Situation

HC Deb 04 November 1958 vol 594 cc743-5

9. Mr. Brockway

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make a statement on the situation in Cyprus.

16. Mr. K. Robinson

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make a statement on the present situation in Cyprus.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd

Her Majesty's Government have made it clear that they will go ahead quietly and unprovocatively, of course, with the arrangements contemplated under their seven-year plan.

E.O.K.A. terrorist acts continue. These have taken the form of road mines directed against Security Force patrols, acts of sabotage, and murders of unarmed Greek Cypriot and United Kingdom civilians. In their campaign to rid the island of violence, the Security Forces have been successful in the capture of many terrorists and quantities of arms and explosives.

Mr. Brockway

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we on this side of the House have denounced acts of terrorism directly to the Cypriot people just as strongly as have any hon. Members opposite? However, does he not realise that his plan for Cyprus is absolutely impossible? Will he make two declarations: first, that just as the Greek Cypriots have laid aside Enosis he will lay aside partition; and secondly, he will add to his proposals the election of a democratic national assembly for Cyprus?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd

I do not recognise that the plan is unworkable, but there is a later Question to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on that matter.

Mr. Robinson

Does not the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that the Government's failure to meet the concessions of Archbishop Makarios by any kind of concession of their own is simply throwing power, influence and initiative more and more into the hands of the extremists? Is that what he really wants in Cyprus?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd

What the hon. Gentleman says is not quite accurate. The suggestion of Archbishop Makarios was rapidly overtaken by the discussion at N.A.T.O. for a conference. We then made it clear that we were ready, in addition to the discussion on the British seven-year plan, to discuss also long-term solutions. This long-term solution could certainly have been one of those discussed, and that was the forum in which it should properly have been discussed.

Mr. Callaghan

That being so, why could not the Government have accepted M. Spaak's provisional plan as a basis for discussion, instead of insisting on the counter-discussion of their own plan? Did not the points contained in M. Spaak's plan meet the position put forward by the Government and later, as amended, by the Opposition? In those circumstances, what could be the basis for refusing it as an agenda?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd

It is quite clear to those who have carefully studied the White Paper, which the hon. Gentleman has in his hand, that we were quite prepared to have our interim plan and long-term solutions discussed, including the effect on the latter of the short-term plan as well as the merits of the proposed long-term plans themselves. There was nothing whatever to prevent any of those plans being discussed—had a conference been held.

Mr. Callaghan

That being so—and I do not know what opportunity we shall have of discussing it—what prevented the Government from accepting M. Spaak's proposals, which contained all the elements of the plan? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he will get no solution to this problem unless he is willing to yield on some of the procedural points which seem to some of us to be of little moment in comparison with the tragedy which is taking place at this moment?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd

No fair-minded reader of that document would doubt that we were ready to acquiesce in procedural suggestions and changes. The proposals put forward by M. Spaak, and other proposals, should properly have been discussed at the conference.