Such a speech as this •gave Mr. Lloyd George a
very easy opening, which he fully used. He declared that though Mr. Brace professed to dislike bureaucracy, State control of the mines would mean bureaucracy and nothing else. He made fine ironic play with Mr. Brace's picture of " State workers pursued by a daily and nightly desire to increase output in every direction." The truth was that State control would bring about something like the system in Russia, and would end in forced labour. Mr. Lloyd George asked whether the miners were really demanding the acceptance of Mr. Justice Sankey's scheme, or the acceptance of their own plans, which were perfectly well known, for syndic- alizing the industry. We may remark here that the Sankey scheme would give the workers minority representation and would mean a surrender of the right to strike. Although the miners continually talk as though they had accepted that scheme, they as a matter of fact rejected it.
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