BERLIN (SITUATION)

HC Deb 05 July 1962 vol 662 cc779-832

7.11 p.m.

Mr. Harold Wilson (Huyton)

We would probably all agree that a Parliamentary debate on the situation in Berlin is long overdue. But I make no bones about the fact that the occasion for having it this week is the fact that a considerable number of my hon. Friends and I have just returned from a visit to West Berlin. This was a visit of perhaps the largest party of Members of Parliament that has ever gone abroad. we were invited by the German Social Democratic Party, and I think that our visit enabled us to show the solidarity that we felt with the people of West Berlin at this critical time.

I should mention that we had full discussions with our colleagues in the S.P.D. and the Parliamentary leaders of West Berlin, and a long meeting with Herr Willy Brandt. During the period that we were there we inevitably saw a good deal of Berlin, including a brief visit to East Berlin— and we saw the wall.

Those of my hon. Friends who catch your eye, Sir Robert, will be able to give their impressions of what they saw and of the wall. We have probably all seen photographs, television films and descriptions in the Press, but to see the wall as we did, and as other hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have seen it, came as a real shock. Hon. Members who have seen it will agree — and although I have used this phrase before I make no apology for repeating it— that one has to see the wall in all its three-dimensional horror to appreciate what it means.

Various members of our party were moved by different aspects of it. There were the blocked windows, facing the West Berlin streets at the top storey and sub-basement levels. Perhaps it seemed rather worse to see, round the corner of a building going back into East Berlin, the windows blocked just far enough to prevent even the most athletic would-be refugee from leaping across the wall.

Others of my hon. Friends were very much moved at seeing the Church of Reconciliation, which had been a place of worship for citizens of East and West Berlin alike, cut off from West Berlin by this wall, with the barbed wire and the armed sentries. Some were very much moved by two or three women of East Berlin who very tentatively and diffidently waved handkerchiefs to us, not quite sure whether the armed sentries would see them. In this localised sector of one divided city we have epitomised and dramatised, in drab, unfeeling concrete, the political division of the world in which we live.

Last December, when we debated foreign affairs, I said that the archaeologists of some future generation, digging up the relics of this wall, would probably find it difficult to produce a thesis explaining how it came into being. What they will have to explain is that, unlike so many of the walls in history — the Great Wall of China, and the walls in the north of this country— the Berlin wall was built not to keep people out but to keep them in. It was not a fortification or bastion; it was a prison wall.

One can well understand its impact on the people of West Berlin last August, and their demand that action should be taken. If the first reaction of some of us, fairly hard-bitten Members of Parliament, was a mad desire to drive a heavy demolition vehicle against it— and we we were only foreigners— we can understand the feelings of the Berliners who were divided from their own families, when they saw the wall going up.

In this connection, I was reported in The Times and elsewhere in terms suggesting that I was in favour of driving a non-existent 100-ton tank through the wall and suggesting that I was therefore in favour of a forcible solution. As many of my hon. Friends who were there will confirm, what I said was that if our first reaction was a desire to resort to some ponderous vehicle to knock the wall down, the restraint with which West Germans held back this natural impulse to take violent action was truly remarkable.

One of the first points on which we must comment is the restraint of the people of West Berlin and the leadership that they have had from Herr Brandt in this matter. I was told of a recent meeting of West German police at which, in the course of a speech, Herr Brandt referred to the fact that East Berlin policemen had been shot. This statement was immediately cheered by a section of West German police, whereupon Herr Brandt stopped the cheering and said that that was not what he wanted. He said that he could never hear to think of one German being killed by another, and he reinforced his appeal to them for every possible restraint at this critical time.

I join with that tribute to West Berliners a tribute to the restraint and realism of British forces and their commander s during these very critical months. I cannot too highly stress that the need today is for calm in Berlin and a sense of urgency outside Berlin.

It seemed to my hon. Friends and myself that there are three problems— or, more correctly, three facets of the same problem. First, there is the immediate problem of the serious rise in tension which has developed in the past few weeks, especially with the shooting of East Berliners seeking to escape to the West. This creates a very special problem of acute urgency for all of us, for everyone knows—to use the fashionable jargon of our time—how a shooting incident across this brutal and unnatural frontier could be escalated into a far graver crisis.

That is why I welcome the proposals made by the three Western nations ten days ago for meetings of representatives of the four military Powers. Whether it be commandants, their deputies—military or civil—or some other representatives, matters not: such a meeting is urgent, and my delegation gave its full support to the proposals when it had a chance of making public comment on them, by Press, radio and television in Berlin. Putting it at its lowest, if there are two versions of these incidents—and there are—it is better to argue them out across a table rather than leave them to the dangerous arbitration of armed frontier police.

There is also the problem of easements of the present situation—easements to help the lot of individuals. For example, a proposal has been made that men and women of over 60 years of age should be allowed freely to cross to West Berlin to join their families; that children should be free to join their families, and that families should be free to travel across the frontier to see family graves in West Berlin. None of these proposals should be unacceptable to the East Berlin authorities. The main purpose of the wall was to prevent the migration of skilled labour, technicians, and so on, and I do not see that any point of principle— if "principle" is the right word to use in this context— is breached if there is some easement to allow families to be reunited and to travel in that way.

Another proposal is that the police should be disarmed on either side of the wall for a given distance— a proposal that we heard referred to as the "100-metre Rapacki Plan". Here again, I should have thought that there was very great value in proposals of this kind.

I know that for many in the West, West Berlin particularly, these proposals would seem to imply acceptance or con-donation of the wall. There is no such implication, I should have thought. The wall is wrong and must go at the earliest possible opportunity, but that is no reason for failing to mitigate individual and family hardship as long as the wall is there.

Another proposal which was made many months ago—it has been made by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, by myself and others—is the idea of establishing a special agency of the United Nations in Berlin. I hope that this will be 6strongly pressed by Her Majesty's Government and that it will be discussed with U Thant when he is in this country. It has also been suggested that it might be appropriate to establish a commission of human rights in Berlin. It was suggested in the debate on disarmament some months ago that this should be done when the new disarmament commission is set up, as we hope it will be, as a result of the disarmament negotiations.

I would make an alternative suggestion. I should like to see the F.A.O. established there, because that organisation is of particular importance to representatives of the newly developing countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere.

Since it is true, and I hope this will not sound cynical, that a great part of the great Powers' battle is the struggle to win acceptance of countries of that kind, I should have thought that to establish F.A.O. in Berlin, with regular visits to and from by representatives of the Afro and Asian countries, would be extremely valuable, because it would be difficult for F.A.O and the wall to coexist in Berlin for long. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will say that this is in the thinking of the Government.

I turn from the immediate Berlin problem to the second and third facets the problems of getting a viable solution to the immediate Berlin issue and the wider problem of co-existence and détente in Central Europe. Because there is a real danger—and this is natural and, in a sense, inevitable, but does not make it any less of a danger that anger and resentment should exist about the wall—that this may turn Westerners, above all West Berliners, away from the search for a basis of co-existence. I believe that there is a real danger that people, upon seeing the wall, say, "Co-existence is impossible." The lesson of the wall is not that coexistence is made possible or undesirable, but that it is all the more essential.

The fact that one has in Berlin the whole East-West conflict concentrated and highlighted in one divided city is a challenge and not an excuse for cynicism, defeatism, or uncompromising hostility to those on the other side of it. My hon. Friends and I have repeatedly made our position clear about the Berlin negotiations. We have said that there must be two non-negotiable conditions: first, freedom for the people of West Berlin to live under a system of society of their own choosing and, secondly guarantees of access going beyond mere paper agreements. Associated with these must be the conditions necessary to ensure the economic viability of Berlin.

These are the absolutes of a settlement. To get them as part of a package deal which incorporates them we should be prepared to show flexibility, especially, for example, by showing willingness to accept Germany's eastern frontiers with Poland and Czechoslovakia. We should also show flexibility in the matter of some measure of recognition of the East German administration as a purely factual arrangement pending, and without prejudice to, the ultimate reunification of Germany on a basis of free elections.

This is, of course, something which can be settled only outside Berlin. The right hon. Gentleman will no doubt be reporting on the conversations which have been going on, first between Mr. Gromyko and the United States Ambassador in Moscow and, secondly—after the problem came to a head in Geneva —between Mr. Dean Rusk and the Soviet Ambassador in Washington. All hon. Members will wish the negotiations well, disappointing and slow though the progress so far has been. I trust that the right hon. Gentleman will associate Her Majesty's Government unreservedly with these discussions and with the desire to see them speedily and fruitfully come to a conclusion.

There can, I think, be no doubt that divided counsels in the West could have serious consequencies. Last December, when I was attacking Her Majesty's Government for a lack of urgency over Berlin, I referred to the vital need for a N.A.T.O. Ministerial Conference and the imperative need to get an agreed Western line on Berlin. I said that there was some reason to fear that Her Majesty's Government had sacrificed this to getting allies to support the lonely position they had then taken up at the United Nations on the Katanga issue. Certainly a sense of urgency was not shown on Berlin at those talks.

Since then the attitude of President de Gaulle and some of the pronouncements of Dr. Adenauer have put a heavy burden on the United States. It would have been understandable had the Soviet Union played on these speeches and statements and asked the United States how far they were negotiating on behalf of their Western Allies. The American position was made extremely difficult by some of those statements, although I do not want to make too much of this. It can certainly be argued that Washington's clear pronouncement on Dr. Adenauer's speeches may have done more to create East-West confidence than anything for many years past.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) has convincingly argued, one of the features of the cold war for many years was the feeling that Mr. Dulles's one guiding principle in European affairs was to back the Adenauer line, right or wrong. Now President Kennedy's declaration of independence could be a great step forward and lead to greater confidence in the negotiations. I trust that the right hon. Gentleman will associate Her Majesty's Government unreservedly with the line the American Government took in relation to the difficult situation that was then created.

We must all recognise that the Berlin issue cannot be settled on its own. The Russians are realists and they know that the adverse propaganda effect of the wall is incalculable. If the West were to spend ten billion dollars and mobilise every public relations officer in the Western world they could not devise so powerful a propaganda weapon as the wall—and the Russians know it. At the same time, they know that East Germany's economy was in danger of bleeding to death through loss of skilled workers and technicians. Perhaps the real truth in all this can be summed up in a famous phrase of Aneurin Bevan's, who once said that the trouble was that the Soviet Union had expanded beyond her natural frontiers.

In the long run the problem is one of creating conditions in Central Europe which will provide the basis on which not merely the problem of the wall but the general problem of Berlin and West Germany can be solved. In previous debates we have asked the Government to adopt our proposals for a nuclear free zone and an area of controlled disarmament in Central Europe. We have stressed these proposals not only in the context of a general disarmament agreement, to which we think they are highly relevant, but also in the context of the Berlin situation. In one debate after another we have had no constructive reply to these proposals from the Government. We think that they could be a powerful solvent in easing the Berlin problem.

I have a fear—and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will do something to allay it tonight—that the Government and certain of their Western allies have lost the sense of urgency they had last autumn over Berlin.

When we were threatened with immediate crisis, when Mr. Khrushchev's deadline overhung the situation, there was intense diplomatic activity and every sign that something was going to be done. Once that deadline was removed, Western statesmen seemed to heave a sigh of relief and lose any sense of urgency about it. Leave the problem as it is, they seemed to say, no real harm is being done.

More recently, with other problems, with other sources of friction between Western countries uppermost in Ministers' minds—disputes about independent nuclear armouries, or about the precise means of achieving Western unity, arguments about the Common Market and the rest—with all these going on, one feels that Western leaders are perhaps in danger of becoming content to let the Berlin situation drift simply because they know that to press for a solution would add one more cause of friction within the Western alliance.

I hope, therefore, that we shall be assured tonight that this is not the position of Her Majesty's Government; for this problem, as all of us realise, could be inflamed to crisis level almost overnight, and if it were, the West would not necessarily face the new crisis with the unity and firmness which we all desire. Once again panic measures might be the order of the day. That is why we stress the need for urgency now. This crisis will not wait for ever. Nor, indeed, will the compelling requirements of the human tragedy which so many of us have witnessed in the past few weeks.

I hope that this debate tonight will be a signal that the resolve and the sense of purpose for which this tragically divided city calls will no longer be absent from the counsels of the West.

7.31 p.m.

Colonel Sir Tufton Beamish (Lewes)

I am not quite sure why the party opposite has chosen this particular time to debate this particular subject. It has been debated fairly frequently in the House.

I realise that the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) and a considerable number of hon. Gentlemen opposite have recently been in Berlin. I see no harm in the subject having an airing now, but I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman that a solution to this problem is urgent, and I hope that he is wrong in saying that it could easily be inflamed to crisis level. It will not be inflamed to crisis level by any action taken by the free countries. I am sure about that. Anyway, we are having this short debate and I am sure that it will be a useful one.

I am the first to agree with the right hon. Gentleman that there is an important need for calm in Berlin itself, and, in the same way, for calm in this House When we are debating this subject. I am also the first to agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the tragedy in human terms that one sees in Berlin more or less beggars description. I was there eighteen months ago and saw fantastic and stark contrasts between West and East Berlin. I am talking not so much of the standard of living, as the feeling one gets of the contrast between East and West Berlin. The stark feeling of despair and oppression in East Berlin compared with the feeling of freedom in West Berlin is quite startling, and one which one has to go there to really feel.

It is true, also, that what has happened to Berlin is a reflection of what has happened to Europe. We all know that nine countries which were independent prior to 1939 are now occupied by the Soviet Union, or are threatened with immediate reoccupation if they do not do precisely What they are told. When I say nine countries, I am not including Eastern Germany. That is simply one of the terribly tragic facts which we have seen unfolding since 1945.

What the Soviet Union has done in Eastern Europe is a cynical and grave breach of all her international obligations undertaken at Potsdam and Yalta and in the three peace treaties with Hungary, Roumania and Bulgaria. This is well known to us all, and anyone Who has any doubt about it, as the hon. Member for Nelson and Calne (Mr. S. Silverman) appears to have, had better re-read the Potsdam and Yalta agreements and the three peace treaties to which I have referred.

A small point occurs to me which I think is relevant to this situation. It is the danger of visits to Eastern Germany being misconstrued in this country by reason of the fact that the régime in Eastern Germany will, naturally, take advantage of any remarks made by hon. Members in a political context, or, for that matter, remarks made by members of another place when visiting Eastern Germany. It seems to me, therefore, to be of the greatest importance that when hon. Members go there on business they should stick to business.

I hope that this will be generally agreed between both sides of the House. This has not arisen out of the speech of the right hon. Member for Huyton. It is a point which for a long time I have wanted to stress. I think that some unfortunate remarks have been made in Eastern Germany, especially at the Leipzig Fair, which could have been avoided with a little more thought.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Huyton that the suggestion which has been made for many years, that one of the important agencies of the United Nations might be established in West Berlin, is a very interesting one indeed, and I hope that it is one to which the Government will give more thought. It may well be that my right hon. Friend will be able to say whether the Government agree in principle with the suggestion. I also agree with the right hon. Gentleman that perhaps F.A.O. would be the best of all. There is a good deal to be said for this organisation being in West Berlin. It is in Rome at the moment, and if it could move to West Berlin I think it might have very important political effects, though I do not know what would be the reaction of the Soviet Union to such a suggestion.

I felt sure that in speaking on this subject the right hon. Gentleman would get on to the question of disengagement. I am not denying that the problem of Berlin will be solved only in the wider context of Europe. I think that this is obvious, but there are one or two remarks which I should like to make about disengagement plans, because I think there is a good deal of misapprehension and misunderstanding about this subject.

We are often told about what was at the time known as the Eden Plan. I think that it was proposed in 1954, but I am speaking from memory. This plan put forward some kind of disengagement proposal. The word "disengagement" is a loose one, and means all things to all men, but a few weeks ago I looked up this Eden Plan which was supposed to have suggested disengagement. It seems to be overlooked very often that the Eden Plan contemplated some kind of disengagement after free elections in East and West Berlin, resulting in the reunification of the whole city, and after free elections throughout the whole of Germany, under international supervision, resulting in a freely elected all-German Government.

It is true that the Eden Plan suggested that after all those things had happened some thinning out of forces might be possible but it is not true to say—and I am sure that my right hon. Friend will confirm this—that a Conservative Government have ever made any proposals for disengagement which bear any real resemblance at all to the Rapacki Plan or to the proposals made by the party opposite, and, in particular, by the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell), who, of course, has specialised in this subject.

Mr. H. Wilson

I did not refer to the Eden Plan. I do not disagree with the hon. and gallant Gentleman's interpretation of it, but surely he will agree that in the important discussions in Moscow in April, 1959, between the present Prime Minister and Mr. Khrushchev, the broadest hints were thrown out by the Prime Minister in favour of some measure of disengagement, and that it was that which really led to the right hon. Gentleman agreeing in principle to the idea of a Summit conference. I hope that the hon. and gallant Gentleman is not going to repudiate or disavow the encouraging proposals put forward by the Prime Minister at that time and later dropped owing to perhaps unfortunate pressures from West Germany.

Sir T. Beamish

I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman is in any way right in suggesting that the form of words used then, and about which I have recently refreshed my memory, could possibly be described as a plan for disengagement. The words were in general terms, and I assure the right hon. Gentleman that they bear no relation whatsoever to the Rapacki Plan or to the proposals put forward by the party opposite.

I am certain that I am right in saying that. When the Rapacki Plan was put forward by the Polish Prime Minister it had the immediate blessing of Mr. Khrushchev, who said that it was a good plan. The plan put forward by the Labour Party was broadly similar to the Rapacki Plan, but arose from totally different thinking. Mr. Khrushchev has made it clear on many occasions that any disengagement in Eastern Europe cannot possibly affect the political status —what he calls "the status quo" of the occupied countries.

What he would call "the Socialist achievement in Eastern Europe" cannot he interfered with in any way by any disengagement. In other words, the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe must be maintained. Many hon. Members opposite and the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) himself have given as one of the main reasons for their disengagement plan that it would hasten the day when the peoples of Eastern Europe would again be able to choose their own Governments free from foreign interference.

The starting point of the Labour Party for its plan and Mr. Rapacki for his plan are at opposite poles, both having completely different thinking. At the starting point for the Labour Party plan was the view of the late Mr. Aneurin Bevan and the hon. Member for Leeds, East that the drive and dynamism have gone out of international Communism. Remarks to that effect were made both by Mr. Aneurin Bevan and the hon. Member for Leeds, East. Although I wish I could agree with them, I cannot see any evidence that that is so.

Consequently, I draw the conclusion that disengagement along the lines proposed by the Opposition would have very serious political disadvantages. After all, if disengagement led, as is suggested, to a neutral Germany, who would insist that Germany remained neutral? Does German neutrality involve occupation? If so, by how many troops and for how long? That is the sort of question which the hon. Gentleman should answer if he is serious about his disengagement proposals. It is the sort of question which is never answered. Disengagement has serious political disadvantages.

It was suggested by the Labour Party at one time that the neutrality of, say, Denmark should be bargained for the neutrality of, say, Roumania, and that one might be able to extend the neutral zone wider and wider. The only people who can bargain away the neutrality of Denmark or Norway are the Danish or Norwegian people respectively, and so far as I know they have no intention of doing it.

The right hon. Gentleman again used the phrase "a nuclear-free zone" as part of his proposals. But this offends against one of the basic things which we have been trying to achieve in all our disarmament negotiations. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will confirm this. It separates nuclear weapons from conventional ones. That is something we simply dare not do. How many Soviet divisions are there in Eastern Germany? The last figure I recollect was 21, but I am told that it is only 20 now, though that is not very different. For all practical purposes Soviet troops in Eastern Germany are roughly the equivalent of the whole of N. A. T. O. 's forces in Western Europe. It is no good the right hon. Gentleman shaking his head; this is true. The Soviet conventional forces would have an enormous military superiority in Europe if a nuclear-free zone were established as he has been suggesting.

Mr. H. Wilson

I beg the hon. and gallant Gentleman's pardon. I was shaking my head only at his misrepresentation of what I had said. I had referred to a nuclear-free zone and an area of controlled disarmament. I did not seek to separate nuclear weapons from conventional weapons.

Sir T. Beamish

But if the right hon. Gentleman speaks about a nuclear-free zone and controlled disarmament he is obviously offending against the principle by abolishing nuclear weapons in that area. Surely he can see that. He has merely confirmed what I have said. A nuclear-free zone means no nuclear weapons—though maybe controlled conventional weapons—in the area.

Another point is that the right hon. Gentleman's proposal involves inspection. I am all in favour of inspection, and so is the right hon. Gentleman. But it was only about a month ago at Geneva that the Soviet Union refused to discuss any further measures against surprise attack. We wanted that as a start for wider inspection and for its own sake. I am all in favour of it, but if the Russians will not even allow inspection to ensure that we have safeguards against the possibility of surprise attack what chance is there of disengagement on the lines which the right hon. Gentleman has proposed? There is no chance whatsoever. Therefore, I regard the right hon. Gentleman's disengagement proposals as disingenuous, impractical and dangerous, and I do not think that it is worth giving serious thought to them any more.

Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne)

Suppose one were to accept from the hon. and gallant Gentleman that the proposals were as dangerous and as useless as he seems determined to believe. What then follows from that? Is he then inviting the House to believe that the present position should go on drearily for ever, or if he thinks that some other move than this should be made, will he tell us what it is?

Sir T. Beamish

The hon. Gentleman is suggesting, I presume, that we should be making some sort of concession now in order to get some sanity back into Europe. Unfortunately, this is a situation that we have to live with. What concession can we make?

Sir Harmar Nicholls (Peterborough)

The time is not ripe.

Sir T. Beamish

As my hon. Friend says, the time is not ripe. I wish it were. There is nothing I long for more than the day when the whole of Europe is free, when the Soviet Union is living within its own frontiers, when Poland can choose a Polish Government of its own, and so on. I wish these proposals were practical. It is because they do not seem to be practical that I think that another point of view on them should be put.

I am not trying to solve the whole of Europe's problems. We have to live with them and negotiate 'peacefully and try to find a solution. I do not agree that the time has come, as the right hon. Gentleman suggested, when we should regard a solution to the problem of Berlin as urgent and that it is a situation which could very easily be inflamed to crisis level. It is useful to have a debate of this kind, and in my remarks I have simply tried to comment on some of the points made by the right hon. Member for Huyton.

7.48 p.m.

Mr. R. H. S. Crossman (Coventry, East)

I hope that the hon. and gallant Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish) will excuse me if I do not follow him directly. I do not want to permit the debate to expand into another repetition of our normal routine debates about Germany. The special interest that we have this evening is to concentrate on Berlin. Though I was not one of the delegation which went there and, therefore, I am bound to look at it a little differently, I want to follow on where my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) left off and deal with three questions.

The first question is: could we have avoided the wall? I think it is worth asking ourselves whether we could have prevented it being built. Secondly, the wall having been built, can we get rid of it? Thirdly, if we cannot get rid of it, how can we create conditions of coexistence in Europe despite the wall being there? I will deal briefly with each of those points and see whether we can come to any constructive conclusions about them.

It might be said that the first question is a historical one, but it is very much relevant to the present situation. One thing that the hon. and gallant Member for Lewes told us clearly was that he felt that this was the wrong time to negotiate. I would tell him that this has always been said. I would further tell him that it was being said just a year ago.

I took the trouble to turn up the debate on Berlin on 31st July last year, a very interesting debate to read. Many Opposition back benchers discussed the possibility, or the threat, of a wall being built. There was not a single reference by a Government spokesman, ten days before the wall was going up, to the possibility that the Russians would build the wall. We were told that it was the wrong time to negotiate. We were told that it was time to build up our strength. We were told that we were able to rely on our position in Berlin, and that all we had to consider was the possibility of Mr. Khrushchev's signing a treaty with the East Germans. I may have missed a sentence in the report of the debate, but I could not find a sentence warning of the danger of what some of us thought was bound to be done.

The last time I was in Berlin was on 13th August last year when I was staying in East Berlin and the wall went up. I spent the previous week in Eastern Europe. I talked to Hendryk who is now, I gather, to succeed Novotny as head of Czechoslovakia. To any one of us out there it was crystal clear that the Communists were going to build the wall, because if they did not build the wall East Germany would collapse. My right hon. Friend made it perfectly clear that the wall was put up as the only alternative to the total collapse of the Communist régime in East Germany, yet the devastating fact is that when the wall was put up on 13th August it caught the West completely unawares. We discovered there were no plans for dealing with the crisis.

The terrible truth was that we were so completely unprepared that when the wall's erection came it was made into a gratuitous defeat of the West, with the frustrating sense that we could do nothing, which was a repetition of the frustrating sense that we could do nothing about the East German rising. I would have hoped that by now we would have learned a lesson from the fact that we stood by and did nothing throughout the East German rising, and from the very fact that we stood by and did nothing when the wall was built I think we have to draw a conclusion, and the conclusion is that, since we are not prepared to use military force to get rid of the Communists in East Germany, Communism is there to stay—which is a lesser evil than a world war—and that the wall is, for good or for ill, a necessity of Communist survival in East Germany.

I am sorry to say anything so unpopular as this, but I will explain why I hold this view. I may have seen the wall from the wrong side. I only wish that the delegation who saw the wall from the West side could have spent as long in studying it from where I was on the East side and from the point of view of the Communists in East Germany, When, perhaps, they would have found the wall looking rather different From the eastern point of view the wall completes the frontier of Communism. It is, in my view, impossible for Communism to exist with an open frontier, because if there is an open frontier people fly in their millions. If there were a gap in the wall in Czechoslovakia, how many would escape? How many would escape from Hungary if they had a hole in the wall there? The terrible truth about Communism is that the majority, or at any rate masses of people, if given the chance, will pour out of every Communist State.

The one Communist State in the world with a hole from which people could escape was the East German Communist State. This is what made it unviable. It is true it had great economic difficulties, faced as it was with the over Whelming strength of West Germany, and the basic difficulty of East Germany was the fact that people in East Germany had the choice of leaving everything behind, taking a suitcase, paying a penny on the underground, and getting into West Germany—and it cost a loss to East Germany of 2 million people, I think it was, who escaped.

This gap in the frontier was exploited with the greatest skill by the psychological warriors fighting in West Germany. Speaking as someone who has been in psychological warfare, I can say that the psychological war operated from West Berlin against East Germany was the most proficient operation I have ever seen. That little half-city terrorised East Germany. It sent in its agents, it sent in its radio, it arranged its rates of exchange; every weapon was used to embarrass and to sabotage the attempts of East Germany to survive. This was the most successful anti-Communist operation, and it was done because of, and it depended on, that hole which it was able to exploit.

I may well be asked, why did not the Communists close the hole before? They did not because it was a great admission of weakness. That is why they did not close the hole. Much more important, to close it would have meant admitting that they had given up hope of reunifying Germany in a Communist State; it would have meant admitting to the world that two-thirds of Germany was going to stay free and democratic, and that was an admission which no Communist wanted to make who had the ambition to see Communism spread West. We felt that the erection of the wall was a self-inflicted defeat, but, of course, it was a major admission of defeat by the Communists on a grand scale. It was a defensive action to prevent a weak régime tottering and finally collapsing.

Unless we are prepared to march into East Germany we are faced with the awkward fact that we have to assist that tottering régime to exist. That is what we have to do. The West German Government today are faced with an exactly similar problem. They are now faced with the frantic problem of whether they should or should not trade with Eastern Germany. If they do not there will be starvation in East Germany, and if there were there would be an East German rising, which they will not support, and they will stand by and see Germans mown down by Russians. Because they do not want to see that happen they have to face the terrible but lesser evil of having to assist and sustain an odious puppet régime.

All I can say to the Committee is that in the sustaining of that régime—it is the blunt and horrid truth—that wall is now essential. It is quite unrealistic not to face the fact that we cannot take that wall down without imperilling the régime, and we cannot take it down unless Germany is reunified. If there were reunification of Germany I could envisage the disappearance of the wall. If we are practical men we must realise that as we could not prevent the wall from being put up by negotiating a settlement a year ago so now we cannot destroy the wall without destroying the fragile basis of coexistence, which is very fragile and extremely tenuous, which exists in Europe today.

If we cannot take it down now we are left with the third problem— what to do about it? We can work for a system of co-existence, accepting that the wall has got to be there, as my right hon. Friend stressed, till we can get the ultimate solution of unification with free elections. We may still dream of that, although I have not much hope of its coming about in my lifetime. I agree with my right hon. Friend that one of the most important things we must not do is deceive ourselves. It is no good talking as though we can take down the wall or as though the wall imposes on the East Germans any greater suffering than the frontier imposes on the Poles, the Hungarians, the Roumanians and the Czechs.

All that has happened through the building of the wall is that the East German State has been made the same kind of completely Communist, closed State, with closed frontiers, as exists in every other part of Eastern Europe. I do not see why I should have any undue, extra feeling because the Germans suffer from that position than I have because the Poles, the Roumanians, the Czechs and the Bulgarians suffer from it; it is no less fair and reasonable that the East Germans, who are in an East German Communist State, should suffer the same conditions if they are to live under the same sort of régime.

I would point out that there are some very special reasons why East Germany must have an even stronger frontier than any other Communist State. One reason is that its Government is more unpopular. Indeed, it is certainly the most unpopular Communist régime in Eastern Europe, and that is saying a good deal. Secondly, by comparison with West Germany it is very weak. Let me give an analogy. Let us imagine that Canada was a Communist State, with its long frontier with America. Let us imagine that American television and radio was blaring out all along the open frontier that Canadians should come to a free America. How many people would be left in Canada after six months? The answer is that no one would be left and that it would be an arctic ruin; the whole population would have decamped into America if the choice were between staying in a Communist Canada and enjoying a democratic America.

That kind of choice is the choice of the Germans between East and West Germany, for the economic strength of East Germany is in roughly the same kind of proportion to that of West Germany as the economic strength of Canada is to the rest of America. When we have not only that great economic advantage but also the fact that the people belong to the same nation, we can see the overwhelming strength and attraction of West Germany.

It follows, therefore, that an enormous wall had to be built to try to hold people inside a Communist East Germany. My right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton was quite right when he said that the wall was there not to keep people out but to hold people in. But if we are to have a Communist East German State, then it will have to have that kind of wall and that kind of totally planned existence. It is a terrible fact, but we must make up our minds not only to support the Communist East German State but even to help it to exist, because the alternative is the starting of World War Three in the centre of Europe when the East Germans rise in revolt and either we do or do not go to their assistance.

I have tried to put to the Committee the problem as I see it. I have done so as clearly and brutally as possible because there is a danger that we feel emotional about the wall and do not grasp its full significance. Again, I agree with my right hon. Friend that the main job which we have to do in advising the Germans is to make them face the realities. He was quite right; all our influence in West Berlin ought to be to persuade the West Berliners to collaborate with the East German Government, in so far as it is necessary to collaborate, to bring about the joining together of relatives and other humanisations which are possible despite the existence of the wall. The great mistake would be if the West Germans were to adopt the attitude adopted by the Arabs towards the problem of their refugees and to say, "We shall deliberately create a political problem and do nothing to reduce the tension". Everything must be done to reduce the tension on both sides of the wall, although it will involve collaboration—a collaboration which politically may be very unpopular in Bonn.

Secondly, it seems to me that we must remind ourselves and our allies that the time to negotiate about Berlin is when there is no Berlin crisis. If we always wait until there is a crisis, the chance of a settlement is virtually nil. One of the tragedies of the West is that when everything is fairly quiet we say, "We need not negotiate". We wait until there is an insoluble crisis and then try to rush a solution. Would it not have been wiser to have negotiated a Berlin settlement last spring and thus to have prevented the erection of the wall? Would it not have been wiser to have saved Berlin from the wall at the cost of recognising East Germany then, as we shall have to recognise it sooner or later? By not negotiating last year the inevitable settlement, we are largely responsible, we of the Western Powers, for imposing the misery of the wall, which stands as a shame and a disgrace on the City of Berlin.

My second conclusion, therefore, is that now is the time to negotiate. I may be told that it is no good—to which I reply, very briefly, on Berlin, that I know of no subject on which the chances of agreement are greater, because I know of no subject on which the advantage gained by both sides by an agreement will be greater than in the case of Berlin. The reason is very simple. In Berlin both sides have positions of extreme weakness. West Berlin is not a position of strength. In the long run, West Berlin is a dying asset. As a result of the wall, the influx of young refugees, which was a source of vitality, has been cut off. It is an ageing city, and enormous sums constantly have to be spent by West Germany on it to give it artificial life. It is therefore not wise for us to bet on the permanence of West Berlin against the impermanence of Communism in East Germany.

But if West Berlin is a weak asset, East Germany is the weakest asset which the Communists possess. If they are sensible, both sides will recognise that because they both have their weak positions in Berlin and East Germany, there is everything to be said for an agreement on broadly accepting the status quo for the time being. We all know that the only basis for agreement has always been a de facto recognition of East Germany in exchange for Russian guarantees of West Berlin independence. That has always been the basis of the discussion, and it is the one piece of horse-dealing in Europe which I regard as having any chance of success, because nobody wants to risk a war presented by the present situation The present is a terribly dangerous situation, as the delegation saw for themselves. They would have seen it even more clearly if they had also spent four days in East Berlin and looked at both sides of the wall. It is a terribly dangerous situation in which sanity could produce a solution.

I must pay tribute to Mr. Kennedy. I think that the American President has shown tremendous courage in facing the need for a Berlin settlement, and in saying that there must be a settlement, in defiance of Adenauer and de Gaulle, and in strengthening the Russian confidence in him by having the courage to stand up for it. This country must back Kennedy's patience in persuading de Gaulle and Adenauer that, in the interests of the West and, above all, of Germany and of Berlin, a sensible understanding based on the status quo is something which we must negotiate in times of quiet. It is no good going on again until there is another crisis.

I therefore conclude where I started. Perhaps the best object lesson is to read the debate of 31st July and to observe the stupidity of the Government spokesman ten days before the wall was built, when there was still a chance of negotiation. The object lesson on this issue is that we must never stop having debates and urging negotiations, because here we know not only that we must negotiate but that a settlement is possible because it is in the interests of both sides.

8.9 p.m.

Mr. Julian Ridsdale (Harwich)

Unlike one or two hon. Members, I have not been to East Berlin recently, although my 18-year-old daughter was there at the time of the visit of hon. Members opposite, and she was able to give me a conservative, first-hand point of view on some of the very human problems which there are in Berlin at present. I find that I can agree a little more with what the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) said now that he is the Opposition Front Bench spokesman for foreign affairs than I could when he was their spokesman for economic affairs.

I agree, too, with a view expressed by the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), when he said that the wall was there not to keep people out, but to keep people in. That is a very sound appreciation of the action of the East German régime.

I also want to pay tribute, as the right hon. Gentleman did, to the restraint of the West Berliners and to Herr Brandt in these very provoking circumstances. I agree that we should seek a meeting of the military representatives of the four powers, with a view to trying to iron out some of the tensions and difficulties which exist and which are bound to arise in Berlin.

To try to get a movement of families would be very welcome. Whilst I certainly have not been able to agree with the Rapacki Plan in its entirety, as portrayed by the Opposition, I can see the wisdom of being able to disarm with peace on either side.

The most important factor in the present position in Berlin is the continued co-operation and unity which we have brought about, not only with the United States but also with our allies in Western Europe. I welcome particularly the close co-operation which we have been able to build up with the West German Government. As one who has attended the last three C.D.U. Party Conferences at Karlsruhr, Cologne and Dontmund, and who bakes an interest in Western Germany, my reply to Mr. Khrushchev's recent utterances, as reported in the Guardian today, is that those who see the existence of revanchist movements in Western Germany see perhaps but a reflection of themselves.

I agree with those hon. Members who have stressed that what is needed at the moment is calmness and determination on the Berlin problem. Surely it is not the existence of a free Berlin which is the threat to peace. The threat to peace is the bad state of East Berlin, the existence of the wall, and the shootings of children and, indeed, refugees after they have crossed the frontier.

With such tensions existing, clearly we must do all we can to reduce them. The question is whether we can find an acceptable basis of negotiation. For us, surely the essentials of any such negotiation must be the freedom of the people of West Berlin, the freedom of access to West Berlin, and the continuance of Berlin as a viable economy.

The Russians are trying to change the status in Berlin. Surely our rights there are established from our occupation rights in 1945, buttressed by the free wish of the free people of West Berlin. How can it help to hand over to the East German authorities, as the Russians want to do, the lines of communication and access from West Berlin to the outside world, to be completely under the control of the East German authorities to cut off at any time they wish?

Surely we cannot conceivably abandon the West Berliners to the Communist world. If we did, the word of the West would be worthless to the uncommitted nations and it would be the quickest way of destroying N.A.T.O. I am sure that over Berlin that it is not the city alone which is at stake, but the good faith and purpose of the Western world as well.

After stating these essentials, I agree that we must do all we can to improve the existing situation. With the threat of nuclear war hovering over us, we must try to lower the tension and find, if possible, a modus vivendi.

I should like to see a committee of Foreign Ministers set up so as to get established the kind of committee which in the end achieved success over the Austrian Peace Treaty, a committee similar to the Disarmament Committee and similar to the Committee on Laos. We know that in dealing with the Russians agreements cannot be reached at once. There are far too many disagreements which we do not know about behind the Iron Curtain and behind the Bamboo Curtain. However, it would be helpful if we could establish some kind of committee to discuss these problems, not necessarily a committee of Ministers, but a committee of officials to get together and discuss the many problems which come up from time to time.

The experts of Britain, Russia, France and the United States should be on such a committee and be able to get down to the detailed work and report back on the explorations which have been made. For instance, the committee would consider the possibility of free movement within the City of Berlin, where such human misery is caused by the division of this great city into two parts. It may be necessary to have this apart from the usual meetings of Foreign Ministers, which, no doubt, can consider the broader long-term political problems, which time alone can solve.

Nuclear problems, the Rapacki Plan, and the necessity for an area of neutralisation in Eastern Europe are possibly better discussed at the Disarmament Committee or in the United Nations and not in the kind of committee which I suggest might form a basis of getting at least a localised agreement on Berlin.

The immediately vital thing is to try to lower the tension. The Berliners have undoubtedly shown remarkable resilience and faith in their future. Whatever the hopes of the other side, I am sure that it is quite untrue to talk about Berlin as a dying city. Life is not running down in any way, nor is the population getting smaller. It is part of our duty to ensure that the faith that these 2¼ million members of the free world have shown in their Western friends is not betrayed.

8.19 p.m.

Mr. Scholefield Allen (Crewe)

With much that the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) has said I agree, particularly with his closing words. I first visited Berlin in 1930, and my last visit was a week ago. I think that only one who has known the pre-war and the post-war Berlin can appreciate what an enormous change has taken place in that city. We went into East Berlin as well, but I had not really appreciated, before going to the city last week, that two cities are now arising where there was only one in pre-war days.

Those who do not know Berlin will not be able to follow the geography, so I will take this great city of London in parallel. One takes the West End of London, Hyde Park and Piccadilly, as a thriving, well-lit, well-employed and sparkling place. Then, from Trafalgar Square, for nearly a mile, one imagines almost complete destruction and devastation, and then, in the drab part of the City of London, another city is rising. A great no-man's-land of devastation lies between the two. That is a picture of Berlin at present.

I am rather disposed to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Grossman) that it is doubtful whether we shall see the two Berlins joined together again in our lifetime. I hope that we can find a solution to this great problem, but while we have this dialectical and ideological battle between Communism and the free world I rather think that the Russians dare not join the two cities together.

On the one side, there is light and freedom, and a happy people. In the lake district of Berlin, we saw hundreds of thousands of people enjoying themselves. There were motor cars, and obvious signs of wealth, happiness, and good dress. In East Berlin, we saw drabness. The shops were almost empty. Nobody could look into them for more than three minutes without knowing that the consumer goods were not there. Life was drab.

In spite of all that, the effect of this wall is tremendous. Nobody who has not seen it, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) said, in the third dimension can appreciate this horror. There are at least 15 miles of it——

Mr. Victor Yates (Birmingham, Ladywood)

There are 28 miles.

Mr. Scholefield Allen

Everyone I asked gave a different measurement, but even 15 miles of it is enough.

We went to one street which, in particular, was a street of desolation. It was a wide street, and it had once been busy. It was obvious that public service vehicles had gone to and fro, and there were lines on which the trams once ran. It was well over half a mile long, and the wall ran down its east side. It was blocked at one end, and the windows of all the houses on the east side were blocked up. The houses were empty. The other side of the wall was a no-man's-land, with East Berlin armed police patrolling between it and the barbed wire 50 yards, 100 yards, or 200 yards beyond.

We looked from platforms provided for the purpose. We saw faces in the distance, hundreds of yards away, peering out of windows. Screens are now being put up so that the East German people cannot even wave to their West German relatives and friends. Families are divided. On one side of this street, dozens and dozens of Germans of both sexes stood gazing, in the hope of catching a glimpse of a relative.

There was a silence in the street— an awed silence that one could almost feel. In the silence stood women, with tears running down their faces. It was a silence imposed by the shock of this inhuman prison wall. The silence there was broken only by the birds in the trees that lined each side of the street. I said to a colleague, "Here, only the birds are singing." This monstrosity is an affront to human dignity and human decency. But there are grave dangers in this situation.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East said, this may strike through our emotions but we must keep stout hearts, and we must keep our emotions well under control. One thing that we learned to admire when we were in Berlin was the conduct and bearing —first of Willy Brandt, who stood out above all others, and of the ordinary West Germans in the street, provoked as they were daily by this horrible monstrosity. There are daily shootings of brave men trying to escape from their prison on the other side. There are deaths of young boys fired on in cold blood; hunted like wounded animals.

I have described this situation emotionally, as I saw it and felt it, because I want the Committee and the Government to realise that this is an explosive, emotional situation. It is amazing that it has not provoked more retaliation. When we have a situation like that, it is a problem which cannot be resolved by sitting still. It is an explosive problem. I disagree with the hon. and gallant Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish), Who said that it was not an urgent problem. I regard it as perhaps the most urgent of all problems, because at any time something may happen. Some action is an urgent necessity for the preservation of peace.

I call on the Government, out of this experience, not to treat this lightly, but to initiate immediately a conference of the four Powers who are responsible for Berlin, including the Soviet Union, to discuss this wall and its dangers. I have no illusions, as I have said, that the wall will be pulled down. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East has well described its purpose. It dare not be pulled down. It is there to keep these East Germans in. They would come out in their tens of thousands if they were allowed to do so. So long as it is there, and there are armed men on both sides very close together, there is danger to peace. When West German soldiers, who are armed, see young Germans swimming across the river and trying to escape, being shot at in cold blood, it does not acquire much imagination to see that this is a situation which might create a third world war.

Therefore, with the ever-present danger of incidents provoking retaliation, the Government should try to arrange with the Russians something that would take the tension out of the situation. One way of arranging it would be the kind of human exchange suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson), so that people could visit relatives. This would relieve tension without the danger of large numbers of people coming out of East Berlin and further debilitating the East German economy.

In the Berlin situation generally, we must give our support to West Berlin. The wall is the urgent question, but as soon as possible we must make a peace treaty for and with Germany as a whole. Her Majesty's Government should give all support to President Kennedy and not tolerate the blocking tactics of Dr. Adenauer and President de Gaulle.

We should insist at the moment on the presence of allied troops in Berlin or, better still, of United Nations forces there, together with a U.N. institution such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation. The presence of large numbers of Asians and Africans in Berlin on such duties would help them, when they returned home, to resist some of the attractive propaganda which comes from behind the wall.

We must preserve the viability of West Berlin. We must insist on free access to West Berlin by land and air from West Germany, and give the West Berliners, who have shown such courage in such provocative circumstances, the right to choose their own future in freedom. That freedom we must never bargain away.

8.32 p.m.

Dr. Alan Glyn (Clapham)

I find myself in perfect agreement with the hon. and learned Member for Crewe (Mr. Scholefield Allen). He has had the good fortune to go to Berlin recently. It was my good fortune to go there before the wall was built. The human tragedies which he described and the differences in the standards between the two parts of the city existed then as they exist now.

I particularly echo what the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) said in paying a tribute to the people of West Berlin, Whose patience seems to have been almost inexhaustible. In spite of the many provocations which the hon. and learned Member for Crewe has described, and of which we are all fully aware, the West Berliners have behaved with dignity and courage throughout the partition of their city.

The right hon. Gentleman made a very interesting and constructive suggestion. He mentioned the possibility of the police on both sides being disarmed. I hope that the Soviets will take notice of that, but I am afraid that possibly they feel that they need their men armed to fire upon those trying to escape from East Berlin. But it is a suggestion which I believe that no humane statesman could refuse to accede to.

The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned the possibility of humanising the situation a little by allowing elderly people and children to cross the border. There would be practical difficulties. It may be that many of the over-60s will also like to stay in West Berlin, so there is a practical difficulty. But if the Soviet authorities wish to show any form of humanitarian treatment, I am sure that they cannot fail to take cognisance of this suggestion.

The necessity for the wall has already been revealed. This is the completion of a structure which completely surrounds the Communist world, because that world cannot possibly exist unless it is sealed off, for the comparison between the two systems is too sharp. The very fact that more than 2 million people have left the glories of Communism and come to the West proves that the two systems cannot be compared.

When I was in Berlin, I took the trouble to see the refugees who had just come from Eastern Germany. They were from all walks of life, artisans and professional people. The extraordinary thing was that they had one factor in common. When I asked them, through the excellent interpreter provided for me by the British Government, I found that that one factor was not that the food was not enough, or that its cost was too high, or that they were not getting sufficient wages, but was freedom.

Everyone to whom I spoke had left the Eastern zone of Germany through West Berlin for the one reason— that he was bored with the régime which did not allow freedom of speech and freedom of action. Many of them had found that it was too great a price to pay and they were willing to give up not only their family ties of affection in Eastern Germany, but, for many of them, what they had saved in the way of worldly goods, so far as it is possible to have worldly goods in East Germany— at least they were things which were important to them, their home surroundings and their environment. In one way or another they told me that in the West we had freedom and other things which they believed it worth giving up everything they had in the East to secure for themselves.

A practical suggestion today has been that the F.A.O. might be moved into Berlin. Perhaps my right hon. Friend will make some comment on this possibility when he winds up the debate.

It is unfortunate that when Members of Parliament visit East Germany for business reasons— and I make no apology for stressing something which has been said before— their opinions are sometimes misconstrued as being representative of a party or a political thought. Many of these trips are of a purely business nature, and people would be well advised to restrict their remarks to the nature of their mission, in these cases purely business.

The hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) said that we could not move the wall, and I have no doubt that nothing but farce could ensure its removal at the moment. But we have to impress on our allies in West Berlin and West Germany, that for the moment at least, they must live with and face that situation. Our job is to continue to support our Western allies, to continue to give encouragement to West Berlin.

The 2 million people in West Berlin are as much our allies as the people in the remainder of West Germany. They look to us for support and encouragement and I hope that we shall continue to give it to them. That does not prevent us from continuing— and I am sure that the Government will continue— to press for an agreement on Berlin, first, on the question of human possibilities so as to reduce tension even in the smallest way, perhaps developing that later. I think that all hon. Members will join with me in saying that we want to remove the tension altogether, but every small concession will help to decrease it.

Whilst paying tribute to the West Berliners and Western Germany we have add to recognise that this is an explosive situation. We have also to make clear that any incursion on the part of West Germany into East Germany wild not be backed by N.A.T.O. and our other Western allies.

8.40 p.m.

Mr. Victor Yates (Birmingham, Ladywood)

I found myself in sympathy with many of the remarks made by the hon. Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn) except when he agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) in suggesting that the wall was there and could not be removed except by force. I do not accept that position. I do not believe that because the wall has been erected and is a fait accompli nothing can be done by moral power throughout the world to compel its pulling down. It could not be effectively pulled down by tanks and guns which would involve the world in war.

As one who recently visited Berlin with my colleagues I received a profound shock. Several times I have seen behind the Iron Curtain. I have been in East Germany and discussed with East Germans and with Russians the problems we are facing now in Germany. With my hon. Friends who went on the visit I saw a horrible picture from the military angle from the other side of the wall as well as on the Western side. I cannot help but feel, after having visited Berlin and other cities in Germany in 1946 when the whole country lay prostrate, a sense of horror that a line has been drawn and a wall built in such a manner as to make the possibility of a world war greater than I had thought.

I made several inquiries to be sure about the length of the wall and found that it is 45 kilometres, which I understand is approximately 28 miles. It is not only the length of the wall but some of the horrible features of it which cause me great apprehension. For example, watch towers are built in trees along the wall so that the military can watch and from which they could shoot. I was assured by people who have a great deal of knowledge that there are enough bricks in the wall to build 10,000 houses.

I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East is not now present so that I could say this to him. I do not agree that because the wall has been built—and I regard it as the most ugly outward expression of war that I have seen for a long time—it must be accepted as permanent. I agree with Kurt Schumacher the former Socialist leader who said that the unity of Germany was more important than the armaments of West or East. That was his view just before he died. I believe that unless there is unity between the two sides in this country there will be danger not only to Germany but to the whole of Europe, in fact, to the whole world.

The debate has revealed, to me at any rate, that my right hon. Friend was correct in saying that the problem is urgent. I was surprised when one hon. Member said that there was no urgency about it. He has not experienced the feeling which exists in Berlin, although he said that he had been to Berlin two years ago, or something like that. On 19th July of last year the Foreign Secretary said that one false step could easily plunge the Continent of Europe into war. In October he followed that up by saying that one false step, one failure in communications, even one failure in comprehension, might mean war. I do not think that then I appreciated the significance of those words. It was not until I discussed the matter recently with Germans and saw certain things that I did appreciate the significance of it.

One fact which emerges from this situation is that shootings occur. I have argued with young Germans who have told me that they had not the power to retaliate in the way they thought they should. One can appreciate the feelings which are aroused when a young boy of 15 swimming across the strip of water which at one point divides one side of Berlin from the other, was shot at, and not only once—seven bullets went into his body. One can imagine the horror aroused in the minds of people in the West at that occurrence and by the fact that that kind of terrible atrocity can happen. The fact that a policeman in East Berlin can put himself into a good position to fire a fatal shot makes it even worse. It does not improve the situation if a West German policeman shoots an East German policeman.

I am amazed that in this situation greater tragedies have not occurred. That several people have been killed in recent months is a stark fact. I congratulate the West Germans upon their restraint and patience. The Mayor of Berlin, Herr Willy Brandt has given clear indications of the circumstances in which West German policemen should shoot and I was astounded at the care with which these policemen carry out their responsibilities. The Mayor has said that it is difficult for a man to be a policeman. I was struck by the restraint among people who were working and going about their ordinary business even though these horrible things were happening.

The first obligation is to continue to urge restraint. We should continue to ask them to offer, in face of the world, a passive resistance to evil and wrong. I cannot see any justification for the East Germans shooting people who are crossing the water or trying to escape.

I remember being in the United States and visiting the worst prison here—Alcatraz. The governor of the prison said to me, "You know, I have been governor for nineteen years and not a prisoner has escaped from this prison." I said to him, "How is that?" and he said, "We shot five dead who were trying to escape and swim away." I thought that was horrible. I realised that, in this country, if a prisoner escaped from Parkhurst in the Isle of Wight, a feeling of horror would be aroused if there was an attempt to shoot.

I have opposed the rearmament of Germany, both West and East, and I have opposed militarism and conscription. I say with all the power at my command that this example of the use of force which we now see is a danger to Europe and a danger to the peace of the world. It is my duty in this Committee to condemn it, as I have condemned other forms of militarism.

I think that partition in this way tends to breed violent sentiments. My right hon. Friend is again correct in saying that there is a danger that people will be led to the conclusion that they must take action which might lead to war. This situation produces violent sentiments and distress, and therefore it is a danger to understanding. I think there is a Latin phrase which we often use to the effect that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad, and to tell the Germans to be patient and to exercise restraint, though very difficult, is very necessary in the present situation.

I have found no evidence that the Germans, the British or the Russians want a war, but war is not prevented just by people not wanting war. As I have said before in the House, wars can come about by accident. Sometimes nations stumble into war. These are the dangers—and I can only hope and pray that the words of the Foreign Secretary still ring true today—that one false step, one failure, might lead to it. This is what makes the situation urgent and makes it essential that we should try to take some action to prevent war.

What can this House of Commons do? I believe that the more hon. Members visit Germany, both East and West, the more they discuss with Germans and the more they bring our point of view to bear, the better it will be. The more we can see of what is happening, the more we will be able to assist them. I agree, however, that we have to do more than that. Our Government must realise that this situation, which has now been going on for months, is one that should receive the closest consideration in order to discover the kind of initiative which the Government could take.

I agree that some action should be taken to bring together the four Powers to discuss the matter. I was surprised to read in the newspapers that Herr Ulbricht of East Germany was not prepared to have discussions. We must bring to bear all the pressure we can not only upon the East Germans but upon the Russians, who are at the back of this—make no mistake about it. If Mr. Khrushchev came out firmly in this matter the East Germans could not move in this way. Our duty, therefore, is to embarrass the Russians in this situation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East said that this wall was a great embarrassment; that the Russians had tried to fill up a hole, and that this was really the only way they could do it. I do not accept this. If that is what the Russians are seeking, they are acting in a most unintelligent manner. Usually they propose something more intelligent than that. We cannot stop people merely by building walls. People will sacrifice their lives in order to join their families. Why cannot they be allowed to worship God in the same church?

Why should we have the Holy Trinity Church—the church where East and West Germans used to worship God together—bricked round? Why should we permit this without a moral protest throughout the world? I do not believe that the Russians feel happy about this position. The more unhappy that we can make them feel, even by our speeches in the House of Commons, the more we shall make them feel that this is not the right solution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East talked about the refugees. He said that 3½ million had left the East in order to go to West Berlin. Is that not an indictment of the system? Because they have built up this wall by force it does not mean that we must accept it as a fait accompli.

Mr. Crossman

I apologise for being out of the Chamber during my hon. Friend's speech, but what I was pointing out was that the creation of a frontier across which no one could pass was not unique in Eastern Germany. I said that this applies to every Communist country, and that all that happened when the wall was constructed was that East Germany was given a frontier like the frontiers of Russia, China, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Roumania and Bulgaria. That is all I said. I did not say that I approved of it. I said that if we wanted to co-exist with the Communists we had to co-exist with frontiers of that kind, and that it was quite unrealistic to think that we could get this frontier changed without changing other frontiers in Eastern Europe.

Mr. Yates

I do not agree. The problem is rather different. This frontier has been recognised as being the one over which a world war could begin. Therefore I do not agree that because the wall has been built we must accept it as a fait accompli, and must negotiate on the basis that it is there and that it will continue to be there, and that the unity of Germany will never be restored. I do not agree that walls of this kind last for ever. We are told in the Scriptures how the wall of Jericho fell as a result of faith. There is much that we and others in the counsels of the world can do to bring pressure to bear for the wall to be removed.

Surely this problem should be taken to the United Nations. My right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. Wilson) mentioned the establishment of a human rights commission in Berlin. Why should that not be done? The facts of the atrocity in terms of human deprivation as a result of the wall are outstandingly dangerous and should be discussed by a human rights organisation and the United Nations. They should be discussed whenever and wherever possible so that the world can see exactly what is happening. For my part I can never remember reading of a situation like this or a wall of this type.

I want peace and freedom. The great majority of people in this world want the same. But peace can spring only from the greatness of people's affection, one for the other, and not from their armies. I salute the people of Berlin and their passive resistance to evil. I hope that they can be persuaded by our moral support and power to remain passive and not to shoot. They require moral support and courage to do this. Let us give them that support, at the same time telling the East Germans just what we think of the method they have adopted to retain people in that part of Germany.

There must be a way of bringing the two sides together so that peace and freedom can prevail. The only alternative to finding such a method is a third world war, which we all wish to see avoided. This has been a vital debate and I hope that time will be found so that more hon. Members can take part in an even wider discussion of this issue. I should like to see far more visits paid to Germany so that the world in general can, at first hand, see the wall. I am sure that, in the end, it will collapse, not as a result of the activities of tanks but as a result of the moral power of the world.

9.4 p.m.

Mr. W. R. van Straubenzee (Wokingham)

I intervene for only a few moments, with some diffidence, because, contrary to the normal courtesies of the House, I was, for binding reasons, unable to be present during the opening stages of the debate and appreciate that it is not normal for an hon. Member to venture to speak in these circumstances.

I am not by any means the only hon. Member who has been impressed by the first-hand accounts and impressions given the House by hon. Members opposite who, as we know, have recently returned from this unfortunate city. While I have been fortunate to have been there, I confess that I have nut had an opportunity to visit the city since the wall was constructed and it has been helpful to hear the first-hand impression of hon. Members opposite.

Having returned, many of them have expressed the view that this is a matter of great urgency. They consider that their visit has made profound impression on them and that there is no time to lose.

Without, I hope, in any sense being unsympathetic to the spirit of that point of view, or being unsympathetic to those in West Berlin who are living under these intolerable conditions, I venture to express a point of view. It is very easy, when one goes from this House to other places, to get a little too close to the canvas. I came back from West Berlin emotionally deeply stirred by what I saw of the plight of those living there. I am sure that at that moment, in so far as I ever had the ability to do so, I was not in a fit state to pass a cool and calm judgment on what our policy ought to be on this aspect of our foreign relations.

That applies to West Berlin today. That is why I offer a thought or two on the subject. Frequently, when I have been lucky enough to catch the eye of the Chair, I have stressed a view which I have long held, that when we are negotiating with the Russians we are negotiating with people who have an essentially Eastern mentality, and not a Western one. I think that we make a grave mistake if we look on them as essentially Western people. An Eastern person has, par excellence, the ability to wait, to take plenty of time. At the absurd end of the scale, this is exemplified by the Eastern bazaar. No self-respecting person would dream of paying the first price that is asked in an Eastern bazaar. No sensible bargainer would dream of making his bargain quickly.

While I use that flippant, light-hearted example of the kind of attitude that I have in mind, I stress what I feel strongly, that the Russian Government have the mentality to wait, and the ability to resist the pressures which would otherwise make them make haste. In this House many of us on this side, and some hon. Gentlemen opposite, are constantly urging action on the Government. This is a proper exercise of our rights, and it is being done today.

We can—and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mr. V. Yates) wanted us to—embarrass the Government. The hon. Gentleman also spoke about embarrassing the Russian Government in respect of the wall. This is an attractive idea, but I could not help smiling gently to myself, because, sitting immediately behind the hon. Gentleman, was the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock). I thought how nice it would be if the Russian Government could be embarrassed by the arrival of the hon. Member for Vladivostock doing what the hon. Member for Orpington did, at any rate for a little while.

Recapitulating, first, by temperament the Russian Government have the ability to wait. Secondly, they have the equipment to stifle the forces which, in a democracy, quite rightly and constantly press the Government to do something. When my hon. Friend the Minister of State, or other Ministers, in the proper exercise of their duty, sometimes venture to caution us not to be pushed into making haste, it sounds dull, dreary, and at times unsympathetic to the sort of strong appeal to which we listened a moment ago and which strikes a warm chord in many hearts, but the reasons that I have given account for their attitude.

I have also found that in West Berlin there are two things which are negotiable. We have a strong interest in negotiating about one thing in particular. I am referring to access by land to West Berlin. It is astonishing to think that there is no written record of an agreement for access by land to West Berlin, except the minute written by an American major the day after a tripartite meeting. By contrast, American rights over the British zone are recorded in every detail, and it is, therefore, astonishing to reflect on the respective attitudes of mind with which we ended the war.

It might have saved a great deal of trouble if there had been a carefully written agreement on access by land. We do not give anything away or weaken our case when we say that it is in our interests to get rights of access recorded clearly. It would be very valuable if they could be in some sense physically guaranteed. This should be brought up at any negotiations that we may negotiate. This is something that we have from our side which is plainly in our interests.

I have believed for a long time that the Russians, too, have an interest here. The East German puppet State cannot be an easy one to handle. We tend to forget how the Russians fear the Germans. It is a deep-rooted fear. I do not think that many of us have made nearly sufficient allowance for this in negotiations with the Russians. One cannot talk very long to a Russian without becoming aware that this fear is very deeply rooted in him. Thus, the Russians may have a direct interest in doing precisely what the hon. Member for Ladywood would like us to do, which is to reduce the tension and remove the possibility of an explosion caused by Russia's agents in East Germany.

As hon. Members have well and clearly said, so long as this physical situation exists there is always the possibility of error and misunderstanding and of young, hot-headed policeman firing a thoughtless shot, resulting in the whole process starting without it being possible to control it. Therefore, the Russians have just as much interest as we have in reducing that situation. They certainly do not want war; there is no question about that.

Consequently, I take enormous encouragement from the contacts that we have been reading about between the Russians and the Americans at ambassadorial and Foreign Minister level. One does not know how they will be taken up now that Mr. Dean Rusk is back in America, but these we have, I hope, contact between the two sides on the problem which has exercised the minds of hon. Members tonight. I do not believe that we shall be able to get a limited settlement on Berlin—I do not believe it will be anything very fundamental—without moving some significant way towards recognition of the puppet régime.

I dislike that régime as much as any other hon. Member. I cannot say that I have ever been impressed by the principal reason that we have so often put up for not dealing with it, which is that it is not democratically elected but a puppet Government imposed on the East German people. I am well aware that my West German friends feel strongly about this and that before the elections no West German politician of any party could tell his electorate that the West German Government or Opposition party should deal with the East German puppet régime. I appreciate those things. But facts are facts. The East German puppet régime is the effective "front" Government of that country.

The hon. Gentleman was right in saying that the Russians stand behind them and that unless one deals with the Russians one is not being effective. That is unquestionably true. But the East German puppet Government are the legal authority there. I believe that at some stage, as part of a package deal, certainly not conceded without something very much from the other side which I have attempted to indicate, we shall have to move in that direction.

I note with some considerable anxiety the preparations for building a similar wall on the border between the City of West Berlin and East Germany itself; that is, an outer wall. [An hon. Member: "It is there now."] It is actually there? I did not appreciate that. With respect, I think that it is not actually built, but that there has been talk of preparations. Anybody who has ever walked round that frontier, as I have, and as other hon. Members have, will konw how complex it is. It is a complicated boundary. It is the municipal boundary of the City of Berlin, with many intricacies, such as those of a ward boundary in one of our own cities. Such a wall would create the most appalling dislocation in the lives of those who live around that boundary, and it is an extensive area. To add yet more possibility of extension of the difficulties of the kind so eloquently described, must be deplored.

I suppose that it must be accepted that we cannot physically stop it. I do not think that any of us would wish to propose actually taking it down, or attempting any physical action, but we in this country should make the strongest possible propaganda use of what has happened and what is foreshadowed. I do not think that we in this country are very good at that, because we find the use of propaganda machinery singularly distasteful. As a nation we are not anything like good enough at seizing opportunities which so often present themselves.

I wanted to intervene for only a few moments, without any suspicion of lack of sympathy with those who have spoken or with those living there, to plead for standing back a little from the canvas and taking, if necessary, time for negotiations, so long as probings and soundings go on all the time. I am not suggesting no action. I am only suggesting a different kind of action, and a calm realisation that it is a long road we have in front of us. Meanwhile, nothing but good, I should think, can come from the unanimous appreciation of both sides of this Committee of the dignity and restraint which the West Berliners show in the most dreadful tragedy ever to have befallen a modern city.

9.18 p.m.

Mr. W. A. Wilkins (Bristol, South)

I can well imagine that if there is anything like a full Press report of the speeches made in this debate there will certainly be many of our fellow countrymen and women asking themselves, "Why do Members of Parliament want to bother themselves about the position in Berlin, whether West or East Berlin?" feeling, as so many of them do, that we are isolated and exclusive from them. Therefore, I believe that it may be a good thing to record what some of us at any rate see as a reason why we should show our interest in what is happening there.

If I were asked to give my own reason for it I would say that as we are one of the occupying Powers there, with both nights and responsibilities, then as long as we have those responsibilities we must have some regard to the well-being of the people in that city.

I am sure that, when we decided to approach the Government to have a debate on this subject, the intention was that it should be a constructive debate, essentially with the idea of trying to make a contribution towards a reduction of the tension to which so many references have been made on a number of occasions by hon. Members, especially those of us who were in Berlin recently. If, as a result of what we have said, there has been any encouragement to the Government to make fresh approaches along whatever lines they think most likely to yield results, perhaps the debate has been worth while.

I have every possible respect for the Minister of State, who has a Foreign Office commission to perform. He has already strived, and will continue to strive, to do everything in his power to secure some agreement not only over Berlin but over the wider issues, about which I will say a word in a moment. He must try to live up to his reputation. I remember driving through his constituency shortly after the last election, on my way to Grimsby, and I saw what we know as fly-bills pasted around almost every telegraph pole in his constituency, "Vote for Honest Joe Godber". Perhaps it was not an inapt description. We have come to regard him as one who will at all times use his best endeavours to secure anything which he thinks desirable. We are trying to commend to him the possibility of redoubling the efforts which he has already made to achieve some relaxation of the tension in Berlin—which is about the most for which we can hope for the time being.

I was about to refer to at least one observation, and possibly two, made by the hon. and gallant Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish), who is not now in his place. There were some aspects of his speech which I thought were perhaps a little unfortunate. I feel that this is not one of those occasions on which we should necessarily try to form our judgments on military considerations. I do not believe that we shall ever secure an easing of tension either in West Berlin or between East and West Germany simply by totting up in figures the number of tanks which each side possesses or the number of hydrogen bombs or the number of men they have massed on the frontier.

Here I find myself in slight disagreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman). I was surprised to discover towards the end of his speech that I agreed very largely with him, because when he began I thought that I should find myself in rather violent disagreement with him. As he developed his speech I began to appreciate the argument which he was advancing. Nevertheless, I do not share his views that sentiment and emotion play no part in this sort of thing. Probably the greatest obstacle to achieving agreement is the cold calculated and logical argument of which my hon. Friend is a very able exponent to almost the entire exclusion of emotion or sentiment, which usually betray the innermost feelings of the people who are concerned. If much more of these emotions and this sentiment were shown in the counsels of the nations, and there were less argument about the logical considerations which are so often taken into account, I think that much more progress would be made.

I feel that it is no part of our responsibility to talk in what I call provocative language about this situation. Many of us could be 'probably highly critical about the régime in East Germany. There may be those who would even be critical of the régime in West Germany, if not in West Berlin. Where would that get us? It would probably only exacerbate the feelings which are already prevalent.

I shall have to omit some things which I wanted to say. In the few minutes remaining to me I want to re-emphasise what I believe to be the main points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson), with the idea of offering to the Government some ideas which may be considered in any approaches which might be made. The most difficult thing for us is to abolish fear and suspicion. Suspicion plays a tremendously important part in all this. I do not know how we shall do this. There is something in my right hon. Friend's suggestion of trying to bring about the disarmament of at any rate the frontier police in both zones.

Tributes have been paid to the conduct of the West Berliners and to the influence exerted over them by the Mayor, Willy Brandt, and all the members of the Senate. Berlin at the moment appears to he a city of gaiety to the visitor. The people are well dressed. They seem to be enjoying themselves. There is over-full employment. They cannot get enough people to perform all the jobs in industry. There is an atmosphere of general well-being. However, anyone who talks to the Berliners soon discovers that there is not a feeling of well-being. There is a tenseness. There is a fear lurking beneath the surface. The Berliners make this very apparent to anyone prepared to talk to them. They say how glad they are that the occupation troops are there, although the troops are, technically speaking, only tokens.

I wonder to what extent the feeling of tension will be exacerbated if, as is reported in the Press, a wall is built around West Berlin. How long will the West Berliners remain tolerant in the face of any new threat of this kind? They have remained quiescent so far and listened to the exhortations of their leaders. I have tried to put myself in their position. I have wondered what the reaction would have been if this sort of thing had happened in London. I could not imagine any section of the British people watching the wall being erected without trying to pull it down. I do not think that could happen in this country. It was possible only with a nation so completely disciplined as the Germans are to keep them patient and tolerant in these circumstances.

However, there are murmurings. It is no use hiding this. The West Berliners are now beginning to say a few critical things about the fact that they were restrained when the Communists started building the wall on 13th August. I believe that we shall have to recognise, as the Berliners themselves recognise, that this problem does not concern them only. The people of Berlin recognise that there is a larger problem which must be resolved before they will make any breaches in the wall. We shall have to find a formula making it possible for there to be co-existence between East and West Germany.

I hope that the Government will note the suggestions that have been made about the possible neutralisation or demilitarisation of the area as a contribution to the solution of the West Berlin problem, but that does not mean that we should not make all possible effort to secure some relaxation if nothing else is possible. It has been suggested that we might first encourage conferences between the allied commanders on the spot, but I believe that it would be better to bring about meetings at some Foreign Office level, which would carry more political authority. I hope that the Minister of State will assure us that no effort will be spared to find a solution of this awful situation.

There is much that I should have liked to have said about the symbolic effect of this wall—because it is symbolic of the segregation of the German nation. From a military or strategic point of view, the wall could be pushed over in seconds; it has no military value. It is symbolic of an attitude of mind towards Berliners and West Germany, and it is that attitude that has to be overcome. If the hon. Gentleman can tell us tonight that efforts will be redoubled, and that there will be an attempt to reopen negotiations to search for a solution, he will earn the gratitude of the Committee, and he will certainly get every possible help from all those of us who have had recent experience of the present outlook of the Berlin people.

9.32 p.m.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. J. B. Godber)

In the short time at our disposal we have had a very useful and interesting debate, and I shall try in due course to deal with the various points that have been raised.

First, I must thank the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins) for his all too kind opening references to myself personally. I assure him that the slogan referring to me on the posters he saw, I did not invent; it was given to me by my constituents. I would not have deemed to try to rise so high.

This debate has, perhaps, been almost unique in the unanimity of view amongst practically all speakers. It has been notable, too, for the particular sense of deep feeling, and even of emotion, that some hon. Members, on the other side particularly, have displayed following their visit to Berlin and seeing the dreadful problem confronting them there.

I found myself in agreement with a very large part of what was said by the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson). He chose to split the subject into three categories, and I shall later try to emulate him, so as to simplify the way in which it can be defined and in which we can seek a solution.

I want to touch very briefly on the interesting speech of the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), who always causes us to think, even though we may not agree with much of what he says. On this occasion, I tried to follow his argument very closely and I must admit that I was puzzled at one stage. He had described very graphically the reason for the building of the wall and the need for it because, as I understood, he argued that every Communist State must be completely sealed off and could not stand freedom of access to a free country. He put that forward most vigorously.

At a later stage, the hon. Member went on to say that, in his view, we could have had an agreement a year ago and he gave us the terms on which he thought it could have been reached. He said that if that had happened none of these problems would have arisen. I did not follow that, because it would still have been a Communist State. Even if there had been an agreement, if he thinks that there could not be a safety valve in a Communist State. I do not see how it could be argued that the wall would not have been erected.

The hon. Gentleman reminded us of the debate last year, on 31st July. I tried hurriedly to refresh my mind in view of his advice. I have looked through a number of speeches in that debate and I cannot find that all that number of his hon. Friends were warning us that there would be this building of a wall or something similar. It is quite true that the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) made some references, but they were very limited ones. Other hon. Members took a very different view. Indeed, I saw that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Baird) took the view that the flow of people was just as much from the West to the East as from the East to the West.

Mr. Crossman

I was trying to point out that while Front Bench speakers completely ignored the problem, it was referred to with greater emphasis by two hon. Members from the back benches behind him. The hon. Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn) made a most remarkable speech. I was pointing out the contrast between those back benehers whose eyes are not blinded by official documents and the Front Bench speakers who, thanks to the Foreign Office, can seldom see anything of what is going on.

Mr. Godber

I will leave the last comment where it can safely lie. I am glad that the hon. Member has qualified it, because I thought that he was talking about h s hon. Friend. If he refers to my own speech in which I wound up the debate, I made the point that we had three requirements which were essential and that … We were willing to meet round the table and discuss these matters with the Russians."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st July, 1961; Vol. 645, c. 1093.] But I added that we insisted on three essentials. They still exist. The position is very much the same as it was then. I thought that it was only right to make the point that the position has not changed materially in regard to the sort of terms on which we could make some agreement. Indeed, the basic position is, we must recall, that the Berlin situation is abnormal solely because the Russians have chosen to make it so—and have been trying to squeeze the West out ever since 1948. It exists as a problem because they have refused self-determination and the consequent reunification of Germany as a whole.

If it were not for that this problem would not exist. The whole of Berlin might have been under the four-Power Kommandatura which existed earlier, but the Russians chose unilaterally to withdraw from their own sector and gradually build up difficulties which culminated in the erection of the wall. This has been so graphically described by many hon. Members. So there has been a unilateral and growing pressure from the Soviet Union.

When we talk about trying to come to some arrangement with the Russians, we must remember the basic fact that they have been pushing the whole time and that, as far as one can see, any arrangement they would accept would involve further concessions by the West. No one in this debate has indicated that that is what he wants us to do.

Among the many interesting speeches, I noticed that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) brought out three basic requirements in relation to our position in Berlin. These are the same as those I stated in the debate to which the hon. Member for Coventry, East referred, and which I will repeat briefly. They are the right of West Berliners—2¼ million of them—to live in freedom, the right of Western troops to guarantee that freedom by their continued presence, and the right of access. The presence of Western troops, as the right hon. Member for Huyton said, is necessary to guarantee the right of access.

We have constantly made it plain to the Russians that all these three rights are essential, and in recent talks it has been clearly stated that the continued presence of Western forces is not a negotiable factor because we believe that it is essential. Their presence rests not only on the arrangements made in 1945, but on the very often expressed wish of the people of West Berlin that they should stay. That is a very important aspect of the picture.

But the East German régime was installed by the Russians to suit their own purposes. In this context, the Russians have no right to assume that any arrangements they come to with those who, after all, are their henchmen can in any way unilaterally affect the continuing right of the West to be in Berlin, or the right of access to the city. That is the crux of the whole argument at present when Mr. Khrushchev says that all he wants is to sign a peace treaty. It is the implications that that statement carries which are so important. This is an obvious fact but there are those who are sometimes taken in by the way in which his point is put.

The West as a whole, and we in particular, want to see a reduction in tension. I take the point of the right hon. Gentleman, repeated by others, about the need for us to endorse the position of Mr. Rusk and the United States Government at the present time. We endorse it fully. We are in complete sympathy with them about the need for further discussions on the basis of the Rusk-Dobrynin talks which have been going on.

Mr. Julius Silverman (Birmingham, Aston)

We understand from the Press that Mr. Rusk put forward certain proposals to the Russians which were apparently received with some sympathy by Mr. Khrushchev, and we know that, because of intervention by Dr. Adenauer, those proposals have disappeared without trace. What is the position of the United States and British Governments on those proposals?

Mr. Godber

I imagine that the hon. Gentleman is referring to discussions relating to an access authority which were put forward. In fact, they were not welcomed by the Russians at all. They took the name "access authority", but nothing more. They used it as a means, it seemed to me, to confuse the situation.

While they accepted the name, they took away the essence of the plan for an access authority. Indeed, the plan as put forward by the United States Government at that time was rejected, first, by the Communist Press and then by Herr Ulbricht, in a speech he made on 4th May. He categorically rejected the whole plan. This was all before Dr. Adenauer had made any comment about it.

Mr. Christopher Mayhew (Woolwich, East)

Nevertheless, whatever the Communist Press and whatever Herr Ulbricht may have said, the last word we had from the Soviet Union was that it would give sympathetic consideration to these remarks. The American proposals were much wider than the hon. Gentleman has suggested and included far more than the access authority. It was left in the air, with the Russians saying that they would give sympathetic consideration to these proposals.

Mr. Godber

The only Russian reaction was directed to the access authority. The whole compass of the paper which the hon. Member has in mind certainly covered a number of other aspects, and I do not deny that for a moment, but they were mostly matters which had been the subjects of discussions with the Russians throughout, and there was nothing particularly new in them. The access authority was a new idea. This proposal was rejected out of hand, first, by the comments of the Russian Press and later by Herr Ulbricht, and it has not been given any serious consideration by the Russians. But all these possibilities are matters which are being considered in the discussions which are going forward.

The discussions, which have been going on since the erection of the wall, started last September in New York among Mr. Rusk, Mr. Gromyko and my noble Friend and have continued in different capitals at slightly different levels more or less continuously since then. They were continued in Moscow between the American Ambassador, Mr. Thompson, and Mr. Gromyko, and they were pursued at the meeting of Mr. Rusk, Mr. Gromyko and my noble Friend the Foreign Secretary in Geneva at the start of the Disarmament Conference.

I was present at some of those discussions myself and I saw the unyielding attitude with which we were confronted by the Russians at that time. It will be recalled that that was the time when the Russians were putting further pressures on the air corridors, which did not make things easier. Fortunately, those pressures have now ceased and we have had discussions going on in Washington between Mr. Rusk and Mr. Dobrynin. Those discussion are still continuing.

Future possible moves in relation to these developments seem to come into three different levels. There is the local level in Berlin in relation to matters which a number of hon. Members have particularly mentioned today, matters which are vital and which have aroused keen concern among many hon. Members but which are local in their immediate effect. Although I agree that they could escalate, they are local matters which could be dealt with as such.

We could then have a continuation of the present talks on permanent measures to produce a solution along the lines which I have just been discussing. The right hon. Member for Huyton had in mind matters beyond and outside Berlin, to which he paid particular emphasis, and having a bearing on Berlin.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish) took the right hon. Gentleman keenly to task for his reference to the Rapacki Plan. I shall certainly not follow on what I thought was his excellent analysis of the present position.

Mr. H. Wilson

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with it?

Mr. Godber

I would say that there is another venue in which the Rapacki Plan could be discussed.

I have defined the three levels. On the first level, the local level, the three Western Powers, in their identical Notes of 25th June, expressed willingness to hold talks in Berlin with a view to reducing tension caused by recent shooting incidents. We are now awaiting the Russian reply to this proposal. I think that it is a realistic and sensible one. If we can pursue things at this level it might be easier to make progress. This is something to which I hope we may be able to get a reply. If so, we may be able to deal with some of these problems and, perhaps, to lower the temperature.

The second level, the Rusk-Dobrynin talks are scheduled to continue. If the three Foreign Ministers go to Geneva, as they may do for final discussions on the Laos Agreement, there will be a possibility for further discussion there.

Various ideas have been put forward in relation to certain things which could be done about a final settlement. One which has occurred in several speeches in the debate has been the question of a United Nations presence in Berlin. I think that that was a suggestion by some of my hon. Friends as well as by some hon. Members apposite. This is a matter to which I have given some thought and which we are very willing to consider sympathetically. It was put forward last autumn. I was in New York at the time, when a great deal of this was discussed. I sounded out a number of delegations informally about certain aspects. A great many were not very keen for any major United Nations body to go there, but I think that some organisation with its headquarters in Europe might well be considered.

Mr. Scholefield Allen

Will the hon. Gentleman take advantage of the fact that U Thant is over here, and raise it again?

Mr. Godber

I noted that point, but I think the problem is not so much one for U Thant or the United Nations itself. It is more a question of getting agreement among the Powers concerned that this would be a useful step. I can see the tremendous value of the actual presence of a United Nations organisation such as the F.A.O. which would bring some of the under-developed countries into close contact with the position in Berlin. That would be very valuable. I do not think that we are being held up at the moment with the question of the United Nations having to take a decision, but of the Powers having to agree on the suggestion. Then we could seek the co-operation of U Thant and make him aware of the thought, but I do not think that we could take it further at the moment.

Mr. H. Wilson

It is only a very small point of wording, but the hon. Gentleman turned my argument round and made it sound negative where I meant it to be positive. I was not suggesting that it was important to bring representatives of under-developed countries into contact with the question of Berlin, but that the question of Berlin should be brought into contact with delegates from the underdeveloped areas so that the people in Berlin would have to behave rather differently.

Mr. Godber

I am sorry. I think that it is rather a dual matter. I accept the correction.

I have dealt with two of the three matters I wish to speak about and I now come to the third, which is a rather wider issue. There seems to be already a forum in which discussions of matters bearing on European security can take place. That is the 17-Nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva where I have been myself until recently and where I shall be returning shortly. We already have there the opportunity to discuss such matters as the dissemination of nuclear weapons, nuclear-free zones, the Rapacki suggestion, the N.A.T.O.-Warsaw Pact problem and the problem of a war breaking out through miscalculation.

All these things have a direct bearing on wider European issues. I am not going to argue the relative merits of these matters. On the Rapacki Plan, I am already on record at Geneva as saying that there are grave problems and I cannot be said to have warmly welcomed the proposals. Nevertheless, these matters can be, and I think should be, discussed there. We have two levels at which contact has already been established between East and West. We have already ways in which I hope these matters can be taken up. It is not channels of communication which are lacking so much as a genuine will to achieve a lasting solution.

I have to say to the Committee that in this sphere, in my own discussions with the Soviet representatives during the last twelve months—and I have been involved in quite a few—I have seen no sign that they are ready to settle any of these issues, other than on their own terms. The one exeption, of course, is Laos, where there has been considerable progress. But in these and in other matters there has been none.

In two instances I have seen the Soviet representatives withdraw from their previous position to take up a position even more intransigent. I hope that we shall be able to make progress, but one must be realistic. Therefore, while we may make progress on the main issue, I hope we shall also make progress on what I have termed small issues—though hon. Members have made the point that they are important. I think that probably that would be the most helpful way of making some progress at the present time.

We continue to try to find a modus vivendi based on the access problem as much as anything else relating to Berlin as a whole while at Geneva we seek a solution to some of the wider East. West issues. That is what we are seeking all the time, a possible solution to the wider issues of general and complete dis- armament. There are those who say that a solution of the Berlin situation can come about only after reducing the tension by reducing armaments. But it is equally arguable that we can succeed in our disarmament talks only after we have succeeded in reducing the tension over Berlin.

We must keep on trying at all these levels, and that is what the Government are determined to do. I shall see that all the suggestions put forward in this debate are carefully studied. I think that it is valuable that there exists this unanimity of view about what the erection of the Berlin wall has meant. I warmly endorse all that has been said about the restraint and patience shown by the people of West Berlin. It is an example to us in our efforts to try to find some accommodation with those who live on the other side of the Iron Curtain. These people have had a terrible experience. I am sure that some of the expressions which have been voiced tonight will be appreciated by those who dwell in West Berlin.

We have had a valuable debate. The Government will continue with its efforts at all three of the levels to which I have referred to make such progress as is possible and to see whether we can get rid finally of this terrible problem which has dogged us for so long.

Whereupon Motion made, and Question, That the Chairman do report Progress and ask leave to sit again—[Mr. J. E. B. Hill]—put and agreed to.

Committee report Progress: to sit again Tomorrow.