William Adamson speaks to the House of Commons on the Government of India Bill, 5 December 1919

THE political consciousness of India has been awakening within recent years, and her people have been pressing for reforms. All the evidence goes to confirm the idea that that pressure will continue until her people are able to obtain complete self-government. That is a very legitimate aspiration on the part of the Indian people, and it embodies one of the principles which have been brought into great prominence in the course of the world conflict from which we are just emerging. The aim of the best type of British statesmen who have interested themselves in the government of our great Indian Dependency has been to lead her people up by gradual stages to a position in which they would be able to exercise the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship within the Empire, a position in which they would be able to exercise all the duties and responsibilities of self-government. How this can best be accomplished is the problem which faces the House and the people of this country to-day, and I hope we are going to discharge that great responsibility in such a way as will assist the people of India to build up a strong united nation, well able to exercise all the duties of self-government. In August, 1917, the present Government, in declaring its policy regarding the future government of India, indicated that they were in complete sympathy with the progressive realization of this aim, and this Bill has been brought forward with that object in view. The Labour party are prepared to admit that the Bill is a definite move in the right direction, our principal criticism being that it does not go far enough, and that we 'are failing to take the fullest advantage of the help of the people of India themselves to assist us in the successful accomplishment of the great task we have in hand. The Bill gives to the people of India in a measure of control the various Provinces, but no real control in the Central Government. This is a mistake and will rob us of the sympathetic cooperation of some of the best elements of the population of India.

        We also regret the very limited franchise which this Bill provides. There may be practical difficulties in the way of the full enfranchisement of the people of India at this juncture, but on the face of it it is absurd that only 5,000,000 out of a total population of 250,000,000 have been enfranchised by this Bill. Especially do we regret that the industrial workers are entirely excluded. There might have been something to have been said for the exceptional treatment of the industrial workers of India if there had been no industrial problems facing her people and demanding solutions at their hands, but the industrial development of our great Indian Dependency has provided a considerable crop of industrial problems. While we are glad to note that the industrial workers of India are beginning to build up a trade union movement, whereby they will be able to protect their conditions of employment in the coming days, we are disappointed that in this Bill we have failed to provide the Indian working class movement with that political safety valve which has been provided in our own and other industrial countries. We are fully aware of the great value that political freedom has been to our own nation. It has given the working classes an alternative to direct action, and an opportunity of working out their own destinies along constitutional lines, along the lines of evolution and against revolution, and the working classes of this country have taken full advantage of that opportunity. They have used that alternative to the greatest possible degree. To such an extent is that the case that there is a strong probability that Labour will assume the responsibilities of government in this country in the not distant future. That is an opportunity which you are denying to the industrial worker of India, and you force him back upon the alternative to that, namely, direct action. In our opinion that is a profound mistake, which may prove very costly to the Empire and to the people of India themselves. We regret also the exclusion of the women of India from the opportunity of standing on a political equality with the men. Our experience in this country, especially within the last five years, has taught us the great value of men and women facing the problems of national life together. Notwithstanding the defects, from our point of view, of this Bill, however, as a party we welcome the measure as a step in the right direction. We hope it will prove a success, and so justify a further installment of political power at no distant date. I hope the people of India themselves will accept the measure in the right spirit as a step towards the realization of their ideals of self-government, and will do their best to make it a success, and so inspire the people of this country with the necessary confidence to trust them with a much larger measure of self-government in the very near future.

From: A. Berriedale Keith, ed. Speeches and Documents on Indian Policy, 1750-1921. Vol. II. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1922, 263-265.