Later in the debate, Mr. Baldwin explained that Mr. Thomas
had given the House to understand that there was in existence a document written by the Prime Minister, to which the Industrial Council of the T.U.C. had agreed. " That," said Mr. Baldwin, " is not quite so. It was a formula that had been reached by a dis- cussion between permanent officials and some members of the T.U.C., to which it was reported that the Trade Unions might agree." He himself had written down nothing at all from the first moment to the last. The formula was actually written by Lord Birkenhead and ran as follows : " We [the General Council of the T.U.C.] would urge the miners to authorize us to enter upon dis- cussion with the understanding that they and we accept the Report [the Coal Commission's Report] as a basis of settlement and we approach it with the knowledge that it may involve some reduction of wages." We must point out here that the General Council of the T.U.C. was not, as has been generally supposed, acting as a plenipotentiary on behalf of the miners. It is quite clear now that the acceptance of this formula had still to receive the consent of the miners. This fact seems to have been at once a discovery and a disappointment to the Government, who had supposed that the General Council had been vested with full powers to act. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald said that the sorrow of the whole thing to him was that although the Prime Minister knew what the mind of the Trades Union Council was, he never asked any questions of them about the Daily Mail incident. Could he not have said : " Do you know nothing about this Are you responsible ? What action do you propose to take ? "
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