HC Deb 20 May 1938 vol 336 cc804-11

3.3 P.m.

Mr. H. Strauss

I apologise for not following the hon. gentleman the Member for Stoke (Mr. E. Smith), who has addressed the House on a matter of great importance, and has spoken with that directness and sincerity to which we are accustomed from him. I wish to return briefly to the subject raised earlier in the debate on Foreign Affairs. The hon. Member for Stoke, in raising a new subject, was good enough to say that, as no notice had been given, he would not expect any reply from the Front Bench on this side of the House.

Mr. R. J. Taylor

He did not exclude the Back Bench.

Mr. Strauss

I think that that was rather a pleasant contrast to the attitude of those who have spoken from the Front Opposition Bench and who raised the question of what happened at the League last week, without, as far as I know, giving any notice.

Mr. Benn

Notice was given by my hon. Friend and myself that we desired to raise a narrow issue about the Chamberlain-Grandi conversations. Notice was duly given at the Table and the Motion appeared on the Order Paper. The Chief Whip moved the Adjournment, and consequently the broadening of the debate was due entirely to the action of the Government. As far as we were concerned, we gave due notice to the Government through the medium of the Order Paper, which is the right way to do it.

Mr. Strauss

I am very anxious not to be unfair to the right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Opposition Bench, but I should have thought that the whole basis of the discussion on Foreign Affairs which has taken place was that it was entirely different from the Motion on the Order Paper, and that, therefore, if he was going to raise a different subject, as he was compelled to do, notice ought to have been given.

Mr. Benn

As the hon. Gentleman is so anxious to be fair, I am sure that he will allow me to explain. How could we give notice to the Minister, when we did not know that the Patronage Secretary was coming here to move the Adjournment, in order to deprive us of the opportunity of discussing the matter?

Mr. Strauss

I am surprised that the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Noel-Baker) should have come down here with such voluminous notes, which he used, if he did not think that he was going to deliver the speech. I leave that matter and will merely express my own conviction that the questions of foreign politics raised in the Debate which has taken place are not such as call for any reply whatsoever from the Front Bench. This is a Private Members' day, and there are a few points which have been made in the Debate on foreign policy with which I should like to deal. The subject of nonintervention and the subject of Abyssinia have been so often discussed in this House that I do not wish to repeat adnauseam the questions so exhaustively debated,

Mr. Tinker

Then why not deal with pensions?

Mr. Strauss

I would not dream of replying without notice on the question of pensions, on which the hon. Member for Stoke has delivered a very careful speech, which he had prepared, and which deserves an equally careful speech from anyone who replies from this side. I have read with great interest and some concern the report to which the hon. Member referred, but I am not today prepared to speak on that subject. I am, however, entitled to reply to some points which have been raised in the foreign affairs debate.

Mr. Tinker

I am not complaining of the hon. Member, but I do not want him to say that we have been speaking on foreign policy ad nauseam, and then for him to proceed on the same lines.

Mr. Strauss

If the hon. Member had followed what I was saying he would have realised that what I was proposing to discuss was not the matters so often discussed before. What astonishes me so much is that those who represent themselves as great friends and champions of the League, such as the hon. Member for Derby, should be guilty of such misrepresentations of fact as those in which the hon. Member so frequently indulges. It was not long ago that he said in this House that there were millions of people in the United States—I do not remember the exact number of the population— who were agreeable to and anxious for sanctions against Japan. There was not the slightest justification for his statement, but great arguments were based upon it and it was used to vilify the policy which His Majesty's Government were then pursuing.

Today he did something precisely similar. He referred to the proceedings at the League last week, when Senor del Vayo made his attack on non-intervention, and he castigated His Majesty's Government for not joining with the many members of the Council who agreed with Senor del Vayo, in order to defeat nonintervention. The hon. Member for Derby knows perfectly well that Senor del Vayo had only one supporter who supported him in the Council. What right has the hon. Member to assume that all those who abstained from voting were in favour of ending non-intervention?

Mr. Benjamin Smith

Why does the hon. Member assume that they are in his favour?

Mr. Strauss

I am making no such assumption. If the hon. Member will listen in silence I do not think that he will find my argument too difficult to follow.

Mr. Smith

Say something, and I will listen.

Mr. Strauss

It is a matter of complete indifference to me whether the hon. Member listens or not. In the vote at Geneva, as the hon. Member for Derby is perfectly well aware, one member supported Senor del Vayo and Great Britain, France and two of the smaller Powers opposed. I do not ask anyone to make any assumption whatever about those Powers who abstained; I only say that the hon. Member for Derby has not the slightest justification for saying that those who abstained wished to end non-intervention.

Miss Rathbone

I was in Geneva at the time and I can only say that if the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Noel-Baker) was wrong it was a mistake shared by practically everybody on the spot, and by many eminent journalists who attend the League constantly, who greeted it as a great triumph for Senor del Vayo.

Mr. Strauss

The hon. Lady will agree, I am sure, that under the Covenant what is important is what the nations do in the Assembly and in the Council, and not what journalists say or think. I have stated what happened in the Council of the League, that while Senor del Vayo had only one supporter, there were four opponents, and it is not proper, nor is it even plausible, to assume that those who abstained were all in favour of ending non-intervention.

Mr. Silverman

Or against it.

Mr. Strauss

Hon. Members opposite keep making the same interruption, and I make the same reply. I am not making any assumption in regard to those who abstained. It will be remembered, how ever, that last September, when there was a proposal which merely contemplated the possibility of ending non-intervention in certain circumstances, it was defeated by the votes of two smaller Powers with a great many Powers abstaining, including two members of the British Common wealth of Nations who were known to have abstained because they were against the mere contemplation of ending non-intervention. The matter to which I desire most earnestly to draw the attention of the House is this: hon. Members and right hon. Members opposite who profess interest in the League of Nations—

Mr. Silverman

The hon. Member has said that the thing which matters at Geneva is not what journalists say or think but what the Powers do at the Council. Now he says that two members of the British Commonwealth who did not vote did so for reasons which were very well known. How were they very well known?

Mr. Strauss

Because of statements by the statesmen of the countries concerned. I cannot quote them now, but on several occasions public statements have been made, I think, by their representatives. Hon. Members who say that they support the League are always urging the rights of small nations under the Covenant. There is nothing that the hon. Member for Derby and other hon. Members more constantly advocate than respect for the rights of small nations, but what do these pretended friends of the League do when the representatives of the small nations at Geneva take action of which they disappove? Then no insult is too great for these small nations. I remember that when the question of what happened last September was debated in the House, when I alluded to the adverse votes of Albania and Portugal, an hon. Member called out, "Fascist puppets."

Mr. Benn

Hear, hear.

Mr. Strauss

I observe that the right hon. Gentleman on the Front Bench says "hear, hear." In other words, those small Powers, which under the Covenant of the League of Nations have every right to be considered the equals of other Powers—

Mr. Silverman

Like Abyssinia.

Mr. Strauss

—because they give a vote which is not agreeable to hon. Members opposite, are liable to any insult in this House. Those are the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who say that they are the friends of the League and want to promote the peace of the world. We had an admirable example of that last night from the hon. Lady the Member for Jarrow (Miss Wilkinson). In referring to the adverse votes of two Members of the Council of the League on the very matter referred to by the hon. Member for Derby this morning, she said that Poland was in the pay of Germany, and that Rumania was in the pay of somebody else. That is the sort of insult which those who pretend that they are supporters of the League heap on any small nation which dares to vote in a way of which they do not approve. It is time that hon. and right hon. Members either abandoned those insults to small nations or stopped pretending that they are friends of the League of Nations.

The other question to which I wish to allude very briefly is the other matter which was raised at the Council of the League last week, when it was the sense of the Council of the League that each nation should be free to decide for itself the question of the recognition or non-recognition of the Italian conquest of Abyssinia. The hon. Member for Derby referred to certain resolutions of the League or of some of its organs, against the recognition of any state of affairs brought about by breaches of the Covenant. As many hon. Members wish to take part in this Debate, I do not intend to go into any long legal discussion of the effect of those resolutions, but I think it is very doubtful whether any international lawyer would say that the effect of Article 10 of the Covenant of the League is that recognition must never, throughout all time, be given to any conquest which is achieved in breach of the Covenant. It was very noticeable that the terms of the Motion which was debated in another place did not suggest that that was the view of His Majesty's Opposition either.

I do not know whether the hon. Member for Derby, supposing that he assumes that the Resolution to which he referred is, so to speak, part of the Covenant, would assume that the obligation it imposes is joint or several, or, as has generally been said about obligations under the Covenant of the League, is general. I think that if the hon. Member looks into the matter more deeply, he will come to the conclusion that it is most material to consider whether the obligation, if it exists, of non-recognition of any conquest brought about by illegal means, remains incumbent upon every member of the League after it has already been broken by a great many Powers. I do not know whether the House has fully considered the consequences that would result if the view of the hon. Member for Derby prevailed. Suppose you got this position—that the League which had abandoned sanctions and had abandoned all attempts to reverse the facts of the conquest, proposed while doing nothing active to reverse the conquest, to refuse for ever de jure recognition. The effect, of course, would be that when an Ambassador to Italy died, or retired from old age, no other Ambassador could be appointed. Is it a practical proposition or one likely to lead to peace to suggest that it should be for ever impossible for the French Government to be represented by an ambassador in Rome? If hon. Members would face these facts, they would realise that, however unpalatable it may be to recognise de jure the conquest of Abyssinia, it may yet be a most necessary step towards the appeasement of Europe and the maintenance of peace.

I was astonished by the attack which the hon. Member for Derby made on His Majesty's Government for not following the lead of Senor del Vayo and voting for the ending of non-intervention. The hon. Member in that, is, of course, advocating a split in the alliance between this country and France. It seems reckless in the extreme to make such a suggestion, with not the slightest evidence that the French Government agree with it; in fact with direct evidence to the contrary, because France took the same line at the Council as we did. To suggest in the present dangerous state of Europe that we should take a completely independent line, with which France does not agree, seems the height of folly and recklessness and proves how utterly undeserving of the confidence of the country is the sort of foreign policy advocated by His Majesty's Opposition when they are in Opposition, though I assume, with my Noble Friend the Foreign Secretary, that in the unlikely event of their being in office, they would not adopt so reckless a policy.

I do not know whether the policy which they are now advocating has any support from the Liberal benches. There have not been many Opposition Liberals present today, otherwise it would have been interesting to see how far the Popular Front is holding. The Popular Front is a very ingenious scheme whereby, in the unlikely event of the Socialists winning the General Election, the Opposition Liberals will take office. For that reason it makes a great appeal to the Opposition Liberals, but is greeted with less enthusiasm by most of the sane Labour men. On the particular point of lunacy in foreign policy raised to-day, as no notice was given by hon. Members opposite to His Majesty's Government, perhaps no notice was given either to their partners in the Popular Front.

In conclusion, I would draw attention to the fact that it is not those who most often pose as champions of the League, who have most respect for its institutions. I deeply regret that one who has championed the League as often as has the hon. Member for Derby should have thought fit so to misrepresent what happened at the League last week in the matter of Spain. I do not think that His Majesty's Government have any reason to regret that the question of foreign policy has again been raised, but I hope that if it is raised again, at least on questions of fact as to what happens at Geneva, the Front Opposition Bench will show a higher standard of accuracy.

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