HC Deb 21 December 1956 vol 562 cc1669-80

2.0 p.m.

Mr. James Johnson (Rugby)

It is not my intention this afternoon to make an impassioned attack upon the odious and barbarous custom of slavery or to make an attack upon any of the Asian Powers, which seems to be becoming a habit on the benches opposite these days. However, I shall have to mention Saudi Arabia and the Yemen in this connection because there is no doubt, as was shown at the conference in New York on 13th August last, which was attended by 51 member States, that Saudi Arabia is the country most deeply implicated in slavery. In fact we know that she has legislation in force to license slave traders.

My object is to ask some questions of the Government. Indeed, I put one last Wednesday to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. I asked the right hon. Gentleman if he would take steps to convene a meeting of the signatories of the Brussels Anti-Slavery Convention, 1890, for the purpose of combating the traffic in slaves from Africa to the Middle East. So my purpose is simply to ask the Minister what he thinks he may be able to do in this matter.

Another question I want to ask at the beginning of this short debate is whether Her Majesty's Government will give favourable consideration to moving a resolution at the United Nations asking for machinery to supervise the application of the slavery Conventions. This is important because we have passed 600 Conventions over the past 150 years, since the famous days of the battles of Wilberforce and his great company in the last century. So there are plenty of Conventions but they have to be implemented, which is not so simple. In fact, we have passed 80 Conventions with Portugal alone.

There are, of course, difficulties in policing the waters around the Arabian peninsula. There are some slave dealings in Baluchistan, but not many, and they are taking place mainly through ports such as Massawa and Svãkin and coves adjoining Port Sudan, indeed all that part of the west coast of the Red Sea opposite to Jidda and such places. In fact a few months ago I went by plane from Cairo to Jidda and over to Asmara and back again to Aden by what is known as the "milk train." Air pilots to whom I was talking in the cockpit of the plane were vocal in pointing out to me stopping places on the coast where dhows put in with pilgrims, who were perhaps future slaves, going over to the eastern shores of the Red Sea.

One could collect massive evidence from the French on this matter. A gentleman called M. La Graviere, who is a member of the French Chamber of Deputies, gave evidence last year in which he mentioned a dispatch of the French Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, in Mecca, stating facts and figures. He said that about 50,000 went over and he based his statement on the fact of the numbers who went but did not return. It is significant, therefore, if pilgrims go over to Jidda, and then continue on the few, miles to Mecca and afterwards disappear. These facts cannot be burked, so I tell the Minister that we must face up to what is happening and I ask him what we can possibly do about it. Again in France-Soir of 25th September last, statistics were given in great detail. Some people may say that these are French Africans who are being taken over, but we also know of Africans who are taken even from as far as Zanzibar, let alone the Somali coast; and get over to the Saudi coast.

Why is this practice in such spate in the last few years? That was not the case between the two world wars. Indeed, at the beginning of the Second World War it had almost ceased, but since the end of that war it has thus waxed. Indeed the present Prime Minister said in 1943 or 1944 that there had been a great advance in shipping slaves over to Arabia during the Second World War. The answer is not too difficult to find. First, we used to stop ships, for we had power to examine ships on the high seas. I believe that at the last New York conference in September this year, in Clause 3 of the Resolution, we agreed not to press this right, in order that we might reserve to ourselves our right to preclude investigations in six of our Colonies, one of which was the Bahamas. I hope that the Minister will confirm or deny whether this happened.

After the 1890 Brussels Conference a permanent Slavery Bureau of member nations was established at Brussels, with a small sub-office in Zanzibar. That office investigated what was happening and proved to be of great value in checking slave traffic. So far as I can see, however, all that is happening today is that evidence can be given by member States to the Economic and Social Council in New York. It is difficult to discover the facts but, as far as I can find out, there is not even an expert on slavery advising the Economic and Social Council. Members of the Council are what they are, national delegates; and even if they do not know much about slave dealing, it is fair to assume that they will wish to speak well of their own nations. After all, they are paid servants, and it is harsh to expect them to testify against their masters to the almost indecent details of what is happening.

I hope that the Government will suggest to the United Nations that there should be attached to the Council in New York a committee of five or seven experts upon slavery, who could amass the facts, who could receive confidential de- tails sent to them by consuls in all these ports of the States of the Middle East, and who could then advise the Economic and Social Council of the true happenings. It is futile to expect anything other beyond what is happening at the present time, unless the actual circumstances are checked. Lord Lugard has complained in the past of the mass of detail which was pigeonholed regarding what took place in the 1920s and in the 'thirties.

Our British delegate on the Economic and Social Council in 1954 said, about the mass of information coming to the United Nations: All this additional information which has become available since the Report of the ad hoc committee—however useful it may be—does not make the picture any clearer. On the contrary, I would suggest that it rather adds to the confusion. That is the position now.

It is well known at the moment that we—I do not know why—are the chief opponents of the setting up of supervisory machinery. It is said that we oppose it because it would become a forum for attack by the Communist Powers upon colonial Powers. That is an argument of expediency and its unworthy of this nation, in view of its past record in opposing the nefarious business of slave dealing. We have nothing to fear from the Communist Powers in regard to slavery. There may perhaps be some slight vestige still of slavery in Hong Kong, perhaps a little in Aden Protectorate—I would not care to say too much about that—and perhaps even a little household or domestic slavery still in Malaya; but there is really very little of that sort of thing now.

This "ostrich" policy, which results from the fear that the Communists might attack us in open council, is unworthy of us and completely at variance with our past policy and history. I trust that the Government will move to set up some supervisory machinery for enforcing the slavery Conventions, and I hope the Minister will give us a forthcoming answer today.

2.12 p.m.

Mr. Barnett Janner (Leicester, North-West)

I support the plea of my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson). We are probably pushing at an open door in view of the action that was taken by the representatives of Her Majesty's Government at the meeting held in regard to the Convention, but perhaps we might try to push the door a little further open.

For many years the United Nations has laboured to produce a new Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Practices Similar to Slavery, and last September such a Convention was adopted. I do not think it was a very strong Convention. It was disappointing in many respects. We all know very well that the best text in the world is not sufficient if it cannot be implemented by satisfactory action, and it is in that respect that the new Convention is disappointing.

I am glad that Her Majesty's Government from the beginning took the lead in an attempt to put teeth into the Convention. One crucial point in our draft, to which my hon. Friend has referred, was the right to search ships on the high seas 'if they were suspected of carrying slaves. I know that the Afro-Asian bloc and Russia opposed it, but I think it a pity that we dropped that point. After all, it is the only effective way in which we could put into practice the attempt to stop what is going on. I cannot see any logical reason why the Asian-African bloc opposed it. There is no question of its argument about colonialisation, which it so frequently uses, arising in a matter of this sort. The shipping of slaves is something of very serious consequence to the world as a whole.

The shipping of slaves occurs in only one particular area of the world, in the seas around Arabia. The warships most likely to search such slavers would be British, and I feel sure that there would not be any abuse of the right to search. I am sorry that we gave up the fight for that right. As far as I know, Saudi Arabia and Yemen are the only States in the world where chattel slavery is still a legal institution. Only a year or so ago a French Deputy—the person, I assume, to whom my hon. Friend referred—investigated the situation and found that every year ignorant Africans are lured on by agents to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. They are not told, of course, that they need a Saudi Arabian visa. When they arrive in Saudi Arabia without a visa they are arrested and put into prison for a few days and then handed over to licensed slave dealers. In addition, raids are made in Baluchistan and the Sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf and people are captured and carried off by land and sea, taken to small Saudi Arabian ports and sold in slave markets.

At the Geneva Conference the Saudi Arabian representative had the effrontery to declare that slavery had been abolished in his country. Only recently a law was signed by King Saud laying down the legal status of slaves and empowering the Minister of the Interior to license slave dealers. I doubt very much whether Saudi Arabia will sign and ratify the new Convention. Even if she signs, there will still be the question of whether she will implement the Convention.

Only international implementation can really achieve something in this respect. I hope we shall do what my hon. Friend has asked, that is, set up various bodies to enable the position to be strengthened, so that we can have an effective machine.

It is true, too—I am sure the Minister will not deny it—that Article I (c) and (d) of the Convention may, in small measure, be called in aid against us by those who oppose us in respect of the Convention. Some tribal customs which, unfortunately, exist in places where we have some jurisdiction could be held to contravene those sections, and I hope we shall do everything possible to put that matter right.

All this brings into clear relief the importance of having, particularly in that part of the Middle East, a good, free and democratic outlook among the nations concerned. The state of civilisation which is exhibited, for example, by the State of Israel in general, and particularly in regard to the treatment of its inhabitants in relation to labour, domestic and other rights—anti-slavery rights in the fullest sense of the term—should have attention drawn to it in an effort to get others to follow that example and to realise how important it is to base themselves upon that type of moral outlook.

I hope the Minister will accede to the points which have been raised and will carry out to its logical conclusion what was so clearly indicated by our own representatives in the deliberations which took place.

2.20 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Douglas Dodds-Parker)

I am sure that the whole House will be grateful to the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) and to the hon. Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner), both of whom have taken a great interest in this matter, for the way in which they have spoken on this occasion. I do not think that there is any party disagreement, either on the approach to the matter or on the way in which we are trying to deal with it. Certainly I can say at once that it is not due to any lack of sympathy or understanding on the part of Her Majesty's Government in the approaches that we have made elsewhere, even if we have failed to achieve all we wanted.

The hon. Member for Rugby raised a number of issues about which he was good enough to give me private notification, as he knows they are somewhat technical, and in the time at my disposal I will do my best to answer them. There are, of course, limitations on the actions of any Government in this particular form of activity. We agree with everything that has been said in deploring the abominable practice of slave trading and slave owning, and wish that our views on this matter were universally shared; but it is right to remind the House that other nations do not share those views.

It is a fact that slavery is an institution which is recognised by Moslem law, and it is also a fact with which we have to reckon in this day and age that there are severe limitations on the action which outside Powers can take in telling other countries what they should not do in matters which those countries regard as their own internal affairs. We must work within existing frameworks and to some extent take the world as we find it. I mention those limitations not to excuse what we cannot do, but rather to show the House, against this background, how much in fact we have been able to achieve in the issue before the House, and the 1956 Convention in particular.

The hon. Member for Rugby spoke about Hong Kong. I have no evidence whatever that there is any slavery in the Colony. The hon. Member may have in mind an institution called Mui-Tsai, or child bondage. As my right hon. Friend the then Minister of State for Colonial Affairs, informed the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Sorensen) on 22nd February: No cases have come to light for a number of years. Mui-Tsai is illegal and social welfare inspectors vigilantly enforce the law."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd February, 1956: Vol. 549, c. 37.] The hon. Member also mentioned Malaya. I have no knowledge of slavery or of anything comparable to Mui-Tsai. In the Colony of Aden slave owning is, of course, forbidden by law. It is not expressly forbidden in the Aden Protectorates, which Her Majesty's Government do not, of course, directly administer, but with the full agreement of the rulers concerned, the representatives of Her Majesty's Government are able to issue a manumission certificate to any slave who applies for one. In the areas on either side, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, interception patrols are carried out by the Royal Navy, and Her Majesty's ships on passage have instructions to search suspected slavers.

Mr. J. Johnson

How many cases have there been in the last year or two?

Mr. Dodds-Parker

I am afraid that I could not answer that question without notice. I shall return again to this matter in a moment.

The hon. Members suggested that there has been a revival of the slave trade since the Second World War. It is, of course, a matter, like contraband or the drug traffic, about which it is very difficult to be categorical, but while there is some evidence that the trade is continuing, I have no evidence, as I have said in the House before, that it is on the increase. Saudi Arabia, as both hon. Members have mentioned, is the country most concerned. Slave owning, for the reasons which I have given, is legal in that country, but there is a prohibition, which may not always be enforced, on the importation of slaves by sea.

I come to what Her Majesty's Government are doing, and our continued leadership and initiative under the 1956 Convention. I have tried to show what Her Majesty's Government have done in territories for which they are in some degree responsible. We have also taken important international initiatives. We played a leading part in preparing the ground for the 1956 Convention by participating in the ten-Power Committee which prepared the preliminary text in January, 1956, and in securing that a plenipotentiary conference should be held in Geneva to adopt a new convention.

That Convention supplements, but does not supersede, the Convention of 1926. Its object is: … to intensify national as well as international efforts towards the abolition of slavery, the slave trade, and institutions and practices similar to slavery. I draw the attention of the House to Section 1, which is a very important development from the 1926 Convention. It binds the parties to abolish debt bondage, serfdom, practices by which women are sold into marriage, and the exploitation of minors. The parties to the Convention are bound to make participation in the slave trade a criminal offence, to prevent their own ships and aircraft from conveying slaves, and to ensure that slaves are not conveyed in or through their territories.

Hon. Members who will refer to Cmd. 9870 will see what has been achieved and what an important document that Convention is. So far the Convention, I am glad to say, has been signed by 33 countries, including two Moslem countries, Iraq and the Sudan. I take exception to what the hon. Member for Rugby said about Port Sudan possibly being used for the slave trade. I do not believe that there is any evidence of any change in Port Sudan in measures against slavery.

Mr. Johnson

The impression t had hoped to give was not that the port was being used, but that the coves along the coast-line in that area where being used. If I gave the impression that I meant Port Sudan itself, I withdraw that.

Mr. Dodds-Parker

I am grateful to the hon. Member for that, because I am sure that the Sudan Government are endeavouring, as they have done for a number of years, to try to get this trade suppressed.

The effectiveness of the Convention must largely depend on the number of accessions, and the United Kingdom delegation to the current session of the United Nations General Assembly has been instructed to raise the matter in the hope of stimulating further accessions.

Criticisms of the Convention and of the right to search have been made, and Her Majesty's Government realise that there have been these criticisms. Indeed, as I said myself in reply to a Question on 24th October: … the Convention is not in every respect in the form we should have desired … [OFFICIAL. REPORT. 24th October, 1956; Vol. 558, c. 617.] In particular we were disappointed that it could not be agreed that the Convention should contain provision for the search and seizure of suspected slavers. However, as I have said before, we have to take into consideration the views of other countries, and a number of delegations, backed by the Soviet bloc raised violent, if unreasonable, objections to a clause which we supported, on the grounds that the draft provisions were discriminatory and insulting to national sovereignty and an attempt to re-impose so-called imperialism.

We were not in a position to force other delegations to our way of thinking. For our part we consider that any rights which we possess in this respect under earlier international agreements, for example the Brussels Act. 1890, are not affected by the failure to make specific provision for such rights in the 1956 Convention.

Other suggestions have been put forward for, as it were, reinforcing the 1956 Convention. The hon. Member for Rugby, in a Question on Wednesday, suggested that we should convene a meeting of the signatories of the Brussels Convention. As I said in my reply on 19th December, we doubt whether such a meeting would assist in achieving the objects desired. The signatories of the Brussels Act, 1890, included the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires and Czarist Russia, whose successors are difficult to determine. Moreover, certain of the signatory States, but not, as I have said. Her Majesty's Government, are known to consider that the Brussels Act is no longer in force.

Another point raised by the hon. Member for Rugby was the question of further United Nations machinery. He spoke of a bureau in Zanzibar, which according to the inquiries I have made, has not existed since the First World War, when some individual was kept there. We do not believe that any supplementary machinery is necessary to supervise the application of the slavery Conventions. It is always open to the Secretary-General of the United Nations to suggest further machinery to supplement this Convention, if he sees fit to do so. We will at that time consider any suggestions that he may make, but at the moment the existing machinery of the United Nations seems to be adequate.

Mr. Johnson

Would the hon. Gentleman care to comment upon the suggestion of having an advisory committee of five or seven experts to advise the Economic and Social Council in this matter?

Mr. Dodds-Parker

I was just coming to that matter.

I wish first to finish dealing with the question whether there should be further United Nations supplementary machinery. It is probable that many of the States parties to the 1956 Convention would not have agreed to the establishment of a supervisory organisation, and no such organisation was proposed at the Geneva Conference. On the other hand, the States parties to the Convention are required to co-operate with the United Nations in giving effect to it. They have to communicate to the Secretary-General any laws, regulations, etc., which give effect to it, and the Secretary-General has to communicate this information both to the other parties and to the Economic and Social Council for discussion. If the Secretary-General were to report that he needs an expert consultant, we should be ready to consider any such proposal.

As regards the suggestion of a committee of experts, we doubt if that would be any improvement on existing arrangements under the Economic and Social Council. I think the hon. Member will agree that we can leave that matter there and see what the Secretary-General may feel should follow from that Convention.

In conclusion, I would say that we believe that the 1956 Convention will mark a further stage in intensifying efforts to stamp out practices which we all agree to be repugnant to civilised consciences. We have every reason to be proud of our own record. We have followed a consistent policy throughout, for many years, and it was mainly due to our initiative that action was taken to produce a new Convention. We hope that the largest possible number of countries will accede, and play a full part in intensifying efforts to eradicate slavery and the slave trade.

In the last resort, progress must depend upon the pressure of public opinion here and elsewhere. It is for that reason that we welcome the hon. Member raising this matter today, and I hope that wide notice will be taken of it. The hon. Member mentioned the many Conventions which have been made. I suppose that in the last hundred years this matter has been one of intense public interest. The fact that the House is not as crowded at the moment as some would have liked to see it, is not due merely to the nearness of Christmas but also signifies in some measure the success of the policies, which were largely initiated in this country a hundred years or more ago, for the abolition of this trade.

For our part, we have made and will continue to make a full and wholehearted contribution. We will neglect no opportunity, by peaceful persuasion, and by our own example, to bring other countries to share our purpose.