Orders of the Day — Dominion and Colonial Affairs.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 29 Gorffennaf 1926.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Dr Leslie Haden-Guest Dr Leslie Haden-Guest , Southwark North

I want to ask the Government, following on the matters raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas), to let us know what is their policy with regard to migration. One hears a good deal about the obstacles there are at present to migration. If one is interested in the matter, one hears that people are waiting sometimes for months before they are able to get away, and one hears of boys selected, chosen, and in every way fitted who are not yet able to get away. There seems to be a very great block in the flow of migrants from this country, and I should like to know what the Government are proposing to do in the matter. I addressed a question recently to the Secretary of State for the Dominions on the subject of miners, asking what proposals, if any, the Government had with regard to making special arrangements for such miners as might wish to migrate after the conclusion of the present stoppage, for it is admitted on all hands that there will be a large number of men surplus to employment in the mines. The right hon. Gentleman replied that no arrangements were made at present and that he could not hold out—I am very glad he was so frank about it—any false hopes, but that the matter must be specially discussed at the Imperial Conference. The policy of the Government on this question is really not at all satisfactory. The Labour party policy on this matter was very clearly defined last year at the Annual Conference at Liverpool, and I wish to refer to that policy because I think that it indicates the only way of really tackling the migration question.

The Labour party, in framing their policy, said that they wished to have a survey of the land resources of the Empire with a view to a scientific redistribution of population, and I think that is the only way in which you can really begin to tackle this problem, because unless you know what land is available, unless you know what places want to have migrants sent to them, and unless you know what facilities you are going to give to those migrants, you are not in a position to do very much in the matter. At present, it is very difficult to get accurate information as to what land is actually available for the use of migrants oversea. When the Attorney-General of New South Wales was over here he kindly supplied me with some very striking figures with regard to New South Wales itself. They had been obtained by the New South Wales Government, and they had been confirmed by, I think, the Railway Commissioner and the Minister of Agriculture. They were to this effect, that within 12 miles of the railway in New South Wales there was land available for wheat growing, for mixed farming, or for dairy farming equal to the total area of England and Wales. If that be so in the one State of New South Wales, you have got an area of land there which obviously is capable of taking as many migrants as we could send to them in the next 20 years.

There is no difficulty whatsoever about land for men to settle upon. [An HON. MEMBER "In this country."] I am coming to that point later. The real difficulty is that there is no definite policy for sending men out and for conferring with the Dominions to get an agreed plan. The Labour party at the last Conference, in addition to determining that their policy was that of a survey of the land for a scientific re-distribution of population, proposed that colonies for training men to work on the land should be set up in this country, through which men could pass before they went on to the land. The setting up of training colonies in this country is necessary, not as a training in farming or agricultural work primarily, but as a kind of sorting place, to find out whether the people who are proposing to go out as migrants are, in fact, the right kind of people to go out. Many Members of the House were present the other day at a meeting of the Empire Parliamentary Association, when the Prime Minister spoke of the Australian problem and the drift to the towns in that Continent. There is a drift to the towns in Australia, in Canada, in this country, and, in fact, all. over the world. That is a psychological problem, and, in choosing migrants, the first thing to solve is that psychological problem. You want to get the people who are not going to drift to the towns, but who prefer to live in the country, and, as a matter of fact, that is a very simple thing to do.

Men who have been accustomed to living in a town, and especially married men and their wives, may think in a moment of enthusiasm that it is a line thing to go out to the Australian hush, or on to a Canadian farm, or into New Zealand, but when they get there they find that the conditions of life in those places are not suitable to them. They cannot run around the corner to buy something at a shop, they cannot go to a cinema, because there is not one within twenty miles, and they do not have those ordinary amusements to which they are accustomed and the ordinary excitements which they think of at home as a matter of course. There are many people who do not like that kind of life, but it is impossible for the town dweller—and for practical purposes nearly everyone in this country may be accounted a town dweller in that respect—to know whether he is fit for life in Canada, Australia, or another Dominion without some preparatory training of some kind. I suggest that we should set up a number of colonies where we can find out, first of all, whether or not people like to live in the country, whether they are psychologically fitted for migrants, for the life of living away from towns, and, secondly, whether they have the special kind of physical fitness which enables them to do work on the land properly. Work on the land does not require enormous strength. It is, as it were, a large amount of work put out at low pressure over a comparatively long series of hours.

I believe that by the setting up of colonies in this country, by a special Migration Authority, which I am going to suggest in a moment, you will have your first and essential preliminary to a real migration policy. You will also have at those colonies elementary training in farming, which will be an additional advantage, but by no means the largest part of the advantage. I am well aware that under the Poor Law there are various institutions where men are trained. There is, for instance, the very excellent training colony at Hollesley Bay, but it takes the wrong type of men. It takes the men who are, according to those well qualified to observe, of the institutional type, whatever that may mean, and they are not exactly the right type for work in the Dominions. That place, because it is attached to the Poor Law, is not able to do the work which otherwise it is well qualified to do, because it is an excellent farm, the training itself is very good, and the physical training is also good. There is a training institution, very much of the kind I have mentioned, under the Ministry of Labour. There needs to be not one or two—and certainly they should not be in connection with Poor Law institutions—but a number of colleges set up under the Migration Department whether for overseas settlement or anything else which shall definitely act as centres where men can be trained for work overseas. My hon. Friend the Member for Silvertown (Mr. J. Jones) has asked why we should not settle the men on the land in this country. May I point out to my hon. Friend that by setting up training colonies in Great Britain you are training men for agricul- tural work, and they will then be just as fit when trained for settlement in this country as for settlement overseas, if only you can get the land for them in this country, and that is the difficulty.