HC Deb 28 November 1951 vol 494 cc1641-8

The Home Guard shall not be mustered either in whole or in part except by the issue of a Royal Proclamation.—[Mr. Shinwell.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Shinwell

I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."

This discussion will hardly be as entertaining as the previous one, but it will be very much briefer, at any rate as far as I am concerned. We are proposing that the Home Guard should not he mustered either in whole or in part except by the issue of a Royal Proclamation. The substance of this proposition, although not in precisely the same terms, was argued at some length in the Second Reading debate. We say to the right hon. Gentleman that the mustering of this Force can be regarded as a very grave act, only undertaken when there is a serious emergency. The mustering of the Force is, of course, a much more drastic operation than either the registration or, for that matter, the, enrolment of the Force. As the Bill declares in Clause 3 (2, c): the expression 'mustered' means mustered for the purpose of resisting an actual or apprehended attack… and so on, including resistance to attack. That, in effect, means that this Force is mustered when we are either about to engage in actual hostilities or, at any rate, apprehend such a situation.

It appears to us, having given the matter very careful consideration, that before the Force is actually mustered a Royal Proclamation should be issued. I am not quite certain what is the position as regards the embodiment of other Forces. I am open to correction, but I believe that the actual embodiment of the Territorial Force can emerge only as a result of the issue of a Royal Proclamation.

Mr. Head

For service overseas.

Mr. Shinwell

I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. I knew it was introduced in some form after the embodiment of a particular Force associated with the Army. It appears to us that for the purpose of mustering this voluntary Force, for such it is, in the event of an emergency, apprehending imminent attack requiring active resistance on the part of this Force, a Royal Proclamation should be issued.

If the right hon. Gentleman cannot accept the form of words proposed I hope that at any rate he will indicate that it is the intention of the War Office to provide something in the nature of an announcement, even if there as not a Royal Proclamation; because we regard the mustering of such a Force as an act which requires that a proclamation of some kind should be made.

Mr. Head

I entirely appreciate the anxiety of the right hon. Gentleman that this act of mustering should have due authority before it takes place. Indeed I appreciate that he would wish to limit the ability of those who have the power to muster.

The first thing I would point out to him is that this question of mustering is not just a matter of mustering the Home Guard and that then it can carry on. The conception of this act of mustering is that it should be temporary and local. That is to say, were there to be some incident, shall we say in East Anglia, a battalion, or even perhaps a company of the Home Guard would be mustered, perhaps for 12 or 24 hours, to meet a critical situation, and the mustering would then cease. It might be that even weeks or months would go by, and then in another area in the country another and perhaps a slightly bigger portion of the Home Guard would be mustered.

Under certain circumstances this might be going on locally in various parts of the country in regard to varying numbers of men. I suggest that that act of mustering is not susceptible to being made the subject of a Royal Proclamation. If it were so subject, it would be apparent that that would not only cause delay in the event of an urgent and imminent crisis, but might also require endless repetition in small areas all over the country.

10.0 p.m.

Therefore, we feel that as the alerting and mustering of the Home Guard is likely to be on a temporary basis, we propose to lay before the House in the Regulations that this power to muster should be vested solely in the G.O.C., United Kingdom Land Forces and G.O.C.s-in-Cy in the Commands, but no further. I hope he will appreciate that, if it were done by Royal Proclamation, it would lead to endless repetition in the case of very small numbers in small areas.

Mr. Wigg

I must confess that I am extremely unhappy about this, although I see the difficulty in which the Secretary of State is placed. To delegate these powers to the G.O.C.s in Commands is not advisable, because these officers are not always very wise, though experienced, men. I know some I would not trust, and I think the Committee would be very wrong to trust them. I am not impugning their honour, but their wisdom. I think the Secretary of State ought to have another look at this point.

There is a very real difficulty in case of sudden attack, because, obviously somebody must take a decision, but I should have thought that it would have been far better to have vested this power, as the Secretary of State said he would in his Second Reading speech, in the G.O.C., United Kingdom Land Forces. To delegate these powers lower down would mean giving it to men who do not know the overall situation.

Mr. Head

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that that question has been considered, but, in the type of conditions that might occur at the start of a war, we should be in the position, in those circumstances, of putting all our eggs in one basket, and if communications, or indeed Headquarters, United Kingdom Land Forces, were to be hit, the whole thing would have gone. We think that some decentralisation to the G.O.C.s in the Commands is desirable.

Mr. Wigg

I think the right hon. Gentleman is going much too far, and I would really ask him to have another look at the matter.

Mr. Head

There is actually nothing between the G.O.C., United Kingdom Land Forces and the G.O.C.s-in-C. in the Commands.

Mr. John Strachey (Dundee, West)

I see the right hon. Gentleman's difficulty, and I agree with him, that there must be, in time of war, power to muster in the hands of the G.O.C., United Kingdom Land Forces and the G.O.C.s-in-C. of the various Commands, and I do not see that we could improve on that, in view of the possibility of communications being disrupted. What my hon. Friend had in mind was that there should be no mustering of the Force until there had been an enabling Proclamation at the beginning of the war, or when, in the opinion of the Government, war was imminent or a real danger. Then, a Proclamation would be issued, which would delegate the power to muster into the hands of the G.O.C., United Kingdom Land Forces or the G.O.C.s-in-C. of the Commands.

There is something really rather repugnant in the idea of a permanent peacetime power, and in the hands of the Commands. I know that the right hon. Gentleman's argument is that mustering is a purely war-time measure, but that is not what is in the Bill, and I would very much like to hear his explanation there. What the Bill says is that the Home Guard cannot be mustered unless an attack is apprehended. That wording is very wide. After all, one might say that the whole reason why we are passing this Bill today is because an attack on this country is apprehended, and, in a sense, of course, that is true.

We are carrying out the whole rearmament programme for no other reason than that in the long run an attack is apprehended. No one can deny that. Therefore, it seems to me that the wording is one which covers two quite different meanings of the word "apprehended," and would enable the Home Guard—perhaps the Law Officers would tell me if I am wrong—to be mustered in peace-time whenever the Government thought that an attack was apprehended.

That being so, I should have thought there was a need for a covering Royal Proclamation which would be done once and for all. I quite agree that there could not be a new Proclamation each time a part of the Force was mustered, but I think there should be a covering Proclamation, including the G.O.C. Land Forces and the G.O.C.s of each Command, to muster during the period of emergency, or some words of that sort. Would the right hon. Gentleman have another look at the matter between now and the Report stage but before the Bill reaches the Statute Book to see if something in that way is possible.

Mr. Head

I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman's point. We are not anxious, as I have already said, to vest mustering in a Royal Proclamation for the reason that once again we are restricting ourselves to a centralised method wherefrom, in the event of very sudden and heavy attack, a great deal of dislocation might result. I also appreciate the right hon. Gentleman's other point. He is worried about the word "apprehended." He says that word could be interpreted as being permissive of the mustering of the Home Guard at the present time.

The intention in the Bill is that we should not muster the Home Guard until we have had such information as would make us think that we really could not state these matters in periods of time because we thought that an attack was going to be made without any formal declaration of war and in the immediate future. "Apprehended" was the best word we could think of to put into the Bill, but if the right hon. Gentleman has a better idea and would care to put it down on the Report stage, I should be only too glad to consider it.

Mr. James Callaghan (Cardiff, South-East)

I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman a question, because this is a difficult matter and one to which we attach quite a lot of importance. He was saying that he thinks it possible that small parts of the Home Guard may have to be mustered at frequent intervals, and that therefore he considers the Royal Proclamation would be a heavy, rather slow and cumbrous instrument to use. That seems to be slightly odd.

Surely, the G.O.C., or whoever is going to have these powers, will not apprehend an attack on Folkestone this week, on Southsea next week, and on Hull the following week. I should have thought it much more likely that an attack would be apprehended on the portion of the country where the right hon. Gentleman is proposing to raise the Home Guard, namely, the area from Flamborough Head to Selsey Bill, in which case the Home Guard would be mustered for that area.

If it were going to be done on that basis, then a Royal Proclamation would not be unduly cumbrous, especially as we are dealing with apprehended attacks to which my right hon. Friend has drawn attention. I am only being interrogatory here, as the right hon. Gentleman will understand. How does he envisage it will work out? Surely, we shall have mustering on a wide scale over a large area of the country and will not have a ittle piece here and there from week to week.

Mr. Head

I think the hon. Gentleman is thinking rather in naval terms. I would not say that he is tainted, but only that he is a little bit tarred in that respect. I am not giving away any secrets here because I think that even the most amateur salt cellar strategist would realise that we are not apprehending a seaborne attack on the East Coast.

Mr. Callaghan

The right hon. Gentleman said "seaborne."

Mr. Head

If I said "seaborne." I meant "airborne."

Mr. Callaghan

It is in HANSARD as "seaborne."

Mr. Head

Was that last night?

Mr. Callaghan

It was during the Second Reading.

Mr. Head

I do not want to argue this, but I think I said "not seaborne except in very exceptional circumstances."

Mr. Strachey

The suggestion is that it is an exception.

Mr. Head

My point is that what we do not anticipate is a widespread mustering of the whole Home Guard, as would have happened had the word "Cromwell" been given in the last war—unless things get very bad or until the Russian Navy steams across the Straits of Dover. Perhaps I should not have said that. It is much more likely, we think, that there would be incidents of parachute raids in various areas, especially the area where the Home Guard is mustered, and if the attacks happened or were apprehended we should get local mustering at various times.

Mr. M. Stewart

I see the difficulty of the right hon. Gentleman, but I hope that he will see our difficulty. Am I not right in thinking that, if the Bill is passed as it now stands in this respect, and if Regulations of the kind that the right hon. Gentleman has in mind are made, the position will then be that, from the moment that the Bill becomes law and Regulations are made, the G.O.C.-in-C. in command of the areas of the country could then muster the Home Guard at any time that he felt there was an apprehended attack? That would be the position, would it not? Can the right hon. Gentleman confirm that?

Mr. Head

That is correct, but I think that in the case of an apprehended attack—I am not trying to split hairs—that information would come from U.K. Land Forces. Subsequently, once war had started, I think we should have to delegate to the G.O.C.-in-C., but in peacetime when the first mustering took place it would have to be left to the decision of U.K. Land Forces; but it would not be done unless he had direct information or intelligence that an attack was likely immediately.

Mr. Stewart

But the position would be that, once the Bill was passed, it would be for military people to decide whether to muster the Home Guard in any area. What we and hon. Members elsewhere want is that, before we put that power into the hands of professional soldiers, there should be some other step besides the passing of the Bill. There should be, either by means of Royal Proclamation or whatever other means may be provided, a way of saying to the country at large, "We are now in such a state of risk that we are prepared to give these powers to professional soldiers."

Mustering the Home Guard, a civilian Force, is an act with very considerable industrial and political repercussions and that is why we ought not to have it as a permanent part of the law of the land that the power to do this is in the hands of professional soldiers, which is what the position will be if we pass the Bill as it stands.

I suggest that we should pass the Bill, but that it should then also be necessary for the Government of the day to go through a public forum of some kind as a way of saying to the country "We have now, for good reasons and on information available to us, come to the conclusion that we must take the serious step of giving to high-ranking professional soldiers the right of mustering the Home Guard." There ought to be some public form or procedure to be gone through. If a Royal Proclamation is not the right way of doing it, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will see if he can find something to meet the position so that it will not be a permanent part of the law that the professional soldier can muster the Home Guard.

Mr. Head

I appreciate the point. I personally never envisaged—I do not think anybody envisaged—that any portion of the Home Guard would be mustered until, for instance, after mobilisation had taken place, and then when there had been a Proclamation; and I will undertake to see if we can find some form of words to meet the position.

Mr. Strachey

In view of the assurance by the right hon. Gentleman that he will look at this question, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

The Chairman

The Motion and Clause can be withdrawn only by the right hon. Member by whom it was moved.

Question put, and negatived.