Orders of the Day — Boys (Hours of Work).

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 19 March 1942.

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Photo of Mr Kenneth Lindsay Mr Kenneth Lindsay , Kilmarnock

I feel that it is almost improper to bring forward another subject after that great peroration, but we are now to consider a subject the origin of which is a Question by the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Rhys Davies), who asked the Minister of Labour: whether he is aware that the chairman of the local education committee recently stated that many of the 17-year-old Huddersfield boys who recently registered were working such long hours that they could not be recommended to join pre-Service units and that they suffered from exhaustion, mental and physical; and whether he will look into the matter?"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th March, 1942; col. 1175, Vol. 378.] My right hon. Friend naturally has not got the facts before him, but perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary to-day will be able to give us some information from Huddersfield. Then, when I further questioned the Minister of Labour, he made what was to me a somewhat surprising statement when I gave him some figures of long hours. He said that this was one of the reasons that the Cabinet agreed to the registration of boys and girls, and that it was the first time there had ever been an opportunity to find out how boys and girls were actually being treated. If that is so, it is not stated in any of the cards which the boys themselves fill up, and it is pure accident whether the interviewing committee finds out any of these details, for they are not under any obligation to do so themselves. I have been interviewing for many nights, and in my particular area we put on the back of the cards the exact number of hours which the boys are working, checking them up afterwards, and I later propose to give the House some of these figures.

I am very glad that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary is replying to this Debate, because I know of his great interest, as a recent chairman of the Association of Education Committees, in this subject, and of his very practical knowledge, especially of the cotton industry. I hope that he will be able to give me some reassuring answer and not the sort of answer we get from the Minister of Health, that sort of slick answer; I had one to-day about Maycrete huts. It does not do any good. I was not asking to catch him out, but because I happened to know the facts and wanted to know whether he intended to do anything about them. We are getting rather tired of such answers, both from him and his Parliamentary Secretary. In the Debate which was inaugurated by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Lipson) recently, my hon. Friend sitting opposite agreed with remarks I made about hours. He said it seemed to him "that the evil of the high wage lay not in the amount of money, but rather in the excessive hours that that wage represented, and the possible physical effect on the growing youth." He did add in a qualifying phrase that consideration had to be given to the fact that many a boy of 16 and 17 was almost equal in physique to a man.

I do not intend to go into the question of the Potteries. That has been debated in the House of Lords. May I say—and I am a very strong supporter of trade unions, and have been all the time I have been in politics—that I was a little alarmed to read that some trade unionists said that it was not the business of the House of Lords to interfere in the matter? The House of Lords were not the only people who were aware of this increase in hours in the Potteries; questions have been asked here. I understand that it was a very exceptional situation, that certain girls were suddenly removed, and they had—although this excuse is often given in these matters—to fill up with juveniles.

Now we hear that the same thing is happening in the cotton industry. On this occasion the Minister of Labour said that he was satisfied that "war requirements of various kinds" made it necessary. I would like to know what war requirements of various kinds are, because it may be a different reason from the case in the Potteries. My hon. Friend was present in the negotiations, and as he has intimate experience of the cotton industry, no doubt he will be able to tell us more, and also be able to tell us how it was that the cotton industry lost so many people by the process of concentration and then could not get them back. I believe they wanted some 10,000. The employers apparently wanted to increase the hours by seven and a half a week, but the operatives would agree only to four hours, so that now we have 52 hours per week in the cotton industry—I am speaking about young people under 16–52 in the cotton industry and 53 hours in the pottery industry. What I want to know is, where are we going to stop? The hours are creeping up for the 14 to 16 group, from 44 to 52 and 53. The hours for those between 16 and 18 are creeping up from 48 to 54, 56, 58, 60, 70 and 75. I have got to be persuaded by my hon. Friend that these steps are vital to the war effort and are not resulting in physical and mental disability, and I have got to be persuaded that it is not gravely affecting the future physique of these boys. If he can prove that, I shall be quite satisfied.

But the chaos of hours between the ages of 14 and 18, and the absenteeism from school, which I may remind my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education is increasing, the weakening of the whole business of apprenticeship—these questions have been familiar to some of us for many years, but this is not the time to make them worse. I wish to try to prove to the House that we are running into a dangerous situation and that I think the time has arrived for a special inquiry into the whole question. I hope my hon. Friend will agree with that. I will give one or two quotations. This is from a man who has been looking at the interviews over the last few weeks: The problem of long hours was found in the main war industries. A number of boys were working ten or more hours on four or five days a week. In many of these cases the effect on their physical and social development was greatly accentuated by the distances they had to travel to work. When people have to work 50, 60, or 70 hours a week, it often becomes much longer when you add the hours they have to travel. You must picture a boy, in some cases, getting up at seven o'clock in the morning, and arriving back at home at eight at night. Cases were quoted of boys leaving home at 7.15 in the morning and not returning until 8 at night, and the general impression gained was that a high proportion of boys in these industries were being worn out at an important stage in their development by the prevailing industrial conditions. That is from a man on the spot.