Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 4 Rhagfyr 1973.
The hon. Gentleman, and any other hon. Gentlemen opposite, must not be under any misapprehension. I do not want to strike away any of the support which they have. I know that they need every bit of support they can dredge up from anywhere, if this House is to see them again after the next election. What I am asking is : if it had been the other way around—and I hope we are on common ground in thinking that the money should not have come out of the pension fund—and it had come out of the general fund, might there not have been an equivalent outcry, not from hon. Gentlemen opposite but from rank-and-file trade unionists ; for example, those who are not supporters of the Labour Party, because there are many engineers who are not. Some are Tories, some are Liberals and some have no politics at all.