13 JANUARY 1950, Page 4

I can understand the indignation felt by Sir Will Lawther,

the miners' leader, and a good many other workers, at the vote of large sums of money to the managing directors of Austin Motors and Standard Motors at a time when ,trade unionists are being urged to withhold all new wage-demands in view of the financial emer- gency. But Sir Will's suggestion that legislation should be passed with retrospective effect making such donations by shareholders illegal should be resisted to the utmost. Nothing can be more per- nicious than retrospective legislation, to which the present Govern- ment has already shown itself all too prone. Every Englishman is expected to know the law and order his actions accordingly. He is deplorably subject to regulations which may be issued at any moment, but the law on which they are based and which determines their principles, is known, and they refer to the future, not the past. For a man to take pains to ascertain what the law is, to assure himself that some action he proposes taking is completely legal, and then to find it made illegal, to his detriment, retrospectively is quite monstrous. Let there be legislation by all means—but to govern future, not past, transactions.

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