Foreign News: Parliament Squabbles

Laborites fiercely defended their Government in both Houses of Parliament last week, battling on four major Empire issues: Unemployment; Disarmament; Dominion Status for India; Resumption of Relations with Soviet Russia. Jabs were scathing, digs sharp and deep. But on the whole the debate was the most vital and constructive of a lackadaisical Parliamentary year.

Thomas on the Grill. Puffed with optimism after his famed trade-questing trip to Canada (TIME, Sept. 2), Lord Privy Seal James Henry Thomas (“Privy Seal Jim”), Minister in Charge of Unemployment, told the House of Commons that “by next year our trouble will be not how to get customers in Canada but how to get enough ships to take our coal and goods there fast enough to fill their orders.”

Without being too specific, bluff Mr. Thomas implied that somehow or other he had arranged for the flood of orders which has yet to burst. Then, getting back to England, he outlined a £42,000,000 ($204,120,000) program of unemployment relief. Straightway this was denounced by Liberal Leader David Lloyd George as “unintelligent, pusillanimous, and ineffective!” At Privy Seal Jim the Welshman jibed, “You-ran away to Canada when you should have been here working out a real solution. I am surprised that the Prime Minister let you go!”

In point of fact Mr. Thomas presented a definite and constructive if in no way brilliant scheme. He proposed to tap the Exchequer for approximately $90.000.000 to be spent on digging reservoirs, building roads and other public works. Further he envisioned Government assistance to several British railways and the London Underground (subway), which would enable them to employ workmen on “improvements” (electrification of steam trackage, new tunnels) costing upwards of $110,000,000.

Concluded Privy Seal Jim: “I have found no magic remedy for unemployment”—and it was all too evident that he had not. On the other hand neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives wanted to bring down the Labor Government on the unemployment issue last week, so amid much grumbling the House voted a resolution enabling Mr. Thomas to go ahead with his plans. Sharpest criticism came from burly James Maxton, leader of the extreme Left Laborite faction. After flaying the Government for “compromising with Capitalism” and not daring to seek the straight Socialist solution of nationalizing industry, he roared: “Some say that Labor will run the Government for 20 years. God knows, at the rate we are going, we will need every minute of it to get anything done!” “Rule Britannia.” Piqued at the highly favorable reaction of British public opinion to Laborite Ramsay MacDonald’s peace odyssey, the Liberal and Conservative leaders in the Commons (both recent Prime Ministers) tried to convince the House, last week, that they had intended and longed to go to Washington while in office but were prevented by “circumstances.” Brief and in comparatively good taste upon this sour-grape theme was kinetic Liberal David Lloyd George. But turgid, bumbling Conservative Stanley Baldwin was long-winded, unsporting. He congratulated Mr. MacDonald on having “taken the first moment that had been possible in recent years to make his visit. It could not have been done by any Government until the actual time he went!” Mr. Baldwin even suggested, “although I am not greedy of power,” that he or some other Conservative prime minister might in future make another such visit. He concluded: “There is no feeling of envy or regret or any feeling of that kind in my heart.”

Conscious of his strong position, Scot MacDonald had delayed until last week his report to Parliament on the Hoover conversations. Taking his time and keeping most of his secrets, the Prime Minister told the House in substance only what he had already told U. S. and Canadian reporters, namely that: 1) The forthcoming Naval Disarmament Pact will be based upon the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact; 2) The tentative Anglo-U. S. naval understanding between himself and President Hoover is only a groundwork on which the Naval Pact proper will be built at the Five-Power Conference scheduled to meet in London next January; 3) In the Hoover-MacDonald statement of last month (from which the Prime Minister quoted copiously last week) the two Governments declared, “in a new and reinforced sense,” that war between them is “unthinkable,” and that mutual “distrusts and suspicions . . . must now cease to influence national policy.” At these familiar words—the 1929 formula of Peace—there were cheers from all quarters of the House.

Subsequent sharp querying of Scot MacDonald—especially by Welshman Lloyd George—confirmed two important if negative facts. The Prime Minister’s answers revealed for the first time that he did not discuss the Anglo-U. S. War debt situation with Mr. Hoover, and that he has not given the President any assurance that in wartime the British navy will respect the right of U. S. merchantmen to freedom of the seas. Since there has been general uneasiness in Britain on the latter point, Mr. MacDonald’s straightforward answer cleared the air, enhanced his popularity, banished suspicion that he is an impractical Socialist capable of bartering away Britannia’s right to rule the wave.

Later in the week at a meeting of the National Labor Club, Scot MacDonald told how he had been “struck by President Hoover’s quiet forcefulness. . . . His powerful way of furthering an argument made me almost smile in his face and exclaim to him out of the happiness of my soul: ‘Oh, you dear old Quaker!’ ”

India Mishandled? Liberals and Conservatives moved upon the Government in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords apropos a proclamation made at New Delhi by the Viceroy of India, Baron Irwin. His actual words were merely to repeat to Indians the pledge (which every British Government has made for a decade) that some day the Indian Empire will be granted full “dominion status” with a self-governing Parliament like Canada’s.

Lord Irwin “grossly blundered” in the opinion of Liberals and Conservatives, because he spoke at a time when Britain’s famed Indian Statutory Commission, chairmanned by the august Liberal barrister, Sir John Simon (TIME, Jan. 30, 1928 et seq.), is at work trying to decide just how much or how little more freedom India should be given, not “someday” but soon. The charge against the MacDonald Government last week was that they had tried to stampede the Simon Commission into making a lenient report by ordering the Viceroy to issue a proclamation in effect anticipating the Commission’s verdict.

In the House of Lords, the big, sharp-tongued Earl of Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India in the late Baldwin Cabinet, sneered that the Labor Government “have mishandled the Indian situation in every conceivable way at every conceivable stage. . . . They have been frightened by the threats of Indian extremists. . . . Their explanations of what they have done have been confused and mutually inconsistent!”

In the House of Commons the new Secretary of State for India, Captain Wedgwood Benn, a Wartime flying ace, was accused by Mr. Lloyd George of “breaking up for the first time in history the solidarity of Parliament on matters pertaining to India.” Nettled, choleric Captain Benn disregarded the fact that Liberal Lloyd George controls enough votes to unseat the Labor Government, lashed out at the Welshman: “I hope that the people of India, on reading the Right Honorable gentleman’s words, will realize that he speaks for only a handful of the members of this House.” Fortunately, in the ugly situation which followed, Sir John Simon rose and stilled the tempest by declaring that his Commission had been consulted by the Government with fitting deference before instructions were issued to the Viceroy, that the Commission had taken and would take no stand until ready to issue their final report. As the squabble subsided the House was lulled by Stanley Baldwin, who, although he had been in the thick of charge and countercharge at one point, ended by delivering a long, soporific speech to the effect that once upon a time Englishmen and Indians were brothers. Ingeniously he pointed out “our common origin in Central Asia at the dawn of history,” regretted that “misunderstandings have arisen in the centuries since some of the aboriginal brothers migrated south to India, others west to Europe.”

Reds Recognized. The decisive vote of the week came when Foreign Secretary “Uncle Arthur” Henderson asked the Commons to ratify his agreement with the Soviet Government for resumption of diplomatic relations and an exchange of Ambassadors (TIME, Oct. 7). Conservatives introduced a motion to “repudiate the action of His Majesty’s Government.” Both bumbling Mr. Baldwin and hawk-featured Sir Austen Chamberlain (“Uncle Arthur’s” predecessor as Foreign Secretary), made half-hearted efforts to dangle before the House the old Red Bugaboo with which they won the election of 1924. In a lull, while Right Honorable Members took tea, Mr. Henderson (pro-Red) and Mr. Baldwin (anti-Red) sat cozily together, smiling, chatting. In the final vote many Conservatives abstained, and several actually voted for the Labor Government. Renegades included Lady Astor and brooding, psychoanalytical John Buchan, the novelist M. P. who in such books as Witch Wood delights to explore the cult of Satanism. Final count showed 324 votes for recognizing Russia, 199 opposed. On the Soviet issue—decisive and fundamental—Liberal David Lloyd George was found to have marshaled his whole party solidly behind Labor, eschewing the hit-&-run tactics with which he deviled the MacDonald Government last week when no vital vote was in prospect.