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and the East. That is the best way of easing the tension.

Foreign Affairs HOUSE OF COMMONS

[MR. DRIBERG.] and now wretched country of Greece, which my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Cocks) dealt with so eloquently. Because he dealt with it, I will only make this point, that I think it regrettable that we had that rather dusty and legalistic answer from the Government to the suggestion that at last, when an opportunity for mediation occurred, we should follow up Mr. Evatt's conciliatory move. On the sub- ject of the impending executions in Greece of the seamen's trade union leaders, I would add that it seems re- grettable also that the Government should rather hypocritically pretend that they cannot intervenc, when only a few months ago, in May, they agreed to inter- vene in almost precisely similar circum- stances.

Mr. Pickthorn: I wonder whether the hon. Member would explain to the House if it is or is not a part of the fight against privilege to assert that trade unionists should be exempted from death?

Mr. Driberg I never made any such assertion or implication, and the hon. Member knows that perfectly well. He is merely wasting time by trying to make me digress. I do not propose to shorten my speech for the hon. Member, so that if I go on too long it will be his fault. not mine.

I was saying that it seems regrettably hypocritical that we should now pretend

that we cannot intervene in this matter. There is some natural anxiety that, with the meetings in Paris finishing, and this House adjourning for the Christmas Recess, the Greek Government may simply be waiting until that time to carry out those executions. Some of us will be watching most anxiously to see what happens, and will be hoping that the Foreign Office may yet relent, in view of the ample precedents which it has itself established within the present year.

in

Surely the solution of the general problem, as I have stated it, is equally obvious. It is that we should avoid, so far as possible-and here the Foreign Secretary has frequently spoken similar vein-merely doctrinaire ideo- logical arguments, and should concen- trate on building up good economic relations, on intensifying and multiply- ing trade agreements between the West

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Several times in recent weeks, at Ques- tion Time, hon. Members will have noticed that there have been some quite explosive interventions from the Opposi- tion benches on the subject of trade with Eastern Europe and with Russia, usually disguised as concern at the ex- port of potential war material to a potential enemy--to which the respon- sible Ministers have very properly replied that it is extremely difficult pre- cisely to define potential war material. It seems to me that the Government, while continuing to resist that pressure, should bear in mind what may perhaps underlie it.

There are two points which occur to me. The first is that the Opposition are trying to coax the Government into a competition in Red-baiting, in merely negative and sterile anti-Communism; and, as Mr. Dewey learned recently in the United States, there is not even elec- toral advantage in that, quite apart from the merits of the argument. Secondly, when we export machinery, etc., to Russia and Eastern Europe we get grain and timber in exchange. Despite the anguished cries of the Housewives' League, the Tories are not really anxious that the present Government should be in a position to provide more timber and more grain for more houses and more food for the British people. Many of them would rather that the British

people suffered long-continuing depriva- tions than that they should enjoy pros- perity and security under a Labour Government.

Mr. Odey (Howdenshire): Before the hon. Member leaves that point may I ask him whether he favours the despatch of potential war material to Russia?

responsible have already explained that Mr. Driberg: As I said, the Ministers

it is extremely difficult in every case to define precisely what is potential war material. They have also explained that the actual jet planes and such, which were not on the secret list any longer, were in any case exported way back in 1946 or early 1947.

Mr. Odey: I do not wish to prolong the hon. Member's speech-

Mr. Driberg: I would give way normally, but I do not want to take

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more than an hour and a half; other- wise I shall be trespassing on the time of the House.

One welcome and interesting develop-

ment has not so far, I think, been com- mented on at all in this country. It is that since 1st October there has been in operation a 43-million-dollar trade agreement between Czechoslovakia and Bizonia, news of which was only released in New York two days ago. That seems to me an extremely welcome develop- ment. Incidentally, Bizonia will be ex- porting to Czechoslovakia electrical equipment and all sorts of dangerous potential war material.

ΠΟ

The most important thing of all in this connection is that Russia should be in the Food and Agricultural Organisation. When this matter was raised last in the House, at Question time, a reply was given, I think by the Minister of State, that the door was open, that Russia had only to pick up the telephone and say she wanted to come in, and she could. That is doubt perfectly correct formally, but surely the international situation is serious enough for the Gov- ernment to take the initiative in this matter and make yet another positive effort. I am aware of the danger which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary might point out, if he takes any notice of this point, that repeated failure might induce cynicism or hopelessness; but, on the whole, I am inclined to think that that is a lesser danger than simply allow- ing the present division to become inten- sified and the present ill-will exaggerated.

American commentators on the Presi- dential Election, before it happened, were extremely scornful about President Truman's "clumsy" and "inept" gesture in trying to send a special envoy to Moscow. I cannot help feeling, however, that that gesture may have contributed something to the result of that election. It did call forth some response in the American people, who, like ordinary people all over the world, are eagerly awaiting an initiative for peace.

It may be said that the Russians are incorrigibly suspicious. I quite agree that many of their suspicions are highly unreasonable: they are based, in my view, on the extremely bad and in- accurate information that they get, at the highest level in Moscow, from some

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Foreign Affairs

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of their representatives in some of the Western countries. None the less, quite apart from the history of the inter-war years, they have at least some cause for disappointment in my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. How glad they may well have been when the Labour Government was elected to power, and they heard that he had been appointed Foreign Secretary-this came man who, only a few weeks or months earlier, had spoken at Blackpool so emphatically about the "absolute need" of Russia for warm-water ports. The need presum- ably, has remained as absolute ever since, but my right hon. Friend must seem to them to have done relatively little to have followed up the implied

assurance.

Indeed, the Foreign Secretary has, 1 am afraid, moved far from Blackpool. I could not help feeling that it was at least ungenerous and tactless of him to- day to refer to "the common ideals for which the Western Powers twice in a generation have shed their blood." I think I can see what he meant, but it

might have been worded more tactfully

-when one thinks how that will sound in countries which did, after all, however much we may disagree with them now, suffer extremely heavy casualties: countries such as Poland, Jugoslavia, or Russia itself.

39

If only common-sense economic agree- ment could be reached, surely we could agree to differ, or to argue out amiably, our ideological or, as I prefer to call I them, our philosophical differences. do not mean by agreeing to differ what my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Cocks) means. It seems to me that his proposal would merely intensify the present divisions. He wants, for a long time at any rate, two worlds. I do not. I want one world from now on, with the semi-Socialist or non-Socialist West gradually becoming more Socialist, and the largely Socialist or largely Communist East learning the ways of liberal Parliamentary democracy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gates- head (Mr. Zilliacus) quoted from a curious and interesting series of editorials that appeared last year in the "Osservatore Romano," the official organ of the Vatican. He omitted, however, to quote what I thought the most interesting and significant passage in those editorials.