HC Deb 24 March 1932 vol 263 cc1237-56

1.30 p.m.

Duchess of ATHOLL

I desire to draw the attention of the House to a contract which has recently been concluded by a newly formed company called "Timber Distributors, Ltd.," for the supply of 450 standards of sawn soft wood from Soviet Russia, and I wish also to draw attention to the temporary commercial agreement concluded between the late Government and the Government of the Soviet Union in April, 1930. In ordinary circumstances, I should not wish to trouble the House with a question of a contract with a foreign Government for the supply of timber to this country. Russia is a country of boundless and magnificent timber supplies, from which before the War we were accustomed to receive a large proportion of our timber imports. There are two reasons, and two only, why I draw attention to these matters. The first is on account of the labour conditions prevailing in many, I am inclined to believe most, of the timber camps of Soviet Russia, and the conditions under which much of that timber is transported and exported; I also wish to draw attention to the contract because of the cutthroat prices at which timber from Soviet Russia is being placed on this market and the very disturbing influence that it has on our home timber industry and on the timber industry of other countries from which we have been accustomed to take a considerable annual supply.

The evidence is unquestionable for the existence of various forms of forced labour in the Russian timber industry. A little over a year ago our late Government published a Blue Book containing extracts from the Russian labour laws of the last few years, which gave us most valuable and absolutely authoritative information with regard to the subject. The first that I wish to mention is what is known as the self-imposed task system. The, Blue Book gives us a decree which describes this method of forced labour. A village meeting, convened by a Communist agent, may carry into force, by a bare majority, even if the meeting be a small one, a vote which commits the village to carry out in the neighbouring forest a definite task of timber felling and hauling. This resolution once passed, every member of the village has to take part in the so-called self-imposed task and has to perform the part of it which is allotted to him. The Blue Book says that, if he refuses the allotted task, he may be fined five times the value of his work, and, if he refuses to pay that fine, he is liable to have all his goods confiscated.

The pay that is given for this kind of forced labour can be very small. I have seen a sworn statement to the effect that last winter—I do not mean this winter, but the one before—in one area where this method was being carried into force the pay of the fellers was about 1s. 8d. to 2s. a day, taking the Russian rouble at its full value at par, and the pay of a man who was only carting the timber was not mare than 30 roubles for three or four months' work. That this method was actually in operation was officially proved by instructions issued in the winter of 1930–31 to judges in the North of Russia to watch how this system of local forced labour was being carried out and to see that it was prosecuted with the utmost vigour. That is one method of forced labour, the local method, which does not imply sending the worker away from his home.

A second method is revealed in decrees of which several were published early last year. It was stated at the time in the Soviet Press that 1,000,000 more workers were needed in the timber industry, and various decrees called up workers from collective farms or from industrial co-operative societies to go off at once to the timber camps. That was a form of forced labour which took the worker away from his home and his family. Then the Blue Book to which I have alluded contains several decrees conscripting labour for floating timber down Russia's great rivers. These decrees run from February, 1930, onwards. In the first of these, it is stated than an 80 per cent. increase was required in personnel for floating timber on account of the very great increase of timber felling in the previous winter. These three methods of conscription of labour to which I have referred are all applicable to the ordinary worker who has not made himself objectionable to the authorities or come within the arm of the law.

In addition to measures of this kind, there is evidence of the existence of a widespread system of prison labour in the timber industry on a commercial basis. As long ago as 1924, this Blue Book tells us, a system of correctional labour was introduced under which it was frankly stated that the labour of prisoners was to be employed commercially. The labour of prisoners was to put on a commercial basis rather than that they should be kept doing nothing in prison. On the 1st June, 1929, according to another decree in this Blue Book, this system of correctional labour was extended to the timber industry. According to the decree the labour in this industry might be given by prisoners sentenced to forced labour with or without detention. Such labour might be given either within 10 miles of the sentenced person's residence or else much further afield. The second part of the decree speaks of work to be selected in the various areas of the vast Soviet Union which was to be suitable for the mass application of unskilled labour. The wording of the decree makes it clear that a large amount of unskilled labour was to be supplied to the timber industry. As a result, there is official information to the effect that what were termed forestal exploitations—no doubt a euphemism for timber camps—rose from six in 1929 to 25 in the summer of 1930. The pay, the same decree states, was to be 25 per cent. of the normal wage which the workers would have received had they been working on a free basis in the industry.

This Blue Book contains information m regard to yet another type of forced labour. It contains a decree or regulations for what are termed penal camps under a "penal" code. To these were to be sent prisoners sentenced for over three years, whereas the correctional labour code regulated the labour of persons sentenced to less than three years forced labour. Like the correctional labour code, the penal code contains articles discriminating against political prisoners as compared with criminal prisoners. It also contains a clause saying that the ration of food allowed to the prisoners will be varied according to the work done—a very dangerous provision to be included in any penal code. These camps under the penal code which was promulgated in April, 1930, as we learn from the Blue Book, are, I believe, the camps which have become notorious in this country, the United States and other countries from the sworn statements made before public officials, some in this country and some in Finland, by ex-prisoners. These statements corroborate each other in speaking of the constant overwork, the atrocious underfeeding, the lack of clothing, and the crowded and in-sanitary conditions, and in consequence the terrible mortality from disease, exposure and exhaustion.

It may be said by hon. Members on the opposite benches that we should not believe statements made in Finland because Finland's export of timber to this country has suffered so severely from all the Russian timber that we have been buying in the last few years. I wish to say, in reply to that objection, if it be raised, that I have seen statements made by ex-prisoners in Finland before public officials, with holograph signatures of two witnesses testifying that they are a true translation and a correct version of what was said, and these statements began to be made before public officials in Finland as long ago as February, 1930. As far as I know, however, none of them were published, none at any rate reached this country in any public form or for publication, until we had received here sworn statements from ex-prisoners who had made their way to England and whose statements were published by my right hon. Friend the present Minister of Health in December, 1930. Therefore, the Finnish authorities clearly showed that they did not want to make political capital out of these statements, or they would have published them long before any ex-prisoners' statements had been published in this country.

Again, it has been suggested in some quarters that these statements are being offered by ex-prisoners for sale. Mat was said the other day in a Press correspondence with myself. I can only say, in reply to that, that I have seen, I believe, all the statements of ex-prisoners that are extant—anyhow, I have seen a good many—and not one has been offered to me for sale nor have I offered one penny for any statements that I have seen. Those that I have seen were shown to me by a thoroughly reliable source. I should add that the statements of the ex-prisoners who escaped to England were most meticulously examined by a committee set up by the Anti-Slavery Society and the Howard League for Penal Reform last year, and they reported that the prisoners' statements were in the main true. Since that report was published, we have been able to see a very interesting hook by Mr. Hessell Tiltman, who is well known for his biography of the Prime Minister. In that publication he gives an account of a prisoners' camp by an Armenian who was sent to the North of Russia, and it confirms in every particular the statements of ex-prisoners made either in England or in Finland. This therefore is another form of forced labour of the existence of which there is official evidence—besides a considerable amount of evidence from ex-prisoners who have been at different penal camps and who corroborate each other in a very remarkable manner.

There is, however, yet another form of prison camp in Soviet Russia, the camps under what is termed the new penitentiary code. Those camps were first heard of last September from a statement made by Mr. Krylenko, Minister of Justice for the Soviet Union. In an official publication he spoke with considerable satisfaction of this new penitentiary code, under which labour gangs, chiefly composed of non-proletarians whose removal from their home districts was considered advisable, were being sent to remote forests and peat bogs, usually for two or three years. The statement went on to record with satisfaction that the new code was proving a source of profit to the State. The "Times" Riga correspondent in that paper on 21st March, gave us further information about this new penitentiary code, from which it appears that there are varying grades of severity in the way in which prisoners may be treated and that the yield of prison labour for the year 1932 was estimated to be some £30,000,000 sterling.

There are, then, no fewer than six forms of forced labour in which either the ordinary worker or the prisoner sentenced by law may be obliged to take part. I believe that these camps, particularly those which contain sentenced prisoners, have been largely filled with members of what are known as the kulak class, that is, the most industrious, thrifty and prosperous peasants. They are peasants, however, who, though they may seem well off as compared with the other and more numerous peasants of Russia, are in many cases only what we should term a type of smallholder rather than what we used to know as the well-to-do farmer of this country. It is difficult to get official figures, but a report made by the Minister of Labour of the Soviet Union last May, which was quoted in a Russian moderate Socialist newspaper published in Paris, spoke of some 4,000,000 or 5,000,000 persona having been sent to the camps, and stated that the mortality in the camps in the last two years had fluctuated between 60 and 70 per cent., a figure which, I may add, was also given by the Armenian whom I have already quoted whose statement appears in Mr. Hessell Tiltman's recent book. I say without hesitation that this process of "liquidation" or sending the kulak after the expropriation of all his goods and possessions, and with or without his family, at an hour or two's notice, to any part of the vast realm of Russia to work on any kind of labour the State may require, but more especially, I believe, in the timber industry, is one of the most terrible crimes ever committed by the Government of any country.

I have detailed these various forms of forced labour in the timber industry in Russia because the chairman, I understand, of the new company which has concluded this great timber contract with the Soviet Union was the leader of a delegation from the British Timber Trade Federation which visited White Sea ports by invitation of the Soviet Government last summer They found no prison labour in the saw mills or on the wharves of the ports they visited, but there is the attested evidence of British seamen to vouch for the fact that prison labour had been employed in those ports a few months before. There is also the evidence of an American newspaper correspondent who visited Archangel in March, 1931, to the effect that as a result of the feeling caused in this country and the United States by the stories of ex-prisoners, the Soviet Government had cleared all prison labour from Archangel. It was, therefore, not surprising that the delegation from the British Timber Trade Federation found no prison labour in the ports they visited, but I think they were much too ready to accept the assurances which they were given by the Soviet officials that there had not been any labour of that kind employed there. They also seem to have been ready to believe that there was no reliable evidence as to the existence of forced labour in other parts of the timber industry.

I want to say, in regard to the delegation's report, that the delegation only visited some four or five ports in one part of Russia's vast timber area. They did not visit Murmansk, on the Arctic Ocean, a port which is open all the year round, and a port near which or on the way to which, according to the statements of some of these ex-prisoners in Finland, a great deal of prison labour had been employed in the timber industry, and a port where, some of these ex-prisoners said, prison labour was actually being used in loading timber. Nor did they see anything of prison labour at ports further east. Only the other day I received a letter from an American lady in Shanghai who had lived for 36 years at Vladivostok—up to about a year before. She said: When I left Vladivostok the prisons held hundreds of peasants, mostly those who had objected to being forced away from their farms. In the spring of 1930 an ordinary morning sight was large groups of these wretched farmers from the gaol, under a military guard, being taken down to work at the docks, a thing well known to British and foreign captains of ships discharging or loading there. That the British Timber Trade Delegation found no prison labour in the White Sea ports they visited was therefore purely negative evidence as regards ports in other parts of Russia from which a great deal of timber is coming. Only on 3rd March last "Pravda" mentioned that at Vladivostok there was an export timber trust, so no doubt prisoners are or may be loading at Vladivostok timber which is being sent away for export.

The second point I wish to observe in regard to the report of the British Timber Trade Delegation is that they did not visit any of the forest camps, and that the stories of the ex-prisoners themselves mostly relate to events in those camps. It is obvious that the statement I have quoted from the Minister of Justice made in September was made subsequent to the visit of the Timber Trade Delegation in June and July, and that his statement cannot possibly be challenged by anything that the Timber Trade Delegation says. Then, recently, we have had in the "Morning Post" a heartrending letter smuggled from a German exile in Siberia. The writer says: In this Siberian village, engaged in the timber industry, we live in barracks. We all work, and we know well what that word. means. All men and women must work from early morn till late at night. There is no such thing as an eight-hours day for us. Our wages for the day are a plate of vegetable soup without meat and half a pound of stale, sour bread. We are all famishing here. There were in this area about 7,000 families, who are dying off at an average of about 10 a day. I do not know that I should have read that extract if it were not that I have seen several letters of the same kind from persons working as exiles in the timber industry in various parts of the Soviet Union. In timber camps in the east and north of Russia there are not only men working but also women. In one or two camps there are also children working of the ages of 12 and 13. Recently I met a young Englishman who was in Russia last year who managed to reach some places rarely seen by visitors, and he can testify that near Novo Sibirsk, in Siberia, he and his companion saw a train guarded by men with rifles going due east. It contained 55 trucks—big trucks of about 40 tons each. Each truck had two small windows at which the desperate faces of deportees could be seen. This young Englishman made inquiries, and he was told that three trains of that kind ran through that district every week to a place 500 miles further east where timber is being worked. Again I lately received a cutting from the "Harbin Times," which states: The coast from Vladivostok to Nokolaievsk, on the Amur, constitutes the main district for timber collecting in the Far East. Enormous forest areas from which rich supplies of timber are delivered, mainly for export purposes, are divided into districts containing the 'lishentsi' camps, which are guarded by strong detachments of special Ogpu troops. 2.0. p.m.

It will be seen then that the report of the timber delegation tells us nothing whatever about conditions in timber camps far removed from the north, which alone was visited by the delegation. An attempt was made in the report of the timber trade delegation to discredit a prisoner's statement made in the report of the Anti-Slavery Society, but that attempt utterly failed. Hon. Members will find correspondence on this point the "British Timber Trade Journal" of 13th February last. It is not alone on account of the report of the timber trade delegation that I have gone into these details. I have done so also on account of an exhibition held recently at the London School of Economics which purported to give an idea of labour conditions prevailing in Soviet Russia. I visited that exhibition and found a screen containing some half-dozen placards devoted to the timber industry. One of these bore the announcement that there was no compulsory labour in the timber industry. Another stated that most of the workers engaged in the industry were employed on seasonal labour, which was merely a source of additional income for them. I was staggered to read these announcements in an exhibition arranged by a society which purports to exist in order to promote cultural relations between this country and the Soviet Union. The society has not carried its members very far in cultural relations if they have ignored all the available evidence in regard to the existence of forced labour in this industry. Mr. Stalin stated last June that the Five-Year Plan would have to be based on conscript labour—it could not be carried out otherwise. If the head of this great State admits that the plan requires conscript labour generally, is it possible to conceive that that conscript labour will not be required in the timber industry when we remember that much of the Russian timber grows in far distant and isolated regions like the Archangel and the Kekem districts, to which few people would go of their own free will? Those who knew Russia before the war will tell you that Archangel and other districts of the far north were very unpopular because of the climate, and that it was always difficult to get people to go there even for seasonal work. Surely it would be equally difficult to get people to go to the far east, the Urals, or into the heart of Siberia. Therefore, the statement which is made in the report of this exhibition by the Society for Promoting Cultural Relations with Russia must be regarded as utterly untrustworthy, and I must express my conviction that an exhibition showing postcards and posters of the nature I have described is a most unreliable way of arriving at any knowledge of a vast country containing 160,000,000 people, and my astonishment that such an exhibition should take place in one of the constituent schools of one of our largest universities. Though, however, it was officially admitted a year ago in this House that forced labour was employed in the timber industry, it was stated at the time that it was not employed upon timber for export.

It must be very difficult to know what labour has been employed on any particular consignment of timber, but there are certain broad facts in this connection to which I would like to refer. In the year 1927–28, which was the last year before the introduction of forced labour in forestry, the exports of timber from Russia were 2,500,000 tons. In the next year after the system of forced labour had been introduced, the exports of timber from Russia jumped to 4,770,000 tons. In the following year, 1929–30, the exports of timber from Russia jumped still further to 7,300,000 tons. I contend that such a huge increase in the Russian exports of timber, corresponding as it does with the period in which forced labour began to be developed, is very significant, and leads to the conclusion that the great development of forced labour must have had a great deal to do with this result.

There is another circumstance. It is notorious that there is a great housing shortage in Russia, and there is also evidence of a shortage of furniture and a shortage of firewood. The Soviet Press has been full of complaints as to the shortage of firewood, and a statement appeared lately in one of the Soviet. journals to the effect that in Moscow even hospitals had no heat. That all points to a shortage of timber for domestic use. Does it not lead one to conclude that a great deal—probably the greater part—of the energy which is being put into the great timber industry is being devoted to producing timber for export? There is a further point. Whether this consignment of timber or that consignment of timber has been produced by forced labour or not, there is evidence of the use of forced labour in handling timber in transit. There are the decrees of which I have already spoken for conscripting labour for timber floating. There was also a decree requiring conscription for ships in rivers and ships sailing by sea. Floating, moreover, in itself suggests export. Russia's great rivers seem to be intended for that purpose. The timber is floated down from the interior to the ports, where there are great sawmills, and, once having reached the ports, it is not likely to be turned backwards into the interior of the country. Therefore, one is obliged to conclude that a very large proportion at any rate of the timber coming to this country from Russia must either have been produced or handled, or both, by forced labour, often under conditions the horror of which it is very difficult for us here to imagine, and I believe that we shall not be acting up to the obligations which we undertook when our country became a member of the League of Nations if we continue officially to shut our eyes to this fact.

Then I come to the economic effects, with which I will deal more briefly, of this continued import of Russian timber under these conditions. As a result of the cheap, often unpaid, labour in the timber industry, and the overmastering desire of the Soviet Government to procure foreign currency to help to purchase machinery for the Five Years Plan, there has been great price-cutting by Russia in our market in the last three years. Whereas she was sending us sawn softwood timber in 1928 at 94s. a load last year her average price was not more than 61s. a load, or about £9 or £10 per standard. This drop in price has destroyed or severely damaged the home market, both for producers and for those who work sawmills, and it has also severely affected other countries, such as Sweden, Finland and Canada, which have been accustomed to send us large quantities of sawn timber. They have had to cut their prices severely, and yet to see their quantities severely reduced on our market. The result is great depression in Finland, Sweden and Canada. In this country, of course, we want cheap timber, though I think we should like to see more timber coming to us in hewn form rather than sawn. We want cheap timber, but we do not want timber cheap at the price of the conditions which prevail in many Russian timber camps, and there is no question that the purchasing power, the power to purchase from us, of countries such as Finland and Sweden, Norway and Canada has been severely restricted by the quantity of Russian timber which we have purchased in the last few years.

Other countries have recognised, in a way that we have not done hitherto, the economic danger of these continued large imports of timber from Soviet Russia. In France and Belgium Soviet timber is only admitted under licence. Canada has barred her doors to it altogether, and the United States have recognised the danger implied in allowing the products of forced or prison labour to enter a country where labour is free, by passing a Tariff Act which, if put into effective operation, is likely to bar the entry of all Soviet imports. But we here are helpless to take any effective measures against Russian timber, because our hands are bound by the temporary commercial agreement concluded in April, 1930, between this country and the Soviet Government, under which we are obliged to give that Government the benefit of the most-favoured-nation Clause. I believe that, when that agreement was signed, little or nothing was known, even in official circles, about the conditions in the timber camps of Russia, or about labour conditions in Russia generally. Indeed, the conscription of labour to which I have referred was only beginning in April, 1930; it has developed tremendously since.

Now the situation is changed. The Government have the benefit of this Blue Book, published by their predecessors over a year ago, to show them what the system is. They must have fully as much information as any private individual can have as to how that system is operating, and I beg them to give the six months' notice that is necessary in order to ter- minate this agreement, so that they may no longer be tied as they are at present. In any case, they will probably wish to terminate the agreement if they arrive at successful arrangements at Ottawa. Six months from now will carry us well beyond the date of the Ottawa Conference, and, if early notice be not given to terminate the agreement, it is possible that it may still be in existence at a date when this newly formed company may begin negotiating another contract for next year. The circular issued by the company states that they hope that the present contract will be a, basis on which contracts may be framed in future years.

It is terrible to think that, by purchasing large quantities of Russian timber, as we have done in the last year or two, we have helped to create the demand for Russian timber which has torn so many peasants and others from their homes and sent them to the camps to which I have referred; but it is intolerable to think that, now that we have official evidence, and a certain amount of other evidence which will bear sifting, as to the conditions in these camps, we should allow these purchases to continue. We have been the chief buyer of Russian timber among the countries of the world, and we cannot escape, therefore, a considerable share of responsibility for the sufferings which these camps entail on the Russian people, so long as, with the information in our possession regarding the conditions there, we allow such purchases to continue. I most earnestly ask the Government to look into this matter closely at an early date, because I feel that it is really a stain on the honour of this country, and a stain on the commercial practice of this country, that we should continue to make these large purchases in spite of all that we know, and that it is a lamentable departure from the finest traditions of this country, established nearly a century ago, when we first began to stand up officially among the nations for freedom of labour.

Captain TODD

I desire to support my Noble Friend's plea that, largely on moral grounds, notice should be given to terminate the trade agreement with Russia. No less than my Noble Friend, I think the moral grounds are extremely strong. Within the British Empire we have done away with slavery, and, until this House sees to it that Great Britain ceases to support great industries carried on by slave and forced labour, this House will not be truly representative of the people who sent us here. British people are constantly surprising the world because they refuse to take the materialistic point of view and adopt the idealistic one. Let it not be said that hon. Members of this House continue to allow a small percentage of their fellow-citizens to make large profits out of this trade, which is a stain on the world.

I do not wish to detain the House too long, but I want to look at the matter from the economic point of view. Probably most hon. Members are aware that there is a Russian Trade sub-Committee working and open to all hon. Members who support the National Government. There seems to be a curious view among those who call themselves friends of Soviet Russia that some underhand work is going on. In the Anglo-Russian Press I see headlines alleging that there is a "London plot." I can assure hon. Members that there is nothing underhand about the committees of the National party or of any other. They are open to any hon. Member to come and listen. Our only object is to look at the matter from the economic point of view and to see whether it is worth while for Britain to go on supporting Soviet Russia. They owe us many millions of pounds, and we have a perfect right to look into the matter and see if we are likely to be paid back. It is only common sense, and there is nothing underhand. I hope we shall continue to look at it from that point of view.

Because of the difficulties of arranging for the importation of Russian timber, a company has been formed which calls itself Timber Distributors, Ltd. They publish a very cleverly-worded prospectus, and to the casual observer the company is a most interesting one which offers very favourable terms to those who take shares. I understand that some 170 firms of timber importers in this country have already been bluffed. They imagine that they are in for a good thing. I am just going to examine some parts of that prospectus and show what this firm of timber distributors really mean. I come from the Border and if I had been asked to take shares I should have said that the offer was too good to be true. We are asked to take 5s. shares and pay 1s. for them. When one takes shares in a com- pany whose object is to import, one would imagine that the members of that company would have some sort of liability for the sale of the articles imported. These are the facts: the company has been set up with a capital of £113,000. As the members are only to pay 1s. out of every 5s., that means that four-fifths of the £113,000 is not found by the members of the company. It is to be found by the Soviet Government, because they are the promoters of the company. From the start, although the capital of this alleged British company is so small, four-fifths of the capital is put up by the Soviet Government, under the guise of shippers and brokers and Russian importers into this country.

Having formed their company, the directors, one would imagine, would have some say in the allotment of shares. Not at all. The normal work of the directors is already done. They are to be directors, but the shares are allotted, and more than that, the timber is already allocated. They propose to import 450,000 standards of timber. I understand that that represents a value of £4,500,000, £1,000,000 of that being the cost of shipping to this country. Does any sane person really believe that a company with £113,000 of capital is in a position to make itself responsible for the purchase of £4,500,000 of timber. The bankers have already refused to finance Russian imported timber, so that the company need not look to the bankers. I have the names of the directors here. Each of them has one A share worth 5s. What is going to happen when this company fails to sell, as it very likely will, about a third of their import? Already in this country there are enormous supplies of timber unsold. What is going to happen if a third of £4,500,000 worth of timber remains unsold? Is the company going to pay for it out of the capital of £113,000? Of course not. The Soviet Government are bound to foot the difference, because there is nobody else who can or will, and that clearly proves to me and, to any ordinary, medium brain that this company is merely camouflaged under the guise of a British company to bluff a large number of timber importers, and that the Soviet Government are putting up money to get their timber into this country whether we will or not. It appears perfectly obvious that a, very large proportion of the sale of the timber must be carried out by Soviet money because there is no other available.

Mr. GROVES

What is the actual disadvantage to the people of this country, if they get timber which is much needed for the construction of houses at the cheapest possible price—if, of course, it is of durable quality? The hon. and gallant Member was illustrating the apparent disadvantage to the British buyer; will he please point out what is the disadvantage to the consumer?

Captain TODD

The hon. Member has merely forestalled what I was just going on to say. The first disadvantage is that we are definitely disgracing the name of British people by our advantage being gained to the detriment of thousands or hundreds of thousands of poor Russian peasants. [Interruption.] We may rule that point out for the moment, because apparently it does not appeal to the right hon. Gentleman opposite.

Mr. LANSBURY

I said it was not true.

Captain TODD

The point is one that does appeal to most hon. Members on this side of the House. From the purely materialist point of view, there are many reasons why we do not want this country to be flooded with Russian timber. Our own people in Canada are very largely unemployed. A great many of our unemployed went to Canada for work, and have had to come back because Canada is a new country and cannot give them employment. Take British Columbia: there are 28 sawmills not working, and with a potential output of 300,000 standards of timber. Last year they only sent us 50,000 standards of timber. Without any malice to Russia I claim that it is only our duty to see that we take more from our Canadian brothers than from people in Russia who are working against us. Some may think that Canadian timber is not suitable; to a certain extent that is true. To some extent this is not the normal market for British Columbian timber, but we are supporting the Soviet who are flooding the normal markets of Canadian timber. It is because Russian timber is going to the whole of the East, largely supported by us, that all that mass of timber remains unsold, and 28 mills are idle to-day in British Columbia.

There is another reason. I do not believe it is wise to give Soviet Russia a monopoly, because they quite frankly say their principal object at the moment is to destroy capitalist countries. In the last five years the export of Sweden has dropped 30 per cent., the export of Finland has dropped by 34 per cent. and the export from Oregon 44 per cent., while the export from Russia has risen by 44 per cent. Do hon. Members think it is wise for us to assist the one great country in the world whose object is to destroy the system that we believe in? Do they think it is wise for us to play into their hands and to continue to take more and more of their goods to the detriment of all those friendly countries; I can see very great danger in it and, for that reason, I have the greatest desire to support the Noble Lady's appeal to the Government to terminate the trade agreement with Russia. On moral, economic and Imperial grounds and in every way without any small-mindedness or bitterness towards Russia, I see every reason why, as British people supporting the British Empire, we should give notice to terminate the Russian agreement.

Mr. LANSBURY

So far as this is a genuine attempt to put down forced or slave labour, the hon. and gallant Gentleman will have no greater supporters than ourselves. He used an interjection of mine to infer that we had no regard to the morals of this business and that it was simply material objects that we had in view. I can speak for myself. I have given hostages, not to fortune but to my days of life, in the service of great impersonal causes and it does not lie in the mouth of anyone to charge me with any other than at least as decent motives as the hon. and gallant Gentleman himself has on the subject.

Captain TODD

My remark had no reference to the right hon. Gentleman at all, but he will not deny that there are a large number of Members of his party who pooh-pooh any suggestion that there is slave or forced labour in Russia, and they can well afford to do so because they live under the protection of a sane, decent civilised Government.

2.30 p.m.

Mr. LANSBURY

I do not want the hon. and gallant Gentleman to think we can accept that last statement at all. In the days of the Tsar I spent years in trying to make public opinion realise what Tsardom meant, but I got no backing then from people of the class to which the Noble Lady and the hon. and gallant Gentleman belong. When we raised the question in 1911 or 1912, the then Foreign Secretary, Lord Grey, said the internal affairs of the Russian Empire had nothing whatever to do with this House, and there was no one here responsible for them. There is no freedom for any individual in Italy except what is permitted by Mussolini, but I am very doubtful whether we should be allowed to make the same sort of statements about the Italian Administration as have been made about Russia to-day. Who are the people who import this Russian timber? It is not the Communist party but the capitalists of Great Britain. You have plenty of power to stop them. It is not for me to stop them. You do not stop them, because you cannot prove the statements which you are making. Further, if we challenge the Russian Government to have an investigation of their forests, they will challenge us to have an investigation into the conditions of native labour in Kenya and the shambles of Bombay and Calcutta. Read the report of the Whitley Committee about the conditions of labour in the mines and the mills of Bombay and Calcutta. You talk about forced labour, but you can be forced by hunger to go to work under conditions to which otherwise you would not submit.

The Noble Lady spoke about Siberia. I have had a granddaughter living in Siberia for a considerable time with an English family, and I should very much like the Noble Lady to hear her version of life in one of the most backward parts of Russia. I have a daughter, who is a Communist—my granddaughter is not—who lived in Soviet Russia for a long time, and I should like to show the Noble Lady private letters written to her mother, in which the sort of stories that we have heard to-day are simply wiped out altogether and proved to have no foundation whatever. Ministers are not here, I understand because they did not have notice. I was challenged when I was First Commissioner why I as a Socialist allowed prison produced timber to come into the country. The officials at the Office of Works said first that it was very difficult to discriminate between one sort of timber and another, but, if it had to be done, the people to do it—you have plenty of power to do it—were the Customs. You have a law now that prison produced goods shall not be allowed into the country. Why is it not stopped? You do not require any more legislation. It is not stopped because you cannot prove it. All the statements that have been made are prima facie and ex parte statements with no real truth about them at all. The hon. and gallant Gentleman asked why we should not, use Canadian timber, and he answered himself. I was asked that at the Office of Works, and they told me that it was not suitable. It is not the kind of timber that we could use, and the hon. and gallant Gentleman admitted it. Then he said, because you deal with these people they are able to send their goods East. Are you going to say to the Russian nation that they shall not export to other countries and that other countries shall not buy from them? It is absurd. We have no power to do that.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman says, practically, that we should not do any business with these people at all, but there are two sides to that question. Their goods do not come in here for nothing. Something has to go out to pay for it, and it is goods that go out. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman represented a district where engineering was carried on, he would know that people who are carrying on this sort of work want more trade with Russia, and you cannot have trade with Russia unless you take her goods. If there is to be an investigation—and if I had anything to do with the matter I should say, "Yes, let us ask the Soviet Government for an investigation"—let us also be ready to respond to their challenges as to an investigation into the conditions of labour within the British Empire, and that would be all fair and square. I should be willing to vote for that and to stand by the result, but I am not in favour of gibbeting a nation.

Burke once said that you cannot indict a whole nation, but Russia and the Russian Government are talked about in this House as though they were just absolute devils, and people with whom you do not wish to have any truck whatever. There are 100,000,000 people in Russia. It is a great untapped country as far as natural wealth is concerned, and, if you are all so sure that Communism will fail and that Communism is a had thing, why worry about it? Remember what is said somewhere in the Bible that if it is good it will stand, and if it is bad it will fail. That will be the test in the days to come. If Communism is not making headway in Russia, and if the Five-Year Plan is going to fail, you who believe in capitalism have only to sit tight, and you will see it fail. The hon. and gallant Gentleman, after he had done with his altruism really got down to the root of the matter when he said that this nation is going to get on and get trade and business and so on. Well, you cannot have it both ways. They are either succeeding or they are failing. If they are failing, you have nothing of which to complain. If they succeed you will have nothing of which to complain because all that the British people want to do is to succeed also. Each nation in this competitive world wants to get on top, and the Russians have as much right to enter the competitive world and do the best they can as any other nation.