There were loud cheers from its supporters when the Divorce Reform Bill completed its passage through the Commons at 2.15 p.m. The Bill's third reading was carried by 109 votes to 55, a majority of 54.
MR. ALEC JONES (Rhondda, West, Lab.), sponsor of the Bill, moving the third reading, said that if they sought to discourage divorce they could not do it by law, but by practising and encouraging others to follow a far higher moral approach to human relationships.
He quoted from a letter which typified the feelings of many of the people who, he hoped, the Bill would serve well.
The letter said: "There are many harsh cases such as mine and we can do so little to help you. I am 68 years of age and in 1936 I left my legal spouse, due to the conduct she meted out to me. That was 33 long, long years ago.
"She refused to divorce me and after many years of sadness I met a gracious lady in 1945 and in 1949 we came to live here as man and wife. We have no children; neither had I any by my legal spouse.
"We just go on hoping, hoping and hoping, that one day before one of us is called home we may be legally married and so complete our loyal love and affection. Will you help our dream come true? Please do try.''
That was what the Divorce Reform Bill would do - serve people like this and serve them well.
MR. PETER MAHON (Preston, South, Lab.) said the Bill was an open-ended attack on marriage and therefore on the family. As divorce became easier, marriage would become weaker. For the first time in English law, a defaulter would benefit from a wrong doing. A man could walk out on his wife with someone else's wife.
This is not a licence (he said). This is legislation for marital pandemonium, or if you prefer it, the law of the jungle. With this Bill we are giving this country eternal promiscuity. As this Bill makes its mark there will be indubitably a philanderer's paradise.
MRS. LENA JEGER (Holborn and St. Pancras, South. Lab.) said this was a small turning point in the social history of the country. Women of the future would rejoice at what the Commons had done today.
She said "women of the future'' advisedly, because surely the Bill attempted to raise the status of both parties in a marriage. It was part of women's attitude generally to higher status, equal pay, and greater opportunity in professional and working life.
MR. EMERY (Honiton, C.) said it seemed to him a realistic and logical advance that for the first time in this country it should be accepted that the breakdown of marriage should be established as the reason for divorce. The concept that in any divorce there was just one guilty person was just not so.
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