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HOUSE OF COMMONS
Foreign Affairs
[MR. LINDSAY.] Therefore, my remarks tonight are some- what of a protest against the whole De- bate rather than a speech in favour of certain aspects of European unity which I originally prepared. I happen to like the cut and thrust of Debate.
The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) made a very important speech, and the Debate then flew off to China and Japan. This is the way it has been going on for a solid five hours. The right hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington made a most important
about the announcement policy of his party in supporting a repre- sentative in Tel Aviv.
Major Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely): He was speaking for himself.
Mr. Lindsay: At any rate, he is the Deputy-Leader of the Conservative Party, although hon. Members may not always agree with what he says. He may have spoken for himself, but he spoke from the Opposition Front Bench and made a very important statement. That statement has gone out to the world as an expression of an ex-Foreign Secre- tary. It seems to me completely unreal.
There are a number of points which I should love to debate with the hon. Member for Maldon, but I will men- tion just two to go on with. He talked about the Food and Agriculture Organi- sation, and about Russia not coming in. As everyone knows, Russia is in not one of the specialised agencies, with the possible exception of the World Health Organisation, where there is an observer. When there was an attempt to produce
a
Yugoslav observer at the first U.N.E.S.C.O. conference, he was driven out by the attempt to define the exact ideological dispute which the hon Mem- ber mentioned just now. The successor to that was the Breslau Conference last year, which everybody knows contributed very little to understanding, and abso- lutely nothing to the peace of Europe. The second point I mention is this. What is the Food and Agriculture Organi- sation, anyway? Has this Government, or any Government in this country, ever agreed that it should be anything more than an advisory body? Not to my knowledge. For that reason, I say that it is a purely decorative body. Sir John Boyd Orr knows that, and he is the only
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person who has come out in favour of giving it executive powers. We have never properly debated it in this House.
Those are just two points made by the hon. Member for Maldon. As for his very interesting argument about the two worlds, it completely cancelled out, as he himself pointed out, the speech of the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Cocks). There, we had two completely different conceptions of how we should face this frightful ideological crisis in the world at present. The hon. Member for Brox- towe said: "Let there be two quite dis- tinct worlds. Let them live side by side but have nothing to do with each other." We then heard the hon. Member for Maldon come out in favour of one world. That only shows that on at any rate the back benches we still live in a state of considerable confusion, and we have not got down to the actual facts.
We do have occasional sub-debates. We have had a series of sub-debates on
foreign policy, via the Minister of
Defence, and most of us think we did not get very far with them. We have also had certain sub-debates on foreign commercial policy, such as on the ques- tion whether we should trade with Rússia. We have had other sub-debates on foreign economic policy. What is this four-year economic plan which we are submitting for European economic recovery? have never seen it. Nobody else, I believe, in this country has seen it. As the right hon. Member for Warwick and Leaming- ton pointed out, it has leaked out from some source or other. Yet I suppose it is about the most important economic state- ment on the future of Europe that has been submitted since the Marshall Plan was devised. Again, the Minister of Defence has said that the deterioration in European policy started from Decem- ber, 1947. I doubt that very much. doubt whether it did not start much earlier.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Organi- sation has been discussing everything from freedom of information to the future of Palestine, with practically no agree- ment. I noticed that today, not only the Foreign Secretary but the right hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) and others all expressed doubts about U.N.O. itself. That is rather a new situation. I know, from going about the country and speaking as a member of the executive of U.N.A., that it is very
Foreign Affairs 9 DECEMBER 1948
difficult indeed to get any enthusiasm, or even any audience in many cases, for this organisation.
us
The hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Bartlett) introduced another considera- tion. I am not sure that the United Nations is not becoming something of an American league, just as the League of Nations became a French league. I could make a case for that. I have seen it happen over one thing in which some of are interested, namely, the United Nations' Appeal for Children, and one or two other questions. I do not believe Mrs. Roosevelt
wanted really
to Our oppose that motion last week. delegate there did valiant work in trying to support the Australian motion. I do not agree with my hon. Friend who thought the British bloc must always vote together in the United Nations. He seemed to think it was very odd that we did not always vote as a bloc. On the contrary, I hope that sometimes we shall differ, and differ very widely about questions.
There is no disguising the fact that there are back benchers who are not en- thusiastic about the Marshall Plan, although the Americans have just by their election shown-whatever else can be proved from it-that they are more anti- isolationist than ever in their history. I was for three weeks in August lecturing in the University of Illinois in the Middle West, and I was invited to attend a meet- ing where the prospective Democratic Governor, whose grandfather seconded Abraham Lincoln for President, and a Senator was the speaker. That meeting
was
coun-
held in the heart of Colonel McCormick's "Chicago Tribune try. Today they are both elected and are very friendly to the United Nations and this country.
This is a revolution
-if ever there was one--in the heart of the United States of America. We ought to recognise the American contribution now to Europe..
I wonder whether the Foreign Secre- tary has quite appreciated a certain lack of understanding in this country of what is going on in Europe. I know he was quick to appreciate the Marshall offer. But now that the Dominion representa- tives have departed, which was why I put a question to him today, and who were in accord with the idea of Western unity; now that Germany is beginning
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to respond to a definite policy; now that the Marshall Aid countries are coming closer together; now that the Brussels Pact is merging into a North Atlantic Pact is there any particular excuse for not making the main lines of our foreign policy
clearer, SO that the people of this country and the people of Europe can understand them? When I said just now,quoting from" The Times," that there was so little discussion on foreign policy, I was referring to the fact that we had been very half-hearted in associating the people of this country In this House I with foreign policy. would not say that there was a hundred per cent., but only a mild agreement on both sides with the general lines; with, of course, people on the extremes dis- agreeing quite strongly. But there never was much enthusiasm, and when it comes to Western Union or the O.E.E.C., or the Brussels Treaty I cannot find people getting very worked up about them as big opportunities for developing Euro- pean unity.
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I am wondering whether the Foreign Secretary has under-estimated the fact that the formation of a European public opinion is one of the reasons why some of us strongly support a European Assembly, because without that European public opinion the economic arrangements and trade agreements will not make any great difference. When our troops went over to Normandy people in the West Country-old ladies-said We have landed in Normandy." In other words, they regarded this country we"; but we ought to think of Western Europe as
"we," if we are to obtain anything comparable to a real European union. If we do not, it seems to me rather humbug to talk so much about Western Europe without doing more to create organisations, not only political and economic, but social and cultural.
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I want to put a question to the Under- Secretary of State who is to reply to the Debate. What steps have been taken to give some practical effect to Article 3 of the Brussels Treaty? Article 3 sug- gests that there should be greater co- operation between the five Brussels Treaty countries. I want to make one or two suggestions. A very distinguished French writer has recently stated-it is not new to anybody, but the way he