POLICE, ENGLAND AND WALES. (Hansard, 14 July 1927)

§ Mr. MAXTON
I should like to enter my mild protest against the procedure we have been adopting to-day in taking these Votes. I do not know who is responsible for the arrangement. I have some matters of importance to raise on this Police Vote. I regard the Home Secretary as being primarily and solely responsible in this House for the administration of the police services throughout the country, and if I am able to make out a case showing that these services have not been well administered during the last year, then he is the person who must take the responsibility. The time-honoured way in which a Minister's responsibility is driven severely home into his heart and head is by moving a reduction of his salary.

§ The CHAIRMAN
I think I ought to say that it is an old Rule of this House that where there is a separate Vote any questions regarding the subject-matter of that Vote have to be raised on the Vote and not on the salary of the Minister who is in charge of those, and other matters.

§ Mr. MAXTON
That was made very clear to me by your predecessor in the Chair, and I am making the point now that I wish the Minister's salary was open to attack on this particular issue, because he can now sit and smile at the criticisms against his Department knowing that his salary is securely in his pocket.

§ The CHAIRMAN
If the contribution made by the Government to the Metropolitan Police were refused, the position of the Home Secretary would be somewhat embarrassing.

§ Mr. MAXTON
I desire to refer to some of the operations of the Secret Service Department, which operates under the control of the Home Office. 2399 I hold strongly the view that the whole system by which the Government has a series of paid spies working at home or abroad is a disgraceful institution. It is wrong and improper that a nation, which has any self-respect, should employ spies of one kind or another to burrow into secret places, present themselves as one thing in one place and as another thing in another place, and use the information so gathered for the purpose of incriminating people who may be completely innocent. I do not know to what extent the Home Secretary has his Secret Service agents planted in other political organisations. I do not know whether any Secret Service agents are inside the Conservative party, or the Liberal party, or the Labour party, or whether they are inside the Independent Labour party, of which I happen to be a responsible official at the moment. I do not know to what extent he thinks it necessary to spy on these organisations, some of which I regard as being inimical to the national welfare. But there is strong evidence indeed to show that inside the Communist party, which the Home Secretary has described on more than one occasion as a perfectly legal organisation, which has a right to exist and carry on its work, so far as that work does not come in conflict, with the ordinary law of the country, he has planted his agents and Secret Service—

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
On a point of Order. I understand we are now discussing the Police Vote. The Secret Service does not come under the Police Vote at all. There is a separate Vote for that, and any observations with regard to the Secret Service agents are not, I submit, in order on the ordinary Police Vote.

§ The CHAIRMAN
Hon. Members can only raise questions in which the Metropolitan Police, including the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard, are included. The general question of the Secret Service comes under another Vote.

§ Mr. MAXTON
The question I wish to bring specially to the attention of the Home Secretary has formed the subject of correspondence between Sir Wyndham Childs, whom presumably the right hon. Gentleman will not disown as a responsible 2400 official of his staff, and a solicitor. Does he persist in trying to deny me the right to debate the operations of a responsible official of his Department?

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
If the hon. Member is debating the operations of Sir Wyndham Childs, who is head of the Criminal Investigation Department dealing with crime in this country, that is in order, but if he is trying to debate the operations of Sir Wyndham Childs or myself as being responsible for secret service agents in various parts of the country then, I submit, that does not come under this Vote but under the Secret Service Vote, and cannot be discussed on this Vote.

§ Mr. MAXTON
I do not think we need boggle about that, and I should have presumed that an orator like the right hon. Gentleman would not have grudged me an exordium. I now come to the marrow of the question. The first question I want to raise is the connection between New Scotland Yard and a person called H. R. Johnstone, who was acting as an agent for this department inside the National Unemployed Workers' Committee. I have strong evidence, what seems to me undeniable evidence, to show that this man was definitely receiving money payments from the right hon. Gentleman's Department for services rendered in the way of giving information about the internal operations of that particular movement. But this man was driven from one side to another until finally the position in which he was placed became quite insupportable and he committed suicide at Southend-on-Sea. This is one of the employés of the right hon. Gentleman; he ends his life at Southend-on-Sea, commits suicide on a certain Tuesday. The coroner's inquest takes place the next day, very rapidly, before any time is possible to make investigations into the case, and pressure was brought to bear in order to prevent the coroner's inquest following its natural course so that questions as to the man's mode of life, the work he was carrying on, the activities he was pursuing, could be brought out in Court. I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman for some explanation as to the exact connection between this man and his Department, and whether his Department brought pressure 2401 to bear on the coroner to prevent, the ordinary operations of the law of this land to take their proper and due course. it is a thing which is very startling and alarming if it is the case that a man can be hounded to his death in this country, can be found dead, and that all the operations of the law of the country relating to inquiries into sudden deaths are not allowed to take their course because the Government has a seamy side which it wishes to hide from the general public. The name of the man was H. R. Johnstone, but presumably he had another name in his operations with Scotland Yard. His connection was with the Lewisham Committee of the National Unemployed Workers' Committee, and I shall be prepared to place all the information I have in the hands of the right hon. Gentleman.
The other case is this. Some time ago there was arrested a woman who passed under the names of Ethel Chiles and Kate Gussfeldt. She was charged with being in wrongful possession of a passport. The chief witness against her was Sir Wyndham Childs, who stated in the course of his evidence that this woman was a spy. I should like the right hon. Gentleman to tell the Committee why his responsible Department, who were investigating these things, and who knew that the woman was a spy, employed by a foreign country to worm out information in this country, did not proceed against her as a spy instead of merely charging her with being wrongfully in possession of a passport. In the course of his evidence Sir William Childs stated that this woman was a friend of Mrs. Helen Crawfurd, a well-known Communist, and that in Glasgow she had stopped with a brother-in-law of Mrs. Helen Crawfurd, who had presumably assisted her to evade the operations of the law of this country by changing clothes with her in the train. This was an absolutely untrue statement in so far as Mrs. Crawfurd's relations with this woman are concerned. I know Mrs. Crawfurd, I have met her, and discussed this case with her. She is a native of the same city as myself, the City of Glasgow.
To begin with, she has no brother. A responsible official of his Department went into Court and swore one thing, and, when challenged about it by correspondence, denied that that was a fact, 2402 although the shorthand report of the proceedings bore out that it was a fact. This Mrs. Helen Crawfurd did not change clothes or aid this woman in any way to escape from the normal operations of the law, and the whole proceedings are a tremendous mass of contradictions. I want the right hon. Gentleman, first, to tell me why, if this woman is a spy and a known spy, she was not proceeded against as a spy. Is it because there is an international understanding that the spies of various countries must be respected by the various Governments of those countries? If she was a spy, why was she not prosecuted as a spy and not on the very minor charge of running a false passport? If he had anything like secure evidence against Mrs. Crawfurd for having aided this woman in evading the law, why has he not proceeded against Mrs. Crawfurd for so doing; and, if he has no such evidence, why does he not get his responsible officials to make, or why does he not himself make, a public contradiction of a statement which was a slander on a lady for whom I have as high regard as the Home Secretary has for any lady in his particular social circle? Why should she be slandered groundlessly by an official of his, however responsible that official may be, or however responsible a position that official may hold, and protected by the privileges that are always accorded to these people, and the additional privileges that he has through the secret nature of his work? It seems to me grossly unfair that, to put it no higher, an ungentlemanly thing like that should be allowed to pass against a woman, and that she should have no opportunity of making her character right either in the Courts or in any other way.
The other point that I want to raise is another one of the same kind, where there was evidence of very great grave carelessness in the presentation of a fact. I know the Home Secretary's desire to cast mud on the Communists of this country; I know that practically all the Members of this House, in all parties in this House, gloat over any fact which they can get against the Communists, but I, personally, believe that the Communist has as much right to carry on his propaganda as has the right hon. Gentleman to carry on his propaganda; and I will say this, that while the Communist propaganda is not my propaganda, it is less offensive to me 2403 than is the right hon. Gentleman's propaganda.

§ The CHAIRMAN
The hon. Member spoke just now of exordiums and perorations, but not of parentheses.

§ Mr. MAXTON
I admit that that is one to you, Sir. But I think we both ought to agree that, if political opponents' doctrines are very obnoxious to us, we ought to be scrupulously careful, when we are bringing prosecutions against them, that we have something like sound evidence and are exact in the matter of bringing it forward. I find, harking back a bit to the prosecution of the 12 Communist leaders in 1925, that a certain detective-sergeant swore, on a certain occasion in that trial, that a certain document, which was a crucial document in their conviction, was said to have been found at a certain address, namely, 16, King Street. But a packet of Communist papers, Command Paper No. 2682, was issued as an official document of this House and, therefore, was presumably prepared by the right hon. Gentleman's Department, in which it was said that this document was found at 38, Great Ormond Street. It is most unfair, in dealing with political opponents, that police witnesses should be allowed to go into Court, carrying all the weight that a police witness has at any time against an ordinary citizen whose political views are not suspect—he can go into Court, if I may use a sporting term, with odds on him as against an ordinary civilian witness, and he goes in with long odds on him if the person in the dock happens to be a Communist and to have got political views that are objectionable to the Government of the day.
Therefore, it is grossly unfair that the Government officials, carrying out the Government's wishes and commands, should use one document at one time to prove a case against a certain man and should use the same document at another time, found in a different place, and make another person or set of persons responsible for the having of that document. To use the same bit of evidence, one document, that only existed once, to find it in two places, and use it twice, is even worse than the operations of the right hon. Gentleman when he went to find one document in Arcos 2404 and found none at all. It is the same type of mind—I am not saying that it is the right hon. Gentleman's mind, because I believe he would like to be an honest man—

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
I am trying hard!

§ Mr. MAXTON
The exigencies of his public position, employing, as he does, a collection of men who are paid to be dishonest—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order!"] If I am going to be out of order on this subject, what can I say without being out of order? [An HON. MEMBER: "You said dishonest!"] I used the word "dishonest" in a very limited sense. I do not wish to get across the traditions of this House, however stupid I may personally regard them as being, but it is of the essence of the thing that if a man is doing Secret Service work, he is in a dishonest relationship with the community. He is worming himself into rooms by making men believe he is one thing, while he is being paid by a Government Department for being something entirely different. Is not that essential dishonesty, and is not the word "dishonest" the appropriate word to use in this connection? The fact that the Home Secretary employs these people and depends, in deciding upon his actions, to a large extent on the reports that they send in, makes it very difficult for him to do his responsible public duty in a truly straightforward way. I said at the outset that I would gladly see the whole of this service abolished, as not being creditable to a great nation, but if it is to go on, I want the right hon. Gentleman to answer me on the points I have raised, and to disabuse my mind that in this particular phase of the activities of his Secret Service there is not deliberately unscrupulous treatment of people who happen to hold different political views from those which are prevailing in this country just now.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
The hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) has, quite unwittingly, I am sure, placed me in a very great difficulty. It is usual to give me notice of points which are going to be raised in regard to the administration of the Home Office. 2405 Here is an enormous Vote put down, which deals with factories, workshops, prisons, aliens, reformatories, and many other things which affect the well-being of this land. I cannot hope to know every point and to have in my mind at any one moment every point which has occurred during the year.

§ Mr. MAXTON
I make full apologies for the fact that the right hon. Gentleman has not been made aware, but I believed I had made the necessary intimation through other channels. Perhaps I ought to have spoken to him direct.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
I have here the intimations that did come to me, sent to me by the Chief Whip, and they are: "Factory inspectors, aliens, and London Police." I suppose that is the heading to which the hon. Member refers, but when the heading "London Police" is made to include a particular prosecution at the Old Bailey, a particular document found in a police raid, not during the last year but 18 months ago, and the suicide of a man of whom I have never heard in my life, it really is quite impossible. I have never in my life heard of this man Johnstone. I do not know who or what he was. He may or may not have been a police agent, but, unless the hon. Member gives me notice, it is impossible to give him an adequate answer.

§ Mr. MAXTON
In the circumstances, I would never dream of expecting an answer from the right hon. Gentleman now, but perhaps a subsequent opportunity may be given on the Adjournment, when he will have had an opportunity of looking up the facts. But I did believe that he had been made aware of the points.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
The hon. Member is always so courteous. I thank him, and, of course, I will look up every point that he has made against my Department. I will have them looked up, and I will let him know—

Captain O'CONNOR
On a point of Order. Do I understand that there is no chance of raising matters connected with the Metropolitan Police except in the limited time between now and Eight o' Clock?

§ The CHAIRMAN
The time is not limited to Eight o' Clock, except by arrangement.

Captain O'CONNOR
I understood that the Home Secretary admitted that this was a perfectly enormous Vote, and I agree with him, and it seems disconcerting to hear that between now and Eight o' Clock is the only time which we shall have for discussing the many matters which we may have desired to raise in connection with the Metropolitan Police. There are several matters that, I should very much like to raise at some time, and I should be very disconcerted if I had no opportunity of doing so. We have just concluded a trial, in which some members of the Metropolitan Police were sent to prison—I think to penal servitude—for a matter which occurred at Goodwood, and which seems to have exposed a fairly well organised system of corruption in the Metropolitan Police. It would be extraordinary if matters of that kind were not to have any further opportunity of being raised during this Debate, and before making any remarks at all I should like to know whether or not there will be another opportunity.

§ The CHAIRMAN
Either the hon. and gallant Member must make his remarks, which would be in order on the Vote, or else he must move to report Progress in order to call attention to the inadequacy of the time allowed. I do not think he can make his remarks or give a description of the police under the guise of a protest against the shortness of the time at his disposal.

Captain O'CONNOR
With deference, I have no desire to do that at all, but the matters that, I desired to raise would not be matters which could be disposed of in a few moments, and I wanted to know whether this was the only opportunity.

§ The CHAIRMAN
The hon. and gallant Member should move formally to report Progress.

Captain O'CONNOR
I beg to move, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."
I do so for the purpose of finding out from the Home Secretary whether it is proposed to put down this large Vote for discussion on a future occasion in order that the matter of the administration of 2407 the Metropolitan Police may be reviewed somewhat more fully than is possible in the time at our disposal to-night.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
I am afraid that I must give the hon. Member the same answer which I gave to the hon. Member opposite. At the moment it is quite impossible for me to give him any reply. Undoubtedly there has been an arrangement made through the usual channels in order to give the party opposite an opportunity of raising these questions in Committee of Supply. As those who know the House are aware, it is always usual in Supply to give the Opposition an opportunity of criticising the Government upon details of administration, and they have the right to put down from time to time any particular Vote on a Supply day. This Vote has been put down for to-day. May I suggest, therefore, to my hon. Friend that if he will give me notice of the subjects which he wishes to raise, and will raise them on the Second or Third Reading of the Appropriation Bill, the week after next, as far as I and the Chief Whip are concerned, we will endeavour to arrange for an opportunity to raise these matters, and I will be prepared to give my hon. Friend an answer.

Captain O'CONNOR
May I understand the position? Several very important things in connection with police administration have happened during the last three months. There is, for example, the Arcos raid, which the right hon. Gentleman will recognise was a very important police operation, one which we might wish to criticise or approve. Is it quite clear that any matter affecting police administration can be raised on the Appropriation Bill?

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
The Appropriation Bill is a Bill which appropriates money voted by this House for Government services, and included in that Bill will be money devoted to the activities under the control of the Home Office. There will be so many shillings or thousands of pounds for the Metropolitan Police.

§ Mr. BUCHANAN
Are we to assume that a Member who makes a point in this Debate is to get a promise from a Front Bench Minister that he will get 2408 a place in the Debate on the Appropriation Bill? That is what it amounts to. The Home Secretary says that the hon. and learned Gentleman can raise his point on that Bill. The Home Secretary has no right to abrogate the functions of this House, and the hon. Member has no right to a prior claim over other Members.

§ The CHAIRMAN
If the hon. Member raises that as a point of Order, the position is that on the Appropriation Bill the Chair decides what subjects are to come before the Committee. What I understood the Home Secretary to mean was that he would use his influence through the usual channels in order that time might be found for this particular discussion.

Captain O'CONNOR
In view of the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
I beg to move, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."
I think, Mr. Hope, that the Committee might report Progress, and get on to the other matter, which, I understand is likely to occupy three or four hours.

§ The CHAIRMAN
It is rather unusual for a Motion of that kind to be moved, after a previous Motion has been withdrawn, but I think, in the circumstances, to take that view would be rather pedantic.

§ Mr. SHEPHERD
On a point of explanation. I have been sitting here all day long in order to talk about something.

§ The CHAIRMAN
If the hon. Gentleman's point is relevant to the Motion to report Progress, he will have an opportunity of raising it. As I said, I think it would be rather pedantic to take the view that it could not be moved, and I will therefore accept the Motion.

§ Mr. SHEPHERD
Can you tell me whether it is possible to talk about the reform of industrial schools? I have been 18 months now wanting to talk about these things.

§ The CHAIRMAN
I can answer that question at once. On the last Vote which was agreed to in silence, the hon. Gentleman 2409 could have talked about Borstal institutions. As to reformatory and industrial schools, they are under a separate Vote. I believe they are included under Vote 5, which does not appear on the Order Paper to-day. If the hon. Gentleman wants to talk about that subject, I suggest that he should convey his wishes through the usual channels which are open to him.