Monday, Dec. 30, 1929

Parliament's Week

The Lords:

P: Were warned by Hero-Admiral Earl Beatty, Commander of the British Grand Fleet (1916-19), First Sea Lord (1919-27), "our situation with regard to cruisers is indeed serious."

He recalled that 9,500,000 tons of British shipping have to be protected every day "on lines of communications extending over 80,000 miles." For years the Admiralty considered 70 cruisers the minimum requirement (less than one to every thousand miles), but this number has now been reduced to 50.

"Is it surprising," asked Earl Beatty in seadog peroration, "that there is apprehension among those who have given thought to this vital question, and that there should be dismay among those who cannot understand how parity in cruisers can be arrived at unless it is to be a parity having regard to the commitments and obligations of each nation? . . . There is no nation, whose naval commitments and obligations are so great and so complicated as the British Empire's."

Such, fairly and frankly set forth by an honest, candid man, is the train of thought by which 99 Britons out of 100 have arrived at the belief that it is right for them to have a larger navy than the U. S., which has so many less merchant ships and colonies to protect than they.

The Commons:

P: Bristled to attention as the shooting of 18 women by British police and troops in Nigeria, West Africa, was announced by Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies Dr. T. Drummond Shiels. The women, said Dr. Shiels, were Negresses. They had attacked some British officers. Troops rushing to the rescue of their superiors received the order "Hold your fire, men!" and did so until the Negresses approached, slapped their faces, laid hands upon their rifles with intent to snatch them, whereupon British chivalry cracked and the shooting down of women began.

The Nigerian blacks have been in an ugly, riotous mood of late, due to the Government's unpopular attempts to collect a head tax on their woolly polls. At Itu, Nigeria, the local British river steamer was chased by tax-indignant blacks in war canoes. "With regard to the women," concluded Dr. Shiels, "His Majesty's Government is informed that they were encouraged in their provocation by a man who told them that British troops would never fire on persons of their sex."

P: Conservative heckler: "Does the Labor Party still believe that His Majesty's Government should control lands?"

Minister of Agriculture Noel Buxton: Yes.

Lady Astor: Whose lands?

Member of the Extreme Left "Clydeside" Labor Faction, with a raucous whoop: Yours! Yours, my Lady! YOURS!!

P: The House passed 273 to 199 the labor government's so-called Unemployment Insurance Bill (TIME, Nov. 25, et seq.) amid bitter plaints from Clydesiders (see above) who demanded that even bigger doles be handed out to the unemployed.

"Scandalous!" stormed peppery Scotch Conservative Major Walter Elliot Elliot, "Why, the dole is already more than wages in some depressed trades."

"If wages fall below the dole," roared Clydeside Leader Jim Maxton, "we shall know how to raise wages!"

"Poppycock!" snorted Major Elliot.

P: That the Cabinet of Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald hangs in fact by a thread, and may fall after the Christmas recess perhaps during the Five Power Naval Conference, was evident last week when the bill to reorganize Britain's pitifully depressed coal industry (TIME, Oct. 28) came up for its second reading. In no sense Communist or Radical, the bill epitomizes Scot MacDonald's own brand of "safe and sturdy Socialism." It provides: 1) shortening the miners' working day from eight hours to seven and one-half; 2) establishment of a "National Industrial Board" of big business and labor leaders; 3) creation of a "National Coal Marketing Board" to coordinate the whole industry and present a united front to the coal trusts of continental Europe.

Conservative attacks on the bill were led by famed Winston ("Winnie") Churchill, whilom Chancellor of the Exchequer, who enjoyed a piece of Scot MacDonald's birthday cake in New York last fall (TIME, Oct. 21). Last week Cake-giver MacDonald lashed out at Cake-eater Churchill: "You are making politics of this [coal bill] and nothing else. All your wit and polished phrases are for the sole purpose of forcing us to go to the country for another election. If you do we will beat you."

Liberal Leader David Lloyd George bleated: "This measure contains some of the worst and none of the best features of Socialism." The Clydeside Laborites, who want the Government to nationalize the coal industry and pay high wages (if necessary out of the taxpayers' pockets), were frankly furious. The vote which followed was the most important since the MacDonald Cabinet took office:

Abstaining For the bill Against

Laborites 14 275

Conservatives 32 228

Liberals 15 2 41

Independents 4 4

61 281 273

Thus the Government won by a humiliating majority of eight. The 14 Clydesiders, who are supposed to be Laborites (i. e. Socialists), showed their Communist colors by abstaining. All but two Liberals turned against Mr. MacDonald. And the only thing that saved his government from falling was the abstention of 32 of his avowed enemies, the Conservatives, who are afraid to risk a general election now while Scot MacDonald is in the heyday of his Hoover prestige.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.