Much to the indignation of the Labour Party and the Working Class Movement generally, the parliamentary Christmas recess was not to end until 13th February, 1923. The T.U.C. organised a National Day of Demonstration that became known as 'Unemployment Sunday' A huge crowd gathered in Trafalgar Square where they were addressed by, among others, George Lansbury, Saklatvala and Wal Hannington. Saklatvala seconded the Resolution protesting against the prorogation , stating that by extending the parliamentary holiday to 13th February the Government showed its indifference to the suffering of the long-term unemployed.
It was not until well after the Christmas recess that Saklatvala finally got the chance to address the House on the subject nearest to his heart, namely, the iniquities of imperialism as practiced in India. It was on the 27th February, 1923, that under Orders of the Day, the House had before it "INDIAN STATES. Protection Against Disaffection Act 1922" Colonel Wedgewood (Labour) moved that "A humble Address be presented to His Majesty that he withold his assent to the Indian States (Protection Against Disaffection) Act 1922." This Act was to make it impossible for subjects of the Indian princely States, not under British rule, or Indian citizens in British India, to publicise in India or the Indian Press, the malpractices of the Indian princes against their subjects. While several of the Princes were reasonably benevolent, many of them were despotic and cruel and Colonel Wedgewood made an impassioned and detailed speech against Great Britain affording their protection to these despotic and tyrranical regimes. (See H. of C. Hansard Vol. 160.1923 Col. 1799-1834).
Mr Snell, (Labour), in seconding the Motion, referred to the Act as a measure which 'very seriously limits human freedom'. The Act was to impose a penalty of 5 years imprisonment, with or without a fine,upon anyone who may 'write, edit, print or publish, any book, newspaper or document calculated to bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against Princes or Chiefs of a State in India...' Mr Snell pointed out to the House that the punishment was to be administered not because any words published had actually CAUSED riot or sabotage or revolution; a person may be imprisoned ...on the ground that the speculative mind of an official may think that his words MAY have caused disaffection.' Later in his long and compassionate speech he reminded the House that, by the famous Proclamation issued in 1858 which was the Magna Charta of Indian liberties, we undertook to concede the same rights and principles to the Indian people as to British subjects born elsewhere. This proposed Act negated that ideal.
Mr Saklatvala took up the argument. at first. with quiet sarcasm. He said: "I suppose I shall be pardoned for saying that I cannot tear myself away from the feeling that we are conducting a mock Debate, with a forgone conclusion. I want all my colleagues here tonight to remember that for these few hours, they are not the same Parliament which they imagine they are, and which they were up till 4 o'clock this afternnon. Up till 4 o'clock this was a Parliament that believed in the representation of the people, in the supreme right, above the sovereign right, of the elected representatives of the people. After 4 o'clock,Parliament has reversed its engines, and it believes in a dictatorship over a foreign people, through a man whom they have sent out, in whose selection 300 million of people had no voice whatever." (He was, of course, alluding to the Viceroy at whose personal instigation the Act was introduced). "The Parliament which here wants to give speed and growth to democratic institutions, desires to extend the franchise, and pretends to give further and further rights to the enfranchised people, is at the same time spreading itself thousands and thousands of more miles further away in other parts of the world,where this very Parliament demands that the people of those countries shall have no voice in the administration and governing of their affairs. This Parliament, as it now considers the Bill, is not the advocate of the right of representation of the people, but of the dictatorship of somebody outside, to other peoples of the world. And this is an entirely different Assembly.
"There is a danger in this sort of Debate having, perhaps, a misguiding effect. By our very effort to save the Government from rushing into a mad act, we are liable here on the Labour Benches to be surreptitiously drawn into an Imperial policy, as if we wanted Imperialism to be run more correctly than they desire, but though there is such a danger, there is no reality in it. The Labour Party is asking the Government not to do something ridiculous and silly, which would betray their own aims and efforts, but by so doing it does not give a pledge to the other side that the Labour Party desires a more correct form of Imperialism to be observed than the Government desire. There is also a danger, on the part of our Indian friends that, by this kind of struggle, by this kind of tug-of-war with the Imperialist, foreign, dominating power, they are tacitly accepting the right of this country to send a Viceroy at all. That is not the position from the Indian point of view, and we do not want to be snared into the false Imperialism which after the War, the whole world, barring the Liberals and Conservatives of Great Britain, have cast to the winds. I am glad that on this occasion our friends, the Liberal Party, are openly associating themselves with the Government so far as we have heard their speakers. We do not wish to have, on such Imperialist questions, the idea that there are three groups in this House. There are only two groups. The one group is the group of Conservatives and Liberals combined that believes in the supreme right of this country and this Parliament in exploiting and dominating over the countries that do not belong to them and that never sent men forth here to disturb them at all; and opposed to them there is only one group that does not believe in such Imperialist domination, but believes in the co-operation of all nations on terms of equality and equal rights.
"The real difficulty with regard to the Viceroy's position arises from the system which he has got to maintain. After the War, the whole of the world, civilised as far as you may call yourselves, or uncivilised as far as others may think, has come to realise that political Imperialism is mere barbarity, however nicely you put it. The world has also come to realise that no country and no nation can now live at peace and in prosperity by crushing other nations economically. If there was no Viceroy in India to represnt this political domination of Britain, but if there were dozens of Britishers to represent the fraternal co-operation of the working classes of Britain, this Bill and this question and this Debate would not have arisen at all, and the result would have been far better than that at which the Government or the present Viceroy may be aiming. I myself realise the position. You send out a Viceroy, and you tell 300 millions of people that they have got nothing to do with selecting the head of their administration. You have only got to send out a certain person for a number of years to run over the people - not to consult them, not to serve - to govern them in the interests that are not known to the people as the peoples' interests. I quite imagine that that Viceroy should more than once run away with the idea that he can only be doing his duty to the Mother Country whenever he defies the wishes of the people in whose midst he has got to live his life. That being the position, the Viceroy runs to this House and asks that we should back him up, and in order to preserve Imperialism as such, you are going to back him up.
"May I ask this House to consider the effects upon the sections of the Indian population? The new Act dared to enfranchise 6% of the population of India, most of whom laughed at the artificial right of franchise given to them by a foreign domination, and 85% of those who were given that franchise scorned it, and said they would have nothing to do with it. As the balance, there is just 1% of the population of India that is hanging on to the Viceroy and his Councils and is keeping faith in British administration as it now stands. It is 1%, but I know the men and the women that are in it. They are worthy of everybody's consideration, but above all, I want the Government to realise that here is this 1% volunteering to keep faith in British institutions, volunteering to come forward to back up the Viceroy and British Councils and the British mode of administering the country -"
Mr Speaker: "This is not the occasion on which to review the Government of India Act or the present system of Government in India. The only question that arises here is whether the right judgement has been exercised within the law now existing in India."
Mr Saklatvala: "I am going to make the point, Mr Speaker, of drawing the attention of the Government to the people whom they are hurting by rejecting the Motion of the Labour Party. The people who are now protesting against the Viceroy's action, and the people whom the Labour Party is now trying to back up, are the people who have dared to become the laughing stock of 99% of their own countrymen in their effort to stand by the British institutions, and the Viceroy and the Government here are now throwing them over. They are telling the people that there is no reality in the Councils, that they have believed in something that was a sham, and they are further telling these people, who the other day sent in a petition, which was duly sent forward, asking this House to consider their position, that this House does not exist in reality as a protector of representational popular freedom. This will be the effect if the Government persist in their policy and do not take the warning that is offered them from the Labour Benches. The action of the Viceroy has another side, which I will ask the Government to bear in mind, and that is this. The people of India do not believe that the Viceroy is taking this measure for the protection of the Princes as such,. The people of India know that, up to the end of the reign by Lord Curzon, the Princes of India were driven by a whip by the Viceroys of India, and it was the Indian papers and the Indian public organisations that were always protecting them and protesting against the action of the Government. The people of India have now begun to believe - they may be right or they may be wrong - that the Government are now adopting a policy of quietly influencing and even, where possible, of indirectly co-ercing, the Indian Princes to maintain a very reactionary policy in the Native States, and that the Government of India are now afraid of their secret and silent influence at the back of what is known in India as Imperialism, which is being exposed by honest criticism in the Indian Press, on which account they are out to pass this Act over the heads of the people of India. It was said by Members on both sides in the Debate that there is a pledge. Who gave the pledge? The Viceroy, whom the people have never elected. He gave the pledge, and he wants the representatives of the people to stand by his pledge. That is the unnatural position of Imperialism. There is no constitutional position in such a pledge, and there is no obligation on the people of India to maintain such a pledge. They are not parties to it. .......................I should be extremely pleased if the Government rejected the Motion of the Labour Party, because that is the only way by which this last lingering vestige of Imperialism in this world will go to its grave. If by any chance you began to show common sense, and if by any chance you began to retrace your steps, it would be somewhat calamitous, because it would still enable Imperialism to continue to exist. and I am quite ready to take sides with the Motion of the Labour Party, because it is quite obvious that the Labour Party can never advocate the principle that one individual should have autocratic power over the representatives of the people. At the same time, I hope that, after the action of the Government in defying the Labour Party, the Labour Party will begin now to discriminate between the existence and non-existence of Imperialism.
"Before concluding, I may just add one word as to the Indian Civil Service, about which there was some argument on account of some remarks offered by the Hon. and Gallant Member who moved the Labour Motion.(Col Wedgewood). I do not believe that it is the intention to attack personalities or Members with regard to this particular Bill. What we do feel is that it is not so much the individual desire of the Viceroy to push it through over the heads of quite a new Assembly, as it is the traditional practice of the Indian Civil Service, and not because the individuals who form the Indian Civil Service are themselves particularly selected wrong men. That is not the idea, but that the whole system and machinery has got its own faults. The Indian Civil Service is not Indian. It has no reputation for being civil, and it is a domination and a usurpation. Barring these three great defects, they are all right. I, therefore, say to the Government that if they wish to destroy Imperialism, as they should, they should go on with their autocratic programme. If they wish to give an extended lease to British Imperialism, they may tell the Viceroy to retrace his steps, to climb down and find some other camouflage to rule the people of India."
Mr Hope Simpson then rose and said he found himself at some disadvantage after the wonderful rhetorical effort to which the House had just listened with such enjoyment.
On the following day, Saklatvala turned his attention to more mundane matters nearer home, in his own constituency of North Battersea, and he raised the question of sub-standard housing there. It is a speech that could well be echoed today when housing is still an acute and agonising problem for thousands of working people in our great cities; when, in spite of the efforts through the years of so many sincere pleaders and champions for their cause, thousands of families are still without homes and shelter and many thousands more are living in derelict and unhealthy slums. Well, here is a little effort my father made in 1923, 65 years ago as I write. We have found money for a world war, for armaments and nuclear weapons, for the upkeep of an elaborate and Oh -so -secret- service, for propaganda and intervention throughout the world, for a mini-war in the Falklands, but still we cannot find the money to build enough homes for our people to live in . Human hearts must be adamantine hard.
Saklatvala said: "I wish to bring to the notice of the substitute for the Minister of Health an urgent matter concerning the housing problem. I am specially requested by the Borough Council of Battersea to urge upon the Minister to give it sympathetic consideration and not to set it aside on grounds of Party feeling. It is not only a question of the shortage of houses and the delay in erecting new houses, but of a most acute problem, which has arisen of rendering existing houses useless by landlords sheltering behind certain imperfections in the law. In accordance with Section 28 of the Housing and Town Planning Act, 1918, while the Municipal authorities are empowered to put in repair certain houses, they are left in a position of great doubt as to ultimately recovering the sums of money spent on such repairs. The Battersea Council is faced with the fact that, having repaired certain houses when the cost was at its highest, they now stand no chance of recovering the sum from the landlords, and have had to come to terms for spreading the repayments over 15 years. Before they can recover the public funds which have been spent on taking care of private enterprise in Battersea, they will have to wait for 15 years. Further, on investigation it has been found that these landlords are not aliens but Britishers, and one happens to be a Scotsman.
"The most serious point is that Section 28 does not give any powers to the Borough Council over the freeholders, and the leaseholders are merely undergoing a process of transferring houses from the name of one leaseholder to that of another, and in the meanwhile the tenants are dwelling in houses which are unfit for use as dwelling places. The municipal authorities have been compelled in Stanford Street, to take in charge about 25 houses, all in one street, and they cordially invite representative of the Ministry to visit these houses which are specimens. ......I am glad to say that all the inhabitants are on rent strike because they know that morally the landlords do not deserve the rents. The trouble is that the corporation have to put these houses into repair, and they do not know how they will recover the expenses. The request of the Battersea Council is that the Minister should see his way to make an alteration in the Section as quickly as possible, with retrospective power, if possible, to arrange that instead of the landlord and leaseholder being sued for recovery of the expenses incurred, other arrangements shall be made. If they could permit the Corporation to go to the County Court Judge or the Magistrate before the repairs are effected, giving the landlord a reasonable time as adjudicated by the Court, and if he failed to effect such repairs within that time, if the Corporation could be allowed to take over charge of the house at its depreciated value, that would be the only way in which a solution could be found. We shall be obliged for an assurance from the Minister that such an alteration can be made speedily."
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, Colonel Leslie Wilson apologised for the absence of Sir W. Joynson-Hicks. Efforts had been made to find him in order that he should be present to answer the Hon. Member, but he had left the House. Colonel Wilson promised to convey Mr Saklatvala's remarks to the Minister and see that he takes all that has been said into consideration. The Session came to an end at 26minutes after 11 o'clock.
A fortnight after this plea in the House, Saklatvala addressed a mass meeting convened by the Labour Party in Westminster on the subject of poor housing in that borough.