rules of order with my right hon. Friend, more especially as on more than one occasion recently I have found myself involved in a controversy with him which has threatened to flare up into something worse, and for which I was, as I said at the time, sincerely sorry, and I certainly do not wish to be led into such a controversy again. I think it is within the general knowledge of the House that Estimates which involved £20,000,000 of new money required close and accurate examination from the point of view of Departmental Estimates, that these Estimates were so examined, that the Prime Minister would have been out of place in such a Debate, and that the Prime Minister himself had gone home, as surely he was entitled to do, for the benefit of his health, which surely any man is entitled to do after an autumn of work which has not been surpassed by any man in this House, engaged upon the very tasks which the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition most vehemently demanded, for the sweeping away of barriers between nation and nation, for the stabilisation of exchanges, and for the cause of international peace.

Those were the tasks upon which the Prime. Minister had exhausted himself, and the Prime Minister surely had a right to say, at such a time, "I will go home." I have known the right hon. Gentleman the Father of the House, when he had great international tasks to perform, when he was involved in great international conferences, when he was Prime Minister, paying little enough heed to those who said that he should be nailed to his place at this Box. I have known him live in foreign capitals for months at a time carrying out schemes which no doubt, he sincerely hoped, would lead to great improvements in international affairs.

I never passed any criticism on the Prime Minister because he had spent his time either at Geneva, Lausanne, or Paris, or any other place where he was discharging his duty. That is a very different thing, but I think it would be difficult for the right hon. Gentleman to find a single case where there was a most important issue of the moment, say, the War, being discussed in this House, when I was not in my place.

What about Gairloch?

I can hear that observation. The House was not sitting then. That was very unworthy of the hon. Member. He ought to apologise, and he would if he were a gentleman.

It is surely unnecessary and undignified for the House of Commons to enter into a criticism of the personal motives of any Member or any officer of this House. The House of Commons as a whole has always freely and generously extended its consideration towards either Members of the House or Members of the Government who have had to be absent for duty or for reasons of health, and I am sure that any of us who heard, as I heard, the broadcast speech of the Prime Minister will not deny that that was the voice of a man who would be greatly improved by a short holiday in his native air. I think everyone who heard that speech certainly would agree that the Prime Minister, when he went home for reasons of health, was going home for reasons that were manifest to anyone who heard that speech delivered.

An engagement entered into long before with the British Broadcasting Corporation, an engagement on the radio, is an engagement with millions of persons, and it is inaccurate in the extreme to say that he was there developing Government policy. He was carrying out an engagement as one of the speakers in a series of talks which the British Broadcasting Corporation was giving to direct the nation towards various aspects of the great problem of unemployment, and the fact that the Prime Minister thought that that was a reasonable thing, and that even on his holiday and while not in full health he could give up an evening to make such an address, is obviously an action for which he should be commended, and not blamed. The fact that even on his holiday in Lossiemouth he directed the attention of others towards the problem not merely of Governmental action, but of personal action and social service, and to the relation between man and man which transcends all the problems of Governmental action, State grants and legislation, is surely an example of the fact that not by one avenue only must we attack this problem of unemployment, but by every avenue, not merely in the House of Commons but in the country as well.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street seized the opportunity to make a few remarks which he doubtless felt would be of great advantage to the House of Commons. He indicated that, in his view, the problem of long-term unemployment had suddenly bounced up from 100,000 to 480,000. He is aware, however, that during the Debate on the unemployment Estimates that point was made, and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour pointed out that the increase in those figures was due to the fact that they had first been enumerated at one period, and then enumerated at another period much later. It is not a sudden phenomenon. If it were, it would be easier to deal with. The problem was here before the hon. Gentleman's Government came into power, and before the period when he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour. The problem was nearly as great when he was Parliamentary Secretary as it is to-day. The problem showed the same menacing features during the period he was Parliamentary Secretary as it is showing to-day. It is not a sudden leap; if it were, it would be, as I have said, more easily dealt with. It is part of the manifestation of the phenomenon of unemployment which no single Administration in this country can cast up against another. No sudden leap has taken place. It is the development of a trend which was developing in the past as it is to-day.

I did not make this as a party point at all. The fact is that in 1931 at Geneva figures were brought out by the Minister of Labour himself showing that there were only 100,000 people who had been unemployed for 12 months or more. That was in June, 1931. I asked the hon. Gentleman for figures, and he himself told me that between 1931 and 1932 the figures had gone up to 480,000. That is the official answer which the hon. Gentleman gave me. I am not making a party point that this Government are responsible for it at all. The point I am making is that the figure has gone up by a sudden leap to five times the previous number.

It would be ungracious of me not to acknowledge the statement of my hon. Friend that there is no party point in it, but that he was merely drawing attention to the general trend. As to the actual discussion and analysis of the figures between two Parliamentary Secretaries to the Ministry of Labour, I will certainly stand aside in that controversy, because it is clear that I must know much less than either taken singly, and very much less than both together.

I want to come back to the main problem, raised more particularly by my right hon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). He spoke of the difficulty before the House in adjourning for Christmas with the unemployment figure still as high as it is to-day. He indicated that he wanted to know whether the Government had any plans, and said that while tariff barriers were as high as they are to-day and the exchanges were as unstable, it was impossible to expect any permanently good results to world trade. I do not wish to enter into the controversy with him on these matters save to say that I believe that those who seek to put affairs right by putting right the whole world at one time are trying to undertake too great a task. In putting right affairs region by region, in establishing an area over which the exchanges would be stable—the sterling area—and in establishing areas in which tariffs would be stable and would tend to go lower rather than to go higher, as within the British Empire, we are embarking on a more hopeful field than if we were to attempt to put right the whole affairs of the world in one or two great sweeping conferences, wherever they might be held. But that is my own view, and I am no more entitled to dogmatise than anyone else. The right hon. Gentleman did me the honour yesterday of indicating that he would raise certain points regarding the utilisation of land, the drainage of land—

And surveys.

—upon which he indicated he would press for a reply to-day. I have done my best in the time available to satisfy his demands. I would like to say, in the first place, that I think he was perhaps a little cavalier in his dismissal of allotments as merely playing with the problem.

I spoke of playing-fields. I never spoke of the provision of allotments as playing with the problem. I am strongly in favour of them, and if I did convey another impression I am sorry.

I did my best to take down the words of the right hon. Gentleman.

I was referring to what the Prime Minister said about playing-fields.

I took down very carefully the words of my right hon. Friend, and he referred with great scorn and derision to the statement of the Prime Minister.

About playing-fields.

He said the Prime Minister had spoken of the reclaiming of waste land, of allotments, of playing-fields and of handicrafts. Those were the four specific things which he mentioned as having been discussed by the Prime Minister, and I do not think he will suggest that he excepted any of the Prime Minister's remarks from the vials of scorn which he poured upon the announcement.

I asked with regard to allotments how land could be obtained merely by private charity? That is all. If I conveyed the impression that allotments were a matter of derision, I did not intend to do so; but I do regard the mere acquisition of land by private charity as playing with the problem.