Parliament's Week

The Commons--

P:Convened for the sixth time to extend for the sixth time the Emergency Powers Act made necessary by the coal strike (TIME, May 10 et seq).

P:Heard Secretary for Mines Lane-Fox ominously declare: "It may be necessary for the Government to fix the price of coal in order to stop profiteering. But it will be better if we can avoid it in view of the probability of an early collapse of the coal strike."

P:Heard Premier Baldwin admit in the course of debate that Laborite Prohibitionist Dr. Alfred Salter was very nearly correct when he declared that many Right Honorable Members are habitual drunkards (TIME, Oct. 28).

P:Defeated, 247 to 95, a motion to refer Dr. Salter's charges to the Committee on Privileges, which would have meant an individual investigation of the alleged Right Honorable drunkards.

P:Finally passed a motion of censure upon Dr. Salter for committing "gross libel on the members of the House and a gross breach of privilege."

P:Were informed that 270;000 of the 1,000,000 miners called on strike have drifted back to work. During the week, efforts to reach a compromise between miners and owners were begun through private channels by both Governor Montagu Norman of the Bank of England and Chairman Arthur Pugh of the Trades Union Council.

P:Lieutenant Commander the Honorable Joseph Montague Kenworthy (heir to the ninth Baron Strabolgi), long a famed bulwark of Georgian Liberalism, grew so vexed at last with Mr. Lloyd George that he bolted without warning into the Laborite ranks of onetime (Jan.-Nov. 1924) Premier Ramsay Macdonald.

The Lords--

P:Listened with a general air of disapprobation as "Labor Peers" Lord Sydney Arnold and Lord Charles Parmoor deplored what they deemed the excessive readiness of the police to deal harshly with strikers. An example cited was the refusal of the police at Wombwell, Yorkshire, to allow President Herbert Smith of the Yorkshire Miners' Association to address a crowd of 3,000 strikers.