The debate on the motion for the second reading of the Indemnity and Undesirables Special Deportation Bill was resumed.

He could assure the House that there would have been no satisfaction if the case had been tried at Johannesburg, even by a special court or by a jury. Then there was the question of the difficulty of obtaining evidence in a case of this sort. What evidence could have been brought into court in support of a matter of this description? The law of the country, he said, had proved inadequate to deal with this matter. The Constitution had been defied, the whole of the country was on the verge almost of revolution, and Martial Law became necessary, because it was found that the ordinary laws of the country were not sufficient to deal with the circumstances that had arisen. The whole country was staggered at what was happening; the whole country was of the opinion that the dangerous men should be deported; and the whole country had since become aware of the extraordinary difficulties that had faced the Government, and the necessity of meeting extraordinary circumstances with extraordinary methods. He was prepared to condone all that had been done by the Government in this matter; he was prepared to condone what had been done, on the ground that the Government had acted in good faith, and because he believed that the country would benefit by the actions of the Government. The question then arose as to whether these men should be kept out of the country in existing circumstances, and a good deal of capital had been made out of the fact that these men had been born out of South Africa, and that this statement appeared in the Bill before the House. He would point out, under sections 21 and 22 of a Bill which was passed last session, power was given the Government only to deal with people who were born out of South Africa. In the face of that, he did think that the Government could not do anything but insert the words in the Bill before the House. It might arouse fears, but, so far as he was concerned, he had no such fears. He was sure that the country would not deal with people in this way except under circumstances of the most extraordinary difficulty.

It had been said too that the Government had made heroes of these men. But would not these men have been bigger heroes if they, had been tried and acquitted at Johannesburg? Would They not have been bigger heroes if they had been convicted at Johannesburg? They had other cases of men who had been convicted and become heroes, and men who had been discharged and become heroes. (Hear, hear.) He was prepared to support the Government in all that it had done. He looked to the industrial legislation that was being brought forward to secure the country in the future. He was one who hoped and prayed that the Government would relax the punishment that had been passed On the railwaymen who had gone out on strike, and he thought that that would come to pass, now that the Government knew that the dangerous men were out of the country. He went on to deal with the Carlton Hotel affair, and said that the fact that the leaders had stated that they had had revolvers in their pockets, and were prepared to use them if a shot had been fired at the crowd in the street, showed how far they were prepared to go. He was confident that if the mob had got loose in January, they would have done greater damage to the citizens and the property of people in Johannesburg than they did in July. The danger was not over, and it would not be over until they had protective legislation on the Statute-book, and until then he was prepared to support the Government. His constituency was not very well disposed towards the Government, but he had been instructed to support the Government in its action on this occasion.

He had told them about the legal difficulties the Government had had in trying to bring these nine deported agitators to-book, and had admitted that he was in some doubt himself as to whether they could be punished under the existing criminal law. He did not point out to this House any way out of the difficulty, and he had stated that this deportation would not put an end to the war between labour and society. That the Government admitted. He would ask the hon. member whether he thought six months’ imprisonment, which was the highest punishment which could be given under the law for inciting to strike would have put an end to this war?

The hon. member for Cape Town had stated that Government had set itself above the law. Government really acted in the absence of any law sufficient to cope with the disturbances, and it did the right thing in coming to the House to ask Parliament’s approval of its action. The Government acted under grave necessity. It did not dictate to Parliament, but simply said, “We have done so and so—do you approve or disapprove?” (Ministerial cheers.) He was perfectly sure that patriotic members on both sides of the House would support the Government. The Government’s action had been variously described as the adoption of Mexican, Russian and Spanish Inquisitorial methods. With regard to the latter, he understood that in Spain about 400 or 500 years ago there was no such thing as personal liberty, and people who sought to worship their Maker according to conscience were starved, tortured, and killed, but in South Afirica everyone had ample liberty, the only one who did not have this liberty—according to the practices which were not condemned by hon. members on the cross-benches—being the scab or the blackleg. In normal times South Africa was the freest country under the sun, and any subject could be discussed openly and fully. (Ministerial cheers.) Instead of the deportees having been starved, they were put on a steamer on which they travelled first-class and starved on five meals a day, with tea and cake to fill in the intervals. (Laughter.) The Government tortured them, not with the rack or the thumb-screw, but by giving them a supply of clothing and putting £3 in their pockets. (Laughter.) With regard to the speech of the right hon. member for Victoria West, he (Sir Thomas) was filled with admiration at the right hon. gentleman’s eloquent manner. The right hon. member was one of the assets of the country, and was a delight and a charm—(cheers)—but he was also a danger. (Laughter.)

A striker, it was assumed, became a criminal ipso facto. He said that they were just ordinary people who had, as he considered, a perfect right to take a holiday for certain purposes of their own. Why was this attitude of his taken exception to by members in that House, and opposed by the Press? The reason was not far to seek. Hon. members in that House, or the majority of them, represented the capitalist class; they had the capitalistic outlook; they were class conscious. Hon. members of that House took a different point of view from hon. members on the cross-benches and from most of the workers. The Press naturally reflected the views of hon. members of that House, for the reason that the capitalists of this country owned the Press, and he who paid the piper—and he did not deny them the right—called the tune. And the Press examined every problem of an industrial nature from the capitalist point of view. Therefore it was that a strike, which might prove effective from the point of view of the workers, should be looked upon and viewed with disapproval by hon. members in that House. He argued this way: that when any man or woman—and no member would deny the right that he or she had to work or not to work if he or she chose—was dissatisfied with the conditions under which he or she was labouring, he or she had the right to cease work. By what right did any man presume to prevent a decent man or decent woman ceasing work when he or she desired? That was all a strike meant— that they ceased work. As his hon. friend the member for Jeppe remarked, the only time when a working-man was of any importance to the general public was when he ceased to work. Now many attacks had been made on his colleagues and himself, and he hoped that the House would bear with him if he went into one or two of these matters somewhat in detail. He had no wish to weary the House.

There had been a time, quite a long while ago in Great Britain when speeches had been made, similar to those which had been made in that. House during the past fort-night, and strikers had been associated with bombs and what was called “sabotage ”now. A Royal Commission had been appointed—a Commission with large powers to investigate the charges and inquire into what had happened for ten years previously. That Commission had presented two reports. Having made a quotation, the hon. member said that a very useful law had arisen out of that Commission (1875). As a result of the return of about 40 Labour members to the House of Commons another law had taken the place of that law, the Act of 1906, which gave the right to picket and safe guarded Trade Union funds against actions at law. There was another point in connection with strikes which was exceedingly unpopular with hon. members in that House and that class of the community who thought with them—a sympathetic strike—a very terrible thing. He (Mr. Andrews) argued that men who came out in sympathy with the railwaymen were anything but selfish. An hon. member had said that the Labour men appealed to the cupidity of the working classes. He asked whether the cupidity of the working classes of the Rand had been appealed to when they were asked to come out in sympathy with the railway-men. There had been no selfishness there. He considered that it was an act of self-sacrifice which should be applauded, and he honoured the men who had taken that step for those reasons. They struck work not for their own personal benefit, but for a principle, and in the interest of the men who had been in danger every day of being retrenched by the Railway Administration. “Loyalty” was a fine thing, but they had to find out to whom they had to be loyal first. Continuing, he said that the Minister was in an exalted and responsible position as a result of the votes of certain electors in that country, and as a result of the confidence which had been reposed in him by his colleagues, and he had been placed there, not as a master, but as a servant of the State, to run those railways efficiently and not cause hardship to the humblest man who worked in that department. Those men who were loyal to their fellows deserved from his (Mr. Andrews’) point of view to be put above the men who were called “loyal to the Administration ”They, the latter, were the men who had looked after their own pockets and had taken a narrow view, who had looked to promotion, and would get it probably, the whole House having rung With demands that their efforts should be recognised. That strike on the railways had not come as a result of the agitators and had not arisen of itself. The hon. member went on to allude to a document dealing with the termination of the services of a certain lampman at Germiston: “It has been decided that your services as lampman are to be terminated forthwith, and I am to offer you the position of labourer at 5s. per day, and advise me whether you will accept the position. ” This lampman had, he said, started at 3s. 4d. a day six years ago, and had carried out his duties faithfully, and had got a rise until he had reached the “giddy height ” of 10s. per day after six years’ work. Then had come this message. He had been discharged for his loyalty and had been offered a position at half of the pay which he was previously getting. And hon. members wondered at there being discontent. Did they want agitators to foster discontent? There were hundreds of similar cases, but he had only read one. Much had been made of acts of violence, which undoubtedly occurred in the July trouble. He doubted whether there were many struggles between employers and employees of the magnitude of that struggle of June and July last year which were not marred by incidents somewhat similar to those they had witnessed and deplored; but that did not, and should not, take away the right of men to strike, if they wished to, and their right of peaceful picketing. That right had been taken away from the men in Germiston and other parts of the country. The English law of 1875 and 1005 specifically laid down that peaceful picketing was allowed, and that House would be wrong to pass restrictive legislation which would make it difficult for men to carry on strikes in the way in which they had been carried on for the past 50 or 100 years. They had been told that the modern phase of the Trade Union movement was Syndicalism, and they had been told that Ministers had no objection to organised labour, “but it must be on proper lines”— it must be sane Trade Unionism—and he took it, it must be of the type which had been advocated by Mr. Osborne, who had been so prominent in railway circles during the past few 7 years. It was interesting to know that the Railway Administration had scattered broadcast a book supposed to be written by that gentleman.

He saw one of those books in the office of the general secretary of the Railway Servants’ Union. It was given to him, or he obtained it, through the Administration. He had seen it in prominent places, in the railwaymen’s institutes and rooms. He had wondered whether they would see an item of expenditure in the Estimates showing how much was spent for that particular book. It was, of course, not propaganda, it could not be called agitation at all, sending that book round and telling the railwaymen at the expense of the Administration that they must have nothing but Trade Unionism of the Osborne type. The Ministers knew perfectly well that no action they could take would prevent strikes in this country any more than strikes had been prevented in any other country, short of making it an absolute slave state. The Minister of Posts and Tele graphs said he did not believe in armed force, neither did the Labour Party. But the Government did believe in armed force and the whole House had enjoyed the spectacle of the six men of the Labour Party being abused and insulted —or something verging very nearly to insult—because it considered that they had been responsible for the movement. That was a very chivalrous action which they would hardly have expected from an Assembly like that. But that was what they had had to put up with, they had had to suffer the gibes and sneers of members of that House because they appeared to be under a shadow 7. They heard hints of legislation all round the House—legislation brought in with a view to oppression must fail. (Hear, hear.) Even such legislation brought in a sympathetic frame of mind must fail. New Zealand and Australia had desired to abolish strikes by providing substitutes, and that legislation had to a large extent at present broken down. He did not say it was a final failure, but it had not had the effect that had been expected. Strikes and lock-outs still took place in New Zealand and Australia in spite of admirable legislation, some of it, of the sympathetic Governments of these countries. How then could this Government expect to succeed with oppressive legislation when those other Governments had failed ? He could not quote from the speech of the Minister of Justice, but his great argument, and it had been followed by his supporters on that side of the House and also by his friends in the Opposition, had been that all that was done, all the illegal actions of the Government—the Martial Law business—was done for the welfare of the State and in the interests of law 7 and order, and therefore the Government was justified and should be indemnified.

The Minister of Posts and Telegraphs said he claimed the support of the House on those grounds, not because it was lawful but because it was expedient. Had that not always been the practice of tyrants—breaking laws because it was expedient at that particular juncture? He supposed the Ministry with a docile majority and a complacent Opposition was not afraid that money would be refused to them. Now, on the question of conspiracy —that was the plea—all had been done as a result of a conspiracy. His friend the member for Jeppe had sketched at considerable length and with great clearness and truth what led up to the events they were discussing that day, and had mentioned the tramway strike in Johannesburg. He had told the House how that tendency towards violence, that tendency of the executive to arrogate to itself larger and larger powers had been growing since the inception of Union. Exactly the same thing took place during the tramway strike in Johannesburg as took place on the 4th July in Johannesburg, police with pick handles charging a defenceless mob. During the tramway strike the total number of men out was about 100, at the most 120, yet the police charged a crowd on the Market Square and brutally assaulted the men. Then the member for Jeppe had alluded to the printers’ strike in Cape Town. He (the speaker) was here at that time. He saw bow the Government treated the men on that occasion. There was no pick-handle business or charging the crowd, but the argument that the Government was not on the side of the employers was disproved on that occasion. Every assistance was given to the employers, who had a Federation—terrible word, but it was a Federation of employers, and that was quite a different thing. The Government assisted the employers in every way they possibly could to get men safely and comfortably into the printing works to take the bread out of the mouths of the men in this country. The men who were on strike were not allowed to approach the men from England, and tell them what was going on here and advise them that it was not in their interests to come and break the strike. He would draw the attention of the House that those men were not all foreign adventurers who were striking in Cape Town, some of them were born in the country, and could not be deported. That proved that the attempt of the Minister to show that people born in this country would be considered in a different category did not hold any water when they were engaged in an industrial dispute. It would not matter whether a man was born in this country or elsewhere, he was an enemy of the employing class if he dared to associate with men who talked about strikes. They came to the July affair, and he wanted to make this point perfectly clear—he wanted to give it as his unbiased opinion that all that he saw, and all that he read, showed that the breaking up of the meeting on the Market-square on July 4 was the cause of all the violence and all the troubles which succeeded. It would be argued that there was violence in Benoni before that. There were certain acts of violence, but, as to this breaking up of a peaceful meeting in Johannesburg, he did not think that the evidence or probabilities went to show that there was any likelihood of that meeting on Market-square, Johannesburg, on July 4, developing into rioting or resulting in any disorder. (Hear, hear.) The meeting was called for 2.30. The notice prohibiting the meeting was posted, according to the evidence of the Chief Magistrate of Johannesburg, at 3 o’clock. They further found that, at 2 o’clock, there was a very large crowd assembled on the Market-square. Hon. members must be convinced, particularly after all that had transpired since then, that it would have been very much wiser and very much more in the interests of law and order if the Minister had not carried that notice into effect, if he had permitted that meeting to take place, at any rate, and then for the future carried out the prohibition against more than six persons assembling in the streets and squares of Johannesburg. But he or his officials were not wise, and they ordered the police to charge, with the result that they knew.

There had been one or two little sneers in this House about the Labour members talking a lot and being away when the fighting took place. Even the Minister himself descended to make the statement that they led their men to the brink and then went back. They were supposed to be skulking. He lived in Germiston, and he represented George Town, which was a part of Germiston. He was “skulking” on the Market-square at Germiston, addressing a meeting, as the men wanted him to address it. The meeting passed off without a stone being thrown, without a window being broken, without any violence whatsoever. They had a procession; they went along to the railway district, and they had another meeting there. Why was there no trouble? Because, for one thing, the men did not want any trouble, were not looking for any trouble, nothing was further from their thoughts, and also because the authorities in Germiston had a certain amount of common-sense, and they did not charge into that crowd. After the meeting was over they (the authorities) spoke to the leaders, the men who had been speaking, pointing out to them the situation, and asked them to co-operate in the maintenance of order, etc. The word was given, and there was no trouble in Germiston from that day until the finish of the whole affair, not a “window broken. There were one or two explosions, but long after the strike had finished. Who was responsible for those explosions, one of which blew a window out of his home at two in the morning, he was not in a position to say, but he was not prepared to believe that members of his society, men who knew him, would set dynamite off immediately outside his window. (Hear, hear.) Well, after that he thought he would like to go into town and see the great meeting in the afternoon.

He wanted to tell hon. members that the reason why he was not on that wagon at Johannesburg was because he was not asked. The Federation were running that show, and they were particularly careful, for reasons best known to themselves, not to ask people who could be labelled as politicians. They were dead against the politicians. However, he thought he would like to go. He expected to find a meeting as usual, with men talking on the wagon, but he found heads broken, men rushing this way and that way, police charging up and down the square, panic everywhere, and men mad with rage. He had never seen people so angry or embittered against the authorities as they were on account of that wanton piece of brutality on Market-square. Now with regard to the Federation of Trades, he had in his hand the rule book of the Federation of Trade Unions of the Transvaal—Constitution and by-laws. It would be well sometimes for hon. members to get down to facts. Let them look at one or two of the rules of this institution, this revolutionary organisation, designed and organised to substitute the Trades Hall as the Parliament of this country for this House here in Cape Town. The name was “Transvaal Federation of Trade Unions,” and the objects were: “To federate all Trade Unions in the Transvaal Province; to assist affiliated Trade Unions by means of negotiations and interviews with employers, to amicably settle trade disputes; to assist affiliated trade and labour unions in case of strikes, lock-outs or other disputes arising over wages, hours or other conditions of labour, either morally, financially, or by advising other affiliated bodies to withdraw the labour represented by them; to raise funds, etc.” He wanted to say, further, with regard to this sneer of the hon. member for Germiston and the Minister and a few others, that they were skulking, that there was one fact to which he would like to draw attention. Many of the unions affiliated with the Federation of Trade Unions had a rule, and from some points of view a very wise one, that no man could be a delegate to these bodies unless he were actually working at the trade. Now he was a member of the Amalgamated Society of. Engineers, which was affiliated to the Federation, but, as he was not working at the trade, his fellow-workers could not, according to their rule book, send him as a delegate to the Federation. That was so in regard to the carpenters and boilermakers and many others of the well-organised and old-established Unions. There was reason for it, and it was partly to prevent, perhaps, the professional agitator or politician from getting control in these things. His hon. friend the member for Springs was not eligible. Therefore they had no voice in the deliberations of the Federation of Trade Unions whatsoever. In regard to the inflammatory handbills and inflammatory speeches, every effort had been made throughout the whole of the debate in that House to fasten any act or statement which might not be creditable to the working-classes on to hon. members on those benches and the members of the party generally. They could see the object of this. He would not call it a conspiracy. He (Mr. Andrews) had had the curiosity the other day to look into the files of some of the Rand papers about that period. The “Transvaal Leader” of September 20, 1913, after the events of July, while the suspense strike as it had been called was on, the Minister had mentioned a meeting where they were “trying to substitute constitutional Government by the domination of the Trades Hall, over the whole of the country.”

It was the annual smoking concert of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, of which body he (Mr. “Andrews) was proud to say he was and had been a member since he was 21 years of age. This meeting, said the “Leader,” was held last night at the Odd fellows’ Hall. “Mr. Andrews said he had noticed a certain inflammatory handbill which had been circulated about that hall, but he did not know by whose authority that had been done. Let him say it was not issued by the organisers of that concert. He wanted to warn them that because they had won, for at that time he believed they had won—it did not follow that they would be as successful if they attempted to repeat the process within the next few weeks. There was a great danger facing them at that time of: their being carried off their legs.” Proceeding, the hon. member said he might have been wrong. He might have made a mistake at that time, but he had courage to speak at a meeting of his own society at a meeting where the public was present and warn them of certain dangers that they were running. Mr. Sampson endorsed his remarks and called attention to the fact that that inflammatory handbill was not signed. Mr. Sampson further said that all was not gold that glittered and all was not true that was printed in red. That handbill, explained Mr. Andrews, was printed in red. Those remarks gave great offence in certain quarters. He would say this, however, to be perfectly frank to the House, that after the July affair, while this suspense strike, as it had been called, was on, the hon. member for Jeppe and himself did attend a meeting of the Federation. They were invited by special resolution, and succeeded in stopping that suspense strike. That was the crime his hon. friend was guilty of. That was the one occasion he believed that either he or the hon. member for Jeppe were admitted to the Council of the Federation. As to their being firebrands, well what did the Transvaal “Leader” of Monday, the 22nd, a few days afterwards, say. There had been a meeting in Jeppestown. They found the headlines “Labour Split. Fierce Attack on Mr. Andrew's. Resentment of the Labour Extremists.” The report of the meeting read like some of the passages from the speech of the hon. Minister. It said that last night a meeting was held at the Tivoli. A certain lady who had figured in the Minister’s speech had presided at that meeting, one who was closely associated with the Federation, Mrs. Fitzgerald. She said that the Labour Party was jealous of the powers of the Federation. They had found that the party was useless during the last strike, and that the workers would have to look to something better than Parliament in order to remedy their grievances. He was inclined to agree with the lady, remarked Mr. Andrews. The report went on, when the strike was on the official leaders of the Labour Party brought all the evil influence they could to bear to get the strike settled. That, said Mr. Andrews, was their crime. And they would agree with the authority of their accuser. She was a person who had no love for the Labour leaders, yet she said they were guilty of using the whole of their evil influence to get the strike settled.

Proceeding, he said he thought his hon. friend the member for Greyville had dealt with those threats, and he thought that that was the word which he had been accused of making to that House. He was supposed to have had inner knowledge of the workings of that great conspiracy, as was evidenced in his warning to that House. Could anything be more absurd than that contention? All his remarks, amounted to was an intelligent anticipation of events. He knew that it was inevitable, that the conduct of the Government and the treatment of the workers in this country were bound to bring about sooner or later an upheaval. There was an accumulation of wrongs and injustices, leaving aside the question of wages and hours that were being felt by the men. He felt that it could not go on for ever, and he was blamed for calling the attention of Parliament to the danger. Was it not in the recollection of the House that other men had been blamed for giving warning? Did the House remember a few years ago, after General Butler warned the British Government that a certain number of men would be necessary for a certain purpose in this country, when he said fifty thousand men, and warned the British public that they were up against a bigger task than they thought they were? He was treated in the same way. It was distasteful to the people in England. It was distasteful possibly to others, but his warning was amply vindicated by the events which followed in after years. In a small way he (Mr. Andrews) was treated in the same manner. He warned the House, but it did not heed, and he was not to blame for what resulted. He believed the hon. member for Germiston had made some remarks about his (Mr. Andrews’) attitude on the 6th of July, or perhaps it was the right hon. the member for Victoria West. He referred to his (the speaker’s) reception at a meeting at the famous Apollo Hall, a bioscope place in Germiston, on July 6. He (Mr. Andrews) wondered where the right hon. gentleman was on that occasion. He wondered what sort of a reception the hon. member for Germiston would have received had he gone to the Apollo Hall. He (Mr. Andrews) did not see the hon. member walking about the streets of Germiston on the 4th and 5th, to say nothing, about the 6th of July, but he and many more hon. members who were showing their teeth to-day were absent, and were accusing the members on the cross-benches of skulking and hiding and leading men to the brink. He did not mean the hon. Minister. Where were those men? He could speak personally for the hon. member for Germiston.

Notwithstanding that treaty, and notwithstanding the fact that the slaughtering had ceased, that the massacre was at art end, and that these murderous doings— brought about entirely by the Government, and for which they and their capitalist friends were entirely responsible—notwithstanding that this was over, the fires had not burned down, and there was a large mass of men and women, infuriated by the action of the Government, who refused to abide by the decision of the men who signed that agreement with the Minister. They said they were not going back to work when their fellow-men were lying in the mortuary, when other friends of theirs were in the hospital in scores with serious wounds. No mention had been made of that, or very little, and there had been no sympathy expressed in this House for these people who had been butchered in the streets of Johannesburg. Who were these people? Hooligans, they were called—dangerous characters; but here was a list. It included a municipal clerk, a commercial traveller, a shoe-black—battered to death by the police, he supposed— a real estate agent, a professional pianist, an engine cleaner, a photographer, and a sanitary boy. What a lot had been made of that unfortunate Kafir who happened to-be asleep when Park Station was burned down! He (Mr. Andrews) regretted it was burned down. Then the list included a dentist’s apprentice. These were the hooligans, the dangerous rioters and miners, as they were called. These were the people who were butchered, slaughtered, and wounded in the streets of Johannesburg on that occasion. He did not see these things. But what did they find when they got back to Johannesburg on the 6th? That was, after the treaty had been signed. He remembered going on to the Union Ground with his friends from Germiston to hold a meeting. Shortly after the meeting started a huge crowd came along from the Trades Hall, violently hostile to the men who had signed the agreement; it refused to have any settlement, and refused to go back to work. In the face of these men, he and his colleagues did all they could to persuade them that it was absolutely essential and necessary that they should abide by the document, and stand behind the men who had signed it, and go back quietly to work. He went back to Germiston that night. They took a ballot at Germiston, and the engineers decided to go back to work. But when he got back to the Apollo Hall he found it seething with excited and enraged men and women, who said they had been betrayed by their leaders, and who were talking about hanging Tom Matthews. He (Mr. Andrews) was told that he would never get another vote for George Town, but he said, “If you don’t abide by the agreement and by what your representatives have done you will be committing a crime.” He was successful in spite of the inflammatory speakers who had preceded him. The people had sufficient confidence in him, and agreed to have a meeting the next morning of strikers only. The meeting w.as held, and the men decided to go back to work. So much for the great Apollo Hall meeting.

Now for the Kafir rising at Jagersfontein. He did not know the particulars of this affair, but he thought hon. members could not dispute that the natives at Jagersfontein never broke out of their compound at all and there was no invasion of the town. So the police went into the Jagersfontein compound and slaughtered a lot of these natives in their own rooms and compounds. How much was made of this? It was magnified and sent by cable to all parts of the earth, and the Labour Party had been accused of being parties to causing a native riot and of turning the natives out against the white people on the Rand. Hon. members had painted most horrible pictures of what the results would be if 200,000 or 500,000 natives on the Rand were let loose on the inhabitants, and they had tried to make the public believe that the Labour people wore the criminals who wished to do this thing. The other day he received a wire from Mr. Tom Matthews, stating that a motion was passed by the executive of the Miners’ Association on January 11, that its members be allowed to guard the compounds without taking an oath in the event of a general strike, so as to prevent anything in the nature of a rising among the natives. But the Government would not have this, of course. The Minister and his Government did not believe in trusting the people. Dragoon them, bullish them, thrust them down! The Prime Minister was very eloquent on this point, and talked about tampering with the native and natives wearing red ties. What a crime! There was no truth in the statement that any section of the workers incited the natives to come out against the white people. When it suited the capitalist class they did not hesitate to use the natives for their own purposes. The object of the employing classes was to industrialise the natives. Already since the strike, natives were working—so he was informed—as drill sharpeners on the Robinson Deep in the place of white men—at native wages, of course. If the employers were going to engage coloured men and natives, did the House consider that these men had not the right to organise and combine? If they were going to make wage-workers of the natives, if they insisted on thrusting the natives into the industrial market, they would have to face the organisation of the native and coloured men.

They could not prevent the native when he became an industrial machine and a wage-earner from organising. He would organise himself. Let them not blame them (the Labour Party)—but the capitalist class of that country for bringing on their shoulders, assisted by the Government, a white man’s burden with a vengeance, and it would not be of their (the Labour Party’s) seeking, but the seeking of the capitalist class. The coloured man and the native man had a perfect right in the matter, however horrified members might be, they had as much right to organise and get the full result of their labour as the white man had The hon. member read an extract from the “Rand Daily Mail” of October 8— an interview with Mr. Hoy in regard to the retrenchment on the railways. The effect of the interview was that the retrenchment was necessary owing to the falling receipts as a result of the unrest which had been created through the strike of July. It appeared (the hon. member proceeded) extremely probable that the threatened retrenchment, having in view that interview and their knowledge of the Administration’s little ways, was by way of revenge for the assistance which the railwaymen had, at least, threatened to give the miners on July 4 and 5. It was the culminating point of a long series of pin-pricks—more than pin-pricks— injustice—which the railwaymen had suffered, and Mr. Poutsma and his executive had met together—rightly or wrongly he was not prepared to say—wisely or unwisely —it was no use for him to discuss that point now—and had decided that if redress were not given and the retrenched men not put back, they would strike. In the first place, public opinion had caused the withdrawal of that suggested retrenchment of 1,000 men The Minister of Railways and Harbours in his speech the other day had said that the railwaymen who had struck were guilty of mutiny, and were like soldiers and sailors who had mutinied. That might be the Minister’s opinion, but he did not know what justification the Minister had for putting temporary men on the railways in the same category as soldiers and sailors. Whatever soldiers and sailors endured from time to time, in times of peace, they were assured of board, lodging and clothing, and whatever pay they might be entitled to, and if they remained long enough, to pensions. What were the unfortunate 3s. 4d. men on the railways sure of? These men had no security, and were not to be placed in the same category as soldiers and sailors. Legally, the permanent men may have been in the wrong. He took it that they knew the regulations, and were prepared, he presumed, to pay the penalty. But the Minister had gone on to say of the railwaymen and the Federation: “They took concerted action; they had common aims and had common plans.” That was the essence of the conspiracy. Were the Federation and railwaymen the only people in that country who had taken concerted action, had common aims and had common plans? He believed that that august body the Chamber of Mines or the Chambers of Commerce might be so described, or the Incorporated Law Society, if that was the proper name, and even the Nationalist Party.

What kind of discipline was there in that wonderful force which they were asked to thank for the magnificent services it had performed? It had incited to violence, not contributed to the maintenance of law and order, Another statement said that, on Thursday, January 15, the writer and a Mr. Lane were reading in front of his house in Germiston. A squad of men with several officers rode up, and asked whether they were strikers. They said they were. He (Mr. Andrews) could not repeat in that House what the officer had said—it was unfit to be read. But he swore at them, and repeated it several times. Another burgher remarked: “They are—rooineks, ” and three of the burghers loaded their rifles and covered them, as was proved by a photograph. They were not even allowed to get their coats, but were marched to the Charge Office and detained there. The hon. member for Vrededorp laughed. That kind of language might be familiar to him. (Laughter.) He said this: that one of the biggest crimes, if he might be allowed the expression, that the Government had been guilty of was the raising once more of racial feeling. Hon. members had said that the calling out of the Defence Force and the burghers, their standing shoulder to shoulder, had cemented the brotherhood between the Dutch and the English. From his personal observation it had had the opposite effect, to his sorrow. He had it on good authority that the commando from Ermelo believed they had gone to the Rand to shoot the Englishmen, and they had been surprised to find that the great bulk of the strikers were Dutchmen. It would surprise hon. Ministers to know what a lot of information those burghers obtained in Germiston during the time they were fraternising with their friends. Every effort was made to keep them apart. Very anxious was the Government that no striker should be in consultation with a burgher. But a lot of propaganda work was done along the Reef in spite of all the precautions; but in spite of that fact racialism was stirred up. It looked very much like this: It was feared that there was a danger that the old racial cleavage was becoming obliterated, and in consequence the supporters of both sides of the House were to be influenced by the waving of the Union Jack or by racial ideals. But there was a coming together of the Afrikander element and those from oversea in the ranks of the Labour Party. They realised that the common enemies sat on each side of the House. It was an unpleasant thing to say, but it was true Particularly was the Government angry to find that the Afrikander was linking up with the Englishman in the Labour Party. What had the Minister said of the deportations. He said it would not affect those who were born in the country, but only the foreign adventurer.

What were the burghers? He did not understand the term. He would say that they ought to use the word citizen. There still seemed to be an idea in the minds of some that only a certain section of the community were entitled to the name of burgher. He had noticed that the Minister of Finance had called them members of the Defence Force, but the common word was burgher.

The question this House had got to decide, so far as the railway was concerned at any rate, was whether it was beneficial and in the interests of this country to drive all these men to desperation or out of the country. Was there any hon. member who would stand up and say it was a good thing for South Africa, even allowing that these men had made mistakes— they might have made a mistake but it was in a good cause—that it was in the interests of the country that these men should be permanently victimised and walk the streets in hundreds or thousands whilst Kafir drill sharpeners were being put on at the Robinson Mine to work in their places. Mr. Spencer, of the Germiston Town Council, had been told by his late boss at Glencairn that he would not get a job if he did not go away for six months. He (the boss) further said that if he caught any man cadging for members for the T.M.A. he would give him 24 hours’ notice. Nearly every secretary of the Miners’ Association on the Rand—working miners who collected the money from the men in their mine—had been permanently blacklisted along the length and breadth of the Witwatersrand. He maintained that the whole effort of the Government, the whole object of Martial Law, was not to preserve law and order, but to force men to work. That was the effect of it. He thought it was the Minister of Railways and Harbours who confessed as much. He said that Martial Law broke the strike. He (Mr. Andrews) had described on a former occasion how men living in the railway married quarters were prevented from going and sleeping in their homes at night. Armed burghers, armed members of the Defence Force, were placed at every entrance, and every lane leading to the rooms, preventing men, because they were on strike from visiting these lovely little houses which were provided for them at £3 and £4 per month by a benevolent Government. He thought that was one of the things that was intended to force men to work. Men turned out of their homes, single men turned out of their quarters, men denied the right to go to their boarding-houses, men imprisoned on the mines during the strike at the Glencairn Gold Mining Company, men who were on strike living in the men’s rooms not allowed out of those quarters into Germiston without a permit from the secretary of that particular mine. Why should the liberty of these men be interfered with in that way? There could be only one answer. To make it impossible for them to continue on strike.

Now he had heard many hon. members talking about free labour. The Minister of Mines, in the course of his remarks, seemed to lead up to that one point. That was the finale. “The one great lesson,” he thought these were the words, “that we must learn is that the free labourer must be protected.” (Ministerial cheers.) He would like to ask hon. members where was he, the free labourer, to be found? (Labour cheers.) Did they ever see one? Did any hon. member ever see a man who had to work for wages who was free? (“Yes.”) He had never seen one, notwithstanding what the hon. member for Newlands, he believed, had the good taste to say the other day with regard to £400 a year and that kind of thing. He (Mr. Andrews) had worked from the age of 13 for his living. Had the hon. member done the same? At the age of 13 he left school and was apprenticed to his trade, and until he was selected by his comrades in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers to be their organiser, their “paid agitator ” (terrible words), he was working at his trade in England or in this country for wages. He was only free either to work for wages or to starve. That was the position of all labourers. It was all very well for hon. members to talk about themselves as working-men; the man who lived on the labour of others need not work. He (Mr. Andrews) had had to do work, manual work, to get his living, and he was doing work, honourable work—-(hear hear)—in his opinion useful work— (hear, hear)—and necessary work when he was organiser of the A.S.E. (Hear, hear.)

He was there as all other hon. members were, not because he put himself there, but because he was elected by a constituency in the same way as other hon. members. Why were these ill-mannered and ill-bred gibes thrown at hon. members on the Labour benches because they happened to take the same money as other members took? He knew why it was done. Their opponents were playing up to some of the meaner instincts of the working-classes. They knew that there were certain men among their fellow workers who would say that so and so had got into Parliament and begin to feel that he was getting on too fast. That was what hon. members were playing up to—electioneering. He was not afraid of it. “Generals of hooligans,” the Labour members had been called. If the “hooligans ” were the men whom he knew and respected on the Reef and the railway, the men who came out and stood by their fellows, and took all the risks, he was proud to be a “general” of such “hooligans.” (Labour cheers.) The House had been very patient with him, and he would not weary hon. members any longer, but before he sat down he would like to quote from a little paper that he had before him, not a newspaper. It was a document which he thought was very apropos of the present situation. It was an extract from a manifesto that was issued on December 26, 1895, by the Transvaal Uitlander Committee, and, in better words than he could use, it summed up, he thought, their position in this country today. He saw amongst the names appended to that document those of Abe Bailey, St. John Carr, George Farrar, J. P. Fitzpatrick. W. Hosken, H. C. Hull—(hear, hear)—he was glad to say that the hon. member for Barberton was one of the few on that list who might be said to be consistent in this matter—A. W. Sampson and Lionel Phillips. This was what it said: “When we look at the events of the past few years, what do we find? All through a spirit of hostility, all through an endeavour not to meet the just wants of the people, not to remove grievances, not to establish the claim to our loyalty by just treatment and equal laws, but to repress the publication of the truth, however much it may be required in the public interest, to prevent us from holding public meetings, to interfere with the courts of law, and to keep us in awe by force, there is now threatened a danger even greater than those which had preceded it The Government has tried to get through legislature an Act which would invest in the Executive the power to decide whether men had been guilty of sedition and to deport them. To-day that power rested with the courts of law—or he ought to have said yesterday—and he could only say that if that Bill became law the power of the executive Government of this country would be as absolute as the power of the Czar of Russia. We shall have said good-bye to the last principle of liberty.” (Cheers.)

He had listened to the speech of the hon. Minister of Defence, when he put the case for the prosecution, and he had listened to the defence of the hon. members on the cross-benches who tried to refute the charges. He expected a whole schedule of grievances would be submitted to justify the unrest, but with a few exceptions no such evidence had been brought forward. The hon. Minister had made it clear that those men had been guilty of Syndicalism. Proceeding, he did not think hon. members understood the difference between a revolutionary leader and a Syndicalist. He had taken part in two revolutions. At Kimberley they protected life and property, and men were allowed to work during the whole time; when they held possession of Johannesburg the same thing occurred. When they were tried not a single charge was brought against them which would in any way compare with the charges brought against the Labour leaders.

The revolutionary leader sought to upset established authority and to place something better in its place. But from what he had been able to gather about Syndicalists it was very clear to him that they sought to make war on society, and then to establish an inquisition with which to terrorise men, women, and children who did not accept the Syndicalist propaganda in all its entirety. (Cheers.) Syndicalism was a most despicable form of agitation. He had a considerable amount of admiration for the man who stood in the firing line, but he had no admiration for the man who stood in the rear rank, loaded a gun and tried to get somebody else to pull the trigger. (Cheers.) He had received a telegram from one of his constituents, begging him to remember Mason’s statement: “To hell with the King, country and flag.” That was not the language used by revolutionists, whatever they had to say, they kept to themselves, but this had been said publicly, with the object of inflaming men’s minds and getting the men to do something which their leaders were not men enough to do themselves. When men said these things, it was necessary for the Government to protect the people, and if it did not do so, it failed in its paramount duty. Hon. members on the cross-benches had denounced what they called the wicked actions of the Government in connection with the strike, but could anything be more wicked than the way in which the strikers dealt with the poor weak women and children and the blind man at Benoni? So far as he was concerned, he had no sympathy with actions of that kind. Wild beasts in the North, which were being exterminated, were not nearly so brutal as the people who did things of this sort. (Hear, hear.)

Concluding, Sir Aubrey said that during the early portion of the fight Government failed to put a period to the unrest. Government had been blamed for failing to give protection to the country, but the Government was in a very tight corner at that time. The Minister had taken credit to himself for what he called the act of a strong man, but he (Sir Aubrey) did not think so, for the Government was compelled to take strong action in order to rehabilitate itself. It was the act of a weak man who was drowning, and who in catching at a straw, was highly delighted to find that he had got hold of a—(An Hon. Member: “A lifebuoy.”) Yes, a lifebuoy. The Government was not responsible for the miners’ strike, but it was absolutely responsible for what occurred on the railways. The railway heads of departments could have settled the difficulty with the greatest ease if they had made the attempt. But no such attempt was made, and heads of departments were blamed for caring more for their own interest and safety than the welfare of the men. There has been negligence on the part of the Government, so far as the railway men were concerned, in not redressing their grievances. As he was not Home-born, he was apt to look at matters of this kind from a South African point of view, which was that, owing to our black environment, it was necessary to maintain discipline at all costs. If the worst were to be faced in this country, we should be met by millions of natives When our position was deliberately challenged, it was the duty of every individual who desired to make this his permanent home to sink all political differences, and stand by the Government until authority had been vindicated. For that reason, he proposed to vote for the second reading of the Bill.

Business was resumed at 7.30 p.m.

The Minister was wrong in saying that the Mayor of Uitenhage and persons in Uitenhage were responsible for the men not going on strike.

The hon. member for Smithfield (General Hertzog) voted for the Bill he (Mr. Fremantle) introduced The men assured him that if action of that kind had been taken it would have put an end to the unrest in the public service. Disputes took an inordinate time to settle on the railways. He told the men that there were members on both sides of the House who were in favour of what the railwaymen wanted, and that what was wanted was to induce-the members of the South African Party to support the measure despite the suspicions engendered by the rather truculent speeches of the hon. members on the cross-benches.

The Minister of Railways, if he really agreed that revolutionary spirit should be eradicated from the railwaymen, should accept his (Mr. Fremantle’s) statement instead of sitting here at the present time electioneering. (Laughter.) The Minister was now sitting grunting. He had a supercilious air—(laughter)—which did a good deal to provoke railway strikes. He (Mr. Fremantle) had constantly seen how in tottering Ministries an air of insolence—

Continuing, Mr. Fremantle said: The Minister was electioneering when he ought to have been engaged in statesmanship. In pointing to the hon. member for Smith-field, he (Mr. Fremantle) had in mind the speeches he had made and the programme of principles which he had just agreed to, and if the Minister of Railways and Harbours thought he could trace his (Mr. Fremantle’s) Roman hand in that programme it showed that the Minister was as ignorant of style as he was of railway matters. (Laughter.) Somebody had suggested that the Prime Minister should be the Minister of Railways and Harbours, for then we should have a man with large sympathies and who was man enough to carry out his own ideas. Unfortunately in the Railway Minister they had a man who misunderstood the railwaymen on every point. He was a man who had turned his back on his own opinions. He was a bit of a Radical when he (Mr. Fremantle) used to know him better in his younger days than he did now, when the Minister ran away from him in the streets of London. He had shifted round with remarkable velocity. He (Mr. Fremantle) had pointed to the hon. member for Smithfield because he had sympathy with the railway-men, and was prepared to put down disorder with an iron hand, and above all was absolutely an honest man, and that was what was wanted to deal with railwaymen. He (Mr. Fremantle) was rather surprised to find the Minister pretending that he was in favour of a railway strike, and he was surprised if this were so, they did not have him arrested; he wished they had

Proceeding, the hon. member said that there had been all sort of rumours about at that time, and he was sorry that one of them with which he was connected was not mentioned by the Minister. A charge had been made against him, not in that House, of trying to pull out the men at Cookhouse. There was not the slightest foundation for that. He had got out at Cookhouse to send a telegram ordering that his cart should be sent to the station, and what was his astonishment the following week to hear that he had been trying to pull out the workmen there! It showed that at a time like that they must be very careful, sift the evidence, and see what the actual facts wore, and not only the allegations. This record should have protected him against all these misrepresentations. In regard to making railway strikes illegal, he had spoken and voted in that House on it, and he had gone to Uitenhage and held a meeting there in the railway institute, and spoken to the men. They had been opposed to making strikes illegal, but he had persuaded them that railway strikes ought to be made illegal, and said that he would vote for it, and had done so. It was preposterous on the part of Ministers to believe, or pretend to believe, that he had been in favour of a railway strike. In regard to the Bill he regretted, as the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Wyndham) had said the previous day, that they had not two Bills before them, but that they had two Bills in one. In the Bill before the House they had no alternative to deportation, and if these men were not to be dealt with by deportation without trial at all, there was no provision at all before the House, but if they had had a separate Bill to deal with them, they could deal with them as they chose. It was one of the ways by which Ministers were trying to get behind the back of Parliament. He did regret that in dealing with that matter, which was a vital matter for the country and for the reputation of the party which sat on that side of the House, they should deal with it in such a passion and such a lashed-up alarm. It was unworthy of the House to greet the remark, “They may have been wrongly reported, but they were rightly deported,” with laughter. On a good many points he agreed with the Government. He must express his utmost abhorrence of the events which had taken place at Benoni last July. He did not wish to say where the blame lay, but in that time of the Christian Era it was a revelation to them that they should have had such a scandalous exhibition of blackguardism in South Africa. He wished to state frankly to the House that he had thought the Government was very wrong in prohibiting the meeting on the Market-square at such short notice, but he was not at all clear on that subject, after having heard the law on the subject. The facts were not sufficiently before him on which to form an opinion, and he should be slow to distrust the Administration without evidence. Under the circumstances, he thought that Martial Law was justified, but he doubted whether it would have been justified or necessary if the Government had acted as it should have done and as his hon. friend (General Hertzog) had acted, perhaps brutally, during the strike of 1910. Having failed in July the Government would have been guilty of another dereliction of duty if it had not declared Martial Law in January, at any rate in Johannesburg. He hoped that there would be another Commission to enquire into Martial Law in January as well as the Commission which had dealt with the July troubles. In his opinion there ought always to be a Martial Law Commission when there had been Martial Law.

Secondly, and an even greater matter, that Government, which once represented the united South African Party, appeared to have utterly failed in its diagnosis of the whole industrial trouble that was before the country. There was a fatal and complete failure to understand the position, especially by the Minister of Defence and the Minister of Railways. There had not been a conspiracy, but there had been, on the part of the Ministers, a failure to understand the minds of the people of this country, if they said there had been a conspiracy. With regard to that, the Prime Minister had called the hon. members on the cross-benches—probably in a jocose way—the leaders of the hooligans. He appeared to think that the Labour policy of the hon. members on the cross-benches was the same as Syndicalism, or, at any rate, had something to do with Syndicalism. He hoped the Minister of Defence knew nothing about it, and if he did, he was deceiving that party which should not be deceived in that matter. The bulk of the members of the South African Party had no great experience of industrial problems, and Ministers like the Minister of Defence, who were able to find out what was being done in other countries, were under a special load of responsibility not to mislead hon. members on their side of the House. In this country they had had very little experience of industrial upheavals, and were very easily misled. He himself was easily misled on subjects which he did not know much about. The hon. Minister confused two things which were not at all the same. The Minister of Defence should know that the greatest enemy of Syndicalism was the constitutional Socialism of the Labour Party. Referring to a remark of the Minister of Mines, the hon. member denied that the Syndicalists had captured the Trade Unions of England. Proceeding, he said he did not think the Prime Minister had studied industrial problems very deeply. The Minister of Defence ought to have been aware of it, but he had not told the House. In the struggle against Syndicalism the Minister looked upon the hon. members on the cross-benches as opponents. But they were allies, though not very successful ones. At any rate, they were not in favour of Syndicalism. There had been a complete mistake of diagnosis, and it was certain to come out in the future. No one who had gone into the industrial movements in the world could have any doubt about that, and in the future the development would be such that those who went with the hon. Minister of Defence in that matter would find they had completely misjudged the situation.

He objected also to the Minister’s policy with regard to the cure. What was the cure? They were told in the speech of the hon. Minister of Defence that there had been a Syndicalist plot, but they were not told in that speech how deportation was going to cure it. The Minister of Posts and Telegraphs had said that deportation was not the cure. Well, if they were not going to cure the trouble by that Bill, when were they going to set about curing it? The Bill that was before the House was merely a question of punishing those men, and nothing else. Was not that a hopeless method of dealing with a Syndicalist movement? If it was a movement, they could not deal with it by banishing half-a-dozen men. It was their duty to find a remedy. As it was, they were only tickling the surface of the matter and making it worse. He believed that experience would show that the remedy proposed was not going to deal with the evil, and he thought it was unfortunate that the Prime Minister and other hon. Ministers should have jumped to that conclusion, instead of dealing with it in a more responsible fashion. The House had not been shown that deportation was likely to be a cure in that matter. They had not been shown that deportation was not an aggravation of the disease. He thought it was. He believed that deportation was going to aggravate-the malady, and the hon. Minister did not attempt to show that it was not so. Even if deportation were good, they had heard nothing from the Minister to suggest that it was even going to help towards a cure to deport people without trial. That, he believed, would aggravate the disease immensely. He thought that appeals to passion were altogether out of place. But the speeches of the members of the Government, everyone without exception, had been directed very largely to lashing up the passions of hon. members of that House.

He blamed the Government, which was the responsible body in this matter, for dealing with it in exactly the opposite way from that in which they ought to have dealt” with it. Instead of making an appeal to the calm intelligence of this House, they tried, first of all, to lash up their passions until they could not think at all, and then said, “Vote for our Bill.” He wished to refer to the attempt of the Government to persuade somebody, he supposed the House, or, even more, the country, that his hon. friend the member for Smithfield (General Hertzog) and other members were not at one with them in their detestation of violence and their insistence on putting down disorder. There was no justification for that. His hon. friend had shown in the past that if there was one man to put down disorder it was he. He did not say the hon. member was the only man. The hon. member, to his knowledge, had used his influence at Bloemfontein to prevent men from striking. A most extraordinary statement had been made by, he thought, the Minister of Railways. After indulging in a little unworthy abuse of the Free State, he tried to make out that the Free State Congress was responsible in some sort of way for not passing a motion disclaiming responsibility for the strike or disapproving of the strike. What happened to the Prime Minister himself? The Prime Minister had a conference, at which he was chairman of the Head Committee, in November. At that period, according to the story they had been listening to, there was the gravest unrest and constant threat of Syndicalist conspiracy in this country. Did the Prime Minister pass a resolution at his Congress on this subject? Not a single word. The fact was that this Government had failed in their duty in July, and were now accusing men who had not failed of complicity with disorder.

There was a very grave matter of which, apparently, the Government was quite unaware. The Minister of Railways had said that he could not for the life of him see how this was an Imperial question at all. Wore the Ministry really unaware of the gravity of their conduct? He did not say that they ought to have postponed the interests of South Africa to the interests of other parts of the Empire in this matter, but he did say that they ought to know what they were doing before they acted. If the Prime Minister and Minister of Railways and Harbours would look at the English Press, not the English Press which usually agreed with hon. members on that side of the House, but the English Press generally, they would see what had happened. The “Times” said: “Whether the masses of the electorate in this country share that view or not, we have no doubt that they will look upon deportation without trial and without statutory justification as an infringement of such elementary rights.” They were creating. Mr. Fremantle contended, a grave conflict between two nations in the Empire. Not only had they raised against them by this action the whole of the working classes in this country and in England, but he read the other day that the Conference of the Federation of Underground Workers of the whole world adopted a resolution protesting against the deportation of the Labour leaders from South Africa. A motion was passed in Australia to say that the deportation of the Labour leaders from South Africa had been denounced by labour meetings in Victoria and New South Wales. By the conduct of the Ministry in dealing with a disorder which they did not understand, by methods of which they did not see how they would affect the case at all, they had raised against the governing people in this country the united passionate hostility of the working-classes of the whole world. (Labour cheers.) Let them prove to the working-classes, if they could, that they were in the wrong. He wished to God they could prove that they were in the wrong! Unfortunately, he felt that they had threatened and struck at the fundamental liberties on which the interests of the working-class depended, not legal technicalities, but those rights, the possession of which was a heritage of which they were proud and a safeguard on which they depended. When dealing with a problem of this kind was it wise that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance should sit there and sneer at and belittle speakers who were trying to point out the gravity of the position? The Minister of Education and Industries ought to know, as Minister of Industries, about the subject with which they were dealing. Yet he kept the House in complete ignorance of the essential facts.

There was a Labour Party Conference in England the other day and the motion with regard to South Africa was moved by Mr. Macdonald. Was he a Syndicalist? He was one of the moderate Labour Party men who were perpetually fighting Syndicalism. It was seconded by Mr. Wardle. The hon. the Minister had a duty to perform to that House which he had grossly neglected. He should have told them that the most moderate element of the Labour Party was against them with regard to these deportations. Mr. Wardle, the seconder of the resolution at the Congress, was perpetually fighting Syndicalism and even Socialism of a character which was supported by hon. members on the cross-benches. He was not as much a Socialist as the Prime Minister, for he was against State railways. They had the opinion of the world of labour and the opinion of the most moderate section of the world of labour against them. He was not saying that they ought to bow to labour, because he did not agree with labour in everything. The Prime Minister was reported to have said that once they passed this Bill they would not hear anything of strikes or industrial troubles for the next generation. He thought that the Prime Minister spoke without recognising the gravity of the situation. What he (the speaker) said was, “Pass this Bill and you enter upon an unending vista of struggles and conflagrations.” They would not only have against them the revolutionaries and the Syndicalists, but they would have against them that section of the Labour movement that relied upon law and the constitution. He believed that the action taken had been unnecessary. He pointed out to the Prime Minister that they had a grave responsibility with regard to the people who sat behind them. The Prime Minister had said the other day that a leader of the old Dutch population should discuss with circumspection their relations with the British Empire. But there were other matters that should be discussed with the greatest circumspection. He did ask the Prime Minister to let them avoid the troubles of the past and avoid some disastrous blunder. Were they going to allow the old troubles of the past to rise up again? The Ministers had dealt with the utmost care with racial and language questions and that was right. Let them see that the ghosts of the past did not rise—

He wished to say a word or two as to the unfortunate and wholly erroneous idea that there was a conspiracy. Could any of the Cape members understand the Minister of Education going in for this conspiracy mongering? Did the Minister not remember his own conspiracy, and the time it was said there was an Afrikander conspiracy? The Cape Parliament appointed a Select Committee to inquire into the matter, but no evidence was given before it. Then those who believed in the existence of a conspiracy said the fact that there was no evidence showed the subtlety of the conspirators. (Laughter.) There was nothing in the Minister’s conspiracy, and at the time he was going about his business as a peaceful citizen, except when he was a guest of the Government. (Laughter.) All this talk about conspiracies was frivolous and empty. It was founded on a want of knowledge of human nature. People nowadays were too busy to conspire. There was trouble in 1899, and there was trouble now; there was no conspiracy then and there was no conspiracy now. If there was a conspiracy the strikers would have supplied themselves with a commissariat, but instead of that within two days they were on the verge of starvation. Then he remembered that the Minister of Mines made a speech in July last, when he said that the Transvaal Miners’ Association was not trying to work up trouble between the masters and the men. When there was serious trouble at Benoni in July last there was no conspiracy, but in January last, when we had a fiasco, it was asserted that there was a conspiracy. Conspirators did not talk from the housetops, as did Mr. Poutsma, who had done an enormous amount of harm and who had misled numbers of railwaymen to their ruin. If he was rightly informed, he would like to see Mr. Poutsma severely dealt with for the trouble he had brought to that country. Mr. Poutsma had been puffed up by his own vanity, and thought he had the power in his own hands, which he had not got, and had done just what a conspirator would not have done, shouting from the housetops. There was no conspiracy; still less a Syndicalist conspiracy. There was not a single Syndicate in South Africa. The nearest approach to Syndicalism he was aware of was the present system of Party Government in that country—(laughter) —where they got particular groups of persons together for certain purposes and they elected persons to that House. The Labour movement in South Africa was not on Syndicalist lines at all. Revolutionary Socialism was represented by hon. members on the cross-benches. Those hon. members were Socialists, and they desired an immediate economic revolution. They constantly said so. They wanted to abolish private ownership and wanted to have ownership by the State. (Labour cheers.) They were “economic revoluntaries.” They on those (the Government) benches and hon. members opposite were opposed to the economic revolution, but nothing could be more foolish than to try to deal with that evil, if it was an evil, by the methods which were proposed in that Bill. The Bill did not deal with the problems of South Africa in an effective way, and that was his objection to it. What was the use of deporting these men when they left behind many revolutionary books which had a great influence? The University was doing a great deal of that propaganda work by encouraging the study of economics, which irresistibly led some minds, though not his, to Socialism, and so they ought to deport the whole lot of them. (Laughter.) Surely, everybody knew that revolutionary propaganda was going on night and day in that country, and if they wanted to stop it they must get to the source, and the source was not these men who spouted foolish extravagant things in the public street; but the poison—if it was a poison—was a subtle exalted proclamation of a new gospel. The problem was surely this—they could not deport the men who were in favour of that, and as long as they had economics studied in their University, they would have Socialists and economic revolutionaries. He was not a Socialist, and he was conservative in that matter. The study of economics was likely to lead to Socialism in a great many respectable minds, although not in all minds. The only way to deal with the progress of Syndicalist doctrines was to see that the minds of the people were unprepared to receive them. That was the crux of the whole thing; that was the only way to deal with the problem which they were supposed to be dealing with in that Bill. They should borrow the experience of other countries. The greatest opposition to Syndicalism came from the ranks of the Socialists themselves, and he would remind the House that for thirty years of his life Karl Marx was engaged in combating Syndicalism in the ranks of the Socialists. He would point out that if they were dealing with Syndicalism they were dealing with Anarchism, and that the most of those who were Socialists were on the side of law and order and opposed to Syndicalism. The remedy taken by the Minister in that connection, therefore, in deporting a few men, instead of minimising the chances of Syndicalism, was just making the ground more favourable. That was exactly the problem they had got to deal with. They deported half a dozen men, but they left behind the propaganda which was going. That was the plain undeniable teaching of the world. The Government therefore was trying to lead the country down a disastrous path. As patriotic men it was not right for hon. members to listen to the arguments addressed to their passions. They should not vote on party lines in matters affecting the welfare of the country. They should honestly go into the question of whether that Bill was anti-Anarchist or, as he believed it was, a pro-Anarchist Bill calculated to promote Anarchism in South Africa. The Government was wrong in its diagnosis and in its remedies, and was going to lead exactly in the wrong direction, to Syndicalism, instead of Constitutionalism. Proceeding to deal with the real causes of the recent upheaval, the hon. member said that revolutions grew from a sense of grievances in all countries, and the sense that those grievances could not be remedied by constitutional methods. It was so in every country in which they had a revolution. All through the industrial world there was a great unrest, and they could not expect to be exempt from it in South Africa. But there was one special trouble in South Africa which led to that unrest here. That was the great mutual misunderstanding which existed and was always bound to exist between the industrial population and the farming population, which had the control of power in this country. It was only natural that there should be grave mutual misunderstanding, because they had on the one hand in Johannesburg a large number of men, representing all parts of the globe, who were fully aware of the latest developments of the Labour movements in the different parts; and on the other hand men who lived on the land and to whom industrial problems were strange. They had got the material there for a great conflagration, and hon. members on that side of the House should scrupulously resolve to get to the root of the question, and try to understand the difficulties and complaints of the industrial population. He thought the Ministers ought to have been more careful in that matter, and have given more patriotic guidance to the House.

There was another point. A speech was made by the hon. member for Namaqualand, who was then Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, which led far to the root of the question. He said that the trouble was largely due to the fact that large sections of the industrial population on the Rand were not rooted in the country. He (the speaker) did believe that want of fixity of tenure on the Rand was largely responsible for the feeling of unrest, and for the readiness to listen to Anarchical doctrines which they found amongst the industrial people. He understood that in Johannesburg 40 per cent. of the miners changed their occupation every year. How could they expect, with that everlasting shifting of occupation and employment, and without any sense of fixity, that men would be really attached to the country? The employers were much to blame for that.

The thing they had to aim at was to give this sense of fixity to the industrial population in this country. Then they had the actual immediate causes, which were, as always happened in these cases, that the employers made a mistake, and then the men made another. The Commission very clearly explained that this was a natural thing. A strike in itself was a danger to law and order, because irresponsible men were always likely to resort to violence. The Government went to sleep, and then tried to persuade the country that every striker was a lawless man. This gradually developed into a class war. It was not due to any conspiracy, but to the inevitable development of facts. At last, having allowed these things to develop, as the Government did by their supine inaction, they got the orgies of blackguardism and brutality which they had at Benoni and elsewhere. These things always happened when they allowed a grave industrial dispute to go on unchecked. Everything had happened as it happened in all parts of the world where there were no conspiracies at all. On the railways they had other causes. Unfortunately they had a Minister of Railways who ought, he thought, to have dealt with these matters before, but who had not provided so that grievances could be dealt with rapidly. He would take a little case brought to his notice the other day, which showed the sort of thing that happened on the railways. The men at Vryburg had no local allowance. The men at Mafeking and the men at Kimberley had The men at Vryburg felt that they had a grievance, and they made representations to the member for Bechuanaland, who communicated with the Minister of Railways. What happened? The Minister attended to the matter, as he very often did. The grievance was rectified, but it was only after his hon. friend, the member for Bechuanaland, had been constantly representing the case for six months. While delaying to deal with such matters the Minister of Railways affected an air of superiority, and created in the minds of the railwaymen a sense of exasperation, and created in his (Mr. Fremantle’s) mind a sense that he was totally incompetent for the office that he held. (Laughter.) He took six months to do business that he ought to have done in five minutes. The result was that the men were convulsed with a passion of intense rage at the Minister.

His sleepiness, his inactivity where he ought to be active, and his activity where he ought to be inactive—