§ 3.33 P.m.
Duchess of AthollI am very glad to have this opportunity of emphatically refuting the suggestions made by the hon. and gallant Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Captain Heilgers) last Wednesday, when he gave my name with those of other hon. Members as patron of a fund for helping wounded members of the International Brigade and dependants of those serving or killed. He suggested that I had taken a share in recruiting men for the International Brigade in Spain, and therefore in evading the Foreign Enlistment Act. Owing to absence from this House during the last two days for reasons into which I need not enter, but which were unavoidable, I received 3576 only to-day the notice that the hon. and gallant Gentleman was proposing to raise these questions, and that was why I could not be here on Wednesday to reply at once to the charges.
I have here the letter in which I was invited to give my name to this fund. It is dated 4th June, 1937, and the notepaper is headed: "International Brigade, Dependants and Wounded Aid Committee." It came to me from Professor J. B. S. Haldane, who said that he wrote to me on behalf of his wife:
She is acting as Secretary for the above Fund, which takes care of the wives and families of the men of the International Brigade, and also arranging adequate medical attention and treatment for the wounded. In this connection, she is preparing shortly to launch a big appeal and it would, of course, be invaluable if she were able to associate your name with this, as a patron of the Fund.I find I replied on 7th June:Dear Professor Haldane: I shall be very glad to be patroness of the proposed Appeal, if it can be worded in such a way as not to make an attack on our Government. I am sure you will understand. Perhaps I might see a copy of the appeal before it goes to press.Mrs. Haldane duly sent me a copy of the appeal, and I asked that certain alterations should be made, so that it should be perfectly clear that the appeal was made on a humanitarian basis only. Incidentally, I am glad to have the opportunity of pointing this out, because some people have tried to make out that, while I was still in receipt of the Government Whip, I was not being loyal to the Government. I think that what I have said will dispose of any suggestion of that kind. It is perfectly clear, from the letters I have had from Mrs. Haldane, that her Committee has nothing whatever to do with recruitment. She wrote to me on 28th July, 1938, on notepaper headed "International Brigade Dependants and Wounded Aid Committee, 1, Lichfield Street, W.C.2 ":With reference to my own position and that of the members of my committee with regard to the question of men going to Spain, I can inform you definitely that neither I nor any member or members of my committee have at any time assisted in sending a single Englishman to Spain, or have been concerned in doing so. I might add to this that on several occasions I have been approached at meetings or on the telephone by young men anxious to volunteer to serve with the Government forces in Spain. On all such occasions my invariable reply has been that I had no information 3577 in the matter, and that it was quite impossible for me to give them any assistance. This is also the case regarding all the members of my committee. Our activities consist in raising funds to help the dependants and wounded of the International Brigade. On occasion we have also endeavoured to obtain information at the request of relatives with reference to individual volunteers.
§ Captain HeilgersWould the Noble Lady say what is the date of that?
Duchess of AthollThe 28th July, when I informed Mrs. Haldane of the charges which had been made by the hon. and gallant Member against her committee. The hon. and gallant Member said that Mr. Coop had been given 7s. 6d. and subsequently the cost of a fare to Paris by her committee, or anyhow at her committee's headquarters, but both Mrs. Haldane—who is well known as the wife of a very distinguished professor, who belongs to a very distinguished and respected family—and her assistant at the office, emphatically deny that the committee gave Coop any money. They say that they have never helped, and the Committee have never helped, anyone to go to Spain. They have no authority to spend money on anything but humanitarian purposes. Further, Mr. Coop's father was informed that the Committee had no knowledge of his son having gone to Spain. On 5th May, 1938, a letter to this effect, signed by Mrs. Haldane, was sent to Mr. Coop, the father. It was as follows:
Dear Sir,—We are in receipt of your letter of May 2nd, and of course can fully appreciate that the bad news we had the responsibility of forwarding to you to the effect that your son was missing in Spain must have come as a great shock both to yourself and your wife. Needless to say, we sincerely sympathise with you in the anxiety which such bad news must inevitably give rise to. We would like to say, however, that we have no knowledge about your son having gone to Spain nor of any method adopted to recruit him. Our news about him was received directly from the headquarters of the battalion in Spain.Therefore, Mr. Coop received a written communication from the Committee to the effect that they knew nothing about having recruited his son.I claim, therefore, that the facts I have put before the House completely clear myself and the other six Members concerned. This communication from the committee, on the word of its responsible officer, shows that the hon. and gallant 3578 Member has entirely misconceived the purpose for which the Committee exists. I am sure he has done it inadvertently because he has been misinformed, but as the statement he made is calculated to damage us in the eyes of some people in this country I would ask him if he will not offer an apology to us as he was good enough to do yesterday to the hon. Member for Jarrow (Miss Wilkinson).
There is another point that I feel I must refer to and that is the serious charge made by the young Mr. Coop that six deserters from the International Brigade were taken from a British ship at the quayside at Barcelona and shot. I cannot say that I feel the evidence on which the charge is made is very weighty. It was made by this young man, barely 18 years of age, who had been through trying experiences and whose nerve evidently had been rather shaken. I think I am justified in making that statement because he had deserted and it takes a good deal to make a man desert in war. We are justified, I think, in assuming that his courage at the time was not what it had been. Moreover, we are told that he was at the time actually hiding in the hold of the ship. Therefore we are entitled to ask if he actually saw anything of the shooting. I would also like to ask whether the hon. and gallant Member made any enquiries of the skipper of the ship, and if so what he learned. It seems to me, on the face of it, distinctly improbable that the Spanish Government, having ready to fight for them more men than they had arms to give them, should take such very drastic measures in regard to six foreigners who had deserted them. And as I find that the statement that the young man had received money to go to Spain from what the hon. and gallant Member thought was this committee is not correct, I must say that I do not regard him as a very creditable witness. [An HON. MEMBER: "Who did find the money?"] —I cannot possibly say. The special point I am concerned with is that it was not the committee to which I gave my name.
I would ask the hon. and gallant Member, at this moment when our Government is taking part in a scheme for withdrawing foreign soldiers from Spain, whether he really thinks it worth while taking up the time of the House and casting reflections on other hon. Members, in order to stop what must be a very 3579 small trickle of volunteers, if any trickle is going on at all. As I say, we are hoping that in the next few months there will be complete withdrawal of foreign soldiers from Spain, but I must express my doubt whether that plan will really lead to complete withdrawal of volunteers, because it has so many gaps in it—the gap in air control and the very incomplete control in many ports in the hands of the insurgents. I fear this will make it possible for assistance to reach the insurgents while the scheme is in process of withdrawing some of the troops. I fear also that the number of translators to be attached to the observers counting the troops is likely to be insufficient to ensure that every observer who counts troops has a translator with him. Moreover, the translators will need to have an extraordinary knowledge of Spanish to know whether a man is speaking Spanish as a Spaniard does or speaking it with a German or Italian accent, and I have the greatest fear as to the way in which General Franco will exercise the belligerent rights which it is proposed to give him when an unknown number of foreign troops have been withdrawn from Spain.
§ 3.45 P.m.
Miss RathboneAt this late hour I do not want to go over the ground covered by the noble Lady and, on a previous occasion, by the hon. Member for Jarrow (Miss Wilkinson). I will only say, like them, that I have nothing to do, either directly or indirectly, with the recruitment of volunteers for the International Brigade, and I am quite convinced that the organisation to which the hon. Member referred has had nothing to do with it either. I think the sole ground of his charge is that a certain letter was readdressed by the hon. Member for Jarrow to 1, Lichfield Street, which happens to be the address of the committee which deals with applications for aid from the dependants of the wounded, and that in another part of that building someone has, occasionally or habitually—I do not know which, and I do not know who the person is—let a room for interviews with young men who want to go to Spain. That, I think, is the foundation of the charge. I want to say that, as people have been included in the charges who are not here to reply for themselves, I would like to remind the House of an article in the 3580 "Law Quarterly Review" for October, 1937, by Professor (now Vice-Chancellor) McNair, the celebrated authority on international affairs, who in connection with the Foreign Enlistment Act said:
We do not often enforce this part of it, and it is notorious that British subjects are found fighting in nearly every war that occurs.Then, after alluding to the doubts that exist on the subject, he says:I need hardly tell this audience that if these"—that is, serving or inducing to serve—are not criminal offences, no amount of Governmental prohibition will make them soThen he says:The words that trouble me a little are at war.' Can it be held by a British court that there is a war in Spain when our Government has declined to grant recognition of belligerency and reiterates that it has granted belligerent rights to either side?He seems to think that, on the whole, if the matter was dealt with by a court of law, the court would probably decide that the British Government were in the right, and that the Act did apply to Spain; but he shows that there is some confusion and no one can suggest that, even after the Foreign Office have made an announcement, anyone indulging in these activities is unquestionably performing an illegal act. We are approaching the silly season, and I can only think that this is a forerunner of the approaching apparition of the Loch Ness monster. We pride ourselves on a reputation for sportsmanship. It is not a good instance of that, that an hon. Member of this House should be anxious for His Majesty's Government to apply special legislation to make it certain that the Act does apply to the Spanish war, when the only effect would be to stop up a tiny trickle, if even that is going on, of men going out to the assistance of the Spanish Government, which is fighting for democracy, when we all know of the enormous number of men who are going from Italy and Germany to fight for the insurgents. If the hon. Member's advice were taken, I think it would become a classic instance in history of straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.
§ 3.50 p.m.
§ Captain HeilgersMay I say to the hon. Lady the Member for the English Universities (Miss Rathbone), who talks about the Loch Ness monster, that I 3581 personally think that it is not a question of the Loch Ness monster; this illegal traffic in human lives is monstrous. I recognise the sincerity of the noble Lady who raised this question and of the hon. Lady who followed her and of all the Members concerned in this particular matter, but I submit to the House and to them that they have been deliberately misled. I have evidence here that they have been misled, and perhaps they will bear with me while I read four letters. Perhaps the first two or three may not seem so relevant, but they lead up to the eventual letter which is the relevant one.
The first letter was dated 7th June this year, to the Secretary of the Communist Party in London:
Dear Comrade, I am very keen to join the British battalion of the International Brigade of the Spanish Government forces as a volunteer, and I shall be pleased if you will help me to attain my ambition. I am aware, of course, that it is possibly illegal, but I feel sure that there is some way of overcoming this difficulty. Hoping you will give me all the help possible. Thanking you for your kind and prompt attention, Yours fraternally, J. Smith.
§ Captain HeilgersThat is right. The next letter is that of the 11th June addressed to J. Smith by the Communist party of Great Britain:
Central Committee, 16, King Street, Covent Garden. Dear Comrade, In reply to your letter of 7th June, we regret to say it is not possible for us to help you in the way you suggest for reasons which we are sure you will appreciate. There are a number of questions involved which it is not possible to accept responsibility for. We assure you we very deeply regret that this is the case as we very much appreciate the attitude you express in your letter. With good wishes, Yours fraternally, the Secretariat.Mr. Smith wrote back again on 13th June to the Secretariat of the Communist party of Great Britain, Central Committee:Dear Comrade, I wish to thank you for your letter of the 11th instant, and I need hardly say I am very disappointed with what you say. My chum, who lived in Manchester, wrote to Miss Ellen Wilkinson about the same matter, and she referred him to you, in consequence of which he was fortunate to leave for the International Brigade. In January last I thought possibly you might have helped me also in order that I could join him. Please do what you can for me. Looking forward to your favourable reply, Yours fraternally, J. Smith.3582 The reply to that is from "The International Brigade Dependants and Wounded Aid Committee." It is headed Honorary Secretary, Charlotte Haldane, and addressed to Mr. J. Smith, and it carries, on the left-hand side of it, the names of all the Members of Parliament I have mentioned:Dear Comrade, Your letter of the 13th June was passed to us by the Communist party for attention. Would it be possible for you to get to Norwich for the purpose of having a talk with Mr. M. Cornforth, of 3, Church Street, Norwich, who may be able to advise you on the matter which you raise in your letter.On that letter I would suggest that the Noble Lady has been misled and that the International Brigade Dependants and Wounded Aid Committee were willing to do what even the Communist party would not do.
§ Captain HeilgersIt is signed, "Yours fraternally, M. A. Johnson."
Duchess of AthollI do not know the name of M. A. Johnson; I should have to ascertain who M. A. Johnson was. I have had many explicit assurances that our committee know nothing about it. If my hon. and gallant Friend's informant was capable of taking the name of Smith, it is quite possible for other people to use notepaper that does not belong to them.
Miss RathboneMay I remind the hon. and gallant Member that by his own admission Coop is an agent provocateur, capable of adopting an assumed name and of trying to lead an organisation into doing an act which he believes to be illegal, because it had something to do with his son.
§ Captain HeilgersAs I said before, I do not seek to justify the action which Mr. Coop took, but I would remind the hon. Lady that parents who have their sons filched away from them without warning arid without their knowledge, may have some possible excuse. Mr. Coop writes to me:
It is very obvious from what evidence there is, as to who is responsible for this horrid business, and I would ask you to please do all that is possible to have these people punished. My wife and I both feel that even if we were to lose our son we may be the means of preventing other parents 3583 from losing theirs also. Therefore, from that point of view we shall do all we can to bring these people to heel.I am sorry, having regard to my respect for the Noble Lady, and the hon. Lady, to have to take this line, but I must say that, having again looked through the evidence which I submitted in my speech last Thursday, right from the beginning to the end, the actions of this so-called International Brigade Dependants and Wounded Aid Committee, justify me in saying that they have been the cause or many young men going to Spain, even though the Noble Lady may not know it, and I can do nothing else but stick to my guns and say that I adhere to everything I have said.
§ 3.58 p.m.
§ Mr. WiseI wish to condole with those hon. Members who have associated themselves with this so-called Dependants Aid Committee in the unfortunate coincidence of their sharing the address of what appears to be a recruiting agency for the Spanish Government forces. I do not believe that any illegal action has been taken. I do not believe that the Foreign Enlistment Act applies, but I do think, illegal or not, that it is repulsive and disgusting that young men should be deluded into offering their lives for a cause recruited by the eloquence of hon. Members of this House, who in their speeches in the country never cease to urge young men to take up arms in a quarrel which is none of theirs.
§ Mr. WiseI was referring to almost every Member of the Opposition who has been reported as having made a public speech on this matter, who always urges that extreme support should be given to the Spanish Government. Whether the Noble Lady has herself persuaded the people to join the Spanish Government forces, I do not know.
§ Mr. WiseSince she joined the Opposition I have not followed her speeches with the attention that I once did. I do want to say, in conclusion, that there is no excuse for these people smuggling young Englishmen and sending them to almost certain slaughter, either from the machine guns of General Franco or apparently—I see no reason to doubt it —the firing squads of the Spanish Government, and I hope that as soon as possible those hon. Members——
§ It being Four of the Clock the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
§ The Government Orders of the Day were read and postponed.
§ Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 2, until Tuesday, 1st November, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of this day.
§ Adjourned at One minute after Four o'Clock.