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226 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
I do not understand. Why is it and what is it that you will get by bringing all persons working in one industry in one particular union ? I fail to understand. On the other hand, my view is, as I submitted, that if you make these impossible conditions, people will not care to form unions at all. The Mahomedans who prefer, and I think we must all agree to allow them the liberty to choose their politics, if they prefer that there will be no use in having a trade union if their trade union is not able to follow the policy laid down by the Muslim League, they may not have any union at all. In the same way if the untouchables feel that if they are not allowed to make some provision for the education of their children and other amenities pertaining to their classes, they would rather not have it, what is the situation that you are creating thereby ? The situation that you are creating is you are compelling people not to have any union at all and I submit therefore, that this is a provision which is fraught with great mischief.
Then, Sir, the second point that arises out of the provisions 4 to 20 is this. What is going to be the effect of this Bill on the stability of the trade union movement ? Supposing that some kind of trade union which could ultimately aspire to be free from the control of the master does grow up, is there any guarantee under the provisions contained in this Bill that that union will remain as a functioning union? So far as I have been able to study the provisions of this Bill that a union once registered will continue to enjoy that registration. Clause 10 is the most dangerous clause. That clause will always be hanging like a sword upon a union : Though registered, its life will always be in jeopardy and it can never be certain that while it has a legal existence today, it will not continue to have a legal existence tomorrow, because under the provisions of this clause its registration may be cancelled at any time provided certain circumstances happen, and once a registration is cancelled, the whole structure which might have been built up with enormous industry, with enormous energy, will simply have been washed away. Now, Sir, there is a further mischief, if I may say so, which is contained in this Bill. It is this that the cancellation of the registration of a union is left to a rival union or to an employer, which means that there will be mutual rivalry, mutual jealousy and a cut-throat competition, if I may say so, between the different trade union men in order to destroy a rival union. A trade union therefore which is once registered under this Bill, in order that it may enjoy a perpetual existence, shall have to show at all times that it had 51 per cent. membership of the total number of workers. Sir, I again ask the question : Is it possible for any union to show that it will have 51 per cent. membership of the total number of workers employed ? It will be interesting. I believe, if I show to the House how trade union membership fluctuates from year to year and I give these figures which I have taken from the figures of Great Britain. In the year
1892 the total membership of trade unions was 1,576,000. In 1910 it was
2,565,000. In 1920 it was 8,346,000 but in 1934 it fell to 4,441,000. There was a drop in ten years of 50 per cent. of the membership of trade unions.