§ 8.55 p.m.
§ Mr. Pritt (Hammersmith, North)I have to raise this evening a matter of the conduct of the Home Secretary, or rather the lack of any conduct on the part of the Home Secretary. It seems to me to raise a somewhat serious matter. Why he should have behaved in such a way is a little difficult to tell, but the grave matter is that he has in fact done so.
The matter involves the circulation of a particularly scurrilous pamphlet in the rather dangerous atmosphere of a miners' hostel of which some 90 per cent. of the population are what are now called European voluntary workers and who are, of course, the people who for so long were called displaced persons, or D.P.s, in Europe, who lived in the difficult conditions of D.P. camps in Europe, subject to a great deal of Fascist propaganda bringing them to a not very normal state of mind where resorts to violence are quite natural to them.
1488 First, perhaps, I should explain the document itself, which I called a scurrilous pamphlet. It would have been interesting to the Home Secretary—if he had had the courage to come here and answer for his own misdeeds—and it will be of interest to the Under-Secretary because, as we shall see, the Home Secretary has ostentatiously refused ever to obtain any information about the document at all; so that my information will be news to the Under-Secretary as well as to the House. It is a printed magazine of about 28 pages, of which some 22 are covered with printed matter, including blocks. It is moderately expensively got up; it is in four colours and has 46 blocks. It is printed in English, but not the English of an Englishman.
The inference which would be drawn by most people—and I think reluctantly and ultimately the Home Secretary is beginning to draw it for himself—through the fact that it was produced in substantial numbers and intended for wide circulation, and the fact that it was printed more or less in English, is that it was intended for circulation amongst English-speaking people who, of course, inhabit many parts of the world; but for the purpose of this pamphlet it was probably mainly intended for Germany—the Western zone of Germany—and also, no doubt, for this country.
One could draw the conclusion that it was probably printed either in Germany or Austria, which makes it pretty dangerous in the awkward and explosive atmosphere of those countries. It contains no printer's imprint so one cannot be sure where it was printed and that fact, of course, in itself constitutes a criminal offence, because the law relating to printing is designed so that undesirable documents can at least be traced to their source. It gives no date, but it is obvious from the contents that it is certainly as recent as the spring of this year. I think its circulation was criminal not only for that reason but because it was pretty well bound to lead to breaches of the peace, as it has already led indirectly to threats of murder, and in another case, in a way, has led to a violent assault upon young British workers by European voluntary workers.
As a lawyer I feel pretty sure that the document is a criminal libel. I want to tell the House its general line, although 1489 it has a good many lines. I shall mention the least important, and least obvious, line first. Among other things it is a savage abuse of the British and American authorities for not immediately taking the three Baltic Republics away from the Soviet Union. I suppose it could be done quite simply by a major war, unless, of course, we lost that war.
It also attacks the British and American authorities for having, according to the writer of the document, forcibly repatriated from Europe a large number of displaced persons to the U.S.S.R. in order, as it makes quite plain, to have them murdered there. This forcible repatriation is also accompanied by threats to those people who do not wish to accept repatriation to the U.S.S.R. that they will receive from the British and American authorities in Germany what is described in the pamphlet as "an uncertain fate." I am not suggesting for one moment that the British or Americans would be guilty of anything of the sort, but I am only revealing what is in this pamphlet, with which the Home Secretary reuses to deal in any shape or form.
It goes on to accuse the British and Americans with having done this for this purpose—if these people are not repatriated in order to be murdered but are released in Europe, they will then get to some free country or another perhaps in Europe and do anti-Communist propaganda. The writer is so far from actuality that he thinks the British and the Americans would never permit any anti-Communist propaganda. There is also a good deal of abuse thrown on the British and Americans and Mr. Henry Wallace is accused of dirty malevolence. I am not taking these in order of importance but in order of examples.
The pamphlet accuses the Swedes and the Finns of having sent Latvians back, according to the writer, to the Soviet Union to be murdered and he also abuses the Danes not for having done it but because the writer thinks they may do it and, therefore, they ought to be abused. The next sample is that officials of U.N.R.R.A. and of the International Relief Organization and the officials of the United States in Germany are accused of taking bribes wholesale, mostly for the purpose of infiltrating Communist agents into the displaced 1490 persons camps in order to prevent genuine Baltic displaced persons being released, so that it will be easier to have more of them sent back to the Soviet Union to be murdered. There is even some abuse of the Nazis. This pamphlet has got nice wide samples of abuse. Almost anybody who likes low-grade abuse may find someone he does not like being abused.
This is a pretty serious document. Of course, above all, as hon. Members will have guessed, the main purpose or the purport of the document is abuse of the Soviet Union. It says that the Soviet Union is still murdering by the thousand citizens of the various Baltic Republics. It is also murdering people all over Europe and indulging in torture, mutilation and sadistic orgies. It supports, if support is the right word, these outrages by a series of quite revolting pictures of mutilated corpses. There is no actual explanation of where the writer, who is printing this document illegally in Germany where the British ought to be stopping him——
§ The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Younger)Or the Russians or the Americans.
§ Mr. PrittOr the Russians or the Americans, but I understood from the general line of the document that it was not being produced in the Eastern zone but in the Western zone. I quite agree that I should have said the British and the American, but the close association between those two bodies led me to call them one. I will be more careful in the future and just call them American.
There is no explanation where they got these pictures from, but I have seen very similar pictures in the past when they were used for exposure of Nazi atrocities. It seems pretty plain that they got hold of the documents exposing Nazi atrocities and turned them round, using them to describe alleged atrocities by the Russians against various Latvians. There are pictures, for example, of prison cells where people can neither sit nor stand, and cells where you can be steamed alive, and things of that kind. If one took the document seriously and looked at the pictures to see how old the cells were, one might reasonably conclude that the cells were built in the Baltic Provinces long before the Soviet Russians were ever there.
1491 The general effect of the document would be to whip up in its readers, especially in not very discriminating readers, a seething hatred against the Soviet Union or, what might worry the Americans a little more—I use the word "Americans" collectively—to whip up disgust against Great Britain and the United States, and particularly against their Governments, as callous and cowardly accomplices of brutal and murderous acts committed by the Soviet Union. That is the document.
How and where did the particular document that is in my possession turn up? I have given a hint of the answer, but I must now state it a little more fully. There is a miners hostel in Lowton near Manchester, called "Scotia South." This point happens to arise upon a Scottish evening, but that is not my fault. It is in Lancashire. Therefore, the Home Secretary and not the Secretary of State for Scotland ought to be answering for it. I think most of the people in that hostel work at the Astley Green Pit. It was at the hostel that most of the incidents arose. It has about 450 European voluntary workers, and 50 or 60 young Englishmen who have volunteered for work in the mines. They are probably trainees.
It must be rather an explosive atmosphere and I should think it ought to be worth a little care from the Home Secretary, who has imported—that is the right phrase but I am not considering the policy at all—these European voluntary workers and has set them to work side by side with Englishmen. Concerned in this matter are two or three of the European voluntary workers and two young English lads, quite young, I think under 20. One of them is a Catholic. That fact does not come in directly except that it is regarded by most people as proof that he is not a Communist. The other is a Communist.
One of the E.V.Ws.—to use the kind of jargon current in these days—gave one of these pamphlets to one of these lads, I think to the Catholic. The Catholic lad handed it to the other. At some stage, I think it was later in the course of the story, the E.V.W. told the boys that they could have more copies if they wanted them, and that he got them from Germany. In passing one might say that if this sort of thing is coming from 1492 Germany to the E.V.Ws. I imagine that the Home Office, with the assistance of the Post Office, will take some interest in what is coming over, and ought to know something about it. One of the lads, I think it was the Communist lad, took a serious view of the document. He is only 19. He did not take any action himself but he took the document home to his father. On his father's advice he sent the document first to a newspaper. He got it back from the newspaper and he afterwards sent it to me.
The document had not been gone very long before the E.V.Ws., I suppose scenting trouble, demanded the document back. They threatened, quite simply, that they would murder the boy if the document did not come back. The boy wisely reported the matter to his trade union branch and to the manager of the pit, but not to the manager of the hostel, because I think the threat was uttered at the pit. The boy reported it to the pit management who said, "You had better have the police to this." A police inspector came to investigate the matter. He immediately asked the boy what were his politics. It is an odd question to ask, or it would be if we did not know that it is a common police question. The boy replied that he was a Communist. The police inspector immediately took up the rather chilly attitude that the police are apt to take to the Communists, and told the boy that it was all his fault, that he ought to return the document to its owners and, indeed, threatened to have him prosecuted for larceny if he did not do so.
The police inspector, copying in advance the Home Secretary, did not take the least interest in the document itself. He did not care two hoots what was in the document and, so far as I can tell, there has never been at any stage any authority who wanted to know what was in the document, or who has given any kind of warning to the European voluntary workers about it. If one may test it by turning it around a bit, one wonders what would have been the reaction of the police or of the Home Secretary if, instead of accusing the Soviet of wholesale murder and the Americans and British of merely being callously indifferent to it, it had accused the Americans and the British of wholesale murder.
1493 However, as far as we have got, that is what the police inspector did, and the boy's father then took what was the wise and ought to have been the useful course of writing to the Chief Constable of Lancashire, who replied after a time that he had made full inquiries. There was no actual evidence of what inquiries but certainly they included his own police and it is possible, though not clear, that he may have asked the European voluntary workers. Certainly he did not ask any of the English volunteers, and certainly he did not ask any of the English miners. This is what he wrote to the father of the boy:
The owner"—That is the gentleman who imported the illegal document—The owner is anxious for the return of his property.Well, no one can say that the Chief Constable is not loyal in the defence of property, however criminal it may be.The owner is anxious for the return of his property, and it appears that the action of your son in disposing of the document is the cause of the trouble.The Chief Constable had been told something about the contents of the document, and something about the threats of murder, and he had also been told that the boy had had to be sent off ill for some time by his doctor because the boy was very worried by being threatened with murder. Some people like being murdered and some do not. I was then consulted and, on 25th August, I wrote to the Home Secretary. I gave him a full description of the document. I said:It is 'Balt' propaganda, primarily Latvian, and is peculiarly scurrilous, violent and unscrupulous anti-Soviet propaganda—some of the pictures are revolting—but it has a good few slashes at the Americans and British, at Sweden and at organisations such as U.N.R.R.A. and I.R.O. which it accuses of taking bribes.I think most Home Secretaries—I have had quite a few to deal with in my time—on receiving that allegation from a Member of Parliament would at any rate want to look at the document. I went on to tell him that:It must presumably be circulating on a substantial scale and it is obviously likely to lead to breaches of the peace if it circulates in places where Balts and English workers mingle. It should surely not be allowed to circulate at all among the D.P.'s, over whom the Home Office presumably 1494 exercises some parental supervision; and its circulation does constitute at any rate one definite criminal offence, owing to the absence of the printers' imprint.It is only fair to say that I did not in terms describe it as a criminal libel. I went on:It seems to me that the matter should be properly investigated; that the circulation of such propaganda should be definitely stopped; and that the matter of prosecution should be considered.I assume that you have means of knowing what goes on among E.V.W.'s, and that you will be able to see for yourself a copy of the pamphlet; but if you wish one of your officials to see the one I have"—Then I made an offer to show it to an official at any time. I also drew his attention to the fact that it was said to be sent over from Germany and I added:From what the Foreign Office tell me officially as to the number of books, etc., that they prohibit from circulation there, I expect and hope that you will feel that you should get as much information as you can as to where the document is alleged to have come from in Germany and pass it to the Foreign Office so that they may put a stop to it there. (I can well imagine that there is a large-scale production of such stuff in Germany, and that it may be very dangerous.)The Home Secretary remained perfectly calm. For a month he attended to all the business of his office except this. I received absolutely nothing of any description for one month—[An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."]—with the approval, at any rate, of one hon. Gentleman opposite, although he does not know what the Home Secretary wrote. Then the Home Secretary, after summarising my letter to him, said:I have not seen a copy of this brochure and I have no information about the extent of its circulation in this country. I have consulted the Chief Constable of Lancashire, but it appears that the only information he has is that one copy of the publication was lent to a Mr. Hope, who said that he had passed it on to the Daily Worker.' The police themselves have not seen the publication, but apart from the exchange indicated in this particular case the police have no evidence—and, as far as we can tell, have taken jolly good care not to get any evidence—of the circulation of such alleged propaganda at the Scotia South Hostel or other similar places.Let us analyse what the right hon. Gentleman, who sends the Under-Secretary here to protect him, was actually doing in that letter. He has not seen the 1495 document. He does not even ask to see it. My offer to show it to him is ignored. He says nothing about prosecution, although he has been told of two definite criminal offences and, if I may prepare for a really prize piece of humour, in none of his later letters does he suggest that he is not a person who ought to take at any rate an indirect interest in such things as prosecutions. He says that he has no information, but he is protecting himself from it. All he has done is to consult the utterly indifferent police, and neither he nor they have made any further inquiries and, as far as we can tell, they do not intend to do so. It does not, apparently, even dawn on him that a printed document is likely to be circulated extensively, or at any rate is printed with that object, and he does not even think of fulfilling my suggestion that he should communicate with the Foreign Office because they might, after all, want to know that such things were not done, or should not be done, in Germany.Let us think what he would have done if this document had been wholly anti-British or anti-American propaganda instead of being just mainly propaganda against the Left Wing. There is no sign in his correspondence that he has caused any warning to be given to the E.V.W.s. At this stage I can tell the House that one indirect result is that quite recently near that hostel another young lad who is known to be a member of the Communist Party was set upon and savagely beaten up by a couple of E.V.W.s. On his complaining to the police they again took their cues from the Chief Constable of the county.
The Home Secretary having written that letter to me on the 25th August and having taken no action of any description I, owing to absence abroad and to one or two other things, was not able to write to him until 11th October, when I wrote to him and recited what had happened.
§ Mr. Follick (Loughborough)How can the hon. and learned Member recite if he writes?
§ Mr. PrittI am asked by an hon. Gentleman who ought to know better how I can recite if I write? "Recite" is an English word which means, among other things, to restate facts in an orderly manner. The hon. Member uses so 1496 many languages that he ought to know English. However, instead of using a word that puzzles our linguists I will read out some of what I said:
I took it for granted that you—the Home Secretary—would infer (1) from the fact that it was printed—and printed expensively …—that it was intended to circulate in substantial numbers, and (2) from the fact that it was in English that it was intended to circulate in English-speaking or reading areas … in which you are Home Secretary, and the British Zone of Germany, for which your colleague the Foreign Secretary is largely responsible.I suggested that if it circulated in places where Balts and English workers met it might cause breaches of the peace and I referred to one. I think most responsible people would infer from what I wrote that I suggested its circulation was a serious criminal libel. I did not ask him to take my word for this, but offered to show him the document. Then I added the suggestion about Germany and the Foreign Office. I asked:What have you done? I gather from your letter that you … have not asked for a sight of the document, although neither you nor the police have ever seen it. Unless the vague reference to 'the police' in your letter refers to some wider inquiries, you have made no inquiries and taken no action beyond asking the Chief Constable of Lancashire, about whose action, or inaction, I have already complained, for information. … It is plain that he is as inactive … as you seem to be. You have neither informed the Foreign Office nor asked them for information, nor taken steps to warn any of the Baits concerned as to their conduct—indeed, you could not, could you, since you do not know … the contents of the document … circulated and not merely circulated but offered to be supplied in large numbers. You have not communicated direct with the Director of Public Prosecutions … any of the offences which appear to me to be involved. In substance, you have done nothing.I said I could not leave it where it was and that I felt that I ought to say that his conduct in this matter was something of which no Home Secretary should be guilty and I asked him to tell me within a week whether he proposed to take any further action.That was the letter in October and, having regard to what he decided to do, it ought not to have taken more than an hour to decide to do it. But, in fact, from 11th October I got nothing beyond the usual courteous acknowledgement from the secretary until 20th October, when I wrote calling attention to my letter and 1497 asking for a reply. Finally, on 25th October I got this:
I have no evidence"—Of course he has not, he ensures himself against it—… of the existence, or circulation, of any other copies of the pamphlet, or the commission of any criminal offence which might call for action on my part. If you have any evidence, the right course would be for you to submit it to the authorities responsible for enforcing the law.Most people, when they have a matter that involves criminal offences, write to the Home Secretary. Those of us who are lawyers know that it might be the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Attorney-General who takes up the matter, but we send to the Home Secretary because he will have other things to look into as well. In the past most of us have received replies that the Home Secretary has sent the matter on. Here he says that the right course is for me to send to the authorities. It reminds me of the time when someone stole a bicycle outside by Chambers in the Temple and I went to the policeman on duty and told him about it. He said, "If I was you, Sir. I should report it to the police."If I stopped at that stage in the letter, it would not be quite fair to the Home Secretary, because, at last, two months after he was given information about the matter, he is actually doing something. He says:
As you suggest the document came from Germany and may be circulating there, I am bringing this correspondence to the notice of the Foreign Secretary.In future, when I write to this Home Secretary about anything which may involve a criminal offence, I shall send copies to the Attorney-General as well. Still the Home Secretary does not ask to see the document himself. It may be that the Foreign Office have lots of copies of it. The Foreign Office have to govern Germany and many of these documents might come their way. This rather dreary story is near its end. I wrote back:I note what you say about the right course for Inc to have taken—This was the course of informing the other authorities.I have to confess that in reporting this matter to you I considered that that was the exact course I was taking, because I had hitherto regarded you as part of 1498 the authorities responsible for enforcing the law.It really does not require much comment. There is the story. Here is a Home Secretary who, if someone wanted to organise a Fascist meeting in London, would send several hundred policemen to see that that man got through with his task. Yet, when confronted with the serious matter of this pamphlet, which has already led to one threat of murder and indirectly to another violent assault, and which may all the time be in extensive distribution in Germany and causing any amount of trouble, the Home Secretary does absolutely nothing. True to his masterly inactivity, he does not even come here to defend himself.
§ 9.26 p.m.
§ Mr. Blackburn (Birmingham, King's Norton)I wish to draw the attention of the House to the extraordinary effrontery of the proposition which has been put before us tonight—nothing more or less than that we should establish a political censorship here in Britain, and that above all we should not allow anti-Soviet literature of any kind to be distributed. That is the substance of what we have heard tonight. There was a slight lacuna, a slight gap, in the history as given to us by the hon. and learned Member for North Hammersmith (Mr. Pritt). He referred to the fact that he was out of the country in September. He did not refer to what he said—it is quite relevant to this matter—nor to where he was. It happens that he was the guest of the Bulgarian Government, that is, the Government which was responsible for the judicial murder of Petkov. The Communist newspaper "Fatherland Front," on 16th September, reported the hon. and learned Gentleman as saying:
I am a member of Mr. Bevin's party.
§ Mr. PrittI was not aware of that fact, and it certainly is not true. I would not say it because, although I would have been very proud to remain a member of the Labour Party, I would never have described it with any pride as" Mr. Bevin's party."
§ Mr. BlackburnOf course, I must accept that. I think that the House will be gratified by the phenomenon of the hon. and learned Member at last contradicting the Communists.
What on earth has this matter to do with the Home Office? The hon. and 1499 learned Member, like any other citizen of this country, is entitled to institute a private prosecution in respect of this matter.
§ Mr. BlackburnMay I correct that statement and say that the hon. and learned Member knows that in substance it is true—he has the right to go to the police and the right to place the whole of the facts before the Director of Public Prosecutions, and if anything approaching a prima facie case is made out, a prosecution can be brought, and the magistrates can decide whether or not proceedings should have been instituted.
Surely the last person in the world to decide whether proceedings should be brought is the Home Secretary. Surely we are proud of the fact that justice in this country is independent of any kind of political influence whatever. We do not want a police State in this country, even though some hon. Members in this House may do so. It seems staggering that when we have fought a war, the sole purpose of which was to preserve freedom and to prevent any kind of political influence from being brought to bear upon British justice, we should have had to listen to the kind of speech which we have heard tonight, the gravamen of which was that it ought to be regarded as being as much an offence against Britain as against Russia if anyone dares to say a word against the Communists.
§ 9.29 p.m.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Younger)When the hon. and learned Member for North Hammersmith (Mr. Pritt) began his remarks this evening, he said—I am not sure whether I quote him verbatim—that a great deal of what he had to say would be news to me. So indeed it was. He later explained that for certain reasons, some of which he gave, the Home Secretary has not up to date seen a copy of the pamphlet to which he referred. That is a point with which I will deal later. It was not only the nature of the pamphlet, but a good many of the other items of information that were given to the House by the hon. and learned Member which were quite new to 1500 me. I am bound to say—and I do not think that he will take this in any offensive sense—that as I have had no previous notice of many of them, and I will tell him which as I go along, I cannot be expected here and now to accept them as being facts.
The hon. and learned Gentleman also appeared to complain that my right hon. Friend was not here to answer tonight and even went so far as to say that my right hon. Friend had not the courage to come here and defend himself. All I can say is that if the hon. and learned Member really believes that, he somewhat overestimates the awe in which my right hon. Friend holds him.
I am not going to express any opinion, let alone a legal opinion, about the merits of this particular document, partly because I have not actually seen it, and in any case because I do not think this would be a suitable time to open a general Debate upon the rights and merits of what has happened in the Baltic States and what is being believed, rightly or wrongly, by displaced persons who are now voluntarily working in this country. I think the best thing to do is to state as shortly as I can the whole of the story in order of time as it was seen from the Home Office.
The first thing we heard of it was the letter to which the hon. and learned Member referred on 25th August telling us in general terms about the pamphlet. We rather naturally made some inquiries, starting at the point he gave us, namely, the Lancashire police. We discovered an incident at the Astley Green colliery a month previously, on 27th July: the management had apparently asked the police to come along because of a complaint made to them by a British worker to whom my hon. and learned Friend has referred. He had apparently said that he feared that there would be some violence done him. When the police actually got there and saw this young man, he said at first that he had not actually feared anything being done to him at the colliery, but that he was afraid of what might happen at the hostel later in the day.
The police made what inquiries they could among the foreign workers who were there, trying to find out who had been involved. They did find that the whole of the trouble such as there had 1501 been—and it had not been much, according to my information it had Only been a few words—related to this pamphlet, "We accuse." One foreign worker said that he had received this from Germany and had lent it to an Englishman, no doubt the first of the two to whom my hon. and learned Friend referred. That worker had in turn passed it on to the second worker, whose name has already been used in this Debate, Mr. Hope. Hope, on being interviewed by the police, said that he had sent it to the "Daily Worker." He also was told that the owner, if I may so term him, the person who had originally received it in this country, wanted it back and that he would try to get it back.
So far I think my information corresponds with that of my hon. and learned Friend; but he went on to say two things which were certainly not known to me. He talked about political questioning and threats made by the police to this English worker and a possible prosecution for larceny. I heard nothing of that.
§ Mr. YoungerI have read this file with very great care and I really do not think there was any reference to prosecution for larceny. If there was, I apologise to the House, but it is certainly my impression that there was not. I should like to say, in passing, that I am not quite sure upon what foundation my hon. and learned Friend is relying for all the details of this incident, because although he was aware—and told the Home Secretary—that the Lancashire police had been involved and had made inquiries, my information is that, at any rate at that time, the Lancashire police had not had any contact with the hon. and learned Member. He presumably got all this information at second hand, or perhaps even third hand, from the father. At any rate, I am not inclined to believe that it is in any sense first-hand information.
§ Mr. PrittEvery word I have said about the Chief Constable of Lancashire is derived from the original letter from the Chief Constable to the lad's father, which I have in my possession if the hon. Gentleman wants to see it.
§ Mr. YoungerPerhaps that, among other evidence—if the hon. and learned Member wishes to supply evidence at the end of the Debate—might be shown to me. But I have not seen it, and I am certainly not aware of it. The police went to the hostel because that was where Hope said he expected trouble. They found no sign of trouble there, so they spoke to Hope again and asked why he anticipated trouble and whether he had been threatened. This is where I think my information does not at all correspond with what my hon. and learned Friend has said. I am informed that Hope said to the police that he had not been threatened and that he had overdone it. Those are the words—"overdone it."
§ Mr. PrittI can procure affidavits from two people who heard the conversation to say that that is a deliberate lie on the part of the police.
§ Mr. YoungerIf we are to have affidavits, we are getting a little nearer having evidence. That is something which I myself should welcome. Those inquiries also failed to show any trace of any other pamphlet at that camp. My hon. and learned Friend said that no inquiries were made of any E.V.Ws. That is not my information. Other E.V.Ws. were questioned and no trace was found of any pamphlet other than the one—presumably there is only one in existence and known to be in this country—the one my hon. and learned Friend has. There is no evidence that it had any further circulation other than to those three individuals who were known to have seen it. No copy was available there either to the police or to my right hon. Friend. My right hon. Friend then informed the hon. and learned Member for North Hammersmith of the negative results of the inquiry which he had made.
§ Mr. PrittThe hon. Gentleman really must not say that no copy was available to the Home Secretary when the Home Secretary had in his possession for weeks before that a letter from me offering expressly to show it.
§ Mr. YoungerI did not mean to imply that we were not aware at that time of the copy which my hon. and learned Friend had. What I meant to say was that, as a result of the inquiry, there was no copy available to be seen either by 1503 the police or by the Home Secretary. I will come in a moment to the question of our seeing the actual copy which the hon. and learned Member has.
§ Wing-Commander Hulbert (Stockport)The hon. and learned Member for North Hammersmith has seen fit to attack the Chief Constable of Lancashire and the police under his command. May I ask the Under-Secretary of State if, so far as the Home Office are aware, the Chief Constable and his officers have conducted themselves with perfect propriety in this matter.
§ Mr. Platts-Mills (Finsbury)We can judge that when we hear the facts.
§ Mr. YoungerI am glad to take this opportunity of associating myself with the view expressed by the hon. and gallant Member for Stockport (Wing-Commander Hulbert). I have no reason whatever to believe that the police have acted in any way improperly or have been in any way negligent in their duties, or that they could have made any further useful inquiries. From my own knowledge of the Chief Constable of Lancashire, which is by no means a brief one, I should be very surprised if the inquiries of the police were not carried out with efficiency.
That is the story and, subject to the few points to which I have called attention, the facts correspond approximately in both our versions. If we are to view this merely as a matter of a propaganda leaflet, possibly undesirable and objectionable, but merely as propaganda and not as a matter of a criminal offence, then I think the House will agree that it is indeed a very trivial matter. We know of only one single copy in this country at the moment and that is the one possessed by my hon. and learned Friend. So far as we are aware, there has been no organised distribution. My hon. and learned Friend referred to the statement by this foreign worker that they could have plenty more copies if they wanted. That was not information which we were able to elicit, although it was mentioned in my hon. and learned Friend's second letter to the Home Secretary, but not in the first. Nobody offered to supply a large number of copies, there was, in fact, no actual 1504 trouble at that time in the camp as the result of the production of this pamphlet. The statements made tonight about threats to murder and violent assaults on a young British worker are completely new to me, and they certainly were not included in any letter sent to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
If such complaints were made at the time, no doubt the police investigated them, but they are completely new to me. I think it is the first time that I have heard mention of a threat of murder, and I have already said that, when he was specifically challenged, the young man Hope admitted that he had not been threatened with violence and said "I have overdone it," and that was the point when the hon. Gentleman interrupted.
If we are to view this not merely as propaganda but as a possible basis for a criminal charge, there are different considerations. There were, first of all, the allegations that there was clearly at least one criminal offence because this document did not bear the printer's imprimatur. My advice is that it is not certain that there is any criminal offence in that respect. The Act which makes it an offence in this country had no extra-territorial effect. I do not think it required the imprimatur on documents printed abroad and subsequently brought into this country, and the legal advice which I have been able to get has been to the effect that there was no possibility of any charge of that kind.
It is conceivable that one might argue that to distribute the document in this country might be an offence, but it is a rather curious argument that to distribute a document which, when it was printed, was not required to comply with this law, might be an offence on the grounds that it did not so comply. That, to put it at its lowest, is a difficult legal point which I am not prepared to dispute with the hon. and learned Gentleman here. What I am clear about is that we might get a technical conviction—and it could be no more than that—but it could not prevent distribution of a document printed abroad from being considered, under these circumstances, as a purely technical conviction, and, since under the Act a prosecution could only be instituted in the name of one of the Law Officers of the Crown, I can hardly imagine that they 1505 would consider it a proper case for action.
There remains the much more serious charge that this document might be a criminal libel. I have not seen the document, and all I know of it is what my hon. and learned Friend has said to me, but I am bound to say, on the face of it, that I do not think he made a very good case. He told us, originally, that it made a few slashes at the British, the Americans, the Swedish and the I.R.O., which they accused of taking bribes. It is not a document likely to be brought within the English criminal law, even though there are slashes at the British. It depends on what they are.
§ Mr. PrittDoes not the hon. Gentleman know the definition of a criminal libel in this country? He is a lawyer; I am very sorry, but he is talking nonsense.
§ Mr. YoungerI do know it. In fact, I took the precaution of arming myself with that information, but I do not think that this is the place in which to debate legal technicalities. I say that, as I have not seen the text, it would be futile to debate the technicalities. I am saying that mere attacks on foreign governments are not in themselves likely to constitute seditious or criminal libels in this country, and that one would have to examine the documents. [Interruption.]If the hon. and learned Gentleman will refer to Archbold, he will find it, as I have done this afternoon. If he had any specific passage in mind, as he has been told once in writing by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, he had only to submit it to the relevant authorities, which, as he told me, include the Home Secretary. But what did he, in fact, offer? He offered that an official might see his copy, if he could not get another one, but only on a personal undertaking by the Secretary of State to return it to him.
§ Mr. YoungerThe hon. and learned Gentleman has read part of it. I asked him the question, and this is what he replied:
If you wish one of your officials to see the one I have, I would prefer to part with it only for a short time and on your personal undertaking to return it to me. This is not meant to be in any way discourteous, and is due only to the peculiar attitude of the Lancashire police.1506 Let us just consider the implications of this personal undertaking, if my right hon. Friend had been so unwise as to give it. First, if this document had on examination proved to be suitable to form the basis of a criminal trial, I think the hon. Member will agree that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary could not have honoured his undertaking.
§ Mr. YoungerI do not think that alters the validity of my point. My right hon. Friend, had he been rash enough, would have given an undertaking which he could not have honoured. If, on the other hand, it had turned out not to be suitable as the basis of any criminal proceedings—as my hon. and learned Friend knew at the time, the ownership of it was in dispute; it was known that the original recipient in this country claimed it as his property and wanted it back, and that the young man had said to the police that he would do his best to get it back—I think it would, indeed, have been rather rash for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to undertake, in those circumstances, that a document which, on examination, had not proved to infringe the criminal law should, nevertheless, be returned to my hon. Friend instead of to the person who claimed it as his own. At the very least, it would have been very rash of my right hon. Friend to be involved in what turned out to be a lengthy legal dispute.
§ Mr. PrittWhy, in those circumstances, did not the Home Secretary write to me and say, "I would like to see this document, but your condition is not useful for that very reason and will you hand it to me unconditionally?"
§ Mr. YoungerMy right hon. Friend did not choose to use that form of words, but he repeated to the hon. and learned Member that he had only to refer it, if he thought it formed the basis of a criminal charge, to the relevant authorities. After all, my hon. and learned Friend is not a child in these matters; he knew quite well that was all he had to do.
§ Mr. PrittThe hon. Gentleman has his facts wrong again. That offer was in the first letter. The wording of the first letter wholly ignored my offer, and 1507 it was not until nearly two months later that the right hon. Gentleman referred me to the police.
§ Mr. YoungerThe remark to which I refer was in the letter from my right hon. Friend on 25th October, which said:
If you have such evidence, the right course would be for you to submit it to the authorities responsible for enforcing the law.That suggestion is still quite good advice, and it is still open to the hon. and learned Member to submit his evidence. If he does so, I can asure him that it will be carefully examined, and not only the document itself, but, also, if he chooses to submit it, any evidence of circulation of further copies.I should like to point out that if, on examination, my right hon. Friend were to be advised that no criminal prosecution could lie, he would have to look very carefully at the suggestion that action should be taken against foreign workers, or that they should be warned or threatened merely on the ground that they had been expressing political views which may not accord with those of many people in this country.
I repudiate what appeared to be the allegation at the end of the hon. Member's speech, that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, in some way, made distinctions in favour of speakers at Fascist meetings and favoured them in a way in which he was not prepared to favour people on the other side. That is absolutely untrue, and there is no possible ground for it. It may well be true that there are limits beyond which an alien living in this country should not go in aggressively promoting political views which are likely to cause ill-feeling. We had a case recently—the case of Scholtz—in which, I am sure, my hon. and learned Friend would not disapprove of the action taken by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. But it is not right to penalise aliens living legitimately in this country merely because they received a document of this kind relating almost exclusively to matters abroad, and from a friend abroad, and because they showed it to a fellow worker who, in turn, showed it to another fellow worker who said he did not like it.
That really is the extent of this. It is, in my view, a storm in a teacup. The 1508 advice is still the same advice which my right hon. Friend gave some weeks ago, that if my hon. and learned Friend warns my right hon. Friend that this may be a criminal document, it is not only his right but his duty to show it to the authorities without attempting to lay down any conditions which are embarrassing. With all respect, I do not think he has produced the evidence to the House tonight. It would not be at all easy to bring a criminal charge according to what he has said. He should look at this very carefully again, and if he still retains his views, then by all means let him show the evidence to us and we will take the appropriate action.
§ Mr. PrittIs the Under-Secretary really suggesting that I would take up the time of the House for the best part of an hour and indulge in a whole series of correspondence with the Home Secretary asserting a criminal offence which I do not believe to be true?