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Foreign Affairs HOUSE OF COMMONS Foreign Affairs

Mr. Scollan: Is the Minister aware that a deputation came here yesterday and tried to interest Members concerned directly, who, realising their duty to the Government and to the trade union movement, refused to have the matter raised, and advised them to take it through the proper channels? I think that it is very ill-advised for Members to raise it here instead of allowing the pro- per machinery to deal with it.

Mr. Isaacs: May I add this final word? I appreciate that Members will not en- courage deputations of this sort, but this is a very trivial matter easily adjusted, and I hope that the men will recognise the position which they have taken up and agree to let the matter be adjusted.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."- [Mr. Whiteley.]

11.10 a.m.

Mr. Churchill (Woodford): Let me begin by joining in the general welcome to the Foreign Secretary on his return to the House after a well deserved and much needed holiday. He and a good many others on the Government Front Bench have had a long spell-eight years or more; they used to work very hard in my day, and no doubt they have been working very hard since. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that, in wel- coming him back from his holiday, we feel that there would be no great harm to the public interest if further and pro- longed holidays were taken, not only by himself, but by those of his colleagues who sit with him.

I understand that it will very shortly be in order on Foreign Office Debates to deal with the question of Ireland. I am sure everyone will say that if that should come to pass, it will be an Hibernian corollary to an arrangement between the two countries by which neither of them are to regard themselves as foreigners. I have still some hopes-and I do not intend to go into the merits--as far as I can follow the matter, because it requires an effort of mental gymnastics, that the policy of the Dublin Govern- ment is that Ireland must be partitioned together and thus excluded into the

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British Commonwealth. If that were

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any Ruling you might have to give in the near future, Mr. Speaker, as to its place in Foreign Office Debates would not only be as wisely considered as all your Rulings are, but would also be thoroughly in harmony with the Irish way of looking at things. For myself, I shall not fret unduly if it all works out in a happy and agreeable manner. There may be larger groupings-in conection with which I shall make some remarks later than we can see in our present situation, and still less prescribed group- ings in which the old feuds of past centuries will find no place. I must, how- ever, warn the Government that there are several serious questions of jurispru- dence and international law which are beyond our control, and which may very well hamper the loose and casual arrangements which they have made.

When I come to the Foreign Policy of the Government as a whole, I naturally find myself confronted with some of the same difficulties as those apparent in the Foreign Secretary's speech, namely, that the topics are so varied and wide, and that there are so many different separate countries and theatres to be discussed, that it is very difficult to have a general theme. I see that the right hon. Gentle- man has been criticised for a lack of a general theme, though I do not admit the criticism was justified. At any rate, if he is to be guilty of dealing with matters in compartments on such a Debate, I shall place myself in the dock at his side.

In the course of the remarks I wish to make, I should like, if it were possible, to begin by dwelling on matters on which we agree. I must observe, how- ever, that since the Socialist Government came into office, the Opposition have been treated with extreme disdain and altogether excluded from the slightest share in the Government's councils on Foreign Affairs. It is the more remark- able when we remember that we have just emerged from a mortal struggle in which so many of us on both sides were colleagues and comrades for more than five years.

It might have been thought that some sense of continuity, some form of con- sultation with the Opposition, would

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Foreign Affairs

Liberal Government of 1914 and the Conservative Opposition of those days, relations which were maintained even while party bitterness had almost reached the limits of civil war in Ulster, I cannot but marvel at the gulf which, in their self- sufficiency, arrogance and conceit, our present rulers have opened and main- tained between themselves and those who lately led them forward through the years of storm. It is too late now for this Parliament, which is in its closing phase, but I say that should we become respon- sible at any future time we should not, I hope, follow the bad example which present Ministers have set in matters which are above domestic party politics.

Foreign Affairs 10 DECEMBER 1948

e been sought by those who are now in power, especially when they represent less than half the nation and less than half the national effort needed to win the victory. Certainly this aspect of the Socialist conduct of affairs falls very far below the standard set by American democracy. We have seen, for instance, how the bi-partisan principle in Foreign Policy was respected even throughout the hard fought clashes of the late Presiden- tial election. We have seen how immedi- ately after the election was over the Presi- dent invited Mr. John Foster Dulles, in the regrettable absence of Mr. Marshall through the need of a serious operation, from which we all rejoice to hear he is recovering, to fill temporarily the position of the United States chief representative at the United Nations meeting in Paris, although his name had been mentioned in a manner not to be ignored as the Republican Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if Mr. Dewey had been successful. That is a remarkable instance of the length to which the Americans, who con- duct their affairs with so much vigour and tenacity, are able, in determining who are to have the offices in the State and who are to have the particular policies in home affairs, to deal with subjects of common interest to the life of the nation as a whole on an altogether higher plane. I think they reach a very high level on these matters in the United States.

But here the Government have used

their victory only to ignore and brush aside all political forces not included in their own circle. I should never have believed that after the ordeals of the late war had been undergone unitedly the party which I had the honour to lead, and the Liberal Party, should have been treated in such a high-handed fashion [Laughter.] Hon. Members may laugh, but the country does not laugh at this attitude. I hope the day will not come when there are no Liberals in the House of Commons. Certainly during the period of the Conservative Government, after the National Coalition, I invited the Prime

Minister to come with me to Potsdam, and in letters which I wrote to him I offered the closest consultation and fullest information to him and to the Foreign Sec- retary in all matters of Foreign Affairs. When I look back, as I can, with my long memory, on the relations in foreign affairs which subsisted between the

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However, we have not allowed this odd and surly treatment to influence or de- flect our judgment and actions on the great questions affecting the common cause, which is still under challenge and in jeopardy throughout the world. On the contrary, we have given the Govern- ment steady support, not only in foreign affairs, but in questions of Defence, with which foreign policy inseparably inter- woven. We have never hesitated to give them that support. Such, however, is the temper of the Socialist Party that neither the Prime Minister nor the Foreign Secre- tary have ever dared or deigned to say as much as "Thank you" for 34 years of unfailing assistance, both in Debate and in the Lobby, in all these spheres which we regard as above ordinary party politics. But this churlishness, to Con- servatives and Liberals, has not shielded the Foreign Secretary, as he might have hoped, from many reproaches from his own Left Wing. There, the Communists and the crypto-Communists, and "fellow travellers," and the like, maintain their unceasing cacophonous chorus of abuse against the Foreign Secretary.

There is the hon. Member for Gates- head (Mr. Zilliacus), who spoke last night, and who was reported last week as saying--and I suppose this was the greatest insult he could conceive-that the policy of the Foreign Secretary was only "Winston and water," adding that

in

later manifestations

there were "larger doses of Winston." I wish to come to the rescue of the Foreign Secre- tary. I assure the House that I have not had any conversation with him, ex- cept casually, on social occasions- [Laughter.] Yes, social occasions can- not wholly be excluded from the contacts