THE CONGO

HC Deb 15 March 1961 vol 636 cc1478-528

7.4 p.m.

Mr. Denis Healey (Leeds, East)

I want to refer to the specific grants, under Subheads C.12 and D.7, which Her Majesty's Government are making to help the United Nations civil and military action in the Congo. Hon. Members on this side of the Committee strongly support the Government's decision to make these grants, but I should like to ask two questions on their size. I understand that the total sum requested by the Secretary-General of the United Nations in respect of United Nations action in the Congo over this year is about £48 million, and that, according to the system by which United Nations costs are distributed among member States, Her Majesty's Government are obligated to make a total contribution of about £3,700.000. My first question is: do Her Majesty's Government propose to pay the other £1,400,000 later this year?

My second question—which I hope the Lord Privy Seal will answer later—concerns the costs falling on the United Nations additional to those envisaged, owing to the refusal of all the Communist members of the United Nations except Yugoslavia to contribute to the cost of the United Nations operation. I understand that this is likely to mean a shortfall of at least £5 million and that in order to cover these costs last year the United Nations has already had to draw on funds which had been paid and earmarked for other activities. I hope that the Lord Privy Seal can tell us whether Her Majesty's Government have any proposals to make to the United Nations as to the way in which this shortfall should be met, and, if the funds raided from other parts of the United Nations Treasury are to be replaced, how the money is to be obtained.

Hon. Members on this side of the Committee feel that it is vitally important to keep the United Nations operation in the Congo going; indeed, we want to ensure that it leads to success at the earliest moment. We believe that United Nations intervention in the Congo has already prevented tribal warfare in the State of unimaginable barbarism. The Secretary-General was speaking no more than the truth when he referred to one outbreak of tribal warfare, some months ago, as genocide, which is castigated as one of the major crimes in the United Nations Charter.

We also believe that the United Nations intervention in the Congo has prevented direct military intervention in the Congolese tribal warfare by external Great Powers. It has prevented the recreation in the Congo of the sort of situation we had about twenty years ago in Spain, and it is difficult to feel sure that if we had had this type of Spanish Civil War situation in the Congo it would not have spread rapidly to other African States.

I find it very difficult to understand how anybody can oppose the United Nations action in the Congo in principle. The opponents of this United Nations action are an extremely motley crew, composed of the most reactionary and backward factions of every political movement in every country of the world—an extreme mixture spreading from Tory dinosaurs at one end of the spectrum to Communist fanatics at the other, led by an unholy trinity of weird sisters—Salisbury, Salazar and Suslov.

If the United Nations action in the Congo succeeds, not only will it bring some chance of ordered progress in future to the people living in that country, but it will create a real chance to keep the cold war, at any rate in its most savage form, out of the Continent of Africa for good. Above all, it will mean a tremendous accession of strength and prestige to the United Nations. If the United Nations operations fail, on the other hand, not only will it mean tragedy in the Congo and on the Continent of Africa as a whole, but it may deal a fatal blow to the United Nations itself both as the framework of world order as originally envisaged by those who drafted the Charter in 1944–45 and, as many of us hope, as an embryo of a future world government.

One must confess that the success of the United Nations operation is still uncertain, but I insist that none of us, on this side of the Committee at any rate, believes that the uncertainty as to whether or not the United Nations action in the Congo will succeed is the fault of the servants of the United Nations itself. I hope the Lord Privy Seal will take the opportunity when he speaks later of disavowing on behalf of Her Majesty's Government the systematic campaign of vilification both against Mr. Hammarskjöld and Mr. Dayal which has brought the Daily Express and lzvestia, the Daily Telegraph and Pravda, into a sinister alliance with one another. I hope we shall have it quite clearly from the Lord Privy Seal that he does not countenance in any way this campaign of abuse and smear which has been carried on for many months now by organs of opinion in Britain as well as other parts of the world.

I am convinced that, in so far as the United Nations has so far failed to achieve its objectives in the Congo, the fault is not that of its servants. Although they may have made mistakes—we all do—in the extremely difficult and totally unprecedented responsibility which has been thrust upon them there can be no doubt whatever that the main reason why the United Nations action in the Congo has not so far succeeded has been the failure of the Governments in the United Nations to give adequate directives to their servants, a failure which was almost total until the Security Council Resolution of 21st February this year.

It must be recognised that the United Nations is no more and no less than what the phrase suggests. It is the nations of the world in so far as they are united and, if they are not united to that extent it is unable to operate. Many of us on this side of the Committee feel that we cannot altogether absolve Her Majesty's Government from responsibility for the failure of the United Nations to unite adequately in action in the Congo. When the Congo operation began in July last year it had unanimous support throughout the United Nations except for some of the Communist Governments, but, from the end of August until the end of last year, a number of Afro-Asian Governments progressively lost confidence in the sincerity of the Western Governments in the Congo operation.

This is a fact which cannot be denied. Whether or not those Afro-Asian Governments were justified in suspecting the sincerity of the Western Governments is a question on which no doubt the Lord Privy Seal will have something to say, but there can be no doubt whatever that the confidence of a large number of Afro-Asian Governments in the purity of the motives of the Western Powers in this operation were progressively undermined in the last few months of last year. Indeed, a special correspondent of the London Times was saying no more than the truth when, in summing up an impressive series of articles about the situation in Africa, he said: Here is the bill which has been presented to us over the Congo—African suspicion of the white man has been increased, possibly irremediably, just at the time when the process of decolonization was working to dispel it. That, I believe, is an extremely fair and objective statement of a fact which it is impossible to dispute. I cannot avoid the conclusion that Her Majesty's Government's conduct of their responsibilities during the discussions on United Nations action in the Congo has been one reason for this psychological suspicion, which I deplore just as much as the Lord Privy Seal must deplore it himself.

It seems that the key is, as suggested by the correspondent of The Times, that the behaviour of British representatives in the United Nations on this issue seems to have been determined much more by the Salisbury wing of the Conservative Party than by that wing of the Conservative Party which is represented by the Colonial Secretary, because again and again—and I propose to prove this—Her Majesty's Government in this Congo affair, indeed on so many issues concern- ing Africa which has arisen at the United Nations, have put the privileges of white minorities in Africa before the rights of the black majorities. That is the central issue of dispute between the two warring factions of the Conservative Party at present.

We have such examples as the Prime Minister ringing up President Eisenhower to persuade him to vote against his convictions on the anti-Colonial resolution put to the United Nations Assembly in December. We have the pusillanimous conduct of Her Majesty's Government in discussions on the future of South-West Africa—conduct which has been repeated twice in the last few months after the Commonwealth Under-Secretary had given a pledge that in future Her Majesty's Government policy on this issue in the United Nations would be changed.

We have had an extraordinary reluctance by Her Majesty's Government to support any United Nations action on Angola, although in fact it is clear to everyone that at present Angola, owing to the blunders and blindness of the Portuguese Government, is racing fast to the same precipice over which the Congo has already fallen.

Mr. Anthony Fell (Yarmouth)

Does the hon. Gentleman really think that the United Nations has jurisdiction over Angola?

Mr. Healey

I believe that the United Nations has both the right and the duty to concern itself with the fate of human beings and their deprival of human rights in any country in the world.

The Temporary Chairman (Sir H. Legge-Bourke)

Order. I am afraid Angola does not come under this Vote.

Mr. Healey

Angola does not come directly under this Vote, Sir Harry, but I am discussing the background of Her Majesty's conduct which has prejudiced the success of the United Nations operation to which these events have contributed. It seems to me that if one is allowed to discuss Her Majesty's conduct over the Congo one must be able to discuss the situation created by the Government which made its action fail.

Mr. Ede (South Shields)

Surely my hon. Friend means Her Majesty's Government's conduct.

Mr. Healey

I am sorry, Her Majesty's Government's conduct, of course.

The Temporary Chairman

I allowed the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) to refer to Angola in passing, but it seemed that there were going to be several questions and answers on that and we must get back to the Vote.

Mr. Healey

I am very glad to do so, Sir Harry. I was proposing in any case to say no more than I did about Angola, and I still maintain the truth and relevance of what I have said, because the conduct over Angola is part of the background against which the Afro-Asian representatives in the United Nations judge the motives of Her Majesty's Government and other Western Governments in their actions on the Congo.

I believe that the motives of Her Majesty's Government, for example, in pushing Lumumba out in the Congo and pushing Kasavubu in were innocent. I believe they thought they had completely sound reasons for pushing in that direction, but the plain fact is that any chance of persuading the Africans of the purity of Western motives in the Congo was ruined by the suspicions created by Her Majesty's Government in their behaviour on other African issues in the United Nations at the same time and even more by the failure of Her Majesty's Government to exert any sustained pressure—indeed, so far as we know, any pressure at all—against Belgian sabotage of United Nations action in the Congo.

Mr. Raymond Gower (Barry)

Will the hon. Member agree that, if Africans in the Congo are trying to judge the credentials, as it were, of Her Majesty's Government, they are much more likely to be impressed by what Her Majesty's Government have done in territories for which we are responsible, such as Nigeria or Tanganyika, than by what we may or may not have done in territories such as those to which he has referred, where we are not responsible?

Mr. Healey

The hon. Member is oil the point. I was not talking about the attitude of Africans in the Congo towards our behaviour. I was discussing the attitude of other African Governments in the United Nations towards our policy in the Congo. I do not think that what I have said can be disputed The point has been made again and again by representatives of those African Governments themselves, such as Mr Nkrumah.

The plain fact is that the general policy which we tried to follow in the Congo during the second half of last year was hopelessly compromised in the eyes of many African Governments by the fact that, throughout the summer, hundreds of officers and men from the Belgian Army were pouring into Katanga, that the opponents of Mr. Lumumba were allowed to recruit in Belgium and elsewhere mercenaries and thugs to serve their political ends, and even as late as, I think, 16th February this year three jet planes which were allocated to Belgium by the United States were flown through Malta to Elizabethville in order to reinforce the Belgian-sponsored forces in the Congo.

These and other facts have been reported to the United Nations in detail by Mr. Dayal, the Secretary-General's representative in the Congo. We have raised these matters again and again in the House of Commons. We have tried to find out whether Her Majesty's Government support these complaints by the United Nations, and we have been met, from the Lord Privy Seal and from the Joint Under-Secretary of State, by stonewalling almost identical with the sort of stonewalling we had from the present Home Secretary during the period of so-called non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War.

Mr. Fell

I am sure the hon. Member does not want to mislead the Committee. Will he explain what he means by "Belgian-sponsored forces"?

Mr. Healey

If the hon. Member does not know that the Katanga Government was initially sponsored and is still supported by the Belgian Union Minière, his ignorance of the situation there is even greater than I thought it was.

Mr. Fell

All right. The fact is, of course that they are supported in exactly the way as they were supported before, that is to say, from the taxes coming from the Union Minière.

Mr. Healey

The hon. Member has made my point so much more clearly than I could have made it myself that I think further comment is unnecessary.

I come now to some direct questions. I understand that Mr. HammarskjÖld, acting on behalf of the United Nations, has during the past few months sent four Notes to the Belgian Government requesting certain actions and complaining of certain other actions. Have Her Majesty's Government supported these Notes at any time'? We had an example even this week in the House. The Lord Privy Seal was asked about recruiting activities indulged in on behalf of the Katanga Government by the assistant Belgian military attaché in London, and the right hon. Gentleman pretended that he knew nothing whatever about it.

The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Edward Heath)

Really!

Mr. Healey

The Lord Privy Seal denied that the assistant military attaché in the Belgian Embassy concerned had had anything to do with recruiting military personnel for Katanga, although a reporter of a well known and reputable British newspaper himself had interviewed the assistant military attaché and had been given the address in Belgium to which he should present himself if he wished to volunteer for the Katanga forces.

Mr. John Eden (Bournemouth, West)

On a point of order, Sir Harry. How far is it in order, in a discussion on Class II, Vote 2, to indulge in the vilification of nationals of one of our close allies highly respected as such?

The Temporary Chairman

I have been listening very closely to what has been said. So far, I think that nothing, has been out of order, but I ask the hon. Member to try to come back to Her Majesty's Government's responsibilities under this Vote.

Mr. Healey

I have never left Her Majesty's Government's responsibilities, Sir Harry. I am trying patiently, in the face of repeated and often irrelevant interruptions from the other side, to explain precisely why Her Majesty's Government's policy in the past has rendered the action of the United Nations—to which we contribute under this Vote the substantial sum of £2,300,000—inoperative. It seems to me that it is perfectly relevant and, indeed, highly necessary that it should be said.

I believe that Her Majesty's Government have perfectly sincere motives for trying to protect the Belgian Government on this issue, but I ask them to realise that continued conduct of this kind by any Western Government will throw the whole of Africa into the hands of the Russians. We have a duty to support United Nations action here, even though 13elgium is our ally, just as—I know that some hon. Members opposite will disagree with this—the United States Government had a duty to support United Nations action over Suez in 1956 even though that meant adopting policies contrary to those of some of her allies. As a loyal supporter of the United Nations, which I believe the Lord Privy Seal to be, the right hon. Gentleman must not, like Pontius Pilate, throw off all responsibility for giving assistance to the Secretary-General of the United Nations in trying to have carried out resolutions voted for by Her Majesty's Government and passed by the United Nations.

The result—this is why I have spent so much time on this matter—was that by the end of last year it had become clear even to Her Majesty's Government—it was certainly clear to the United States Government—that the only way to restore Afro-Asian confidence in the purity of Western motives in the Congo operation was to try to bring Mr. Lumumba back somehow into the Congolese Government. We all know that Mr. Stevenson, the American representative at the United Nations, from the first moment when he took office was working hard in order to contrive this end. Again, when we raised this matter in the House, Her Majesty's Government dragged their feet. We raised it again and again, and I remember well that when in a question I referred to Mr. Lumumba as a personality, whatever his character, of unique importance in the Congo, almost every hon. and right hon. Member on the Tory back benches laughed and sneered. Within a week, Mr. Lumumba was dead—if he had not been done to death in some Katanga prison even before we discussed the matter.

Since then, even hon. Members opposite, I think, have had to accept that Mr. Lumumba's death has been seen by most of the world as a political murder as foul as the murder of Imre Nagy in a Russian prison under other auspices. The tragedy of the whole story is that many people in Africa and Asia sincerely believe—wrongly in my view—that the West is responsible for Mr. Lumumba's murder.

Mr. Gower

Does not the hon. Member agree that in a country like the Congo, which was, perhaps, inadequately prepared for democracy and in which there was a battle for power between different elements, a tragedy of that kind was the result of circumstances in the country? Does he suggest that this country, through the United Nations, should try to decide the issue of such an internal battle?

Mr. Healey

I do not want to go into this in detail because it would take me even further away from matters directly relevant to this Vote. Of course the situation in the Congo was such that murders of this type were liable to take place, but this does not absolve anyone who was responsible for these murders from the crime which they committed in committing them. I agree that the situation was abnormal. So was the situation in Hungary in October, 1956, but that in no way diminishes the guilt of those who committed crimes.

However, the fact is that even in the moment when Afro-Asian passions were most excited by the murder of Mr. Lumumba, disaster was averted and the situation saved by what I consider to be the great political triumph of the Resolution passed in the Security Council on the night of 21st February—a Resolution which was supported by all members of the Security Council, including the British Government, except for the interesting duo of the Soviet Union and France. We all owe an immense debt of gratitude to the Afro-Asian countries which sponsored this Resolution, not least to Colonel Nasser, since the United Arab Republic played such a leading part in obtaining the support of African and Asian countries which had previously been quite unwilling, for reasons of their suspicions of the West, to support wholeheartedly any United Nations action.

We can also be very proud of the part which the Commonwealth is playing in this new situation in trying to improve the development of affairs in the Congo, and particularly of Mr. Nehru for supplying this week nearly 5,000 troops to the military forces under United Nations command in the Congo, even though this means almost a revolution in a major aspect of Indian policy. We should also be particularly grateful to Ghana for the role which she has played in building up political support in Africa for a common United Nations policy in the Congo. In many respects it is a great tragedy that Her Majesty's Government did not earlier accept President Nkrumah's advice on some of these issues.

I do not wish to discuss in any detail the internal political affairs of the Congo, and that is why I did not go further into the questions raised by the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) a moment ago. The one thing of which I am convinced, in the light of the experience of the last nine months, is that the Western Powers must keep their hands completely out of this question. As the Resolution of 21st February insists, this question must be left to a decision of the Congolese people themselves, taken after the recall of the Congolese Parliament, and in so far as external Powers can make a useful intervention into questions of the Congo's internal policy, I believe that those external Powers must be African Powers. One of the mistakes which we have made in the last nine months is to play far too active and public a role in trying to decide these questions as Western Powers. That criticism applies both to Britain and to the United States.

I believe that the Resolution of 21st February provides the first adequate basis which the United Nations has had for effective action in the Congo and I ask the Lord Privy Seal in his reply to express his support and endorsement of that Resolution in the most unqualified terms possible.

As I sit down, I should like to insist again that the fact that the African countries have agreed to give the United Nations the right, if necessary and as a last resort, to use force inside an African State in order to avert civil war is a tremendous concession, particularly for the countries which are neighbours of the Congo, some of which may possibly fear difficulties in their own countries which would invite a similar United Nations' intervention.

I insist that the Government recognise that this aspect of the Resolution of 21st February, which gives the United Nations Force the right in certain circumstances to intervene in the Congo, can be read only in conjunction with the other passage in that Resolution, which insists that all Belgian military and paramilitary personnel and all political advisers in the Congo who are not responsible to the United Nations should be evacuated as early as possible. I should like the Lord Privy Seal, when he replies, to tell the House what the Government are doing, if anything, to see that this part of the Resolution is being carried out by the Governments concerned, including the Belgian Government, because even though Her Majesty's Government's tenderness towards the Belgians throughout this unhappy affair has been inspired, I believe, by the most pure of motives—namely, the desire to protect an ally who is in a difficult and tragic situation—in my opinion it shows a wrong sense of political priorities to give this factor in British policy priority over the need to win and hold the confidence of the African and Asian countries, without whose continued and enthusiastic support the United Nation's action in the Congo cannot succeed.

7.36 p.m.

Sir Charles Mott-Radclyffe (Windsor)

This debate is useful for the number of reasons. In the first stage, it has enabled the Committee to listen to a lecture from the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) of almost unbelievable naivety, if I may say so. In the second place, it provides an opportunity for my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal to enlighten the Committee in his reply on certain aspects of this extremely tangled story of the task of the United Nations Force in the Congo.

Thirdly, I believe that it might act as a healthy reminder to those on both sides of the Committee who are a little apt to say, whenever there is some international problem, dispute or upheaval, "Leave it to the United Nations", without pausing to consider what kind of a burden they wish to place on the United Nations or bothering to find out whether the United Nations, by its very machinery, its very rules and its very complexity, is capable of dealing with that kind of eventuality.

I am with the hon. Member for Leeds, East to this extent: I am not one of those who is against the United Nations. But it is wrong for any hon. Member, irrespective of the side of the Committee on which he sits, to try to impose a load on the machinery of the United Nations which that machinery is not designed to carry and then subsequently to criticise the United Nations for failing to carry this load.

I agree that the principle of having a United Nations Force in the Congo was quite right. It was there, as I understand it, in the first place to hold the ring and, in the second place, to restore a measure of law and order in that enormous area in the middle of Africa where law and order has completely broken down. That was the object of the exercise, and I am wholly in favour of that objective. If the United Nations had not attempted to fill the vacuum, other people from a number of very undesirable sources might well have filled it with the kind of results which the hon. Member for Leeds, East described earlier in his speech.

But if a force is supposed to restore law and order in an enormous territory where law and order has broken down, there are a certain number of essentials which it must fulfil if the operation is to be a success and if its instructions are to be carried out. In the first place, surely, however the force is composed, it must be large enough to do the job, its orders must be clear and, what is more, they must be absolutely practical. In the second place, the force must have a common language, by which I mean a language which all members of the force can understand. In the third place, it must have a common policy. In the fourth place, it must have some common loyalty. Lastly, it must have some administrative experience. Frankly, I do not see how a United Nations Force could conceivably carry out the task which it was asked to carry out unless it had some control over the administration of some of the territory in which it was placed.

By its own rules, and being hamstrung by them, it happened that the United Nations Force lacked all those five essentials. Let me say at once that I have the utmost sympathy with and, in many ways, admiration for what the United Nations Force has been trying to do. I can think of no worse position than to be a U.N.O. officer, an N.C.O., or a private soldier for that matter, in the Congo during the last three or four months, trying to carry out the sort of orders which have been issued to the Force from the United Nations Assembly thousands of miles away. I can conceive of no more dreadful nightmare.

The United Nations Force was told, for very well-meaning reasons, that it had to be impartial. One can be impartial if one deals quite impartially with whatever disturbance arises from whatever quarter. That seems to me to be the right interpretation of impartiality. But one cannot be impartial and exercise authority if one interprets impartiality as meaning that one sits back with arms folded while men and women, Africans and Europeans, are beaten up, shot up, murdered and raped in front of one's eyes. That cannot be the right interpretation of impartiality.

I do not think that it is possible to exercise authority or to restore law and order if one interprets impartiality or neutrality, whichever word one likes to use, in the sense that one sits back with arms folded and does nothing while atrocities are committed in front of one's eyes.

Mr. Healey

This is a very interesting argument, with which I have great sympathy. It means, I think, that the hon. Member totally rejects the interpretation of the Resolution of 21st February which was given by Sir Patrick Dean, the representative of Her Majesty's Government in the Assembly, in which he tried to restrict freedom of action even under this Resolution in such a way that only in the case of outright civil war, and as a last resort, would there be any right for the United Nations Force to take any action in the Congo whatever.

Sir C. Mott-Radclyffe

This brings out the difficulty I am trying to describe. Is it fair to put the United Nations Force in the position in which it was placed in the Congo, with the sort of orders which it was being given, and expect it to maintain law and order? If it is not fair, then it ought never to have been sent to carry out that kind of operation. I am quite certain that neither the hon. Gentleman nor myself could carry out these instructions in that way.

My own view is that those who demonstrated outside the Belgian Embassy in London, and outside Belgian Embassies elsewhere, against the alleged complicity of the Belgians in the murder of Mr. Lumumba—and as far as I am aware there is no proof whatever that the Belgians had anything whatever to do with it—might have given a more convincing proof of their sincerity if in the week that followed there had been similar demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and in other capitals of the world protesting against the failure of the United Nations Force to prevent atrocities occurring within a few feet of United Nations troops.

Atrocity, as the hon. Member said, is atrocity, whether committed by African against European, European against African, or African against African. Whoever commits it against whomsoever, it is an atrocity. I think that it does not entirely redound to the credit of the United Nations as a whole that United Nations troops have been placed in the position, by the very complexity and difficulties of their orders, of having to stand by with arms folded. Can the hon. Gentleman conceive what it must be like to stand by with arms folded, or with a rifle on the ground, while men, women and children are being beaten up as close to him as the hon. Gentleman is to me? I think that is an appalling position in which to put the United Nations Force. I am not criticising those who carry out the orders; all I am saying is that the orders in fact made the task quite impossible.

Mr. Gilbert Longden (Hertfordshire, South-West)

I do not understand my hon. Friend when he talks about the orders. I have seen the orders, and I know that every soldier, as he lands in the Congo, has orders put into his hands which clearly state that he is to intervene to protect life and property where an attack is made by black upon white or vice versa. The force has not carried out those orders in every case, but it is not fair to blame the United Nations orders, which were clear in that respect.

Sir C. Mott-Radcliffe

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for putting this matter more clearly than I thought it was. If, indeed, those were the orders, I have perhaps been rather over-sympathetic to the conduct of the United Nations troops. If they were not carrying out the orders which my hon. Friend says were given, that puts a somewhat different interpretation on what I have been trying to say.

I hope that my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal will split up the Vote which we are discussing and tell us under what subheads the various sums are allocated. I imagine that within the total sum the Government provided funds in cash, food and medical supplies and corn. I do not know if they provided equipment for the United Nations Force, but I know that they provided seed corn. I should like to know what sort of commodities were provided for within the total sum. I am sure that would be of interest to the Committee.

I must point out that the Government were perfectly right to make that contribution. They were absolutely right to send the goods for which they were asked. But the value of medical supplies, of the seed corn, of food or of any equipment is written down by at least half unless those who handle the medical supplies, distribute the food or drill the seed are guaranteed a minimum amount of physical security. It is not enough to drop goods on the ground in the middle of an airstrip or at a port in the Congo or anywhere else, unless they can be moved safely from A to B and unless some physical security can be given to the men, or women for that matter, who are moving the goods from A to B, because without that security they lose half their value.

The object of the intervention of the United Nations Force in the Congo was, as the hon. Gentleman said, in case there was a vacuum which would not remain a vacuum very long, because other people might step in. The U.A.R. and the Soviet Union might have stepped in and a terrible civil war on all sorts of very undesirable lines might have occurred.

I imagine that the object of the exercise is to continue to hold the ring until such time as a Government—it may be a coalition Government, or a group of people sufficiently agreed—can take over and exercise efficient authority and enjoy sufficient popular support, if that is possible, in the Congo. I do not think that the story ends there. Supposing all this does happen and a Government is produced in the Congo which commands a modicum of popular support and shows signs of getting to grips with the minimum requirements for restoring law and order—what then? Does anyone really think that that Government could function without an immense amount of administrative and technical assistance and advice from someone else? If so. from whom?

The question that we have to ask ourselves today is one which the hon. Gentleman studiously avoided. Does he think that U.N.O. can function in the Congo, not on a day-to-day basis, not on a hand-to-mouth basis, but on a long-term basis? Does he think that U.N.O. can function collectively, as the trustee powers used to function individually in the past? That is the question which arises from this debate. It is no good discussing the nature of the United Nations Force and burying our heads in the sand without considering what might come after. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal will give some indication this evening of the way in which the mind of Her Majesty's Government is working.

7.50 p.m.

Mr. Tom Driberg (Barking)

It seems to me shameful that the Government have not found time for a full debate on an issue so important as this and that we should have to squeeze it into part of a Supply day. However, since that is the situation, I, for one, will speak briefly.

The United Nations operation in the Congo has been severely criticised already and I agree that it has been in many respects deplorably ineffective, but I think that we should not entirely overlook the better side of that operation. I personally have nothing but praise, having seen it on the spot as recently as January, for the relief and the technical work done there by the United Nations civil people. They really have done a terrific job, and although there were delays in getting the famine relief food there, certainly by January, when another hon. Member and I were able to see it, the supplies were going out pretty well and the death-roll was being dramatically reduced. It is only right to say that, since we are all, from various points of view, being so critical tonight.

Since I, for one, like my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), shall have some hard things to say about some of the Belgians in the Congo, I should like also to pay tribute to the nursing sisters—the Belgian nuns—whom I saw at various hospitals tending wretchedly ill and under-nourished children, nuns who had stuck to their posts in those hospitals when, rather regrettably, a large number of the Belgian doctors left in a hurry last summer.

The forces, too, although they have been to some extent handicapped in practice by their directive, whatever may be said by the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Longden), have done, within the strict limits of that directive, a pretty good job. I am thinking particularly of the Ghana contingent under the very able command of General Alexander, officered by both Ghanaian and English officers. I am thinking also of Nigerian police, Indonesian paratroopers, Scandinavians, and all the rest of them. It has not been an easy task for them, and I do not think it ought to go out from even a secondary debate in this House that there was nothing except criticism of the United Nations operation.

Next, however, I must express the horror that most of us, surely, felt at the murder of Patrice Lumumba and at the really disgusting, frivolous and almost gloating cartoons and comments that appeared about it here and there in the British Press. As I think the hon. Member opposite nearly said, I do not know that the murder of a Prime Minister is necessarily more culpable than any other murder, but the murder of a prisoner, as Lumumba almost certainly was at the time of his death, always seems peculiarly revolting. It is tragically ironical, too, that Lumumba was killed while theoretically under the protection and almost actually in the presence of the United Nations forces whom he had invited into his country to restore and to preserve law and order. To preserve law and order—but that murder was an affront to the very principle of legality.

There is no doubt whatever that at the time of his death Mr. Lumumba was the only legal Prime Minister of the Congo and that his true successor, as, I suppose one must call him, acting Prime Minister, is Mr. Gizenga. I say that there is no doubt about this at all, and I hope that the Lord Privy Seal will not cast any doubt upon it tonight, because if he does it will simply show that he has not read, as I am sure he must have done, the Loi Fondamentale of the Congo passed by the Belgian Parliament in May of last year. I hope that by now Her Majesty's Government have realised, in the light of the strict provisions of that law, and in particular Articles 43 and 44, how wrong they were in agreeing, no doubt under pressure from the Eisenhower administration, that President Kasavubu had any right at all to dismiss the Prime Minister without invoking the procedure laid down in the Articles to which I have referred in that law.

Of course, Kasavubu is and was the legitimate President of the Congo, but he has no more right to act as an arbitrary ruler than has the King of the Belgians, on whose status and powers those of the Congolese President were modelled so closely. It is rather interesting to contrast the present Government's attitude to Kasavubu with the diametrically opposite position taken up vis-à-vis the King and Government of the Belgians, by an earlier and greater Tory Prime Minister, in 1940. He was, of course, fortified by the sound advice of a number of colleagues in the Cabinet who were members of the Labour Party. His recognition of the Belgian Government in exile, despite the attitude of the King, was constitutionally correct and was agreed to by the United States, the Soviet Union and France—and also, incidentally, by Chiang Kai-shek.

I stress what may seem to be a legalistic argument because it is highly relevant to the events of the past few days. It is clear that the pretensions of the Congolese politicians who met in Madagascar, and any confederation that they may be proposing, have no constitutional validity, and I hope very much that the Lord Privy Seal will tell us tonight that Her Majesty's Government are aware of this point. This is, of course, quite apart from the more substantial criticisms that such a set-up would tend to impoverish most of the Congo Republic in favour of the two richest provinces—those in which the Belgians are, naturally, interested—and would tend also to-wards what President Nkrumah has called the Balkanisation of Africa. Indeed, these Madagascar plotters are in effect simply rebels and pirates, and to grant them any recognition at all, other than the recognition of Kasavubu's limited status as constitutional Head of State, is actually to intervene in the internal politics of the Congo. If we do that, we are intervening in favour of an illegal rebellion against the legally constituted Government.

The most flagrant intervention, as has already been said, is that of the Belgians. I do not refer to those Belgian civilians who may be doing useful non-political work, as technicians and professional men—for some of those who went away last summer are now back again. I refer to the ruthless and avaricious Union Minière, whose stooge Tshombe is; and still more to the hundreds of Belgian officers and senior N.C.O.s who are running his piratical armed forces for him and training his mercenaries in the use of arms supplied from Belgium—[An Hon. MEMBER "Rubbish."] It is not rubbish. The hon. Member merely parades his ignorance yet again when he interrupts. The public announcements of the Belgian Government on this matter—perhaps this will please the hon. Member better—have been very welcome. They have condemned the service in the Congo of large numbers of Belgian officers and men. I should like to hear from the right hon. Gentleman tonight that Her Majesty's Government have made representations to the Belgian Government, urging them to implement these words in action and to recall these officers, as they can well do in the case of those—of whom there are many, as I know—whose names are still on the Belgian Army list. Her Majesty's Government have surely some right to make such representations: the Belgians are our allies in N.A.T.O., and, after all, Britain has engaged in two world wars partly in defence of the independence of Belgium.

I have only one or two other points to make, and I shall make them briefly—I should have liked to have made many more. I hope that the Foreign Office has sent new instructions to the British Embassy in Leopoldville. I do not like to censure officials on the spot If they do anything that seems to me to be wrong—anything with which, rightly or wrongly, I do not agree—I assume that they are carrying out instructions from home, and I attack the Minister—who, I am sure, would not dodge responsibility for anything that is done in the name of the British Government.

I must, however, say that it is quite deplorable that some of the foreign missions in Leopoldville, and most notably the British and American missions, have conducted a bitter personal vendetta against Mr. Dayal, the United Nations Secretary-General's personal representative in the Congo and a man who has been doing as good a job as any man could do—hampered as he was until lately by the inhibiting mandate already mentioned, which was the basic cause of the failure, in so far as it has failed, of the United Nations operation.

That vendetta has been echoed in a silly and inaccurate smear campaign against Mr. Dayal in some British and American newspapers. I hope that the Lord Privy Seal will tonight express the confidence of Her Majesty's Government in Mr. Dayal; if he does not do so, we shall draw our own conclusions.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman can also say something about that extraordinary and possibly significant recent incident in which four American naval vessels were involved—particularly disturbing, coming, as it did, soon after the delivery of those jet planes to which reference has already been made. Hon. Members will recall seeing reports of the incident. It was on 6th March that the State Department in Washington announced that four naval vessels on a good-will trip to South Africa had suddenly been ordered to steam North to the Congo. Next day, the same State Department spokesman announced that the ships had been ordered to turn about and continue their cruise; while, also on the second day, a Navy Department spokesman in Washington said that the turnaround of the ships was ordered because …their presence is not required by the United Nations in Congo waters. The odd thing is that the State Department spokesman also said that the United Nations had never requested the ships in the first place, and that they had been, so to speak, ordered or asked for by the American ambassador, Mr. Timberlake, on his own initiative. Is not that a very odd way for an ambassador to behave? That is all I ask.

Finally, I hope that Her Majesty's Government will take full account of the concrete and sensible proposals made, particularly in his speech at the United Nations last week, by President Nkrumah. I need not detail them here—the Lord Privy Seal must be familiar with them. I will only say that, despite what has been said recently about differences of emphasis between the Ghana Government and the Governments of other African States, I believe that, in their view of what ought to be done in the Congo, the Governments of Ghana and of Nigeria are very close together. These views must be taken seriously: they are African views. Especially after what has happened today at Lancaster House, I do not think that any member of Her Majesty's Government will under-estimate the importance of that.

8.5 p.m.

Sir John Vaughan-Morgan (Reigate)

With much of what the hon. Member for Barking (Mr. Driberg) has said, especially in praise of the United Nations, I will concur and will readily do the like, but I was sorry that he chose to imply criticism of the officials who represent us abroad. I spent a week there at the time when the hon. Member was there, and I would very much like to say to the Committee that not only at Leopoldville but at Elizabethville I think that we are very well represented at all levels.

It is, if I may say so, a mistake to base strictures on the servants of this country abroad, much of which, I am afraid, with great respect to the hon. Member, is based on rather malicious tittle tattle and gossip—

Mr. Driberg

Since the hon. Gentleman has said that, he will forgive me for saying that I have absolute proof for what I said, but that I was careful in my speech to say that I was not censuring the men on the spot but attacking the Minister, who is, after all, responsible for them; they act under his instructions.

Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan

That, I am very glad to hear. If the hon. Member has proof, he will no doubt forward it to the Lord Privy Seal and continue his attacks on that Minister, but it was the hon. Gentleman who introduced the attack on the people on the spot.

Where I agreed with the hon. Gentleman very strongly was in his praise of the United Nations effort. One tends to find oneself criticising when one is there. I do not think that that is unnatural or necessarily harmful, but when history comes to be recorded I think we will all appreciate that, on balance, the United Nations effort in the Congo is, without exception, the most important and the most successful thing that the United Nations has yet done. It is based very largely on the fortuitous fact that Dr. Bunche happened to find himself In Leopoldville for the independence celebrations. If I might say so, never has so much been built on so small and so personal a foundation.

The hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), whose speech was quite admirable, except when he found it necessary to be a party politician, quite rightly said that the United Nations had stopped both a major civil war—"tribal warfare was the term he used—and a major war between the great Powers.

Where there is very much praise we should also be quite frank and try to look for the flaws in the organisation to see where they can be improved for future occasions—because I have no doubt that this kind of operation will have to be carried out again. I cannot think that it could be anything but good to the United Nations' cause if we employed our time in doing that, and not being too sensitive on its behalf of any criticism there may be.

I think we are all agreed, in the first place, that the original mandate from the Security Council was vague and impossible to carry out. When I was there. The United Nations troops were derided for their ineffectiveness. The fact that they were apparently so powerless to intervene alienated a great deal of the sympathy that they would have earned otherwise. They got the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, they were accused of being ineffective. On the other hand, the rival factions in the Congo tended to accuse them of being partisan.

The fact is also that the United Nations forces have been a great success as a whole. There can seldom have been an army of occupation, if one can use that word in inverted commas in this case, which has earned so much praise from the people in the country. I mention not only the Ghanaian troops under General Alexander, but the Nigerian troops under General Foster and the Malayan troops, who were particularly conspicuous for their behaviour and turn-out. Without being too invidious, I mention particularly the Commonwealth troops that were to the fore in the praise they received on all sides. Nevertheless, leaving out the armed forces, one cannot entirely overlook the fact that there have been, to put it mildly, certain clashes of personality.

Nobody who has met Mr. Dayal, as the hon. Member for Barking and I have done, could be anything but impressed by his sincerity of purpose and his dedication to his task. He is a great and able administrator who is helped by a loyal and selfless staff. Although it is fair to say that at many levels relations between the United Nations and the Congolese have on occasion been bad, there is no point in recrimination and there probably have been faults on both sides.

The Congolese authorities have been weak, uncertain of their status and probably touchy or difficult. Overnight, they find themselves with these enormous tasks to carry out, and they are none of them exactly subtle and sophisticated or experienced politicians. It may be a small point to mention, but it is not unimportant, that when Mr. Kasavubu—wrongly, in my view—called for the recall of Mr. Dayal and threatened no longer to co-operate with the United Nations, he received what seemed to me an unnecessarily patronising and rather tart reply from Mr. Hammarskj öld. It may have been justified, but I think that it was a pity and that it is some of the actions of that kind which have rather prejudiced the atmosphere. I hope, however, that with the present slight brightening in the situation, the Congolese authorities will be able to have a fresh start.

We ought to look very carefully at the new mandate from the Security Council, to which the hon. Member for Leeds, East referred. As I understand, the United Nations is charged, first, to remove all Belgian and foreign military and political advisers. Secondly, the Congolese armed units and personnel are to be reorganised and brought under discipline and control. Even if the United Nations is allowed to use force, we should be under no illusions about what this commitment may mean.

So far, spread over a country two-thirds the size of India, the United Nations has, with the Indians, some 20,000 troops. The Congolese Army in its various factions has about 20,000. If any of those forces or any of the tribesmen show resistance to these policies, it will need not 20,000 but very many more thousands of troops to enforce the mandate. We could see guerrilla warfare on a scale which so far the Congo has been spared, and the logistic problems of supplying a force which is not at warfare are nothing to the problems which the United Nations would then have to face. I shall be grateful if my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal will say whether there have been any indications from the United Nations about how it expects to carry out the mandate.

What I am also unhappy about is the tendency that because the Congolese State may be weak and divided, the United Nations Force may, want lo impose its will on the various regimes. Advice yes, but enforcement may be very difficult.

Concerning the other point of the mandate—the removal of the Belgian and foreign military and political advisers—I hope that the Belgian Government will co-operate in this. I have seen the correspondence that has taken place between the Secretary-General and the Belgian Government. It was something of a revelation to me to realise that many of those Belgian military personnel are there under that same loi fondamentale that the hon. Member for Barking quoted which is the sanction for Mr. Lumumba's authority. If that applies in one case, it must, presumably, apply in the other case.

I am not so happy about the removal of the other advisers. I am not certain what is meant by the term "political advisers", but certainly I hope that it does not extend to any of the technical personnel, whether they are under the United Nations or not. I will come to that point again later.

Mr. Fell

In his argument about the recall of Belgian personnel serving in the Congo—I ask this only to elicit information—is my hon. Friend saying that the Belgians should try to recall even personnel whom President Tshombe, for example, himself wants to have in Katanga?

Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan

If they are there seconded from the Belgian Army, the Belgian Government has the right to do it. I agree with my hon. Friend that when dealing with those recruited by the legal Congolese Government, which includes President Tshombe, the elected President of the Province—not of the autonomous State—and when those legal authorities say, "We want to employ those people", it is for the United Nations to sort it out with the Congolese Government. I am talking only about the action in regard to the Belgian Government and its own seconded personnel.

I am not so worried about the military personnel. What is important concerning them is to say that when the Belgians and the other foreigners go, the United Nations must be able to produce people to take their place if they are so required. That is the important thing concerning the civilian personnel. We must realise that the Belgian staff—administrative, economic and technical—is now once again very considerable in numbers. I cannot think that any kind of an economy or civilisation in the Congo has any hope of being carried on without a large number of Belgian personnel. They already outnumber the United Nations people by ten to one or more. The United Nations staff is limited by the fact that so many of them are French-speaking. They have to be recruited from French-speaking States. I sincerely hope that some of the United Nations people on the spot will get over their dislike of the Belgians being there at all, because I cannot see their being eliminated in the near future.

I should like to say a few words about the political situation, and particularly about the murder of Mr. Lumumba. The crime of his death is one that will lie on the consciences of the Congolese leaders until the are prepared to prove to the world that they are innocent. He who takes the sword will perish by the sword, but I sometimes find it odd that those who did not for one moment disapprove of Her Majesty's Government recognising the new Government of Iraq within a few days of political murder taking place now feel that we should take a different attitude. Political murder always brings its own retribution in the long run.

I do not share for a moment the view of the hon. Member for Barking. If anything comes out of the Tananarive Conference it will be, I hope, a realisation and a move towards a new political constitution which will recognise that the Congo as such is not yet a nation. The Congolese must go through the period that Nigeria went through for ten years before independence. I cannot see that in that vast empty land anything but a political federation or preferably a confederation can really be worth while. I feel that that must be the ultimate solution for the tribal feuds and stresses that undoubtedly exist.

Mr. Driberg

Does the hon. Member recall that at the Round Table Conference in Brussels there was nobody more strongly for a unitary state and against federation than Mr. Tshombe?

Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan

Many odd things came out of the Round Table Conference. The first thing to remember is that the Belgians then wanted a strong unitary Government, and that was not the least of the major mistakes that they made. They also supported Mr. Lumumba and were against Mr. Kasavubu, but I do not think that we should go back to the extraordinary record of the incredible inconsistencies that have pursued the country in the past year. The fact is that the Belgians wanted unitary Government, and how wrong they were. If they had faced up to what we faced up to in Nigeria, I believe that there would be an entirely different situation in the Congo today and the Belgian presence and authority there would be quite different from what it is today.

Let us face the fact quite bluntly. I do not think that Belgium has the least chance of being a real power in the Congo for many generations. The Belgians will never be forgiven for what has happened. But the time has not yet come to give a true assessment of Belgian effort in the Congo. We look at all the black patches now and the mistakes, but history is best written after a delay and I feel that in years to come people will realise that there was a great deal to the credit of Belgium. If the economy of the country can survive the incredible events of the last year, it will be because the Belgians have developed it so very well and soundly.

The hon. Member for Barking has distracted me and made me go on longer than I intended, but like anybody else who has been in the Congo I find myself fascinated by the drama that is being played out there. I feel that it is one of the most tragic situations that has ever happened in our history. I end as I began by saying that the United Nations effort has been a good one on the whole.

8.25 p.m.

Mr. Donald Wade (Huddersfield, West)

Before I refer to some of the figures in the Supplementary Estimates—and one of the objects of the debate is to examine the figures—I want to make it clear that I wish to see the United Nations operation succeed. The situation obviously would have been very much worse if the United Nations Force had not been sent to the Congo. There has been a great temptation on the part of nations to back the Secretary-General when he appeared to be doing something in their own interest and to criticise him when he appeared to be acting contrary to their own interest. We should make clear that the Secretary-General should be backed throughout.

It is of the utmost importance that this operation should succeed. It is an extremely difficult task that is being undertaken. I agree with other hon. Members who have pointed out that the mandate was not sufficiently clear at the outset. Furthermore, various Congo leaders themselves kept changing their attitude to the United Nations, and that goes for Patrice Lumumba who at one time welcomed the United Nations and then was extremely hostile. It applies, as I have said, to other Congo leaders but it does not help matters when other nations have acted in like manner.

Also the task has been made more difficult by free-lance volunteers, however they have been recruited, and it is clear that if there had been no United Nations Force there at all the flow of volunteers to the Congo would have been very much greater and there is little doubt that we should have had not only a civil war but an international war. Therefore, in any examination or possible criticism of the figures, I am not for one moment criticising the intentions of the Government in making these payments or the principle of the United Nations operation.

As I understand it, under Subhead C.2 the revised Estimate for the United Nations Emergency Force is £590,000, under C.12, for the United Nations Force in the Congo, it is £1,345,715. and under D.7, for United Nations Civil Assistance to the Congo, it is £1,086,429. There is a footnote which applies to all three items, and it reads: Expenditure out of these subscriptions and grants in aid will not be accounted for in detail to the Comptroller and Auditor General. Any balance of the sums issued which may remain unexpended at 31st March. 1961 will not be liable to surrender to the Exchequer. I should like to know the exact meaning of the footnote. If there is some money unexpended at 31st March, 1961, will it be carried forward to the following year? What exactly is meant by the expression, "will not be accounted for in detail"? Are we entitled to inquire how the money is expended? For example, have we any breakdown of the expenditure? I think that we should agree willingly to most of the expenditure, but it has been suggested that among the items expended are somewhat substantial sums for rent of premises, more substantial than is really necessary. Are we entitled to inquire into that, and if so, has the Lord Privy Seal an answer?

Again, do we know the proportion that is required to pay what I think is commonly known as "the Congo bonus"; that is, the extra sum for service in the Congo? As I understand it, each Government which sends units to the Congo pays its soldiers the salary which they would require at home, but there is also an extra sum for Congo service paid by the United Nations, and I presume that it is that which makes up the major item. I also understand that there is a great disparity between the amounts charged by different nations. I am told that it costs the United Nations ten times more to maintain a Swedish soldier in the Congo than a Canadian because there is less differential between home pay and overseas pay in the Canadian Army. I am not for one moment criticising the Canadians. I am merely asking whether that is so. It seems to indicate that it would be preferable if the United Nations had a permanent force, or at any rate the nucleus of a permanent force. It would not only be preferable for political reasons but might even be more economical.

Turning to the Civil Assistance grant, it has also been alleged that a number of civilian technicians have been flown out to the Congo and that on arrival they have found that the tasks which they were expected to fulfil were being carried out by Belgians who had returned, and that they have been drawing salaries while waiting for assignments and have, in fact, had very little to do. Again, I am not criticising the operations as a whole, but I should be interested to know what truth there is in that and whether it indicates some lack of co-operation between the United Nations and the Belgian Government or the various provincial Governments. Perhaps the Lord Privy Seal will be able to give us some information. We are entitled to satisfy ourselves that these various sums have been spent to the best advantage.

I think that the general lesson is that it would be very much better if there were a permanent force and a permanent technical body which would be available for emergencies such as those which have occurred in the Congo. In the meantime, so far as the Force is concerned, I think there is much to be said for sending manpower from countries as far afield as possible rather than those nearest the scene of the trouble. I can understand the pressure which has been brought to bear by the African nations that there should be a force there composed only of African contingents. However, I am glad to hear—I hope it is correct—that they are no longer pressing that point of view. Personally, I think there is much to be said, for example, for Irish, Swedish and Indian personnel rather than those from territories neighbouring the Congo. If we can make a comparison with civilian police, when serious trouble is expected there is much to be said for bringing in extra police from some other part of the country, police who cannot be regarded as in any way biased. Similarly, as a general principle. I think that so long as there are to be independent national contingents there is much to be said for those contingents coming from nations which are not bordering on the territory where the trouble has arisen.

In conclusion, I wish to make it clear that it is of the utmost importance that this venture in the Congo should succeed. It is probable that other situations may arise, though I hope not so grave as in the Congo; but if the United Nations Force fails, it may be the beginning of the end of the United Nations itself.

8.35 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Fell (Yarmouth)

I came here this afternoon hoping to make a short speech asking some questions on Class II, Vote 2—Foreign Office Grants and Services. It had not occurred to me that the discussion would lead off with a most extraordinarily wide-ranging speech on the history of the United Nations in the Congo by the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), but it has developed into this wide debate. Although I wanted to confine myself to certain questions to my right hon. Friend, I shall, nevertheless, feel obliged to say something about the extraordinary views that have been expressed both by the hon. Gentleman who started the debate and by the right hon. Member for an Essex constituency.

Mr. Driberg

Not right hon.

Mr. Fell

I am sure that I was not guilty of insulting the hon. Member by calling him right hon.

Mr. Driberg

The hon. Member did.

Mr. Fell

I am very sorry for that defection. I would never hope to have to do that.

May I ask one or two questions of my right hon. Friend on this Vote in regard to the United Nations Emergency Force. This is a relic of Suez. It will be noted that this additional sum required is nearly 50 per cent. on top of the original Estimate. This Force has been in position for some time now, and one would think that by now the Government would know roughly what the commitment was to be for the Force. Or has there been some extraordinary situation arising that I know nothing about which has meant a much greater cost for the United Nations Emergency Force? Could my right hon. Friend tell me something about that? It seems an awful lot of money.

I wonder if, when considering this Force and the indebtedness of the British Government, it has ever been argued by the British Government that, in fact, we ought not to be paying for this Force at all, because the United Nations force is there because certain members of the United Nations did their best to stop the British Government from carrying out an operation which would have made quite unnecessary—

The Temporary Chairman (Dr. King)

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but it was agreed last week that we should confine our debate on this item of the Vote tonight to the Congo. I hope the hon. Member will be able to do that.

Mr. Fell

I am sorry, Dr. King. I am completely unaware that it was to be completely confined to the Congo, for Class II, Vote 2, surely covers all the items listed therein.

The Temporary Chairman

It will be within the memory of the hon. Gentleman that the Leader of the House, in announcing the business for today, announced what Votes would be taken and that we should debate this particular Vote only in so far as it affects the Congo.

Mr. Fell

Yes, Dr. King, but that places me in a difficulty. Is the situation, then, that though it is stated on the Order Paper that certain Votes are to be discussed, and the first one was Government hospitality, and that was allowed to be discussed, and I heard it in full, and the second one is Class II, Vote 2.—Foreign Office Grants and Services. I do not quite understand why there is this restriction to the Congo, though this may be due to my ignorance of procedure.

The Temporary Chairman

The hon. Member puts me in a difficulty. It was agreed through the usual channels that the debate tonight should be confined to the Congo, so far as this Vote is concerned, but the hon. Gentleman is seeking to assert the right of any hon. Member to tear up whatever agreement exists and speak to whatever is in the Vote.

Mr. Fell

I am terribly interested in agreements through the usual channels. I do not want to spend very much time on matters affecting the Congo—

Mr. H. Hynd (Accrington)

On a point of order. If the hon. Gentleman is going on to discuss Suez, Dr. King, will other hon. Members be allowed to answer him, because some of us will have quite a lot to say about Suez?

Mr. Fell

No, I am not.

The Temporary Chairman

I hope the hon. Gentleman will take note of what I have said. The Leader of the House announced last Thursday the subjects of today's debates and announced not only the Votes but also the items in those Votes which had been chosen by Her Majesty's Opposition. It is the right of the Opposition to name the topics on which this debate takes place. I hope the hon. Gentleman will observe that and will keep to the Question.

Mr. Fell

With the greatest respect, Dr. King, are we not dealing with Class II, Vote 2, which is for Foreign Office grants and services? Surely it is not possible to limit me in discussing any of the subjects under this Vote? Am I not entitled to discuss one or the other?

The Temporary Chairman

It is indeed possible to limit the hon. Member. We have to reconcile the right of every hon. Member to raise any question whatsoever mentioned in the Estimate under discussion with the right of the Opposition to choose what subject shall be discussed on this particular Vote. I ask the hon. Member to confine himself to the subject of the Congo.

Mr. Fell

I find this terribly difficult. You are being very fair to me, but I can see that you are in difficulty yourself, because, on the one hand, you say that I am at liberty to discuss any of these subjects in this Vote, and, on the other hand, you ask me to confine myself to a subject which the Opposition have chosen for me to speak about. I do not like that very much.

The Temporary Chairman

I am sorry that the hon. Member bandies words with the Chair. I have tried to help him, and I always sympathise with the difficulty of any hon. Member who has a point of view to express. I now have to rule that he must confine himself to the matter which has been selected for this debate.

Mr. Fell

I am sorry, Dr. King. I am not trying to bandy words with the Chair. I put down four Motions on the Order Paper, affecting four matters in this Vote, and I wanted to speak about them. I am in the difficulty that I do not want to talk at length on any of these matters but that I did want to refer to them. You have ruled that, because the Opposition have chosen a debate about the Congo, I am not allowed to talk or to ask questions about North Atlantic Council civilian agencies.

The Temporary Chairman

The position is exactly as the hon. Member has just stated it. The Motions which he put on the Order Paper have not been selected.

Mr. Fell

I realise that. Thank you, Dr. King. I am a wiser and unhappier man than I was five minutes ago. In that case I will come to the question of the Congo. I want to ask one or two questions. in the first place, we should know more about how our money is being spent, how much other members of the United Nations are paying and also who those members are who should be paying but have defaulted, or who have so far not honoured their obligations. In other words, are we in the position, or are we to be in the position, of having to bear an unfair part of the burden?

An astonishing description of the efforts of the United Nations in the Congo was given by President Kennedy in his State of the Union Message when he spoke of the "heroic" efforts of the United Nations in the Congo. First, there has been nothing very heroic about the action of the United Nations in the Congo. Secondly, there has been nothing very efficient about the action of the United Nations' action in the Congo. Thirdly, there has been no success about the action of the United Nations in the Congo. Fourthly, I question very strongly whether our Government ought not to protest at having to pay, for instance, for that part of the operation in which United Nations forces went into Katanga Province when President Tshombe did not want them there and when there was no major disturbance of any sort in Katanga at that time.

Under the terms of the United Nations Resolution, there was no need for United Nations troops to go into Katanga and yet, I presume, that has cost us a lot of money. The one province in the Congo completely able to do without United Nations troops is Katanga.

Mr. William Warbey (Ashfield)

Has the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) forgotten that part of the Security Council Resolution which requires that the perpetrators of the crime of the murder of Mr. Lumumba shall be brought to justice? Since those people are in Katanga and are closely connected with the Tshombe regime, how is the United Nations to carry out that part of the Security Council's decision unless its forces enter Katanga?

Mr. Fell

I wish that the hon. Member would make his own speech and weep his own crocodile tears for Lumumba. I would be more impressed by his great sorrow for the death of Lumumba—which I regret as an assassination, as I would regret any other assassination—if the hon. Member would also weep tears for the priests killed and the nuns raped and the forty-five murdered the other day. I do not want to take up too much time, but I have been astonished by some of the things which have been said today.

Is it clear under whose command the Indian Brigade is to be? Is it definitely to be completely under United Nations command and, if not, what is its status to be in the Congo? I take it that it will be under the command of the United Nations, but I do not believe that we have been specifically told so.

My right hon. Friend has been requested to state that the British Government back Mr. Dayal to the hilt.

Mr. Driberg

Have confidence in him.

Mr. Fell

Have confidence in him. Today Mr. Dayal is reported as saying that he wants full diplomatic support by us, in particular to ensure that Belgian military and para-military personnel and Belgian advisers in government offices are withdrawn. Anybody who thinks that the withdrawal of the Belgian civilians and military staff who are being used by President Tshombe and by the people in Leopoldville will do a service to the Africans in the Congo ought to start thinking again, because the only part of the Congo which has been reasonably peaceful from the beginning of the trouble is Katanga Province. President Tshombe is the only person who from the outset realised that if he was to keep the peace and be successful in running Katanga Province he would have to use those who had some experience of administration in the Congo, and the only people who have that experience are the Belgians.

I therefore ask my right hon. Friend for an assurance that in paying these large sums towards the maintenance of these forces in the Congo we shall resist any move to carry out the last Resolution so far as it affects the withdrawal of Belgian personnel employed by President Tshombe, or their doing any sort of good job to help rehabilitate the Congo, because I believe that real disaster will come if all the Belgians are withdrawn.

So much nonsense is talked about this. I do not understand the mentality of people who call my right hon. Friend Pontius Pilate and yet are themselves more like Judas Iscariot. I do not understand the mentality of British people who can never say anything good about Britain and can never do anything except attack their friends. Belgium is one of our great allies, and she was one of the few nations who tried to stand by us a bit at the time of Suez. We run out on our friends. We blame the Belgians for everything that happened in the Congo and yet if we were honest we would realise that had Belgium not withdrawn from the Congo when she did and drawn us into the position in which we now find ourselves of having to pay all this money, within a year the world would have been screaming at Belgium, "Get out of the Congo". The matter would have been referred to the United Nations, very likely by hon. Gentlemen opposite. There would have been the usual fuss and screaming about it. Belgium would have been asked, "Why do you not get out of the Congo?". Yet when she does everybody says "Rats".

I believe that there is also something to be said about the whole concept of U.N.O. and what we are paying to support it. I believe that the concept of U.N.O. is basically wrong. It has been proved to be wrong throughout its history, and it does nothing but harm to the future peace of the world. There has been a lot of talk about the wonders of U.N.O. and semi-support from many of my hon. Friends who do not basically support U.N.O. Some do and some do not, but this ought to be said. We are paying a lot of money to keep this lead-beat failure of an organisation going. It is dead-beat in the context of maintaining peace as it is trying to do in the Congo for the reason stated from this side of the Committee on a number of occasions, that one cannot have a force which has no loyalties, no principles, no common language and nothing to keep it going. We cannot have an effective force if it is an amorphous mass, as is the present United Nations force.

I respect those people who are logical enough to say that we must have a permanent armed force of the United Nations, but a permanent armed force means a very big and competent force. It means a force with a United Nations loyalty and not a British, American, Russian or some other loyalty. It means a force that will ultimately have to be armed with hydrogen bombs and all the nuclear weapons. Although I respect the logic of that view I am not willing to see my country put money into an organisation which could put my country into a position where it can be dictated to by an international organisation which has no basic principles and no friendly feeling for my country, and which can dictate to the whole world. I am not willing to take a risk that, at some stage, the head of the United Nations, armed with a force superior to all the other forces of the world, would become an evil dictator. If that happened we would all be at the mercy of the monster we had created.

If we are not going to be logical and call for that, we must be logical and say that the only possibility for the future of the United Nations is its extinction—for then we would not lean on the United Nations as an escape from our problems; then we would not witness the stupidity of nations going to the talking shop and saying, "What we must do when we get there is to fight it"; then we would not have the stupidity of talk about the mainland Government of China being invited to join the United Nations when she has no intention of subscribing to the Charter. The Charter of the United Nations has been completely torn up.

The Temporary-Chairman

The hon. Member is going very wide of the Vote under discussion. I must ask him to keep in order.

Mr. Fell

I am sorry to have gone wide of the Vote, Dr. King, but we are being asked to subscribe a lot of money for this operation, and I am sure that we will have to pay a lot more. I am deeply concerned that we should not build up this monster, which will ruin us. It is so easy for people to say, "You cannot grumble about the presence of the United Nations Forces in the Congo." It is easy for people to ask me, "What would you have done if the United Nations had not gone in?" The answer is that if there had been no United Nations the position would have been completely different. As there was a United Nations it was probably impossible to escape its being invited to go in. The question is a nonsense while there is a United Nations. I want there to be no United Nations. If there had been no such organisation, in a situation like that in the Congo one or more of the colonial Powers, with experience of Africa, would have gone in, and the real problem of the Congo would probably never have developed. We would have seen that people who know something about colonial administration would have gone in there to see that there was law and order and to see that the health of the nation was not wrecked as it is being wrecked now through lack of medical supplies and lack of doctors.

We think too much in this matter in terms of the wonderful United Nations. We think too much in terms of the heroic efforts of the United Nations. We think too much in terms of the murder of a little dictator like Lumumba. We think too little in terms of human beings. We think too little in terms of hundreds of thousands of Africans who are dying in the Congo as a result of our bungling and the complete failure of the United Nations to bring about any semblance of law and order in that territory. The truth is that the money we are paying to the United Nations would have been better spent supporting President Tshombe and the Prime Ministers who met at the recent conference and decided at least to try to get on with the business of making the Congo into a working federation.

We would have been better advised to do that than to be spending this money on the Congo. As I see it, it is an open sum of money which is being spent. Five thousand Indian troops are coming in and all these things have to be paid for. Who has to pay for them? We are to be asked to spend very large sums. I would not expect my right hon. Friend to take up the point about my attack on the United Nations. I think it would be unfair to ask him to do that, but I ask him to consider very carefully the implications of our getting rid of, of our being a party to driving out the Belgians from the Congo for, after all, they are the only people who know anything about the administration of the Congo.

9.2 p.m.

The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Edward Heath)

As some hon. Members have commented in the course of the debate, this is a substantial Supplementary Estimate which we are discussing. By its size it indicates the scope of the operations of the United Nations in the Congo. It must be, financially certainly, the biggest operation which the United Nations has carried out under its own auspices and, from the point of view of technical assistance, a very large one indeed.

Hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have asked a number of questions and I hope to be able to deal with them all in the course of my remarks this evening.

Mr. James Dempsey (Coatbridge and Airdrie)

Answer the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell).

Mr. Heath

I shall try to answer them in detail as far as I can. I shall endeavour to answer the questions which my hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) put to me about other Votes—questions which were ruled out of order by your predecessor, Sir Gordon—by writing to my hon. Friend in due course.

Before I come to those details, I think it would be right for me to make one or two general comments on the speech made by the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), who opened the discussion on this Supplementary Estimate. The First thing I say is that Her Majesty's Government have willingly and, I believe, speedily, answered every call made on them by the United Nations which lay within their power since the United Nations operation began in the Congo in July last year. I do not believe that can be denied. We have dome in fact on any basis much more than our share. Of that we do not complain in the least, but I see the hon. Member is shaking his head—

Mr. Healey

Nodding.

Mr. Heath

—nodding his head in agreement. That was not the tenor of the remarks he made—

Mr. Healey

Financially.

Mr. Heath

Financially or in any other way we have supported the United Nations and supported the Secretary-General and his representatives and staff in the Congo itself. The hon. Member, in a speech which I must say contained quite an amount of material of a smear character without any scrap of truth and also a speech which was remarkable for its over-simplification, said a number of things which I must challenge. He said that the African members of the United Nations had grave doubts about our policy and our motives. The hon. Member then discussed several extraneous matters, which were finally ruled out of order, about Angola and South-West Africa, saying that these had been the basis of the doubts which the other African countries had.

I can only assume that he brought in these other matters because he was not prepared to challenge our record in the United Nations on the Congo itself. Our views on these other very difficult and complicated matters have always been expressed by our permanent representative there, and they are well known. If any African has any doubt about our policy, he can see it in operation for himself in our dependent territories and the way they are moving to independence and now taking their full part, which we appreciate, in the work of the United Nations. Anyone can see this for himself. The Africans should not have any doubt about our motives or policy.

The hon. Gentleman's over-simplification went further. One of the sad features of African representation at the United Nations has been the divisions within the United Nations in the course of these difficulties over the Congo. There are several examples I can give. There was the division among the Africans themselves about support for the United Nations Force. A large number of them maintain it—and we are delighted that they do—while others have withdrawn their support. Some African countries have recognised the Stanleyville régime and others recognise the régime in Leopoldville itself. Some voted for seating Mr. Kasavubu and some voted against him. It has been a remarkable feature of debates at the United Nations during this difficult period that African representation itself has been divided, and the reason for this is certainly not British policy.

Another extraordinary statement by the hon. Gentleman was—I noted his words—that the British Government pushed Mr. Lumumba out and pushed Mr. Kasavubu in.

Mr. Healey

Before the right hon. Gentleman comes to that, will he say whether he contests the truth of the statement by The Times correspondent that there has developed, since the Congo operation, widespread distrust of Western motives? I think it cannot be denied. If the right hon. Gentleman accepts that, he must take the trouble to look into the reasons why the distrust has developed. If he does, he will find that the evidence I adduced was relevant and correct.

Mr. Heath

To begin with, Western motives do not necessarily mean British motives, and I do not accept that British motives are involved. Secondly, the fact that a small number of African countries withdraw their support does not mean that they do so because of doubt about Western motives. In some cases, it may well be because the policy which they want to see carried out in the Congo is not being followed by the United Nations as a whole.

The hon. Member said that the British Government had pushed Mr. Lumumba out and pushed Mr. Kasavubu in. At no point did Her Majesty's Government intervene in the internal affairs of the Congo. Mr. Lumumba was dismissed by Mr. Kasavubu as Head of State.

Mr. Driberg

He had no right to do so.

Mr. Heath

In reply to the hon. Member for Barking (Mr. Driberg), there seems little doubt that under Article 22 of the Loi Fondamentale, which I have here—not Articles 43 and 44 which the hon. Gentleman mentioned; I am sure it was a slip of the tongue—the President has the right to dismiss the Prime Minister. Therefore, in our view—and it is the advice we have received—he was entitled to do that.

I find it difficult to understand what the hon. Member for Leeds, East meant when he said that the British Government pushed Mr. Lumumba out and pushed Mr. Kasavubu in.

Mr. Healey

If the right hon. Gentleman finds it difficult, may I explain? The Loi Fondamentale on this issue is directly parallel with the Belgian Constitution. When the King of Belgium, who occupies a position similar to that occupied by Mr. Kasavubu in the Congo, dismissed the Belgian Government during the last world war, the British Government, rightly in my view, took the view that he had no constitutional right to do so without the authority of the Belgian Parliament. I believe that exactly the same is true in the Congo, and it is because Her Majesty's Government took on this issue a view different from the one they took previously on a precisely similar issue that the suspicion is in my mind that Her Majesty's Government were supporting a move to get rid of Mr. Lumumba and to seat Mr. Kasavubu. It certainly had that effect on United Nations representation.

Mr. Heath

These are difficult constitutional matters and I find that even those people who have been in the Congo will not say dogmatically, "The position is so-and-so". I am not pre- pared to say that it is exactly parallel with the Belgian constitution, because I understand that there are differences, but even if I accept the hon. Member's constitutional interpretation, it remains untrue to say that the British Government took this action. Moreover, we were one of a majority of countries which seated President Kasavubu in the United Nations in the circumstances of the time.

Mr. Driberg rose—

Mr. Heath

I am sorry, but I cannot give way. I have a lot to say and time will not permit me to give way.

Mr. Driberg

But the right hon. Gentleman accused me of having made a mistake. There was no mistake. I referred to Articles 43 and 44, which contain some of the conditions which restrict the President's actions in naming and dismissing the Prime Minister under Article 22. Evidently the right hon. Gentler, an has not himself studied this law: he has been imperfectly briefed by constitutional advisers who are less competent than mine.

Mr. Heath

I do not think that the hon. Member has any justification for saying that. He did not mention Article 22. Let us leave that aside, however. I have explained why the British Government took the action they did and that they had nothing to do with the events which the hon. Member described.

The hon. Member for Leeds, East at no time mentioned the action which we took in promoting the Resolution in the Security Council which called for the Congolese to take no measures contrary to recognised rules of law and order. That Resolution was vetoed in the Security Council and failed by only one vote to get the necessary two-thirds majority in the Assembly itself. If the hon. Member is suspicious of British policy he should at least consider the constructive action which we took in the Security Council and in the Assembly.

May I give some information about the details of the Vote? The Secretary-General found himself left with a balance of 45 million dollars from his original estimate to be shared; and this was after 10.3 pillion dollars of airlift costs had been waived and, in addition, the American Government had made a voluntary contribution of 31 million to 4 million dollars. Our contribution to the military forces is calculated on the basis of the assessment for the normal United Nations budget—7.78 per cent.; and that amounts to just over 3¾ million dollars, which is the sum provided for in this Estimate. We have waived the airlift costs of 550,000 dollars and we have made a contribution to the voluntary fund, for which provision is made in D.7, of 3 million dollars. My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Sir C. MottRadclyffe) asked about the contribution for seed corn. That is £5,000. We are asking for authority in the Estimates to make these payments.

I was also asked about the deficit which will arise. It is not yet possible to say what it will be, because we shall not know until the end of March, but the United Nations Controller of Finance is preparing proposals to deal with this, and these will be presented to the United Nations Committee. We shall give them all the support that we feel able to give. There are binding obligations on members to contribute their assessment—there can be no doubt about that—although some members have indicated that they will be unwilling to pay. My hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth asked about the contributions of other countries. Fourteen countries have undertaken to contribute but, as the list is rather long, I had better send my hon. Friend the details in a letter shortly.

Mr. Driberg

Where is the hon. Member for Yarmouth?

Mr. Heath

I should also indicate to the Committee that various estimates have been prepared for 1961. There is an indication that for military operations our contribution will amount to just over 10½ million dollars. We have promised a further 2 million dollars for the civil fund, making a total of just over 12½ million dollars for 1961. The hon. Member for Huddersfield, West (Mr. Wade) asked about the points in the footnote. The details are not accountable, because they are accountable through the United Nations budget. We have our representative there to watch the detailed accounting.

I was asked about the footnote concerning the carry-over. The amount as far as we are concerned will be paid to the United Nations, but if the United Nations has a balance on 31st March that will be carried over without accountability to our own Treasury. We shall, in fact, have paid over the total amount included in the Estimates. I hope that answers the points of detail about the financial side of the operation.

Mr. H. Hynd

Does the right hon. Gentleman intend to say anything more by way of comment on what was said by the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell)? I think that it would be a great pity if by implication it went out from the House of Commons that the majority of Members felt about the United Nations in the same way as does the hon. Member for Yarmouth.

Mr. Heath

I have a number of other things to say to the Committee and I will deal with that point. My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor made a number of comments about the Force. His thinking led to the conclusion that some form of small permanent force was desirable for the United Nations. This is not the time to debate that issue. We do not accept—I do not think that we have ever accepted—the view which he expressed about the limitations on the Force in maintaining law and order. We do not accept that the United Nations Force must allow atrocities to take place under its eyes. One of its functions in the Resolution from the United Nations is to help in keeping law and order. We believe that the United Nations Force is entitled to do that in the circumstances which my hon. Friend mentioned.

We have a great deal of information about the details of the Force. There are ten different countries at the moment providing combatant forces. There are rather more than another ten helping to contribute to the international staff of the supreme commander. They have communications which are provided by the Canadian detachment. The United Nations air detachment for providing transport facilities is partly on charter and, I understand, is partly provided by the United States. They have also a number of regional organisations with international staff, but the individual contingents are kept separate and, therefore, some of the language difficulties are removed. I believe that the fundamental difficulties to which my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor referred can be solved in the Congo only by co-operation between the United Nations Force and the Congolese authorities.

I now turn to more general things and away from the details of the Supplementary Estimate. Perhaps I should now come to some of the matters raised by hon. Members, some of which have been of great interest. The hon. Member for Barking and my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan) have been to the Congo in recent weeks. Our responsibility in the Congo has been limited to our share in sustaining the effort of the United Nations and also in trying to ensure the safety of our nationals, either through local authorities or through the United Nations. We have had no desire of any kind to intervene in the affairs of the Congo. Our only interest has been in its development, in the maintenance of its independence, and in allowing the Congo to have its individual liberty and law and order restored and to be able to make progress.

We have borne a very heavy share of the cost of the operations in the Congo, and I think that the Committee is right, even in a comparatively short debate, to examine carefully how these operations have been carried out. The hon. Member for Barking said, very frankly, that after eight months the effort had not succeeded in the way that we all hoped that it would. The country is still divided. There is Stanleyville divided from Leopoldville and the other provinces. There are armed forces opposing each other, although there is comparatively little shooting. There is almost no administration in Orientale and Kivu where there have been terrible brutalities and violations of human decencies.

Also, we must regretfully admit that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate from personal experience indicated, there has been a lack of confidence at times between the Congolese and the United Nations, leading unfortunately even to clashes in the lower Congo in recent weeks. The hon. Gentleman asked me to deny that we countenance in any way the campaign against the Secretary-General or his representative in the Congo or any other United Nations servant. Of course, we do not countenance that for a moment.

The hon. Member for Barking asked me about the British representation in Leopoldville and asked that different instructions should be sent to the Ambassador because the British Government had been carrying out a vendetta against Mr. Dayal. That is absolutely untrue. It is completely without foundation. There has been no vendetta from the British Government or its representatives against Mr. Dayal, and we have complete confidence in the Ambassador in Leopoldville and in the work which he is doing. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will be so kind as to send me a little later, perhaps in a letter, proof of the vendetta which he alleges is being carried out.

Mr. Driberg

It is perfectly true.

Mr. Heath

Mr. Dayal is the Secretary-General's representative in the Congo and we give the Secretary-General full support in all the arrangements which he makes for carrying out the United Nations operation there. I had a most interesting conversation this week with Mr. Dayal and I was very grateful to him for seeing me and telling me about what was going on in the Congo and his views upon it. As has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate, he is a loyal and dedicated servant of the United Nations. But, as has been commented not only in this Committee but also in the Press, it is also true that Mr. Dayal has become the centre of some controversy in the Congo, and we regret it. What we have done and always will do is to work for better relations between the Congolese and the members of the United Nations who are representing the Secretary-General in the Congo. That will be our policy.

If I may digress for a moment, I have been asked about the American ships and their presence in the Congo waters. A statement was made about this by the American Secretary of State at a Press conference where he described what had happened. The ships had been visiting West African waters on a good will tour. They were then heading south, and the American Ambassador in Leopoldville, so he said, feared that, with the tension growing there, there would be danger to American lives, and therefore after normal consultation the ships were turned back, but when it was found to be unnecessary they continued their course south.

I was asked about the passage of aircraft. That is another example of the difficulties of handling these problems. When the aircraft staged in Malta, they were said to be going to Johanesburg, and that was accepted in good faith. But as soon as it was found that this proved not to be the case, I understand that the French and Belgian Governments together stopped the movement of any further aircraft because the true circumstances were then revealed. This illustrates the difficulty of dealing with these matters and particularly the difficulties which will arise from carrying out the Resolution of 21st February.

Mr. Healey rose—

Mr. Heath

I cannot give way again. I have so much to say.

There has been this criticism of the United Nations operation. But let us look at the credit side. It has undoubtedly deterred intervention from outside; that has been a major purpose and it has prevented the Congo becoming an arena for the cold war. It has also provided a ground force which, with reinforcements, will be about 18,000 strong to help in keeping the peace. Although it has not always succeeded, it has, by interposing itself in Northern Katanga, prevented bloodshed there. Thirdly, the United Nations has provided considerable technical assistance in the administration of the Congo and in helping to organise its economy.

Mr. Fell rose—

Mr. Heath

I am sorry; I cannot give way now. The purpose is to sustain the United Nations in this effort and to support the Secretary-General.

My hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth holds his views sincerely and extremely strongly, but I must tell the Committee frankly that they are in complete contradiction to the views of Her Majesty's Government and of my noble Friend the Foreign Secretary. I think that by what I have said this evening I have made that quite plain—

Mr. Fell rose—

Mr. Heath

I am sorry, no.

The problem of carrying out the United Nations mandate is a very diffi cult one. If there had been time, it would have been fruitful for the Committee to have followed the trail of the United Nations Resolutions. As it is, I can do so only very briefly, but I want to emphasise the principles that emerged from them.

First there was the Resolution of 14th July. That did two things. First, it called for the withdrawal of Belgian troops—and that has been a feature of other Resolutions. Secondly, it said that action should be taken in consultation with the Congolese Government and that the United Nations should provide military assistance. It is that feature of the Resolutions that has governed the actions and attitude of the United Nations throughout all the Congo operations. Those were the two important principles that were then established, and they have always been supported by Her Majesty's Government.

The Resolution of 22nd July asked all States to refrain from actions that might …impede the restoration and the exercise by the Government of the Congo of its Authority. Again, the Resolution of 9th August reaffirmed …that the United Nations forces in the Congo will not be a party to, or in any way intervene in or be used to influence the outcome of any internal conflict. That was also touched on in the last Resolution, that of 21st February.

There is this fundamental point that the United Nations is there to assist, and to work in co-operation with the Government of the Congo. I am emphasising this because there have been misconceptions about the last Resolution which have led to a heightening of tension in the Congo for fear that the United Nations intended to impose itself on the Congo and, possibly, even to impose some form of trusteeship.

In our view, it would be quite improper for the United Nations to try to do that. It would be extremely dangerous for it to try to do that, because it would lead to great bloodshed. The Congo and the Congolese have now attained their independence. They value their independence, and we believe that the United Nations should help them to keep their independence.

In the last minute or two remaining to me, perhaps I might comment on one or two questions asked about the Belgian position. First, there is no doubt about the value of the Belgian technical assistance in the Congo today. Next, let me describe what the Belgian Government have done about the military personnel. We have, of course, been in contact with the Belgian Government, as one of our allies, throughout. Those men who were left, at the request of the United Nations, at the two bases of Kamina and Kitona have been withdrawn, and will be back in Belgium—or, at any rate, will have left the bases—by 15th March; that is, today.

There is nother group, which is dependent on the Congolese authorities. These are, first, the former members of the Force Publique, who were placed at the disposal of the Congolese under Article 250 of the Loi Fondamentale. The Belgian Government have asked the United Nations to relieve these personnel as soon as possible so that they can return to Belgium. Secondly, there are a few officers and N.C.O.s who arrived after 1st July Those are being recalled by the Belgians.

Thirdly, the Belgian Government have expressed disapproval of Belgian mercenaries in these forces. The Belgian Government of course, have no power to force their return unless they have still to complete national service, in which case the Belgian Government are enforcing their return. Lastly, the Belgian Government have drawn the attention of the whole nation to the existing state of the law: in other words, to the 1951 Penal Code under which it is an offence against the law to carry out such recruiting in Belgium. The Belgian Government are enforcing that Code. I think that that deals with the points that have been made about Belgian military personnel in the Congo today.

Finally. there is the future. We believe that progress can be made in the Congo in three directions. First, it can be made by sustaining the United Nations effort. Here, I should like to add my words of welcome to the Indian Brigade which is being sent there. We warmly welcome it. Its despatch represents a considerable sacrifice by India. We also welcome, of course, the additional battalion being sent from Malaya. We regret the Sudanese withdrawal, but we are quite certain—

It being half-past Nine o'clock, The CHAIRMAN proceeded, pursuant to Standing Order No. 16 (Business of Supply), to put forthwith the Question necessary to dispose of the Vote under consideration.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That a Supplementary sum, not exceeding £3,205,144, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1961, for sundry grants and services connected with Her Majesty's Foreign Service, including subscriptions to international organisations and grants in aid.

Mr. Stephen Swingler (Newcastle-under-Lyme)

On a point of order—

The Chairman

There cannot be a point of order at this stage. I am bound to put the Resolutions forthwith.

Mr. Swingler

May I raise a point of order about the putting of the Question?

The Chairman

There cannot be a point of order. I am bound by Standing Order No. 16 (Business of Supply) forthwith to put the Questions.

The CHAIRMAN then proceeded forthwith to put severally the Questions, That the total amounts outstanding in such Estimates for the Army and the Air Services for the coming financial year as have been put down on at least one previous day for consideration on an allotted day, and the total amounts of all outstanding Estimates supplementary to those of the current financial year as have been presented seven clear days and of all outstanding Excess Votes be granted for the Services defined in those Estimates, Supplementary Estimates and Statements of Excess.