They made the claim for what really had to be put in the foreground, which clearly was the staff requirements, their own lives. That was met in the way I have mentioned—they got one-third of what they asked for; and others were treated better.
That, however, as I say, is only one facet of what we have to consider over the country in the 15 years. I said earlier to-night that I thought Deputy Hickey's protestations probably were going to bear fruit at last. I do not know whether what he speaks of in the way of money, circulation and credit is going to be accepted in full, but at any rate there is some new approach. Deputy Derrig substituted for the absent Minister for Finance at the Gresham Hotel at the end of November. Two things emerged from his speech—one is a recognition that there are in this country resources that might have been developed and which had been neglected. Added to that, there was the demand put by him, for the Government and the banks, that they might expect as time went on anenlargement of the banks' portfolios of Irish Government and municipal securities. Am I right in saying that that speech was a confession and admission of neglect of resources, the resources that could have been developed and have not been developed? If there are undeveloped resources in this country, who bears the blame for that? Is it the people who held Government sway here for 15 years, or is there anyone else to take the responsibility on their shoulders? Now, with the recognition that there are resources that have to be developed, resources that have been neglected, we get this approach, that it is only legitimate to expect an enlargement—the mild word "enlargement"—as time goes on of the banks' portfolios of Irish Government and municipal securities.
One could ask what attention was paid to these undeveloped resources from 1932 onwards? What effort was made by the Government to get from the people or from the banks the money they are now seeking and which they say it is legitimate they should expect as time goes on to have from the banks? What did they do in the way of capital development over 15 years? I argued that the other night and gave a list of the loans that were looked for by the Fianna Fáil Government in its 15 years of office. I leave out the conversion loan, as that was not new money. I also leave out the loan which was floated to pay England £10,000,000, as that was not for the development of this country. There were three loans other than those two—one of £6,000,000, one of £7,000,000 and one of £8,000,000— £21,000,000 in the whole 15 years, of which the public subscribed £13,000,000. What they got by way of public subscription was £13,000,000 in 15 years, or if we take all Government funds and social security and other funds brought in, £21,000,000 over the 15 years. Now we are going mad for loans. We are offering to give the public 5 per cent. and 4¾ per cent. A financier I quoted a fortnight ago said that the first loan was badly timed. It came at a point when interest rates were high and when it could safely be forecast that they would drop. TheGovernment went ahead and followed up with a loan this year. In fact, the Taoiseach has announced that a national loan every year is now the ideal. Over the 15 years when the country's resources were not being developed, were lying there unused, all that the Government could think of doing was to raise £13,000,000 from the public—and to try to raise £21,000,000. What did they put the money into? Mainly, they put it into electricity development and into the services under the Postal and Telegraph Acts. These are two things which, once started, have no element of risk or insecurity about them. Money floats into Post Office development. It is hardly to be regarded as risk money at all. The same can be said—certainly between 1932 and 1947 —of electrical development in this country.
The Taoiseach stated recently—I think it was in Kilkenny where he was attending some celebration which was being held for Deputy Derrig, the Minister for Lands—when announcing the loan of this year, that he hoped people would subscribe their savings to that loan. He said that that was the only way in which national development could be carried on and that, if the people failed to fill the loan with their savings, other less desirable means of finance would have to be sought or would be sought.
Speaking in this House on the 7th November, 1952—a little more than a year ago—of the two loans for which I was responsible, Deputy Major de Valera said, as reported at column 1259 of the Official Report, that there was damage to the country's credit by letting expenditure far exceed revenue. Then he added:—
"... there was a damaging situation that we were borrowing more and more—going to the well too often for water—and naturally people were asking where it would all end and what would happen next."
May we now ask the question: Where will it all end and what will happen next? Surely the Taoiseach must realise that the people want an explanation of this peculiar change ofpolicy. In the years that the locusts have eaten from us, during which virtually no capital development took place in this country—the 15 years of their long sway—£21,000,000 was gathered in and most of it was spent on electricity development or on the postal and telegraph services. That was a period in which men emigrated and in which men who remained at home became unemployed. It was a period during which the standard of living in this country went down gradually and the value of money decreased gradually. Over that period, there was this dearth of development. When we bent ourselves to make up for the arrears left over those 15 years, we were met with hostility, with a vile propaganda, with talk about putting the country into pawn and with the display of the pawnbroker's calling plastered around the city. Then the present Government decided on a loan policy and on development. But the warning was given by Deputy Major de Valera—the warning not to go to the well too often because people would ask where it will all end and what will happen next.
The Taoiseach went to Kilkenny about the autumn of this year and spoke of the necessity of people giving their savings to the Government as otherwise less desirable methods of finance would have to be adopted. Finally, we come to a speech made by Deputy Derrig, the Minister for Lands, at the end of the month of November, in which he said that the Government feel it is legitimate that they should expect an enlargement of the banks' proportion of Irish Government municipal securities. Is this the screw to be put on the banks at last? Is this what the Taoiseach would describe, as he expressed it in Kilkenny in the early autumn, as, "less desirable methods of finance"? Is this something less desirable than getting the people's savings and the bribing of some of them with a greater interest rate on the loan? Where are we? What is the money to be used for? Are we now, at last, going to get a speed up with regard to the development of the unused and neglected resources of this country?
I gave figures here the other night about the early efforts of Fianna Fáil in regard to development in this country. I tried to find out the objectives to which we put the money borrowed over these 15 years. The items that occured, year after year, in the below-the-line services were the Shannon scheme, telegraph and telephone services, the Road Fund and moneys for the relief of unemployment. I found that, until the year 1936-37, these were the main objectives of any borrowing done in that period. After that, there was a speed up. Local loans came into the picture in 1936-37; air services in 1939-40; tourists in 1943-44; the National Stud in 1946-47. Some attention was also paid to turf in that last year. Was that what the present Government and its Leader thought was a proper programme of capital works from 1932 onwards? They were given a chance, if they had read some of the old documents, to get other objectives.
When the Shannon scheme was projected as many years ago as 1923, the people who projected that scheme —a German firm—wrote a special chapter on electricity in Irish agriculture. They spoke of the use of electricity as being widespread on the farms of Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark "where central generation of power and the use of long-distance transmission and distribution systems have made it possible to bring cheap electricity to the farmer." They spoke of the dullness of life in the country, the hard-working conditions and the low wages which agriculture could only afford to pay. They said that these circumstances, combined with the attraction of life in the towns and cities, first caused a shortage of labour and a corresponding rise in its cost on the German farms. They said that migratory labour was then resorted to—something of which we have had experience here in the past 20 years. The chapter went on to speak of the problems of lessening the dullness and hardships of the farmer's life. It pointed out that the progress has naturally been slow because the prejudice of conservative farmers, based on centuries of habit, has had to be overcome. Thechapter pointed out that as Ireland depends mainly on agriculture for exports the Irish farmer must be as well equipped as his Continental competitor and that, accordingly, he can neglect no development that will bring about reductions in production costs. The benefits which electricity brings were pointed out as well as how increasing use was made of it on the Continent as a result of propaganda and instruction. The chapter continued:—
"It will take many years before an electric transmission system is built which reaches to the majority of the farms"—
that is about Ireland—
"but the present scheme will make future development at least possible and a beginning has to be made somewhere."
Written in 1923, that chapter ended with these words: "On the Continent it was made more than 20 years ago." When the experts reported on that in 1925, they said that they were aware that in Ireland it is thought that the rural population would be unwilling to introduce the use of electricity to an extent worth mentioning. Then they gave their views. They spoke in the following terms in 1925:—
"In all civilised countries the electrification of the agricultural districts is regarded as a desirable object...."
And they continued:—
"It would, therefore, be advisable for the Free State, as soon as possible, to prepare for and guide this development."
I have quoted from two reports—one made in 1923 and the other made in 1925. The Shannon scheme was carried through. The people who got hold of that scheme in 1932 delayed—I think until the war had started—before they thought of adding anything even to the generating system that Shannon supplied. It was many years after that before they first began to talk about rural electrification.
When they did even get a schemeput up by the E.S.B. with regard to rural electrification, they delayed on it and starved it of finance. We went in and made finance easier in respect of the present generation by offloading it on to future generations, but they were not two months back in office until they had damaged our scheme of financing and had gone back to their own tried-and-found-wanting system of the years up to 1947.
There were plans for future developments at hand and there was material of a warning type issued to the Government as to how resources were being neglected and as to the necessity for involving the people's savings at home in development work at home; but Deputy Major de Valera, speaking in this House on 12th November, 1952, showed where he and his Party stood, so far as these famous sterling assets were concerned. He said, at column 1410:—
"If we are at the point where those assets are to be invested in the sterling area, where are you going to invest them better than in the British Treasury, which is really the Central Bank of the sterling area?"
After all the protestation Deputy Hickey had made here before Deputy de Valera came into the House—there were people here who could instruct him with regard to what Deputy Hickey said—we have Deputy Major de Valera in 1952 saying: "Where better can you have these invested than in the British Treasury, which is really the Central Bank of the sterling area?" That was, no doubt, a reflection of the policy he got explained to him in his Party rooms. It had never been explained here so clearly that the Government's attitude was that the British Treasury represented the Central Bank of the sterling area and was a first-class place for investment. That was the plan, so far as Deputy Major de Valera was concerned.
With regard to these sterling assets, we were told that we were disinvesting at too fast a rate—that there was no control and that things were haphazard. All the bogies were trotted out in the late part of 1951 and leadingup to the Budget of 1952. As part of that programme, we were given this famous White Paper referred to by Deputy Matthew O'Reilly to-night. He apparently still thinks a good deal of it, although very few other people give it any reference. It was presented to each House of the Oireachtas by the Minister for Finance in October, 1951. The phrase which has often been quoted in this House and which I want to quote again is on page 8, where we are told:—
"The current output figures for our staple exports rule out the possibility of any large increase in the volume of exports in the near future to bridge the gap."
Certain statistics follow with regard to the number of animals in the country and the paragraph ends also on page 8:—
"The inescapable conclusion is that any substantial relief in the balance of payments can only be achieved by importing less."
It was on that paper that the Government founded its policy and plan for a couple of years. I do not know who wrote that paper or produced that piece of statistical information, but, in the light of after events, whoever did it ought definitely to be suspect as a counsellor in Government Buildings and if a group of people combined to produce these two phrases, they ought, as a group, to be suspect for what they have produced to the public and made the foundation of Government policy.
Let us test it by events. In October, 1951, we are solemnly told that we must rule out the possibility of any large increase in the volume of exports in the near future and that the inescapable conclusion is that any substantial relief in the balance of payments can only be achieved by importing less. I take the Central Bank Report for the year ended March 31st of this year and on paragraph 10 I find certain figures with regard to the balance of trade. The comment at paragraph 10 is:—
"The improvement in the balance of payments in 1952 as compared with1951 has been due mainly to a reduction in the import excess on merchandise account, reflecting at current prices, a 16 per cent. drop in the value of imports and a 25 per cent. rise in the value of exports."
This was what the inescapable conclusion had to avoid—there was no possibility of a large increase in the volume of exports in the near future. The date of that again is October, 1951, and the bank, writing about the year 1952 in 1953, says there was a 25 per cent. rise in the value of exports as compared with 1951 and the volume of imports was 17 per cent. down and the volume of exports 22 per cent. up. Then, they draw attention to the fact that there was, in consequence, a significant rise in the proportion of the imports paid for by exports. However, the Government accepted that view, that inescapable conclusion that they must cut down imports and that there was no way out of it by increasing the volume of exports.
Let us see what they have done with regard to these imports. The table at the foot of page ten gives the trade imports for the years 1928, 1938 and 1948 and then the three consecutive years 1950, 1951 and 1952. 1951 is the year that caused all the trouble. The value of the imports that year was £204,000,000, having been £159,000,000 the year before and £136,000,000 in 1948. The figure for 1952 is given as £172,000,000 and this year a forecast of mine would be that they will be somewhere in the region of £180,000,000 to £185,000,000.
Let me take the average of the bad year 1951 and the two years before it. In these three years, the value was £494,000,000, an average of £164,000,000. I want that average compared with the cut-down imports under the sway of that pamphlet which brought the imports to £172,000,000, in excess of the average for these three years, even including the bad year 1951. One can take any one of these averages. One can take them over four years—I have taken them over three years. The inescapable conclusion from this is that imports are rising again and that imports in 1952, when efforts were madeto keep them down, had gone above the average for the three preceding years, even including the very bad year 1951.
Let me turn to the other side of it. The possibility had to be ruled out of any large increase in the volume of exports. I take the figures first. Exports in the year 1948 were £49,000,000. In 1947, they were much lower. In 1949, although towards the end of the war we had succeeded in getting them up, £49,000,000 was the figure. That was the circumstance left to us after 15 years of Fianna Fáil Government—our exports that year were running less than £50,000,000. In 1950, they had been raised to £72,000,000, and, in 1951, when the possibility of any large increase in the volume of exports had to be put aside, they went to £81,000,000. In 1952, they had gone over the £100,000,000 mark. When that paper was discussed in this House, Deputy Dillon and the rest of us prophesied with the greatest confidence that exports would be over the £100,000,000 mark in that year. They have gone over it and they are going higher this year.
When we get the new figures, we must delve into them to see whether the complacency of Deputy O'Reilly will be sustained.
He tells us that whatever increase there has been in exports was due to the Fianna Fáil efforts since 1951 and not to the efforts of those who preceded them for those critical three years. That is the picture I want to get out for the people of this country over Christmas, that the advisers of the Government on whom the Government pledged themselves and on whose forecast they built their plans have been falsified immediately by events. Their inescapable conclusion was a wrong conclusion and even though it was regarded as inescapable and the Government pretended to drive towards it, they have not been able to collapse imports in any significant way. The one possibility that had to be ruled out, according to the Government themselves and their advisers, was regarding any large increase in the volume of exports in the near future. Let there be no quarrel as to value and volume. That is dealt with in the report.
We know that was a nonsensical policy. We pointed out that a policy which was built on those phrases was bound to make for austerity in the country, and that that austerity was unnecessary. When we said it would cause hunger and hardship it did. It has helped greatly towards emigration. We said it would increase unemployment. The figures have shown that that is true. The people would not have minded and could even have suffered tightening their belts or facing up to emigration and unemployment if the circumstances demanded it but we showed in our argument that this policy was an unnecessary one and that these two rather firm foundations of the White Paper were rotten foundations. It took only two years' imports and exports returns to show how completely wrong that forecast was.
I do not know whether that policy is still being assisted by the people who brought out that pamphlet. If that policy is still being made by these people, surely the Government should take a lesson from what happened already and should realise that those forecasts were bad and that it took a very short time, indeed, to have them falsified to the knowledge of the public.
The Government, having had their two years of austerity, now with their compact group in the House in favour of the cutting of the subsidies, the imposition of hardships on the people, pretending to be complacent with unemployment and the cost of living and rise in the cost of living, the emigration figures and the rise in those, apparently have a new policy, something which is a despairing policy, and the banks are going to be approached. The first hint has been given that it is legitimate, surely, for the Government to expect that over the years there will be an increase in the holdings of the banks' portfolios for Government and municipal investments. I want to know what is below the surface in this. How far have the banks been brought into consultation? People are asking whether Deputy Derrig, Minister for Lands, operating that night as deputy Minister for Finance, was sent there, so to speak, as a warning to the banks, whether they had notice of this changeof policy and, if so, people would be glad to know what has been their new attitude towards this new orientation of policy.
I come back to the question I asked a fortnight ago, because I believe it is pivotal to the proper system of banking in this country. When the recent loan was floated we were told it was for £25,000,000. The public were asked to subscribe as to £20,000,000. The banks, we were told, had agreed to take up £5,000,000. The interest rate —I am taking in such things as discount—was about 4¾ per cent. Did the banks get 4¾ per cent. for the £5,000,000 they took up? I think we are entitled to have an answer to that. If so, does the Government believe they were entitled to get that return on the money? If the Government have investigated that, did they believe that the banks shed any better securities in order to buy £5,000,000 worth of the last national loan? If they have done that, has there been any investigation as to whether the banking system has suffered with regard to security, liquidity or return? I think we are entitled to have an answer to that.
I suggest that the banks will be found to have done what they told us they were going to do when we were discussing the £5,000,000 loan to the Dublin Corporation. They first of all pretended and made their case on the sale of investments and the dangers of the sale. They went into detail as to the interlocking of their whole system of investments and said that if one was pulled apart from the other it might change the whole field judged by the standards of security, liquidity and return. For a whole long day they had argued on these terms and made their case on that sort of proposition. At the end of the day, when they had agreed to give the £5,000,000, they laughed at the idea that anybody would sell securities. The banking system permitted a double entry in the books and the £5,000,000 was at the disposal of the corporation. That is an example in a theoretical way of what Deputy Hickey spoke of.
If the banks are manipulating credit in order to put £5,000,000 at the Government's disposal and if it is a manipulation of credit, they have no right to demand or get 4¾ per cent. or any other interest except the operational expenses having regard to the nature of that particular transaction. I said the other night that, once the banks yielded at the time of the Dublin Corporation loan, they had given their whole case away. I believe they know that now. Therefore, I believe they will insist that the present Government will give them their interest rate the same as any depositor or investor gets a return of the 4¾ per cent. type. I think that if they do not ask for that, then we will have the beginnings of a new banking system. We will then have a clear recognition of this pretence that is behind the whole banking system here.
Deputy Hickey will be with me in the ordinary operation of the bank where there is certain real money. One goes to the bank. Under that foundation they rear a whole credit superstructure and they may, if the demand is there, multiply by ten in respect of the credit or what they use as credit the actual amount of savings that come to them from small traders. For years they have been playing a very definite lie as far as the community is concerned pretending that they were only lending out depositors' money.
I was amazed that after the years of education on this matter to find that Deputy Lehane could, during the week, say that a difficulty was going to be created in this country on account of the rivalry in regard to socialistic schemes and that depositors would take their deposits out of the banking system here.
As regards Deputy Lehane and Deputy Briscoe, some of their remarks bear the same interpretation. Both these Deputies apparently believe that the banks to-day are operating like the old moneylenders, that they get in money and they lend that money out and that there is nothing in the banking system other than that. Anybody who has studied, even in a mild way, this whole matter knows here is notruth in that suggestion. As far as any plan that I have ever put forward in this House goes, I never wanted to interfere, so to speak, with real savings, with money that was put into the banking system. The people who own real savings could get a better return while the community could benefit better by an extension of the credit system and by the issuing of credit terms. That is what we have to aim at and that can be achieved while it gives complete and entire security to the depositors. The community can benefit and we can get idle men and idle materials brought together in so far as money has any function in bringing them together for desirable projects.
The Taoiseach has denied here several times that during the year there has been any restriction in respect of bank credit. I do not know whether his denial goes to the point of saying that there has been none or that the Government has not authorised any. Nobody believes that there has not been a restriction of bank credit in the country and it will weaken the Taoiseach's authority in the community if he countinues to say that because it is entirely discredited in the minds of any business men or traders in the whole community. If he says the Government were not behind the banks in restricting credit, that is a different matter, but the answer that should come to him and the answer he has to meet on that is that the Government should have taken action with regard to issuing credit in the circumstances that developed here in late 1951 and over the whole of the year 1952. There was a restriction of credit, a restriction of credit that was openly announced. I read in this House a quotation from the Governor of the Bank of Ireland in 1951, who said that even good projects, that is, good from the bankers' point of view, would have to be put aside and await more propitious times. Is there any meaning to be taken from that except that banks were restricting credit even for what they chose to call worth-while schemes? The Government said that that had nothing to do with them, that they were not responsible. I say they were indirectly and I answer again that they should have beenresponsible for taking steps against that particular situation which had developed.
Can anybody read the speeches of the Minister for Finance and of the various Ministers in the autumn of 1951 leading up to the Budget in 1952 and not believe that in the background, in the minds of the Government, there was clearly a policy of credit restriction? Would credit restriction not fit in with the policy of the 1952 Budget? Would the issuing of credit help the Budget of 1952? Would it not have run counter to whatever the Minister was proposing and all he thought he would achieve by his policy in 1952?
This country, through its Government, is committed to the slashing of subsidies. The policy was to make living dearer. People had to buy the commodities that had been subsidised. If they bought those at a higher rate, as it was expected they would, they would have less money in their pockets for spending on other things. Tobacco and beer were taxed. The Budget expectation was not that there would be less consumption of those things because they budgeted for an increase. The Budget policy would have gone astray if people stopped consuming beer and tobacco to any great extent because then they would have had the money in their pockets to spend on those articles which the Government wanted to put them off buying. The slashing of the food subsidies and the tax on beer and tobacco were all aimed at the same thing, to diminish the amount of money people had for spending, and the only policy that will fit in with that is credit restriction. Accordingly, in the issuing of credit, the interest rate on loans was raised. It was all a plan to stop people spending. The reason, according to this famous White Paper, was that the balance of trade was against us and we had the inescapable conclusion and the thing we could not count on: we cannot raise exports therefore, we must decrease imports. Imports can be directed by physical means, by control at the ports. They can also be controlled in another way, that is, the monetary way: diminish people's incomesby making them pay more for the things they have to buy and then there is less money to be spent on the commodities flowing through the ports. The only policy that fits in with that scheme is the policy of credit restriction. Credit restriction came and the people who were responsible for that can point to the Government and say: "We are acting fully in accord with what the representatives of the people proposed on that occasion."
Deputy Mathew O'Reilly asked the question: Do people here believe in what he called a State bank? If he meant do people here believe that such things as credit ought to be under public control, I say for myself, "Yes." Whether that involves a State bank or not is a matter of machinery and I do not propose to pursue that question. When the Central Bank Act was going through, we argued vehemently from this side of the House that both the volume of credit and its direction should be brought under control and suggested the only proper people to control it were the public authority, the Government of the day. We argued that many, many years ago, and in this House I could read from an article of the then editor of The Economist, in which he said that control of credit in the two ways which I have mentioned was the situation in the greater part of the world and the language he used about it indicated that he himself was inclined to accept that as something that was bound to come and in which he saw no danger. We thought we could get the Central Bank set up with definite powers and that there would be authority to control credit and its manipulation and manufacture in the way I have stated.
Supposing our plan had been accepted. Supposing the Government of the day was in control of the banking and financial situation here to the extent that they could either enlarge or diminish credit and direct it, say, as opposed to cinema and entertainment palaces, to other things that are showing better signs and a better chance of productivity, what would have happened over the last couple ofyears? Surely the present Government cannot deny that in accord with the Budget policy of 1952, if they had control of credit, they would immediately have operated a severe restriction of credit. They might have manipulated that restricted credit in a better direction than it was, but that there would have been full-hearted restriction of credit there can be no doubt.
I still think credit ought to be under control even though, as I say, possibly if it had been under the control of the Government over the last couple of years, it would have meant an even fiercer restriction of credit than we had. I believe that would have made a better situation because then there would not have been the possibility of the Government sitting back and washing its hands of the whole matter and saying: "That is none of our business; we never told the banks to restrict credit." The Government would have had to act as they should have acted, and their policy would then have been to deal with the financial policy not merely through subsidies and through the increased prices for the commodities people would continue to buy. We might have seen Government policy exemplified in a ruthless way, with credit being narrowed and the ravages of the past few years increased and probably made more severe than they have been.
Again, I suggest that would be a better scheme. The Government ought to be in charge of these things, and Deputies ought to know that when credit is restricted it either is with the approval of or by Order of the Government, and that there is some different policy being operated to minimise whatever the banks are doing. I still stand for that. It would be disastrous for the community if the old bogies were trotted out again and if public timidity were increased. I think, however, we have gone beyond that stage now. At the time that we were in Government we had to go cautiously because the present Government were then in opposition and were ready to carry on a most damaging propaganda against us on these plans which, to a certain extent they have now adopted as well as the policies that we had.
The last two years have had a very definite educative purpose. Folks have now come to recognise by hard experience the importance of the banking system. They have come also to realise the effect of a bad banking policy. I believe that the community generally agree with the views which I am expressing, and that it would be far better if the Government were clear and distinct on this question. We saw, however, that Government policy was not merely making the lives of the people harder but how they carried out their plans of austerity, afraid to have any easing of credit because that would have meant the spending of more money. We have seen also all the evil effects there were in respect of imports, particularly. The people who wrote the White Paper said there was one inescapable conclusion and that was to cut imports. That is the policy that was tried, and that led to all the hardships of the last two years. I have said that over the years the policy of the Government was to neglect the resources of the country. That neglect amounted to an appreciation of the fact that there were certain results that could not be avoided. We have had the burden of unemployment over all the years.
The policy which the Government now in power had was really a policy of wage restriction. Preparations for further wage restrictions were made in October, 1947. A minute made by the present Minister for Industry and Commerce dated 16th October, 1947, stated: "On the assumption that discussions with the Trade Union Congress will not result in any agreement on the stabilisation of wage rates, legislation will be required and it is necessary that immediate steps will be taken to prepare a draft Bill." The main purpose of the Bill was then set out—that wages must be again stood still as at the date of October, 15th, 1947. The second thing was that the protection of the Trades Disputes Act was withdrawn from any strike the purpose of which was to compel an employer to pay wages above the prevailing rate. At the end of the minute there was the note: "The duration of the Bill will be two years. Penalties should be severe."
