779
HOUSE OF COMMONS
Foreign Affairs
[MR. MACKAY.] European Union and so that the dis- cussion will be taken on to a larger field. The second point I wish to make is that the committee should consist of representatives of the 17 countries who are signatories to O.E.E.C. and that they should be nominated by Governments. am not saying they should only be mem- bers of Governments or Government parties. If this were to be a body with legislative and executive power, then it would be right that it should be elected; but that is not the type of body sug- gested. It is a body to discuss whether we can take further steps to unify Europe with no legislative or executive power. The decisions they come to should be decisions which the different Governments will ratify.
My suggestion is that if you take a body of about 110 people, Britain could send, say, 25 and if seventeen or eighteen came from the Government, the other seven or eight could be chosen from other parties and possibly from outside the House of Commons. For example, Sir Harold Butler is a person emminently suitable to go on a delegation of this kind. If we can call a council of Europe early next year so much the better. If we are to have a council of Europe, it should be of about 100 people, the delegates being nominated by the Governments and responsible to the Governments. The decisions which they make will come back to the Governments and we can have some solid effective lead given to them.
I want to suggest three considerations to Members of the House which would have to be borne in mind in any discus- sion at a council of Europe. It has worried me to sit here and to hear all the time that people are more concerned with in- dividual problems and countries in con- sidering foreign affairs, and that at no time have we had a review from any- body of the principles which should be guiding our foreign policy in the chang- ing conditions of today.
My first suggestion is an economic one, and I do not say that I know the answer. We have to think out the problems threatening us and Europe because of dollar scarcity. The European Recovery Programme may tide us over the next four years, but there are good reasons for saying that because America is not a country depending on imports and must
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always be putting a large part of her profits in investment in her own country, and whose savings must always be much larger than her export trade, she can never play a part in the world by putting into the normal channels of trade the amount of money required to make multilateral trade work. To my mind dollar scarcity is a permanent thing in our lives for the next 10 or 20 years. The four years plan which the Govern- ment are submitting to the O.E.E.C. in Paris is put forward on the assumption that we will have convertibility in 1952. That seems to me to be a completely erroneous idea.. If this is true, and be- cause of American industrialism and other factors dollar scarcity is perma- nent, we have to think what we are to do. We can only do something that works if we think in commodities and not in terms of nations.
We had the Foreign Secretary saying yesterday that the French had to realise that we could not now import their luxuries. In saying that, he was saying that the French people would have to change their methods of production and trade. But we are trying to sell luxuries all over the world in the form of motor- cars and other things. We are acting exactly as the French are.
In planning European recovery we should be thinking in terms of commodities. We are going to find that the whole of Western Europe depends on the imports of raw materials and foodstuffs and the sale of manufac- tured products abroad. If we are going to plan production all the time for export trade, as we are now doing, each of the 17 countries will come into competition with one another overseas as to the right prices of the goods, and this will make the economic position of each of us quite hopeless. It is obvious that if we are going to do this, in the future we shall be forced ultimately to exchange a Rolls- Royce car for a bushel of wheat before many years are out.
If we accept the dollar scarcity as be- ing permanent, and we realise that Europe must plan its resources in order to provide much greater food and raw material and other things than have been done in the past, the next step is to know how to do it. It is ridiculous under the E.R.P. programme that we should buy 26 million dollars worth of cheese from
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the United States when there is a sur- It plus of cheese in Italy and France, is ridiculous to think of many of these things as luxuries. The French want to bring luxuries here if we do not put a prohibitive duty on them. If we move the three million unemployed in Italy to- day into France, we shall get back to the period when France is producing more wheat than Canada, as she was in 1938, and when Italy is producing more wheat than Canada, as she was in 1938.
That brings me to my third point. The whole history of development throughout the centuries is that when social and economic conditions change, it is neces- sary to alter the political institutions. That was the case with our Revolution in 1688, with the French Revolution and with the Russian Revolution. We must make our political forms conform to the facts; that is an essential condition of recovery in Europe. The fact remains that economic conditions in Europe make our political institutions completely out of date, and that is why we are unable to do anything about recovery in Europe or building further on O.E.E.C. To do that we need some political authority in Europe to create, to handle and control the economic machinery we require.
There is the question of a council of Europe being constituted shortly. It may not do so much in itself, but it can berald a new age for the European peoples. After all, the fall of the Bastille was only a comparatively minor affair. I think it only released four coiners, two madmen and a debauchee, but it heralded a new age in Europe. If, as a result of what is going on in Paris and of the creation of a council of Europe, we can have full and representative discussions on the problems of the political and economic union of Europe, we shall be making a real step not only towards the stability of Europe but towards the peace of the world as well.
3.7 p.m.
Mr. Hollis (Devizes): I shall confine myself to getting quite clear the important point about the part the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has recently been playing. I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for adopting such a per- sonal note, but it is, after all, an important point. The Chancellor of the Duchy told us the observations he made in the course
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of the Scarborough Conference, which are not particularly here or there, but the fact remains that he supported a resolu- tion calling for the creation of a demo- cratic and Socialist Europe. He promised to support a resolution to co-operate with European Socialist Parties in taking prac- tical steps to achieve the united Socialist States of Europe, and he told my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) that he said such a thing could only fully succeed if all the countries of Europe committed them- selves, as our electorate did in 1945, to the belief that Socialism is the hope of us all. He also said that he was quite convinced that the success of any scheme for the union of Europe was going to depend on the success of these democratic and Socialist Parties in each of these countries. There is no dispute about the facts. I do not question the right hon. Gentleman's right and sincerity in believ- ing that Socialism is the solution to the future problems of Europe. I simply want to examine whether, under these cir- cumstances, he was the proper person to send to the Paris Conference.
Mr. Dalton: I do not want to repeat myself. The hon. Member is, of course, re-quoting a passage which was quoted by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington. I do not know whether the hon. Member was in his place when I spoke, but I said that this quotation, while being completely accurate, had been taken out of its con- text, and the rest of the context I would supply. I have supplied it, and the hon. Member should bear it in mind in any remarks he makes.
Mr. Hollis : am certainly bearing it in mind, and was present when the right hon. Gentleman spoke. I do not think there is any dispute about the facts. When this exchange took place, the hon. Members for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) and Eton and Slough (Mr. Levy) supported the point of view of the right hon. Gentleman, that if there is to be a United Europe it can only be a planned Europe, and therefore only a Socialist Europe. My right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington answered that if that be so, there could not be any united Europe in the near future. We must face the fact that there is about as much chance of Parliamentary Socialists capturing the countries of