12 DECEMBER 1925
A resolution condemning the Government’s decision to close the Rosyth and Pembroke dockyards was defeated in the House of Commons.
The report stage of the supplementary estimates of £9,000,000 for the coal wages subsidy, and of £1,000,000 to cover the Government guarantee in connection with Wembley, was agreed to.
A Geneva message says that the attempt at mediation made by the Council of the League of Nations in the Mosul dispute has completely failed. The Council’s decision is expected on Tuesday at the latest.
The Australian High Court has ordered the immediate release from prison of Messrs Walsh and Johansen, the strike leaders, and granted costs against the Crown.
The death-roll in connection with the mining disaster near Birmingham, Alabama, is 61.
Nine persons were killed and 21 injured in a railway disaster in Southern India.
The franc reached the record low level of 131.80.
Mr Churchill, speaking at Battersea, described British Socialists as “our Socialist softies and fatheads,” and Moscow Communists as a band of cosmopolitan conspirators gathered from the underworld of Europe and America.
Commenting on the Liberal land scheme at Wick, the Duke of Atholl said that under the plan the land would be “simply more than ever the toy for political wire-pulling,” which he described as the curse of land-owning and farming in this country.
Evidence on behalf of shipping was given at the Coal Commission. Five shillings a ton difference in the cost of coal represented at least 4 per cent. in the capital cost of a ship. Export trade was hampered by delay at Welsh and other ports, where eight to ten days were required to load a cargo that could be done abroad in about three days.
Queen Mary, in a message to the National Chamber of Trade, expresses the hope that every Local Authority and every housewife will co-operate to make the British shopping week a success.
The inquiry by the Ministry of Transport into the Fenny Stratford charabanc disaster was begun. After the engine-driver, fireman, and guard of the train had given evidence, the Inspector stated he had received a message from the Coroner, and deemed it in the public interest that the inquiry should be held in private.