These Labour troubles seemed beyond the reach of legislation; indeed, the South Yorkshire coal strike was the direct outcome of the Minimum Wage Act; but Liberals hoped that the increased cost of living, or at any rate the housing difficulty, which was a factor in it, might be mitigated by the achievement of the Ministerial programme of land reform. Further material for this was provided by the Report containing the urban land proposals of the Liberal Land Enquiry Committee, issued as a shilling volume of some 700 pages on April 1. Broadly, they substantiated the forecasts given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at Holloway (A.R., 1913, p. 247), but only the briefest indication of them can be given here. Skilled observers, armed with a set of questions to be answered, had investigated the conditions in London and 100 other towns, and in sixteen London boroughs, and supplementary inquiries had subsequently been made in these towns and in 148 others. The inquiry fell into four divisions: (1) Housing; (2) Acquisition of land by public or quasi-public bodies and private persons; (3) systems of tenure, especially leasehold; (4) the rating and taxation of land. Wages and labour conditions had been dealt with in view of their bearing on housing, and the recommendations included the fixing of a minimum wage, the consideration of remedies for casual employment, statutory obligation on all local authorities to provide adequate housing for their working-class population, supplementing it, if necessary, by schemes of transit; the appointment of district Government officials to stimulate these efforts; Government power to order the leasing of undeveloped land and the sale of mining and prospecting rights, and of land required for churches, chapels, village institutes, co-operative or trade union halls; copyhold reform under a pending Bill which was to be made more comprehensive; the prohibition of future leases for lives, and the conferring of wide powers on the Land Commissioners to vary and regulate the conditions of existing and future leases; a rate on site values to meet all future increases in local expenditure chargeable to the rates; further Imperial relief to local taxation, possibly amounting to 5,000,000l. annually, and statutory revaluation at least every five years, but annually if practicable.
To return to the House of Commons, the Home Rule Bill debate had been interrupted for a Labour protest on the South African deportations, in the shape of a resolution moved by Mr. Goldstone (Lab., Sunderland) declaring that "the rights of British citizens set forth in Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, and the Habeas Corpus Act, and declared and recognised by the Common Law of England, should be common to the whole Empire, and their inviolability should be assured in every self-governing Dominion." The mover pointed to the Labour gains at the South African elections as indicating that the Government would be supported by the majority in South Africa in intervention. He offered, however, to withdraw the last clause. The Colonial Secretary pointed out that many of the rights specified in Magna Charta were obsolete, and that the Common Law of England did not run throughout the Empire; in South Africa the law was Roman-Dutch. South Africa could not be controlled by debates in that House. He suggested an amendment making the motion read after "Act"—"as representing the freedom of the subject, are those which this House desires to see applied to British subjects throughout the Empire." Lord Robert Cecil (U.) pointed out that Great Britain had less control over an autonomous part of the Empire than over a foreign country, but he held that the British Government might and should have offered advice. After other speeches, the motion as amended was agreed to.
A Conference summoned by the Joint Board of the Trade Union Congress, the General Federation of Trade Unions, and the Labour party, met at the Memorial Hall (London) on April 7, and resolved to call on the Government to counsel the repeal of Clause 4 of the Indemnity Act passed in South Africa, and to send Mr. Ramsay Macdonald and Mr. Seddon, both Labour M.P.'s, to present a protest to the South African Government. An amendment that "failing satisfaction, the Labour party turn out the Government at the earliest opportunity," was rejected by more than ten to one, but the party's inaction was severely criticised by the minority.
The remaining time before the Easter adjournment was filled up partly by minor Government Bills. The East African Protectorates Loan Bill (April 7) authorised the Treasury to lend 3,000,000l. to the Governments of British East Africa (l,855,000l.), Nyasaland (816,000l.), and Uganda (329,000l.). The trade, the Colonial Secretary explained, was outstripping the facilities for communication. The Bill was passed with a little adverse criticism. So was the Mall Approach Improvement Bill, enabling the London County Council to approve the Charing Cross Approach to the Admiralty Arch. The cost, 115,000l., was to be shared equally between the Council, the Westminster City Council, and the Commissioners of Works, and the First Commissioner would have a veto on the architectural design of buildings erected by the County Council on the superfluous land taken.
A significant contribution towards suffrage reform in the future was afforded by a debate on the "alternative" or preferential vote, a device favourably viewed by most of the speakers, but left an open question by the Government.
The debate on the adjournment (April 7) was ingeniously used to revive the subject of the obstruction of debate by "blocking motions," a practice condemned by the House in 1907 (A.R., 1907, pp. 74, 166). A week earlier attention had been called to the blocking of a resolution on divorce proposed by Mr. France (L.), through the introduction of a Divorce Bill by Lord Hugh Cecil (U.), who declined, when appealed to by the Speaker, to desist, though the Bill, as the Speaker said, was obviously a bogus one. By way of retaliation, and also to call attention to the necessity of getting rid of this practice of obstruction, Liberal members put down 160 notices of motion designed to bar out all possible subjects from the debate on the adjournment, in which any matter not thus barred can be discussed. A few questions were raised, less for their own sake than to exhibit the ingenuity of the raisers. Eventually a stormy debate was raised by Mr. Amery (U.) on the reticence of Ministers, which developed into a fresh conflict over the Ulster "plot." The adjournment, however, was carried by 171 to 21; and four weeks later the abuse of "blocking motions" was at last disposed of by a new Standing Order, to the effect that in determining whether a discussion was out of order on the ground of anticipation, the Speaker should have regard to the probability of the matter anticipated being brought before the House within a reasonable time. This reproduced the chief recommendation made by a Committee in 1907.
The day following the adjournment more light was thrown on the Army crisis by Colonel Seely at Ilkeston. He did not propose, he said, either to pose as a penitent or to reproach others; the facts were these. He had learnt that certain hot-headed persons under no discipline might try to capture certain stores of arms and ammunition, and to remove these stores in the face of armed opposition might have precipitated bloodshed. It was decided to send small detachments to remove them. No orders were disobeyed; but the Conservative Press went mad, and thought that there was a plot to overwhelm Ulster by force of arms. So wicked a plan could not have been thought of by any Government, least of all a Liberal Government. Reports came that there had been breaches of discipline, not amongst the troops ordered to move, but amongst others. The parties concerned were sent for, and were found to have been under the complete delusion that a hypothetical question had been put to them. He had told General Gough that the Government were not contemplating unlawful action, and the General had promised to obey all lawful commands. The wild stories as to the King's interference were absolutely untrue, and the King never knew of the document (p. [60]) till the next day. He himself had completed the document as he had stated it to his colleagues, so as to represent the substance of what he had said, and the last two paragraphs seemed to him to represent the true Liberal view of the duty of the Army in support of the civil power. But the Conservative Press treated the document as a trophy and a surrender. Having made the mistake of not calling his colleagues together again, he resigned, to make the task of the Government easier.
Sir John French and Sir J. S. Ewart had been replaced by General Sir Charles Douglas and Lieut.-Gen. Sir H. C. Sclater; and the approach of the Easter holiday gave time for the popular excitement to abate. On Good Friday one of the most extravagant delusions of Ulster was shattered by a letter in The Times from two eminent German Professors, Dr. Theodor Schiemann, whose weekly reviews of world-politics in the Berlin Kreuz Zeitung were famous, and Dr. Kuno Meyer, the great Keltic scholar, to the effect that the hope of interference by Germany was a delusion. The Covenanters, the letter said, were living wholly in the ideas and sentiments of a bygone age. In the seventeenth century the cause of Protestantism was at stake. But at the present day "no civilised country, least of all Germany, could look favourably on any policy which would run counter to the spirit of religious comprehension."