BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION (NEWS BROADCASTS) (Hansard, 14 November 1956)

§ Mr. Peter Rawlinson (Epsom)
It is a surprising and luxurious circumstance that the Adjournment has been moved at this early hour. I can therefore perhaps escape the usual sound of feet tramping out of the Chamber in making my opening remarks.
Under the threatening heading, "Keep Off", The Times today advises the House that, whatever our individual likes or dislikes about broadcasting programmes, there is nothing that we in this House can do about them. The editor of The Times—described by the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger) on 8th November from the Opposition Front Bench as, "a rather disgraceful character"—is in fact wrong.

§ Mr. Kenneth Younger (Grimsby)
The hon. Member told me that he was going to refer to that remark, and I think I owe it to the editor of The Times and myself to be a little more precise about what I meant by that one word. What I was referring to was that it seems to me that there has been no clear intellectual or moral basis for The Times editorials over a period of three or four months. There has been such obliquity as has not been seen since Geoffrey Dawson was in charge of The Times in 1938–39.

§ Mr. Rawlinson
It is surprising that whenever a back bencher gets up to make any remark a Front Bench right hon. Member will interrupt him. The British Broadcasting Corporation is a corporate body set up by Royal Charter, and by Clause 3 of the Charter it is the duty of the Corporation to provide as public services, broadcasting services of wireless telegraphy and so on both in sound and television— visual images with sound. … to the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and aircraft and ships.
1024 Lord Crawford's Committee of 1925—perhaps the real parent of the present constitution of the Corporation—recommended that the governors should be invested with the maximum freedom which Parliament is prepared to concede, but that Parliament must retain ultimate control. By Clause 15, paragraph 4, of the licence granted to the Corporation, the Government of the day have an absolutely firm veto over the programmes of the Corporation. Of course that is merely a power in reserve to enable Parliament, should it think fit, to secure the compliance of the governors on matters to which Parliament attaches absolute importance. Broadcasting controversial issues is permitted to the Corporation in the faith and the trust that such broadcasting shall be impartial.
As an hon. Member of this House, I attach basic importance to that faith and trust. Unlike right hon. Members opposite, I make no comment on the character of the editor of The Times. It may be that "auld acquaintance" is never forgot and there may be some desire to shield the British Broadcasting Corporation, some sense of nostalgia which has been drifting from Printing House Square to Broadcasting House that led him to defend the Corporation. I have no intention of being deterred—nor has any hon. Member—from raising this issue of basic importance, nor of being silenced by the opinion which has emitted from, I agree, that muddle-headed quarter.
The Corporation is a powerful, alert and influential organisation. No hon. Member would deny that. I do not think it needs any outside defender. I know from personal experience. Within three days of learning that I was to raise this matter on the Adjournment tonight I accepted a social engagement to luncheon with a friend only to find that I was engaged in conversation with another guest, an eminence grise of the directorate, who had arranged the luncheon in order to meet me, to find out, I presume, what I had to say and why I was going to say it. I am quite certain that such conversation as we had went back to the proper quarter.
The motives for setting up the Corporation were to provide a public service. It is described as a public service. Anybody who engages in public service, as we in this House know only too well and to 1025 our cost, finds that in most cases that involves and entails criticism and complaints. It involves not only ourselves but those who enter the public service—the Civil Service, the service of the Crown or whatever it may be—and in such a position one must be man enough to accept the criticism which inevitably will be flung at one.
I cannot understand why this Corporation should be so remarkably sensitive. I appreciate the privileged position of a Member of Parliament. He is able to raise matters of criticism and complaint privileged from any form of legal action, privileged to have this forum in which to speak. I agree and accept that those opportunities should be taken with responsibility. I am the first to acknowledge the Corporation's difficulty. I accept that it has to steer a middle course, which is difficult enough for anyone. I agree that it has to forgo expressing its own opinions. It cannot have an editorial opinion and express itself.
I agree that when men speak in public, again as we in this House know to our cost, there are many times when one may say things, lay emphasis, or use words which one does not in fact intend. That must happen occasionally—in particular, I should imagine, before the television cameras. Nevertheless, I felt constrained to say that I share what I believe to be a widespread impression that the Corporation has not maintained standards of impartiality during the past few weeks over the crisis in the Middle East.
My principal ground of comment and complaint is not, of course, about the time given to either one side or the other. That, I am sure, is or may be fairly balanced, but it is on matters of emphasis, matters of selection, matters of nuance, the use of adjective, the use of tone, that I raise objection, giving what is so well known to be a "slant" on the news. The spoken word sounds so very different to the hearer at the time than when it is read afterwards. When we hear the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan), leaning across the Dispatch Box, saying to the Government, "We want to know, we want to know," a considerable impression is created, but when we read that in the OFFICIAL REPORT it has none of the force and emphasis given by the person making the speech.
1026 Often what it not said is as telling as what is said. The use of an adjective is important. If one speaks of a savage attack one can put into the word "savage" all the savagery one wishes and give an impression of the strength or success of that savagery. One may talk about "a major speech of the Leader of the Opposition" and suggest that the other speeches were of less importance. All these are matters of selectiveness in reporting and not matters of editorship. I do not know whether there have been reported the speeches and views of the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) as we have had reported the divisions on this side of the House. Have we had reported the Cairo broadcast asking for volunteers which has been reproduced by Moscow radio?
Most of these may be small examples, but they add up to something which, I think, shows that the Corporation is guilty of partiality. An example is that on 13th November at 9 a.m. on the Light Programme news there was a report of a speech by the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown). It was reported that the right hon. Gentleman's speech was greeted with cheers. There was them a reference to the reply by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which was reported without comment.
On 11th November, Radio Newsreel gave a recording of the Albert Hall meeting including crowds chanting "Eden must go."

§ Mr. Gordon Walker (Smethwick)
Hear, hear.

§ Mr. Rawlinson
I join issue with the right hon. Gentleman. The report of the Albert Hall meeting included cheers for the Leader of the Opposition and chants of "Eden must go." The balance of that was merely to give an extract from the Prime Minister's Mansion House speech on the Swiss proposals and none of the argument about the Suez crisis. There are many similar points, which my hon. Friends certainly know, and which might appear in detail unimportant, but which in the aggregate assume a considerable significance.
I want to refer particularly to three matters. On 5th November, in the programme entitled "Panorama", the link between Hungary and the Suez, which was so assiduously sought by right hon.
1027 and hon. Gentlemen opposite, was directly introduced. At the end of that programme reference was made to the anger of refugees that Suez had replaced Hungary in the headlines and their fear that it might be used as a bargaining factor in deciding their future. Was this and could this have been the general, widespread opinion of those unfortunate, tragic but simple people who were fleeing from Russian tanks? How was that question put? How was it posed? Who raised it first? It was first introduced at the end of a particular programme.
On the television news of 6th November, a commentary was given purporting to be a report of the proceedings in this House on the day on which the Prime Minister reported on the cease-fire at Port Said, and a totally false impression was given by the commentator that evening. Emphasis was given to the Opposition's cheering of the Prime Minister's speech and the commentator claimed that shouts of "Resign" were directed at the Prime Minister.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker
Quite true.

§ Mr. Rawlinson
I ask the right hon. Gentleman to look at The Times which reported the news the next day and said that the Prime Minister was greeted by a standing ovation, spreading to the Members' Galleries. The Opposition seemed amused, said the report, and it was the Leader of the Opposition who was greeted with cries of "Resign".
This inaccurate and biased report which I have just mentioned was followed by a filmed report of the Albert Hall meeting—perhaps the right hon. Member for Smethwick and other right hon. Members were there—with pictures of the Leader of the Opposition appearing covered with glee. This followed straight after the scenes which had been reported in the television news, giving a wrong, false and, in my view, harmful impression.
On 12th November, in the programme to which I have already referred, "Panorama", there were given purported interviews in the various capitals of the world with various men in the street. I wonder who selected those men in the street. Of course, one can always find those in the street who will agree with one and will oppose the Government. But 1028 why choose, in the main, as they did, those who opposed the Government?
I want to turn to the question of United States opinion. First of all, the reporter got through to Washington, and there again the impression was given that the whole of American opinion was against this country and France. That is utter and absolute nonsense. When a journalist from Tel Aviv was interviewed he had some document which had been captured showing what Egypt had intended to do with Israel and then commented, "A good job well done". The questioner then said he did not agree with something which the journalist had said, and added, sarcastically and with a sneer, "A good job well done!" If the broadcast is impartial, why is that done?
An explanation may well be the effect of the personality of the questioner himself. I think it is well known that he is a former member of the Socialist party and a former Under-Secretary of State in the Socialist Government. I do not know his qualifications, and it is not for me to inquire into why he should be doing this task, but where is his prejudice likely to lie? When such people telephone in the programme to a correspondent in New York, Whom did they choose? They picked the correspondent of the Observer—a newspaper which had certainly made its views known—and asked what he thought about the present crisis. They chose a correspondent well known to me, a personal friend of mine, and a former member of the Labour Party. Of course, they are all of the same club. If one wandered into White's it is unlikely that one would find anybody, except the right hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes), who would be in favour of the Opposition's views.
Of course, once we have a situation in which a programme is being handled in this way, only answers opposed to the Government would be received to the question. The fact that such programmes are presided over with sauve urbanity by somebody whose voice we are more accustomed to hear on the more non-controversial ceremonial occasions does not disguise the fact that these programmes going out to a wide audience are in my view biased and unfair.
I want to deal, next, with overseas broadcasts. I understand that the general overseas broadcasts pay special attention 1029 to audiences in the Commonwealth, British Forces and British communities, whereas the European services go out in the main to Europe, putting the British point of view in comments and Press reviews. These external services are financed by a grant-in-aid of over £5 million voted by the House, and I think it is proper that Parliament should inquire how this money is being used. This service for which the grant-in-aid is given includes, at 6 a.m. in the European News Services, a summary of Press comment. I do not know what its purpose is, but presumably it is to show what the British people are reading, not what journalists are writing. If it is to show what people are reading, in the main, one would imagine that the papers with the largest circulations would be the papers chosen.

§ Mr. Norman Dodds (Erith and Crayford)
Why?

§ Mr. Rawlinson
If we want to give what people are reading in the majority of cases, that is what we should do. It is only if we want to see what people are writing or, as I shall mention in a moment, what the few are reading that we should give extracts from what the few are reading. We should certainly give a considerable amount more from what more people are reading.
Yet in the period 5th November to 8th November the papers with the largest circulation—the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror were not quoted very often; the Daily Express was quoted twice and the Daily Mirror once. Nearly half the words quoted in that period came from The Times, over which the friend of the right hon. Member for Grimsby presides, and the Manchester Guardian; and the only paper mentioned every single day was the paper with the lowest circulation, the Manchester Guardian, with about 163,000 readers.
I should like to know whether these broadcasts were heard in Cyprus prior to the assault. I should like to know whether the reports of the European service went out to the troops and could have been heard by the troops there. I understand from various sources that there have been complaints from troops already back in this country, but I should like to know whether in fact these broadcasts reached the troops 1030 there. If so, were the extracts read from the Manchester Guardian heard by our troops?
May I give a few examples from the editorials of the Manchester Guardian? On 31st October they described the Suez policy as an act of folly without justification in any terms. On 1st November they described it as a disaster of the first magnitude and said, It is wrong on every count—moral, military and political". The editorial said that beyond a first success stretches the nightmare of endless skirmishings and harassings". If those words reached the troops by broadcasts paid for by public money and by the taxpayer, is not that calculated to create doubts and divisions among the men?

§ Mr. George Wigg (Dudley)
I hope so.

§ Mr. Rawlinson
I understand from the hon. Gentleman's interjection that he hopes that doubt and division were caused among our troops if these words were read to them at a time when they were about to go into this assault. I have had personal experience of this, as perhaps have many hon. Members on both sides. I can remember during the war, while I was in a wagon in an olive grove, picking up a broadcast of news from home—I think in 1943—in which there was some talk of a strike. The anger which that caused all of us at that time can be imagined. I am not talking of whether the strike was good or bad, but of the anger which that broadcast news caused people about to be engaged in battle. What more stupid action could be taken than to have such news reaching troops just before a battle?
The overseas broadcast should speak in the name of the Government of the day. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] It should broadcast the foreign policy of that Government of the day. I speak here of the overseas broadcasts, and in regard to foreign policy. That should be the policy of the Government of the day approved by this House; the foreign policy of the Government which is maintained by a majority of this House. That should be the only thing that should be sent out in the name of this country. I would refer to a pamphlet which has been sent to me called "Britain's Voice Abroad." That, 1031 I think, sets out many of the things that should be done, such as the setting up of a Ministry of Information, so that, in overseas affairs, this country should have a proper propaganda voice to go out all over the world.
I believe that in the last few weeks the British Broadcasting Corporation has failed to maintain that standard which it ought to have maintained. The Ullswater Committee in 1935 said that the object of B.B.C. news bulletins should be: … a fair selection of items impartially presented. I and many of my hon. Friends,, and many of my fellow-countrymen, have an uneasy opinion that the B.B.C. has fallen short of that standard of fairness and impartiality.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker (Smethwick)
The hon. Member for Epsom (Mr. Rawlinson) has been complaining of the selectivity of the B.B.C., but I must say that he has given an extraordinarily good example of selective quotation, and has deliberately set out to give a very false and prejudiced impression of the broadcasts sent out in this country and abroad by the B.B.C. He quoted the television programme called "Panorama", which dealt with Hungary and Suez in the same programme. But these two things happened in the same week. They happened together. Is he asking the B.B.C. to suppress from the viewers either the events in Suez or the events in Hungary?

§ Mr. Rawlinson
indicated dissent.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker
The hon. Member said that it was a terrible thing that the two were put together—that there was a link between them—but there has been tremendous talk, as everyone knows, in Central Europe—and particularly among those who are near to Hungary—about what they regard as a very sad thing: that the attention of the world was diverted from Hungary to Egypt. There is no doubt that this has been widely said, and to have failed to report it would have been a suppression of news. That is the only link there was in this B.B.C. programme between these two things—things that happened.

§ Mr. Rawlinson
indicated dissent.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker
The hon. Gentleman quoted it, and said that this link was made, but it would have been a suppression of news not to have mentioned both these events.

§ Mr. Rawlinson
I did not, in fact, say that. There were two programmes of "Panorama" to which I referred. The one on 5th November was purely the link which was sought among the refugees coming from Hungary. What I wanted to know was the form of the question put to such refugees, which asked them to say that they were so much upset by the fact that the news of Suez should have driven the news of Hungary from the newspapers.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker
It would have taken most skilful work to suppress that, because everyone knows that it was being said that the coincidence of the two things was extremely unfortunate.
Not only the B.B.C., but the whole of the Press has reported that the Hungarians were very disturbed. They were not blaming the British Government, but they were very disturbed that the coincidence of the two items had diverted attention from Hungary to Egypt—and it certainly succeeded in dong that, both here and abroad. Vast numbers of refugees were saying this, and for the B.B.C. so to have framed its questions as to elicit a different answer would have ben gross misreporting.

§ Mr. G. R. Howard (St. Ives)
I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman would consider this to be unbiased reporting? During the first week of the wonderful fight put up by the Freedom Fighters in Hungary, I listened to practically every news broadcast. There was not one word spoken of the Freedom Fighters. Further, later in the week, the B.B.C. issued a Communist statement saying that the fighting was over. If that is not biased, I do not know what is.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker
And were not such reports of that statement appearing in the newspapers? The B.B.C. must give the news, which may consist, also, of statements put out which may not be true.

§ Mr. Howard
In every newspaper there were reports of the Freedom Fighters, but there was not one word about them on the B.B.C.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker
Of course there were. I heard them myself. The hon. Member must have been very unfortunate. I distinctly remember, during the first week, reports of the Freedom Fighters—reports giving a very vivid picture. It may be that the hon. Member missed one.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. There are two many interventions. The right hon. Gentleman ought to be allowed to continue.

§ Mr. Nabarro
On the news last Sunday, the B.B.C.'s own reporter from Hungary was given only five minutes to give his personal account of events in that country.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker
I am very glad to hear it. Five minutes is a very considerable amount of time to be allotted in a news broadcast. I am grateful for the hon. Member's support.
The hon. Member for Epsom made a great deal of fuss about the B.B.C. saying that there were shouts of "Resign" when the Prime Minister announced the ceasefire, and that those shouts of "Resign" were directed at the Prime Minister. He seems to have thought that because The Times said that the shouts were directed at the Leader of the Opposition, The Times must be right and the B.B.C. wrong. I was present on that occasion. I am not sure that the word "Resign" did not escape my lips, but I am quite sure that, if it did, it did not refer to the Leader of the Opposition. The answer is that different observers of the same scene can draw different conclusions from it. Certainly, shouts of "Resign" were directed at the Prime Minister at that time.
The hon. Member says that the B.B.C. was monstrous because, in this week of action in Egypt, by the British Government, the Corporation tried to collect the opinions of men in the street all over the world, and that a good many of those reports turned out to be unfavourable to the Government. The simple fact is that that was the state of world opinion at the time. It was not very easy in America or India, or anywhere outside France—and some people in this country 1034 —to find someone supporting this country's action. To have kept those opinions quiet would have needed selective action by the B.B.C. in its search for interviews. As a matter of fact, world opinion is still strongly against us. I think that the Foreign Secretary would find it very unwise to go to Washington from New York. If he did, he would find himself up against a lot of hostile opinion which, no doubt, the hon. Gentleman would like the B.B.C. to suppress.
There have been, as the hon. Member did not mention, some very clear statements, programmes and talks on the B.B.C. in support of the Government's case. That is quite right—quite right. No one on this side objects to that, but the hon. Gentleman did not trouble to make even formal reference to them. There have been talks, and so on, by Mr. Sidney Carroll, Sir Alec Kirkbride and others; quite clear, strong statements, with which I totally disagree, though I am quite sure that they should have been broadcast because, of course, these things should be broadcast.
Nevertheless, the hon. Member seems to think that only defences of the Government's policy should foe broadcast. He certainly said that about overseas matters, but the burden of his speech seemed to be that anything which could possibly be twisted into criticism of the Government was worthy of his comment, while he absolutely ignored important comment and statements that were made in favour of the Government.
When the hon. Member came to what he said about the Overseas Service of the B.B.C., I was really appalled to hear any hon. Member uttering that sort of ideas, and I hope that the Assistant Postmaster-General will make it quite clear that we are not going to have any direct censorship by the Government in pursuit of their own policy of the Overseas Service or, indeed, any party political considerations entering into the control, running and content of our Overseas Service.
The hon. Gentleman gave as an example of this sort of thing something which has been going on for many years, and which goes out in many languages, that is, a review of opinion in the Press and particularly in periodicals. He seemed to think that one only reads things to find out what the people are reading.
1035 Does he not read the New York Times, which reaches here? I read that not to hear what Americans are reading, but to ascertain specifically what the New York Times is saying. This B.B.C. programme has been going on for a long time and we have had long experience of what listeners want to hear.
After all, one of the purposes of broadcasting is to give the listener what he wants to hear. Many people abroad want to know the views of certain opinion-forming papers like The Times, the Manchester Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and others. That has been found to be the experience. People abroad, and many newspapermen among them, want to discover what papers like the Manchester Guardian, in particular, and The Times and others are saying. One of the functions of broadcasting is to broadcast what the listeners want to listen to, especially in overseas broadcasting.
It is extremely easy for anyone to turn off overseas broadcasting. If we broadcast in the overseas programmes only news of which the Government of the day approve, and which we strictly censor, there would be no listeners at all. The only reason that the B.B.C. has its enormous tradition in the world is that it reports freely, objectively and evenly the views and different ideas held in this country. If we had the hon. Gentleman's appalling ideas of censorship and direction from the Government he might be satisfied to hear that all this was going on the air, but it would not be impinging on anyone's ears.
No one wants to listen to propaganda of that sort. That is what the hon. Gentleman said—that the views of the Opposition should be suppressed and that there should be no balance in our broadcasting overseas. Does the hon. Gentleman think that we are going to get listeners on those terms, when other people will be broadcasting views expressed by Liberal people, Labour people and others and when Britain specifically, when there is a Conservative Government, will be broadcasting only Conservative opinion and, when there is a Labour Government, broadcasting only Labour opinion?

§ Mr. Rawlinson
I never said anything about opinion. All that I said was that 1036 in my view overseas broadcasts should be used by the Government of the day, whatever their colour, to speak the foreign policy of this country all over the world.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker
If anybody in England criticises that policy then I suppose his speeches are to be suppressed. If not, what does the hon. Gentleman mean? Of course, when the Prime Minister makes a statement the B.B.C. gives great prominence to it overseas, and if there is criticism it gives some time to that accordingly. If the hon. Gentleman means that all the views on both sides are to be given equally then, of course, we will be going on as we are now and he will not have what he wants.

§ Mr. F. M. Bennett (Torquay)
I have listened with considerable interest to the right hon. Gentleman. During the height of the Mau Mau disturbances in Kenya I, in common with some of my colleagues, had conversations with the Director-General of the B.B.C., in which we complained that certain of the B.B.C. programmes were likely to give strength and support to Mau Mau elements out there. We had very carefully drawn to our attention then, by Sir Ian Jacob, that careful distinction must be drawn between home and overseas programmes. The right hon. Gentleman is ignoring the opinion of the Director-General that the general purpose should be to carry out the overseas policy of the Government of the day. He is speaking against what the Director-General said at that time.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker
I am saying what the Director-General has often said to me, and not only the present Director-General but previous Director-Generals—that one of the basic principles of our overseas news service, in particular, is that there should not be a distinction between the news broadcast to our own people at home and that broadcast to people abroad. A general service programme is going to people abroad and even within their own countries; and if someone listening hears that the British are broadcasting different news to different areas it immediately destroys our impartiality in the world.
I cannot believe that the hon. Gentleman properly understood what the Director-General was saying, because this has been the principle of overseas broadcasting and an absolutely right one, 1037 because any departure from it or any hint to the listener which he can pick up by reading the papers that the British are fiddling things, picking out things and broadcasting differing views—

§ Mr. Bennett
I did not say that we should send abroad different sorts of news. I said, with emphasis, that the overseas programme should go along in accordance with the foreign policy of this country. That was the only phrase that I used, and that was the undertaking which I was given by the Director-General at that time.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker
It does not seem that the hon. Gentleman has altered it at all. He is now saying that the news bulletin for abroad should be emphasised in a different way from broadcasts at home. If he is not talking about news bulletins he must be talking only about talks and he is saying, "We agree that the views of hon. Gentlemen opposite should be censored and programmes ought to be different according to the audience to which they are going." That would be absolutely fatal.
The overseas broadcasts must reflect as fairly as the people doing it can manage the views of Britain. What we stand to gain in the world is a picture of British democracy at work, the clash of views and argument. And we are putting that across to people who do not have to listen and who can very easily switch off, and who, on the whole, are inclined to switch off. If we are to have a selected emphasised programme they will just turn off and the money spent will be completely wasted—money which is very well spent at the moment. I hope that the Assistant Postmaster-General will give a completely firm and negative reply to the really dangerous suggestions which have come from behind him.

§ Mr. Charles Ian Orr-Ewing (Hendon, North)
I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom (Mr. Rawlinson) has chosen this subject for debate because it has come at the end of a period when we in this House have had greater strains, probably greater arguments and probably higher feeling than at any time for many years.
I have always had the greatest admiration for the way in which the B.B.C. 1038 Parliamentary reporters have plucked the main content of our debates, which are often rather woolly, and have summarised and made sense out of them. But I am bound to point out that that very high standard does not appear to have been maintained during the last 14 days. One has had an opportunity of sitting in this Chamber through hours of debate and then going home and, in case there has been fresh news, immediately listening to the reports of our debates on the nine or ten o'clock news. In that way, one has had a first-class opportunity of comparing what actually happened with what, in fact, was meant to have happened in the eyes of the B.B.C. Parliamentary reporters.
I should like to quote one or two examples where, I must say, they were blatantly biased. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that on Thursday, 1st November, the Prime Minister made his first major speech in the crisis, and when he sat down he was given a tremendous welcome and prolonged cheers from this side of the House. I have looked through the journals the following day and every one of them reports that fact. The Times, which has not been particularly friendly to the Government in the latter part of this crisis, reports that when the Prime Minister sat down there were (Loud and prolonged Ministerial cheers). I understand that in the modest terms of The Times that is equivalent to a five-star programme, as it were, if I may borrow the jargon of Michelin to describe these things. That is the the strongest applause that can be recorded in that sedate paper. The other papers did very much the same.
When I listened to the report of this occasion on the B.B.C. I was amazed. There was no such comment whatever, and apparently the Prime Minister sat down in complete silence. I therefore sent for the script, and I have it with me. After saying that the scenes had been described by many as the most remarkable in living memory, which I am sure, Mr. Speaker, must be very close to your mind, the report goes on: There was a loud burst of cheering when the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Gaitskell, asked, 'Is the Minister aware that millions of British people were profoundly shocked and ashamed?' At the end of the report of the Prime Minister's speech there was a complete 1039 blank. Was that accidental, or was it biased and slanted?
If I may take another example, we had on 5th November the cease-fire. There was a flash signal and it raised tremendous interest in the House. I remember that these benches were extremely elated and very excited.

§ Mr. James Callaghan (Cardiff, South-East)
Hysterical.

§ Mr. Orr-Ewing
In fact, The Times said: Conservative Members jumped to their feet cheering jubilantly. When I listened to the proceedings there was very modest jubilation, to put it mildly, on the other side of the House. The papers the next day said that hon. Members opposite looked extremely gloomy. That was the general reporting of all the newspapers, but there was no mention of this at all on the B.B.C. In fact, it was rather biased in the other direction.
I then came across another example. I only raise these points because I have received lots of letters and representations on this matter from many quarters. This is not just an idea of my own. Many people feel most strongly. I came across the report by Richard Scott in what is generally an extremely interesting programme, "The World and Ourselves," from 8.15 to 8.30. On Thursday, 8th November, he finished with these words: Whatever one may feel about the rights and wrongs of our action against Egypt, they have played some part in the Russian action. He was dealing with the connection between Hungary and Suez, which has been so dear to the Opposition. He says, in conclusion: The Russian forces were pulling out of Hungary and then we went into Egypt. Russian forces were sent back into Hungary in greater numbers. That, it has since been revealed, is absolutely untrue.
The Foreign Secretary, from the Dispatch Box, before the Suez operation was launched, said that although Press reports said that the Russians were pulling out, his information from Hungary was that their forces were moving in. All hon. Gentlemen who were in the House at the time will remember that fact. In yesterday's debate it was revealed that 1040 Shepilov himself, as reported in the Daily Herald, said the same, that they were reinforcing. This item, which is meant to be objective comment in an important listening hour, was inaccurate and, I maintain, biased.

§ Mr. Callaghan
Let us get quite clear what the complaint is. This man Richard Scott, whoever he is, is presumably one commentator among numerous Press commentators who all reported that the Russians were pulling out. Why should the hon. Gentleman assume that he was biased? At a later date the Foreign Secretary was able to say from information available to him that in fact all those reporters and commentators were wrong. How does that prove bias?

§ Mr. Orr-Ewing
The hon. Gentleman is wrong. The Foreign Secretary said before Suez was launched, in answer to a supplementary question, that his information was that the Russians were reinforcing, and that was contrary to the general reports that had been received. I ought perhaps to add that Mr. Scott is a member of the Manchester Guardian staff, so that one might expect him to express a view which might not be in accord with Government policy.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker
Should there, then, be censorship of the B.B.C.?

§ Mr. Orr-Ewing
I think that that is too trivial a point to be taken up.
I now come to the programme "Panorama", to which attention has been drawn. I think that that programme on 12th November, which I saw and of which I made careful notes, was extremely heavily biased. I am not going to enter into the 14-day rule controversy, but, certainly, the programme paid no attention to that. As a matter of fact, I have always been opposed to the rule. The programme managed to select Berliners, every one of whom came to the conclusion that Britain had been the aggressor. Then two or three French people were found who were apparently not interested in Egypt where their forces were fighting and dying, but who said that this was a tragedy for Hungary. I cannot believe that there was not the most careful selection of people who held that point of view, and that led to a series of interviews.
I was also rather sorry that the B.B.C. overlooked the contribution made by the 1041 right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) who, after all, as a former Labour Minister of Defence, holds an opinion which should be greatly valued in overseas broadcasts. It was reported on the I.T.A. that …the former Labour Defence Minister said that Franco-British intervention in the Middle East was 'inevitable.' 'I think it will be shown', he said, 'that our action, although drastic and fraught with difficulties and dangers, will prove in the long-run to have been right'. The B.B.C. made no reference to that in any of its news bulletins.

§ Mr. Wigg
Of course, the B.B.C. might have had some regard for taste. My right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) had gone abroad, I think, as a representative of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, and in all good taste he might, therefore, have kept his mouth shut on controversial matters.

§ Mr. Orr-Ewing
Surely the hon. Gentleman is not going to say that the former Minister of Defence should be censored?

§ Mr. Wigg
He should censor himself.

§ Mr. Orr-Ewing
We are not anxious to see the B.B.C. put in the box, but we have an obligation in this House to draw attention to errors when they occur. The B.B.C. has a very strong position in the minds, and, I believe, in the hearts as well, of many people in this country. We do not wish to see it drift into biased reporting when it has previously set a very high standard. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Assistant Postmaster-General might consider the setting up of an inquiry—I do not mean an outside inquiry, but an inquiry within the B.B.C.—to look into the reporting and the general slant which has been given during the last 14 days. This might help to calm some of those fears which many of us now feel.

§ Mr. Charles Pannell (Leeds, West)
Any hon. Member speaking from this side of the House is under a considerable disadvantage, because obviously the hon. Member for Epsom (Mr. Rawlinson) came here with a well prepared brief. It is none the worst for that. After all, he comes here with a brief and one must answer that brief. It appears, by the stamp of it, that it was worked out at 1042 the Tory Central Office. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I think that the Tory Central Office could work this brief out very well without any advice from hon. Members opposite. This brief has been well worked out, if not by the Tory Office, then by someone else. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman burnt much midnight oil over it himself. He did not smell so much of the lamp when he spoke.

§ Mr. Rawlinson
My words are my own words; they are the sweat of my own brow.

§ Mr. Pannell
I can only say that it is most remarkable, but if the hon. Gentleman assures me of that, of course I believe him.

§ Mr. Pannell
No, I cannot give way too many times to the hon. Gentleman. I have accepted what he says. He has instituted himself as a monitoring service—

§ Mr. Pannell
Let me finish. He has searched all through the scripts. He has rushed away from the debates in this House, and directly he tunes in something happens which offends his sensitive ear.

§ Mr. Rawlinson
Perhaps I misled the hon. Gentleman. When he talked about "briefs", I understood him to mean briefs in the technical sense, as I know-something about briefs. All I meant was that my speech was my own. I say that facts are facts, and I have presented them, to this House. I do not say that I heard, every broadcast to which I referred.

§ Mr. Pannell
The hon. Gentleman has given me my case. He came here with a brief in the political sense—a political brief—prepared by someone who wished to prove a case; and the hon. Gentleman has digested the stuff which was prepared for him.
I have worked on other people's briefs in my time and this is supposed to be the "sixth form" of politics and not the "prep school". After all, the hon. Gentleman does come from Epsom where they know more about the Jockey Club than anything else. Let us be sensible about this. If the normal business of the House had gone the full period, the hon.
1043 Gentleman would probably have had a quarter-of-an-hour in which to speak, and then the Assistant Postmaster-General would have replied. I hope that the Assistant Postmaster-General will not consider it offensive if I say that both he and the hon. Member are members of the same political party, and I have no doubt that the Assistant Postmaster-General would have robustly defended the B.B.C. But it is fortunate that this evening we have more time in which to examine this brief.
Having got it clear that this brief was probably worked out by the Tory Central Office, the charge presumably is that the B.B.C. has not given the Government a fair crack of the whip in a time of considerable difficulty when the Government have been under considerable criticism. I have arrived back where I started; it is difficult for anyone, speaking from this side of the House, to answer and put up a case and examine every one of those instances which have been recorded. I think the hon. Gentleman will admit that.
The hon. Member said that words are different when they are spoken from when they are written. Of course that is true. I recall all the emotionally-toned question-begging phrases of the Prime Minister day after day, when he was retreating from the half-truth of the day before—a catalogue of which was given yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens). It was a time of very great emotion. My right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown) was cheered. The hon. Member criticised that, and then objected because the B.B.C. did not record that the Prime Minister was cheered enough.

§ Mr. Rawlinson
The Chancellor was cheered and they did not mention that.

§ Mr. Pannell
I remember writing an article for a paper, and I remember that speech, and I remember saying that it was a speech which the Chancellor would want to forget.
It is all a question of the point of view. When the hon. Member for Epsom is referred to by his constituents, presumably they refer to him as a remarkable up-and-coming young politician. But the Epsom Labour Party might refer to him as a "cheap careerist" or something like that. It is only a matter of 1044 taste and one has to be careful. That is part of the stock in trade of democracy. We support our friends and we set about our enemies.

§ Mr. Pannell
How many more?

§ Sir Henry Studholme (Tavistock)
The hon. Gentleman is making my hon. Friend's case for him. The B.B.C. is not a political party, and should not be.

§ Mr. Pannell
The hon. Member had better be careful. I once went with him on a tour to Belgium. When he gets outside this Chamber the hon. Gentleman is quite an agreeable individual. But in this Chamber the other week he was going into hysterics. It merely indicates how people get all hot under the collar when they start discussing this sort of thing.
Over the years the B.B.C. has built up a reputation for the faithful recording of news. It is one of the "chips" on the shoulders of the newspapers that, generally speaking, the people of this country believe less and less what they read in the newspapers. They read the newspapers for enjoyment and entertainment and turn to the radio for real news. I give it as a generalisation that the political influence of a newspaper is in inverse ratio to its circulation.

§ Mr. Nabarro
The Daily Mirror.

§ Mr. Pannell
I am giving that as a general opinion. [HON. MEMBERS: "The Daily Express."] All right, take the Express if hon. Members wish. I am merely taking those two papers, one which is behind the Government and one against them, but broadly speaking the opinion-forming newspapers of this country are not those with a mass circulation. I offended a respectable Yorkshire newspaper on one occasion. The newspaper had attacked me and suggested that I was "going down the drain". When at the declaration of the poll I got a 7,000 majority, I said it was a good thing that the "tripe" that goes into the papers today often only wraps up the fish and chips.
It is easy to make these general charges against broadcasting. My interest in this House, apart from my interest as the representative of West Leeds, is that I am I trade union representative. The 1045 general charge which I would bring against the B.B.C. is a lack of trade union speakers, particularly in programmes like "Any Questions," and particularly on occasions—

§ Mr. Nabarro
Why?

§ Mr. Pannell
Just one moment. That is particularly so when trade union questions are discussed, such as, for example, the question of sending strikers to Coventry. As a man with a life-time of experience in the trade union movement, and as one who has been on strike himself many times, that criticism has often occurred to me. I may as well take the House fully into my confidence and say that from time to time when I have heard the silly answers given by hon. Members who sit on this side of the House and who happen to be on the panel on such occasions, I have thought that they displayed a lack of understanding of the trade union movement.

§ Mr. Pannell
No, I cannot give way too many times—we are not debating carpets now.
I want now to deal with a point which was made by the hon. Member for Epsom. He particularly criticised "Panorama." What was the objection? My intervening on this subject is largely the result of a personal friendship with Woodrow Wyatt. Wyatt was an Under-Secretary of State for War, and I defy any hon. Member who knew him to dispute his robust patriotism, as a result of which he was prepared to stand against many people in the Labour Party. He had a robust patriotism, freely expressed, and a remarkable degree of courage. He is an honest witness; he would not pervert the truth to the disadvantage of this country. What is his record? He went straight from school into the Forces, and then from the Forces into Parliament. Hon. Members on both sides of the House know him. He may have a point of view which is dissimilar to that of some people, but no one can doubt his integrity.
The programme is not generally under the control of Woodrow Wyatt. I believe it is generally steered by Richard Dimbleby. I hope I am not doing Dimbleby a grave injustice, but I imagine that he may be as far removed 1046 on one side of the political fence as Woodrow Wyatt is on the other. Dimbleby's is the delightful voice which records Royal occasions with a remarkable degree of dignity. His is a remarkable personality. Surely one gets a balance in personalities there. One can almost imagine the reverent hush in Dimbleby's voice when Royalty is mentioned.
The hon. Gentleman put forward the doctrine that the B.B.C.'s overseas broadcasts should, in the main, be the voice of the Government. Let us look at that doctrine in the light of political history. Just before I entered the House, when I was fighting my by-election in 1949, the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill), then Leader of the Opposition, made a terrific speech at Wolverhampton in which he castigated the whole of the British people as Weary Willies and Tired Tims. It amounted to a general view of the slothfulness of the British people living upon American charity.
If one likes to equate that with the values of the hon. Member for Epsom, I cannot imagine anything more damaging to British morale and prestige at that time when we were fighting an economic battle. We had had devaluation, which, in the economic field, was as difficult and as dangerous an operation as the one in which we have just been engaged. Surely the hon. Member would not say that the right hon. Member for Woodford at that time, having been the wartime Prime Minister, should not have received great coverage in the international news as a responsible leader of British opinion.

§ Mr. Rawlinson
I made it quite clear in my speech that I was referring to matters of foreign policy. I said that on matters of foreign policy the overseas programmes should speak the Government's policy.

§ Mr. Pannell
The hon. Gentleman gets himself into a difficulty. He says "matters of foreign policy". Surely our foreign policies are influenced by the type of people we are. When an ex-Prime Minister makes a speech of the kind that the right hon. Member for Woodford did about American aid, is that not a matter of foreign policy? Of course it is. The overseas broadcast is in the main presenting Britain to the world. The 1047 things that we do at home are as important as the things we do in Egypt.
How does this doctrine stand up in the light of later circumstances? In 1950 and 1951 the Labour Government had a majority of six. I can imagine what would have happened if this doctrine had been enunciated by the B.B.C. at that time. When a country is as evenly divided as ours is, we cannot say that the Government which happens to have a majority at a certain time shall have its view alone broadcast and that there shall be no reference to the view of anybody else. What happened between 1951 and 1955? The Government had a majority in the House but a minority in the Government.
The idea that, somehow, a propaganda view can be put over will not stand. I believe that the hon. Member advanced his theory in good faith, but it will not stand up to democratic processes. We must face self-criticism from time to time. When I was recently in America I found that the people there would stand any amount of criticism provided they believed it was fundamentally sincere. That is one of the best things about the American people.
I was asked to speak at a foreign policy forum at Pittsburgh. I am not a member of the biggest club in the House of Commons, that of the potential Foreign Secretaries, and so I gave an address on "Why an Englishman must occasionally disagree with the Americans". That is a foreign policy subject in the context of England and America.
When the right hon. Member for Woodford was saying that we were Weary Willies and Tired Tims, I had to spend a lot of time pointing out that by all the national indices of production rates, production per man-hour, and so on, we were the champions of the first division in the European league. Was that not a foreign policy subject? In a democracy one cannot allow the Government of the day to decide what shall be sent out on the Overseas broadcasts of the B.B.C.
There is also the question, mentioned by the hon. Member for Hendon, North (Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing), of what the Foreign Secretary said about troops in Hungary. I speak from memory here. I thought the Foreign Secretary said that 1048 Soviet troops were there in substantial numbers.

§ Mr. F. M. Bennett
The hon. Member says that he is relying on his recollection. I have the quotations hare. In the broadcast about which my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North (Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing) was complaining in "The World and Ourselves" on Thursday, 8th November, the following words were used: Whatever one may feel about the wrongs of it, our action against Egypt has played some part in Russian action. Russian forces were pulling out of Hungary, and then we went into Egypt and Russian forces were sent back into Hungary in greater numbers. On 29th October the Foreign Secretary, in response to a query from the Leader of the Opposition, made this statement: The right hon. Gentleman asked about the movement of additional troops. Our information is in accordance with what he said, that further Soviet troops are being moved into Hungary towards the capital."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th October, 1956; Vol. 558, c. 1072.] That was nine days before the broadcast which said precisely the opposite.

§ Mr. Pannell
I have a recollection of it being said at some stage or other that a considerable number of troops were in Hungary at that time.
In moments of considerable passion we are inclined to feel that our side is doing well and that the other side is, in all the circumstances, doing rather poorly. Otherwise we should not be political partisans. On the other hand, the hon. Member for Epsom will appreciate that, given a similar amount of time and a similar body of researchers beside me, I could have picked out items from the B.B.C.'s broadcasts to prove the opposite of what he set out to prove. The hon. Gentleman has had a considerable advantage this evening, although I do not think that he meant to be unfair. I I am sure he will grant that there is in the minds of people abroad a considerable connection between Hungary and Egypt. I do not want to labour that; I merely want to make my point clear. I rather take the point of view of my hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Daines) who spoke yesterday.
Generally speaking, whatever the rights or wrongs, it is undoubtedly true that while we were diverting ourselves in Egypt we were not completely free and united as a nation to face the Hungarian war 1049 threat which, in my view, was a greater one than that which we faced in Egypt. That is purely a matter of opinion. To that extent—that a greater evil was committed—there is a degree of guilt in the matter. That is purely a point of view, but I am sure the hon. Member will accept that among all sorts of people this view is shared to a considerable extent.
With all its shortcomings, I believe that the B.B.C. has built up in this country a tradition of faithful reporting, which lends to keep the newspapers on the right lines.

§ Sir Robert Grimston (Westbury)
The hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) referred to the fact that he had not had time to conduct research into this question—and that is quite understood. But I would tell him that one of the objects of raising this matter is that there shall be some research into the question, because many of my hon. Friends feel—and my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom (Mr. Rawlinson) has adduced a good deal of evidence in the matter—that in this crisis the B.B.C. has shown both a direct bias and a bias by way of slant, in the presentation of news, and so on, against the Government. That is a serious charge to make, and we should not make it if we did not feel from our own observations, and also from what we have heard from other people, that the matter needs inquiring into.
I should like to deal, first, with something which has not yet been mentioned, namely, the question of party political broadcasts. In the past it has always been the case that, at a time of crisis, the Prime Minister broadcasts to the nation. He broadcasts as Prime Minister, and the question of a party political broadcast does not enter into the consideration. That practice was completely reversed in the case of the series of broadcasts which took place a week ago.

§ Mr. Wigg
Nonsense.

§ Sir R. Grimston
The Prime Minister's broadcast to the nation was followed, next evening, by that of the Leader of the Opposition. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Hon. Members opposite are cheering, but it is more than likely that one of the results of that broadcast was the great swing to the support of the Government which has taken place. By 1050 most people that broadcast is regarded as one of the most disgraceful ever made. But that is not the point we are talking about now.
My point is that one or two nights after those two broadcasts there was another party political broadcast, by the Foreign Secretary—

§ Mr. C. Pannell
I suppose that was brilliant.

§ Sir R. Grimston
It seemed to me that the proper balance had then been reached. The Prime Minister had broadcast to the nation as Prime Minister, and there had been two party political broadcasts. Not at bit of it; the B.B.C. then put on the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths), the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, on the following night. I suggest that that departure from the usual precedent, which has been the practice of the B.B.C. throughout the whole war and since, was an indication of some bias against the Government.
I now turn to other matters. What is far more insidious than that direct example of bias is the slant which is sometimes given, because it is very much more difficult to deal with. I want to mention some correspondence that I have had with the B.B.C. concerning the broadcasts to the Armed Forces, which have been referred to by my hon. Friend. It had come to my knowledge that the excerpts of Press reports to the Forces had been very much biased against the Government. I wrote to the B.B.C. saying. I should be glad if you would let me have a transcript of all the news bulletins broadcast to the Forces by the B.B.C. during the period of the crisis. I wrote to Sir Ian Jacob, but he is away in Australia and the Head of the Secretariat wrote back in his absence, saying: The news bulletins in the Light Programme are relayed by the British Forces Network in Germany during the evening. In other parts of the world the bulletins in the B.B.C.'s General Overseas Service are made available either by relay or by short wave reception for those serving in the Forces. The total number of bulletins and other news reports broadcast in these ways during the crisis is very large, and I am afraid that it would not be practicable to provide you with a transcript of all of them. If there is any particular broadcast in which you are interested, I shall be very glad to send you a transcript of it. I do not complain about the statement that it would be difficult to supply all the transcripts—although I do not very 1051 much like the word "practicable"; that cannot be true. I would agree that it might be asking for rather a lot. But somebody must go through all these broadcasts to the Forces and find out whether or not the slant and bias that we complain of, as summarised by my hon. Friend, is correct. This must be done by Members of Parliament, or by the Government—or by somebody or other.
I now want to give an illustration of the type of slant which seems to me to indicate a bias. I watched the television broadcast of the Lord Mayor's Mansion House dinner. I have been told by a number of my friends who were at the dinner, and I have heard from other people as well, that when the Prime Minister sat down at the conclusion of his speech he received an ovation.

§ Mr. Wigg
Of course.

§ Sir R. Grimston
I am very glad that the hon. Member is helping me to make my case.
That was not the impression created by the way in which the B.B.C. faded out that applause. It was most marked on the television broadcast. I am told that it was cut out on the sound broadcast, and that the announcer then came on and said there would be a seven-minute interval before the next programme, which would be used for playing records. That indicated that there was absolutely no necessity to cut out the applause, except by deliberate intent.
Those are the sort of things which have been happening and which have brought us to make this protest about the insidious way in which this bias against the Government has been put over. I do not think that it has been going on at the top levels; it has obviously been going on lower down. But this is a serious charge against a State monopoly which is supposed to be impartial; and an inquiry should be put on foot to go into all these questions, and, if necessary, take evidence so as to establish either that we are right in what we say or that we are wrong. At least that should be done, both in fairness to the Government and to the B.B.C.

§ Mr. George Wigg (Dudley)
Up to hearing the hon. Member for Westbury (Sir R. Grimston) I had thought that this 1052 was a serious debate. I suppose the hon. Member must be taken seriously, because there must be a majority of people in his constituency who voted for him—though goodness knows why. The only thing I can imagine is that he goes round his constituency and, instead of making political speeches, puts on the kind of performance to which we have just listened.
The hon. Member has been a Member of this House for years, but he does not even understand the procedure whereby political broadcasts are arranged. He imagines that they are doled out, presumably on a coupon basis, by the Director-General of the B.B.C. He does not understand that there has been an agreement between the political parties that any political party, at any time, can arrange with the B.B.C. to make a broadcast. I beg leave to doubt that he really thinks that the broadcast made by the Leader of the Opposition was disgraceful. What he probably thinks is that it was effective.
Another thing that he does not understand is that there is a world of difference between the Prime Minister broadcasting as the Prime Minister and a vain, inglorious creature, abusing his position to get possession of the microphone and to broadcast on all wavelengths, and also to use Eurovision, to bolster up a weakening and a party case.
Speaking personally, I have no complaint. The Prime Minister can broadcast every night in the week, the Foreign Secretary can broadcast every afternoon and hon. Members opposite can have all the rest of the time on the one condition that they announce their label. What I object to are the insidious broadcasts which are put over as being authoritative and to the poor listener being led to believe that what he is listening to is a very objective, learned dissertation, whereas, in fact, it is nothing but Tory propaganda.
I happened to be in a rather unusual position during the course of the—

§ Mr. C. Pannell
Before my hon. Friend leaves that point, I should like to point out that, of course, the briefs are prepared in the same place.

§ Mr. Wigg
My hon. Friend prompts me to say what I was going to say about it. He is absolutely right, of course, in 1053 pointing out that the Government's timetable has gone a little wrong or that the Conservative Central Office has gone a little wrong.
What happened was that they looked round the benches and saw a young man who had a good record in dock briefs, in getting a man off with 14 days instead of 28—the hon. Member for Epsom (Mr. Rawlinson). They supplied him with a brief and hoped that he would come to the House between 10 and 10.15 p.m. and speak for 15 minutes and that the Minister would speak for another 15 minutes in reply with the result that the screw would then be put on the B.B.C. which would make it a little safer for the Tory Party. Unfortunately, the business has not worked out that way. I have now 2¼ hours in which to outline my case, and I propose to do it.
The first interesting point made by the hon. Member for Epsom was when he and his hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North (Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing) thought they had scored a major point—subversion—because I wanted the troops to listen to the overseas broadcast. It just happens that on the day when the Israeli attack was made, under cover of British troops, I was just north of Cyprus. I had sailed that morning from Izmit, after a trip round the Middle East, and, therefore. I can vouch for the fact that the troops had the opportunity of listening to the overseas programme. For the next few days until the boat got into Naples, I had to depend upon the overseas broadcast.
Naturally, half the troops were doing what I was doing; they were listening not only to the overseas programme, but to the short-wave stations which were pouring out broadcasts from all over the world. I shall never forget as long as I live listening to the broadcast of General Eisenhower about the acts of the British Government. I have never listened to a more angry man. I wished—and I hope that my words reach him—that he was English. I wished that he had been Prime Minister when he said that the principles of the United States and the principles which he required from her friends as well as her enemies were those of the rule of law based upon justice. I should like to think that every British lad wearing the Queen's uniform went into action wearing that motto as his cap-badge, because many millions of men 1054 gave their lives in the First World War to establish the rule of right, and not the rule of might.
What the hon. Member for Westbury has not said in his childish way, as I understood, is that if the overseas programme does not tell the truth the listener merely turns the knob until he gets it from another source. We no longer control the air any more than we rule the waves. It is open to every country to put over its own form of propaganda. I should have thought it was a very dangerous game indeed, and it shows the weakness of the Government's case, for the Conservative Central Office to brief a Tory Member to come here and make a special plea in order that the overseas programme of the B.B.C. shall turn out Tory propaganda and nothing else, because that is what he has said tonight.
I am not one of those who go into raptures about the B.B.C. It always strikes me as being a "pansy" kind of organisation that really does not understand the workings of democracy. Indeed, I have said in this House on previous occasions that when the epitaph of democracy comes to be written it will consist of the letters "B.B.C." Democracy cannot flourish unless it has information. The basis of democracy is not the putting of a cross on a piece of paper every five years. Democracy means that every citizen in the country is associating himself or herself positively with the work of the body politic. Let hon. Members go back and read the Putney debates. If we look at the great moments in our history over the last three hundred years, we find that they have always been preceded by moments of discussion, often violent discussion, and from that has proceeded the synthesis which makes democratic action possible.
Hon. Members opposite rather pat themselves on the back, I gather, as a result of the Gallup poll this morning. Good luck to them. Let them count all the blessings they can. But let them mark this. On the morrow of Munich, we had exactly the same shift of opinion as is happening now, and for precisely the same reasons. Informed opinion in this country, opinion that was tied up with the expression of moral values, moved to the Left, and there was a movement the other way of people who had to rely on the 1055 headlines in the Press for such information as they can now glean from organs like the B.B.C. But inevitably the discussion went on, and what happened in Munich produced 1945. Hon. Members opposite will find that the actions of the last fortnight—in a democracy retribution has to come—will result in their being swept from office in the same way as they were swept from office in 1945.
I think it is basely ungrateful for hon. Gentlemen opposite to come to the House and complain about the B.B.C., because the B.B.C. has served them well. The hon. Member for Westbury was a little more artful. He is not such a "mug" as the hon. Member for Epsom. He carefully pointed out to us that it was not due to the people at the top of the B.B.C. but to some creatures down below. The hon. Gentleman is aware, of course, that it is a little dangerous to be too sweeping about the personnel of the B.B.C., particularly those at the top, because, after all, they were appointed by right hon. Gentlemen opposite.
Let us start off with the Director-General himself. He is General Sir Ian Jacob. Read his writings and look at his close association with the present Minister of Defence. He was military adviser to the Ministry of Defence, and I have no doubt that the present Minister of Defence used all the influence he could with the Prime Minister to get General Jacob appointed. To me, General Jacob is a Tory "stooge." He was, he is and always will be that. Now we turn to the Chairman, a Foreign Office "deadbeat," Sir Alexander Cadogan. When he at last woke up from his sleep, the Government thought that he had to have a job, so they pushed him in as Chairman of the B.B.C. As I say, it is basely ungrateful for hon. Gentlemen opposite to come here and denounce the B.B.C.
Consider what used to happen when we were the Government and we had to rely upon the B.B.C.'s good will for at least presenting our case. I remember going to see an official of the B.B.C. after a series of what I thought were particularly unfunny jokes aimed at my right hon. Friends who were then members of the Government. "Oh," I was told, "you do not understand. One always finds that power is satirised; it is one of the functions of an organisation like the B.B.C. 1056 to satirise the concentrations of power. You have not had a classical education, but if you were to go back to the Greeks you would find they did this; they took their great public figures and exposed them as objects of fun, and there was thereby a curbing of power."
I did not believe all this, but I made a note of it. Has any hon. Member heard any political jokes on the B.B.C. in recent times? If so, the number of them may be counted on the fingers of one hand. Stuck up in my flat I have all manner of scripts for which I have sent, and cuttings I have made, with regard to events when we were in Government. What a different tale.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I happened to be in the Eastern Mediterranean, as I said. A fortnight ago, I was in Egypt and I had a chance to make some direct observations on some of the comments of hon. Gentlemen. I had to rely upon the short-wave service, and I had to rely for a while on foreign newspapers for my news. I came back to England just in time to listen to a broadcast which had already been sent out on the Friday night a week ago. I wanted to know what had happened and, like the hon. Member for Hendon, North I went to a friend's house and turned on the radio to hear it.
I invite hon. Gentlemen to send for the script of that broadcast. I think it is called "Topic for Tonight", or some such name as that. There was a talk by a Middle East expert, so we were told. He was put on to give an account of the impact of our policy in the Middle East. I have never in my life listened to such balderdash. And the two subsequent broadcasts were of the same quality.
Let us probe a little deeper and examine the facts more closely. While I was abroad, I learned details of the operation which the Israelis had conducted, how they had conducted it, how it had gone, and from what points the attack was made. Last Thursday night I made a speech in the House and I drew attention to the fact that the attack was made from Eilat. At Eilat is an armed regiment of the British Army, the 10th Hussars. In other words, the main Israeli drive was covered—its lines of communication were covered—by the 10th Hussars.
1057 I cannot find any reference whatever in the programmes of the B.B.C. to the manner in which that attack was carried out, or any details of it. There has been no mention of Eilat at all. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that even up to this moment I do not believe that there has been any mention at all on the B.B.C. of the point at which the Israeli attack was made. I will go further: not only has there been a censorship at the B.B.C., either directed by or at the instigation of the Government, but something perilously like it has happened to the British Press. With the help of a friend, I have made an examination of every map showing details of the attack upon the Sinai Desert which has been published in the British Press.
Let me ask hon. Gentlemen to go to the Library and look at the map published in the Daily Telegraph. There was a description of the operation by General Martin, which was wildly inaccurate—miles out. It is more than a coincidence, I think, when there is a blackout in the Press and a blackout in the B.B.C. as well.

§ Mr. Cyril Osborne (Louth)
A blackout in the Daily Herald at the same time?

§ Mr. Wigg
A blackout in the Daily Herald as well. I say that because the news was never made available.
I am not here making a party point, for this reason. I happen to hold a view, as I said last Thursday, that this country has suffered a political and military defeat of the first magnitude. If hon. Gentlemen doubt it, let them read today's issue of the New York Times, where it is said that in international affairs two things matter-wisdom and success. As far as America is concerned, it is finished; if they are not in at the take-off, they are not in at the trip.
Unless these facts are got across to the British people, and unless the discussion which has started in the last fortnight goes on, we shall sink to the level of—I will mention it—to the level of, I say, France. There is nothing lower than France, our gallant ally. Indeed, it is an American opinion, as has been said to me, that one of the things which upsets Americans is that in ten days we managed to reduce ourselves to the level of the French.
It is plain beyond any shadow of doubt that a major instrument of national 1058 policy, the Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement—if hon. Gentlement want to refer to it, it is Cmd. 7894—the Agreement whereby this country and other countries were given American aid for military purposes, has been broken. There is no doubt at all that it has been broken. I see the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) frowns and wonders what this has to do with the subject of debate.

§ Mr. Nabarro
I could not catch the last word that the hon. Member used in his last two sentences. We could not hear it over here. That is why I frowned.

§ Mr. Wigg
I am sorry; I was trying to account for the puzzled look or his face, and I am always anxious to help. I was referring to the fact that the Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement, Cmd. 7894, had, in fact, been broken.

§ Mr. Nabarro
Broken?

§ Mr. Wigg
Yes, broken. Here was a piece of information which was known to every European country. I am not asking for any publicity for anything I say.
I came back from abroad, and on the Saturday morning I phoned the Minister of Defence and asked him whether he would disclose to the House what military equipment which had been supplied by the United States for N.A.T.O. had been used in the Middle East. He gave me, on this matter, the misleading reply which he repeated today. He said that he did not know. On the same morning, Saturday a week ago, the United States Government issued a statement from their Embassy drawing the attention of both British and French Governments to the fact that this—

§ Mr. Nabarro
On a point of order. I apologise for intervening. As I understand the position, the subject of this Adjournment debate is the partiality or otherwise of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Might I inquire what possible relevance there is to that subject in what the hon. Gentleman is saying?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris)
The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) is mistaken. The Question before the House is, "That this House do now adjourn."

§ Mr. Nabarro
Further to that point of order. Are we, then, entitled to discuss any and every aspect of the presentation of news?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Hon. Gentlemen are free to discuss anything that comes within the rules of order on the Adjournment.

§ Mr. Wigg
I thought, from the puzzled look on the face of the hon. Member for Kidderminster, that he did not quite understand. It appears that he is not quite as up to date in his knowledge of the rules of order as he might be. This debate started on the Motion for the Adjournment. There is plenty of time. I am in order, I believe, as long as I do not raise any question which requires legislation. I remind the hon. Gentleman that there are two hours open to us yet.
I was discussing a very important point indeed, the fact that the American Government, a week ago last Saturday, drew the attention of the British and French Governments to the fact that equipment which had been supplied for Mutual Aid must not be used for any other purpose than the purpose for which it was taken. There was no reference on the B.B.C. at all to that announcement. I hoped that I would get a chance to speak tonight, even if the debate lasted for only half an hour, so I armed myself with a copy of the Mutual Defence Agreement. It contains this sentence: Neither contracting Government without the prior consent of the other will devote assistance furnished to it by the other contracting Government to purposes other than those for which it was furnished. This country stands in breach of that agreement. We are just an embezzler of equipment, because we have taken 515 Hunters and 100 Sea Hawks and have used them in defiance of that agreement, honourably undertaken, for purposes other than those for which they were supplied. I would not be surprised if the French Government have gone a little further. They have supplied the Israeli Government with a considerable number of Mystere 4s. All these were supplied under the Mutual Aid Agreement. I would not be surprised if the French Government sold them to the Israeli Government.
None of these facts, which are known to every Government in Europe and 1060 which are known in detail to the United States, never a single word of them, has been put across the B.B.C. There has been no objective approach at all to the events of the last fortnight. It has been Tory propaganda. That is why the hon. Member for Epsom comes here tonight. The Tories understand this and the Assistant Postmaster-General, who will reply to the debate, understands it as well. There is no better defence than attack. I know that, and so does the hon. Gentleman. Hon. Gentlemen opposite have guilty consciences. I do not suppose that they have fully taken the hon. Member for Epsom into their confidence or he would not have spoken in quite the way that he did. He has far too great an understanding for that.
Somebody at the Tory Central Office said, "We had better put up a smokescreen. Otherwise there might be an inquiry into General Jacob's and Sir Alexander Cadogan's administration of the B.B.C." So they have produced a selective brief. They have trotted out the hon. Member for Westbury to give the matter a light touch and come to the House of Commons and pretend that there has been a Socialist bias. Was there ever such tommy-rot?
My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) paid tribute, and deservedly, to the courage and ability of Mr. Woodrow Wyatt. It was not so very long ago that I was questioning, without protest from the Government benches, the propriety of a broadcast by Mr. Woodrow Wyatt. I got an answer, in writing, from the Postmaster-General which, in the careful way these letters are drafted, made it abundantly clear that I had caught Mar. Woodrow Wyatt and his friends out in a piece of Right-wing propaganda. If any Government supporter would like copies of the correspondence the Assistant-Postmaster General has my permission to supply hon. Gentlemen with copies of the correspondence which passed between me and the Postmaster-General.

§ Mr. C. Pannell
I think I know what my hon. Friend is referring to. When Mr. Woodrow Wyatt intervened in the elections in my trade union, the Amalgamated Engineering Union, and the Communist conspiracy, hon. Members on Government benches gave him all the 1061 medals under the sun. Broadly speaking, I am grateful to him for unmasking Communism, but it is rather curious how selective Government supporters are in their enthusiasm over Mr. Woodrow Wyatt.

§ Mr. Wigg
I am glad that my hon. Friend remembers that occasion. We had no protest from the Tory Party at all then. I can think of other occasions when protests have been made from this side of the House without any backing from hon. Members opposite.
The truth is that right hon. Gentlemen opposite do not understand the meaning of democracy. They are not a democratic party. The nearest and best description I can give that party is that it is a political conspiracy. What they exist for is, by hook or by crook, to persuade or delude the majority of their fellow countrymen to vote for them on a special issue in order to give them another five years of power. It is a dangerous game and this country has paid a very heavy price for it.
On this occasion I am not thinking in terms of whether the Conservative Party or the Labour Party gets in at the next Election. If hon. Members opposite-there are a few—are really concerned about the workings of democracy and believe it to be a civilised way of life and a better way of life than anyone else has yet contrived, they will realise that it is absolutely vital that on all occasions the truth shall be told. Can hon. Members opposite truly say that that has been the case?

§ Mr. Osborne
The hon. Member should not arrogate to himself the sole belief that truth should prevail. That is accepted on both sides of the House and as sincerely on this side as on his side.

§ Mr. Wigg
Not for a moment. I acknowledge my thinking on this point, I do not claim to be original. I left school at the age of 14—

§ Mr. Nabarro
The hon. Member is not the only one.

§ Mr. Wigg
I know, but some hon. Members show it more obviously than I do. They show it in their appearance, their behaviour and manner.
I have always realised the disadvantage from which I suffer. Therefore, in 1062 later life I have tried to make up for it and have turned to men of genius who, in their thoughts and writings, have given expression to the democratic way of life and the prerequisites for its continuation. We have no right to expect that here in Britain democracy will continue automatically. It is something which has to be watched; it has to be prized and it has to be safeguarded by us all.
Before hon. Members opposite make complaints about the slanting of the news which, after all, is another way of saying that the B.B.C. has been telling half the truth—half-truths carefully worked out to their disadvantage—they should ask themselves whether the representatives of their party who have stood at the Dispatch Box have told the truth and are now telling the truth.
If hon. Members opposite think that all the truth has been told and that there has been a genuine effort on the part of the Government to reveal to the House and the country all the facts of the present situation, I ask them to buy short-wave sets and listen to foreign broadcasts, or to read reports in foreign newspapers. They should read the American Press, then they will quickly realise the enormous gap which exists between the consensus of opinion in this country and the truth.

§ Mr. Archer Baldwin (Leominster)
I wonder whether the hon. Member has seen what Mrs. Roosevelt has been saying in America?

§ Mr. Wigg
Of course I have seen what Mrs. Roosevelt said, that the British Government are right. The hon. Member has every right to yell that from the house tops. If he wishes, next time I speak in my constituency I will say that he got up in the House of Commons and said what Mrs. Roosevelt said.
But if it is valid to tell the country what Mrs. Roosevelt said, then the hon. Gentleman ought to go to his constituency and tell them what a Right-wing newspaper said last weekend—that we went into the Canal to explode Nasser and to consolidate the Canal. In fact, what we have done is to consolidate Nasser and explode the Canal. I am: quite willing to do a deal with the hon. Member; let him go to his constituency and repeat that and I will repeat in my constituency what Mrs. Roosevelt said.
1063 This shows the depth of the hon. Member's moral corruption. I want the truth. I have not the slightest objection to controversy; indeed, I welcome it. Let the B.B.C. be as controversial as it likes. That is the difference between hon. Members opposite and myself; they do not want the B.B.C. to be controversial. What they want is the unanimity of the graveyard. They want us all the same.

§ Mr. Osborne
They want the hon. Member to sit down.

§ Mr. Wigg
I know, but I am not going to. Provided that I keep in order, I am not going to sit down. I will certainly let the right hon. Member for Kidderminster—I am sorry, the hon. Member for Kidderminster; he will never be a right hon. Gentleman; his party will see to that. I will let the hon. Member who, because he left school at 14, will never get power on the Tory benches, have his chance to speak.

§ Mr. Osborne
The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) has not power on his side, either.

§ Mr. Wigg
I know that.

§ Mr. Osborne
The hon. Member for Dudley is sneering at my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) for not having power on this side of the House because he left school at 14. I am reminding the hon. Member for Dudley that, despite his long-winded speeches, he has not power, either.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Order. This part of the debate is certainly getting out of order.

§ Mr. Wigg
I was certainly not sneering at the hon. Member for Kidderminster. I might congratulate the country on its escape—and I could do that—but I certainly will not sneer. I am merely saying that despite all the hon. Member's efforts, he has got as far as he will go. So have I—and as far as I want to go. I am quite happy, and probably he is happy, too.

§ Mr. Osborne
He has not been able to speak.

§ Mr. Wigg
I am all for giving the hon. Member for Kidderminster the chance to make a speech and I was only joking when I said that I would go on for several 1064 hours. But this is too good an opportunity to miss, an opportunity to give those hon. Members of the Conservative Party who care to stay and listen an elementary lesson, which is seriously meant, in the functioning of democracy.
May I pay a tribute to the hon. Member for Kidderminster? Occasionally I have listened to him in the programme "Any Questions?". Hon. Members opposite do not complain because he does more broadcasting than anybody else—and I will accept the fact that it is quite gratuitous. He always speaks with vigour and puts his own party point of view, and as long as he is labelled "The honourable Member for Kidderminster" he has my full support for broadcasting 24 hours a day for 365 days in the year—because I do not have to listen to him if I do not wish to do so. If I like, I always have the remedy of switching off.

§ Mr. Osborne
He wants to speak tonight.

§ Mr. Wigg
What I object to about the B.B.C. is the broadcast of a man like Kirkbride, a week ago last Friday. It was put on as if he were giving an objective and unbiased account and yet he gave an account which was as biased and just as pro-Government as the hon. Member for Kidderminster.

§ Mr. Osborne
Like Tennyson's brook, the hon. Member for Dudley goes on for ever.

§ Mr. Wigg
I want to see a vigorous and controversial B.B.C.—a B.B.C. which expresses every single point of view. There is the question of religious broadcasts. Here is a very fruitful subject. Do minority religious points of view find expression? Do the unorthodox have an opportunity to make their views known. After all, the unorthodox, the heterodox, of today are the orthodox of tomorrow.
In every aspect of our national life, the B.B.C. shows the hallmark of the reactionary Tory—and I want to define that. A Tory is a person who thinks—who feels, rather, because he does not think—that power should be where power seems to be. He is always biased towards the maintenance of the status quo. That is why Toryism, left to itself and unprodded by movements of the Left, inevitably becomes stagnant and decadent and, of course, ultimately, stinks.
1065 That is the kind of instrument of public instruction that hon. Gentlemen opposite want. Why do they want it? They want it because, in the last analysis, what are politics about? Politics decide who gets what. Hon. Gentlemen opposite come from the comfortable sections of society, or, if they have left school at 14, they have got to the comfortable sections of society, and what they want to do is to organise society here and throughout the world in such a way that life shall be comfortable for them and for their kind.
That is not the way of progress. There was a time, of course, when the Pax Britannica really meant something; when, perhaps, we really did rule the waves—I do not know how long ago, but it is way back now. When we really ran the show the ruling classes here were in a position to impose their will not only in Britain but throughout the world, and what hon. Members opposite have not yet realised is that that day has gone. The days when they could throw their weight about have gone, and they are never coming back.
To do hon. Members opposite justice—and here I want to be absurdly generous—after 1945 it seemed that, under the inspiration of the present Leader of the House, they were finding themselves in better ways; that they had come to realise that the earth had tilted, and that no longer could the Tory Party hope to gain political power in Britain whilst expounding the kind of views which had served in the period between the two wars. So the present Leader of the House produced a few pamphlets, held a few week-end schools and paid lip service to progress.
As a result, the party opposite managed—because of two Elections, and the fact that we got caught up in the Korean War in defending the principle of the rule of law, which the present Government have now sabotaged—to achieve power. Of course, the majority was much smaller than the Tories had thought of, or hoped for. For a while, therefore, they had to behave themselves, but, as the majority got a little bigger so the cloven hoof began to show in a number of Measures.
I shall not bore hon. Gentlemen by going over the political and legislative misdeeds of the Government in the last few years. I am very well aware that I must not deal with any matter requiring 1066 legislation, I am not, at the moment, advocating that the Government's Measures should be repealed. That will happen in due course, but tonight I am not drawing attention to Measures of repeal.
I want to move to the relations of Britain with the outside world. When the Labour Government were in power they put through—to their great credit, because they have no militarist tradition—a vast armaments programme. That action split this party, because it was against all the tradition of this party. It is a weakness that my hon. Friends from the depths of their hearts pay tribute to the principle of law, but when it comes to spending money on it that is sometimes a different story. But what did the party opposite do: they adhered to the same principle—again, lip-service.
I remember a memorable speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan), following on one of the most dishonest Amendments ever put on the Order Paper—an Amendment put down in February, 1951, by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill). He put it down, of course, not because he was concerned with Britain. With what was he concerned? He was concerned, again, by hook or by crook, with getting the Tory Party back into office. That is one of the ways in which it could be done.
I mention this because tonight and last night we heard protests about the speech—the disgraceful speech as it was described—broadcast by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition when he urged hon. Members opposite, vainly, of course, with a few honourable exceptions, to put their country before their party. Could anything sound more indecent in the Tory Party's ears than that, because, of course, to them country and party are one. It was disgraceful, according to the hon. Gentleman who has now left the House, for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition to make a plea to hon. Members opposite at a moment of great national peril to think of the future of their country. But, of course, it was a quite honourable undertaking for the right hon. Member for Woodford to put an Amendment on the Order Paper in order to try to split the ranks of the Labour Party and to get hon. Members on this side who are honourable 1067 pacifists in their convictions and try to stick them on to his piece of political flypaper. Was there ever such humbug as we have listened to tonight out of the mouths of hon. Members opposite who have spoken? We are concerned about democracy; they are concerned about the Tory Party. They are concerned here with a smokescreen, with trying to present a picture to the country which suits them. What they find so desperately inconvenient is that the facts do not happen to suit their particular political bill. So what do they do?

§ Mr. C. Pannell
Perhaps my hon. Friend will tell me something. I have spoken in the debate, and I had anticipated that as a matter of courtesy I would hear the hon. Gentleman's speech. But I have to make some domestic arrangements and should like to know whether it was a threat or a promise that he intended to speak until 10.30?

§ Mr. Wigg
It would be wrong to say that it was either a threat or a promise. We are on the Adjournment of the House, and the hon. Member for Epsom came down, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West has himself said, with a carefully prepared brief—prepared not by himself but by the Conservative Central Office—to do a little bit to work his passage and justify his existence in this House, and he was going to do it in a quarter of an hour. The rules of the House are such that on the Adjournment it is open to any hon. Member to speak.

§ Mr. Pannell
I am not complaining.

§ Mr. Wigg
I am much obliged to my hon. Friend. It happens to be that this is one of the rare occasions on which I have caught the Speaker's eye. I have caught his eye tonight because I thought that no one else on this side of the House wanted to speak. There are a number of points which I think need to be made. I have made one or two of them, but I want to move on, because, as my hon. Friend knows, I am interested in the subject of defence. I want to lose no opportunity here of coming back to my central theme—the need of an educated democracy in which representatives of all shades of opinion, of all parties, may go to the microphone and bash each other's heads off so that the man in the street can make up his mind. My complaint 1068 against that miserable crowd opposite is that they do everything in their power to stop that.

§ Mr. Leslie Hale (Oldham, West)
I apologise for interrupting my hon. Friend, but I missed his introductory sentences and I am not sure how far he has gone. Would he deal with an important point? There are two or three million pacifists in this country, and the number is rapidly increasing. The B.B.C. never puts over the Christian-pacifist case against the use of arms.

§ Mr. Wigg
I am much obliged to my hon. Friend. I do not want to offend any person's religious feeling, but I have drawn attention to the fact that those who hold religious beliefs deeply and sincerely and who happen to hold minority views never find expression. It is a fact that an increasing number of men and women in this country are driven to the pacifist point of view. Hon. Members know that my life's work has been in a different field. I profoundly respect the pacifist point of view, and in the last fortnight I have given very serious thought indeed to what, after all, is the alternative to the Christian-pacifist point of view.
I say in all sincerity that well balanced, serious and intelligent discussions between pacifists and non-pacifists ought to be part of a B.B.C. that is concerned with the education of public opinion. I hold the view that the British Broadcasting Corporation, like any political party that is seriously and honestly concerned with democracy, will recognise that its prime function is not the gaining of votes. Any person who calls himself a democrat and whose practice of democracy begins only at election time does not know the meaning of the words.
It is an educational process which goes on all the time. It concerns the young and the old. The casting of the vote is the least important part of it. Democracy is a tapestry of great richness. It has got many threads, and I hold that heterodox views must find expression through this great instrument for the influencing of men's minds.
The B.B.C.'s motto says: Nation shall speak peace unto nation. The present B.B.C. is a corruption of what it could become if there were honesty of purpose behind it. It would 1069 be wrong of me to go over all the ground again, but I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) will agree when I say that when an hon. Member opposite complains of Left-wing bias in the B.B.C., an organisation which is directed and controlled by such men as Lieut.-General Sir Ian Jacob and Sir Alexander Cadogan, it is difficult to find words; the rules of the House prevent me from saying what I really think. I hope, however, that I have made it clear that I think that such action is contemptible, because it strikes at the very basis of what is left of our decent way of life. I hope I have satisfied my hon. Friend on that point.
I now want to turn to another and very important point which never finds any ventilation. This country is spending £1,500,000 on defence, 9 per cent. of its national income. We are in economic difficulties, and we have been. Our balance of payments all the time has been dragged at and cut into by this vast defence bill and the necessity for overseas expenditure.
What effort has the B.B.C. made, either this year or in any year, to have informed discussions about the reality of our defence expenditure? On 26th July—I do not need the Conservative Central Office to make out a brief for me, these dates are in our minds and we shall never forget them—we had the Prime Minister coming to this House on Friday, 27th July, after Nasser's seizure of the Canal on the 26th—and threatening to take strong action. To their shame, there were hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House who cheered him. I said then, and I say again now, that both made me sick; because they did not understand the weak position of this country both then and now.
I defy any single one of the hon. Gentlemen opposite to deny the accuracy of what I say. They know in their hearts of hearts that if they were proposing to attempt to undertake the criminal action which they have been undertaking, the time to do so was during August Bank Holiday week-end. That was the only time at which it made military and political sense. Why did not they do it? Because they had no transport aircraft—

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Order. I do not wish to interrupt the hon. Gentleman. It is true that we are on the Adjournment, but I find it difficult to associate what he has said with the Minister's responsibility.

§ Mr. Wigg
With respect, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, we are on the Adjournment, and if we accept the principle of collective responsibility, the Assistant Postmaster-General is as much responsible as the Prime Minister himself. No Minister can escape responsibility for having spent £6,000 million on defence. They left this country weak and unprepared.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
That is a constitutional responsibility, but not a Ministerial responsibility.

§ Mr. Wigg
With respect, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I am surprised—I say this with great respect—that on an issue of this kind I should be considered out of order. I would draw your attention to the fact that when this House was recalled on 12th September I spoke on the Adjournment on the question of the preparations which had been made and the recall of the reservists. If I was in order on that occasion, inevitably I must be in order now.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I am not suggesting that the hon. Gentleman is out of order, because we are on the Adjournment. What I find a little difficult, because the Assistant Postmaster-General is to reply, is to reconcile what the hon. Gentleman is saying with the Minister's responsibility.

§ Mr. Wigg
Naturally, I bow to your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. But that would be a matter for the Minister himself. He can reply or not as he wishes. But providing that I am in order in raising the matter on the Adjournment, the question whether or not the Minister replies is entirely beside the point. If your Ruling is that an hon. Member can only raise a matter on which the Minister is to reply, then our discussions on every subject will be slightly circumscribed.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I am not ruling that, but it has been a practice of the House, if an hon. Member raises other issues, to inform the other Ministers.

§ Mr. Wigg
On that point I am willing to meet your convenience, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. There is a representative of the Patronage Secretary sitting on the Government Front Bench, and if you feel that the appropriate Minister should be present, it is up to the Patronage Secretary to send for that Minister. I invite the hon. Gentleman to send for the Minister of Defence if he feels that the right hon. Gentleman should be present.
I was relating the unpreparedness of this country in the field of defence to the fact that there is an ignorance of the problems involved—an ignorance which certainly exists in this House—and I drew attention to that fact in a previous debate, I think on 30th July. It is an ignorance for which hon. Members of this House have a responsibility. The point I am making is that the Assistant Postmaster-General should impress upon the B.B.C., with all the vigour at his command, the necessity for informed controversy in great public affairs. There should be discussion. This is not a subject that is taboo.
Nine per cent. of our national income—£6,000 million since the present Administration took office—has been spent, and on 1st August we had two tank landing ships. No paper in the country, or the B.B.C., revealed the fact that on August Bank Holiday we had two tank landing ships after an expenditure of 9 per cent. of our national income.
I do not want to weary the House, but I should like to improve the reading of hon. Members opposite. I am a great student. I study very carefully the writings of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford. Hon. Gentlemen opposite should turn to the fifth volume of the right hon. Gentleman's "History of the Second World War—Closing The Ring." There is there a detailed account of the Anzio operation carried out on a two-divisional basis. The right hon. Gentleman tells how many tank landing ships we needed to undertake the operation—88; and we had two. Neither the B.B.C. nor the Press informed the country.
The public were left to believe that out of the Government's great strength and great preparations this armada set sail from Cyprus to knock Colonel Nasser off his perch. What of the truth? The hon. Gentleman complained about the truth 1072 not being told. I complain, too. I complain that the public were not told of the shortage of tank landing ships and transport aircraft. They were not told that; they were led to believe that here was great strength.
I did not have time the other night to tell the House; fortunately I have more time tonight. It was not until 6th September, until five weeks had gone by, after an expenditure which is so vast that its very size creates problems, that the Government were ready to move.

§ Mr. Hale
My hon. Friend referred to the writings of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill). He need not go back so far as the Second World War—

§ Mr. Osborne
On a point of order. The Motion before the House refers to the political balance of the B.B.C.—

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
The Motion before the House, as I pointed out earlier, is "That this House do now adjourn." What I have pointed out to the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) is that it is the customary practice when matters other than the one under discussion are to be raised that notice should be given to the responsible Minister.

§ Mr. Osborne
Is not it customary in this House that there should be a give-and-take and fair shares of the time allotted to the House? As there are hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House, some of whom have been waiting without having a meal this evening so that they may take part in the debate, is it not unreasonable that we should have a senseless filibuster like this taking up the time?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
That is not a matter for me to decide.

§ Mr. Nabarro
Mr. Deputy-Speaker, you referred a moment ago to notice being given. Can you guide me and tell me what form the notice should take when an hon. Member deliberately switches the subject from that on which the debate was initiated, namely, the political balance of the B.B.C., to defence considerations and the much wider issue of the position in the Middle East?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I have already said that the Motion before us has nothing to do with the B.B.C. The Motion 1073 is "That this House do now adjourn". Therefore, the hon. Member for Dudley is in order, but I have pointed out that it is the practice of the House when a Member wishes to raise other matters, that he should give notice to the Ministers responsible for them.

§ Mr. Nabarro
I am asking you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, on a point of order, what form the notice to which you have referred should take. I have not heard any notice given. I am inquiring now whether that notice should be given in written form or in oral form, and when it should have been given?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
So far as I know, there is no particular form for it.

§ Mr. Nabarro
Might I inquire, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, when and where notice was given to switch the subject.

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
There is no switching of the subject. The subject is whether the House shall now adjourn.

§ Mr. Wigg
I am obliged to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. It almost seems necessary that the B.B.C. should give broadcasts about the procedure and rules of order of the House of Commons. They would be of great use to the hon. Member for Kidderminster, because he obviously does not understand the rules, and also to the hon. Member for Louth, who has been in the House for ten years.
I submit, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that I am perfectly in order and that there are plenty of precedents for going from one subject to another on the Adjournment. I am the first to obey your Rulings, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, in the letter and the spirit. It is my submission that I am keeping very close to the subject which has been raised. The subject raised is—

§ Mr. Osborne
But the hon. Member is not—

§ Mr. Wigg
Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to finish my point. I am keeping very close to the subject.
The hon. Member for Epsom came here with, as he has admitted, a carefully prepared speech. He had the impudence to make allegations based upon examples which he had not himself heard, and he did it in a sly sort of way hoping to gat through it in a quarter 1074 of an hour. Then we heard his hon. Friends, who had no doubt been given ample notice of these examples, if not by the hon. Member for Epsom, then by the person in the Conservative Central Office who prepared the brief. From now on we shall find pressure—not much pressure would be required; just enough—being put on the B.B.C. to make it even more Right-wing than it is at present.

§ Mr. Wigg
I will give way in a moment.

§ Mr. Hale
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The hon. Member for Louth, who does not even know the subject we are discussing, interrupted me on a point of order when my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) had given way for me. Then when I wait for my hon. Friend to finish a sentence the hon. Member for Louth desires my hon. Firend to give way to him before he resumes giving way to me. There must be some end to this. Might I take it that my hon. Friend is now giving way to me? I would point out to him that the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. H. A. Price), in writing of the history of the third world war, contributed—

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Nobody knows better than the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) what the object of an intervention is. He is using an intervention for the purpose of making a speech.

§ Mr. Wigg
My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West referred—I am not sure whether it was a slip of the tongue—to a history of the third world war. Is he referring to the history of the operations of the last fortnight?

§ Mr. Hale
I certainly am. The hon. Member contributed two columns to the front page of that very great organ of Sabbatarian information, the Sunday Dispatch, last Sunday—

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
This is really a misuse of an intervention.

§ Mr. Wigg
I am very much obliged to my hon. Friend for his help. I remember the article. I think it is very appropriate that it should be referred to at this point. It is true that the hon. Member for Epsom allowed himself, demeaned 1075 himself, to support the blatant, wicked propaganda on the front page of the Sunday Dispatch. I have no objection whatever to the hon. Member beating the Soviet Union if he wants to, but he must remember that one cannot fool all the people all the time. There are supporters of the Conservative Party in Epsom who will realise that the Government started by saying that their actions in the Middle East were concerned with the safety of British subjects in Egypt; subsequently—perhaps it is not unfair to say that it happened at the same time—they discovered that it was necessary to take action to protect the Canal; later they discovered reasons for their action in support of the United Nations; and last weekend we were told that a great Red plot had been discovered.

§ Mr. Wigg
I will not give way.

§ Mr. Speaker
The hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) must resume his seat if the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) does not give way,

§ Mr. Wigg
I am quite willing to give way to the hon. Member for Louth—

§ Mr. Osborne
Thank you.

§ Mr. Wigg
—but not at the moment. He must wait.
I am now referring to the speech of the hon. Member for Epsom. He allowed himself to be used, without any knowledge of the facts, to support the view that the reason why the Government had acted was the existence of a Red plot. Here again, I can give evidence at first hand. Hon. Members opposite by this time really should have learnt that in their propaganda nonsense they should never put out a spate of half-truths which can be checked. Last week, the right hon. Member—I am now using the customs and courtesies of the House in so describing him—the President of the Board of Trade told the House that a vast amount of Red arms had been discovered in Egypt. What are the facts? The figures are almost identical with the list of arms which had appeared in The Times of 30th October.
Let me go further. I am astonished; hon. Members opposite really must be slipping, because it is the easiest thing 1076 in the world to establish the amount of equipment that has gone into Egypt from the Soviet Union in the last few months.

§ Mr. John Rankin (Glasgow, Govan)
Pure obstruction.

§ Mr. Wigg
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Epsom has not understood this. Apparently the hon. Member, who gives some signs of intelligence, has never heard of such a thing as Lloyd's List. It is quite easy for any hon. Member opposite who really wants to build up a case about the intervention of the Soviet Union in Egypt to consult Lloyd's List and establish what Soviet ships have been into Egyptian ports in the last six months, or the last year, or during any period. I will help him in this. A fortnight ago last Friday, on the eve of this great Red plot, there was one ex-Liberty ship bearing the flag of the Soviet Union in Alexandria harbour, and the previous one had been there three weeks before.

§ Mr. Wigg
I am very much obliged to those hon. Members who have come in and so thwarted the totalitarian methods of the hon. Member for Louth. This is another example of Tory democracy. We have the attack, and then they try to suppress the reply. I very much hope that the B.B.C. will make a note of this and give special mention to the hon. Member for Louth, who had recourse to an attempt to count the House out on an occasion when one of his hon. Friends began a carefully planned attack, hoping to launch it in half an hour when nobody was present, but was thwarted by the matter being fully ventilated. I should have had no objection if the hon. Member for Louth had succeeded. He wants a meal, and so do I, but it is also very important indeed that the occasion of the Adjournment of the House should be used to the utmost to ventilate and expose some of the Tory machinations. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Oldham, West has gone.

§ Mr. Rankin
He is coming back.

§ Mr. Wigg
He was good enough to remind me that the hon. Member for Epsom had contributed last week in the Sunday Dispatch to an attempt—

§ Mr. Rawlinson
I have never contributed to the Sunday Dispatch, and I have not read the Sunday Dispatch.

§ Mr. Osborne
Wrong again.

§ Mr. Wigg
I beg the hon. Member's pardon. I was taking up a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West.

§ Mr. Osborne
Both wrong.

§ Mr. Wigg
If it was not the hon. Member for Epsom it was the same pea in the same pod, the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. H. A. Price). The fact is that Conservative Members of Parliament, running out of alibis, had to fall back on the corny old line they used between the wars. So far as one knows, one of the bills of lading for this vast quantity of Russian goods which have been supplied was probably signed by Zinoviev, or Zinoviev signed bills of lading for tins of pressed snow, because sooner or later the Russians and their equipment must have snow, particularly as the weather gets colder.

§ Mr. Osborne
Is that what the Hungarians think? The hon. Member has been on his feet for 80 minutes. My hon. Friends have been here without a meal to take part in a serious discussion. All we are having is filibustering. The hon. Member is sneering about what we think about the Russians. He should remember what the Hungarians are thinking about the Russians today.

§ Mr. Wigg
Hon. Members will again notice that the same hon. Member who wanted to count out the House now wants to use the agony of the Hungarian people for a party end. I spurn that and treat it with the contempt it deserves. This is a desperately serious matter. It wounds and affects the hearts of all of us for the hon. Member to mention the agony of the Hungarians to make a party point. Let him go outside and be ashamed of himself.
Mr. Speaker, I was mentioning snow on Russian boots and inviting the attention of hon. Members opposite, including the hon. Member for Louth, to the fact that if they wished to make progress with 1078 their stories about Russian equipment, they should do something better than read accounts in The Times and then a short time after those accounts have been published think of them something new. They are not new. There are also hon. Members on this side of the House who read The Times, and we recollected as soon as we saw the figures that we had seen them before.
I invite the hon. Member for Louth to fill in a little time between now and when I have finished to read Lloyd's List and thereby do a great service to his party.

§ Mr. Osborne
That is more than the hon. Member is doing.

§ Mr. Wigg
He could really discover what the Russians have put into Egypt in the last six months and in the last year.

§ Mr. Osborne
It is not fair.

§ Mr. Wigg
On a point of order. I co not often ask for the protection of the Chair, but if the hon. Member for Louth must interject, would you, Mr. Speaker, please ask him to make it clearly enough for me to hear him?

§ Mr. Osborne
I will with pleasure. I merely stated that I thought it was fantastic and unfair, and I will say it again. My hon. Friends have been waiting without a meal to take part in what they thought would be a serious discussion. Here we have the typical folly of an hon. Member who on some occasions talks sense but who tonight seems to be completely bereft of his senses.

§ Mr. Rankin
Further to that point of order. The hon. Member for Louth has been saying that time and time again. Does that not come under the rule which bans tedious repetition?

§ Mr. Speaker
No point of order has been raised at all yet.

§ Mr. Wigg
I am much obliged, Mr. Speaker. I asked for your protection, Sir, and I trust that I shall get it.
The hon. Member for Louth interrupted me when I was saying that the latest propaganda, the last skin of the onion of excuses, as it were, can easily be checked. I was saying that in the interest of democracy it was useful for a political 1079 party, when putting forward reasons for warlike actions, to see that they were reasons which would stand up to serious examination. So far, the only statements we have had from the Government have been lists of material which are almost identical with those published on 30th October.
What I was going on to say was that this fact could be decided quite easily by any hon. Member who took the trouble to look at Lloyd's List. Here, again, is a matter about which the B.B.C. might well have a discussion. In my judgment, the B.B.C. ought to discuss the reasons which prompted the Government to take action in Suez. Hon. Gentlemen opposite complained about slant. Why did they not plead with the B.B.C? Sir Ian Jacob would not listen to me, but he would listen to them.
Let the hon. Gentleman give us an assurance tonight that he will ask the B.B.C. to institute a series of discussions, taking one by one the various excuses which the Government have put forward. Let that be done, if hon. Members opposite like, by a panel of hon. Members opposite or by the Conservative Central Office. So long as the talks take place, and there is an opportunity for both points of view, that suits me.

§ Mr. Osborne
Hear, hear.

§ Mr. Wigg
The hon. Member for Louth has put himself out of court because he wanted to stop me from being heard. He wanted to stop his hon. Friend the Assistant Postmaster-General from replying to the debate. That is a disgraceful act. He wanted the gag. I want to hear the Minister, but not for long.
There are one or two things to which I must call the attention of the House. When, earlier, I was interrupted by the hon. Member for Louth I was dealing with the point that this country was abysmally ignorant of the facts as, of course, is this House.

§ Mr. Osborne
The hon. Gentleman is speaking for himself now.

§ Mr. Wigg
I agree that I am profoundly ignorant. All I can say is that I am like the hon. Member for Louth, but that I recognise my ignorance and try to put it right.
1080 The point I am dealing with is the question of defence. The whole country and the House are ignorant on this matter.

§ Mr. Hale
One could not have a more classic example of that fact than that after 2 hours and 20 minutes' discussion the hon. Member for Louth got to his feet and said that we were discussing something else. He did not know what the Question was.

§ Mr. Wigg
I do not want to be discourteous—far be it from that—but the hon. Member for Louth talks about ignorance. He has been in this House for eleven years, but he does not even understand the procedure on an Adjournment debate. However, I am not to be deflected from my purpose.
I am now raising a very fundamental question and I say this in all sincerity and with utter conviction. If the hon. Member for Epsom and those of his colleagues who spoke like him had been sincere in their purpose, they would have come to the House tonight and complained of the failure of the B.B.C. to put across to the country the events since 1st August. They would have explained why the Government could not take the action which the Government wanted to take because of our utter unpreparedness.
Although the Government may think that they have got over the immediate difficulties, this particular "bogey-man" has still to be tackled. We still have an enormous defence bill. We still have a colossal defence expenditure. But we are as far away, if not farther now, from any reality in defence as we were on the day that the crisis started.
I can conceive of no policy-making organ or instrument of public instruction better fitted than the B.B.C. to have the most earnest discussion of the kind of world in which we now find ourselves, in all its ramifications, and of the new thinking which has got to be done by all political parties. The happenings of the last week were, in my judgment, the beginning of a new era. They witnessed the close of the old era and the beginning of the new. Things will never be the same politically, economically or in any other way.
The British people, for ten years past, have been living in a dream world, fostered—we all bear a responsibility— 1081 and exploited by the party opposite. There is no organ of opinion in this country which has a greater responsibility than the B.B.C. It could, with its huge resources, have helped to turn this nation into a vast discussion group, probing, inquiring and examining.

§ Mr. Osborne
Not while the hon. Member for Dudley is talking.

§ Mr. Wigg
Probably not. That remark again shows the sort of level of expression to be expected from the hon. Member for Louth, which, if it takes literary form, is writing epithets on lavatory walls.

§ Mr. Osborne
On a point of order. Surely, Mr. Speaker, this abuse can be stopped under some rule of the House? I appeal to you. If we must listen to this tedious speech, at least personal abuse should be kept out of it.

§ Mr. Speaker
I did not hear what the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) said. What were the words the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) complains of?

§ Mr. Osborne
The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) complains that I should use my abuse on lavatory walls.

§ Mr. Speaker
If the hon. Member for Dudley said that, it was a most improper remark.

§ Mr. Wigg
Further to that point of order. With respect, Mr. Speaker, I am the last person to abuse the rules of the House. What I did say, in precise form, was that I doubted whether the hon. Member for Louth could write at all, but that if his expression took literary form it would probably be writing epithets on lavatory walls.

§ Mr. Speaker
I think it is a very offensive remark to make. The hon. Member for Dudley ought to withdraw it.

§ Mr. Wigg
I bow to your Ruling, Sir. I will gladly withdraw the remark—

§ Mr. Osborne
The first decent thing that the hon. Member has done tonight.

§ Mr. Wigg
I must point out, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. Member for Louth carries on a constant stream of interruption, which I do not mind if I can always hear it. But I find difficulty in hearing his remarks, and it does strike me that 1082 if this is a form of controversy in which he indulges that sort of calling of names and running away seems to be about the limit of his expression. But I am not to be deflected. I am here, and I shall say what I have a right to say.

§ Mr. Osborne
It is a pity that it will not lead to a serious contribution to the debate.

§ Mr. Wigg
On a point of order. May I again ask your protection, Mr. Speaker, from constant interruption by the hon. Member for Louth, who makes all his remarks without rising to his feet?

§ Mr. Hale
On a point of order. The hon. Member for Louth, in the hearing of every Member of the House, has uttered a whole series of derogatory statements, has not risen to his feet to make one of them, is continuing to do so, and apparently intends to continue to do so. Surely, Mr. Speaker, there can be some protection?

§ Mr. Speaker
I did not hear what the hon. Member for Louth said. Perhaps the microphone in front of him was not alive.

§ Mr. Wigg
I very much regret that that remark, Sir, applies only to the microphone.
I was saying, when I was interrupted, that this country needs to face the facts and to turn itself into a discussion group to inquire and probe every aspect of our national life. Unless that is done, unless there is a fearless and courageous facing of the facts, there is no hope for us.
I would remind the House that our age structure is wrong. We have a population which is ageing and tending to decline. Our educational programme is clearly inadequate to our needs. We are not turning out the technicians that we ought. Our universities are not providing the research students that we need. As far as our economy is concerned, Government supporters are far more concerned about winning Elections than about the national needs. We had a diminution in the size of the Income Tax, against the national needs, so that the Government could buy popularity with public money and could get a majority in order to carry on the orgy of misrule for a further period.
1083 What does the B.B.C. say about it? I pay my tribute to the hon. Member for Louth; he knows that what I am saying is true. He knows the dishonesty of the Budget before last, because he himself said so. What do we get from the B.B.C? Mr. Paul Bareau, and economists of that ilk, a mere Tory "stooge". Government supporters have the impertinence to come here and talk about Left-wing propaganda slants from the B.B.C. Was there ever such nonsense?
In every aspect of our national life is the same story. When is an economist who happens to hold heterodox views invited to the microphone? Never. Can any hon. Gentleman tell me of an economist with an established reputation, who happens to hold views which are not accepted by the Treasury, getting anywhere near the microphone? There is the same barrier, the same curbing of discussion and of opinion, in the field of economics as there is in the field of religion.
I turn to the vital subject of defence. In that fled, the need for a very quick appreciation of the facts of a situation is vitally important. We have spent vast sums of public money. Can any hon. Gentleman on either side of the House point to a single occasion in the last ten years when we have had a detailed examination and discusson on the B.B.C. of the defence Estimates from any single Department? Can any hon. Gentleman who has been in this House since 1945 remember one occasion when we have had an informed discussion on our inability to raise Regular recruits for the Army? Can any hon. Gentleman remember an objective, unbiased and informed discussion to enable the public to make up their own minds about the realities of the situation?
Oh, no. What we get is great respectability. We had Black Rod from the House of Lords. He appeared on the B.B.C., an excellent broadcaster but not exactly a controversial figure, and not exactly a figure objected to by the Tory Party. I challenge the Assistant Postmaster-General. I have touched on religion and economics and now come to the subject of defence, on which the hon. Gentleman is an expert. Can he remember a single occason when a military writer or thinker, who happened to hold views which were not 100 per cent. acceptable to the Minis- 1084 try of Defence, found an opportunity to discuss the defence problems of this country? If the Assistant Postmaster-General cannot do so, can any hon. Member opposite find one?
One can go through the subjects of religion, economics, politics, military affairs, agriculture, mining, education, every aspect of our national life, and find the same story. Conscious of it or not, the B.B.C. is an instrument to maintain the status quo. What this country needs, what this country has got to have if it is to survive, is a revolution—not a revolution at the barricades, that belongs to primitive and backward people, but a revolution of morals and thought. We have to substantiate the claim we make to be the most highly developed democracy in the world. That is the claim, but we have fallen a little short of it in the last fortnight. Owing to the functioning of the B.B.C., owing to the functioning of a corrupt and stupid Press—by "corrupt" I mean an intellectually corrupt and lazy Press—the public of this country have not been told the truth.
Among the first requirements of a democrat is the ability to make up one's mind on very limited evidence. The great genius of the British people is that they can do that. Time and time again in our history the masses of men and women of this country—the majority of them, like the hon. Member for Kidderminster and myself, had their education cut off just at the moment when it should have been starting—have known better than their rulers. Their instinct has been strong enough to give expression to the traditions which have made this country great.

§ Mr. Hale
I apologise for interrupting my hon. Friend again. I do not want to disturb the main tenor of his argument, but, before he sits down, will he refer to the colonial aspects of this question? [Laughter.] I am not trying to be funny. This is a vital matter. There is the whole question of British Guiana, on which the representatives of the people—

§ Mr. Speaker
Many Speakers before me—and I repeat it—have deprecated the raising of matters on the Adjournment of which no notice has been given to the appropriate Minister. There is a certain code of behaviour on these matters.

§ Mr. Hale
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. That point was raised with Mr. Deputy-Speaker before you resumed in the Chair. The point was made that there comes a time when it would be uneconomic to summon all the Ministers, but one Minister is present who is directly responsible.
I am not suggesting that my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) should deal with colonial affairs, but precisely with the point that he is raising and to which the Assistant Postmaster-General could reply. That is the attitude of the B.B.C. towards colonial problems. Surely that is a matter for the Postmaster-General, or the Assistant Postmaster-General, and one on which the Colonial Secretary would certainly be able to reply that he had no ministerial responsibility.

§ Mr. Wigg
I am very conscious of your Ruling about giving notice to Departmental Ministers, Mr. Speaker, but, with respect, I am speaking on the Adjournment on a matter raised by the hon. Member for Epsom, who has now left the Chamber. The hon. Member raised it, as he admitted, on a Conservative Central Office brief, hoping that the matter would go through—

§ The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. C. J. M. Alport)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom (Mr. Rawlinson) is not now present, I think it would be right to say that he made no such admission.

§ Mr. Wigg
It is within the recollection of hon. Members that when my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West made the point that it was a Conservative Party brief, the hon. Member for Epsom did not deny it.

§ Mr. Nabarro
He did.

§ Mr. Wigg
He did not do so in my recollection. If he denied it, I owe him an apology, because I have since repeated it several times in his hearing without being contradicted by him. He certainly admitted that the examples which he gave to the House were examples which had been supplied to him. It may be that they had been gathered from a variety of sources, and perhaps we wrong him in saying that they were all supplied from the Conservative Central Office.
1086 In any event, he came to the House tonight to suggest that the B.B.C. had failed in its job and that it was guilty of a Left-wing slant. The consequences of that are extremely serious. If he had come here at the end of a day when hon. Members were tired and lacking in diligence, they would have gone home and would have read the account the next day. The Assistant Postmaster-General, who I am quite sure, in the ordinary way, was fully aware of what was going to be said, would have given the assurances which were requested, there would have been no public inquiry, there would have been a private inquiry, and we should have found that the screw was being put on and that what little independence the B.B.C. has was being quietened. I thought that was totalitarian.
The hon. Member also seriously suggested, in this great legislative Chamber, this Mother of Parliaments, that the Government should take over and put out its own propaganda, paid for by public money, for consumption abroad. If hon. Members opposite think I have been talking for the sake of talking, I ask them to forget it. I am saying something which is of importance if they have the wit to listen.
It is not very often that one gets the opportunity. I shall probably not get the opportunity again for a long time; I am well aware of that. But I also know the rules of the House, not as well as you, Mr. Speaker, but at least as well as some hon. Members opposite; and I know very well that if I am energetic enough the opportunity will come, and, indeed, that I can make my own opportunity.
This is an occasion worth taking advantage of, because we have here a conspiracy to quieten democracy. Of course the Government are afraid of the informed voice of the people. It is worth noticing the point at which the hon. Member for Louth tried to silence me. What was the point at which he tried to count the House out? He did it when I was telling the House that if they wanted to check the Government's propaganda and the story that the Government have carried out their operation in Egypt in order to explode a Russian plot, they should go to Lloyd's List and count the ships which have arrived in Alexandria harbour in the last few months. It was 1087 about that point that the hon. Member for Louth found it convenient to try to stop me.
But this is a free assembly, and provided I speak inside the rules of order I have a right and a duty to say to the House of Commons that the B.B.C. is not an instrument of Left-wing propaganda; it is a flabby, emasculated collection of very well-meaning people who do not understand the meaning of the word democracy.

§ Mr. Nabarro
Drivel.

§ Mr. Wigg
They do not understand the meaning of the word "democracy", and the hon. Member for Kidderminster is the only evidence to the contrary, because he is a misfit in the Tory Party, although he does not know it; he is an exhibit, poor-boy-made-good, and as long as he has "exhibit" hung around his neck, I do not mind.

§ Mr. Speaker
The hon. Member seems to be straying from the domain of Ministerial responsibility at the moment.

§ Mr. Wigg
I regret that this is the temptation which I can never resist. I am such a believer in democracy that I believe in giving way and answering interjections which have been made. Previously I answered the hon. Member for Louth, and I have now answered the hon. Member for Kidderminster. The Ministerial responsibility is not to be a party to a kind of conspiracy to silence the B.B.C. but to encourage the B.B.C. to be vigorous in giving opportunities for the expression of every aspect of opinion. Democracy was born in the market-place—that is where men struggled and fought with ideas; it is not there to sit down to emasculated talks—and even for those talks to be watered down because they do not happen to suit the hon. Member for Epsom or the hon. Member for West-bury.

§ Mr. Nabarro
There is nothing emasculated about me.

§ Mr. Wigg
I was about to fall into the temptation of answering the half-heard interjection of the hon. Member for Kidderminister.

§ Mr. F. H. Hayman (Falmouth and Camborne)
Would my hon. Friend consider that perhaps other hon. Members might wish to take part in the discussion?

§ Mr. Wigg
I am certainly aware of that. The hon. Member has only just come into the House, and I am sure that he would not ask me to forgo my privilege. I have several more comments that I wish to make.

§ Sir R. Grimston
Mr. Speaker, would it be possible for you to inquire of the hon. Member who has the Floor whether it is his intention to sit down in sufficient time for the Minister to have adequate time to reply to the debate?

§ Mr. Speaker
That would be no part of my function.

§ Mr. Wigg
If the Minister would care to interrupt me in order to say at what time he would like to speak, I would certainly do my best to limit my remarks to the point where he would have a full opportunity of replying.

§ Mr. Alport
I will merely say that I would naturally wish to reply to this debate, which relates to a matter with which I am particularly concerned. I think that it would be fairer, however, to say that I would not wish my remarks to be such as to detract from the rights, unnecessarily, of other back bench Members on both sides who, I am sure, wish to take part in the debate and whose opportunities of doing so are being increasingly limited.

§ Mr. Wigg
I had hoped to hear from the hon. Gentleman at what time he would wish to get up. I shall be only too willing to limit my remarks to the point of meeting his convenience to the fullest possible extent, but I want to point out to him, and to the House, that when I got up I saw no signs of any other hon. Member wishing to speak. I then said that there were two-and-a-half hours in front of me, and therefore I have used part of that time, I think, to the best possible advantage.

§ Mr. Nabarro
I should like to point out to the hon. Member, in case he has omitted to notice the fact, that he came into this debate shortly after it started, and that since 7 o'clock I have been standing on the cessation of every speech. He has, however, occupied the time of the House for nearly 100 minutes in order primarily, of course, to prevent my speaking.

§ Mr. Wigg
I have not the slightest interest in preventing the hon. Member from speaking, Mr. Speaker. If he does not catch your eye this evening, he will find other opportunities. An effort was made by the hon. Member for Louth to cut short my remarks. He moved to count out the House. As long as I am in order, and as long as you approve, Sir—and if the Minister does not wish to indicate when he wants to reply—perhaps I may be allowed to continue.

§ Mr. Rankin
Is not the Minister being discourteous to the House, Mr. Speaker? Is it not usual for the Minister to indicate to the House and to the Opposition when he would like to reply?

§ Mr. Alport
As far as I know, it has never been that custom at all, although in the normal way unofficial arrangements are made. In my experience of this House, it has certainly never been indicated as to when the Minister should reply. Naturally, I would wish to reply, and it would be in the interests of both sides, I think, that I should have reasonable time to do so.

§ Mr. Hale
Further to that point of order. Has it not been the invariable practice that one should not move to count out the House during an Adjournment Motion? And do hon. Members realise that if this comes about it will mean that very few such Motions will be heard?

§ Mr. Speaker
These are not points of order at all.

§ Mr. Wigg
I had, in fact, myself noticed that an attempt was made to count out the House, and hon. Members opposite should know that that is a game which two can play. An attempt was made to count me out, and I am now, as it were, being generous in wishing to accommodate the Minister to the fullest possible extent.
I came into the debate as soon as I knew that the Adjournment was on, and I had every intention of trying to speak in it, if only to protest that a speech of this importance was being slipped through in this way. I caught your eye, Mr. Speaker, and so far as I understood no one else wanted to speak. The hon. Member for Louth did not want to speak and made no attempt to get up.

§ Mr. Speaker
The hon. Member had really better get back to subjects for which Ministers are responsible.

§ Mr. Wigg
I will now talk on the question of defence from which I have been put off on several occasions. The case which I have tried to make tonight is that this was an organised effort by the Conservative Central Office for a back bench Conservative Member to come down to this House and give examples which had been carefully worked out in order to bring pressure on the B.B.C. to be even more timorous than it has been.
It is part of my case that the B.B.C. has not only—and I emphasise "not"—been indulging in Tory propaganda, but it has gone out of its way ever since the Suez crisis at the beginning of August to withhold the truth from the British people. I invite the Minister tonight—and I will in three or four minutes sit down in order to give him a full half-hour in which to reply—to say if he believes for a split second that there is even a modicum of truth in the allegations which had been made by the hot. Member for Epsom. I invite him to ask the B.B.C. to run a series of talks, given by the most prominent, eminent and unbiased men in this country, to examine in detail the various excuses which have been supplied by the Government since the beginning of the invasion of Egypt.

§ Mr. Harold Davies (Leek)
Since I have been following the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), I have noticed that he has omitted completely from his discussion of the B.B.C. the entire problem of television. Will he, in his characteristic way, ask the Minister to give the number of hours on television during which pictures have been shown of the blockage of the Suez Canal, the ships that are in it and the position in Egypt and in Cyprus at present. Those pictures should be shown to a knowledgeable British public.

§ Mr. Wigg
I did not deal with television tonight because the hon. Member for Epsom did not raise the issue of television.

§ Mr. Davies
I am raising it.

§ Mr. Wigg
My hon. Friend must do it in his own way. I am perfectly aware that the Right-wing bias—the bias in favour 1091 of the trivial, in favour of the obvious, the attempt to treat the British public as if their intellectual level was that of a Tory women's gathering—is the motivating force behind it. They cannot bring themselves to believe that ordinary men and women who work for their living with their minds and intelligence and the extent to which they build up an informed public opinion is the extent to which any Government, Tory or Labour, could subsequently take action.

§ Mr. Wigg
My last point is this. Not all the complaints are on one side. I have other examples. I have a dozen files of examples built up over the years of the grossest Tory misrepresentation. But I prefer to take a charitable view. I do not charge the B.B.C., every time that it broadcasts something that I do not like, with Tory propaganda; but I think that it is timid and lacks courage. That is the skilful purpose behind this Adjournment debate tonight, to make the B.B.C. more timorous and cautious.
I want to read a letter. I will not reveal where it comes from, but it is dated 9th November and states: Listening to the 9 p.m. news on Thursday evening, 8th November. I was shocked to hear the report of a statement made by Mr. Antony Head in the House that day concerning Suez. He said'…that the Suez Canal cannot, and must not. be solely the concern of the Egyptian Government. That is what all this has been about.' After having heard the Prime Minister, and other Ministers, declare that our intervention was only 'police action' I was dumbfounded, and thought I had misheard the statement. I intently listened to the 10 p.m. news and again to 'Today in Parliament', fully expecting to hear some reference to this matter, but nothing further was said. Hon. Members know exactly what happened. The right hon. Gentleman made that statement in this House. It was a damning statement, for it contradicted every single word that every other Minister has said. The Minister of Defence had told the truth. What is it about?—Britain's honour and good name, young Britons exposed to violent death and mutilation, so that the Prime Minister and his friends can get back in the Canal. The 1092 Tory Party is determined at all costs to stop that truth from emerging.

§ Mr. Nabarro
Drivel.

§ Mr. Wigg
The hon. Member for Kidderminster, with his usual courtesy, was not listening. I will repeat for his benefit the allegation in the letter: I was shocked to hear the report of a statement made by Mr. Antony Head … 'that the Suez Canal cannot, and must not, be solely the concern of the Egyptian Government. That is what all this has been about.' It was on the 9 o'clock news on Thursday evening. It was not on the news at 10 o'clock and it never appeared again.
Those are my last words. That is the answer to the hon. Member for Epsom. The B.B.C. occasionally lets the truth out, and when it does hon. Members opposite do not applaud it. They condemn it and they try to throttle it.

The Assistant Postmaster - General (Mr. C. J. M, Alport)
The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) appears to forget that the particular incident to which he has just referred was the subject of an exchange between his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence quite recently, when the Minister of Defence made it quite clear that the reference which the hon. Gentleman mentioned was to the clearing of the Canal and not to the whole of the Suez episode.
It is, however, typical of the hon. Gentleman that he should come to this House, participate in a debate on a relatively limited subject and make a large number of sweeping allegations on the subject of defence, to which he has given study, when he knew—because he is a Member of long standing in this House—that there would be no Minister immediately present with responsibility to make a reply.

§ Mr. Wigg
Why not?

§ Mr. Alport
I would say to the hon. Gentleman that if he has confidence in the allegations he has made, he should surely have kept his statements until there was an opportunity for an answer to be given authoritatively by the Minister in charge of the Department concerned. Listening to the hon. Gentleman's speech, I think it a good thing that in the B.B.C. we have a reliable and 1093 responsible organisation which, no doubt, will treat the hon. Gentleman's speech reliably and responsibly and prevent the damage to the cause which he has in mind, to his own party and to the House, which would result if his speech were listened to verbatim in this country.
The hon. Gentleman has referred to the industrious working people of—

§ Mr. Hale
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The Assistant Postmaster-General has just expressed the hope to the B.B.C., for whom he is responsible to the House, that it will not report a speech to which the House has just listened with interest and applause. If that is not typical Fascist dictatorship, what is?
A statement has been made by the Minister which, on reflection, he may wish to withdraw. But clearly within the hearing of hon. Members he expressed a desire, if not a directive, that a speech from this side of the House should be censored, and that an hon. Member's remarks should not be recorded at all. That is what he said, and I rise to a very serious point of order, to ask whether you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, do not rule that such a remark is grossly improper, an abuse of the duties of a Minister and an abuse of the privilege that he holds?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew)
It certainly was not out of order.

§ Mr. Alport
It is clear that the B.B.C., as I have said, will deal with this matter very responsibly and properly. I think it in accordance with the dignity of the House that some of the abuse which the hon. Gentleman levelled, not only at right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House, but at his own colleagues and at the institutions of this country, should not be widely heard; because it would not go to the credit of the House, nor to the credit of the hon. Gentleman.
If I may, I should like to try to restore the course of this debate to the subject to which it was originally directed. My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom (Mr. Rawlinson) initiated this debate on a subject which I am aware, and I think all hon. Members are aware, has been discussed widely during these last three weeks. At a time of great controversy, 1094 there is naturally an acute sensitiveness to the treatment of news and opinions by an organisation which has the power to influence the public at home, and the responsibility for representing our country to the people abroad.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House will, in fairness, recognise that the B.B.C. is doomed eternally to sail between what must appear to the Corporation to be the Scylla and Charybdis of Government and Opposition; and in stormy weather the difficulties of setting its course are greatly increased. The knowledge, therefore, that vigilant eyes are watching the way in which the B.B.C. carries out its heavy responsibility, and the fact that it is the subject of Parliamentary debate, are, I should have thought, valuable to the B.B.C. and a reassurance to the public of all political persuasions.
I find it difficult, therefore, to accept at least one aspect of the doctrine advanced in The Times this morning with regard to our responsibility in this matter. Parliament, surely, has the right to criticise and discuss matters of public interest, and surely the activities of a great public Corporation fall into that category.
I must make it clear that my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General has not in any way modified the interpretation of his responsibilities in this matter which are set out in a debate which was held in this House on 2nd May of last year. He said then: … I desire to make perfectly plain the absolute limitations—desirable limitations—on what the Postmaster-General can do in directing the British Broadcasting Corporation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd May, 1955; Vol. 540, c. 1480.] Apart from certain powers given to him under Clause 15 of the Licence, the responsibility for the administration of the day-to-day affairs of the B.B.C., including the programmes, rests with the Governors of the B.B.C.
I would remind the House of a Resolution of the House itself, passed in 1933, which says: … it would be contrary to the public interest to subject the Corporation to any control by Government or by Parliament other than the control already provided for in the Charter and the Licence of the Corporation. That, frankly, is the answer to the hon. Member for Dudley, who asked us to take special action to instruct the B.B.C. to 1095 do certain things which he thought would be good. The hon. Gentleman has accused this side of the House of Fascist tendencies, but what could be a greater interference with the liberties, and safeguards of liberty, of the B.B.C. than the suggestion which the hon. Member has made?

§ Mr. Hale
Does that take account of the rights of minorities?

§ Mr. Wigg
It is noticeable that when the hon. Member for Epsom (Mr. Rawlinson) suggested an internal inquiry, that is all right; when I suggest that the hon. Gentleman should invite the B.B.C. to discuss plans for a series of talks, there is objection.

§ Mr. Rawlinson
On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), whose mind may have wandered since other hon. Members spoke in the debate, to attribute to a Member a suggestion which was certainly not made by me?

§ Mr. Alport
I am trying to make it clear that these are matters for the Governors of the B.B.C. and not for my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General or, for that matter, for the Government of the day.
My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom advanced certain criticisms in respect of the editorial and presentation of the news. In its handbook for 1957, the B.B.C. says: The ideal of every B.B.C. bulletin is 'a fair selection of items impartially presented.' This was the phrase used by the Ullswater Committee of 1935, and it survived the test of war. There is no room in a B.B.C. bulletin for the personal views of the editors or subeditors. Their duty is to give the facts so that listeners may form their own opinions. I should think that there is no Member in this House who would in any way disagree with that statement.
The problem which the B.B.C. faces is, however, that it must try to live up to the ideal which it sets itself. What it must do is to examine from time to time how far it is successful in doing so. I think that the House will recognise that the events of the last three weeks have presented the Corporation with an exceedingly difficult problem. This arises from the fact that an emergency in the field of foreign affairs, accompanied by a deep 1096 conflict of opinion between Government and Opposition, has arisen during an era in which the powerful medium of television has been added to that of sound.
More than one of my hon. Friends—and I think that this is true of hon. Gentlemen opposite—has drawn attention to the particular problems which arose in connection with the feature "Panorama." The B.B.C. is fully aware of the implications of these events. I can assure all hon. Members that it has been, and always is, vigilant to ensure that it carries out the responsibility which is laid upon it to be impartial in these matters.
It has examined and is now examining, the methods of presentation of the various aspects of the controversy in both its sound and its television services, bearing in mind the importance of not only being impartial but of appearing to be impartial to the listening public, who, after all, are the men and women whom it serves.
It will be possible, therefore, for the B.B.C. to judge what action is necessary, if, indeed, any is needed, to safeguard what I think all hon. Members will agree is the vital tradition of impartiality which the B.B.C. has built up and which, as we saw during the war years and subsequently, is one of its greatest assets.
I would say, in addition, that the B.B.C. must always be more sure of its success in impartiality if it is attacked equally from both sides. I am reminded of a story told me recently about the handicapper at a Scottish racecourse who announced one day that he had finally got the handicapping of a race perfected, because he had received a letter of complaint from the owner of every horse in the race.
In some degree, that is a test of impartiality, but I think it fair to say, from the point of view of the B.B.C., that it is a very rough and ready test, to say the most of it. The definition and achievement of absolute impartiality is one of the most difficult things with which any corporation or person concerned with current affairs and public discussion can possibly be confronted.
I have no doubt that the points raised by my hon. Friends and by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and not least the points raised by the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell), in his engaging 1097 speech, in which he referred to the importance of ensuring proper trade union representation in B.B.C. programmes, will be borne in mind by the Corporation when it considers the outcome of this debate.
I assure hon. Members on both sides of the House that the B.B.C. is particularly anxious to assist them in keeping in touch with the various aspects of its activities. I have asked the Acting Director-General to consider how this can best be done: I am sure that it will be of assistance to hon. Members in keeping in touch with those activities, and of advantage to the B.B.C. in ensuring that its difficulties are fully understood, if hon. Members have ready access to various material which they may from time to time require.
There is one aspect of the rôle of the B.B.C. in public political discussion—reference has been made to it in the debate—which falls into a rather special category. This relates to Ministerial broadcasts. This subject was referred to by the hon. Member for Dudley and by other hon. Members. As the hon. Member for Dudley may know, and as the right hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker) certainly knows, this is governed by an agreement in the form of an aide-mémoire which dates from February, 1947, an agreement which is reviewed from year to year in conjunction with the two major parties in the House. By this, Ministers may make statements, and, where these are highly controversial, the Opposition can claim a right to reply.
In the case of the Prime Minister's broadcast on 3rd November, it was, and still is, our view that my right hon. Friend was, in the words of the aide-mémoire, as impartial as possible. The aide-mémoire lays down that, if no agreement is reached between the two sides in this matter, the B.B.C. is free to exercise its own judgment. It accordingly did so. Whether or not that exercise of judgment is agreed to by hon. Members on either side of the House, I think that many will accept the evaluation that was given to it by my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal in his speech of yesterday.
I must make it clear—and I am sure that the right hon. Member for Smethwick knows this—that the responsibilities and 1098 the relationship between the Government and the B.B.C. over home affairs as laid down in the Licence are not the same as their relationship in respect of external affairs. He will remember that Clause 15 (2), (3) and (4) deal with home affairs, while 15 (5) deals with overseas broadcasts, and that this says: The Corporation shall consult and collaborate with the Departments so specified"— which are the Commonwealth Relations Office, the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office— and shall obtain and accept from them such information regarding conditions in, and lie policies of Her Majesty's Government aforesaid towards, the countries so prescribed and other countries as will enable the Corporation to plan and prepare its programmes in the External Services in the national interest. I thought that the right hon. Member was unfair when he tried to make a point which is true in respect of news but not true, and not recognised as necessarily being true, in respect of the whole programme of the Overseas Services.

§ Mr. Gordon Walker
The hon. Member must interpret himself the words which he has just read out. It does not say that the B.B.C. has to accept. The B.B.C. has to inform itself of the views of the Government about the countries concerned; but it is the B.B.C., and not the Government, who prepare the programmes.

§ Mr. Alport
I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is not intentionally reading into my remarks anything that I have not said. It is quite clear that the detail of the programme is the responsibility of the B.B.C., but it also has a responsibility in these matters to keep in touch with the Departments concerned so that, as it says—it can prepare its programmes in the External Services in the national interest. It is also worth remembering that it is very difficult, if not physically impossible, for the B.B.C. to direct a particular service in the overseas field to a special audience. It would be quite impossible, for instance, to differentiate, in the General Overseas Service, between an audience in Cyprus and another audience in Malta or some other part of the Eastern Mediterranean. It is asking the B.B.C. to do the physically impossible to say that it should ensure, for instance, 1099 that in the case of Forces engaged in action any special service should be available to them other than a special service made available locally and not through the medium of the external services of the General Overseas Service.
No one is more aware than the Government of the importance of making the British point of view heard and understood in those parts of the world where it is most frequently traduced and misrepresented, and the reputation of the B.B.C. for its objectivity and integrity is one of our most important assets in this matter. It is surely evidence of this that we heard the moving tribute to the B.B.C. which was paid by the Hungarian State Radio at the end of the pathetically short period during which it spoke for the people of Hungary.
But there are undoubtedly arguments—as the Drogheda Committee has pointed out—for the redeployment of our resources in this field.
It has been argued by many people of experience, particularly General Glubb, that special methods are needed in particular areas to ensure that the point of view of this country is not drowned in the loud and tendentious voices of those whose only object appears to be to destroy the standards and the values not only of Great Britain, but of free, democratic peoples everywhere.
I can assure my hon. Friends who have referred to this subject that this matter is being very carefully considered by Her Majesty's Government, and hon. Members will not, I hope, expect me to go into details of the plans and the proposals which are afoot. I hope, however, that they will accept my assurance that the Government are no less aware than they are of the importance of this problem, and no less determined than they are that an effective solution should be found for it before it is too late.
A good many hard things have been said in the debate about the B.B.C. The B.B.C., no doubt like other human institutions, is not infallible, and I do not suppose for a moment that it would claim that it was. At the same time, it has created a tradition of great value to this country. It performs a great service for this country, and I am quite certain that the criticism which is levelled at it from time to time is of assistance to it in 1100 carrying out those services and should not be regarded simply as nagging criticism aimed at destroying its initiative and purpose.
The truth of the matter is that in this world, when high feelings are raging on a particular subject, there is abnormal sensitiveness to the problems of expression of points of view on the B.B.C., but I have no doubt at all that if any improvement or changes are necessary the Governors and the B.B.C. will be among the first to see that those changes and improvements are carried out speedily, so that the B.B.C. can retain, as it has in the past, the full confidence of all sections of the community in this country.

§ Mr. Leslie Hale (Oldham, West)
I can well understand the anxiety of hon. Members opposite to raise this subject, because an impartial presentation of the facts damns the Government completely. I should like to raise an issue of real importance in the few minutes that remain. I do not dissent very much from what the Assistant Postmaster-General has said. He put his case moderately and reasonably, and we all agree that the B.B.C. is a very great and a useful institution doing very good work.
The point upon which there should be more discussion is the presentation of the rights of minorities and the case for minority opinion. We have had this problem over a long period. I am not a Spiritualist, but I happen to be associated with spiritualists. They tried for years to get a chance to put their case, but it was years before that chance was conceded. At this moment, when millions of people are turning—perhaps a little dubiously and uncertainly—more towards a pacifist point of view, no pacifist has been heard on the B.B.C. No one who believes completely in non-violence is given an opportunity of putting the case, opening a discussion, or allowing the overwhelming religious case, the Christian case, for pacifism to be put with all the force of the B.B.C. These organisations, usually with little money and with few possibilities of propaganda and of organising meetings in towns and villages, are compelled to use the old and almost outworn methods of putting their case before the public.
1101 My other point is a more difficult one. The B.B.C. is the voice of Britain not only here but throughout the greater part of the Colonies and in some part of the Commonwealth. In the Colonies what is sometimes a minority opinion—but what is sometimes a majority opinion in the Colony—is not put at all. Orders have been made and constitutions suspended, but we have never heard on the B.B.C. the voice of someone representing the colonial workers and saying that he objects to the suspension of the constitution and giving his view of what has been happening.
1102 I pay my tribute to the B.B.C. I am completely impartial in this matter. The B.B.C. has never used me, so I have no axe to grind. On the last occasion the B.B.C. invited me, the party Whips said that I should not be allowed to go—