Mr. Herbert Smith, the President of the Conference, did his
best to check the flowing tide of folly, but he ignominiously failed. On Friday, October 8th, the Dele- gate Conference met again and expelled from the Con- ference Mr. George Spencer, M.P., and two .other Nottinghamshire delegates, who had arranged for work to be resumed at certain collieries. The general return to work in Nottinghamshire shows that in that district at all events there is a large majority which is grateful to Mr. Spencer. We admire the courage and loyalty with which Mr. Frank Hodges, Secretary of the Miners' International Federation, hastened to the vindication of Mr. Spencer. • " The one man,' said Mr. Hodges in a speech last Saturday, `who in recent Parliamentary debates has made the most practical and constructive speeches on behalf of the miners is Mr. George Spencer. Strange irony ! He is the first M.P. to be suspended from the miners' conference. . . These'docisions arrived at behind closed doors are so reminiscent of Moscow as to outrage British ideas of common decency. These are the very. people who daily plead for justice and fair play from the employers. . . . All this wreckage of miners' homes and hopes is due to a subtle combination of minority propaganda linked, by coincidence, with incompetent leadership. Tho miners to save themselves must counter-attack. The situation is so tragic that every experienced local leader and every hitherto non-vocal minor must assert himself quickly. The district leaders have now to consider not district versus national agreements, but district versus unauthorized pit settlement.. They know now, as well as I, that incompetence has dished them of national agreement.' "
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