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[MR. DALTON.] he held a number of other important diplomatic posts. In addition to Lord Inverchapel, a most distinguished diplo- mat, we have Mr. Gladwyn Jebb, one of the youngest and most vital of the Foreign Office officials, who has just been promoted by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary to be a Deputy Under- Secretary. With these two persons pre- sent in our delegation, Foreign Office ex- pertise and point of view are fully repre- sented. I say without hesitation that this is a valuable body of people who are associated with me and they are doing a good job of work in the preparation of the report that we shall finally tender. At this stage it would be wrong for me to prejudge what form the report of the Committee may take. We are in the midst of taking evidence and having dis- cussions among ourselves.

I now propose to say a few words about the declarations of the Leader of the Opposition on this matter; this will conveniently lead on to the quotations I intend to make from what I myself have said. I do not disagree at all with what I am now going to quote. It is reported in "The Times of 18th November that the right hon. Gentleman opened a United Europe Exhibition. The report said:

"Mr. Churchill said that to imagine that Europe today was ripe for either a political federation or a customs union would be wholly unrealistic."

He rules out a federation and he rules out a customs union. At any rate, a customs union is now being studied by a body working under the Brussels Treaty. The difficulties of such a Union for us with our Commonwealth relation- ships are very great.

That indeed is obvious. But the right hon. Gentleman goes further and he says that it would be wholly unrealistic. He says the same for a political federation. The report

continues :

"But who could say what might not be possible in the future?"

The right hon. Gentleman will notice a curious similarity between those, and some remarks of my own which I will quote in a moment.

Mr. Churchill: Oh!

Mr. Dalton: I am very sorry for the right hon. Gentleman but he will notice

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that in a moment. The right ho....- Gentleman then went on to say:

"They should not underrate the progress already made in the field of inter-governmental co-operation during the last 12 months.”

I do not want to quote at undue length, but the right hon. Gentleman went on further to say:

"It might, of course, be argued that a purely deliberative Assembly without executive powers would develop into an irresponsible talking- shop, and that it would be better to leave the work of European unification to be achieved through inter-governmental negotiations." He said that was not true and dissented from that idea. It shows once again that he rejects federation and a customs union.

I have taken the precaution of bring- ing the official report of what I said at the last Annual Conference of the Labour Party. When accusations are made in vague terms and without much detail as to my being an enemy of Western Union and so forth, I always is cited. wait to hear exactly what speech it is that I have a note of what was said by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington yesterday. He cited a speech which I made in May at Scarborough. Some of my hon. Friends heard that speech, but naturally the Press were only able to report part of it. It was a lengthy speech and I am going to quote only a few bits of it. It was a winding-up speech at the end of a fairly lively debate on a wide range of subjects, including federal union, common provisions for defence and a project for a Socialist United States of Europe. At the end, on behalf of the National Executive of the Labour

Party, I wound up. I touched upon a

number of these matters in what I have to say. It has been stated in the "Con- tinental Daily Mail" that I am а notorious arch-enemy of Western Union. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford does not read the Press which supports the Opposition. He ought to read the Continental Daily Mail." It has been saying the most scandalous things.

<

Mr. Churchill: I always do when I am in Paris. I get it every day.

Mr. Dalton: I get it too, as a pre- caution.

I want to quote in order to put this matter in proper focus. I always like

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to be judged by the words I spoke at the time. These are the words I spoke at the time. I was not a Member of the Gov- ernment. I was speaking responsibly and I said then just the same as I do now. I was speaking on behalf of the National Executive of the Labour Party winding- up this debate. I am quoting from the official report of the Labour Conference at Scarborough. I said:

this conception of the United States of Europe, which has been in the minds of imagi- native and noble thinkers throughout many generations is a constructive idea which rallies almost universal support when put in general terms. It is right that we should lift up our eyes towards the high mountains, from which we draw our hope. It is also important that we should keep our feet upon the ground in our approach to them."

The phrase "Feet on the ground" has now gone into the title of a document which has been issued from Transport House. Then I referred to what had already been done in very similar terms to the speech made by the right hon. Gentleman which I have just quoted. I referred to what had been done in regard to O.E.E.C. and the building up of that organisation. I said:

"That organisation is in existence and has begun to work,"

I described its constitution. I said:

"It has set up a Supreme Council of 16 Members representing the 16 European countries who are going to participate in the European Recovery Programme."

I said that the Executive Council con- sisted of seven members. I continued:

"The Secretary-General is a distinguished Frenchman and an important secretariat and group of technical committees have been ap- pointed. Those are facts and not aspirations. Therefore already the first steps have been taken towards the end that is universally desired. We should be glad that this is so, and I pay my tribute to the man who more than any other in this country is responsible for it, namely, Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secre- tary, who has been organising those forward steps,'

Then I spoke of the federal possibili- ties which the right hon. Gentleman and I both agree are not for today. I spoke of the alternative possibility of advancing step by step along what is called the functional road." I said:

you should begin by dealing with those things that are ripe to be dealt with through the agencies that exist."

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In the next sentence I used a phrase which I hope will not cause dismay to people with thin skins. I said:

"You should begin, not with conclaves of chatterboxes but with functional advances by Governments who have the power to make their decisions operative. ... Let those Gov- ernments appoint their representatives and get on with the detailed actual first stages for the closer economic integration of Western Europe."

I went on to say:

I am wholly for the practical British func- tional approach rather than for any theoretical federalism. Let us keep our feet upon the ground. I certainly do not wish--" and this is getting very close to what the right hon. Gentleman said----

-to rule out the possibility of federal de- velopments later, when we see how we get on with the existing arrangements and what sort of people we might have to bring into a federal scheme."

Mr. Boothby (Aberdeen and Kincar- dine, Eastern): May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he now thinks, look- ing back, if he had been successful in his attempt to sabotage what he called "the conclave of chatterboxes at The Hague," it would have been a good thing? Mr. Dalton: I think that has very little relevance to the Hague Conference. I think we attach very much more import- ance to what the Governments have achieved, and I do not regard that as central to this controversy. After refer- ring briefly to the question of joint de- fence, speaking at the end of a long De- bate, I said that no speaker had uttered a word of criticism against the Five- Fower Treaty signed between the French, the three Benelux countries and our- selves based upon the Pact of Brussels, in which we are all now in fact com- mitted to joint military arrangements one with another. I welcomed that and also its acceptance in the Conference.

I now go on to cite what I said about the British Commonwealth, because this evidently has some connection with what I have said about Western Union. I said:

"We are very much closer, in all respects except distance, to Australia and New Zealand than we are to Western Europe. Australia and New Zealand are populated by our kinsmen. They live under Labour Gov- ernments, they are democracies, they speak our language, they have high standards of life and have the same political ideals as we have. If you go to those countries you find yourself at once completely at home in a way that you

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