HC Deb 17 January 1945 vol 407 cc143-4
26. Miss Ward

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can give any further information on the representations of Greek trades union leaders to His Majesty's Ambassador to Greece.

Mr. Eden

The trades unionists who visited His Majesty's Ambassador to Greece claimed to be the legitimate and duly elected officials of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece. I cannot at present add anything to this statement.

Miss Ward

My right hon. Friend does not feel, I am sure, that there was anything lacking in their bona fides?

Mr. Eden

The House will understand that these questions are difficult for us to assess. [An HON. MEMBER: "Dodging."] I try to be fair. I say they are difficult to assess in a country in which trade unions have been suppressed for many years, but I have not the slightest doubt that His Majesty's Ambassador is doing all he can to check the information, and to give us the truest and fullest report.

Mr. Shinwell

If these questions are difficult to assess, as the right hon. Gentleman says, how does he account for the fact that the B.B.C., in their news service, declared that these trade union leaders were bona-fide representatives of 170,000 Greek workers when, in fact, they represented nobody but themselves?

Mr. Eden

The hon. Gentleman asserts a knowledge and I do not know how he comes to possess it at all. I presume that what the B.B.C. gave was the report which was made available to us, and which was checked, as far as it was possible to check it in the circumstances of the present time.

Mr. Shinwell

Did not the right hon. Gentleman use it as propaganda?

Mr. Cocks

Is it not a fact that the leading trade union signatory was a leading Quisling under the German Government?

Mr. Eden

The hon. Gentleman asks me about the record of a signatory. I say I do not know the record of all these individual Greeks, and I am moved and surprised at the deep knowledge which hon. Gentlemen have.

Mr. Cocks

Was not the right hon. Gentleman equally surprised about the knowledge I had of German rearmament, when he was on the other side of the House?

Mr. Eden

I think the hon. Gentleman had better look up his own record.

Mr. G. Strauss

Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that some of us have often been shocked by the little knowledge possessed by the British authorities in Greece, who have sent over information without checking it?

Mr. Eden

It is difficult to approach these matters without prejudice, and if I may say so the hon. Gentleman has not been a shining example in that respect.