HC Deb 24 May 1921 vol 142 cc104-11

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £465,500, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Expense of Educational Services, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1922.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

I wish to ask what facilities exist at present for blue jacket boys of certain educational attainments to sit for the examination for special entry as cadets? In addition to the training establishment at Dartmouth, we also have a system of entering naval officers direct from public schools at a rather later age. These young men from public schools sit for examination and soon after the Armistice it was possible for some blue jacket boys who got on sufficiently well in school to sit for the examination with some chance of passing. Though I say boys from public schools, yet any lad can go forward from any school for this examination. The idea was, I suppose, to get most of them from public schools. Many of these boys have come from the less known public schools and there have been cases of blue jacket boys trained in the ordinary council schools, then going to sea and afterwards sitting for this examination. I am sorry to say that this possibility was rather cut down by the action of the Admiralty itself. I raised this matter in 1919 in this House. The reply from the Government Bench at that time was not sympathetic. They said that the way of promotion from the lower deck was through the mate's class. The mates are taken later in life and have not the same chance of promotion as if they entered the officers' ranks as midshipmen, and there was this loop-hole for the exceptional boy from the lower deck. Do the Admiralty still permit these boys to sit and give them facilities, because if they do not I think they are making a great mistake?

We live in democratic times. In the past naval officers have been recruited exclusively from one class. That policy is no longer possible to-day. The class from which officers are drawn should be the aristocracy of brains and physique throughout the country, and no question of family or finance should give any advantage to any small section of the population. I commend this view to my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport (Sir C. Kinloch-Cooke). He has at heart the need of a great and expensive Navy, because the dockyards then will flourish like the roses, and the roses in Devonport may have to look for their water and their dew one day to a Labour Government, and he may find it advantageous to encourage the democratic point of view in recruiting officers for the Navy. It did not need the War to show that officers can be drawn safely from all classes, but the war has made it more manifest. I know that the great majority of naval officers of to-day, at any rate the thinking officers, the coming generation, the people who will rule over the Navy to-morrow, are very willing to see the door of entry into the officers' class in the Navy thrown open wide to all sections of the population. The mate system of recruiting from the lower deck to the commissioned ranks is good to a point, but you want something more. The door should be thrown open to any boy who has ability, who enters the Navy through the training ships as a bluejacket boy, to sit for an entrance examination to become a midshipman.

Speaking generally on this educational Vote, I do hope that the Admiralty, in spite of the financial stringency, are considering the abolition of fees for Dartmouth. To-day only the wealthy can send their sons there. The widow of an officer killed in the War cannot afford to send her sons to Dartmouth on the officers' widows' pension. That is wrong. There are, I know, certain numbers of service cadetships, but they must of necessity be awarded by influence, and it would be much fairer if the State undertook the whole cost of tuition at Dartmouth. Then any boy of requisite ability could enter there. In the long run a widening of the field of selection, I believe, would raise the standard of officers.

I want to raise the question of the present situation of the Royal Naval Staff College at Greenwich. We have heard a great deal in this House and in another place recently as to the need for a thinking department in the Navy, a real war staff. I believe that that is appreciated in Whitehall, that the course given at Greenwich is good, and that great care is taken in the selection of candidates for the course. But I have a criticism to make, and it is as to the policy of maintaining the staff college at Greenwich at all. In the first place, much of the most valuable part of a staff officer's course is comprised in the discussions that take place out of the class altogether, on problems engaging the attention of students. At Greenwich you are near London, and in normal times there is a good service of trains. Human nature being what it is, the students there, naval officers who have perhaps had little opportunity of seeing the capital of the Empire, naturally take advantage of the facilities for coming up to London to spend their evenings. That is very bad. The nearness of Greenwich to London is probably one of the reasons why certain senior officers in high positions at the Admiralty favour Greenwich as a place for the staff college, because they can have their families in London and come up to town nightly.

Another thing I would urge is the great need of closer co-ordination with the Army and the Air Force. That can best begin by bringing the staffs together and letting them work out combined problems. It would be much better if the Naval Staff College were situated at or near Camberley. There are certain people who say that you must keep a nautical atmosphere, and that there is some salt water at Greenwich. Others say that if the college is not to be at Greenwich it should be at Portsmouth, where it was in the old days. There is a much stronger reason for having it at Camberley, which would bring it in close touch with the military and the Air Force. I do not think the extra cost would be great. The buildings at Greenwich are venerable and historic, but they are expensive to maintain. I have been on a course there, and know something about the place. The great bulk of those in the Navy who take an interest in these matters are with me in feeling that the staff college should not be at Greenwich. I hope the hon. and gallant Gentleman in replying will give us more comfort on this point than the right hon. Member for St. George's Division (Mr. Long) gave us last year.

Mr. G. BARNES

I am not qualified to speak on the last topic mentioned, although it seems to me that the hon. and gallant Member who has just sat down has made out a good case for the staff college being brought into closer contact with the other branches of the service. I wish to support his plea in regard to entry into the other branches of the Naval Service. I took a considerable interest in this matter many years ago, and I am glad to know that the position now is very much better, from the democratic point of view, than it was then. It used to be the case that the entry of a boy into the executive branch involved an expense of considerably over £100 per annum, and that there was no other way of getting into the executive branch. Parents who can afford to pay £100 a year or more for a boy at 13 years of age are not very numerous. They are about 5 per cent. or 6 per cent. of the community. The old system, therefore, was very bad, inasmuch as it narrowed the field of selection, and although we have in the Navy a very good naval officer due I think very largely to the fact that boys are taken at a very early age for training, yet however good an officer may have been when he was drawn from the old and narrow circle, it is obvious that he might have been better had the circle been very much wider. I am glad to know that the circle is now wider than it was. The fees are now less than they were. There is the advantage to the widow of an officer who can place her son for, I think, £40 a year, and there are the young fellows from the public schools entering. It is satisfactory to find that the circle has been widened considerably.

I suggest that we might go a great deal further still. I support the plea for the complete abolition of fees. In the lower branch, that is to say, in the branch which feeds what might be called the artificer and technical class in the Navy, fees have been abolished. Boys are drawn now from the elementary or the secondary schools, and they are trained as artificers. They are given a very good training, a very much better training than that obtained by the average boy on entering an engineering shop. That is done for nothing. If it is right to train the artificer it should also be right to train the executive officer at the public expense. If it is necessary to do it in the one case it is even more necessary to do it in the other, owing to the greater degree of responsibility that rests upon the executive officer compared with the artificer. I want to put a question in regard to the entry of these boys into the artificer class. I do not know whether it is so now, but it was the case some years ago that the selection was made only from the school, and I think it was confined to the continuation schools. I do not object to a standard. Make the standard sufficiently high to ensure that you get the best boy possible, so that public money will not be spent unnecessarily. Is it now the rule to confine the selection to those who are attending continuation schools? If so, it is a wrong principle. The boy who goes to a continuation school is the boy of parents who are a little better off than the average working man, and I want the average boy of the working man to have the same chance as the boy who is sent to a continuation school. Is it merely an educational standard that has to be satisfied, or is there any of this caste business in drawing only from the continuation schools? If there is that caste principle, I want to see it abolished.

7.0 P.M.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE

It is most interesting to me again to hear the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Barnes) upon a subject that is a very old one to him and not unfamiliar to myself. I can remember the right hon. Gentleman advocating the same views in 1910 and 1911 and I think up to 1916. In those days the right hon. Gentleman used to take about three-quarters of an hour in emphasising the necessity for these reforms. To-night he has managed it in a few minutes. That shows how we are progressing. The hon. and gallant Member (Lieut.-Commander Ken worthy) seemed to think that he was making a suggestion to me in his speech. The hon. and gallant Member has been a very short time in the House, although during that short time I think he has managed to make more speeches than any Member at present sitting in the House. That shows his ingenuity, but I protest against the hon. and gallant Member putting to me as a suggestion that with which I am perfectly familiar, and with which I was familiar, I will not say when he was at school, but when he was at sea. I am most anxious to see boys rise from the lowest position in the Navy to the highest position, and I always joined with my right hon. Friend (Mr. Barnes) years ago in supporting the views he expressed. Then my right hon. Friend sat where he is sitting to-night, but I was on the other side of the House, and I believe I sat in the seat now occupied by the hon. and gallant Member (Lieut.-Commander Ken-worthy). I am quite in accord with what has fallen from the hon. and gallant Member for Central Hull, so far as he referred to opportunities for boys to rise in the Navy. The hon. and gallant Gentleman seems to imagine that there will be a different constituency awaiting me in years to come from that which I now represent. Though he supposes that the side which he so well represents will probably defeat me, I have no hesitation in saying I do not think they will; at any rate, it is quite open for them to come and try. Whether that be so or not, I shall continue to support what the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Barnes) and the hon. and gallant Gentleman have said with regard to the need of giving every facility, so far as education goes, to every boy in this country who shows, by his brains and his ability, that he can rise to the highest position in the Navy. In conclusion, I just want to put the hon. and gallant Gentleman right—because he is sometimes wrong—on the point of roses in Devonshire. I assure him that the roses in Devonshire are very much superior to any sort of flower that grows in Hull.

Mr. AMERY

I will not pursue the floral part of the argument, but I may say that, like my hon. Friend who has just sat down, I am very largely in sympathy with the speeches which have been made this afternoon on that point. As regards the particular matter of the artificer training, I understand that the Admiralty have always worked in closest touch with the educational authorities. I will assume, therefore, that the suggestion of inducing candidates to go to continuation schools was introduced purely from the point of view of securing better education and better qualifications. I will certainly look into that matter, and I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend (Mr. Barnes) that nothing in the nature of caste should stand in the way of the selection of the fittest candidates for these positions.

Mr. BARNES

May I interrupt my hon. Friend. I do not object to the continuation schools so far as they are evening schools, but I rather think he will find that a selection is made from the day continuation schools. Therefore that must necessarily exclude a very large number of boys.

Mr. AMERY

I quite understand the right hon. Gentleman's point, and I will look into it and inform him as to the result of my inquiry. As to the general question of cost, I should certainly also like to look into the matter of fees paid at Dartmouth. I would, however, remind hon. Members that not only have these fees actually been reduced, but that the reduction is in fact much greater than appears owing to the great decrease in the value of money. A number of people can afford £75 or £40—and that £40 is not given by favour but wherever parents up to a certain total number are in difficult circumstances—that £40 represents a far smaller sum of money than £40 did before the War, and is within the range of a much wider circle of parents. I will not, however, go further into that point. With regard to the matter of special entry cadets from boys already in the service, which was raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Hull (Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy), I will again confess that I sympathise very largely with his point of view. I do not know what answer was given by a predecessor of mine speaking from this Box two years ago, or what very real practical difficulties may stand in the way of his suggestion. Speaking from what I know of the Army, however, I would say that I believe the view of those who have studied the question of promotion from the ranks in the Army, is that the earlier the promotion is made the fairer it is to the individual and the better in the interests of the service. Therefore, on this purely general ground, although I cannot in the absence of specific information go further than that, I frankly say that I sympathise with the point of view of the hon. and gallant Gentleman.

There is one other point which is of the very greatest importance to the future of the naval service, and indeed of all the services. It was raised by the hon. and gallant Member when he suggested the desirability of the Naval Staff College being in closest physical juxtaposition with the Air and Military Staff Colleges. He pointed out that such juxtaposition brings about interchange of thought and ideas on the whole problem of our Imperial defence, and that it is essentially a problem of combination of all the three elements. There I am heartily in agreement with him. I think the First Lord referred to this matter not long ago in the House of Lords, and the whole Board of Admiralty are in agreement with him as to the desirability of bringing about this close communion and intercourse between the Naval Staff College, the Military Staff College, and the Air College. The only difficulty that has stood in the way for a time—I am putting it quite frankly—is the question of expense. The putting up of a college is a matter which costs a considerable sum of money. Including the equipping and furnishing it would run into five figures, certainly, and at this time we are anxious to avoid, if possible, all bricks and mortar expenditure until such time as we may get the same results for, I hope, considerably less money. Therefore I trust that the Committee will not press for the immediate carrying out of this particular suggestion, but I can assure them it is one with which the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Board of Admiralty, and, if I may speak for myself, I am heartily in sympathy.

Question put, and agreed to.