HC Deb 06 October 1938 vol 339 cc474-6
Mr. Wise

In the course of the Debate yesterday, I attributed certain remarks to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, to which he took exception. In order that the House may realise what those remarks were, perhaps hon. Members will forgive me if I read them briefly: I can remember the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition at about the same time saying that in no circumstances were they going to vote in support of the Government's rearmament programme, because, I believe the official excuse was, it was not to be used for collective security, but only for the defence of English men, women, and children."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th October, 1938 cols. 436-7, Vol. 239.] Let me make it quite clear that the words for the defence of English men, women and children were not the words used by the right hon. Gentleman, but were my own; nor did it ever occur to me that the remark could ever be interpreted otherwise. If that was what the right hon. Gentleman took exception to, I can assure him that I did not intend to attribute it to him in any way. Over the rest of the remark, I do not think we are particularly at variance, but I draw my authority for that remark from the official report of the Labour Party Conference, where the right hon. Gentleman did say: there can be no question of our supporting the Government in its rearmament policy. It is true that that was in the middle of a very long speech, but the apposite parts of the speech, I think, are these: The Government have put forward a rearmament policy. They have not related it to a League policy. They had the greatest chance of uniting the people of this country behind a real peace policy, in which they could have got support for whatever arms were required, and they deliberately threw it away. I do not think that that is at variance with what I have attributed to the right hon. Gentleman. I also depended on another quotation, which was recorded in the "Times" of 9th July, 1936, and also in the "Nottingham Guardian" of the same date. It was a speech at Derby during a by-election. The right hon. Gentleman, on the question of getting recruits for the Army, said: They will appeal to us, and they will appeal in vain because I am not going to support a recruiting campaign by a Government whose foreign policy I cannot trust. If it is to the end of my quotation that the right hon. Gentleman took exception, I freely assure him that I had no intention whatever of attributing to him a remark, which, quite clearly, he would never have made on a public platform or indeed, I think, in this House or elsewhere. That was my comment on the attitude of the party opposite. For the rest of the remarks, I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree that I had sufficient justification for what I said.

Mr. Attlee

I thank the hon. Member for his explanation, but no one could have told when he was making his speech what was quotation and where his own comment began or ended, and even the part that he quoted, or professed to quote, is incorrect. He used the word "programme" instead of the word "policy." The fact was that I was in the course of a somewhat long argument in support of the Labour party attitude in providing sufficient arms for the defence of this country, and in the course of that I drew a distinction not between collective security and the defence of English men, women and children, but I was stressing the difference between the competition in arms and the defence of our country through collective security by collective action, which, as the present Government had recently at that time declared, could alone save us from a return to the old system which resulted in the Great War.