Parliament
Edwards began his Parliamentary career by moving a motion calling for the location of industry to be planned, in which he called for an area of 40 miles around London to be closed to new industry. He was concerned about a government proposal to help the iron and steel industry in Jarrow, arguing that it would become a competitor to his own constituency. In April 1937 he opposed the Conservative government's proposal for assistance to 'special areas', complaining that it had the deliberate intention of depriving Middlesbrough of the advantages other areas were to have. He made a failed attempt to get Middlesbrough included during the passage of the Bill, in which he was joined by the Middlesbrough West MP Frank Kingsley Griffith.
In 1937 he took up the issue of producing oil from coal, and claimed that the Falmouth Committee looking into the question had deliberately restricted its remit and sent an insulting letter to a company which might have helped it. Early in 1939 he protested against criticism of the police voiced in Parliament by Communist Party of Great Britain MP Willie Gallacher.
Read more about this topic: Alfred Edwards (politician)
Famous quotes containing the word parliament:
“At the ramparts on the cliff near the old Parliament House I counted twenty-four thirty-two-pounders in a row, pointed over the harbor, with their balls piled pyramid-wise between them,—there are said to be in all about one hundred and eighty guns mounted at Quebec,—all which were faithfully kept dusted by officials, in accordance with the motto, “In time of peace prepare for war”; but I saw no preparations for peace: she was plainly an uninvited guest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What is the historical function of Parliament in this country? It is to prevent the Government from governing.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The war shook down the Tsardom, an unspeakable abomination, and made an end of the new German Empire and the old Apostolic Austrian one. It ... gave votes and seats in Parliament to women.... But if society can be reformed only by the accidental results of horrible catastrophes ... what hope is there for mankind in them? The war was a horror and everybody is the worse for it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)