Union. Number of Men involved. Action of Men during General Strike. Action of Trade Union. Present Position. Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers. 1 Being unemployed he worked as a volunteer during the strike. Fine of £5 imposed by branch. The Department have been in communication with the Union and have informed the man of the procedure to be adopted under the Rules of the Union for...
Sir Douglas Hogg: Of course I accept the right hon. Gentleman's disclaimer. I had understood his argument to mean that a general strike was an impossibility, because you could not have a universal strike of everybody which would not at once starve the strikers, and that, therefore, a general strike, in that sort of sense, was one which, he said, could not take place. I used that in order to point out that that...
Sir Douglas Hogg: The first Clause of the Bill does not make any strike illegal which inflicts hardship on the community. It only makes a strike illegal which inflicts such hardship as to coerce the Government—[HON. MEMBERS: "Ah !"]—please hear me—only if that strike is not a strike merely in furtherance of a trade dispute. Where there is a strike in furtherance of a trade dispute in the industry—I...
Sir Douglas Hogg: ...against something which we have defined. We have heard within the last few minutes from one of the hon. Members opposite—I do not think the right hon. Gentleman was present—that the general strike, I think the hon. Member referred to it as a general stoppage, was not a general strike but a purely industrial strike. In truth, one has to make up one's mind what one means by a general...
Sir Keith Joseph: The hon. Gentleman talked about the Post Office strike being an official strike and it was. But we normally would expect in an official strike that some strike pay would be made available. Here was a union which embarked upon a strike without strike pay and therefore to a greater extent than would be normal the men and women concerned turned to supplementary benefit. They were entitled to do so.
Mr Geoffrey Howe: I am anxious not to go further than I should in the discussion of Clause 87. Clause 87 is designed to deal with the secondary strike whether or not the primary strike is fair. It is designed to deal with the secondary strike directed at the entirely innocent party, as we would put it. In answer to the point made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara), the external...
Mr Henry Charleton: .... Friends when they say the more the Attorney-General talks to us about the Bill, the more bewildered we get. The Prime Minister last week told us that what he wanted to do was to prevent a general strike. He said he would like to put that in the Bill, but he was told by his legal adviser, who I presume is the Attorney-General, that that could not be done. So we get a Bill that is designed...
Mr Worthington Evans: Was the general strike of May last the first of many, or was it only an exceptional thing which we need not bother about? [HON. MEMBERS: "Talk about the Bill!"] The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Platting in his speech, appeared to be defending the general strike. At any rate, he said the general strike was a defensive rather than an aggressive action—[Interruption]—that it was taken...
Mr Martin Flannery: I shall not go along the path indicated by my hon. Friend, although I know his big interest in history and many other things. When it comes to supporting strike action—and I mean strike action in reality, as opposed to theory, because the Tories support it in theory, of course—the Tories remind me of the hopeful maiden who is reputed to have prayed "O God, make me pure, but not yet."...
Sir William Brass: ...of the Committee for a very short time. I have spent this afternoon listening to the Debate, and what has interested me so much has been this general discussion of what is or is not a sympathetic strike, and whether a sympathetic strike will come under this Bill or not. A sympathetic strike, to my mind, will not come under this Bill, unless it is one trying to attack the community in some...
Mr Thomas Inskip: ...that my hon. Friend is of opinion that that ought not to be illegal. I am only trying to take the arguments step by step, and see to where they lead. Having taken the case of the illegality of the strike in Factory B, as to which he is in agreement, I pass to the question as to whether somebody who instigated that strike originally becomes ipso facto, so to speak, retrospectively guilty of...
Angus Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how much his Department expects to spend on the (a) Joint Strike Fighter Autonomic Logistics, (b) Joint Strike Fighter Autonomic Logistics Global Sustainment System, (c) Joint Strike Fighter Autonomic Logistics Information System, (d) Joint Strike Fighter Air Vehicles and (e) Joint Strike Fighter Lightning II Pilot and Maintenance Training Systems.
Mr Michael Maitland Stewart: I hope I may be allowed to intervene further, for we are at the very crux of the matter here. Surely the hon. and learned Gentleman does not suggest that we are to understand by a revolutionary strike, a bloody revolution with arms? What I have understood to be a revolutionary strike was a strike like the late general strike. If the hon. and learned Gentleman has a different interpretation,...
Lord Kakkar: ...in particular, that I am a practising clinician. The amendment, and my noble friend’s introduction to it, clearly lay out an important point about the consequences with regard to practice on non-strike days if a minimum level of staffing is defined for clinical areas on strike days. It is possible that, on non-strike days, staffing levels will fall below the minimum defined for a strike...
Sir Douglas Hogg: Such a strike, as the hon. and learned Member for South-East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser) has said, we have not stopped by this Bill. We do not, although harm may be done. We recognise that harm is done to large bodies of the community by a large scale strike, but so long as it be an industrial strike only, we have not thought it right to prohibit it. It would have been easy to declare that the...
Mr David Lloyd George: ...on the Coal Commission, and they did not accept the scheme which Mr. Justice Sankey regarded as the basis of his recommendation. Now I come to my second reason. Since then we have bad the Yorkshire strike. What is the theory of those who say that nationalisation will promote harmony? It is the theory that, while they would ask the worker to strike against the employer who is making profit,...
Mr James Reid: ..., came out 24 hours before anybody else. The hon. Gentleman says the next wave then came out, but the third wave never came out, because the whole thing collapsed. Does anybody suggest that the strike of 1926 was not promoted as a general strike? [Hon. Members: "Yes."] Of course it was. At any rate, do not let us argue about words. What I am talking about is a strike on the lines of the...
John Prescott: Welcome back, Dennis. It is going to be a lot warmer. My hon. Friend makes a serious point, though, and one of which we both have direct experience. In one strike, the administrator took over the union as a consequence of the strike legislation. It did not solve the strike; it just made it more bitter. My personal judgment is that such legislation does not work in the way that people hope it...
Mr Michael Foot: ..., know very well of the readiness of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service to come in and assist, if it can, at any period either now or later. Efforts are being made to overcome the strike. I will not attempt to answer the hon. Gentleman's question directly, because the precise moment when the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service might best help is not known. But,...
Dennis Skinner: The Home Secretary has made it clear that, in Merseyside, people had to take several days of strike action to get the matter before the public and himself. Now that they have carried out the strikes, he has the temerity to say that they have won the argument without strike action, so he is encouraging firefighters throughout Britain to threaten to go on strike, to go on strike, to get the...
