The Trade Disputes Bill The Trade Disputes Bill is at
the mercy of the Liberals. At first enough Liberals were for giving it a second reading, but the official Liberal policy is now for absten- tion. Mr. Norman Birkett presided over a Liberal committee which examined the Bill, and reported on it without giving any particular -advice. But there are more ways than one of summing up a case to a jury, and the jury seems to have felt, no doubt rightly, that the Committee was strongly against the Bill. On Wednesday Sir John Simon addressed his colleagues and he appears to have torn the vital clause of the Bill about the legality of strikes into shreds. The division will be taken after we have gone to press. All we can say is that the Government cannot calmly accept a second reading defeat on this Bill as they accepted defeat from Mr. Scurr. * *
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