(by Private Notice) asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, why Government policy with regard to Prestwick Airport included no indication of the rent to be charged to Scottish Aviation Ltd., or of the arrangements he had in mind on the arbitration procedure and if he will now make a statement on these two important points.

My noble Friend announced yesterday that he has decided to confirm the compulsory purchase Order with regard to Prestwick Airport and he has informed Scottish Aviation, Limited, that he is prepared to give them a lease for 99 years, subject to settlement of terms, of the premises which they occupy. The rent to be charged will be a matter for negotiation with the company and would not be facilitated by my mentioning any figure in advance. In the event of any difference of opinion my noble Friend is prepared to accept the decision of an arbiter and he is considering how best an arbiter can be appointed.

I do not think I can usefully say more except to add that my noble Friend is hopeful that the terms of the lease can be so framed as to relieve Scottish Aviation, Limited, of any anxiety they may have expressed in the past as to the security of their general tenure or as to their freedom to make long-term plans. I hope that outstanding questions will be speedily settled, as, with good will, I am sure they can be.

While thanking the Parliamentary Secretary and his Minister for their well-meaning efforts to bring this long-drawn- out matter to a conclusion, may I ask whether they will appreciate that Prestwick airport has now become a symbol to Scotland of her part in Scottish aviation? Will they sympathetically and swiftly deal with these questions of rent, direct orders to the airport, and feeder services, and so help to settle the problem of these four-and-a-half years of frustration?

I do not think I can quite accept the word "frustration" unless it refers to the efforts of my Department to get this matter settled in the past. I hope that outstanding problems will be speedily deal with. I hope that we can then set aside an unused portion of this airport in which to bury the hatchet good and deep.

Does my hon. Friend appreciate that the news that this airport, in which the nation has invested so much money, is to be compulsorily acquired and to become public property for the benefit of the nation will be welcomed all over Scotland?

(by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has now any statement to make about the destruction in Singapore by arson of several thousand tons of rubber.

A fire at the Aik Hoe rubber factory was reported to the police at midday yesterday. The police and fire brigade reached the scene within ten minutes. The fire, however, spread rapidly, and within the next 2½ hours enveloped the whole factory. It was not brought under control until midnight. The estimated loss may exceed 11 million Malayan dollars. Preliminary inquiries indicate that the fire, which began in the drying shed near the main entrance, was started by arson, though responsibility has not yet been established. Investigations are proceeding.

The factory was named for sabotage in the recently captured plans of the Malayan Communist Party. The police had advised the owners of this, and on measures of protection. The police have also been patrolling the area nightly since the 30th April. The Government of Singapore are fully alive to the threat of organised sabotage of this kind, and I am satisfied from the Governor's report to me that the police have taken the fullest possible precautions, in consultation with the owners of factories and warehouses generally.

While joining with the Minister in the tribute he has paid to the police and the other Services at Singapore, who worked magnificently under great strain, may I ask him two questions? One is whether he is contemplating assisting the police with any form of auxiliary volunteer organisation to tackle this very difficult question of organised Communistic sabotage in the island of Singapore. The second is whether, in view of the fact that the emergency may increase, and may stop or minimise the supply of these essential raw materials, he has concerted with the local authorities and local interests any possible scheme of Government insurance, to come into effect later, should that be necessary?

On the first question, my answer is that I discussed this matter very fully with the Governor on my recent visit, and I believe that the steps that have been taken will be effectual. We cannot prevent acts of sabotage in every instance. The reply to the second question is that I would prefer not to make a statement about that matter now. I am making inquiries into the matter.

Before I call on the hon, and gallant Member for Belfast, North (Lieut.-Colonel Hyde), I want to make an appeal to hon. Members. The two Private Notice Questions have already taken up five minutes of our time and we shall have a rather long Royal Commission, for I believe that there are 55 Bills which are to receive the Royal Assent. We may be running short of time and that may reduce the time for the last important subject which is to be discussed. I hope, therefore, that we shall keep to the time-table as closely as possible.

I am glad to have this opportunity of raising a question which is of importance to those whose business or pleasure obliges them to travel between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom but it has been found necessary to exercise a certain control over travellers, who are obliged to be in possession of travel permits in the form of passports or travel identity cards when they pass betwen these two component parts of the United Kingdom.

The travel identity card is a simpler document than the passport. I have an example of it in my hand. So far as Northern Ireland is concerned, it is somewhat infelicitously coloured green. I should have thought that red, white or blue, or perhaps orange, would have been a more appropriate colour. The traveller's passport, or travel identity card, has to be examined at the ports of embarkation in the respective countries. The travel permit system was instituted in the early years of the war, and it was borne cheerfully by the people of Northern Ireland, but we are now in the sixth year of peace, uneasy though that peace may be, and in Northern Ireland we are beginning to wonder whether this system of control or restriction has become permanent.

It involves delay and irritation, not to say expense. Travellers have to queue, sometimes in draughty sheds, so that their cards or passports may be produced and examined by the immigration officials. I have only the very highest praise for the way in which the immigration officials carry out their duties. I have been through their hands many hundreds of times and I have been greatly impressed by the courtesy and efficiency with which they do their work. My criticisms and suggestions are directed to the question whether the time has come to terminate this system or at least to modify the form in which it operates.

The subject has been raised before in the House. In the last Parliament it was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Mr. Gage) and by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Haire), and I put a Question about it to the Home Secretary in the present Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman's answer has always been the same, that the reason for the continuance of this system is the possibility that undesirable aliens may be able to enter Great Britain from Eire by way of Northern Ireland.

I wonder why there should be so many more undesirable aliens than there were in 1939 when we had no such system. I shall be glad if the Under-Secretary of State would tell us who the undesirable aliens are and why they should now be regarded with suspicion any more than they were 11 years ago. If these aliens really are so undesirable, it seems rather hard that we in Northern Ireland should have to put up with this, because the system as it is operated now does not give us any protection at all in Northern Ireland. It is operated only at the ports through which people travel between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I suggest that the really undesirable people who come from Eire into Northern Ireland are those who have nefarious designs on the internal security of Northern Ireland. They want to stay in Ulster, and they should be controlled, but the present system does not control them. I should like the Home Secretary to consider the possibility of removing the system of control from the points at which it is at present exercised to points along the Eire-Northern Ireland border where I believe it is possible to exercise this form of control. The Home Secretary has said that such control along the border is not practicable, but the border is only 180 miles long, which is very short compared with borders in other parts of the world—the United States-Mexican border is many thousands of miles in length—which are controlled very efficiently and effectively by the authorities there.

The Customs and Revenue officials exercise control very efficiently on the Eire-Ulster border. I want to give an example from my own knowledge to show that control can be exercised by immigration officials. An angler was fishing for trout in Lough Melvin which is intersected by the border, being between the counties of Leitrim and Fermanagh. By the time he had caught his 7 lb. trout he was exhausted. He started to catch the fish from the Eire side but he landed it on the Ulster side where he wanted to go in search of a cup of tea or some stronger liquid. He was immediately pounced on from behind some bushes by a Customs official who was no doubt on the look-out for smugglers and suggested—probably with a twinkle in his eye—that the man was smuggling fish. The angler was moved back to the Eire side where he was pounced upon by an Eire Revenue officer who suggested the same thing. That shows that control by Revenue authorities is exercised there, and if it is possible to control contraband, it should be possible to control the entry and exit of individuals.

I realise that it may not be possible altogether to do away with the system, but I urge the Under-Secretary to consider the possibility of removing the control system to the border. I should like to invite him and the Home Secretary to accompany me on a tour of the border. I am sure that that tour would be as profitable to them as it would be pleasurable to me, and I am sure that I could convince them that it is possible to exercise control there. I hope that this will be carefully examined and that the system will be altered in the way I have suggested. That would, at the same time, remove an irksome restriction which bona fide travellers between this country and Northern Ireland have had to endure for too long.

The hon, and gallant Member for Belfast, North (Lieut.-Colonel Hyde) is to be congratulated on the way he has presented the case, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will make the concession which that argument demands. I feel certain that I know the spirit of the people of Northern Ireland—I can declare an interest because I was born there and lived there for 30 years—and I know that they feel very strongly that they are being discriminated against by this long continuing control. We of the Labour Party have said that we do not stand for control for control's sake, and I feel that as it is nearly six years after the war the time has come for a serious review of this control upon travellers between Northern Ireland and this country.

Each year for the last five years this question has been raised in the House of Commons, and we have always had the same answer from the Home Secretary, that it is impossible to remove the control. I hope the Under-Secretary will tell us that at least some revision will be made. After all, in the last five years we have seen the removal of many restrictions upon travel from the Continent to this country and it is now possible for travellers to come here from some countries on the Continent without a visa.

Perhaps we may be told whether more aliens are entering Great Britain from Northern Ireland today than before the war. If we assume that there are 2,000 travellers a day from Northern Ireland, how many of these are aliens? Does that proportion whatever it is justify the continuation of this control? If my hon. Friend knows the Northern Ireland police as well as some hon. Members opposite and as, I suppose, I do, he would know that they could smell an undesirable a mile away. I personally agree with the hon, and gallant Gentleman when he says that these restrictions ought to be controlled by the police in Northern Ireland.

I have here a travel permit for Northern Ireland of a more discreet political colour than the one presented by the hon, and gallant Gentleman opposite; it is an earlier one. But if an undesirable alien wanted to enter this country from Northern Ireland it would appear to be the simplest thing imaginable; he would surely have the brains to see through this simple device. The travel permit is issued to any applicant who presents two photographs, neither of which need be attested. He has to present a signature which is put on the travel permit. In this way this travel permit can be obtained by any applicant who sends two photographs, an identity card number and a name all of which could easily be obtained by an alien anxious to enter this country. That seems to reduce the whole thing to a farce and, if that is so, why is all this elaborate machinery of travel permits maintained?

I suggest that it can be simplified and improved; that in Northern Ireland travellers to this country should be divided into two classes, Britishers and aliens, at the port of exit when it would be extremely simple for the Northern Ireland police to ask a few questions and establish a traveller's identity and bona fides. If any undesirable got through that net I should be very surprised. This may be the last opportunity that my hon. Friend will have in this present Chamber to announce a concession, and I think there could be no better occasion than this, for doing so.

I wish I could undertake to end this requirement of travel cards which admittedly causes much inconvenience to a particularly loyal part of the United Kingdom. I was asked quite frankly by the hon, and gallant Member for Belfast, North (Lieut.-Colonel Hyde) why there was this system of control and particularly why it was necessary today when it was not necessary 11 years ago.

The root of the matter is that before the war the Irish Free State had an immigration system on our lines; their policy regarding the admission of aliens was similar to ours and the two immigration services worked closely together. The immigration officials visited each other, got to know each other's methods of working, and the policy of the respective Governments was the same. If, for instance, the Irish Free State admitted an alien on certain conditions, we automatically applied the same conditions to him if he came to the United Kingdom, and vice versa. Further, no one admitted to the Irish Free State would be denied admission to the United Kingdom, and vice versa. Over the control of aliens the Irish Free State and the United Kingdom were one unit.

Today, the Irish Republic has no longer the same immigration sytem or the same policy with the result that the Irish Republic admits many aliens who would not be qualified to come to this country whether on a Ministry of Labour work permit, as a distressed relative, or under any other category. The example of the Ministry of Labour work permit shows the importance of aliens control. In Northern Ireland, as in Continental countries which have a land frontier, there is an employment permit sytem. This protects the Northern Ireland worker by controlling the employment of people who do not come from Ulster. In Great Britain, we have many customs, and laws which have developed in a certain way because this is an island. One example is our aliens control which is at the port of entry. It is the only check. We have no employment permit system, and there is nothing in our laws and regulations to stop an employer employing an alien and putting a British subject out of work.

If the Irish Republic would once again join with us in working a common system for the control of aliens, then we would for this purpose become a single unit, and these annoying travel cards could be abolished. What is necesasry is that the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic should agree to follow a similar immigration policy, to set up a similar system of immigration control, and to agree that any alien who had been admitted to the Irish Republic or the United Kingdom and who got into the other country, would be accepted back if the second country did not want him to stay there. Until that happens, we must have this control of aliens because, otherwise, there is a danger of their slipping into this country through the back door of the Irish Republic. It should also be recognised that as a result of modern air travel and also of the way in which shipping has developed, there is a very great increase in the amount of air and sea travel direct between the Irish Republic and countries other than the United Kingdom.

The question arises: If there is to be control, where it should be exercsied? Should it be at the border of the United Kingdom or at the ports of Great Britain? I am hoping to go to Northern Ireland in September and I shall certainly consider the hon, and gallant Gentleman's invitation. When I am there, I shall discuss with the Northern Irish authorities the possibilities of control on the border.

The practice of Customs control is of no help to us in solving the problem. We must remember that on the border between the Irish Republic and the United Kingdom there are only 17 or 18 Customs posts. We could not afford to take the risk in respect of undesirable aliens which is taken by the Customs service. It would require an army of immigration officers to make that control effective. There is no real parallel between that boundary and the U.S. Mexican border and that of the United States and Canada. I have crossed those borders many times. It is very easy to do so, but it is extremely difficult to get into Canada, the United States and Mexico from other countries.

It is alleged that the obtaining of a travel card is an inconvenience, and also that it is too easy to obtain. The truth is between those two extremes. We are satisfied that the present system is a valuable safeguard and a check. However, I will certainly have the suggestions examined, and see what we can do to change the colour of the cards from green to red.

Delay is usually caused by shipping difficulties, and not by the inspection of travel permits. There are queues everywhere; people have to queue when going to the Channel Islands, although there is no question of a travel permit being required. There is only one method of sea travel between Northern Ireland and Great Britain which I know of where no queueing is met with. Three years ago today a constituent of mine with whom I had been on training swims in Northern Ireland, pioneered the swimming route from Northern Ireland to Port Patrick in Scotland. I wish I could undertake to end this system. I can only say that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is just as anxious as hon. Members from Northern Ireland are to see unrestricted travel between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

If the Northern Ireland Government can con- trol the entry of workers by means of the permit system on the border, why cannot this Government do the same thing?

I wish this morning to draw the attention of the House mainly to the question of the revision of the Fijian Constitution. I say "mainly," because I understand from the Minister that he feels he will be able to say what he wishes in about 10 minutes only and that will give me about 20 minutes to try to make the case I wish to make. I therefore wish to spend the first few minutes in calling the attention of the House to the more general problems raised by the present colonial policy and then, later, to go on to the particular problems as they affect Fiji.

May I first say, however, that I believe it is generally felt in most parts of the House that opportunities for Colonial Debates are far too infrequent. I have taken quite a considerable interest in Colonial affairs, having had the opportunity, during the war, of visiting a number of Colonies. In spite of that, in the last 12 months, I have only had the opportunity to speak for one period of about 20 minutes and I feel that something has to be done to give hon. Members who take an interest in Colonial affairs more opportunity of debating these very important matters which are now arising. I expect many hon. Members have thought on many occasions of the. lack of opportunities in this House and have thought out various ways and means whereby more time could be spent in debating these matters.

It may be that a suggestion, which I can only touch on now, will appeal to my hon. Friend. That is, that thought be given to setting up a colonial council in the United Kingdom which would be representative and on which the elected members would sit for periods of, say, three years, where colonial debates could go on continuously in public. It could then be seen by colonial peoples that we are keeping their very real problems continuously under review and, at the same time, give them a feeling that, if need be, they can have a say themselves in those affairs in this country.

In previous Colonial Debates I have tried to indicate that I believe Colonial policy needs to be thought out afresh. I think that both in detail and overall, our policy has lagged behind the times. In last year's Colonial Debate, particularly, I made the point that Colonial policy had gone astray because it was tending to focus too much attention on political advance and not enough attention on economic advance. I believe that this year's Colonial Debate tended to focus special attention on that aspect of political policy. Unless each Colony is economically sound, it is not ready for self-government. I suggest to my right hon. Friend that Colonial policy might be summed up in a new motto. Instead of saying, "Self-government as soon as possible," they should adopt the motto, "Self-government as and when self-supporting" and then say, "We will do everything we can towards both these objectives, but we shall not pursue one without the other."

The fact that the Colonial Development Corporation has laid its plans and is forging ahead with the development of economic schemes throughout the Empire, is a proof that in some measure that is Colonial policy, but I do not believe it is stated emphatically enough, particularly in terms which the colonial peoples themselves can understand. Let them realise that the two things, political and economic advancement, are inseparable, and must go hand in hand. Some of the troubles that have arisen in West Africa, and in the Gold Coast and in Nigeria in particular, are examples of this policy of the Colonial Office, which fails to keep these objectives in proper focus.

I was in West Africa during the war, and I have taken special trouble to keep in touch with colonial conditions since by seeing as frequently as possible colonial officials who come back to this country on leave. I get from them this sort of opinion, "Press on with agriculture development, irrigation schemes "—which we have sadly neglected in Nigeria compared with what the French have done in their territory, near by—" develop forestry and the other natural resources and mineral resources first, and then, as the country gets on to a sound economic basis, develop alongside these economic developments the political consciousness of the peoples so that they can participate fully in running their own affairs." We realise, of course, that vast schemes of education need to be developed, but they cannot possibly be developed entirely at the expense of this country. The colonial peoples themselves must help in the organisation and financing of their own educational system.

It is significant that in Nigeria when one goes to such towns as Lagos, one sees that the Nigerians themselves are not, in the main, running even their own shops. If they have not got that feeling of responsibility for their own affairs, which takes initiative expression in terms of doing simple things like that of running their own shops, it is indicative that they are thinking far too much of political advancement and far too little of economic advancement. That is further shown by the fact that too many of the Nigerians come over to this country to study law and that far too few come across to get degrees in agriculture, engineering, and so forth, which, of course, are vital in order that they shall take up positions of responsibility in running the railways and in advancing better schemes and better methods of agriculture. It was, admittedly, a phrase of derision which Napoleon used when he said that this country was a nation of shopkeepers, but, in fact, therein lies the strength of this country, because it indicates that the individual in this country is for ever trying to take responsibility for running some activity which is in his own hands.

My time is running out and I must pass to the immediate problem of Fiji. Just before I do so I should like to make this one comment: far too much notice has been taken by the Colonial Office of the dissentient and noisy sections of our colonial peoples as represented by the Ziks, the Bustamentes and the Nkrunas in the Gold Coast, compared with those taking a responsible attitude towards the advancement of the Fijian. I should like, in particular, to mention the Hon. A. A. Ragg, who has kept me fully informed of what is happening there. The Fijians themselves, from the evidence given to me, are, in fact, making comparisons between the political advancement that they are making and the political advances which are being made in West Africa. For example, we see that although the present Nigerian Constitution was set up in 1947, already the proposals are well in hand for a revision, and it seems from people who are watching the working of the present constitution that the only thing about it is that it seems to be working well.

In Fiji, the Constitution was last changed in 1937. The present position is summed up adequately, I think, in the letter which I received from the Hon. A. A. Ragg, dated 23rd April of this year. He said:

"The Governor has returned to the Colony after his visit to London to discuss with the Secretary of State constitutional and other matters concerning the Colony. At a meeting of the Legislative Council, held on 12th March, he informed the Council that:

'On the question of constitutional reform, both Mr. Creech Jones, before his retirement, and his successor in office displayed great interest in the discussions held and the views expressed by the honourable unofficial Members, during the November Session of this Council. Mr. Griffiths has authorised me to say that he has noted the upshot of those discussions, and that he proposed to take no action in the matter of substantial constitutional changes in Fiji until there is evidence that such changes are desired by the majority of the accredited representatives of public opinion in the Colony.'"

Mr. Ragg, in his letter, comments on that report by the Governor, by saying:

"With all due respect, I submit that as long as the system of nomination on the unofficial side of the Council prevails, there is no hope of an expression of opinion in favour of a more liberal Constitution as the nominated members with but few exceptions, have voted against revision."

I do not know how progressive the present Governor, Sir Brian Freeston, is in his ideas. He may be trying to represent the desires and wishes of the Fijian people. I do not know, but I took the opportunity to discuss the Fijian position with Mr. Garvie when he came from Fiji on his way to take up his appointment as Governor of Honduras, and he gave me the opinion that the ideas expressed by the Hon. A. A. Ragg were sound, and that they should be listened to. I hope my right hon. Friend will take due regard of the opinions expressed by Mr. Ragg.

I have sent to the Colonial Office the very full papers that Mr. Ragg has let me have, and they show that the ideas that he is trying to express are widely represented. The first principle, I suggest, that the Colonial Office should bear in mind is that the interests of the Fijians must predominate. They were there many centuries before our claim to the islands and before either Europeans or Indians arrived there. We know that the Indians are in the majority. They have a population of 125,500, while the Fijians have 121,250. Yet it seems to me that the Indians have greater freedom and more democratic representation. The Indians were introduced into the Colony by us in 1879 to help in the development of the sugar industry, which is now the chief export. Undoubtedly, it is a fair claim that the Indians have to the political advances that they have made.

The Fijians are very fearful of the steadily increasing Indian population, which, they feel, is threatening the indigenous peoples. It is a very real fear, and, therefore, it seems to me that some special safeguard should be given to the Fijians.

An example of greater Indian freedom is indicated by the composition of the present Legislative Council. It consists of the Governor, who is the President, and 16 official members appointed by the Government, who, naturally, will be inclined to vote as he directs. There are five Europeans, three of whom are elected and two nominated by the Governor; five Fijians, all of whom are nominated by the Governor and who are chosen from a panel of suggested names put forward by the council of the chiefs. There are five Indians who are on the same level as the Europeans in that they also have three elected and two nominated members. This indicates that the Legislative Council is composed of 16 official members and 15 unofficial members and, therefore, the official members are always in a majority. This means that there is always a preponderance in favour of the status quo and that bears out the point made in Mr. Ragg's letter.

How, therefore, can a change ever take place? The only thing which does seem to be happening is that we are inviting the very troubles which have forced progress in West Africa. We are inviting the rise of dissident forces and rioting. In fact, in 1948 there were troubles in the gold mines which are only symptomatic of what might well develop if we fail to take notice of the desire for political progress at present being expressed.

The Fijians are selected by the Governor from the panel of chiefs and this puts them at a special disadvantage. In addition, the Fijians are subject to orders made by the Tikima and provincial councils, and this, of course, means that the Fijians are under double control. It has been suggested in the Report that was put before the Legislative Council by the Governor, when he returned recently, that there is no popular decision in favour of a change in the Constitution. I do not see how there ever can be with the present set-up. The chiefs, the officials, the Europeans in the main and the Indians in the main are likely continuously to prevent the right desires and wishes of the Fijians from being expressed on the Council because, to some extent, that would tend to go against their interests.

The Colonial Office seem to take very little notice of the expression of opinion of responsible Europeans who are out there. Let it be put on record that the Indians in Fiji did not even fight in defence of the British Empire in the last war, whereas the Fijians and the Europeans sacrificed both blood and treasure in the common cause. For that effort alone I believe the Fijians have won a recognition of their right to greater responsibility for their own fate. In the council papers put before the Legislative Council in 1949 the suggestion was made of what requirements might be made and I would quote them to sum up my remarks. The wording is:

"There shall be an Executive Council for the Colony and the said Council shall consist of the Governor as President; four ex officio members, viz., the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney-General, the Financial Secretary, and the Secretary for Fijian Affairs; three elected members of the Legislative Council, one European, one Fijian and one Indian, to be chosen by the Governor from a panel of six composed of two members from each racial group and any other person or persons as an extraordinary member or members as the Governor may require to assist him in the Administration;".

Then, even more important, for the representative Legislative Council:

"There shall be a Legislative Council for the Colony and the said Council shall consist of the Governor as President, four ex officio members "—

the same as the Executive Council—

"12 official members appointed by the Governor, five European members elected by the European electorate "—

completely, without any nominated members—

"five Fijian members, elected by the Council of Chiefs, and five Indian members elected by the Indian electorate."

Even this, in the opinion of many people, does not go far enough. Why should the Fijian people themselves be put at a disadvantage, compared with the Indians and the Europeans?

On the other hand, this was an agreed proposal, but it is so mild in its request that I suggest to my right hon. Friend that he give to the people of Fiji a definite reassurance, if he can, by suggesting it would now be appropriate to reconsider the whole situation with a view to at least adopting this proposed revision; and that, at a later stage, when there is some greater democratic expression for the Fijian people, a further amendment might be produced which would give the Fijian people themselves the same opportunities to express their opinion as the European and Indian section of the population.

In the short time at my disposal I do not propose to cover the same ground as my hon. Friend, because he strayed into Nigeria, and, I think, the Gold Coast, and various other places some considerable distance from Fiji. I would only say that, in general, we are seized of the importance of the economic developments of the Empire; and the Colonial Office is just as aware of its importance as is my hon. Friend. As he mentioned himself, among other things we have set up a Colonial Development Corporation, with a capital of no less than £100 million, which will play a very important part in this development.

The picture given by my hon. Friend is not altogether correct, and I will give the facts as we know them. In September, 1948, the Governor agreed to set up a committee of unofficial members of the Legislative Council to make proposals. This committee was presided over by none other than Mr. Ragg, the gentleman about whom my hon. Friend has been speaking. I might add that there were six members, two of whom were Fijians. Their recommendations were, first, that the official majority on the Legislative Council should be retained. Second, that the Fijian members of the council should be elected direct to the council by the Council of Chiefs without reference to the Governor—that was a change—and the four European and Indian nominated members should, in future, be elected—

rose—

I have so short a time left that I cannot give way.

The only major change they recommended was that the Fijian members should be elected directly to the council, by the Council of Chiefs without any reference to the Governor. That is an important point, but what happened later? There was a meeting of the full Legislative Council, and the unofficial members of the council said that they favoured leaving the Constitution exactly as it was; and the members of the council who voted in favour of it included all five Fijians. There was not actually a division called because, so certain were all the members that they wanted no change, that they agreed to it by a show of hands without even calling for a division, which they have called for on a number of other matters. So, our information is that there is, from the Legislative-Council, no desire for change.

My hon. Friend says that it is not representative of the people of Fiji. I maintain that it is. The council of chiefs sounds as if it were a body which was entirely undemocratic, but that is not so. It is largely elected by secret ballot by the provincial councils. They, in turn, are elected in the same way by the village councils. Therefore, there is a system of elections starting with the village councils and going to the provincial councils right up to the council of chiefs, and for elections to that council there is a secret ballot. That being so, I think I can say that the system of the council of chiefs is comparatively democratic. It is not a body composed entirely of chiefs who have arrived there merely by virtue of some mysterious rite about which nobody knows anything. The greater number of them have been elected. They say that it is wise that there should be no change. The Fijian, Indian and British members also say that.

It can, therefore, hardly be said that there is a great demand for a constitutional change. The speech of my hon. Friend was not calculated to provide a calm atmosphere in Fiji. He referred to the fact that there had been riots in the past. He spoke of bitterness between Indians and Fijians. I do not think that that bitterness exists, and I certainly think that it is the worst possible thing to try to stir it up if it does not exist. If the House will bear with me, I do not think that I can do better than to read part of the speech made by the senior unofficial Fijian member of the Legislative Council. It is a remarkable speech, which shows the attitude which the Fijians adopt to these matters more clearly than any Englishman could express it. This is what he said:

"Your Excellency, in this country we have three communities: the European, devoted to his own affairs; the Indian, jealous of his rights; and the Fijian, steeped in traditional ideas. Though there are powerful elements of conflict in our society, for 20 years we have worked peacefully together on this council. We often had differences, but we have settled them as friends and not as enemies. There is in this council no racial bitterness. During this period we have made great progress, especially during the post-war period when other countries were going through political and economic storms. All this we have done under the existing constitution which was framed to accommodate the different racial outlooks and temperaments. We are now facing a new development plan in which we will be required, each of us, to give of our best and to make sacrifices. I therefore ask the European and the Indian members to go forward together with us on the present Constitution on the elective and nominative system until we have carried through the work we have so willingly shouldered. I make this plea backed by the strength of political facts in the Colonial Empire. In no other Colony is there the peace, the good will and the cooperation that we have in this Colony."

Under the Constitution as it exists now, I maintain that, far from there being any need for a sudden examination of this matter, it is better that we should wait until there may be a demand—if there is in future, because all things change—for a change. While the Constitution works as it does now, with the very great success evidenced by this Fijian speech, I think that it would be unwise to make any alteration. As the hon. Gentleman said, we have important developments with which to deal in the economic field. We will pursue these matters to the utmost. In the meantime, we trust that the Fijians, the Indians and the British in Fiji will continue to work together with that good will which they have shown in the past.

Does my right hon. Friend realise that the person whom he quoted, and upon whose speech he largely based his case, is somebody who, at one time, was extremely progressive, but, later, got to a responsible position which may well have caused him to be more silent than he would otherwise have been? Would he also bear in mind that when I quoted from the document, I was quoting from the actual report of the special committee set up by the Governor?

I hope that my hon. Friend does not mean that if he were appointed Colonial Secretary he would suddenly lose all his idealism and become dead from the neck upwards.

That is an unfair comment.

I should like to invite the attention of the House to the economic conference which is due to open at Torquay in September. In so doing, I shall probably wander even more widely around the Empire, and possibly the world in general, than the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, West (Mr. G. Cooper). The conference at Torquay is merely another in a series of long and dreary economic conferences held since 1947, mostly in the choicest watering places of Europe and America. The object of all these conferences is to lower tariffs and to reduce, and eventually eliminate, tariff preferences and especially our own system of Imperial Preference.

This process began at Geneva in 1947 when, after six months, there was produced the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. After a series of tariff negotiations which resulted in tariff reductions by many countries and a certain number of reductions of Imperial Preference, this policy was continued at Havana in the winter of 1947–8, at Annecy in the summer of last year and, in addition, there have also been one or two minor sessions at Geneva. The President of the Board of Trade told me, in answer to a recent Question, that the total cost of sending British delegations to these conferences had already reached a figure of about £150,000 and that the delegation at Torquay would cost between £4,000 and £5,000 per month. I merely mention these figures in passing.

The policy which is behind all these conferences has been imposed on the world by the Government of the United States. I do not blame the Government of the United States for trying to do this, I blame our Government for tamely swallowing that policy. The ostensible reason why they have done this, is that they believe that the policy of no discrimination is in the best interests of world trade. But the real reason why the Americans do this, is because their own exporting industries want our Imperial Preference abolished so that they can prise open the markets of the Dominions and Colonies for their own mass-produced goods.

Fortunately, the Government are implementing this policy at a very slow pace. In fact, the policy is trickling along in bottom gear. The Government realise that the policy cannot be put fully into operation at the moment, and I hope that gradually they will realise that it cannot be put into operation at all. So far, they have given away nothing vital. In fact, my chief complaint against them is that they have completely tied our hands. They have bound this country not to increase any of our existing Empire Preferences or to introduce any new ones. They have done that without getting anything in return. We have eliminated or reduced some of our Preferences and we have got something in return—whether it is valuable is another matter—in the way of reduced tariffs; but we have had nothing in return for this tying of our hands which prevents us completely from introducing any new Preferences or increasing any existing ones.

We can free ourselves of this policy at 60 days' notice. I was glad when the President of the Board of Trade said, in answer to a question last week, that if the proposal to be discussed at Torquay succeeded in extending the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade for another three years, it still would not affect the 60 days' notice, because the Agreement has not yet been completely ratified, if the word "ratified" is the right one to use in connection with this Agreement. Therefore, the provisional protocol is still in application. I hope that the Agreement is not ratified and that the 60 days' notice will still apply.

The ban on increasing our present preferences is a very miserable business. In the Debate on the Finance Bill on 22nd June, when my hon. Friends and myself proposed a new Clause to reduce the duty on Empire wines, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury said, as one reason why it could not be accepted, that it would be contrary to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. What a pitiful confession from a spokesman of His Majesty's Government, that we have tied our hands so that we cannot increase the preference on Empire wine and, therefore, encourage more Empire wines to be imported into this country.

The President has told us that it is Government policy, as he put it, to "maximise Empire trade." It is impossible to "maximise" Empire trade if we are barred from taking measures which will encourage the increase of imports from Empire countries, and Empire wines are a case in point. I am not suggesting that we should specifically try to increase the import of Empire wines. I am in favour of increasing all forms of Empire trade, but we cannot do that if there is this ban on increasing Imperial Preference. We hope that, one day, we shall live in a world free of exchange controls and of currency shortages, but if the Government are going to carry this Geneva policy through, as they have undertaken, they will in accepting the original American loan in 1945, they will have to give away something vital one day.

How are our Colonies going to fare if Imperial Preference is finally abolished? How are we going to improve conditions in the Colonial Empire, as we are pledged to do, if we cannot give priority to their produce? How will Mauritius or Barbados—I take them as two examples because they are almost made of sugar—be able to find a market for their exports in the face of the competition of sugar from Cuba if there is no preference in our Empire trade system? What will happen to Gambia, whose groundnuts form 95 per cent. by value of her total exports? What hope will there be for the fantastically expensive groundnuts scheme in Tanganyika, if any groundnuts ever materialise?

State trading is no remedy. Article XVII of the Geneva Agreement on Tariffs and Trade says that the Government must buy solely in accordance with commercial considerations. Therefore, if groundnuts from Tanganyika are a little dearer than groundnuts from the United States we would be compelled to buy United States rather than Empire groundnuts. The poultry scheme in Gambia is now hatching some eggs. As far as I know they are very expensive eggs, so expensive that the Ministry of Food is very wary of buying them. How can we guarantee a market for them?

I invite the hon. Gentleman who is to reply to say what will happen to Lancashire if the preferences which cotton goods enjoy in some Empire countries are wiped out. How will Lancashire, his own county, and incidentally the county represented by his right hon. Friend, fare, if cotton goods do not obtain preference? Apart from the question of Japan, there is competition from other industrial countries as well.

One of the odd things about the Havana Charter—most of which has been incorporated in the Geneva Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, because it was not ratified in Havana—is that it bans systems of moderate preference, like ours, but it actively encourages customs unions which give 100 per cent. preference. The United States is a case in point. It is one vast customs union. The State of New York gives to the State of California, 3,000 miles away, 100 per cent. preference, yet, according to a system that we are invited to make worldwide, Australia should not give New Zealand, about 1,200 miles away, any greater preference than she gives to Norway or Nicaragua.

There is a great deal of opposition to this doctrine. The Benelux countries, which have tried to form a customs union, have gone so far towards it, but I understand they have now come on to the rocks, because neither the farmers of Holland nor those of Belgium want to admit each others' produce free of duty. It looks as if the customs union will come to grief on that point, because farmers all over Europe are taking the same line. The same opposition applies even in the United States. The New York Board of Trade objected to the Havana Charter and its policy when it was introduced. The National Foreign Trade Council of the United States and the American Tariff League, and also South American countries, do not like it. Various groups of those countries have preference systems. Nor do the countries of the Arab League care for it.

The most conspicuous impression I brought away from the Plenary Session of the Geneva Conference, which adopted the draft trade charter which eventually went to Havana, was that there was complete apathy towards it. There was about as much enthusiasm as one would expect if members of the Supreme Soviet, for example, strayed into a Salvation Army meeting. The Government, in adopting this policy, are putting the clock back 100 years. As Mr. L. S. Amery said in his book "The Awakening," they are "setting up the Humpty-Dumpty of mid-19th century economics on his wall again." If the Conservative Party had done this we would have been called reactionary, and rightly so.

There is no need to prove the success of the system of Imperial Preference between 1932 and 1939, introduced by the pre-war National Government, because the President of the Board of Trade admitted its success when he gave figures, in answer to a Question of mine on 27th April, showing the increased proportion of Class 1 and 2 imports, which came from Empire countries in that period.

I know there are certain right hon. Gentlemen in the Government who believe fervently, or who said they believed very fervently, in a system of Empire Preference. The Minister of Town and Country Planning once said that he gave a rebellious vote in favour of Imperial Preference soon after he came to the House, and he said that he is not one of those who go nibbling away at Imperial Preference. The present Government has nibbled away at Imperial Preference, and I hope that one day the Minister of Town and Country Planning will call them to task for doing it.

While we were increasing our imports from Empire countries before the war we also increased imports from foreign countries; therefore our system of Empire Preference before the war did not damage the interests of the United States. It is really in the interest of the United States that we should continue that policy, because, if we did not, it would mean the break-up of the British Empire, which is the strongest bulwark in the world against Communism.

We should take the lead and persuade our good friends, the Americans, of the error of their ways. I am quite convinced that the future of world prosperity, so far as international trade is concerned, does not lie in this moth-eaten policy of 1850–60, but that it lies in modifying the most-favoured-nation principle so that not only can our own system be developed but foreign countries will be allowed to adopt similar systems in regions or groups. Some experts say that if that were done, even the Russians might find it difficult not to co-operate.

I hope the Government will consider very seriously the way they are going and where it will eventually lead. If they eventually come to the conclusion that they have strayed on to the wrong course. I hope they will come to the House and tell us and that they will take a lead in persuading the Americans of which is the right way of conducting international trade.

The case has been argued very fully by my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) and I think all that remains for me to do is to make a few observations on the general principles involved. I suppose there are very few people in this House who would dispute the fact that Imperial Preferences have been a powerful, if not the most powerful, instrument in the promotion and expansion of trade between ourselves and other Commonwealth countries. In so far as trade is the means whereby resources are developed and conditions created under which population can be attracted into the Commonwealth countries, then it might be argued that preferences have played no mean part in building up the strength of the Dominions. That strength has been of inestimable value to this country and the world twice within the span of a man's lifetime.

I am, however, more concerned with the future than with the past. We have been reminded, particularly during the present Session, that the Commonwealth stands on the threshhold of great developments. The economy of the Dominions, and indeed of the Colonies, too, has been expanding rapidly in the last 10 years. The untapped resources of the British Colonial Empire alone are enormous. Yet it is at this moment that His Majesty's Government have sought to bind' our hands and to limit our control over our own economic destiny.

It is all the more incomprehensible to me that a Socialist Government should have done this, because I have always believed that one of the principal objectives of the Socialist Party was to provide not only full but stable employment for our own people and to provide them with the highest possible standards of living. Yet one of the declared objectives of the Havana Charter is, if I may read it:

"To further the enjoyment by all countries, on equal terms"—

and the operative words are "on equal terms"—

"of access to the markets, products and productive facilities which are needed for their economic prosperity and development."

What exactly is meant by the phrase "equal terms"? I suggest that it is an example of that woolly thinking which has characterised the action and outlook of our own and other governments since the end of the war and has landed us in the grave difficulties in which we find ourselves today in other spheres.

It means, ultimately, the removal of all controls over imports. To give a specific example, it would mean that Japanese goods could flood British Empire markets although they were produced under vastly lower standards of living than those enjoyed by our own people. We could not possibly compete with the mass flooding of the Commonwealth with Japanese or, for that matter, German goods. A British Government guilty of implementing that kind of nonsense would commit an act of the highest folly and would be sealing the death warrant of the British Commonwealth.

Fortunately, as my hon. Friend said, all is not yet lost. There is time for second thoughts. I trust, therefore, that the Government will see fit to instruct our delegation at Torquay accordingly and to re-think their whole attitude and policy on this matter.

I should like to say a few words on another aspect of this subject. A few days ago we had an announcement concerning the establishment of the European Payments Union and the Minister of Economic Affairs gave us a brief explanation of what was intended. From what he said, I gathered that the basic conception of the scheme was the liberalisation of trade. Some of us were rather apprehensive about what it really meant.

The right hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton), who spoke for the Opposition that day, asked certain pertinent questions and indicated that although there was to be an attempt to liberalise trade to the extent of 60 per cent. and still further, there were certain qualifications. He thought it was a facade which had not much in it when go down to close examination. He said there were tariff barriers and customs requirements of various kinds which would still keep out certain traffic. As I understood the arrangements, however, it was the intention to raise imports and, in that connection, we were to expect that further goods would enter this country from Western Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland.

I think it is a good thing that the trade of the world should be liberalised, if that means the development of the natural resources of the various countries for the benefit of the world and the employment of labour upon those processes and activities which they are best designed to perform. Nevertheless, having said that, I think there is some truth in what has been said this morning by hon. Gentlemen opposite, especially in their remarks about Japan and other parts of the world. We know that in Germany and Japan there exists what is called a low price economy—an economy which, before the war, was almost on a slave basis in the case of Japan. As we have so often heard in this House, we saw some of the weaknesses of the system in respect of textiles and pottery. I am very closely associated with the pottery industry in Stoke-on-Trent. We are still to some extent apprehensive about what will happen with Japan and other parts of the world, like Western Germany.

While, as I have said, I welcome the idea of liberalising trade if it is intended to raise the standards of the people generally, and while I realise that if we are to expect America and other countries to take a large quantity of our primary products—as obviously they will have to do—we must consider the point of view of the buying country, there are, nevertheless, certain qualifications.

The Government must be very careful to pay attention to the conditions of production. I was very proud of the work which the International Labour Organisation was able to do between the wars. I thought it was one of the most successful specialised agencies. I hope we shall watch conditions of production, in terms of fair wages, of hours of employment and the plagiarising of trade marks, practices and inventions which should be the property of this and other countries. We know that in some industries in this country, particularly pottery, many of the trade marks and much of the inventive work done in this country have been exploited by countries like Japan.

While we all recognise that we cannot press down 70 million people in those islands indefinitely, and while we appreciate that they have to be allowed to earn their living; while in my view it is wrong to have a closed shop which leads to a condition of autarchy, we must have regard to these basic considerations. I hope that whoever goes to Torquay to talk about the liberalisation of trade or to do some kind of bargaining on tariffs, will not overlook this subject, because it is vital, whether it concerns Japan or Germany or anywhere else in the world.

If those conditions are observed I feel sure we may have confidence in what the Government are doing, because surely to goodness we are all convinced at this time of the day, that the British Commonwealth, in its methods of tackling political, social and economic problems, has much to give to the world. It is a system of which we are very proud and about which we should be very jealous; but we do not want to make it a closed shop. We want to give these good things to the rest of the world.

It is a pleasure to find oneself following an hon. Member on the other side with whom one can agree. I believe that, small though the attendance here is today, the importance of the subject far transcends the apparent but by no means actual disinterest in the subject in the House today. For many years the British Empire has been the victim of not always kind propaganda, and anti-preference propaganda has been made a missile to be hurled at the British way of life. I should like to mention briefly three points which I consider are vitally important to be borne in mind when our delegates go to Torquay.

I would first support previous speakers who have emphasised that our standard of living in this country, despite the burden of taxation—the highest in the world—and, not least, our system of social services, which is the most comprehensive and costly per head of the population of any nation in the world, is maintained because we are able to sell our goods within Empire markets, and we are able to enjoy mutual exchange of trade with Commonwealth and Dominion countries that enjoy a standard similar to our own.

Secondly, I believe most firmly that it is no good spending millions of the taxpayers' money in Colonial Preference and development of new industries, in order to raise the standards of living of the peoples of those Colonies, unless we are prepared to provide markets for the goods which we encourage to be developed in those areas. Colonial development is not worth the paper it is written on, unless we are prepared to protect the goods whose production we stimulate there.

Thirdly, I believe that America cannot go on buying her own exports with her own money for ever. We are grateful for the generous aid she has given Europe, and particularly to us; but she knows, and we know, that if we are to restore Europe to prosperity and maintain her employment, then we must be in a position to keep our people employed. The greatest disservice that was done to this country in trade was to believe for a short while that we could subscribe to the terms of the Havana Charter under which buying in the cheapest world markets was the first criterion.

I believe buying in the cheapest markets would strike a death blow at all the services, at all the standards of life, at all the trade union rules and regulations, and at the very basis of our way of life in this country, which have been built up over the last 100 years. We cannot believe that a free market where goods made in long hours of work by sweated labour in poor factory conditions should be allowed to compete with that citadel of increasing prosperity, as we hope it may be, and of good hours and working conditions, as it certainly is, that is this country today.

I believe very strongly that our delegates to this conference will carry with them— and I believe this is shared by Members on the other side of the House—the feeling that it is our duty to maintain our standards, to do all we can to encourage better standards elsewhere, so far as it lies in our power to do so, and to see that for freer world trade we do not jeopardise the livelihood of our own people, the standards of our own factories and workshops, and, above all, the prosperity which is the great bulwark against Communism.

Provided the international situation, as is more than likely, does not demand the return of this House before the full Recess has been exhausted, the conference on international trade will have assembled at Torquay before this House meets again, and that does give particular justification to my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) in bringing up this matter today on the Adjournment. The object of our party in encouraging a discussion on this subject is two-fold; first of all, to make our own position absolutely plain; and secondly, to try to get certain definite assurances from the Government. It has also, I hope, achieved a third useful purpose in that it has shown how less and less this matter is becoming a matter of party political controversy, and that the interest and the anxiety on this issue is common to both sides of the House; and I hope that that fact will not be lost sight of by His Majesty's advisers at the Torquay conference.

In regard, first of all, to the position of the Conservative Party. We have made it absolutely plain that we do not consider ourselves pledged by any international agreements reached at Geneva, Havana, Anneçy, or, in September, at Torquay in so far as they limit the right of the British Empire to make its own mutual preferential arrangements. We have made it plain that we feel that now, in the present situation in the House of Commons, there is an obligation on the Government to take notice of those warnings. The House is very closely divided. Only yesterday there was a majority of only one on a matter of prime importance, and I think it would be very unwise for the Government to go to the Torquay conference and encourage their delegates, or any foreign delegates, to believe that a party Government of another complexion that may well succeed the present Administration, will be in any way bound by agreements of that sort reached at Torquay.

I do not think that in the United States there is quite the same feeling in regard to the need to do away with British Imperial Preference as there used to be. I am encouraged in this view by the favourable response to the article by Sir Hubert Henderson in the "American Economic Review" last year, when he made it quite plain that, in his view, the only hope for the United Kingdom, the sterling area and the British Empire to get out of its present dollar difficulty, was by the wise use of discrimination, and that non-discrimination and multilateral trade pursued at this moment might well permanently prevent the British peoples from recovering economic independence and playing their proper part in the world.

No doubt we shall hear from the hon. Gentleman the sort of phrases that all Ministers feel obliged to use in regard to the merits of multilateral trade, but I would draw his attention to the concluding paragraph of an article in the "Economist," and so shall, I hope, discount in advance any general tribute of that kind which the hon. Gentleman may feel inclined to make.

"Any reasonably competent third-year student of economics "—

says the "Economist"—

"can demonstrate with triumphant theoretical finality that any international trading system which has the peace and the welfare of mankind at heart must be based upon these principles of multilateral convertibility and nondiscrimination. No sensible person would dispute that they represent polysyllabic perfection. They have only one defect: in the world as it is they will not work."

It is because of that fact I do not want the House to pay much importance to any words or phrases in favour of nondiscrimination to which the hon. Gentleman may give vent today. We want from him definite assurances.

There are two dangers. The first danger is that the British Government may ratify the Havana Charter, and the other is that they may agree, without ratifying it, to a procedure which will have the same practical effect as ratification. I should like very briefly in the next two or three minutes to ask the hon. Gentleman certain questions about that. We should be grateful for a definite declaration that the Government will not ratify the Havana Charter at Torquay, or take any steps to do this without reference first to the House of Commons. I think we are entitled to ask for that statement, having made our own position quite plain, and having drawn the Minister's attention to the narrow margins which now separate the two parties. I hope he will be able to give us a definite assurance on that.

Secondly, in regard to any action the Government might take, short of ratifying the Havana Charter, which will have very largely the same practical effect as if they did ratify it, there is a very great danger that we may find ourselves committed to nearly as much as the Charter itself represents, but committed rather by the back door, without the country, or British industry, or the British Empire wholly knowing what is happening. As the House knows, we did sign the general agreement on tariffs and trade, and at the same time we agreed to an article whereby we said we would do our utmost, or words to that effect, to live up to Chapters 1 to 6 and Chapter 9 of the Havana Charter. The chapter that we did not pledge ourselves to, was the chapter setting up the international authority; we certainly have not got that, and it is a good thing that we have not. But the chapters that we have undertaken to accept, can be made just as dangerous for imperial trade in many spheres as the full Charter might be.

The House ought to realise, for example, that today any decrease in most-favoured-nation margins automatically at this moment reduces or eliminates Imperial Preference; that no Imperial Preference margins can be increased; that whatever the situation may be in, for example, the British sugar colonies, no new preference can be instituted; and that the machinery of most-favoured-nation clause agreements applies to any new preferences. This appears to us to be an extraordinary handicap to British imperial recovery, and little more should be needed than to draw to the attention of our friends in the United States, the problem of our sugar colonies and the vivid contrast with their own treatment of Cuba. In Cuba, sugar producers have an absolute priority in American markets, and a large virtual Imperial Preference. All we are asking is to be able to treat those countries that are part of our own Empire, in the same way as America is treating Cuba which is not part of her Empire.

In regard to the second danger, that we might find ourselves committed by the back door, I should like a definite assurance from the Parliamentary Secretary that what is called the provisional application procedure will apply to any extension at Torquay for another three years of the existing tariffs arrangements; that is to say, that whatever His Majesty's Government agree to do at Torquay in regard to extending for another three years the general agreements of Geneva, we shall still be free to give 60 days' notice of intention to renounce such an agreement, and that no country would have a complaint against our honour if we took that course.

I hope the Parliamentary Secretary can give us definite assurances on those few points. I should like, on behalf of the Opposition, to welcome him in his rôle today, and to say that his right hon. Friend the Minister and the Secretary for Overseas Trade did both explain to us that urgent prior engagements made it impossible for them to be associated with the Parliamentary Secretary today.

I thank the House very much for the way in which hon. Members have expressed themselves on this topic. It is not my particular branch of the work of the Board of Trade, but I must confess that I am very interested in it, because for many years my own livelihood has been connected with it. I always expected to export 25 per cent. of the fabrics that I made, at any rate before I came to this House. I am. therefore, aware of that particular aspect. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) for raising this subject. The fact that a large number of countries will be meeting at Torquay on 28th September to negotiate between themselves reductions in tariffs, makes this subject an extremely important one, and it is fitting that the House should have an opportunity of hearing about this complicated and often misunderstood subject before it adjourns for the Summer Recess.

The misunderstandings which have arisen about the Geneva Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and Torquay seem to have caused several hon. Members considerable concern—and not unnatural concern either. The main cause of alarm seems to be, first, that G.A.T.T. is a conspiracy to whittle away Imperial Preference behind a screen of technical jargon; and, secondly, the idea that irrevocable steps will have been taken to change the tariff before the House meets again. These are, in fact, illusions, as I shall try to show in the course of my remarks.

It may help if I first deal briefly with the background to the negotiations which we are about to open at Torquay. During and after the war, a considerable amount of thought was given, both here and overseas, to the shape which international economic co-operation would take in a peaceful world, and this found expression in the project to create an international Trade Organisation. As the hon. Member for Wembley, South knows full well, that idea stemmed out of the Atlantic Charter, in which his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition played a considerable part, and when he is criticising G.A.T.T. he is indirectly criticising something his own leader helped to set up—and rightly so helped.

This organisation would provide a code of rules to preserve world trade from unfair and undesirable practices, and would provide for periodic negotiations between contracting parties for the reduction of their tariffs. The aim of this grand design was to reduce throughout the world the barriers to free and fair trading, and so enable all those who joined its ranks to move forward from the poverty of war to a brighter and more prosperous world.

Hear, hear.

Yes, that is one of the phrases to which the hon. Gentleman referred, and I concede him that.

The first of the international conferences designed to hammer out the details of this organisation met in London in 1946. At the second in Geneva in 1947, it was realised that some half-way house was needed before the full-scale Charter envisaged could be ratified by all the members and come into operation. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which contained some of the provisions it was hoped later to embody in the Charter, was concluded at Geneva in November, 1947 by 22 countries, including all the Commonwealth and the U.S.A. Attached to the Agreement as schedules are the reductions of tariffs negotiated by these original members, and the results of those negotiations were laid before the House as Command Paper 7258, and debated in January, 1948.

A second round of tariff negotiations took place at Annecy during the summer of 1949. The original contracting parties did not negotiate among themselves, but negotiated with newcomers who had expressed a desire to accede to the General Agreement. As a result of these negotiations, a full account of which was laid before the House in Command Paper 7792, a further nine countries became contracting parties.

It is now proposed to hold a third round of tariff negotiations at Torquay. To be quite fair, I think the fact that this charming resort has won the honour of being the seat of an important conference such as this, from such exotic places as Cannes and Monte Carlo is in no small measure due to the activities of my right hon. Friend and the British Travel and Holiday Association, not to mention the activities of the hon. Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams).

In these negotiations, which are due to begin on 28th September this year, contracting parties will negotiate tariffs amongst themselves, and also with the following countries who wish to accede to G.A.T.T.: Western Germany, the Philippines, Guatemala, Peru, Austria and Turkey. I would point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mr. Edward Davies) that Japan is not a contracting party and does not come into it.

I should now like to say a word or two about the procedure which is followed during the negotiations. The countries negotiate bilaterally, but the concessions thus negotiated by each pair of countries apply equally to all other contracting parties. Consequently each country benefits not only from the concessions it negotiates on the items of which it is the principal supplier but from concessions on items in which it has a secondary or minor interest and which have been negotiated by the principal supplier.

The results of the negotiations which have so far taken place under G.A.T.T. have been incorporated as schedules to the General Agreement and have been frozen until 1st January, 1951. At the conclusion of the Torquay negotiations it is intended to extend the life of existing schedules until 1st January, 1954. I will have a. word to say about the advisability of that course. Before confirming the schedules negotiated at Geneva and Annecy, the contracting parties will be able to negotiate some modifications, but it is the intention that these modifications should be kept to an absolute minimum so that the maximum amount of trade may remain covered.

At Torquay, the United Kingdom envisages negotiations with the United States, the Philippines, Western Germany, Turkey, Austria, Peru, France, Belgium, Holland, Italy. Greece and Sweden. I have said that the object of these negotiations is to secure reductions in tariffs in order to help and to further the expansion of world trade. The House will remember what my right hon. Friend said in answer to a Question only yesterday, that it is the Government's policy first to agree to reductions in our tariffs, or in the preferences enjoyed in Commonwealth countries, only when we secure tariff concessions which we consider of at least equal advantage, and secondly to agree to no changes—which answers the point made by the hon. Gentleman opposite—in preferences which we give or enjoy, without the fullest consultation with the other Commonwealth countries involved.

While we are not proposing to negotiate with other members of the Commonwealth, they have agreed to our suggestion that we should all meet in London before the Torquay negotiations take place. That meeting will take place on 16th September. It is proposed that, at that meeting, there should be a full and frank exchange of information and views, and at Torquay the United Kingdom delegation will keep in close touch with the delegations of other Commonwealth countries. I should also add, in reply to another question, that industry has been fully consulted and its advice has been asked on the tariff concessions that we should seek. It is similarly being consulted in regard to requests for concessions which have been made to us.

The second point which seems to be causing some concern to hon. Members is that there may be some irrevocable change in the United Kingdom tariff during the Recess. I can give an assurance here and now that that will not be the position. The Torquay conference opens on 28th September, and is likely to last for several months. The point which seems to be causing concern to some hon. Members is a confusion between the time limit for a possible withdrawal from the G.A.T.T. and the period for which we are proposing to prolong the schedules of tariff reductions at Torquay.

I should perhaps remind the House that these are two separate and distinct operations. So far as the G.A.T.T. is concerned, we are not doing anything which impairs our right to withdraw from the Agreement at 60 days' notice, subject to this, however, that we are proposing to prolong for a further three years the bargains we made at Geneva and Annecy. We are also proposing to give this term to bargains which we make at Torquay in order to bring them into line.

The term of 60 days?

The 60 days' term is quite separate and is the notice which has to be given to terminate. Unless we renew our tariff concessions for a further three years, we should run the risk that other countries might withdraw the benefit of concessions of great value to our own exporting industries which we have already negotiated with other countries over a period of years.

I should like here to refer to the request made for details of what we have asked for and what we have been asked for. I cannot provide details of this nature. Under the rules governing the conditions of tariff negotiations, details of requests made are confidential. The House may rest assured that, as on the two previous occasions, a full report on the outcome of these negotiations will be made to it as soon as possible after the conclusion of the negotiations. That is as far as I can go.

It has often been said that it is only by an expanding world economy that this great trading community can hope for steady improvement in its standard of life. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is designed to ensure the lowering of barriers which is essential if world trade is to continue to expand, without infringing in any way the principles to which His Majesty's Government are committed—full and frank consultation with the Commonwealth, with a traditional and proper regard to our own interests.

When the hon. Gentleman said there would be no change in the tariff structure during the Recess, or words to that effect, before the House reassembles, I hope we are entitled to assume that his statement covered the ratification of the Havana Charter. That will not be ratified before Parliament reassembles?

I quite agree. I can give that assurance.

I am glad to have a chance of raising in the House the question of the establishment of consumers' advice centres in this country. I would like to do that for three reasons. First, it is entirely a nonparty affair; second, I believe that such establishments would be for the benefit of the community; third, they would enhance the standing of reputable manufacturers. Before going any further I should make it plain that I appreciate that it would be entirely out of order for me to raise on the Adjournment any matter that would require legislation. I hope therefore that I shall be able to keep within the rules of order. I have taken advice on the matter, and I believe that the suggestions I am going to make would not require legislation or amendment of the law.

It might be of interest if I gave a definite example of the type of work which would be done by consumers' advice centres. I shall go for my example to America, and shall take the case of aspirin. The American public have the choice of 65 kinds of aspirin. Consumers' Union of America decided to conduct a test of all of them. Perhaps the Americans are slightly better than ourselves at drafting extravagant captions, but some of these aspirins were described as "pure," some as "certified," some as "dissolving faster." One advertiser said that his brand of aspirin gave quick relief because it dissolved more speedily in water. All these inducements were held out to the American public. Consumers' Union tested them all.

They found some very interesting facts. They found that the speed with which an aspirin dissolves in water is no indication of the speed with which it is absorbed into the system. They found that its speed of dissolving in water is no indication of the speed with which it cures headaches or pains. The last thing—which they did not discover, but which the great American public had entirely forgotten—was that all aspirins were compelled by law to meet a certain minimum standard of purity and identity. So, Consumers' Union found that the 65 different brands of aspirins were alike in all important respects.

The members of Consumers' Union who received the findings of the test therefore realised that it was an entire waste of time to look at the various captions, because they conveyed nothing, and they also realised that the prices which some of them had been paying for some of these aspirins—I am speaking now of the price before devaluation, because I think it is simpler—varied from 2 cents per 100 to 85 cents per 100, equal to 1d. to 3s. 6d. per 100. As a result of the tests by Consumers' Union the public realised that whether they paid 1d. or 3s. 6d. their aspirins were alike in all fundamental respects, and I suggest that that was a very useful thing.

To come from that very definite example to the organisation which made such work possible, may I say that I was in America in 1948, for three months, and I realised the great importance which the American manufacturers, perhaps naturally, place on the consumer. Although I have no wish to raise any controversy today, I should like, in passing, to say that I believe that the American manufacturers pay much more attention to woman as a consumer than is done in this country. It seemed to be realised in America that women spend 75 per cent. of the consumer purse. Greater attention should be paid to women at the consumer end in this country.

In America, I found two main organisations, one called Consumers' Union and the other called Consumer Research Incorporated. I cannot take both today, so I shall deal with Consumers' Union, which is a non-profit making organisation. It derives its income from fees and is chartered under the membership corporation laws of New York State. It has a present membership of between 300,000 and 400,000 people and an annual subscription of five dollars. That gives it an annual gross income of 1,500,000 dollars, or £375,000 before devaluation. The important thing is that it allows, and spends yearly, 21s. per member, which is a lot of money. Consumers' Union publishes a buying guide once a year which is issued only to members and is not reproduced in the American Press. It consists of some 300 to 400 pages and is divided into sections for different consumer goods.

Opinions differ very much in America, of course, as to whether each section is equally worthwhile. One thing which they have in America—it may seem to us to be rather unnecessary—is toothpaste tasters. I presume that they taste toothpastes and advise members of Consumers' Union what they taste like. A section in the buying guide is devoted to toothpaste tasters. There is a strong body of opinion in America which believes that it is unnecessary to have toothpaste tasters or even that that commodity should be tested by Consumers' Union, and that it would be better to spend time examining more durable and more expensive goods which people buy only once in a lifetime. However, in view of the very wide range between 1d. and 3s. 6d. per 100, the aspirins seemed worth examining.

We have looked at the example, and the organisation; now I should like to come to the actual operations which produce the results given to the members of Consumers' Union. No advertisements at all are accepted in the buying guide. Consumers' Union employs shoppers to go to the various shops and stores in the different cities of America to buy goods on current sale. It would be no use a manufacturer sending any goods to Consumers' Union and asking that they should be tested, for they would be ignored. Only goods bought by the shoppers are tested. When they have been tested, the findings are reported in the buying guide. Normally, two classifications are used, "Acceptable" and "Not acceptable," but sometimes there is a third one, "Best buy."

I found three points of particular interest. The first was that the money of Consumers' Union belongs neither to the State nor to the public, but comes entirely from voluntary subscribers. The second—which I certainly should not like to see here—was that the section of the American public making the most use of Consumers' Union was the middle income group, because only the middle income group could, or was prepared to, find five dollars a year—about 25s. before devaluation—as a subscription. I noticed with interest, as it bore out that point, that during the unemployment years in America membership of Consumers' Union fell off very considerably.

The third point—I do not know whether I am right in saying that I think women would agree with this even more than men would because, presumably, men must be as good judges of style as women—was that although Consumers' Union could test quality and performance, it was unable to test style. We might find that a cheaper article was as good and durable as a very expensive one, but the more expensive one might have that indefinable something which created the style and was, therefore, worth more money.

That is what is done in America. As we all know, a good deal of consumer advice work has been done in this country for years. I am not a car owner, but I know that the motoring correspondents of the general Press and the motoring trade papers give advice and opinions—impartial, I think—about new models which are brought upon the market, and organisations like the A.A. and the R.A.C. are always prepared to give advice to people buying new cars. The British Electricity Authority and the Gas Council issue a good deal of publicity about their commodities, and some magazines refuse to accept advertisements unless the goods advertised reach their own particular standard. Many organisations, particularly women's organisations, have done a great deal of this consumer advice work. We heard in the House this week of various consumers' councils set up in connection with the nationalised industries.

I feel that a great deal of consumer advice work is being done in this country, but it is all very loose and disjointed. Some people do not even know that it exists, and those who do know that it exists do not know how to get their feelings put forward to the right places. I believe that we could set up a consumers' advice centre in this country to bring together all the information which is scattered about in various organisations. Reports could then be made to the country through the organisations connected with the centre.

I come now, with some trepidation, to the legal aspect. Speaking as a layman, I feel that very often in this House the law, when interpreted by a layman, is more intelligent to the layman than when it is interpreted by a high legal authority. It seems to me—although I am subject to correction—that it is obviously very difficult to give a ruling unless one has a test case actually in the courts. But the law of defamation, as I understand it in this particular case, is that if a manufacturer wants to bring an action successfully, he has to prove that the report concerned is not only malicious and untrue, but that it has actually caused him damage.

I am further informed that any such consumers' advice centre could, under the present law, publish findings mentioning branded goods by name to its members, but that if the Press tried to make spectacular stories out of such reports, they might then render themselves liable to proceedings. In other words, one could probably not say of branded goods that X apparatus was better than Y, but one could say that X used 50 therms of gas in so many hours, whereas Y used 100.

I believe this to be very much a nonparty matter of benefit to us all, and I think it would be less than just to the party to which I have the honour to belong if I did not mention that in their publication, "Labour Believes in Britain," they put forward the formation of a consumers' advice centre, as one of the aspects of the policy of the Labour Party at the last General Election.

I think the points suggested there are of interest. The first was that such a centre should be independent, or publicly financed; the second, that it should conduct expert tests, and examinations of various consumer goods on the market; the third, that it should issue buying guides indicating the relative merits and demerits of the products tested, and furthermore, how far each is reasonable value for money; and, lastly, that such a centre should institute safeguards to avoid injustice to manufacturers.

That would mean that good manufacturers would be helped and that unscrupulous advertising would be exposed. The Board of Trade have the job of trying to work out practical proposals along these lines, and as long ago as 30th March last my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade gave us an indication in this House that he was not unsympathetic towards these ideas. Consumers' Union in America claims, and produces evidence to support the claim, that not only does it enable the consumer to get the most for his money, but that manufacturers often take notice of the reports and improve their products where deficiencies have been noted. It is very true that it is not much use saying that one aspirin cures pain more quickly than others if a great many people are aware that all aspirins are equal in that respect.

In conclusion, I feel that if public money is to be spent on setting up such a centre or centres in this country, then, obviously, every section of the community must benefit. It would be entirely wrong if it were only the middle, the lower, or the higher income group which benefited. We might consider whether it would be right to concentrate on the expensive and the durable goods which people occasionally buy, such as radios, television sets, cars and refrigerators, or whether we should concentrate on our aspirins, our toothpaste or our washing powders.

I do not know what reply we are to receive today from the Board of Trade, but if the reply is, in general, that they approve of such an idea but that it does not go far enough, nobody will be more pleased than I. I do not think it goes far enough, but this was as far as I could go today without being called to order. I hope very much that we shall get these centres, and I would like to see branded goods mentioned by name and compared. I would even like to see patent medicines included so that advertising is cut, and, therefore, the cost to the consumer. I wish to pay a tribute to my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade in his absence, because I feel that he has throughout been most sympathetic to this idea. It is one which I hope the House will support and which will eventually become an actuality in this country.

First, I want to express appreciation of the way in which the case has been put by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Miss Burton), and to supplement her plea for the establishment of a consumers' advice centre, or centres. I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will signify the approval of his Department when he comes to reply. I want to deal with this matter from a totally different aspect from that indicated by my hon. Friend, because my great concern is that we should understand quite clearly the purpose of such a centre.

I know it can be said by many people, both in and out of this House that this may be just another committee. As I envisage it, however, it means that any consumers' centre would need to have at the highest point some kind of an executive committee or executive council. Rightly or wrongly, I prefer to call that a consumers' council, and, in doing so, I am reminded that if we had a council of that nature in this country, it would not be the first in existence. If my memory serves me right, the first consumers' council was instituted in this country in 1917. I have turned up the official records, and I am fortified in what I say today by statements made by the late John Robert Clynes, who incidentally, nursed me, when he was a boy. I am very proud to quote what he said when that first consumers' council was set up in 1917, because I think it clearly defines what should be the object of any such centre. He said:

"On this council we shall ask representatives to sit who will act for the organised working-classes, and we shall ask women also to act upon the council. We propose that such representatives shall not merely come in once a week to be told some story by an official or to pass resolutions of approval, or merely to be told that the price of an article has been fixed at so and so, but they shall know for themselves the processes by which things are done, and see, with an eye on the consumer, whether the rights and interests of consumers are being properly watched or not."

I commend the statement of my late right hon. Friend to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, in the hope that it will not be overlooked whenever a consumers' advice centre is set up having the terms, aims, and objects of that earlier centre.

While we are on the historical survey which has been dealt with very faithfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South, I think I ought to mention that a previous attempt was made in this House to set up a consumers' council. During the lifetime of the minority Labour Government of 1929–31, the late William Graham introduced a Bill into this House to set up a consumers' council. It passed through all its stages in this House, but was afterwards rejected in another place.

Although times and circumstances have changed, there is one problem which remains the same. Production and the processes of production were, and seemingly, are today, out of alignment with the needs of distribution and public services. I am not going to deal with what I would call this disequilibrium, but I say that it is very important when it reflects itself in the price level to the consumer.

One of the most important problems with which we have to deal today is the price level in our internal economy. But for the difficulties in world relationships, I think that the price level would be the major' political problem of the day. I support, therefore, the proposal for a consumers' centre to deal efficiently with the problems of the price level and, in words which I read the other day in a "News Chronicle" pamphlet, to bring to the consumer those consumer goods

"at the right time, in the right place, in the right quantities, at the right price."

I believe that the findings of the Linlithgow Committee, which was set up some time ago, could be applied quite easily today. When we are examining this problem of price, we are dealing with something which, from the viewpoint of the general public, is causing profound disturbance. When I think of the Report of the Linlithgow Committee and their findings, and know that precisely the same things are happening today in distributing consumer goods from the producer to the consumers, then I think that there is a crying need for a consumers' advice centre.

Take, for instance, Covent Garden. First of all, there is the grower; then there is the London commission salesmen and, next, the London wholesaler; then we get the London commission buyer and the provincial wholesaler—sometimes there is a secondary wholesaler; and then we have the retailer. I have spent most of my life in the world of distribution. I have done a great deal—I do not say this boastingly—in examining the prices of commodities, and I say quite categorically that in examining the prices of commodities, at the various stages in their distribution from the producer to the consumer, I cannot find excessive margins at any one stage. There is, however, an excessive margin between the final retail price and the cost of production. Two-penny cabbages very often cost 8d., 9d. or 10d. on the market; that is one of the problems which we have to examine.

I do not believe that we shall ever do anything effective about price levels until we have examined very closely and diligently the problem of the plethora of intermediaries in the world of distribution. What is even more important is that of the total national product in this country of £11,201 million, almost £6,000 million is being spent over the counters of the shops; that is a matter of serious moment. Therefore, I say that there is a case for wise, courageous and systematic investigation into the price level by a consumer advice centre.

I want to make it clear to the Parliamentary Secretary that I am dealing only with consumer goods such as food, clothing, household articles, and to the point of newsprint. I know that provision in the way of very wise protection has been made for the consumer in regard to, say, electricity and gas, but what I am dealing with are the things which men and women are buying every week of their lives. I bring to the notice of my hon. Friend as an illustration, a fact which emerged only this last week. In Press reports we have been told that the catering working party have issued their report, which shows that rather deplorable conditions exist in the 230,000 catering establishments of the country. Those deplorable conditions militate mainly against the health of the people.

Another important fact, which I believe to be true, is that in the world of distribution over 50 per cent. of the consumer expenditure—that figure is my own estimate—is done by means of credit trade. I distinguish between the two sections of credit and cash; the former includes hire purchase. I could go into the structure of the organisations which deal in this way with this kind of trade and I believe that their existence could be investigated and tackled by a consumers' advice centre.

I appreciate all that has been done by the very many parties who have dealt with the distribution of consumer goods, but I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consider very seriously this suggestion. Why is resort made to ad hoc sporadic committees, when we could have a permanent structure which would deal in a more permanent way with the whole problem? That body can be a consumers' advice centre. It is not only when dealing with consumer goods that the need for the establishment of such a centre exists. It is also required in conducting investigations into the nature, the substance and the quality of those consumer goods. I believe that ultimately, as a result of our findings here in Parliament and the findings of the consumers' advice centre, which I hope to see set up, the health, wealth and happiness of the British people will benefit.

I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Miss Burton), for raising this very interesting subject and for the charming way in which she has given the House the benefit of her investigations. The Government have given quite a lot of protection to the consumer in many ways, especially in time of shortages, by price control regulations, rationing schemes, and also by utility schemes and other means. I quite agree the problem is now extended and we shall have to find appropriate means of protection for the more normal economic conditions which we hope will exist in the future. I shall not be able to answer fully all that has been said, particularly by my hon. Friend the Mem- ber for Brightside (Mr. R. Winterbottom), as that would involve me in difficulty. The outcome of deliberations at the Board of Trade might be that it would become necessary later to introduce legislation to deal with this problem, and I should be quite out of order in dealing with that now.

The idea of a consumers' advice centre is very sound, but there is a danger of accepting it too easily and thinking it a simple matter. It is not, and before we move in the matter we have to make quite sure that when we advance detailed proposals for such a service, that as far as possible, we shall have foreseen the many difficulties and have formed a clear idea of the kind of work which may be most useful in this field; and, conversely, the kind of work which may look useful at first sight, but may turn out to be wasteful and ineffective.

A proposition of this kind would cost money and the probability is that some may be public money paid by the taxpayer. As the taxpayer and the consumer are one, we have to make quite sure that as a consumer he is to get value for the money he provides as a taxpayer, in whatever service it is provided. That is why we have to take time in making a careful and critical study of a possible consumers' advice service, how it could be organised, how much it would cost, and, above all, what kind of advice it could give and how it would get its advice over to the public.

The hon. Lady mentioned the American model. Up to now I think the American model is the only one. They work on the basis of testing and issuing rating reports. One of the things we have had to do was to learn all we could from American experience and to examine that experience in as critical a manner as we could. Our conclusions from this study are that a good deal of what is done in America would not be very useful for us to copy, though we have also picked up much of value from that experience. But it is no use just copying; what we have to do is to create something properly attuned to what we require in this country.

The hon. Lady mentioned the guides which are published in America. The contents of those guides do not appear to be uniformly useful. There are long lists of branded things like toothpaste, cosmetics and all sorts of cheap goods which are divided into two kinds. One is "acceptable" and the other is "not acceptable." We think it very doubtful that such a classification of goods would be of very great use. People soon find their favourite brands without doing themselves or their pockets much harm.

There are also American publications giving long lists of tinned foods where the rating is largely dependent on the view of a "flavour panel" which is a representative collection of housewives. With all due respect to housewives, we do not think we should waste money in telling housewives what other housewives thing about the flavour of A's soup as against B's soup. It is the family which decides things of that description.

The best advice in these American reports is on things like washing machines and refrigerators, technical things about which the layman knows very little. We think there are possibilities in this line of country, but, again, we have to be careful not to give people expensive advice about expensive types of appliance which at present everyone cannot afford.

Another important point is that for the purposes of public reports, only branded goods can be dealt with in the American scheme. Otherwise, when they go shopping people cannot identify the goods described in the reports. This is an important limitation on the whole method. For example, practically no reports could be made on furniture, at least at the moment in this country, and on many types of clothing or essential household goods like pots and pans, although these are things on which advice is often badly needed. As far as we can make out, the American guides deal with goods worth, at most, 10 per cent. of normal consumer expenditure, and a lot of the information given is of doubtful value.

Another thing we have had to look at very carefully is the idea that these rating reports can, by themselves, stop people getting a false impression from advertisements. The hon. Lady took the example of aspirin. Some makes of aspirin have fancy names and are widely advertised and cost a lot, as she said. The same thing can often be had, far cheaper but just as good, in a less well advertised make.

The suggestion is that consumer reports can stop the waste of money that goes on in this way. But it has to be remembered that all the advice centre can say about this is that make "A," costing 2s. and make "B" costing 6d. are both "acceptable." This is not a very exciting statement and it probably does not get into the newspapers. Subscribers may read it in a pamphlet or bulletin and it may impress them. But, meanwhile, maker "A" is still spending many thousands of pounds a week saying that people should buy make "A." Unless we spent as many thousands telling people that they should buy make "B," the chances are that they will go on using make "A." It would be nice to stop this sort of thing, but we have to be realistic about it.

There are all sorts of other questions which arise out of a study of these American bodies. For example, they do not, as is sometimes thought, compare the value for money of competing brands. All they do is to give factual reports of tests they have carried out. This is an important lesson for us. Many factors make up the value of an article; some of them can be tested objectively, but others cannot, because they are matters of taste—appearance, design, and so on. It would be impossible and misleading to say that one article is better than another, unless one could make an objective statement about all the features of that particular article.

Another point we have noticed is that, as would be expected in any country with a high standard of industrial production, most of the goods are rated as acceptable—it would be wrong to get an idea that our country is particularly flooded with goods of a very shoddy nature; it is not; our goods, taken by and large, are of a high quality—and very few cases are judged unacceptable. The customer who usually "buys blind" will probably buy what the buying guide says is acceptable to 80 per cent. or 90 per cent. anyway.

This has led us to ask whether for our purposes it would be worth while to prepare and publish a lot of information which merely confirms the consumer in his or her normal choice. We think this may be a wasteful and inefficient method of advising people and that perhaps it might be better to confine the reports to cases where there is really something worth telling the people, or something specific about which to warn them.

The object of saying a good deal in criticism of the American version of consumer advice is not to pour cold water on the remarks of the hon. Lady or my hon. Friend the Member for Brightside, because we are very keen on the idea and general principle. I would not like to suggest in any way that there is nothing useful to be done. There is quite a lot. We are fully convinced of that, and of the need for such a service. Our object is to try to show hon. Members, who have raised this subject, that there are really some difficult problems to solve in arriving at a concrete workable scheme. They are not problems that we are inventing, but real matters for study and consideration before we put our hand to legislation on the subject.

Our view is that there is a good deal of general advice to consumers of one kind and another, which ought to be made available from some central service. There is a good deal of helpful material already available in one form or another, for example, the Council of Industrial Design, Food Facts and the Ministry of Fuel and Power Fuel Efficiency Bulletin which have been built up over the years, but probably they need co-ordinating in some way or another. We think there is room for something more synthetic in this field, and that there are gaps to be filled. General advice of various kinds, such as the suitability of different textiles for different purposes, how to choose well-made furniture, and so on, should be the starting point, and the attempt to give advice about particular goods should grow out of it.

The technique of testing and rating, about which we have learned a great deal, study of the work done in America, would, we think, come in very useful in the context of a general advisory service. We should aim to use this technique in a selective and economical way, applying it to just those lines of goods where it seems to us most effective. It is impossible to go into detail at this stage. Our work in the Board of Trade on this problem is continuing, and it is important to lay a firm foundation by taking trouble at the outset to get workable proposals. When the President is able to announce detailed proposals for a consumers' advisory coun- cil, it will be seen that the careful preparatory work has been worth while.

This proposal is utter nonsense. Millions and millions of pamphlets are being printed telling people what they already know. The hon. Member for Brightside (Mr. Winterbottom) says himself that in America they have gone too far, and we certainly have no reserves to waste upon printing more and more instructions for people who already know what they want themselves. I do not mean to say that there should be no protection for the customer. Neither do I assume that there are no measures which the Government can rightly take to improve the standard of products. Surely the remedy for that exists. If we want to maintain standards we should insist upon the trade maintaining them. The utility scheme does that, and if that goes we can manage it by a development council. If there is any tendency to monopolist tendencies there is the Monopoly Commission to deal with it.

To suggest the setting up of another organisation, which is going to occupy shops in the main street of certain towns or big offices in London, is utter nonsense. There is only one way of safeguarding the consumer, and the Parliamentary Secretary knows it as well as I do—to ensure there is adequate competition. If there is competition the consumer will be safeguarded. I can assure the hon. Lady the Member for Coventry, South (Miss Burton) that if the most elaborate apparatus in the world is set up, millions and millions of pamphlets are printed about it, and if it is the biggest monopoly that was ever seen in this country, there will still be people in the business who will exploit the consumer in some way or another, or who will get away with something which is not as good as it ought to be.

The answer is not to set up these organisations, not to add another committee to the thousands we already have, but, first, to safeguard the standards through the machinery we already have available; second, to deal with any tendency towards monopoly through the channels already existing; and third, to see that there is a rightful amount of competition, which is the only safeguard for the consumers' interests.

I believe there is no example in history of so small an island as Heligoland playing such an extremely important part. It is only one mile long from north-west to south-east, one-third of a mile wide and a quarter of a square mile in area. The population of the Frisian natives, the people who speak Heligolandish and—I must insist on this most emphatically—are not Germans, at the last census taken in 1933 was 2,721.

Frisians constitute one of the oldest races in north-west Europe, where they lived as a distinct people for over 20 centuries. The Frisians were the principal opponents in that part of the world of the Romans. The Romans recognised their valour by conferring upon them the title of "socii," which means allies. We here in this country are under a great debt to them. King Alfred, when he wanted to build his fleet, sent to Heligoland for Frisian builders, and if we look at the statute of Alfred in the Royal Gallery, it will be seen that he is holding in his hand a Heligoland or Frisian ship.

In their early history the Frisian people were united under kings, and later they formed a confederation of seven Frisian Sealands. At the present moment they form a national minority in Holland, in part of Germany and in Slesvig. West Frisians live in the Netherlands; east and north Frisians, which include the Heligolanders, in Germany and Slesvig. From 450 to 850 the Frisians were the greatest maritime power in the world, and the North Sea was nothing but a Frisian lake. In the 14th century Heligoland with Frisia became part of the Duchy of Slesvig. From the year 1714 onwards it came directly under the Danish Crown.

Our connection with it arose in 1807 at the time of the Napoleonic blockade. In that year we laid seige to it—we had been at war with Denmark—and it was occupied in 1807. At the Treaty of Kiel in 1814 it became a Crown Colony of Great Britain, thanks to the efforts of that great Ulsterman, to whom I must pay a tribute, Lord Castlereagh. No doubt, hon. Members will remember that in their youth in their stamp collection amongst the most highly prized stamps they had were those beautiful stamps of Heligoland bearing a portrait of Queen Victoria.

Heligoland was very content under our rule and we preserved for them their Frisian language and customs. Why did we hand it over to Germany in the year 1890? [HON. MEMBERS: "A Tory Government."] A Tory Government! I am not a party man, I am an impartial historian. I do not care what Government it was if that Government committed a mistake I will attack that Government. Heligoland was ceded to Germany ostensibly as compensation for the Protectorate which was given to us over Zanzibar and the Island of Pemba. Historians maintain that was perfectly monstrous, because Zanzibar and Pemba were already British Protectorates. Bismarck had tried to persuade Lord Granville as Foreign Secretary to hand over Heligoland but Lord Granville had the common sense to resist. Why Lord Salisbury should do so is to us at the present time incomprehensible. My dear father—and I must pay a tribute to him—strongly protested against it. He said that to hand over Heligoland to Germany was as bad as handing over Gibraltar to Spain, or Malta to Italy.

Great indignation was expressed by the British people over Heligoland at that time. They did not want it to become German. They wanted above all to maintain it as British. But Heligoland was handed over, and at once the Prussian jackboot was applied in exactly the same way as I described on a previous Adjournment Motion that the Germans applied it to Schleswig. The Prussians tried to suppress the Frisian language; they tried to prevent the people from studying in schools their own native Heligolandish. They tried to impose German upon them, a language which they had never spoken or learned, except as a foreign language. The great explorer, Stanley, tried to console the British people by this famous phrase. He said that in taking over Zanzibar and the neighbouring Pemba they were getting a new suit of clothes in exchange for a trouser button. He compared Heligoland to a trouser button. I think if he had had the experience which we have had of two wars he would have changed his language.

The Treaty of Versailles had stipulated the complete destruction of the fortifications, as they had formed a strategical protection to the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser and the Kiel Canal. The Treaty laid down that no similar fortifications should be constructed in future. Why did the British Government, having information that these fortifications were being constructed in flagrant violation of the Treaty of Versailles, not take some step, as they might so easily have done at the time, to prevent it?

Another Tory Government!

We cannot help deploring these things with the hon. Member for South Ayrshire.

Let me from the point of view of these unfortunate people point out that this Frisian language is entirely different both from Dutch and from German. All philologists agree in classifying it with English. English belongs to the Anglo-Frisian group and early missionaries who went out there from England were able to make themselves understood by the inhabitants of Heligoland without the aid of any interpreter. The affinity between the two languages, English and Frisian, is very well represented by this famous old rhyme:

"Bread, butter and green cheese

Is good English and good Friese"—

that is good Frisian.

The old Frisian literature contained many fine epics, and the modern great literature dates back to the 17th century when the greatest name is that of Gysbert Japicx. Today in the Netherlands the Frisian language is taught in the primary and secondary schools of Friesland. At four Dutch universities there are at the present moment Professorships of the Frisian language. The North Frisians, whom I with the hon. Member for Lady-wood (Mr. Yates) visited last year in their Islands, want to be reunited, not with Germany but with Schleswig. They want autonomy within the framework of the Danish State.

Heligoland is not simply an isolated island which happens to be a target for our bombardment. It is the very core of all the Frisian countries. Heligoland forms a connecting link between the West, the East and the North Frisians.

It is a rock, like Gibraltar. It is a great harbour. It is a beacon for the Islands, and symbolises for these people the relation of the Frisians to the sea. Without Heligoland, Friesland, the Frisian countries, would simply be a mutilated body.

To come down to this last war; on 12th May, 1945, Heligolanders were compelled to leave their island at the command of the British. They were allowed to take with them only what they could carry. Everything else they lost. We have often had it stated in reply to Questions in this House that the terrible destruction took place during the war. That is not the case. The worst destruction took place on 18th April, 1947, nearly two years after the Armistice. Let me read what an eye-witness has said about this:

"In the underground shelters, vaults and passages, objects worth millions of pounds were destroyed, which might have served the cause of peaceful reconstruction. Modern machines, a completely equipped power station, Diesel trains ready to take the rails, materials and tools of all kinds."

That was a terrible devastation and I cannot help thinking with the writer of the article that it left "a horrifying picture of senseless desolation."

I maintain that this continued bombardment is a breach of International Law. I have been consulting—and I speak here in deference to a great lawyer—a very distinguished Professor of International Law and he points out that this continued devastation is absolutely prohibited by Article 3 (g) of the Hague Regulations. Professor Oppenheim, a great authority and a Professor of International Law at Cambridge says this, and he is speaking simply of wartime:

"A measure of permissible devastation is found in the strict necessities of war. As an end in itself, as a separate measure of war, devastation is not sanctioned by the law of war."

As I say, he is speaking of wartime. How much stronger is the argument when it is applied to a time of peace.

Then again my argument is supported by the 35th Conference of the International Law Association which in 1928 resolved:

"Damage to or destruction of immoveable property is only permitted for the purpose of attaining a specific military objective. Indiscriminate, wanton, and general devastation or destruction is prohibited."

I am sure that the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Professor Savory) wishes to be fair, but the impression he has given the House is certainly that the destruction of immoveable property and other devastation which is apparent in Heligoland has something to do with the bombing exercises. But he must be aware that the destruction of underground tunnels was the result of air raids and occurred long before the bombing exercises started.

I said most emphatically that it was in 1947. I have here the very strongest evidence that this bombing is going on. Here is a letter signed by 11 fishermen, describing fully the appalling bombardment which took place, starting at 12.30 on 22nd June of this year. I propose to send this letter to the Secretary of State for Air.

Even now, there are 250 Heligolanders who were born under the British flag who are still alive. The people of Heligoland, through their Aldermen, sent a petition to the British Government. I will only quote the essential parts, as I wish to leave time for other speakers. It is dated 1st January, 1946, and it says:

"It is almost impossible for us to believe that Great Britain and its people, to whom a lot of other small nations are again thankful for their regained freedom and liberty, should have forgotten their former subjects, the natives of the Crown Colony of Heligoland."

I ask hon. Gentlemen to mark these words:

"If it is impossible to come back under British rule, then we would prefer to come back under Danish protection, as the Island's history has never been German, but Danish for many centuries."

In this petition they are only repeating what they asked for after the First World War. They demanded, they implored and begged the British Government to take them back. Here, they are repeating the plea. They want the British to take them over and to restore their liberties, their customs and their language.

These people, after having appealed to the British Government, have appealed now to the German Federal Chancellor, and I have the original letter here signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs to their spokesman, Mr. Franz Siemens. I do not want to read the whole letter. I will summarise it. It points out that the Federal Government, through the Chancellor, Dr. Adenauer, are doing everything they can to support this request of the people of Heligoland. The Chancellor regrets that up to the present these efforts have produced no considerable results, and the letter continues:

"… yet it is to be hoped that the incidents described by you"—

That is the last terrible bombing of 22nd June—

"will contribute to a revision by the British Government of its point of view."

A very important body, the Federal Council for Minorities, sat in Holland on 1st July. All minorities from many countries were represented, and they passed unanimously certain resolutions requesting the British to stop immediately the bombardment of the Island, and, secondly, to grant the population the right to return to their native island and to live under the laws and customs which have hitherto been in force. A third resolution says:

"The Council further begs Great Britain and the Allied Nations to recognise the ex-territorial nature of Heligoland, while the population freely determines its own future; to give the inhabitants of Heligoland the right of self-determination in order that they may decide themselves to what State they wish to belong."

That is the unanimous demand of this most important body which sat in Holland on 1st July. I have here pitiful letters from these people of Heligoland. They have written again and again asking me to take up their cause. Their plea can be summarised in a beautiful poem, written in Heligolandish, of which I will quote only the first two verses:

"Grey Heaven, Grey Misery,

Death lowers over Heligoland's rock

Grey sea and abandon—a silent God

and comfortless grief.

Black Mourning, black Night

Heligoland's joy has passed for ever

Heligoland's laughter has long ceased

The only Cry is that of the Seagulls."

It is with pleasure that I support what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Professor Savory). We have listened with great interest to his discourse on Heligoland and his exposition of the position of the Frisian people. This is a matter which should appeal very strongly to the British people. It is essentially one of support for a small people who want to return to their own land. Once the Frisians were British. I believe now that the Danes claim that they are Danish and the Dutch claim that they are Dutch.

I should like to ask the Government exactly what is the reason why they put obstacles in the way of the return of these people. Is it because, as was hinted by the Secretary of State for Air the other day, that island was a base for offensive operations during the war? If that was the case, then surely there would be an argument for continuing to bomb Cuxhaven and Wilhelmshaven. Is it because the Royal Air Force can find no alternative place? I should like a frank answer to those questions.

I have spent a number of years in the Royal Air Force, and I cannot believe that the Service is so devoid of imagination or capacity that it cannot find another suitable target. Why do the Royal Air Force need this target? Is it for navigational training, or so that they can see the effects of bombing. If it is for navigational training then a point off Heligoland would do just as well. There could be observation posts on the island to observe bombs being dropped into the sea. If it is the land which is required for bombing purposes, then Scharhörn, Trischen or Memmert, uninhabited islands off the north-west coast of Germany, could be used for the purpose. No people want to go there, and they would provide a suitable alternative.

I should oppose very strongly any suggestion that uninhabited Scottish islands should be used, as has been suggested by one hon. Member. We hope to persuade people to live on these islands, if there are any where no one lives at present.

Would the hon. Gentleman say who was the hon. Member who suggested that?

I cannot remember.

I think the hon. Gentleman is wrong.

I can remember that the hon. Gentleman himself mentioned it and said that he, too, was opposed to it.

I assumed that that was the reference. I do not want to be misrepresented. I did not suggest it.

No.

I suggested that the German Press, in pursuance of this campaign, were suggesting publicly that a Scottish island should be used.

I am sorry if I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman. I merely wished to say that I was entirely in agreement with his suggestion that a Scottish island should not be used. There are islands off the North-West coast of Germany which could be used. This is a case where the Government could show a little magnanimity which would have a tremendous effect throughout the world.

I had not intended to take part in this Debate, but, after having listened to the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Professor Savory), I think that I ought to intervene. Every one will pay tribute to the sincerity and humanitarianism which inspired his speech and that of the hon. Member for Inverness (Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton). It is desirable, however, that this matter should be put in its proper perspective. The hon. Member for Antrim, South, painted a picture which gave a clear impression that the devastation in Heligoland was, in fact, due to the bombing exercises which are going on. That, of course is not the case. The devastation on Heligoland was caused by the air raids during the war.

I have read practically all the reports in the German press on this issue, and I must say they are, apparently deliberately, calculated to give the impression that the devastation has been caused by the operations of the British Air Force since the end of the war. The facts are that the air raids which took place on Heligoland completely destroyed every building on the island. They completely destroyed the whole surface of the island, till there was not a single street recognisable or, in fact, visible, and the whole surface of the island was just a series of pot holes. Nothing could be cultivated on the top soil, nor is it there to restore.

That was the position which faced our people when they went to Germany.

They also found that, from end to end, Heligoland was honeycombed with three lairs of tunnels, and vast halls stocked to the ceilings with probably tens of thousands of tons of explosives in the form of mines, cases of ammunition and so on. These, incidentally, had been damaged by the reverberations of the bombing and by looters on their deserting the island.

As far as my recollection goes, our occupation authorities were so concerned about the preservation of the island that, recognising that these tunnels and the explosives must be destroyed in some way or other, they invited responsible German authorities to examine the situation and to suggest an alternative method to exploding for the removal of the ammunition. These authorities were unable to suggest any alternative, and they agreed that the only thing to be done was to blow up the tunnels with the ammunition in them.

This had the effect of collapsing certain parts of the surface of the island, but those parts had been completely destroyed as the result of the earlier bombing. I do not think anyone in this House will doubt my humanitarian approach to the German situation, least of all the hon. Member for Antrim, South. Hon. Members know of my persistant attempts to try and bring an end to the unnecessary, wanton destruction that has gone on with regard to the demolition of industries, and my intervention with regard to the Salzgitter factories, the Keil torpedo centre and a large number of other cases.

But if it is necessary that there should be bombing exercises by the Royal Air Force, where it is important to mark the results of the dropping of bombs on solid surfaces, I can imagine no more suitable spot than an island already completely devastated and remote from any kind of human habitation. After it was found essential that these tunnels and explosive stocks should be destroyed, we went so far as to get scientists to examine the bird life on the island and to set off small experimental explosive charges to frighten the birds to a safe distance before the tunnels were blown up, so that they would come back and settle again when the later big explosions had taken place. The German authorities expressed appreciation of how that had been done, and how it had been instrumental in preserving bird life. That was the sense in which this thing was approached.

The noble Lord the Member for Inverness drew attention to the fact that it has been suggested that if bombing exercises are necessary Heligoland should not be used. The German Press go so far as to suggest that we should use some Scottish island. I emphasise that, to indicate the kind of propaganda that is being made in the German Press about this thing. It is most unfortunate that that kind of suggestion has ever been made.

However remote some of the Scottish islands may be, even though there may be only one or two crofters there, at least there is someone there and there is something growing there, whereas in Heligoland there was nothing but a solid fortified stronghold of German military power during the war, which had to be demolished as a military base. I should imagine, therefore, that it was very suitable for bombing exercises. It is particularly appropriate, or inappropriate, that this question should have been raised at this stage, because, for the last two days, we have been discussing a very serious world situation and considering large measures of austerity to be applied to the people of this country which, presumably, will include the shutting off of vast areas of land, which could be used for agriculture and other purposes, to allow for infantry, tank and even bombing exercises.

After all, the Germans have no army, navy or air force, and have none of our obligations. If the only complaint is that we are using a remote spot away from the mainland, where there is no habitation, of any kind and that it is an inconvenience to people who otherwise might live on that rock, it is taking it out of perspective if this is all that Germany is to contribute to the defence of Germany and of the rest of Western Europe.

I appreciate that the main burden of the case put by the hon. Member for Antrim, South is the frustration of the people who previously lived on this island and who want to go back. I appreciate the long historical association with this country and with Denmark, and so on. But let us put that, too, in proper perspective. These people were driven from the island as a result of war operations. Those who remained there had to be removed for the purpose of destroying this fantastic network of tunnels, loaded with tremendous quantities of explosives, put there by the Germans. There were tremendous submarine shelters of heavy reinforced concrete which had to be destroyed.

It would have been out of the question, in any case, to set about restoring the surface, the housing and other amenities of Heligoland for many years; whereas on the mainland of Germany, where these people are living at present, there are vast arrears of housing to be overcome. Therefore, there is no real net reduction in the housing accommodation available for these people, and many more millions of unfortunate homeless people driven into Germany for one reason or another. I do not think it is a practical proposition to suggest that we should stop bombing and invite these people to come to Heligoland tomorrow, next week, next month or next year, because there would be nowhere for them to go.

One point made on the other side struck me as irrelevant to this discussion. It was suggested that we should declare the independence of Heligoland and either link it up with this country or Denmark or leave it as an independent State. Hon. Members must know that we cannot do that, in loyalty to our obligations to Germany and our associates in the United Nations and in the administration of Germany. We have protested against the seizure of Silesia to be handed over to Poland, and the seizure of the Saar by France. We have declared categorically that we will not recognise these, until a peace treaty has been signed and all questions of frontiers and territorial rights have been settled in the proper way. It would be equally wrong to take unilateral action with regard to Heligoland.

We have to recognise that it is an integral part of Germany until its final fate has been settled. I am sorry that I have had to say this in the House, because I know it will be misrepresented in Germany, where my position has been Very well known until now. I know it will be misrepresented in this country, but I feel that if we are to face this issue honestly, it is desirable that the facts of the situation should be clearly presented. It should not be left entirely to what, I fully understand, is a legitimate sentimental demand of homeless people to write off history, and to get back to where they started.

I may be regarded as having something of a vested interest in islands but, nevertheless, I think everyone must be grateful to the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Professor Savory) for raising this subject today. Whatever conclusion we reach, it must cause us the gravest concern that these people should be kept away from their homes.

I want to address myself to only two of the reasons which have been given for the continued bombing of Heligoland and for the fact that the Heligolanders are not allowed to return. First of all, it has been said that the island was so badly devastated that these people could not, in fact, return. But we in this country learned of the extraordinary devotion which people can show for their homes. After our cities had been destroyed we often found people still living in them, or returning to them at the earliest possible moment, although it seemed that nothing could exist except devastation and rubble. I think it is most unfortunate that the Heligolanders cannot make their homes again in their own country, and I think we should be chary of asserting that these people, who are so willing to try, could not return to their island. It must be borne in mind that a great many of these people are fishermen, and I know from experience in Scotland that fishermen, who, after all, get their livelihood from the sea, will live in places which many men would say, could not possibly support life from off the land at any rate.

The other and far more serious reason which has been given is that there is no other suitable target for our Air Force. I agree that if that is really the case at this time, then the Government have a right to ask the Heligolanders to accept this very great sacrifice in the interests of the whole of Western Europe. We must be absolutely sure, however, that the Government have probed every conceivable alternative. I suggest that this is a Western European problem. We were told yesterday that our defence is not a matter for ourselves alone. Can the Government honestly say that there are no other uninhabited islands, no other means of providing targets for the Air Force?

Like the hon. Member for Inverness (Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton), I would regret the bombing of any Scottish island which is, or might be, uninhabited. No one would regret it more than I. But there may be certain places, like Rockall, which are uninhabited and uninhabitable. There may be islands round Ireland which are uninhabited and will never be inhabited again, and there must be similar islands around the coast of Europe. I do not want it to be thought that I am advocating the bombing of Scottish or any other islands, even if uninhabitable. I should deplore it. But if the alternative to bombing an uninhabitable European island, is the continued bombing of Heligoland, then I say that, other things being equal, this would be preferable.

I am much more in agreement with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. J. Hynd) than with my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Professor Savory). My hon. Friend has the respect and affection of everyone in this House, not least for his characteristics of kindliness, but I do not think it should go forward without correction that we, on these benches, wish to support any proposals which are likely to interfere with the efficient training of the R.A.F. or weaken the policy of being firm with the Germans. Indeed, I would support the Government in any attempts they are making to be firm with the defeated Germans, even in a bad case—although I do not think this is such.

I was not very much impressed with my hon. Friend's argument that these people are not German. They have been under the German flag for 60 years and, in my opinion, they are, by absorption, just as much German as any other minority in the country. Their late Government led them into the last war and I do not know that they made any protest at the time. I am sure it is extremely inconvenient for them to suffer this type of bombardment in their own homeland, to which they want to return, but I remember that not so very long ago many millions of people were put to a great deal of inconvenience by the Germans.

The Royal Air Force has to have bombing ranges. Everybody is agreed about that, provided that the bombing ranges do not happen to be anywhere near where those people live or near any place in which they have an interest. That has always been the case. As to the argument that there are other uninhabited islands available, I should like to think that in a short time we shall have an Air Force sufficiently strong to need bombing targets on other uninhabited islands, as well as Heligoland, which suit their training requirements.

Again, I am not in the least impressed by the argument that this action is contrary to The Hague Convention. I think it is monstrous impertinence on the part of the present Western German Government to invoke that argument, when Germany has never kept any international conventions when it has suited her purpose to break them. To invoke a convention only when it happens to-suit the Germans is nothing but hypocrisy. I hope that the Government will stand firm and will have no nonsense about it, and that if it suits them, they will continue to use this island for the same purpose.

The speech of the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. M. Lindsay), shows a state of mind which will make it quite impossible to defend Western Europe. If this idea of savage hatred, of contempt for German interests, is to be maintained, I would point out that it is not the sort of idea which will make Western Europe defensible.

I would be inclined to agree that it is hyprocrisy to invoke The Hague Convention. No nation, including ourselves, even went through the motions of abiding by The Hague Convention in the last war. Our bombardment of German towns was a flagrant breach of The Hague Convention, which specifically forbids it. The only time we seemed to be interested in The Hague Convention was in invoking it against German generals who had been fighting in Russia, where, needless to say, it was not applied by the Russians. The hon. Member for Solihull is an old friend of mine, and there is nothing personal in my remarks. But I feel that his was a most unfortunate and unhappy intervention in this Debate.

In spite of the very effective factual case presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Attercliffe (Mr. J. Hynd), whose humanitarian views are in no way challenged, I prefer the case made out by the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Professor Savory), although I feel that the hon. Member for Antrim, South, may be a great deal more inaccurate about the facts than was my hon. Friend.

The issue, as has been said, is an emotional rather than a practical issue. To take a German island which today is uninhabited, and perhaps uninhabitable, but which is an island of great history and tradition, and to say that we will use it as a bombing target, is an offence which will be resented by every German. If Western Europe is to be defended, these people must be our friends. There are those who say, "What an outrage that the Germans should suggest that we should practise bombing on one of our own uninhabited islands."

Hear, hear.

Such an attitude is quite wrong. The hon. Member for Solihull says "Hear, hear," but none the less his is an attitude of mind which makes any possibility of frank and free co-operation in the defence of Europe quite impossible. We cannot hope to work with the Germans on terms other than those of equality. That equality expresses itself not only in purely utilitarian forms. It expresses itself in sentiment, and in respect for other people's feelings. At the moment, probably, the bombing of Heligoland does not much injure property. There is a perfectly good utilitarian case for it. But, it injures the possibility of good will, and on that ground it ought to stop.

I intervene because of the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Attercliffe (Mr. J. Hynd), who made a very flimsy case in suggesting that it is impracticable to have bombing elsewhere; that because one part of a country has been devastated we should keep it in a state of devastation, and that we should never allow the people who lived there to return to their birthplace. Suppose that the Germans were using a Scottish island for bombing practice. Suppose the Heligolanders or Frisians were doing so. I think that, probably, that would have been resented in this country and that it would have been suggested that they should practise their bombing in some part of their own country.

I think that the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Professor Savory), who raised this matter, raised it very sincerely and rightly. He has done so before, and I have sometimes felt that the question has not received the fair consideration to which it is entitled. For that reason I give him support here today. I think it is an outrage to public opinion that an island to which the Germans, in their own country, could go to find beauty and culture and science, is now being completely laid in ruins. I think that this is a dreadful policy.

The suggestion of the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. Lindsay), that we should continue to bomb Heligoland because the people who lived there were Germans, is an even bigger outrage. It does not seem to me to matter whether those people are Germans or Frisians, or of any other nationality. The fundamental consideration is: What is to be the future of those people who lived there, whose home it is? They at least ought to be consulted, if we believe in the right of self-determination. I hope the Government will give serious consideration to this matter, and that this country will not go on with this policy.

I am sure we all admire the persistence and passion with which the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Professor Savory) always supports the case of minorities. As the hon. Member for Inverness (Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton) said, it is a very attractive quality, and one which we should all like to think our country was famous for. We have shown our sympathy already with the representations the hon. Member has made, because when he brought our attention to the fact that the cemetery had been hit by some bombs dropped in practice, we stopped bombing and carried out an investigation on the spot, and moved the target to a point where it was no longer possible also to hit the cemetery. I also enjoyed the hon. Member's historical survey, as one always does; but he will not expect me to answer for the mistakes of the Government of Lord Salisbury or of any Government between the wars.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Attercliffe (Mr. J. Hynd) said, one must really try to put this thing in its proper proportions. The hon. Member for Antrim, South, spoke again today of 2,700 Frisians who wanted to go back to their homes on this island. As a result of the representations he made to the Air Ministry before, only a week or two ago I flew round this island, within a few feet of its summit, and had a very close look at it. I think hon. Members ought to know exactly what its condition is.

At the moment it is the nearest thing to the Warsaw Ghetto I have seen in Western Europe. It is literally a rock sticking out of the sea, and just a mass of rubble, with two or three long spits on either side, of which one was used as the Germans' naval base. There is no question of anybody's home being on that island, nor can there possibly be any question of more than a handful of people—of fishermen—gaining their living there again. What were the industries there, or what sort of life was supported there? It had a fashionable seaside resort and a great naval base and arsenal. I do not think anybody can imagine that any Government—it would have been a German Government if a peace treaty had been signed—would spend money on making a seaside resort there amid a heap of rubble while Germany has so many other problems. Nor could there be any possible consideration of reviving the naval base.

So, what we are really considering is, whether it is now right to allow a few fishermen—they could not be more than a handful—to go to live there in whatever conditions they please, but necessarily very hard ones and ply their trade there, or whether the use to which we are putting it is really more important, and more in the interests, not only of all of us, but of those fishermen themselves.

I should like to correct one very misleading impression the hon. Member for Antrim, South, made when he spoke about the bombardment of 1947. There was no bombardment in 1947. There was the demolition of the arsenal and naval base under the agreements by which war installations were destroyed in Germany, and in other parts which the Germans had armed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Attercliffe pointed out, Heligoland was the most thoroughly organised arsenal and the most important naval base.

The hon. Member asked about machinery and other things being destroyed which might have had a peacetime value. The only conceivable purpose of the greater part of that machinery on Heligoland was naval. The power station might, of course, have served the seaside resort, but only in a very secondary capacity. There was no deliberate and indiscriminate devastation of Heligoland. There was very deliberate and scientific destruction of a most important and dangerous naval base and war-time arsenal. The effects—the very heavy effects—of our war-time bombing increased the general devastation of the island.

The question that we have to decide is whether, in view of the international situation, it is right to go on using Heligoland as a bombing target, or whether we ought to allow a handful of fishermen to return there to make their homes on the Island and ply their trade there. Were the international situation different from what it is, I have very little doubt that I should be giving a different answer, but the international situation is as it is, and as we have been discussing it in the last two days; and one has to consider the problem in that light.

I should like to tell the House why it is that Heligoland is so uniquely suitable as a bombing target. We have all had the same idea as has occurred to many hon. Members who have spoken in this Debate, that there must be some other place we could use. When we come to consider all the factors concerned, however, we see that it is very difficult to find anywhere else which combines as many of the advantages for target purposes as Heligoland. We have not found anywhere else within range of these islands for normal bombing practice.

We have got to have an island which is of a certain size. It must stick out a certain distance from the sea in order to be a good radar target to be bombed from a height. It must also be a certain distance all round from any land, not only because one does not want to disturb people on the land, but so that there is a good margin of safety if anything goes wrong and it is necessary to jettison the bombs, quite apart from bombing practice.

It must also be in a part of the world where the climate is reasonable and, although the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) may not like to hear it, we have had a look round his part of the world, and round a great many parts of the British Isles. The fact is, although there are a good many rocks sticking out of the sea, from this point of view none of them combines all the qualities that Heligoland has, and climate is one of the great difficulties.

Our climate has some advantages, then.

If the hon. Gentleman likes to take it that way, so much the better.

What about the Russian climate?

Lastly, there is another very important point, that when doing a bombing exercise it is not only the crew in the bomber to whom practice is given, or to whom it is desired to give practice. Heligoland has the advantage of being geographically in a position which can give practice to all sorts of other units concerned with the air defence of this country—a position which is not held on any island off the north-coast of Scotland, or off the coast of Ireland, or anywhere else.

When all these considerations are taken into account, there is nowhere else which combines all the qualities which must be possessed by a target for live bombing practice from high altitudes, and if we are to have an effective bombing force, it is necessary to practise bombing with live bombs. Practice bombs have not the same ballistics; they are not so accurate, and they do not therefore give the bomb aimer real training. Live bombs are quite different in their flight, and so on, and it is only when they are used that accuracy can be obtained.

Of course, it is unpleasant and, in a sense, distresing to have to think of these things, but nobody—particularly nobody who has attended the Debates in this House in the last few days—can really believe that we can maintain our way of life or help the Germans and the Frisian Islanders to maintain theirs without doing these things, and I honestly feel that we have a right to ask both the former inhabitants of this island and all those who are so naturally interested in their case to accept the position. The Germans themselves, for they are concerned, are not yet in a position to contribute to any considerable extent to the defence of the West. Yet this is a way in which they can really help us to assure their defence, and exactly the same goes for the islanders themselves.

If it is a question of sentiment, I cannot believe that the present German Government would want to make this a sentimental issue. Heligoland has not been in the possession of Germany for very long. As the hon. Member for Antrim, South, reminded us, it was only ceded to Germany in 1890, and in so far as it has any sentimental value for the Germans it can only be as a great military base from which two terrible wars were waged against the people whom we all hope the Germans will now consider their friends and Allies. I should hope that if any tradition was worth breaking, and if any sentiment was worth changing, then the German sentiment about Heligoland was such a one. I think we can appeal to the Germans with real sincerity, and with a real desire to further co-operation with them, to let this position stand.

Surely the Government will repudiate the suggestion of the hon. Member for Ayrshire, South (Mr. Emrys Hughes), that Ayrshire should be used as an alternative target?

I do not think the Government need repudiate all the suggestions made by every hon. Member, particularly some of the suggestions of our hon. Friend the Member for Ayrshire, South (Mr. Emrys Hughes).

I have not intervened in this Debate except to make a brief reference, and it was not to Ayrshire.

Before I get into my speech this afternoon, may I preface my remarks by making one fact abundantly clear? When the North Koreans launched their attack, their invasion on the South, it was right and proper for the United Nations, by every means in their power, to oppose that flagrant aggression. No other course was possible. In their instant acceptance of the Security Council resolution the Government have my whole-hearted support. Let me assure the House that in this I am speaking with the unanimous support of the Parliamentary group which I represent, and also I think with the endorsement of the vast majority of my associates. Let there be no doubt where we stand on this: In opposing aggression in Korea, we are four-square behind the United Nations. But the burden of our appeal today is that more than that is also necessary.

This war in Korea has taught us many lessons, and before it is over we shall be obliged to learn many more. Whatever conclusions have already been drawn, I think it is reasonable to suppose that would-be democrats on all the potential battle-fronts may now be asking themselves, anxiously, whether it is worth opposing Communism to pay the second price for the awful privilege of liberation—and possibly atomic liberation. That is the pass we have reached; that is the drift of events:

"The best chance of saving freedom and achieving peace is in an action so challenging, so vast in scope, so practical in design and so sincere in purpose that it fills the moral vacuum in the world with new and reborn hope."

Those were words which Walter Reuther, the President of the Automobile Workers Union, used last week when putting to an American audience much the same theme as that which I propose to discuss today.

To the ordinary citizen throughout the length and breadth of this distracted planet the message of Communism has two compelling attractions. It serves as a beacon to the under-privileged and to the oppressed; and it poses as the champion of the poor and the hungry against the power of the strong and the rich. It also offers an answer—specious though it undoubtedly is—to that burning question which, since August, 1945, has been uppermost in everybody's mind: How can war be ended so that man may survive; and how can the scientific knowledge of our age be used for constructive purposes and prevented from destroying the world? To this second question the orthodox Marxist will reply: "War is inherent in the nature of capitalism, and it can only be ended when capitalism is overthrown." Western Christendom has not yet disproved that assertion. We have not yet exposed the fallacy of this spurious dialectic.

Now the tide of Communism cannot be countered unless the message with which we meet it answers those two questions with better, more noble and more convincing solutions than the Communists can give. There are better answers; there are better solutions; but they have not yet been demonstrated. In our hearts we know those answers but so far, publicly, we have not effectively asserted them. The democracies will not win this ideological struggle unless we fight openly and courageously for one single objective, for the creation of a world of peace and justice. And that objective must be repeatedly stated. But just to state the goal is not enough.

We must also be able to explain shortly and concisely how the solution for which we stand can, and will, provide the world with lasting peace and genuine justice. Right solutions to most complex problems are often simple. It is because of their very simplicity that we are apt to overlook them.

It had better be admitted that the standard for which we now are fighting is, in the opinion of most of the world's people, not sufficiently attractive. Today the West, that is the anti-Communist world, is fighting for the United Nations, and for freedom which, being interpreted, means political liberty. This is, indeed, a laudable aim. For us, who have already achieved release from serfdom, for our people, who no longer suffer from poverty and hunger, political freedom is a sacred flame for the maintenance of which most of us would die; for which, in two world wars, our youth believed they gave their lives.

But for the majority of mankind on this planet political freedom, as we understand it, is almost meaningless. Moreover, if it means anything in Asia it means exactly the opposite to what we are doing. It means the expulsion of white hegemony. The mass of the world's people endure unending hunger and grinding poverty; they still suffer the paralysing indignity of being regarded, through accident of birth or colour, as second-class citizens, inferior and seemingly degraded.

It is against this intolerable injustice that mankind now stirs in indignant wrath. The cold war is not, as it sometimes seems, merely a struggle between Soviet Russia and Anglo-American forces. It is a world civil war bent on tearing down a social fabric which allows such things to exist. A civil war can only be ended when government, law and order, take its place. This government, which the world now so urgently demands, cannot be instituted on secure foundations unless it effectively redresses those evils, unless it alters the conditions which breed the anger and hostility which are the symptoms of the discontent. How to do that is our real problem.

Let me repeat. The root of this conflict, in which we are engaged, is a spontaneous revulsion against social injustice, and against inequality of opportunity. In the last analysis, it is against the domination of the many who are poor, and hungry and weak, by the exercise of power and privilege by the rich and the few. The majority of mankind, being hungry and under-privileged, look to Communism for their salvation. They will continue to do so until we give them better reasons to look to us. Because this is so, a mere military strengthening of the armed forces of the West offers no solution. Indeed, the stronger the West becomes, the more the under-privileged, the poor and hungry will hate us for our power, the more certain it is that in the end we will be defeated. We can never win by being powerful. Paradoxically, though, we can lose by being weak and woolly-minded.

Speaking to the United Nations in the autumn of 1948, Mr. Nehru used these words:

"We have got into a cycle of hatred and violence, and not the most brilliant debate will get you out of it, unless you look for some other way and find some other means."

"Hatred and violence," he said, "will not build peace." That is true. Let us consider our problem, then, on the basis of first principles.

What is required? Peace, and with it happiness; life and with it love, justice, and freedom for all men—Peace; Justice; Freedom, in that order. But there can be no peace without justice, no justice without law. Nor can there be law without a legislature to make it, courts to interpret it, and a police force to enforce it. All of that is also true. Nor can there be any political freedom, in the sense we desire it, unless, in that legislature where the world law is made, there is due regard for democracy; government of the people, by the people and for the people. Lincoln's phrase can be re-stated thus: "Government by a freely elected representative assembly."

How far does the United Nations in its existing form fall short of these principles? How far are we honestly able to assert that the maintenance of the authority of the United Nations is the paramount objective for which we fight? Let us examine the U.N. Is its law, by any stretch of imagination, made by a representative assembly? According to the existing Charter, the U.S.S.R., India and China, together containing half the population of the world, cast only 10 per cent. of its votes. The 20 Latin-American Republics, regarded by many as the satellites of the U.S.A., represent 7 per cent. of the population of the United Nations. But they cast 40 per cent. of the votes. In the General Assembly of the U.N., which chooses the members of the Security Council, Luxemburg and India each have one vote. Luxemburg has a population of 300,000. India has over 300 million. This means that one white privileged Luxembourgois has the same representation as 1,000 coloured poverty-stricken Indians. It is hard to argue the case for the United Nations to an inquiring audience of young Asian students, as I had to do about this time last year.

The primary object of any world assembly—of the United Nations, therefore—as no one can or will deny, is the maintenance of peace. This is odd when, under its statutes, it is seen that the only way the U.N. keeps the peace is by making war, when the peace enforcement action it envisages can only be obtained by the application of force by national armies, when the individual instigators of acts of lawlessness cannot be arrested or brought to trial before a jury because the only laws of this kind—the Nuremberg laws—have not yet been adopted by the U.N. Under the U.N. Charter the aggressor we must seek to indict can never be an individual, but must always be a nation-state. And yet, to quote the words which Justice Jackson used at Nuremberg:

"The idea that a state, any more than a corporation, commits crimes is a fiction. Crimes always are committed only by persons. That fictional being, the state, cannot be produced for trial, cannot plead, cannot testify and cannot be sentenced."

To do just that, which Justice Jackson and Burke have said is impossible, is the solemnly declared aim of the United Nations. The United Nations Charter manifestly needs to be amended. If we are to be honest with ourselves and respected by the world I think we ought to admit it.

How then is the U.N. to be altered? I think that Britain, first, should declare its aims, and declare them unequivocally. This is no time for half measures. What kind of world authority and what kind of world justice are we really fighting for? It has been said that in war there is a danger of thinking too much about the fighting and too little about the object of the fight. Today we live in mortal danger of making that mistake. That is why on Wednesday, 28th June, I sought the Adjournment of the House in order to discuss this very urgent issue. I quote:

"Never since the beginning of recorded history has mankind been faced by so terrible a problem. Either we must within the space of a few years consent to an entirely novel form of political and military organisation or, if we fail in this, we must expect a worldwide disaster surpassing in its horror all that past misfortune enables us to imagine. One of the greatest difficulties is the shortness of the time during which preventive measures must be completed. There must be one central government possessing a monopoly of the more dangerous weapons and strong enough to insist on the substitution of law for anarchy. So long as no such central government exists, war is sure to recur."

Then the author went on:

"If mankind can be brought, while there is yet time, to realise that the most elementary motives of self-preservation demand this revolutionary change as regards national sovereignty, a new era of unprecedented happiness and prosperity will almost inevitably result. Given a stable world Government, it will be easy to abolish poverty everywhere."

Those words were used by Bertrand Russell when he spoke on the B.B.C. in a talk on atomic energy in March, 1947.

"There must be one Central Government strong enough to insist on the substitution of law for anarchy … So long as no such Government exists, war is sure to recur."

No such central authority does exist. How are we to create it? It is a solution of this cardinal problem which I want the House to consider. We must act quickly. Time is fast running out. The first step, I think, can be taken here. This House should, I believe, say what the creation of such a central authority will demand in respect of the abrogation of national sovereignty, and, having said it, we should then admit with conviction and sincerity that we are ready, given adequate safeguards, to make those changes.

Now let me discuss for a few moments the nature of the powers which, given the safeguards—which are all-important—Britain would require to transfer from our Parliament in Westminster to a supranational world authority, if ever such a thing could be created. Determined to face the facts as I see them, I would make the list as follows:

Firstly, the central authority or world government, will need, as Lord Russell has correctly pointed out, to exercise the monopoly of armed force. This it would use, at its discretion, as an instrument of law enforcement; and the participating nations would thus be required to disarm down to the level of their internal policing commitments. Under such circumstances, be it noted, Britain would no longer control the British Royal Navy; it would become an integral part of a world police force. Nor, since foreign policy is an instrument of defence, would we require the present organs of diplomacy.

Secondly, the central authority would control the one integrated agency for atomic development, and no nation, except under licence, would be allowed to handle fissionable materials or to own weapons of mass destruction.

Thirdly, the central authority, having control of a world police force, being solely responsible for defence, and having control of the production and distribution of atomic energy, would need to raise revenue, presumably by some system of indirect taxation. And this, surely, involves the fixing by the central authority of the rates of exchange of our several national currencies.

Fourthly, and lastly, the central authority would need to operate, as one of its executive agencies, a world food board. It would thus be given the responsibility for planning, in broad outline, the overall production, and ensuring the equitable distribution of the basic raw materials of the union.

These four transfers of power from the national Governments to the world authority are, I suggest, fundamental and inescapable. They are also indivisible. Therefore, a step to world peace is for this House to admit that fact. We shall get nowhere by burying our heads in the sand. But it will be readily understood that no nation, least of all our own, could ever contemplate such phenomenal and revolutionary transfers of authority without ample and adequate safeguards. Nor could we do so until it can be seen without doubt that it is a wise and safe step to take. But we must not be over-cautious. Let me remind the House that to make no change, is to face the prospect of human extinction.

I come now to the question of the all-important safeguards. How are they to be discovered, and how are we to assure ourselves of their adequacy? Which brings me to the second step which I think this House might take. Either under Article 109 or outside the scope of the U.N., if that is thought to be preferable, a Peoples' Constituent Assembly should be convened; and, learning the lessons of Versailles, San Francisco and Strasbourg, the Assembly ought to be organised as follows.

First, the peoples of the nations, and not the nation-states themselves, should be represented, on a basis, I would suggest, of one per million of their inhabitants. Secondly, the objective of the Assembly should be to draft a new charter for the United Nations—one which, incidentally, makes some sense of the first words of its Preamble: "We the people." The Assembly, from the outset, should be asked to assume that a transfer of powers, much as I have already adumbrated, is desirable. It should be instructed to find, if it can be found, an acceptable constitutional formula by which such powers could be abrogated to, and exercised by, an elected World Parliament, formed on a federal pattern. The Assembly would, of course, also have to define the representation on this Parliament or, if the description is preferred, on a reformed General Assembly of a truly United Nations—which representation incidentally certainly cannot be a simple per capita basis.

Thirdly, we should invite Mr. Nehru and Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan, jointly, to sponsor this Assembly, and ask them to find a town in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent where it could conveniently meet. Fourthly, to this Peoples' Constituent Assembly, sponsored jointly by India and Pakistan, all the peoples of the world should be invited to send their representatives. The constituent assembly should reach its decisions by a majority vote and in its deliberations should adopt a Parliamentary procedure. Indeed, it might, in effect, be regarded as a "Select Committee of Mankind," set up to produce and to lay before the bar of world opinion, detailed advice for securing a world at peace.

At this point I know that I shall be asked whether I realise what might happen in this Assembly if the Communist delegates there present outnumbered the rest. As is the case with any Select Committee, a minority, if it feels impelled to do so, can submit a minority report. We already know in considerable detail the Communist plan for world government; and what we know we do not much admire. But what we have not had, and for the lack of it the world is now in danger of perishing, is the democratic alternative.

What form of World State do the democracies envisage? What would we consent to join? The United Nations, as at present constituted, is obviously now inadequate. It is not democratic. It cannot sufficiently speedily provide the redeployment of the world's resources so as to ensure their use for the benefit of man as distinct from the profit of investing nations. And—this is of paramount importance—the United Nations does not provide the tangible evidence of a world citizenship status without which that prevailing sense of under-privilege and injustice can never be eliminated from the minds of four-fifths of the human race.

Before concluding my speech I want to make a few observations which, I hope, will be helpful. In 1944 I moved at the Labour Party Conference, a resolu- tion in favour of the creation of a United States of Europe. By January, 1946, I had discovered reluctantly that this idea, which seemed to me in earlier years to offer a reliable stepping-stone to world government, was no longer a practical possibility. Many of my federalist colleagues rejected my conclusions at that time. Most of them today, I think, have changed their views. Events have moved swiftly. That stepping-stone, a European Federation including the United Kingdom, if ever it existed as an independent unit, has now disappeared into the chasm of the cold war.

Nowadays much thought is being given to the alternative possibility of Atlantic Union. I implore those who are now examining this project to do so very carefully. The idea of Atlantic Union is undoubtedly attractive; but two factors should be carefully noted. Britain can never abrogate sovereignty in the full sense except to a Union which is big enough to contain the whole of the British Commonwealth; and this includes, India, Pakistan and Ceylon. Secondly, any union which contains, as founder members, India and her neighbours, can never be termed an Atlantic fraternity, unless one regards Indians as second-class citizens—and that they certainly are not, nor will ever consent to be. Which brings me to my final point.

The problem of world federal government, which everyone now knows is the only ultimate solution, is identically the same, in global proportion, as federation of our allies in the Korean war is in microcosm. If we were able organically to unit this group of States which supported the Security Council resolution we would meet and have to overcome all the problems which world unity presents. In this group of nations, which has supported the Security Council resolution, we will meet and have to overcome all the problems which world unity presents. In this group of nations we have at least three different civilisations, Indian, Islamic and Western Christendom. We have communities which are rich and numerically few, alongside the poor and numerically vast. We have communities who have found and treasured political liberty with those for whom this phrase, as yet, has hardly any meaning.

This, then, is a group it should be possible now to unite. We should work for this without delay. If it is within the compass of human ability to devise a constitution under which these vastly different races can live and work and. if need be, fight and die together, maintaining their rich diversity within a cohesive federal unity; if it is possible within such a structure to give hope to our Asian brothers in the union that the resources of all can and will be used for the common good of all; if it is possible for the cultural freedoms and legitimate aspirations of the minorities to be adequately safeguarded—if these problems can be solved within this group of allied nations, then we will have discovered, at long last, the pattern of global peace.

Without alteration this same system could be offered, and might reasonably be expected to be acceptable, to all the other nations of the earth. We shall then have something with which to confront the Soviet Union; a system that combines peace with justice, freedom with equality, and power with responsibility and true democracy. Sooner or later, as the right hon. Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) has said, we shall have to bring matters to a head with the Soviet Union. If ever we do so, there is only one ultimatum which is feasible. The alternative is utter destruction. There is only one proposal for "unconditional surrender" that makes any sense at all. It will be the offer to the Soviet Union of inclusion, as an equal partner, in a World Federal Government which has been tried and not found wanting.

Nor should we, the British, or the Americans for that matter, have the responsibility of proposing its acceptance. For nothing we can say to the Russians, it seems, is likely greatly to influence them. That, fortunately, is of little consequence. The pressure for acceptance for this new ideal will be applied, not by us, but by those Asians whose leadership and inspiration will have brought the Union to birth. Our contribution, which these Asians Will never forget, is that, when they asked for it, we gave them freedom. Their desire, and our only hope now, is that they in turn may show the world the way to peace. I believe, with God's help, that they could do it if we in Britain only have the courage and the vision to play our part.

rose—

The hon. Member for Inverness (Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton) has lost his right to speak as he has already spoken. The Question before the House is the same, "That this House do now adjourn."

I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, I thought one could speak in another Debate.

Only by leave of the House.

Exactly five weeks ago, there was a Motion in the name of the hon. Member for Yardley (Mr. Usborne), which was never debated, calling for reform of the United Nations and the formation of a world Government. At that time there were many who believed that the United Nations, as a force for stopping war was going the way of the League of Nations. Within a few days those fears were justified. For we are again smitten by the scourge of war. But just as justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done, so must the United Nations not only act unitedly when aggression takes place, but must be known to be united and to be going to act unitedly. That was not known several weeks ago.

When Korea was invaded the voice, albeit without that of the newly re-joined member of it, was the voice of the United Nations; but the hand was the hand of America, and we should all be grateful for her right arm and the surprising speed of her reaction. But government by surprise is not conducive to order or discipline in a bandit world and, in future, we must make it clear beyond a per-adventure that when a similar act of aggression takes place, the nations will take united action, which will be action and not mere lip service.

It may be that when South Korea is again in non-Communist hands the Communists will have learned their lesson. But the Communist campaign is like an iceberg; the bulk of it is not seen, and in the fog of cloudy thinking many who feel that their economic condition could not be much worse under any regime are attracted thereto. Yet despite the great difference in riches between the rulers and the ruled in the Soviet Union and the domination there of the many by the few, I believe that unless we of the West reorganise our Governments and economies and produce a faith to counter Communism there may be further Communist successes. For we must now accept a divided world and concentrate on the world that is still free, in improving conditions therein, and making sure that the world of tyranny recognises our united strength and will keep within its bounds.

I have recently put down my name to a Motion which recognises the ultimate idea of world Government, because I believe that, without some supranational force, over the generations we shall be unable to prevent war. But however much the hon. Member for Yardley may preach, I fear it may be many decades before there is such a peace and many years before the last Communist tyranny comes to an end. But something can be done now. We can achieve a Government of the free world by the free world for the free world; the provision of security for those States that look to the free world for their protection and the guarantee of the frontiers of those countries which lie between the two world systems. Therein lies sane realist hope. But if we who share a common Christian cultural inheritance treat our sovereign rights in a miserly manner, we shall never attain united strength.

The frontier of the free world is now on the Elbe. Though we must keep open the door to those beyond when they are free, and to others elsewhere, there can be no seats in the federation of the free for any State voting as a tyrant party dictates, nor for one which is too backward for real democracy. The free world is then reduced to little more than the Commonwealth, America and Western and Mediterranean Europe. The greatest danger which that free world now faces is from the new secular religion of the East, some of whose prophets have already declared a holy war.

It fights openly against us in the Far East, and in our home countries its apostles and proselytes prophesy the break-up of our economy once Marshall Aid ends or whenever a slump, however long delayed it may now be, comes in America. Yet the communications of that free world, with all its common inheritance and ideals, have been so contracted by science, that it is relatively smaller than England was a few centuries ago. With all, our vast areas and potential power, the Western world is in danger of being "Balkanized" in our constant frontiers and in our dollar poverty.

How are we going to confound the Communist prophets? How, in the past, did the world adjust itself in similar circumstances of potential suspicion? In the case of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it was by marriage between Royal Families, but in most cases by conquest, by the law of "might is right." The first is precluded to us, because other countries have been less happy than we in our Royal dynasties, and the second is unacceptable to all save the conqueror. Surely there is some other way, a way that has been tried by that great Union of States across the Atlantic. The catalyst then was fear, fear of domination by a far-off Britain as, I believe, in the immediate years the catalyst will again be fear, fear that unless we get together we shall all fall separately before the new imperialism of the East, which is out for world domination. Whatever we now create, we must base it on the people rather than on the separate Governments of the free world.

This House has frequently discussed the three circles of our relations—with the Commonwealth, with America, and with Europe. If one is divorced from the other how great can be the misunderstanding? No one knows yet how the Schuman Plan will work and what effect it will have on our own country or on Commonwealth economy. Even if Western Union is achieved, our problem is not solved, because our countries have, largely, supplementary, rather than complementary economies. We compete with each other in our exports, in the getting of our raw materials and of our food from America and from out of the Russian storehouse. If any of us turn inwards, on our Empire, as many of us would like to do, how are we to find those vast capital resources that we need to make that Empire self-sufficient? Fresh capital is what we deny ourselves today out of our own production, and if we are dependent on dollar aid, how are we to produce that fresh capital?

America is almost the only country in the world that has, up to now, had a surplus of production over consumption, and how are her citizens to lend their money in currencies, in the control of Which they have no share, which may be blocked, as we found ours blocked in South America? Are they going to build up with their money an integrated Empire, which, ultimately, will be self-sufficient, and will no longer want to import American goods?

Nor can the solution be found in anything like a 49th State. National pride and other interests will always dictate against that. In our youth we have seen a conjurer take three interlocking steel rings, and, with the aid of a magic wand and with great dexterity, make them one. I have often wondered whether some magic statesman might not do likewise. Surely there is nothing unworthy in a partnership. All my business life I have been a junior partner, and every day as I come through St. Stephen's Hall and look at the picture of Queen Anne in the Palace of St. James receiving from the Scottish Commissioners the Articles of Union of the two Kingdoms, I wonder whether those Commissioners ever thought they were giving up their sovereignty or if they ever foresaw that my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Boothby) would remind this House that the Scots not only govern Scotland, but have most of the worthwhile jobs in England, in the Commonwealth and in large sections of America. If any member of the federation should object to being a junior partner, I suggest that surely that is better than being pensioned off as an old retainer.

What, in point of fact, should we have to give up? There is defence. Already, in large measure, that is done, though I suspect that with a single, integrated Defence Force there would be immense savings on overheads. There is foreign policy. Once we accept a full working defensive alliance, surely a joint foreign policy becomes inevitable. But if the foundations of the Western world are to be so sure that, whatever the Communists do, our house will stand, there must be economic as well as military union.

If trade is to flow freely and in an expanding manner, it will mean one Customs, one citizenship and one currency—"stollar" or "derling," whatever the name may be—for that honest coin which must be legal tender in New York, London, Paris or Berlin. It means one financial policy—and this is vital—so designed to stimulate the production of wealth in an expanding Keynesian way, with the emphasis on the partnership income rather than on the partnership debts that there are no pools of economic distress in countries, as there has been in the past in some cities and counties of the United Kingdom.

There must be some court of appeal for partnership disputes. The International Court at The Hague may well evolve into that. It is not as if the system has not in large measure been tried already. It was tried in the closing stages of the war in the work of the combined boards at Washington. We have already had much support for the idea both in Congress and in the Senate of the United States. Recently, in Canada, the Senate passed, with only one dissentient, a motion calling for a convocation of the Atlantic Powers to consider federal union.

Beyond what I have outlined, little else need be delegated. States and people would be free to run themselves and to grow rich in so doing. If there are some so wedded to the past as to believe that Socialism will work, there is no reason why they should not continue to try it in their own area. Such a partnership would solve not only the German problem. The economic problem of Canadian triangular trade would be no more, and even the Irish might no longer consider themselves divided.

Of course, there are constitutional and other difficulties. The United States of America might think that they would not gain relatively as much as the junior partners, but I suspect that any senior partner in an expanding company does better than he ever did as a one-man concern, however rich and prosperous he may have been by himself. I suspect, too, that he would prefer partnership to the position of being a permanent rich uncle to poor relations. Atlantis, Oceana—for the friends of freedom are found on the shores of all the oceans—whatever the name may be, here is an opportunity, in our defence against Communism, of attaining world peace by arming ourselves now with powerful new economic weapons.

Here is a chance to fill our Western ports with an expanding trade, a chance of looking forward to a time when taxation will no longer press upon the people and when all can enjoy the free world's immense potential riches. Finally, here is a faith that Western Christian civilisation can so compose its differences and give up to a greater family some of its own particular patrimony, that war within itself will become as unthinkable as war between England and Scotland, and we shall have a union so strong that none dare challenge our supremacy. So armed, the partners and the people may well go forward to the attainment of a world peace and to the enjoyment of an Augustan or, perhaps, an Elizabethan age.

I suppose that, at this time, the minds of people are so pre-occupied with the danger of war that a Debate like this must strike a note which is very strange and even unreal. People will be asking themselves—those who trouble to think—what it is that the Russians really want. Is it world power as the way to domestic stability? But that was the argument that we always used in connection with the rise of Hitler. Or is it that we lack some sympathetic and intelligent understanding of the endemic national fear on the part of Russia?

When my hon. Friend the Member for Yardley (Mr. Usborne) talked about world authority, I suppose he was thinking, as I think, that what we want to find out is whether there is any sort of world authority that would attract the interest and the sympathy of Russia but which, at the same time, would permit intellectual freedom—freedom which, in my view, can never be killed, whatever temporary oppressive measures may be taken.

Our job, and especially the job of those who seek the confidence of people at the time of democratic elections, must be to look ahead and try to get behind the minds of those whom we consider as aggressors. If I may digress, let us trace for a moment the reasoning behind Russian political thought at the present time. I do not think there is a better stepping-off stone than to take the example of the German philosopher Hegel, for it was he who developed the process of dialectics to go further than the development of thought—that is to the developments in Nature and history to which could be applied the same dialectical process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Marx, when he extended that process of thought by thesis, antithesis and synthesis to material things, made it quite clear that material things, as such, should not be regarded just as a reflection of ideas, but as a development in their own right, as a process of thought. It is this dialectical materialism together, I think, with some evidence of paronia, which lies behind and is the controlling factor in Soviet policy and which remains the main threat to the influence of the United Nations.

I conceive the simple analysis of the present position to be that we have a thesis of control of sovereignty by pact or union, and a Soviet antithesis of over-influence by capitalist interests, or over representation by capitalist elements, and the synthesis that there is an inevitable reaction by what, I suppose, the Russians would call the proletarian elements of the United Nations.

This Union, as we have it at present with no reduction in national sovereignty or power to enforce decisions, cannot provide that which we all desire—peace. Nor can it, except by processes far too slow, provide any sort of confidence in what are known, I think very incorrectly, as the backward peoples. That was touched upon by my hon. Friend me Member for West Ham, South (Mr. Frederick Elwyn Jones) and my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) in the Debate during the last two days. The only solution we can get, before it is too late, is to replace that Soviet antithesis by something which will produce in the minds of the so-called backward peoples some entirely different reaction and give them some confidence in their own destiny.

It seems to me that in this British Parliament we never provide a very good example of how the Colonial peoples and their interests should be given proper consideration. Five or six times a year, in the British Parliament, we give consideration to the fate and the lives of hundreds of millions of people who have no direct representation here. To my mind, we have to show, by using the example of our own Commonwealth, how the right principle can be applied in a world authority. I do not want to take up the time of the House any longer, except to say that I do not think we so-called "advanced people" have made such a great success of our affairs that we should think it beyond the realm of possibility that among those backward people there is some genius of administration and self-government which would make a very useful contribution to a world authority.

The hon. Member for Yardley (Mr. Usborne) has given virtually the whole of his time during the last five or six years to an attempt to bring this subject to the attention of the world and of this nation in particular, and it is especially fortunate that he has today had the opportunity of developing a theme which ought to be very carefully considered by the nations of the world and, in particular, by this nation.

It seems to me perfectly clear that the United Nations has failed as a deterrent. We sincerely hope that it will not fail as a police force, and I reiterate what was said by the hon. Member for Yardley—we are all behind the United Nations in an effort to make it act as an effective police force and so, in time, increase its deterrent value in the future. But it has failed as a deterrent, and it has failed because of its inability to grasp the nettle of sovereignty. The United Nations saw the problem and introduced the veto, but sidestepped the problem by that very veto. The League of Nations pretended that the problem did not even exist.

In the same way, the United Nations has not yet really started on its positive functions. That is to say, keeping the peace is fundamentally a negative factor, whereas developing the potentialities of the community as a whole is a positive factor; and, there, they have not properly started—and for exactly the same reason that they have not grasped this nettle of sovereignty.

I want to draw the attention of the House to the astonishing Christian paradox in this field that, by renunciation, we actually gain. Within my memory, on the pegs behind you, Sir, there used to be tapes so that people could hang up their swords. It is one of the astonishing evidences of the truth of Christianity that the moment man individually gave us his right of self-defence and his sovereign right to draw his armour, he actually gained. In the same way, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) would say, the moment Scotland or England gave up the individual right of defence against the other, each gained as a consequence. The problem, as I see it, is how are the United Nations, as distinct from individuals, to be brought to agree to that great renunciation and how can we set up mechanism to make it effective.

There has been precedent in the past in the setting up of a central sovereignty, but in history there have been only two ways in which it has been achieved. The first, I am sorry to say, has been the result of chaos. The second has been the imposition of authority from outside, by an outsider. In this country we have had gradual evolution and, eventually, the gradual general acceptance of that authority and a full franchise. Do not let us ever forget, however, that the Communists want chaos because that is the way in which authority at the centre can effectively be attained. Every one then says, "By gosh, for goodness' sake, if we have to put up with this, let us have one person at the centre who is going to run the show and get on with it."

Similarly, the other possibility, I would submit, is debarred from us. The days of matrimonial matches between monarchs are past. It may well be we have a picture of Philip of Spain in our Lobbies. Equally is it not true he very nearly came to the establishment, with Mary, of a world authority for the world as it then was? But that is not on the cards at the present moment, and we have to find some method of achieving that desirable end.

How are we to create a central authority? How are we to select it and maintain it by renewal? This is possibly where I join issue with my hon. Friend the Member for Yardley—if I may call him so, for he is—in that I do not think for one moment one can do it on what I would call a purely nob counting basis. But I do think we can do it by instituting—provided it is instituted democratically—such a self-maintaining authority. Then comes the question, Will the various nations, and the various people within those nations, submit themselves voluntarily to that authority, and will it evolve democratically over the centuries gradually, as people come to have the political ability not to wreck the central authority, and as the problem arises of acceptance of that authority?

Let us make it absolutely clear that there is no hope of a central authority's being permanently or even originally acceptable to the people of Europe which is based on a nob-counting basis, because the "have nots" of Africa and Asia so enormously outnumber the others on a purely nob counting basis, except in the institution of that authority, there is just no hope at all. I would then say that there is nothing wrong in asking millions of these people to entrust detail to the central authority. That is already done in justice in this country, and it is already done in administration in this country. I think hon. Members opposite would not say that this country is any less democratic by reason of the fact that we do not elect our judges, as they do in America, on a nob counting basis, or that we are any less democratic because we do not turn out the whole of the Civil Service—or, at any rate, the most important part of it—on the grounds that they have not got a democratic franchise behind them.

Will the hon. Gentleman allow me? I want to make quite clear, if I did not make it clear, that I was suggesting this one per million for the constituent assembly, not for the world authority. I do not think myself that it is very important—the nob-counting basis—because I suggest that few people in this House would know what the basis was at Versailles or San Francisco when the Charter was evolved. Very few knew about the basis of nob-counting which went on at the drafting assembly.

I think there is no real difference between us on that point, but I would say that I think there is possibly a difference in that I do feel absolutely convinced that this central authority must be as free as justice from sectional, nationalistic, class, industrial, or any other interest, and must be as free to do what it considers best as justice is. If it is, after all, that we are seeking a rule of law in the world, then it seems to me that that law must be free, particularly in the early stages, until it has had a chance to develop, to get on with the job of administering law fairly and squarely.

Let us suppose that that is so. There are bound to be head-on conflicts. After all, in justice there are head-on conflicts; the two sides do not both expect to come away contented at the end; one or other must be extremely upset at the result. In the same way, in these world affairs there must be head-on clashes between nationalistic classes and all sorts of interests, but the important thing is that it shall be a rule of justice.

I am convinced that such a central authority can be democratically instituted. It would need to consist, I suggest, largely of Europeans, but it would be absolutely fatal if there were not a very large contingent from other continents—Africans and Asians—who have the same attitude to government by principle and government by justice. Whatever authority is set up, there would be two necessary limitations. There must be the limitation of continuance of survival, and the limitation of need for accessibility to interests that are seeking to gain recognition. I think that our Private Bill procedure upstairs shows how well in such cases the point of view of interests can properly be considered, and can be thrashed out by people who have got respect for principle and principles of law at their background.

If we were to weight this assembly so deliberately against the coloured peoples, would they not be most unlikely to believe that we really believed in equality?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his interruption, but I am coming to that point later on, if I may, because I see its great cogency.

I would maintain that Bernard Shaw is, by and large, right in regard to limitation of survival; that the real advantage of democracy is that it does prevent tyranny because it enables the people who are in authority settling what is right and what is to happen to be kicked out on their ear, and in any similar arrangement we must have machinery for their discontinuance—the more so as we shall give them a continuing authoritative situation after their first appointment. It seems to me perfectly clear that if they came up for approval every five years by the nations concerned—and I would support the need to continue national cultures, individuality and administration and would like to remind my hon. Friend the Member for Waver-tree of the parallel of the Highland Brigade, which still act very effectively in protecting the joint shores of Scotland and England—and if at the end of five years the nations of the world were so dissatisfied, notwithstanding the benefits of peace, and notwithstanding the positive advantages, that they did not renew it for another five years, then something would indeed be very wrong.

It will not be easy. There is obviously a movement the other way, not only in Ireland and Scotland, but in the two halves of India, and in the setting up of Israel; fresh constituent units are constantly coming forward to increase and not diminish the number of sovereign States. Anyhow, those details must be worked out by the United Nations. We want a truly democratically appointed authority, a truly democratically limited authority, and, as the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) has said, we must have brought in the Asiatics and the Africans in that appointment in such a way that they freely of their own accord see the need of safeguarding the people who at present have most, and propose a constitution under which these important wielders of sovereignty and self defence shall not be at the mercy of the majority of people who are in the class of the have-nots. That seems to me to be absolutely essential.

It equally seems to me clear that the United Nations staff should help, not the Foreign Offices of the world but private individuals in working this out. I am not really differing from the hon. Member for Yardley, if I say that probably professional footballers would do better than professional diplomats, and they might as well hold it in Rio as in Africa. I would strongly urge that the United Nations—

I urge that the United Nations should take seriously this Clause 109 and should work out in some such way—we must not limit them—for instance whether it is to be a written or a flexible constitution like ours. There are most important issues to be worked out. I do urge that the United Nations be given the task of doing it.

I should like to make two points. We owe a great deal to the hon. Member for Yardley (Mr. Usborne) for having brought this very important point before public opinion. Many of us feel that there is almost a conspiracy to prevent it being discussed in this country at all. We do not go the whole way with the hon. Member in his solution, but I agree with his diagnosis of the problem to be solved.

World peace is not something which can be easily achieved. It is something to do with bayonets and bullets. Most of us have had far too much to do with those in the past 10 years. That is how it concerns me and my constituents. I believe with the hon. Member for Waver-tree (Mr. Tilney) that there is a basis in the world today for something that is eminently practicable and possible, but, for some strange reason, it is a deep, dark secret in the United Kingdom. There is an advance towards the idea of some kind of Atlantic unity. I say that for want of a better term. The advance made in North America in the last five years is absolutely startling.

The hon. Member for Wavertree referred to a resolution passed in the Canadian Senate. Unless I am mistaken it is the first time that it has ever been mentioned in public in the United Kingdom, because it was boycotted by the London Press. They refused to print a word of it. I succumbed to the good old English habit of writing a letter to "The Times," but they felt it was quite unsuitable to be printed. It is really a world-shaking event that Canada and the United States, whose entire policy has been founded on the idea of staying out of Europe's trouble, should pass a resolution saying that they want to go right into Europe's trouble. I will read to the House the exact wording of that resolution in a moment or two.

We seem petrified in this country by the word "federal." That passes my comprehension, because I was brought up in a federal country and I have lived most of my life in a federal country, the United States of America. People think that it was easy for those countries to become federations, as though they just sprang fully armed, overnight, into being, as great federal governments. That is completely untrue. The American Union went through the greatest birth pangs, and for 11 years they tried a completely anarchic system. As my hon. Friend has said, they put through their federal union under the influence of fear. Let us remember also that members of the South African Union were fighting against each other only a few years before they went into their Union.

I want to make one quotation. If any hon. Member has heard it before I will bow humbly and say that I apologise. It is from a speech made in the American Senate on 29th June, when Senator Kefauver reported to the President what had happened on the same day in the Canadian Senate, showing that the administration in both those two great federations has undergone a complete revolution of public opinion which has not even been mentioned here. The Senator said:

"Mr. President, I have just received news from Canada which I hope will be a guide for all the free peoples of the world in the present critical situation. Particularly do I hope that the Senate of the United States will give pause to consider this development "—

which is more than the Parliament of the United Kingdom has done.

"Just a few moments ago the Canadian Senate took action which I venture to predict will dwarf in history the aggression of the Communist puppets in Korea. The Canadian Senate, with only one lone dissenting voice, adopted a resolution calling for an exploratory federal convention to investigate the great benefits of Atlantic federation. The resolution was introduced by Senator Euler, and support came from Senator Robertson, the Senate leader for the Candian Government."

This is the context of it:

"That the Senate of Canada do approve the calling of a convention of delegates from the democracies which sponsored the North Atlantic Treaty and representing the principal political parties of such democracies for the purpose of exploring how far their peoples and the peoples of such other democracies as the convention may invite to send delegates, can apply among them, within the framework of the United Nations, the principles of federal union."

I suggest that throughout the Empire and in the United States of America there are a vast number of people who are ready to take the next step, and it would be the most crying tragedy in modern history if we in this country who have contributed so much and suffered so much should, at this critical stage, be found completely wanting because the opinion of our people is entirely unprepared, as they have never heard about it from their political leaders on either side of the House.

The hon. Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Leather), has shown us that there are certain difficulties in fully comprehending and even in having full knowledge about what goes on in the British Commonwealth of Nations. It is a very salutary thing to be reminded that even within the British Commonwealth we have these difficulties, because, if they exist within the Commonwealth, to what greater degree must they not exist in the world as a whole? One of the excellent things which I have noted running through the Debate is the fact that Member after Member has, at least for a time, paused to remark on what Asia is thinking about the world today.

We are notorious for our insularity. At times in history it has had its qualities, but in a world divided into two, in a world where the Asiatics outnumber the others—we know little of Asia; we know very little of Korea and China, our greatest contact with Asia has been in India—it is time that the people of this country had some opportunity of understanding just what the other half of the world outside the Soviet Union thinks of world events today.

I hope that every hon. Member, especially every member of His Majesty's Government, read, digested and understood the article which appeared in last Sunday's "Observer" on the subject of India. It seemed to me one of the most profound contributions to the discussion of present events that has been presented to the people of this country. The article analysed the situation and suggested that the people of Asia did not quite see things as we in the United Kingdom saw them. They did not see a nice, clear-cut picture of black and white, with all the white on the side of the social democracies and all the black on the side of Communism and the Soviet Union, but saw something quite different. They saw what they call "imperialism"—not our imperialism; we are exempt from blame—but imperialism, attempting once again to dominate the Asiatic Continent. These are important things to ponder. As Lord Samuel, the Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords, said the other day, we are now confronted with the fantastic situation that, from the Armed Forces point of view, the world is divided into two halves, each one of which is prepared to blow the other to smithereens in order to preserve world peace.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Yardley (Mr. Usborne), with the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Pitman) and with the hon. Member for Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) that we in the Parliamentary World Government Committee are fully behind His Majesty's Government and the United Nations in their action in Korea. But Korea demonstrates that the United Nations organisation is not founded in such a way as successfully to maintain world peace. Therefore, we are calling for the amendment of the United Nations Charter, which amendment was envisaged, as the right hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) said the other day, by those who created the United Nations. The right hon. Gentleman said that he had accepted the best that could be done at the time, but that, quite clearly, the Charter calls for amendment and must be amended.

We are asking the Government of this country and the people of Britain to surrender some degree of British sovereignty to a world Government. I agree that there are two great problems confronting mankind today. There is the problem of war and peace—the problem of one world or none—and the problem of food for the peoples of the world or famine on an unprecedented scale. While I agree with that, I am not in favour of surrendering more sovereignty than is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the peace of the world. I would not agree to the handing over of the British Commonwealth to a world federal organisation. I do not think the Russians would agree to hand over their colonies to a world federal system.

I believe that we should hand over to such a world authority only that degree of sovereignty which is absolutely essential for the maintenance of peace, that is to say, that we should put it into the hands of a world authority, properly constituted and democratically elected, to maintain the peace of the world. That one stroke would lift from all the nations of the world—from the Soviet Union as well as from this hard-pressed island—a very large part of the fantastic burden of armaments that the world is now bearing. If we could get rid of that one thing we could immediately raise the whole standard of living of our people to a level never hitherto achieved, and the Soviet Union could do the same.

Senator McMahon has put forward a very modest proposal in the United States, whereby each nation should surrender some part of its expenditure on armaments for the purpose of creating a world fund with which to provide food for the peoples of the world. I think that is a proposal which all of us ought to welcome. That proposal, carried to its logical conclusion, would mean a new era for mankind.

The hon. Member for Somerset, North, made an important point when he referred to Senator Kefauver and his intervention in the American Senate. I had the pleasure of meeting Senator Kefauver in Washington a few months ago. He is not of my political persuasion, and we do not see eye to eye on many things. But this idea that if the world is to be saved it must surrender national sovereignty to a world government, is gaining support in the United of the Union have already agreed that this is the real solution. During the last fortnight I have met members of the French Parliament who are all for the idea. I met four members of the Japanese Diet, 200 members of which have backed the resolution in favour of world government.

All over the world the movement is growing, and I have no doubt that when present tensions are eased a little, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will implement what he has already said and will get the nations of the world together in order to sit down and hammer States. Twenty-six States out of the 48 out some method whereby national sovereignty can be abrogated to the extent that is necessary as the only sure way to achieve and maintain peace.

I am very glad that at long last my hon. Friend the Member for Yardley (Mr. Usborne) has succeeded in obtaining time in the House to debate the subject of world government. Intentionally, I did not intervene earlier because it was our view that in the time at our disposal, as many Members as possible should express their views on this all-important and serious subject.

I think that the whole House will join with me in congratulating my hon. Friend on the deep sincerity of his speech, the seriousness with which he has tackled this subject, and on the devotion he has given to the cause in which he believes. All of us, I think, share the sentiments which he and other hon. Members have expressed this afternoon. We all detest the idea of war. We all want to do whatever is practical and possible to bring about a cessation of hostilities or of the threat of hostilities as it arises. But where we should probably part ways with those who are such keen supporters of world federation or world government, would be in the matter of timing and the manner in which world government can be achieved.

We cannot do otherwise than welcome the idea as a grand ideal, but when it comes to putting that ideal into practice those of us who are concerned with the practicalities of world affairs today find considerable difficulties confronting us. I would remind my hon. Friend that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary himself has endorsed this ideal and has stated that he is prepared to sit down with anyone and draft a constitution for world government. I can see him doing so with the hon. Members who have spoken today—the hon. Members for Bath (Mr. Pitman) and Somerset, North (Mr. Leather), and my hon. Friend the Member for Yardley. I can see difficulties immediately developing, as they have developed today, as to the manner in which the method of voting and similar details were to be worked out.

When my hon. Friend suggested that we should not bury our heads in the sand. I wondered whether that was preferable to walking with one's head in the clouds, as I think my hon. Friend does on occasion; and I decided that his was By far the better course. But it is necessary this afternoon to bring him back to earth and to place his feet firmly on the ground, and to view the proposals which he has put forward so well, against for instance, the Debate during the last two days on Defence and in the light of the grave international situation which faces us today.

If one considers the proposition of world government against that background, it can be agreed that world government is a very fine target—but a target for tomorrow, and not for tonight. Too many obstacles still confront the practicability of world government, and there is certainly no short cut to it. The obstacles of nationalism and selfishness have been mentioned, and then there is imperialism, which uses as its weapon aggression and the employment of force. Those obstacles are not easily overcome, as we can see from the gravity of the situation today and the way in which it has developed for the worse in the last six months. But when we return to the general principles with which my hon. Friend the Member for Yardley began his speech, I am sure that we shall accept his thesis.

It is necessary to provide an answer to Communism and to find some way in which its spread throughout the world can be stemmed and, ultimately, a return to democracy accomplished. We all agree with that, but I doubt if he has given the answer and I think that the answer we have is the more practical one. The trouble is that there are millions today, tens of millions, who are forbidden to hear the answer, let alone practise it. I would say that the answer is our way of life, our political democratic system—democracy and not totalitarianism. It is democracy which provides the answer, it is the freedom of the individual against State oppression and the police State.

I think that democracy is showing that it has an alternative to Communism and that that alternative is succeeding to a large extent. I believe that in this country, through the form of social democracy we have been practising in recent years, our social democracy has resulted in encouragement and leadership to a very large number of people in the world, who see something in it which offers hope and gives them faith in the overcoming of Communism and the opportunity of building a better and finer form of democracy.

I feel that my hon. Friend is inclined to exaggerate the appeal of Communism and not to give sufficient credit to the forces which are opposed to it today—the democratic forces—in making their appeal and. ultimately, in being victorious as far as countries which have not yet achieved democracy are concerned. After all, world government can only come, through the free consent of nations. There is no over-riding authority which can impose the unity of nations from above, and I think the arguments which have been put forward this afternoon—all of which are acceptable as a basis—the arguments which have suggested that we have just to believe in the idea of world government in order to bring it about—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—that once we believe in it, we can set up this world authority and then have agreement among the members of that authority—

rose—

I have only a few minutes left. Universal free consent cannot be accomplished simply by bringing the peoples together and saying, "Here is your form of self-government"—

We never suggested that.

It cannot be brought about by amending the Charter of the United Nations, as has been suggested, and making that body into a supreme authority. Surely it can only come about through an evolutionary process as communities develop a wider sense of fellowship and universal respect for the rule of law.

Would my hon. Friend say that when the right hon. Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) offered an act of union with France, it was evolutionary?

No, I would say that the United Nations' idea did, in the first instance, provide for a considerable limitation of national sovereignty and was based on the hope and belief that there would be co-operation among the different nations who were members of that organisation. Had full co-operation been obtained from all members of the United Nations there would have been this voluntary surrender of sovereignty, and far more would have been accomplished than has been accomplished. Unfortunately, the history of the United Nations has been otherwise and the U.S.S.R. has unfortunately, taken up an uncompromising attitude and has destroyed its full effectiveness up to the present.

It is very difficult to believe that it is a practical suggestion to supersede the United Nations by world government. Will that offer the likelihood of closer co-operation and a greater spirit of conciliation? I cannot believe there is any evidence whatsoever that world government would succeed where the United Nations have failed. The present international situation might still be resolved—we all hope it will be—in the committee rooms and assembly halls of the United Nations. The support for the Security Council's action in Korea shows that, except for the Soviet bloc, all are willing to co-operate in condemning aggression, and I am sure we all welcome the support given to that action by members of the world groups.

The principle of collective security, on which the United Nations is founded, must, as my hon. Friend the Member for Yardley said, on occasions meet force with force. Sometimes it is necessary to make war to maintain peace. That is the basis of collective security, and it is the aggressor who causes the nations to revert to making war in order to overcome aggression. We still can resolve the present international situation, and let us hope that the U.S.S.R. will now act in a statesmanlike way in the councils of the United Nations, and co-operate to achieve peace in the world. But I cannot believe there is any greater likelihood of that occurring if we embark on this great adventure of world co-operation instead of by trying to work it out through the existing bodies which have already been set up.

The alternative to this world cooperation is to bring together the peoples of like minds in an alliance, and for them to co-operate in the purpose which we all share of bringing about peace and its preservation. After all, the basis of our foreign policy is to bring together people of like mind—the democracies in the Brussels Treaty, in the Atlantic Pact and in co-operation with the Commonwealth. This is the policy which we are pursuing, and it is only people of like mind, who share a common belief and certain ideals—in this case the democratic idea—who can approach it in a similar way, and who can co-operate and consent jointly in common interests. We feel that the policy which is being pursued is one directed to that end, and it is through the continuance of this policy that we are far more likely to achieve our object than by embarking upon some new experiment, such as has been suggested here this afternoon.

We welcome the views which have been put forward and they will, I am sure, be studied with great interest and care, but we have to face this matter in a realistic way and consider whether the pursuit of the policy on which we have embarked and the using of the United Nations' organisation is not the best way of bringing about world peace and preserving it. That is the aim of all of us.

My hon. Friend has talked about collective security. Is it not a fact that it is based on an alliance, which all history shows never works? It is not collective; and it is not secure. But world government is both.