FOREIGN OFFICE DOCUMENTS (PUBLICATION) (Hansard, 9 June 1944)

§ Miss Ward (Wallsend)
I am glad to have this opportunity of raising the question of the publication of Foreign Office documents. I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary for having initiated the publication of Foreign Office papers from 1919 to 1939, because I think that is a matter of great importance. My object in raising this question to-day, is to find just how far 1756 my right hon. Friend intends that that information should be disclosed, and whether, in association with the publication of Foreign Office papers, other relative. papers, from other Government Departments, to complete the picture, will also be made available. I know that what I have to say will in no way embarrass my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, who is to reply, but he is one of those fortunate people who, before the outbreak of this war, saw the red light. He has an absolutely clear conscience. Well, I do not feel that I have a clear conscience, because I followed the constitutional tradition and accepted the information which was given to me and other Members from the Treasury Bench.
When this war is over, the country will ask the very pertinent question as to how we got into this war, whether it was due to lack of information from our foreign representatives abroad, from our Service Departments, from our Secret Service, whether it was the wrong political interpretation through Foreign Secretaries or through the Cabinet, or through the Prime Minister. If it was, in fact, partly the responsibility of the machinery of government, that this war came about, it is vitally important that, in so far as that machinery was to blame, it should be corrected for the future. I am sure that people will make very keen inquiries into past history on that score. It is no good initiating the new foreign policy, setting up a new League machine, having international relationships if, in this country, our own machine does not give the correct facts to the public. I believe from the immature investigations I have been able to make that the Foreign Office had in their possession the right information. I also believe that the Service Departments and the Secret Service supplied the information. I would like to say, in passing, that Government Departments seem to feel that no Members of Parliament know that a Secret Service exists. During the years leading up to the outbreak of the war I had many opportunities of discussing in foreign countries the kind of information that was being sent in to the Service Departments and the Foreign Office, and I was quite frequently told by responsible people that they felt utterly depressed at the reception given to their information. It is no good building up a vast new international machine to 1757 try to prevent wars in the future, if through some power behind the scenes, unknown to Parliament and to the country, the information does not come outside the confines of the Department concerned.
Let me put it in a more concrete form. Lord Vansittart has stated more than once, that he gave the Cabinet, through the usual channels, more notice of this war than Sir Eyre Crowe gave of the last. The Prime Minister tried for a considerable number of years to educate Parliament and the country in what was happening in the matter of German rearmament, particularly with regard to their Air Force. Lord Londonderry has stated that, if it had not been for him, there would have been no Air Force at all. Lord Baldwin contradicted the statements of the present Prime Minister. He must have been in possession of certain facts and figures which must have been supplied by some Government Department, whether they were supplied by the Foreign Office, or the Air Ministry, or partly by one and partly by the other. No Prime Minister stands at that Box and replies to challenging speeches, without having been primed by some Government Department. In addition, there are various ex-diplomats of high standing and integrity, who served their country faithfully during the years after the advent of Hitler, and who have stated that their reports to the Foreign Office apparently received scant attention.
The public are, frankly, bewildered at what happened during those fateful years. I am equally certain that many unofficial letters went to the Foreign Office from many accredited sources. If we are to give the world, as I believe is essential, a clear picture of what happened, we must know whether, when the reports coming into the Foreign Office from all these various sources were put forward in the form of memoranda to the Foreign Secretary of the day, he put a wrong political interpretation on them. I cannot believe that it was so, but something must have happened. We do not know whether, when the Cabinet received the information from our Ambassadors and Ministers and Secret Service the responsible, political chiefs of our Foreign Office ignored them, or whether the Prime Minister, having received information from the Air Ministry or the War Office or the Admiralty, which 1758 was in conflict with the information supplied by the Foreign Office, balanced all the information in his possession and decided to discard the information from the Foreign Office. I do not know, but I feel absolutely bemused.
I want to know whether when these papers are published we will really get the whole story. In reply to a Question which I addressed to him, my right hon. Friend said that the whole of the papers available to the Foreign Office were going to be given to Professor Woodward to edit. Does that mean unofficial as well as official papers, and will he be in a position to look at the official documents submitted to the Cabinet and to the information that has flowed into the Cabinet from the Air Ministry, the War Office and the Admiralty? Or will he be restricted to papers which are regarded as official papers and despatches? If that is so, I cannot believe that we shall get a fair picture. Let me give another illustration of what I mean. Nobody seems to have really answered the question whether we had any reliable information about the condition of France. I cannot believe that we were not in possession of, at any rate, fairly good evidence. In fact, people have told me that they put in informed reports of the French position, but that the Foreign Office did not welcome reports from outsiders because they were considered defeatist, and that, in fact, these reports were ignored and not given the consideration which they deserved. Are the reports that went in from friends of mine to be available to Professor Woodward, or will they rank as unofficial documents which will not appear in any edition which is finally given to the public?
I feel strongly on this point because, if our political interpretation was wrong, I think it only fair to those who represented our interests in the diplomatic, consular and secret services that their reputations should be cleared. I believe that they did supply the right information. I should also like to know whether Professor Woodward is to be allowed access to the despatches emanating from our military, air and naval attachés. I know that many of them feel that valuable information which came from the various Service Departments to the Foreign Office through our attaches did not receive proper consideration and that they were not en- 1759 couraged from London to collect all the information to which they had access. I want to know whether we are really going to try to give such a picture to the people of this country that when the war is over, when this House of Commons disappears, and when the younger generation come along and have to protect the interests of this country and give leadership to the world on a democratic basis, they will be able, by reading the papers that are to be published, to know on what lines to put their questions to the Treasury Bench.
I do not want to be unfair, but I have an uncomfortable feeling that it suits Ministers and Government Departments to have a not-too-well-informed House of Commons. I know that answers sometimes do not really tell quite the whole truth, and Ministers hope to goodness that Members have not got up their sleeves additional information which might prove an embarrassment. That is all part of our Parliamentary system, and of the democratic game that we all play and understand so well in this country; but if the machinery of government was so wrong during those years that we failed to warn the country even when all the information was available, whether that was the fault of the politicians, of the leaders of the politicians or the fault of Parliament, we must know, and we must take our medicine from the country. The great thing is to be able to give to the generation who have to take over the responsibility of government after we have gone sufficient information to show them where we went wrong in the years that are past and the way to avoid the dangers in the future. I want my right hon. Friend to tell me, whether we are going to allow Professor Woodward to have complete access to all the papers, so that he will be able to give a clear picture and answer the problem that has vexed so many minds in this country: How did we get into this war? Is that question going to be answered fairly, squarely and completely?

§ Mr. Douglas (Battersea, North)
I congratulate the hon. Lady upon having raised this matter to-day. It is good that the consciences of some Members of Parliament trouble them occasionally, and that they want to find out why they made mistakes in the past. If the publication 1760 of the documents is not sufficiently complete, to give Members of this House and the public generally a clear picture of the information which was in front of the Government during that period, certainly they will not be able to form a judgment of the true reasons why things went wrong and why the proper steps were not taken. I do not support the demand for an inquiry, which might be only a piece of antiquarian research, and a post-mortem on something which happened in years gone by. It would be of much more practical importance that steps should be taken before war either to prevent it or to put us into a position of greater preparedness than that in which we found ourselves. It is certainly most regrettable that those steps were not taken.
The hon. Lady has suggested that the Government were in possession of a large volume of information, obtained through our representatives abroad and from other sources, which should have enabled them to form a clear picture of the situation and how it was developing. The inference to be drawn from her remarks is that those who sat upon the Treasury Bench at that time concealed the information from the House and did not give the full picture to the House and to the country. If that is so, it leads to another inquiry and that is whether information of that kind should be confined to members of the Government, or to Ministers, and that they should be in a position to conceal information vital to the security and safety and the future of the country, and to prevent proper representations being made by the Opposition as to the course which ought to be taken.
That inquiry leads one to another question, and that is whether the time has not arrived when we ought to consider whether it is not desirable to have some reform of our Parliamentary procedure, such as exists in Legislatures of certain other countries, under which one might have a Foreign Affairs Committee of the House, composed of Members of all parties. They would not necessarily sit in public, because it is appreciated that much of this information might be of a character which it was not desirable to reveal to the world at large but which could properly be revealed to a Committee of that nature, composed of responsible public representatives who could form a judgment upon it and who could 1761 make their views known to Ministers. I think that is a problem which deserves very serious consideration. If the charge should be well founded that vital information was kept hidden by Ministers, with the result that the public policy of this country was based upon lack of information, or indeed upon mis-information, the necessity for adopting a procedure of that kind would seem to be imperative, because it is not right that a country should be landed in serious difficulties on account of information being kept in the hands of one party, and in the hands of the Ministers of that party, to the exclusion of knowledge from all other Members of the House of Commons. I suggest, in all seriousness, to the right hon. Gentleman, that that, too, is an aspect of affairs which deserves serious consideration.

§ The Minister of State (Mr. Richard Law)
I hope that the hon. Member for North Battersea (Mr. Douglas) will not expect me to follow him down the very interesting by-ways of Constitutional and Parliamentary reform which he was beginning to tread. I am afraid that in the very few moments at my disposal I should not be able to do that. I must confine myself more strictly to the matter before us, which is the question of the publication of British diplomatic documents and the extent of the field they will cover. I have listened, as I always do listen, with the closest attention and the greatest respect to the speech of the hon. Lady the Member for Wallsend (Miss Ward). My hon. Friend has always shown not only a great interest in foreign policy but a great interest in the well-being of the Foreign Service, and for that reason I always have a natural sympathy with what she says. On this occasion, however, I hope she will acquit me of any malice, or of any desire to disagree with her merely for the sake of disagreement, if I say that I cannot follow her the whole way in her interesting speech. I think my hon. Friend, if she will allow me to say so, has rather mistaken the purpose which the publication of these documents is intended to serve. I entirely agree with her that it is most desirable that the documents relating to our foreign policy in the period between the two wars should be published, and should be made available as soon as may be. There are many reasons why publication should be 1762 proceeded with. We, in this House and this country, can remember how valiantly, and sometimes perhaps injudiciously, we struggled to keep our feet in the paths of peace; but memories are short, and that may not always be remembered. It is very important that it should be put on the record for all the world to see.
It is extremely important that the whole world should know, in the most clear and objective way, the general line of our foreign policy between the two wars. It is very easy, for example, to imagine some other megalomaniac arising in Germany, who will try to pervert history and prove that Germany was the innocent victim of aggression. It is obviously most necessary that truth should have a long start. I agree with my hon. Friend that we ourselves should also know what our own foreign policy was, and the effect which it had, for good or for ill. But I would like to impress upon the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for North Battersea that it is the purpose of these documents, when they are published, to show to the world and to the historians of the future what was our foreign policy; it is not the intention to try to explain how that foreign policy was arrived at, or how the foreign policy which in fact we had might have been improved. It is simply to put on record, finally, for the historian, so that there shall be no possibility of mistake in future, what our foreign policy was in those fateful years.
The publication of these documents has been entrusted to a skilled and impartial historian, who can be trusted to take an entirely objective view of what happened. He will make use of just as many of those documents as he may need to enable him to present to the world an objective picture of our foreign policy during that time. It will not be his business—and we could hardly expect it to be the business of an objective historian—to try to allocate blame, as between one individual and another, one Government office and another, or one Minister and another. It will be remembered that after the last war Dr. Gooch and the late Dr. Temperley produced a long series of diplomatic documents which exposed the course of our foreign policy and the difficulties of our policy up to 1914. Dr. Woodward's task will 1763 be exactly the same as that, and his work will be on precisely the same scale. But I would repeat that it is not our purpose to indulge in a post mortem or a witch hunt. The hon. Member for North Battersea referred to an inquiry. This is not an inquiry; it is an attempt to put before 'the world the truth about our foreign policy. He also spoke about charges having been made which ought to be disproved. Of course they ought 1764 to be disproved, but not in this way. The purpose of these documents is simply to give to the historian, so that there may be no kind of misunderstanding in future, a clear-cut, honest, and objective view of the course of our foreign policy.