attitude they should adopt was that one Parliament was honestly and sincerely desirous of consulting another Parliament as to the best course to adopt, and was sending forth a Commission of Inquiry in a spirit of good-fellowship and co-operation to get the facts and the reflections of the best Indians, so that it might be able to produce the best report possible.

Strangely enough, Mr. MacDonald did not press a proposal which had been adopted by his party at a meeting on the previous day, that the Indian Commission should also be asked to present a report to the Joint Parliamentary Committee which was ultimately to draft a scheme of reform; nor was it brought forward by any subsequent speaker on the Labour benches. One or two Labour members demurred to the purely British character of the Commission, but the bulk of their own party was against them on this matter; Mr. MacDonald had fully concurred in the Government view that a mixed Commission in this case was quite impracticable.

The Prime Minister, in closing the debate, responded to Mr. MacDonald's appeal by stating that the Indians could dismiss from their minds any thought of inferiority, and that they would be approached as friends and as equals. The Government, he said, regarded their scheme as the most effective means of satisfying the proper ambition of statesmen in India who had hitherto worked and co-operated with the Government, of taking part in the settlement of the constitutional future of India. Referring to certain points which had been raised in the debate, he said they had shown the extreme difficulty of deciding how the Indian question could best be brought into focus for the consideration of Parliament. The Government was entering upon an unprecedented path, the like of which had never been explored by any Government or body of men before. He relied for whatever success might be attained on the instinctive sense of justice implanted in the heart of every Briton, and expressed his confidence that the Commission would discharge their task with courage and due sense of responsibility.

The legislative work of the session began with the discussion of the Government's new Unemployment Insurance Bill which was to take the place of the Act expiring at the end of the year. Although the Labour Party had earlier in the year signified its acceptance of the Blanesburgh report, it had already declared itself totally dissatisfied with this Bill, which professed to be based on the report. It was joined in opposition by a number of Liberals and a small group of Conservatives, who criticised the Bill for its faults, not of commission, but of omission. The Government had not aimed at anything more than putting unemployment insurance on a sound actuarial basis and separating insurance sharply from charity. The Opposition, however, insisted on opening up the whole unemployment problem, and in

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The Unemployment Insurance Bill.

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consequence the measure proved much more contentious, and occupied far more time than had been expected.

The Minister of Labour, in introducing the second reading (November 9), laid stress on the fact that the new measure would do away with extended benefit, commonly known as "the dole," and, with it, the discretionary power of the Minister, a relief for which he personally would be deeply grateful. The unemployed person would now have a statutory right to benefit on fulfilling two conditions-one, that he should have made thirty contributions in the preceding two years, the other that he should be genuinely seeking work. The Blanesburgh Committee had recommended the insertion in the Bill of a short definition of the words "genuinely seeking work." Amid the laughter of the House the Minister remarked that he had cudgelled his own brains and asked his officials to cudgel theirs to produce such a definition, but without success. He explained the financial reasons which had led the Government to depart from the recommendations of the Blanesburgh Committee in one particular. The Committee had come to the conclusion that, given a cycle of average trade, and taking the normal average of unemployment as 6 per cent., the present benefits could be given for an average of 15d. per man, which could be divided in equal contributions of 5d. each from the employer, the workman, and the State. The Committee, however, had also taken into consideration the debt on the Fund, which now stood at 22,000,000l., and in order to provide a sinking fund they recommended that the 5d. should be increased to 6d., which would still mean a reduction of 2d. from the employer and ld. from the workman. The Government regretfully found itself unable to follow this course, as the future of trade was still uncertain and an immediate reduction to ls. 6d. would mean that instead of reducing the debt they would start the scheme by increasing the debt by 3,500,000l.

The rejection of the Bill was moved on behalf of the Labour Party on the several grounds that it failed to effect a fairer distribution of the burden of maintaining the Unemployment Insurance Fund, that it would further increase charges on the rates, that it reduced the already inadequate scales of unemployment benefit, and that it imposed conditions for the receipt of benefit which, in many cases, it would be impossible to fulfil. But the real grievance of the Labour Party against the Government went deeper; it was, as was stated with much force on the second day of the debate by Mr. Greenwood, that instead of tinkering with unemployment insurance, they ought to be directing their energy to increasing the volume of available employment. That was the major problem, which the Government had deliberately ignored. The Blanesburgh Committee was not to blame, as it had itself protested against the limitation put on its activities in its terms of reference. He did not think any member of the

Committee would take responsibility for the Bill, which had picked out the worst features of the report and ignored those for which something could be said. This last remark was corroborated by Miss Bondfield, speaking for herself as the one member of the Committee then in the House of Commons. She defended her own action in signing the report of the Committee on the ground that, so long as any permanent scheme of unemployment insurance was based on the contributory principle, the recommendations of the report marked an advance on anything that had preceded. These, however, provided only for the man in industry, but gave no hope to the man who was not in industry. It was the Government's duty to take up this matter; the proposals of the Committee were not put forward as a solution of the difficulties of the present day and should not be interpreted as such.

From the Conservative benches a telling criticism of the Bill was made by Captain MacMillan. He complained first that the Government, so far as could be gathered from the Minister's statement, was not going to carry out certain preliminary recommendations of the Committee which were essential to the success of the new scheme, such as improved registration of vacancies, extension of juvenile unemployment and training centres, etc. But, apart from that, he thought that the Committee had missed a great opportunity of considering the whole basis of social insurance. The Government, too, should have taken a wider and more generous view of their social responsibilities; no provision, for instance, was being made for the able-bodied unemployed who were disqualified for benefit. Lady Astor also pleaded for a broader and more constructive policy-" something," as she said, "with which they could fight Socialism."

In replying for the Government, Mr. Betterton, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, ignored his Conservative critics, and, dealing with the Labour speakers, said that their objections to the Bill left him cold, as they would object to any Bill based on a contributory system. The Government, however, stood for such a system, and were therefore under obligation to see that the scheme was actuarially sound and did not increase the debt of the Fund. The second reading was eventually carried by 296 votes to 143.

The Committee stage of the Unemployment Insurance Bill began on November 21. Before it opened, the Government had announced a concession to the Labour Party in the shape of an increase in the benefits of young persons under 21. The objections of the Opposition to the Bill went, however, much deeper than this; they were based on the fear that, owing to the abolition of extended benefit while unemployment still remained at its present level, large numbers of unemployed-perhaps hundreds of thousands-would be deprived of benefit and thrown on the rates. The Minister of Labour himself estimated that by April,

1929, the number would not be more than 30,000, but this figure was scouted by the critics as absurdly low. In the further discussion of the Bill, certain "left wing" members of the Labour Party developed a tendency to obstruction, and the Chairman of Committees, Mr. Hope, applied the closure rather drastically. This caused some of the Labour members-who had an old-standing grievance against the Chairman-to indulge in unparliamentary language, with the result that four of them were suspended-not until they had considerably delayed the proceedings of the House. The Bill took longer in Committee than had been anticipated. The Labour Party, led by Mr. Shaw, found fault with it in nearly every detail, and dragged out the discussion by endless amendments. The proposal to abolish extended benefit also displeased a number of Conservatives, who were afraid that this provision might have the effect of throwing more men on the rates, and a small group of the malcontents, mostly representatives of necessitous areas," carried their opposition to the point of voting against the Government. To meet the reproach that he was doing nothing for the unemployed juveniles, the Minister of Labour added a clause to the Bill authorising the payment of a small grant from the Unemployment Fund towards the cost of approved courses of instruction for boys and girls between 16 and 18 years of age. On examination, it turned out that he was aiming, not at giving the juveniles a genuine industrial training, but merely at preserving in them the "industrial habit; " but this also was regarded by his critics as better than nothing, and with much grumbling they accepted the clause.

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Progress with the Bill was so slow that after a few days the Government sought to quicken matters by introducing the guillotine, thus adding fuel to the ire of the Opposition. Even so the Committee stage took nine days, without, however, producing any substantial change in the Bill. In the third reading debate, which took place on December 9, Mr. Betterton made it clear once more that the Bill was nothing more than its name implied, a measure for putting unemployment insurance on a sound basis actuarially and administratively; it was not a measure for solving the problem of unemployment, so that most of the Opposition criticisms were wide of the mark. It meant, in plain English, that if a man had some insured work on an average of only 15 weeks in a year and was genuinely in search of work he would obtain benefit as of right, nor would this benefit be limited to 26 weeks, as at present. Sir J. Simon complained strongly of the obscure language in which the Bill was couched, and its numerous references to previous statutes, and pleaded for a presentation of the law of Unemployment Insurance in a single pamphlet. Labour speakers in the debate frankly declared for the principle of work or maintenance, irrespective of the cost to the State; and even Unionist speakers who supported the Bill

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did not profess to be satisfied with it, and warned the Government that some more comprehensive measure was needed to deal with the problems which it left untouched. The Minister of Labour replied that the Bill was intended to provide a permanent scheme for normal times; the present black spots in industry were abnormal features which should be dealt with by special means. The third reading was eventually carried by 233 votes to 124.

The awakened interest in the disarmament question was reflected in the manner in which Armistice Day was celebrated this year. Public participation in the proceedings was more active than ever, but it was prompted this time in large measure, not only by remembrance of the past, but also by thought for the future. The general feeling was well expressed by the Prince of Wales when, addressing a great gathering of ex-Service men and women in the Albert Hall in the evening, he said that if they were to save themselves and those that came after them from a renewal in an even more frightful form of what they had suffered in the Great War, they must by their every action, their everyday conversation, and even their very thoughts seek peace and ensue it.

By this time conditions of employment in the coal-mining industry had become so bad that the miners felt an immediate change to be imperatively necessary. As a first step to this end, the Executive Committee of the Miners' Federation waited on the Minister of Labour on November 11 to lay before him proposals for mitigating and relieving the acute unemployment in the coalmining areas. The deputation stated that not only was unemployment already great in the industry, but that it was increasing and assuming a permanent character. The proposals of the Federation were the repeal of the Eight Hours Act, compulsory amalgamation of collieries in certain areas, further restriction of recruiting of mining labour, more rapid development of byproduct industries, and the appointment of a Government Committee to consider ways of carrying out these measures. The Executive further complained that thousands of miners were being deprived of unemployment benefit by a too strict application of the Insurance Act, and suggested that its administration should be somewhat relaxed and that the South Wales and Durham coal-fields, where the distress was most acute, should be treated as necessitous areas and receive assistance from the national Exchequer. The Minister could not promise more than that the representations would receive very careful attention.

Considering that this reply merely shelved the miners' demands, the Labour Party in Parliament, on November 16, brought forward a vote of censure on the Government for neglecting its responsibilities to the mining industry. Mr. MacDonald, who moved the vote, drew a black picture of the conditions of the mining population, largely due, as he insisted, to the cut-throat competition among the colliery owners. All the Government