ADJOURNMENT (CHRISTMAS). (Hansard, 22 December 1932)

§ Sir S. HOARE
When the Debate was interrupted I had been drawn reluctantly into something of the nature of a controversy with the right hon. Gentleman opposite. May I suggest to him that he shall see the document himself, and I think he will be satisfied that it is not official? Let me pass from this incident to the bigger questions raised by the hon. Member for Caerphilly, who seems still worried about the present situation in India. I am, however, glad to be able to inform him that, so far as I can judge, it is definitely better than when last I addressed the House. He may say that my view is biased, that I depend upon official reports, that I am 10,000 miles away from India, and that just as I have said that the delegation whose activities we were discussing is biased on one side, I am biased on the other. Let me therefore not give him my simple statement in answer to his inquiry, but let me rather take two outward and visible events which do quite definitely show that the cause of good will in India is growing in strength.
I take, first of all, the example of the ratification of the Ottawa Agreement. Right hon. and hon. Members will remember that from the very start of the Ottawa negotiations I stood aside entirely. I gave a pledge that the Assembly in India should have the opportunity of ratifying or not ratifying it as it liked, and I think every member of the India delegation will say that from start to finish no influence was brought to bear upon it either by myself or from the Departments in Whitehall. The delegation went to Ottawa and, if I may say so, it was a. very able delegation. By the admission of everyone it was one of the ablest of all the Imperial delegations at Ottawa. It studied the question upon the merits and without any pressure from the Government, and it agreed at the end of the discussion to recommend an arrangement that seemed to it to be beneficial to India and to the Empire as a whole.
The Agreement was subsequently put before the Assembly, which not unnaturally scrutinised the Agreement, and 1263 many members at first were under the impression that the Agreement was not altogether in the interests of India. Accordingly, a Select Committee was appointed—I believe, very representative of the main bodies of opinion in the Assembly—and the Agreement was scrutinised meticulously for several days from cover to cover. At the end of that time the Committee recommended, by a very large majority, that the Agreement should be ratified, on the ground that it was obviously in the interests of India. The Committee's report went back to the Assembly, and the Agreement was eventually carried by a majority of 77 to 25; that is to say, a majority, as far as we can judge, quite independent of the official bloc. I venture to say to hon. Members in all parts of the House that there is very significant evidence of good will between the Indian Legislature and the Imperial Parliament, that there they looked at the question upon its merits, that they set aside any partisan sentiments, and that they came to the conclusion that in the interests of India and those of the Empire the Agreement ought to be ratified; and without any pressure from here they ratified it by an overwhelming majority.
I come to my second instance, and I am glad to be able to use it. I think the hon. Member for Caerphilly will find that it provides a satisfactory answer to a good many of the questions that he asked me just now. The hon. Member once again deplored the necessity for emergency ordinances. I tell him, and tell him quite sincerely, that I have always hated emergency orders. They are a hand-to-mouth method of dealing with a serious situation, and nobody wishes to see them imposed unless it is absolutely necessary, and nobody wishes to continue them a day longer than is necessary. Accordingly, some months ago the Government of India and I came to the view that it would be much more satisfactory if the responsibility of dealing with grave threats to law and order was imposed upon the Legislatures rather than upon the ordinance of the Governor-General. Accordingly, we decided to put the position before both the Assembly at Simla and the provincial councils telling them the state of affairs and giving them the opportunity of dealing with them. I am glad to be able to say that in the 1264 Assembly and in practically every provincial council this opportunity has been welcomed, and the fullest use has been made of it. The result of it is to-day that by the ordinary methods of legislation, and I think in every case without the need of the vote of the official block, legislation has been passed which gives the Central Government and the Provincial Governments sufficient power to deal with any recrudescence of trouble.
This legislation has been passed without the vote of official blocks in almost every case, and I think in every case by an overwhelming majority. That is a very satisfactory change in the situation. It shows, in the first place, that there is a great body of public opinion behind the Government, whether in the centre or in the provinces, in the efforts they have been making to maintain law and order. It also shows that the members of the Indian legislatures are prepared to take on their own shoulders the responsibility of dealing with the situation. The result is that by the beginning of the new year we shall find ourselves in the position that the hon. Member for Caerphilly desires, namely, that we shall require emergency ordinances no longer. The legislatures have of their own free will given the Government the necessary powers to deal with the situation, and I am glad to be able to announce to-day that, so far as I can see, by the beginning of the new year there need be no further emergency ordinances. That applies also to the Press ordinances. When I say that the emergency ordinances will come to an end, I mean all the ordinances. What Press powers are retained are passed by the Assembly and the provincial legislatures.
I pass to the other part of the hon. Member's speech dealing with the Round Table Conference.

§ Mr. MORGAN JONES
Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves that portion of his speech, can he take the opportunity to respond to my appeal for a gesture of conciliation at this Christmas season?

§ Sir S. HOARE
I would rather give my speech in the order in which I have mapped it out. I want to say a word in answer to the hon. Member's question about the Round Table Conference. There again, I do not blame the hon. Member in any way, but he seemed to 1265 me to be under several grave misapprehensions, first of all about the personnel of the Round Table Conference. The personnel differs only in two respects from the personnel of the last two Round Table Conferences. The first is that Congress, having refused to co-operate with us, no longer takes part in our deliberations. That was not our fault. The second difference, I suggest, was not our fault either. It was, for reasons which I dare say are very good reasons, due to the fact that the right hon. Gentleman and hon. Members opposite felt that they could not take part in the conference at this stage. I think that it is only in this stage, for we shall have their active co-operation when the proposals go to the Joint Select Committee. Apart from that, the personnel is substantially the same as it was in the last two years. It is smaller, but I think that everybody who is following the course of events is agreed that a smaller conference at this stage was better than a big conference.
It is a mistake to say that the Conference is not representative of big bodies of Indian opinion. It is representative of very big bodies of Indian opinion. For instance, the Indian States are represented by their principal Ministers. There can be no question about the States' representation being unrepresentative of the Indian princes.

§ Mr. ATTLEE
Not the Chamber of Princes.

§ Sir S. HOARE
Yes, indeed, there are the principal Ministers here.

§ Mr. ATTLEE
They are not nominated?

§ Sir S. HOARE
They are not nominated by the Chamber, I agree, but none the less, I think the view of the Princes of the Chamber is very subtially represented. Next, there is a very representative delegation of the Moslem community, and, lastly, there is a representation of various branches of the Hindu and Sikh communities composed of public men whose names carry weight in the whole of India and here as well. I would demur very strongly to the suggestion that the personnel of this Conference is in any way less representative than that of the two previous conferences, or that its Indian members are not competent to speak for great bodies of opinion in India.
1266 Next, the hon. Member seems to think that we have been holding over the Conference a curtain of secrecy. That is not the case. We came to the conclusion—the Indian delegates just as much as ourselves—that at this stage when we were dealing with details, and when we were trying to get through the work as expeditiously as we could, the kind of publicity that we had last year and the year before, in which everybody's speech was published verbatim—and we know in this House that we are rather inclined, when we know our speeches are being published verbatim, to speak at some length —upon the whole it was better to have the kind of restricted publicity that we have had this year. The publicity has been in the hands of a small committee on which the Indian delegations have been represented, and I think that, on the whole, it has given a very fair picture of what has been happening in the Conference without falling in to the kind of—I will not say error—but the state of affairs of last year and the year before when too much publicity meant prolixity of speech.
As to the work of the Conference, and particularly as to the intentions with which the Conference is assembled, the hon. Member seemed to think that there was some change in the attitude of the Government towards the Conference, or in the conception of what we wished to get out of the Conference. I tell him quite categorically that there is no difference at all. I have been a member of all these three Conferences, and we are trying to get out of this Conference exactly the same results that we tried to get out of the Conference last year and the Conference the year before. We are trying to get out of the Conference as much agreement as ever we can between Indian opinion and ourselves. I should be the last person in the world to be too optimistic, particularly in the matter of conferences. I would never say that any conference had succeeded until it was over; I think I would go further and say that no conference has succeeded until we have had time in which to judge the actual effects of the work of the conference in hard facts. But I am able to tell the hon. Member to-day—and I think every Indian delegate will agree—that so far we have had a series of very useful 1267 and, on the whole, very satisfactory discussions. We have been dealing in the main with details. We have taken as our text the White Paper of last year and the White Paper of the year before, and I can tell him and his hon. Friends that we have departed from the White Paper neither in the letter nor in the spirit.
The hon. Member asked me a specific question as to whether our attitude had changed towards provincial autonomy and responsibility at the centre. My answer is: "No, it has not changed in any way." What we have been doing in this Conference is to try to fill in the gaps —many gaps were left over in the White Papers of last year and of the year before —and to carry out the implications of the general principles that were then accepted by a great majority of hon. Members in the House. I can also tell him that the Conference will end just as the Conference ended last year and the year before, namely, with a series of reports. There will be a number of reports, and if he and his hon. Friends will read them I think he will agree that much very useful work has been done, work that was inevitable if we were to clear the ground for the meeting of the Joint Select Committee. I hope I am not too optimistic when I say I believe he will also find that a, great measure of agreement has been reached by the Government and both the British delegation and the great body of the Indian delegates assembled in London. But, as I say, let us wait until the Conference is over—it looks as if it will not be a matter of many days—and the hon. Member will then have in his hands a number of reports and will be able to judge whether the statement I am making is justified or not by the actual facts.
Lastly, let me say a word about his appeal that we should do everything in our power to increase the forces of good will and to show our willingness to cooperate with whoever will co-operate with us. I say to the House this morning that the situation is definitely better than it was six months ago. We have had these evidences of good will, evidences which I am afraid have been rather rare in recent years, in the relations between India and Great Britain. The evidences, I believe, go to show that we are at the beginning of a new 1268 chapter. Further, we have the fact that the Legislatures have given the Governments, central and provincial, powers to deal with any dangerous situation. These are facts which the Government will certainly take into account. The hon. Member can rely on the Government of India taking them into account and using them to the full, making it as easy as possible for everybody who is willing to take a share in the moulding of the new Constitution to take that share and for everyone who is willing to co-operate with us upon the general lines of the two White Papers. We are following the situation very carefully, and I would ask him not to press me further on the point this morning.