Parliament's Week

The Lords & Commons--

P: Met after summer recess with only the River Thames and several hundred London bobbies between themselves and a savage mob of 10,000 unemployed (see above).

The Commons--

P: Tried to ignore the clamoring, rioting unemployed but had to listen to their parliamentary champion, "Grandpa" George Lansbury, Leader of the Labor Party, who shouted, "I demand that the damnable 'means test'* be abolished and every man given a chance of decent existence!"

Knowing that the "means test" is the chief grievance of Britain's unemployed, Scot MacDonald summoned his Cabinet in hasty session. Later a spokesman said the National Government were "planning to remove harsh features of the means test," planning for example to let an unemployed man exclude his property or capital (if any) from his statement of "means" which would be defined hereafter as covering only current income.

P: Passed by tremendous Conservative majorities of over 200 the preliminary enabling bills for the Ottawa tariff accords (TIME, Oct. 24). Though the free trade Laborites and Liberals never mustered more than 90 opposition votes, Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain thought it necessary to lecture them, taking as his text Charles M. Schwab. Steelman Schwab had just said in London, ''Of course my business will be hurt by the Ottawa accords, but if the British Empire prospers as a result that will help us all," Cried Chancellor Chamberlain to the House of Commons, "There is true statesmanship in the remark of that man who is not a citizen of the British Empire! I wish all our citizens could take an equally far-sighted view."

P: Were told by breezy Dominion Secretary James Henry ("Jim") Thomas that the Anglo-Russian Trade Treaty of 1930 is incompatible with the Ottawa tariff accords, and that therefore His Majesty's Government renounced the treaty last week, giving the Soviet Government the required six-months notice before trade rupture becomes effective. Mr. Thomas mentioned Argentina, Denmark, Norway and Sweden as countries invited by His Majesty's Government last week to send representatives to London "for the purpose of discussing tariffs"-- this being Great Britain's opening move in a campaign to force the U. S.. France and other Great Powers to bargain with her for tariff quids and quos.

P: Anxiously awaited Nov. 1, when municipal elections in 300 cities and towns will show whether British voters are still for the Conservative majority in the House of Commons or have turned against it, as a result of the National Government's policy of taxing the formerly ''Free British Meal Table" by means of the Ottawa tariffs.

A municipal landslide against the Conservatives might force Scot MacDonald to "go to the country" in a general election. In an absent-minded moment last week the Prime Minister drew ironic Labor cheers by remarking to the House: ''Neither protection nor free trade can by itself cure unemployment, which is caused by the breakdown of the present social system."

*Started not as a dole (charity) but as straight unemployment insurance, the British system still works on the premise that premiums are paid by the employed into a fund from which they are entitled to draw, if unemployed, sums proportionate to what they have paid in. When a jobless man has exhausted this "covenanted benefit" and is still unemployed he appeals for State charity which is properly speaking the "dole." To get this he must prove his indigence to a local Public Assistance Committee: the ordeal of trying to convince a suspicious committee that one is really poor is called the "means test." Of the 3,000,000 unemployed Britons now receiving aid about 1,000,000 are asking for State charity, taking the 'means test."

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