WAR TOYS (BAN)

HC Deb 03 July 1967 vol 749 cc1274-307

3.43 p.m.

Mrs. Anne Kerr (Rochester and Chatham)

I beg to move, That this House, conscious of the need to create the environment in which a sense of world community can develop, which is impossible at present due to the dangerous cult of violence and militarism, is of opinion that the sale, manufacture, import, export and advertisement of war toys in the Press and magazines and on television should be banned. I am deeply grieved that the Minister recently appointed as Minister responsible for disarmament within the Foreign Office has not seen fit to attend this debate. I have been trying to get him to state that he would be here at least to reply to the remarks that I and other hon. Members make on what may be one of the last occasions on which this House is able to discuss the question of violence before the third world war breaks out.

U Thant, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, has warned that we may well be within the first phase of the third world war and I find it deeply troubling that the Government are so little interested in concerning themselves with the creation of the kind of environment in which young people may be able to grow up as citizens of a world community that they do not send along to the debate a key Minister, who is, after all, concerned with this matter. There are, apparently, 29 departments of the Foreign Office, of which one is concerned with atomic energy and disarmament. There should be a department, a key department, that is pressing for world citizenship, and I would have thought that the Minister responsible for disarmament would have been concerned with creating such a department.

Recently, we have heard from many quarters of the various kinds of mental sickness afflicting young people not only in our own country but throughout the world, and Pope Paul in his latest encyclical said that the world was sick. I do not think that there can be an hon. Member who does not feel deeply that in very many ways the world is sick, and perhaps we do not altogether yet understand to what extent we are putting young people under pressure.

Over the last few months, I have made up my mind to try to look at one small aspect of what I would term the sickness afflicting our present society—the physical violence. I have not had time to do very much shopping around myself, but my mother has done so and has brought me an armoury of modern war toys which is absolutely horrifying. These toys range from flame-throwers to guns through to bombs, booby-traps and a whole mass of weaponry of the sort actually being used not only in Vietnam, about which so many hon. Members, including myself, are concerned, but in the Middle East.

The number of offences against the person has increased enormously in our nation. In 1938, the total was 2,721; in 1963, the last year for which I have been able to obtain figures, the total was 20,083. I do not take this as a sign that we should reintroduce capital punishment. On the contrary, I believe that, as a result of such figures, we should examine the whole rôle of violence in our society and what perhaps we are allowing to be inflicted on our young people—and not only on the young people. I would like to see legislation emerge as a result perhaps of some months or even a year's debate and argument within our country on this matter. The kind of legislation that I would like to see would refer to something constructive as opposed merely to banning certain kinds of war toys and of advertisements on television, radio and in horror comics.

We should stress far more the kind of constructive material which our children should be able to use. One of the great joys of my life was a doll's house. This is a very obvious sort of play toy for a little girl. One of the less obvious types of toy which I enjoyed was a piece of lino which my father put on a trestle table. He spread some sand across it and made little paths, and I then collected the toys to make it into a farmyard. This helped me to use my imagination and use a little initiative. When I was given my 6d. a week—which went up to 9d. when I became about nine years of age—I would buy a toy and place it in my farmyard. These are the kinds of toys which we should encourage children to have, use and collect.

We should encourage them to paint toys and to have constructional toys of many different types. What we should not try to do is to impress upon them our own acceptance of violence which unfortunately our world in its present situation accepts. I find it astonishing that people who have a wide understanding of politics are not more concerned at this stage of human development with this situation.

Every Christmas there is a war toy orgy—I can use no other term. There is an "Airwar" comic which comes from the United States which sells here for 1s.—heaven knows how we find the dollars to import these things—which has an advertisement with a whole range of different types of guns. It says: It's a Daisy! Just leave this page next to Dad's place at the table some time between now and Christmas. If we know Pop, he will be as excited as you when you open that package on Christmas morning. Then there are seven choices of guns.

One of the interesting things which my mother has discovered while buying my "Annie's Armoury" has been that the shop assistants themselves are rather revolted at having to sell this plastic trash across the counters. They feel deeply offended about this. One young man came down to my home just before last Christmas—he refused to accept any kind of fee or payment for his coming—and showed me how to let off some of these plastic toys so that if I were to get on television I would know how to pull the trigger effectively. I found this rather moving. He was a very nice lad and his father had been in the Royal Marines. He was not a soppy ass, but he was a person who felt offended at the kind of rubbish that he was being asked to sell across the counters of a well-known and famous store in Surrey.

It is not only that we have these toys in the shops. One of the problems is that the toy manufacturers are deliberately building up an appetite for such toys. I have debated this matter at least twice and discussed it also with the Chairman of the British Toy Manufacturers' Association. They talk, like all business men, about the market and about the possibilities of sales, etc. I am a Socialist and I do not think that this of itself is good enough. We have to discuss what people need as opposed to what makes most money. They try to sound responsible, but these chaps who make the toys are not as responsible as hon. Members would wish them to be, and I am sure that the women of this country would not wish to hear the kinds of argument that some of them are prepared to put.

This vicarious violence is put across on television, in horror comics and many other ways, using to the extreme every form of mass media. The situation in the United States is infinitely worse, but I am anxious that we shall stop it now from infiltrating and infecting and affecting more and more of our young people.

One of the signs that one sees in toy-shops today is: YOU need Tommy Gunn. Kit out your Action Man for every phase of military service with these authentic true scale equipment sets"— of which there are at least 50, and included in these sets are the most astonishing weapons of torture and destruction. This is what was chosen last year as the toy of the year for Britain—Action Man. What a comment on our society.

U Thant said recently: If you recall the series of events leading to World War I, and World War II, you will realise the prologues were quite long: the psychological climate, the creation of political attitudes took some time, and when conditions were ripe for some plausible excuse, then the global wars were triggered off. I beg my colleagues in the House of Commons today to understand what is being done to young minds. They are being conditioned to accept war, cruelty and violence as the normal thing. I should have thought that this country, with all its faults, but with its political maturity, might have understood that it could play a rôle in creating a different environment for young people.

We do not know what will happen in the next few years. I was talking to an 18-year-old girl hairdresser the other day and she said: "We do not think there is much hope, and the Jehovah's Witnesses say that the world is coming to an end in 1975 and they are the only people who will be able to survive. I do not think that is very fair. I do not see why the good people should not survive as well as the Jehovah's Witnesses. Personally I do not accept it". I said, "I think that is a bit much". She said, "You know, generally the boys are not much good these days". I said, "What do you mean by that? Do they expect too much?". She said, "It is not only that. If they have a date with you they do not let you know when they are not going to keep it. Moreover, a lot of them steal your money".

I give this as an illustration as it was told to me. I am deeply worried, and I am sure many of us are—particularly those who are parents—about the attitude of the young and the feeling that the world is coming to an end. She said that the general feeling is that the world will not survive. In those circumstances, is it not right that this House should turn its mind attentively, thoughtfully and imaginatively to trying to change the whole feeling in which young people are educated and brought up? Is it not right that we should decide to try to do something about it? How is it, when we have a Minister for Disarmament, that he cannot come to the House and say something about this key subject?

It may be that there will not be a war in 1975, as the Jehovah's Witnesses predict. I do not think that there will be, and in any event I do not see how they should pick the right year. However, there is a great danger of world war breaking out in the next ten or twenty years, and it seems to me that there is a chance that our young people could help to create the kind of society in which the killing of other human beings who happen to have different beliefs cannot occur.

A very wise American Senator said recently: If a child is permitted to sit like a vegetable pursuing moronic murders and ceaseless crimes, he suffers —and his parents do, too, in the end.

Many studies have been completed, particularly in the United States, although there we seem not yet to be aware of the seriousness of the problems which may be confronting us. They describe the effects of radio and comics portraying violent scenes. The reactions among children vary from mild anxiety to nightmares, from pulling bedclothes over their heads to bed wetting, and those children not becoming actively delinquent are becoming more and more passively jaded. As a kind of self-protection, they develop thick skins to avoid being upset by the gouging out of eyes, the smashings and the burnings. Advertised on television, they see so much that is horrible and anxiety-making that they cease to be fully human.

That is the view of people who are studying these matters in the United States where, for ten years, television, horror comics and war toys have really got a grip on children. I am terribly anxious that this country shall wake up in time to stop this evil permeating our own society. For a long while, I have had the feeling that this country is particularly well placed, as it were, to provide a bridge between the extremes of capitalism and the extremes of Communism. After all, we had one of the earliest revolutions, and, with the experience that we have gained, I have long had the feeling that we could play an unusually significant rôle in trying to wake up men and women to their responsibilities and to the need for change, even change of a type which could hurt their pockets.

It is with that feeling that I move this Motion. I hope very much that there will be a contribution from our Minister for Disarmament, because I am sure that no one wishes more than he to create the kind of environment in which people throughout the world will understand the need for really radical change whereby the poor have to be fed and the rich have to stop killing.

4.5 p.m.

Mr. John Tilney (Liverpool, Wavertree)

I am sure the House will appreciate the sincerity of the hon. Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mrs. Anne Kerr) in moving her Motion. I can remember visiting Canada as a junior Minister. I arrived at Winnipeg and went to a party. The first people to arrive at the party told us of the Cuba ultimatum and, in the middle of the party, the Town Clerk of Winnipeg went off to see that everything was in order for the civil defence of Winnipeg. That brought home the situation vividly to me. The feeling that war was imminent at that time was much greater in North America than it was in this country.

We all felt, too, the other day that we were on the brink. There is no doubt that the younger generation feel, as the hon. Lady has pointed out, that the world may not have all that many years to live, and that the human race may not survive if we are guilty of the supreme folly. I have always believed that the aim should be to establish some form of world order, and I pay tribute to what Lord Attlee has done over many years and what Conservative Governments have stated in many White Papers on defence, that the ultimate aim was to get some form of world order. We must all accept that.

In my own city of Liverpool, I am taking part on Wednesday in a great discussion on the film, "The War Game". I believe that it is something that everyone ought to see. Before about 1,700 sixth-formers, there will be discussion in the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool.

But what is actually being done? Terribly little, I am afraid. The world looks like going further ahead in having more H-bombs and having more countries possessing them. One has only to read the official communications of the People's Republic of China to wonder what they will do with theirs.

This morning, I have been looking at a Report issued by U.N.E.S.C.O. of the Associated Schools Project at the Primary Level. It is a study of other countries and other cultures in promoting education for international understanding. It is a report of an international seminar organised at Cheltenham last year by the U.N.E.S.C.O. Institute for Education. There is no mention in that report of the importance of toys and of the ways that toys can influence the mind of a child.

There is a rather interesting story in the report: One of the classes had been doing a study of Holland, and we took with us an official from the Dutch Embassy because we thought that he would be interested in the work. It goes on to describe how he had some particularly interesting cuff-links, made of silver and elaborately moulded. He told the children that they were made from buttons worn by fishermen in a certain region of Holland and that they were used in times gone by as a form of insurance policy supposing they were drowned at sea.

About half an hour later we were in another part of the school and a small boy about seven years old … came up to us and said that he wished to ask a question … The question was: 'Did you cut those cufflinks off the jacket of a dead man?' The Dutchman assured him that he did not, and I felt, as this boy thanked him and went away, that the child was slightly disappointed. This, of course, is reality. Unfortunately, mankind is pugnacious. To many people, destruction is fun. We can see that at a church fete, where people will pay 6d. or 1s. to break crockery. They enjoy destruction, but it us up to us to see that our law controls our more bestial instincts. Because people enjoy destruction, I fear that the resolution is somewhat unrealistic, although I appreciate the hon. Lady's aim.

The U.N.E.S.C.O. report adds: I think that serves to remind us of three things about children of the age with which we are concerned …

1. (a) that in fact they have a fascination with violence
2. (b) that they are interested by the exotic, and
3. (c) that you can never be quite sure;…

what particular point or item will excite the imagination of a particular child. Children like up-to-date toys or even those that grasp the future; hence the interest in spacemen. How different toys are now from what I had in my youth! I remember a game called "L'Attaque". There was one piece which alone could capture the commander-in-chief, and that was the spy. It would be better if that game were brought up to date, and the children of today used models of an international police force, however discredited the United Nations may be at present. I should welcome the day that I saw such a toy. I fear, too, that it will be a long time before children prefer to have models of the great benefactors of humanity rather than their national heroes.

If we are to survive, it is tremendously important that the younger generation should think of the future, and what life will probably be like in the year 2000. Very few of us give enough attention to arguing what we want to see in England or in the world then, but, after all, in only 33 years the children now playing with toys should be at their prime.

In March this year I went to Quemoy. Having seen the army underground with all its stores and weapons, and its tanks in great tank tunnels, I went down to the shore and had my first experience of psychological warfare. I learned how the human voice can carry for 18 kilometres and how there are ways of propagating ideas by balloon or the propaganda shell—one of which had wounded five people the afternoon before on the island. I should like to see some form of psychological warfare toy, because we live in an age of religious and ideological controversy and it is right that today's children should know what our form of democracy stands for and that it should impinge right down to their games.

Mrs. Anne Kerr

Would the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be a good thing if world civics were taught in school so that young people understood not only our form of democracy but also other people's, and forms of Government which we may not yet accept as being democratic?

Mr. Tilney

Yes, but I still believe that it is a good thing for the western world to inculcate in its young the tenets of our faith. I use the word "faith" in the broadest possible way. I do not believe that it is right to allow the young mind to be muddled by also hearing, say, the views of a Communist Chinese. One has only to read what the Communist Chinese put out officially today to understand that.

I would strongly oppose their hearing such views, but I would equally strongly support the exchange of toys and ideas between one country and another. In the U.N.E.S.C.O. report which I have quoted there is a suggestion that schools in advanced countries should link up with schools in developing countries and exchange the things which interest the children most in their own countries. This seems to me a good idea, because children like concrete things to play with and see which they may not play with and see in the ordinary way.

What is a toy? The dictionary tells me that it is a child's plaything, a trifle, a matter of no importance. There I disagree profoundly with the dictionary. I think that it is a matter of importance affecting the mind of the young. There can also be toys which adults enjoy—not only railway trains but toys for the masses, like planetarium, which makes space into a toy and gives great enjoyment to old and young.

I have one suggestion to make which would give the young some idea of world community. I went to a Civic Trust demonstration at Basingstoke last autumn and met the head of the opencast coal-mining section of the National Coal Board. He told me of plans to turn a rather uninteresting part of the Midlands into parkland after the coal had been extracted. In that park I suggest having what might be called Orbis Marium, or a model of the world to show in a way how small it is, and how little land there is compared with the sea, which could be represented by the lakes which I understand from my friend would be planned there.

It would be a tremendous tourist attraction. Visitors could go by boat either into the mock Baltic Sea or the Mediterranean. I believe that children would get some idea of the map of the world, because everything could be done to scale. The park would need to be several miles in diameter, but I understand that that is the planned size. It is the sort of thing that could be a toy for old and young.

For centuries the ethos of the schools has been nationalistic, but I believe that history will say that the two world wars were really civil European wars. Anything we can do to stop them happening again is to be commended.

4.19 p.m.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. George Darling)

I think it would be helpful to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mrs. Anne Kerr) and other hon. Members who wish to speak if I intervene now to try to explain what the Government's position would be if the Motion were approved and the House, in effect, instructed the Government to carry out its terms.

I should also like to explain why the Minister whom my hon. Friend wished to see here is not present. With respect, the reason lies in the wording of her Motion. If she had wished the Minister responsible for disarmament to be here, she should have drawn attention to the disarmament part of the argument which she has put forward. In the discussions which we had to decide where Ministerial responsibility lies here, we felt that it fell between the Department of Education and Science, the Home Office and the Board of Trade, but nobody suggested the Foreign Office.

I do not wish to comment on the case my hon. Friend has advanced. I, too, pay tribute to her sincerity and the purpose of the Motion. But it will be clear that it would be quite inappropriate for a Board of Trade Minister to express views on my hon. Friend's arguments. I wish to confine myself to the administrative position.

Mrs. Kerr

That is exactly the point. I never thought that it was the job of a Minister of the Board of Trade to reply to or speak in this debate. That is why I pressed my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, who is responsible for disarmament matters, to speak in this debate.

Mr. Darling

My hon. Friend's Motion asks for the banning of the sale, manufacture, import, export and advertisement of war toys". Unfortunately, that has nothing to do with the Foreign Office. Therefore, my right hon. Friend has no responsibility in connection with the Motion. As I say, if its terms had been expressed differently, I could well envisage how my right hon. Friend would be involved. If I might put the order slightly differently, I should say that my hon. Friend has asked for a ban on the manufacture, importing, exporting, advertising and selling of war toys.

The Board of Trade has some general powers in this wide field, but in practice it never exercises them other than for strictly commercial reasons. Neither the Board of Trade nor any other Department has general powers to forbid the manufacture of goods. If Parliament agrees that the manufacture of certain things—for instance, war toys—shall be prohibited for reasons of health, safety or social or moral welfare, it is the appropriate Department which is responsible for health, safety and welfare which introduces the legislation. For instance, safety regulations and the prohibition on the sale and manufacture of dangerously unsafe articles are the responsibility of the Home Office, and dangerous drugs questions are decided between the Home Office and the Ministry of Health. Obscene publications come under the Home Office. Therefore, if the manufacture of war toys is to be banned, the prohibition would require special legislation and would have to be the responsibility of a Department concerned with the social and moral welfare of children.

The Board of Trade has unlimited powers to control exports and imports under the Import, Export and Customs Powers (Defence) Act, 1939, which is still in force, and toys of this description could be controlled by an addition to the respective Orders made by the Board under these powers. Such action could be taken administratively and would not require Parliamentary approval. But, because of the strength and wide sweeping nature of these powers, it would be quite inappropriate to use them to institute any form of control over either the import or export of goods for social or moral purposes. The policy of successive Governments—and this must continue to be the policy of succeeding Governments—has been to use the Board's power to control imports only for broad economic or commercial purposes and powers to control exports only for military or strategic reasons.

My hon. Friend asked where the dollars came from to pay for the horror toys which she described, imported, I think, from the United States. There are two issues. One is concern with the proper development of trade, and the other is who imports these toys. It is obviously British merchants and shopkeepers who import them. Any educational campaign on imports should be directed at the people buying toys for sale in this country if it is generally considered that the sale of them is harmful to children.

The United Kingdom toy industry is one of our most flourishing industries, even though it consists of a few medium firms and a very large number of small firms. Last year, £16 million worth of British toys, I am pleased to say, were exported overseas. The United Kingdom industry produces some war toys, both for the home market and for export, in response, I would suppose, to demand. It would not produce them if there were no demand for them. Some of them are conventional representations—the sort of toy soldiers which I am sure every pacifist played with in his youth. I certainly did. Others, such as rockets—and this is where my hon. Friend's criticism begins to bite—reflect the more modern techniques of war.

The United Kingdom toy industry has a reasonably sensitive social conscience. It has set its face against dangerous toys and it has helped the Home Office considerably to draw up, as I suppose one would call it, a code of standards, which is very satisfactory indeed, in order to keep dangerous toys off the market. I am sure that it would behave in much the same way in respect of war toys if it were satisfied that they created moral and psychological hazards for children. But I suppose that it, and probably the majority of the public of this country, would need to be persuaded that the manufacture and the sale of certain war toys should be stopped.

Generally speaking, we want United Kingdom toys to be sold increasingly overseas, and to ban imports except for strictly moral or social reasons which would have to be proved, or to put any obstacle in the way of the import of other countries' toys, might well invite retaliatory action against our own exports.

That brings me to what, from our point of view, would be one of our extreme difficulties if we were to accept the Motion—the problem of definition. If playing with toys which have anything to do with war is bad for children, I would assume that reading about battles or fights, or watching them on television or in the cinema, was equally bad. However much we deplore force as a habit of settling disputes, the fact remains that history is full of it, and we cannot very well rewrite history so that the battles of the past have no psychological effect on the children of the present age. I do not need to labour that point; it is obvious.

My hon. Friend's emphasis has been on toys which have something to do with war. This raises problems of definition. Not only a gun or sword can be an offensive weapon. What about bows and arrows, which are used for sporting purposes and which have nothing to do with any warlike activities at present, although they had something to do with warlike activities in the past? Sticks and stones and penknives are, I suppose, more offensive weapons than some of the toys being sold in the shops. Difficulties of definition would be bound to arise.

I have intervened only to explain the administrative problems which would be involved if the Motion were carried. But, if I might express a personal view, I do not think that it is so much the toys which one needs to worry about; it is the general education of our children which is tremendously important. Most of the pacifists I know played with warlike toys in their youth. I do not know whether that goes for my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), but he would be an exception if he never played with toy soldiers when he was young. It is the general education and the educational atmosphere of the country with which we need be concerned. With that, I would put horror films, horror comics and horror literature. But I am not sure that we should put horror toys in the same category because they can be so easily broken and thrown away.

4.31 p.m.

Mr. Cranley Onslow (Woking)

I hope that the hon. Lady the Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mrs. Anne Kerr) will not take anything which I say in my brief intervention as a reflection of the sincerity with which she has moved her Motion, which we all recognise. I hope, however, that she in her turn will accept that others can take different views and still be equally sincere.

If I say to the hon. Lady that her Motion seems to me to be about the most middled and misconceived Motion which I have seen on the Order Paper since I have been fortunate enough to be a Member of the House—and I include in that for good measure Motions put down by the Government Front Bench, which at times are muddled and misconceived enough—I hope that she will understand that I say it because this is a Motion to be debated and I wish to take it on such merits as it may seem to have. For me, they are not many.

As the Minister of State, Board of Trade has explained, it is a little unnecessary of the hon. Lady to complain of the absence of a Minister for Disarmament, at least for a Motion which, on the face of it, appears to have nothing whatever to do with the Foreign Office. Disarmament is certainly too serious a matter to be left to the Board of Trade. If, however, the hon. Lady wishes to have a Minister for Disarmament here, it was up to her to make it clear in the terms of her Motion.

Underlying the Motion and much of the speech in which the hon. Lady moved it is one assumption even more fundamentally mistaken than some of the others which also underlie it: that is, that by banning war toys, whatever they may be, we would achieve the effect of bringing about the environment to which the hon. Lady refers in her Motion. She certainly has not established to my satisfaction that if war toys are any cause of that environment, they are in any way a prime cause. The hon. Lady gave that away by referring to the other serious influences which we all know to exist in our society.

There are other underlying reasons for the dangerous spate of violence which we certainly and regrettably see all too often—violence on television and on radio, violence in fact or fiction reported by all the media with which we are familiar, then, too, there is the disorientation of society which we know to be coming about as established values and traditions are destroyed, some by accident, some deliberately, and whose destruction has the effect of leaving adults often groping, frequently unaware where they can turn or why the world should go on, even if they accept that the Jehovah's Witnesses are likely to be wrong about the date of its end. These are all good, sound and serious reasons for there being a situation which we can all deplore.

To say, however, that the existence of war toys is a cause seems to me to be putting it rather high, let alone to suggest, as does the Motion, that it may be the prime cause. If the hon. Lady wants to take steps towards creating a better environment, she would do better to start examining some of the other causes which I have mentioned. If she wants to investigate any aspect of toys, perhaps it is the danger to the user which the most peaceful toy may inadvertently have—for example, a doll which bursts into flames. It is not a war toy, but a dangerous toy, to which the hon. Lady's attention should be directed.

Mrs. Anne Kerr

A demonstration of that aspect has already been given to all lady Members of the House who are mothers, including myself.

Mr. Onslow

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. One of the toys to which the Government have drawn attention is a dangerous toy which I found in the possession of my youngest daughter, and I would not suggest that time spent in dealing with matters of that kind would be wasted. If the hon. Lady is interested in such good work as this, she should go on with it and she should not move into so speculative a field as the present one.

If the hon. Lady seeks reasons for the unsatisfactory behaviour of hairdressers' boy friends, it is a pretty farfetched assumption that it rests on their playing with war toys before they were ever interested in girls.

Even if it were possible to carry out what the hon. Lady seeks to have done, would it have any effect on children? This the hon. Lady has not established. I do not know how many children she has. I have four, and their ability to improvise never ceases to amaze me. Am I to turn them over to the local police if they come in from the garden with a stick or a bit of wood and say, "Look, we have made a gun"? If they produce a paper bag full of water and say, "This is a bomb"—which they have manufactured—am I to turn them in? By reducing it to its absurdity, that is carrying a Motion to a point where we can all see that it would be impossible to enforce.

The hon. Lady should also have thought that the existence of toys and the fact that children move often into a fantasy world of mock violence, as we know they do, may help them to get some of the aggressions out of their system and that hon. Members opposite, as they drilled their toy soldiers in the days of their youth, might have been forming the basis for the militant pacifism for which we know so many of them so well.

Much more important is the question of aggression against whom. This is something which we often forget. When my young son went first to a village school in the Battle of Britain country, I noticed that he came back drawing with considerable skill dogfights in which British aeroplanes were shooting down German aeroplanes, with the swastikas on the German aeroplanes the right way up —for this was knowledge handed down in the infant class year by year. We might do well to think how good it is that children in our schools should be introduced at this point to the idea that the Germans are still our enemies. We ought, perhaps, to wonder at the effect of inculcating this idea. I am not suggesting that we should require the aeroplanes to be marked with Russian or Egyptian markings, or the markings of any nation. All I am saying is that this is something that we might think about and on the effects of which we might speculate.

We do not know what war toys are. The hon. Lady has not told us. Nor has she told us why she seeks to stop at war toys. I believe that if her Motion were consistently followed out, it would have to go much further. Legislation would have to be passed to outlaw the game of cowboys and Indians on the ground that it inculcated race hatreds. Golliwogs would have to be made illegal for the same reason. Cops and robbers would have to be made an illegal pastime on the ground that it glorified crime—at least, I hope that the Home Secretary would be moved to outlaw cops and robbers on that ground. What about Grimm's Fairy Tales? They contain plenty of sources of nightmare. Would they have to be ceremoniously burned in Trafalgar Square? What about that excellent game of "Monopoly"?

Mrs. Anne Kerr

Hear, hear.

Mr. Onslow

No doubt, there are hon. Members opposite who would seek to have it declared illegal on the ground that it fostered a premature interest in investment and capitalism and was undesirable on that account. All card games would have to be outlawed because they exposed children at a tender age to the existence of the laws of chance, and so to the fallacies of Socialist planning. The hon. Lady may think that I am joking. Perhaps in jest I may ask her if she thinks that because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale. Not in jest, however, I would go further. Taking the terms of the Motion and the spirit which could underlie it, I would say that it is a very dangerous Motion because it opens a door to legislation to control the right of an individual and his children to think. We are all familiar with the words "Ban this, ban that." There are plenty of people who want to ban the freedom of a parent to spend his own money on the education of his children. I am appalled at the idea of our moving towards 1984 by banning toys of one kind or another. The hon. Lady said "Hear, hear" when I mentioned "Monopoly", so presumably by inference the supports the idea of banning any instructions in capitalism lest the citizen should find them dangerously subversive to her way of thinking. If we accepted the Motion, we could move, not simply towards something which cannot be done, but towards something which should not be done, towards the idea that the Government should seek to control and direct, even more than they do now, the environment in which we live and the games and thoughts we are allowed to have.

I regard this debate as a sad but revealing waste of time. The House would do much better to move on to the Motion entitled, "Shortage of Teachers (Scotland)" in the name of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown), because that is something for which the Government are responsible and, if it were remedied, it might even go some way towards achieving the purpose which the hon. Lady seems to believe she can achieve with her Motion.

4.41 p.m.

Mr. Brian Parkyn (Bedford)

I feel privileged to follow the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow), because, although in some respects I agree with some of the conclusions he has drawn from the Motion, in other respects I profoundly disagree with him. The Motion brings again to our minds the problems and horror of war. I do not think we serve the best interests of our constituents or of the nation if we try to push this matter under the carpet and forget about it and do not apply ourselves to what is the major problem of this age and what has been the major problem of almost any age throughout the length of written history.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mrs. Anne Kerr) was right to refer to a sense of world community, a concept which was also referred to by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney). I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman spoke, because in trying to introduce ideas of world government we are trying to put an end to the possibility of war.

My hon. Friend spoke briefly about the present lack of sensitivity to horror and death. Up to the middle of the 19th century, because death was around all the time, there was an attitude of accustomedness to death. People were used to seeing others die of sickness. The expectation of life was very short. Then, because of the improvement in medical science, during the latter part of the last century and the first 25 years of this one people acquired a new sensitivity to suffering and death and for the first time became really aware of horror, suffering and death.

I believe that since the events of Hiroshima we have all become insentive also to the horrors of war, because war has reached a point where we can no longer understand the depth of the horror. It goes beyond feeling. I believe that my hon. Friend was right to table the Motion, because the point has been reached where we can no longer feel the depths of anguish at war, modern war weapons, and the facilities for making war.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the present-day lack of morals. She referred to the dishonesty of a boy who even stole his girl friend's money. This is due to the lack of religion, to the failure of religion, to the fact that the State religion which we have has endorsed and supported war, that organised religion, as we understand it, is no longer viable and people are no longer prepared to accept it. Yet everyone needs a religion. We need something beyond ourselves. We need a belief in god. Because of the lack of this in our lives, because religion has not, perhaps, kept up with the age, because it has not been prepared to stand fast on the question of war and peace, this has led to a lack of good morals, to an increase in dishonesty. Too often morality is spoken of in terms of sexual morality. It is not sexual morality. It is dishonesty that pervades this age. There is a shortage of people who speak their minds and who are straight and honest.

In many ways I support the Motion, but I believe that the hon. Member for Woking touched on the kernel of the question. In 1859 John Stuart Mill wrote his "Essay on Liberty". The question of the extent to which Parliament, although sovereign, should limit its own sovereignty, arises. I believe in the repeal of the Act of Parliament which made homosexual acts between adult males illegal because I do not believe that Parliament has the right to interfere with people's behaviour in private. For the same reason, I do not believe that we should legislate to prevent people from having abortions if they wish to do so. This is not a field in which Parliament should interfere.

Likewise, because of what Mill said in his "Essay on Liberty", I believe that Parliament has no right to use its sovereignty, its censorship, to interfere in this way with the rights of ordinary people, however good the motives may appear to my hon. Friend to be. I believe that she has the right motive, but I agree with the hon. Member for Woking that it is a very dangerous situation when one accepts that Parliament should use its sovereignty to interfere with the rights and liberties of people in the pursuit of their ordinary, everyday life.

Mrs. Anne Kerr

It is precisely because I do not believe that children have a choice that I have introduced the Motion. I think that children are being brainwashed. I can give my hon. Friend chapter and verse—he can see it any time he likes in horror comics—of the kind of advertising which is being put out on all the mass media. This is exactly my point. Children do not have a free choice.

Mr. Parkyn

I believe that the cure would be worse than the disease. Once such a cure was embarked upon, no government would know where to stop. This is why I oppose all forms of censorship, because it is a very difficult line to take. I ask my hon. Friend to consider whether there is any way in which this could be prevented from going on interminably, a process of restricting and restricting all along the line. If we are to ban war, which is what all hon. Members want, I believe that we should publicise the problems of war; we should discuss the matter more and more and not sweep it under the carpet. We should consider how war could be banned. These are massive problems. I am glad that we have a Minister for Disarmament. I only wish that he would do something to show us that the Government intend to go ahead seriously and give the world a lead in disarmament.

In the final analysis it is not a question of being opposed to violence. Are we opposed to violence, or are we opposed to violence when it is used by a sovereign State for the ends of that State? If we believe in a world government, with some kind of world peacekeeping force, and some kind of world law and order, surely we must also accept the minimal use of force, whatever that may mean, the right to use force for maintaining those international laws on behalf of all the countries of the world? When one speaks of minimal force, one raises the difficult moral problem of the difference between using a bow and arrow and a hydrogen bomb. I think that it would be outside the terms of the Motion to get involved in the theological argument, of different degrees of morality in the use of force.

If we wish to ban war, I do not think that we can do it by restricting the sale of war toys, or censoring books. Grimms' Fairy Tales have been mentioned. I do not believe that it can be done in this way. I believe that we will ban war by working towards establishing a world government, with a world peace-keeping force, and world law and order maintained on our behalf by this world force.

4.52 p.m.

Mr. Quintin Hogg (St. Marylebone)

I not not think that this Motion ought to go completely unanswered from the Front Bench on this side of the House.

I start by saying that one of the few things in this world which I would ban, that is prohibit by law, is the word "ban", which is the excuse for much of the woolliest thinking to which we are subjected in this House. With great respect to the eloquent speech of the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Brian Parkyn), who talked about banning war, let us remember that we banned war in 1925, by the Kellogg Pact, and yet people have gone on fighting with the same enthusiasm ever since. One does not prevent a thing by banning it, and this is the first thing that needs to be said about the Motion.

I know that the hon. Lady the Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mrs. Anne Kerr) will not accuse me—or at least I hope she will not—of any personal dis- courtesy towards herself, but there was an extraordinary contrast between the solemn thoughts with which she introduced the Motion and the extraordinary small brown mouse which emerged when we came to her practical proposals. She began with the horrible words, "This may be one of the last occasions which we have in this House to discuss violence before the third world war breaks out". That was pretty rough stuff, but what emerged? What was the solution? How are we to survive—by preventing our children from buying, and other people from selling them, war toys? I do not feel very much safer having heard the hon. Lady's proposals.

The hon. Lady seemed to think that she should have been replied to by the Minister for Disarmament. It would perhaps be a good thing if we could be sure that the Minister for Disarmament existed, or that he had any useful work to do, but whatever useful work he may have to do, it is not in the banning or prohibition of war toys. It is something very much more serious that he is about, I hope, if ever he does grace this House or take part in our discussions.

I hope that the hon. Lady will not think, either that I disregard or undervalue the need, as she puts it, of a sense of world community, or that I particularly relish the use or sale of some of the toy weapons which I have seen for sale in this country. I certainly would have no hesitation in buying my children a toy pistol with caps, or a set of Indian feathers and bows and arrows. But some of the toys that we see, like tommy guns and mills bombs, are disagreeably like the real thing in appearance, and I do not like them, but so far it has not occurred to me to prohibit them by law, and that is what the Motion is about.

I seriously ask the hon. Lady to consider what kind of scientific evidence she has which would stand up to examination that wars are caused, or even contributed to, by children using war toys. This is a more important question, not a rhetorical one, than appears at first sight, for reasons which I shall seek to develop. My impression is that we tend in this House to live in the pre-scientific age. The proposition that we ought to prohibit the sale of an article of any kind, whether it is a toy mills bomb or a plastic doll, ought to be accompanied by some kind of scientific evidence over and above the individual's dislike of the article concerned.

Mrs. Anne Kerr

This is one of the reasons why I have raised the whole matter. I think that a Government Department should be concerned about the psychological effect of these toys and of the advertising of them. There is nobody here at the moment who is responsible for this aspect of the matter. This is the point that I am trying to make. In the United States, where they have been subjected to much more of this kind of advertising, and where the children have been subjected to considerably more brainwashing, they are beginning to get some scientific evidence on this. Why not some from Britain?

Mr. Hogg

The only point that I was seeking to make was that before the hon. Lady seeks to prohibit the sale or manufacture of an article she should have some scientific evidence to show that she will achieve her purpose. I question whether such scientific evidence can be found or exists.

I believe that wars are caused by adults and not by children. I may be wrong about this. It is possible that all wars in the world are caused by children, but I do not think they are. I think that they are caused by adults, and if I am asked why children play at soldiers, or why they play cowboys and Indians, or why they play cops and robbers, or even why they use a toy tommy gun, the reason is that they know that adults do it. A child in its play—and I think it is important to recognise this basic fact—in its world of fantasy, tends to reflect the world of adults as it believes it to be, sometimes rightly, and sometimes less rightly.

Mrs. Anne Kerr

How does one change the situation?

Mr. Hogg

The hon. Lady is right to ask how one changes the situation, but I suggest that we should start at the beginning and not at the wrong end. To get the right end of the stick is the important thing. We will not prevent wars by stopping children playing at soldiers, although we would probably stop children playing at soldiers if we prevented wars. The thing to do is to get the right relationship between cause and effect.

This Motion—I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) about some of its other implications, and I shall come to them—reflects a common attitude of mind towards children and education which I have seen again and again, in the campaign against smoking, in the campaign against a great many other things, drink, gambling, war, and a lot of very serious adult vices.

Because we cannot control adults, and perhaps do not even control ourselves, our first reaction is to take it out of the children. Because we drink and smoke too much, because we gamble and because we are greedy of money, we say, "Let us take it out of our children." Saying to my children, "Do not do as I do but do as I say", is one of the first lapses which, as an experienced parent, I am only too conscious of committing. But when we introduce this idea into legislation we are perilously near to nonsense. Children will catch the habits of their elders. It is not, on the whole, true that elders and adults learn the vices of their children.

Mr. Emrys Hughes (South Ayrshire)

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that children should be allowed to see every play that adults see?

Mr. Hogg

Far from it. I am only making a general comment. I have said again and again in this House—and I have said it to the Home Secretary—on the question of the banning of obscene publications, that just as good books do good to adults and children so bad books do bad to adults and children. I am far from being an apostle of the permissive society. But let us get our priorities right. Let us not think that we shall abolish World War III by banning toys for children, because we shall not.

The second point I want to make is somewhat similar to that made by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking. The idea that one should prohibit by law some activities which adults indulge in and of which we do not approve is one that, as the hon. Member for Bedford has said, we should approach with a good deal of caution. We should be especially wary of the temptation, having failed to take it out of the children, to say, "Let us take it out of the manufacturer"—that wicked man who makes money out of our vices and sells us things that we ought not to want to buy.

This, again, is a perverted sense of logic. I agree—I am not arguing for the permissive society—that cigarette smoking is the cause of lung cancer. I am against the sale of a host of things of which I do not approve because they are dangerous or wicked. On the other hand, we ought to approach with a good deal of caution the idea that because we smoke too much we must punish the man who sells tobacco because it is one which is sound neither in morality nor jurisprudence.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

If cigarette smoking affects children, is the right hon. and learned Gentleman in favour of allowing smoking in schools?

Mr. Hogg

Far from it. I have urged again and again, both as regards adults and children—and to this extent I make no difference between the two—that it should be recognised that cigarette smoking causes cancer and that if a parent loves his children he is a fool if he smokes cigarettes himself. If he smokes 20 or 30 cigarettes a day it is idiotic for him to tell his child's schoolmaster to forbid his child to smoke in school, because the first thing that his child does when he gets into a bush is to light a cigarette, like his daddy or mummy. Let us have a little less humbug in our approach to childhood and legislation.

I return to the question of banning war toys because we do not want a war. Having failed to take it out of the child and then failed to take it out of the manufacturer, we adopt the pathetic belief that if we pass a law against it it will not happen. This is not true. As my hon. Friend pointed out, the child will make his own war toys. He will take a stick, and in his childish fancy it will become a gun, a rocket or an atom bomb—because the child needs only the smallest possible incitement to his imagination to reflect in his play the activity which he believes, rightly or wrongly, to be the activity of the adult world. We shall achieve nothing if we impose this prohibition.

I have only two other points to make, and they are both fairly rough. First, we sat up all last Thursday discussing an important piece of social legislation, and perhaps we shall sit up all night tonight discussing another important piece of legislation, it having been said that we had no time at all to discuss these matters except between the hours of midnight and nine o'clock in the morning. Here we are, discussing solemnly a proposal to ban toy soldiers by law.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Exeter)

It must be accepted that both those issues came in private Members' time. We should remember that this debate is also taking place in private Members' time. We may not always agree with the choice of subjects discussed in private Members' time, but we should not seek to take away the chance to discuss them.

Mr. Hogg

I am not seeking to prevent the use of private Members' time, but I would remind the hon. Lady of something that I heard in the House in 1945, when Mr. Herbert Morrison, as he then was, took away private Members' time. One of my hon. Friends—we were in Opposition then, also—said that he did not think much of private Members' time because some people, as a result of the ballot, did not know what to do with it while others—he added, darkly—knew only too well. This is one of the latter occasions.

5.7 p.m.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Exeter)

I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mrs. Anne Kerr) should have put down this Private Member's Motion, because apart from anything else—her sincerity needs no congratulation—she has given us a marvellous chance to ride more personal hobby horses than we have been given by any other debate for months. She has given us a chance to discuss a topic that does not receive sufficient consideration, and which involves not the day-to-day mechanics of governing our country but the sort of values we want our country to have.

I am therefore sorry that I cannot give the Motion my wholehearted support. One of my difficulties is that I believe that for the best of reasons my hon. Friend has come to the worst conclusions. She has told us that little girls do not play with war toys, but play with things like dolls' houses. My experience is that the female is not only tougher but far more aggressive and, on occasions, far more effective than the male. This cannot necessarily be said to have developed from a certain amount of conditioning by playing with toy soldiers. My mother alleges that at five I got a great deal more fun out of playing with a rough and dirty group of boys than from anything else. A child tends to regard as a toy an empty medicine tin or a whole lot of muddy water. What we are discussing today are the things purchased by fond aunts and uncles at Christmas time, which usually do not last for more than 48 hours anyway.

I was fascinated to hear the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) say that he would be quite pleased to buy a gun that fired caps for his children. I should be interested to hear the views of his wife before I took that remark seriously. My objection is that the noise that these guns create, driving me absolutely mad, and not to any effect they may have on my moral fibre.

Mr. Hogg

My wife thinks exactly the same as I; she dislikes the noise but likes the children to enjoy themselves.

Mrs. Dunwoody

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Perhaps she is well-conditioned to noise, having been married to a politician for some time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Chatham has forgotten that between the manufacturer and the child is that extraordinary creature, the parent. The parent has some responsibility not only over what his child plays with, but also over its environment and over what it reads. One of the first times that I realised this—I must be getting elderly—was when I lectured another generation about what I considered they were doing wrong. One of our constant mistakes is to lump generations together, saying that a certain generation has different values from ours, is more subject to pressures and more interested in a permissive society, but I sometimes feel that the 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds to whom I talk are much more sensible than my generation. They are far more politically conscious and they are open to persuasion. They ask straight questions and accept straight answers. If that had been done more often in the past, our society would be far better today.

Parents must consider their children's environment. It is difficult to answer honestly on what a moral judgment is. One may give small boys guns and forts, but is one giving them the sort of standards by which they can judge everyday life, which will enable them to sort out the difference between licence and freedom and to face up honestly to a society which puts many pressures on them?

One of the nicest things that has happened to me since I came to the House was meeting a very sad little Australian boy on the doorstep one very rainy winter morning with his parents who had not been able to see the Changing of the Guard and who now wanted to see the Houses of Parliament. I showed him round these august premises and he was singularly unimpressed. I showed him the House of Commons and the House of Lords and told him many, probably grossly inaccurate, stories about the history of Parliament, and he was interested only when we reached the painted hall at the other side of the House of Lords, where there are large set-pieces. With great interest, he inspected "The Death of Nelson" and said, "Coo, look, Mum—blood!" I thought that, when he went home, he would refer to his visit to the Houses of Parliament and say that he saw Nelson with blood all down his side.

This is what children are interested in. They will also be interested in horror comics and in people flying through balsa wood frames on television. I am not sure that they connect these things with real life. They read Grimm's Fairy Tales about giants eating people and dreadful things happening to their favourite heroes, but in their minds it has nothing to do with real life.

This happens with adults. One of my husband's objections to my selection of television programmes is that I choose what he regards as an almighty amount of "guff". This is because I am sanguine about actors being knocked 20 feet and carrying on with their lines quite unaffected, whereas I was unable to look at the documentary on Culodden because it had happened to real people and I identified myself with them.

In talking about banning toys, we are using the wrong methods to reach the wrong ends. We should consider the values which we give our children, which some call Christianity, though hon. Members on this side would call it Socialism. I was brought up by a very tough parent who eternally threatened my brother and me with the most dreadful physical punishments, which we were convinced he would never carry out. One of my most terrible realisations, having fought happily with him for well over 30 years, was that I could no longer fight with him when a stroke deprived him of the power of speech.

We must prevent war, but we should accept our aggressive tendencies. A small boy who appears beautifully clean and with his socks pulled up makes me eminently suspicious. A boy with his hat round the wrong way and his shirt torn after the most terrible battles may have been working out many inhibitions but will probably be a fairly healthy human being.

I thank my hon. Friend for her choice of subject, but I hope that the Motion will not be accepted.

5.16 p.m.

Mr. Victor Goodhew (St. Albans)

Although I had to leave before the end of her speech, I thought that, in talking of children being brainwashed by toys, the hon. Lady the Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mrs. Anne Kerr) was living in a world of make-believe, exceeding that of the children themselves. When children play at soldiers, the conception of life and death does not arise. When they say, "Bang, bang, you're dead," and the other child falls down, they know that he will get up in a moment and that next time it will be his turn. This is a world of fantasy with no idea of death or violence.

A child may have a twig shaped like a rifle, a tommy-gun or a pistol, he may have a nail driven through two pieces of wood as a sword or he may have a water pistol. These children are reliving the lives of heroes of history and literature. They might be acting out the part of Field Marshal Montgomery at Alamein or the exploits of a Battle of Britain pilot shooting down Germans. They may be knights in shining armour rescuing damsels in distress from an evil man, or spies dying for their country, but throughout they are identifying with heroes whom they have been taught are right and are fighting wrong.

Therefore, there is nothing intrinsically evil in their play. We are talking of the very young. The youths who are most inclined to violence do not play with toys, which are toys of the imagination for the very young. I would be much more concerned with debating the subject of teenage boys with airguns shooting animals and birds and probably leaving them to die, than these toys. I am astonished that the people who often cry about banning war toys and war itself are the first to demand licence in entertainment and no censorship, and who say that it is perfectly acceptable for the worst of violence, perversion and thuggery to be portrayed on television for children to see.

Mrs. Anne Kerr

I do not think that the hon. Member should group me with those who are saying those things. He has not the slightest idea of what my views are on that matter.

Mr. Goodhew

I admit that at once. I was not saying that this applies to the hon. Lady, but that the very people who usually take the approach which she has put to the House this afternoon are those who say that there should be licence in the world of entertainment. If there is one thing that does harm to the young it is the appearance of violence, perversion and other terrible things on television and on films, and so on. This affects many who have passed from childhood to their formative years and they are very much impressed by it.

I would sooner that we were talking about the effect of various entertainments on teenagers than about toys which are part of make-believe games of the very young. If we are to talk about the sense of world community, this is something which the example of grown-ups can teach. When we have a situation in which there is such intolerance as to suggest that one nation should constantly be trying to interfere in the internal domestic affairs of others—which is what we find very often in the very body which is supposed to bring a world community about, the United Nations—it is there that we have to look for the lessons which need to be taught to the young.

I hope that we might decide that the subject we are discussing is not a real threat to the young of this country, and that we might try to look in other directions if we want them to grow up as peace-loving people.

5.22 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins (Putney)

The trouble about narrowly drawn Motions is that they tend to encourage wide-flung speeches. This I think an inevitable tendency. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mrs. Anne Kerr) will feel able to withdraw her Motion at the end of this debate, but it has served a useful purpose. It is not very often that the House has an opportunity to speculate upon the nature of the society in which we live. Therefore, my hon. Friend should not feel discouraged if she has been the recipient of some slight rebuffs in the debate. It has served a useful purpose, although the Motion is not one I find myself able fully to support.

The debate has drawn attention to the fact that one man's freedom is another's captivity. It is the sort of squabble we have going on continually in the world, the fight between the greed society and the slave society, or, to lift it up one, the fight between freedom and order. It can be seen as a fight for freedom against slavery. Communists would see it as a fight between greed and the ordered society. It may be said that society is only free if it is restrictive.

Mr. Brian Parkyn

The point I tried to make following on John Stuart Mill concerned the question of what a person does in his private life. Obviously, there must be restrictions and control of society. This is the main function of Parliament, the maintenance of law and order.

Mr. Jenkins

I take the point made by my hon. Friend. My hon. Friend said that we have to be careful when we try to impose restrictions. I am a member of a committee which has recently recommended the removal of censorship or pre-censorship on the theatre. So the cap of the hon. Member for St. Albans was wearing fits quite firmly on my head, and I am proud of it.

The real problem we face has been hardly touched on. It is that we are living in a new sort of society in which we cannot afford violence any more. Until now we have been able to get away with it. We only narrowly got away with it in the last world war. I took the view at that time that it was right to take up arms on that occasion because I felt that the evil we faced was greater than the things we would face through not combatting it. We are past that phase. Now war and violence itself have become the greatest evils because we are in danger of destroying the very world in which we live.

In this situation we face something entirely new. Therefore, my hon. Friend was not entirely amiss when she said that in such a dangerous society anything which inculcates or accustoms in the young the idea of acceptance of violence is something which we should worry about. One of the characteristics of Communist societies which I find welcome in an ordered system of society is that all their children's toys are the sort of things which would please my hon. Friend and not what we get in the West. I think the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) took the matter to the other degree when he suggested that it was solely a case of the adult setting an example to the young. He was taking the matter too far in the opposite direction. It is a case of the chicken and the egg.

The sort of society in which we live encourages the production and distribution of not only such things as war toys but of violence on television as a way of life. This is disquieting because, as we become more technically expertise in the art of destroying ourselves, so we need to become less violent in our approach to problems, not more so. If going along together with our technical ability to destroy ourselves there is acceptance of violence, the world is bound ultimately to reach that point which none of us wants to reach but which we are all worried about and want to avoid. This debate has served a useful purpose, but I do not think that anyone has come up with the answer to these major problems. If we pay attention to the direction in which we are going, it may be that arising from this Motion on another occasion we shall have more to say about that.

I think that my hon. Friend's time perspective is perhaps too optimistic. In effect, she says that if we banned war toys now, in 20 years or more we would have a generation which, deprived of that stimulus, would be extremely pacific. I have some doubts about that. I am worried about the next 20 years. Even if this were applied and proved to be the solution, which I doubt, I am afraid that it would be too late. It is we who have the responsibility, we and the immediately succeeding generation. This generation, we ourselves, have to guide the world through the next 10 or 15 years, which is a very dangerous period as we move in the nuclear age towards a world order. It is for us, in spite of our shortcomings, so to conduct ourselves that we succeed in bringing mankind through the time of extreme peril which is before us.

5.30 p.m.

Mr. Emrys Hughes (South Ayrshire)

In this short debate the charge has frequently been made that my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mrs. Anne Kerr) is an optimist. I think that she is. She was certainly very optimistic in believing that a Government whose policy is to export as many arms as possible would go on exporting arms but would ban toy arms.

The Government's policy is to export tanks, aeroplanes, bombers, poison gas—everything that can bring in a profit. That is the Government's policy, supported by the Opposition. We employ an arms salesman, not to sell toys but to sell real armaments. We have been selling armaments, I believe, to both sides involved in the war in the Middle East. Atheists have been selling arms to the Muslims and Christian countries have been engaged in making profits out of selling arms to both Christians and Mohammedans. As long as we accept the export of arms, and as long as any Government continue such a policy. I do not see how we can agree to put a ban on toys. A manufacturer of toy tanks might well say, "It is not clear to me why you put a ban on my toys when you export a Chieftain tank to Egypt for £100,000". As long as we are manufacturing and exporting arms, it would not be logical for the Government to put a ban on the export of toys.

I have no objection to the fact that my hon. Friend is embarrassing the Government. That is why the Government are here. But it puts the Government in an impossible position when she asks, "Where is the Minister for Rearmament?" The Minister for Rearmament has become a joke.

Mr. Darling

My hon. Friend means the Minister for Disarmament.

Mr. Hughes

It is all so mixed up that we do not know what he is. The Minister for Disarmament is regarded as the least effective Member of the Government. It is most appropriate that we have here a Minister from the Board of Trade who really does something, if it is only to supply advance factories to mining constituencies, but who at any rate is a Minister with some influence on Government policy.

The Government cannot possibly take up the proposal in the Motion and must pour cold water on it. Had I been fortunate in winning the Ballot, I should have sought not to ban toys but to ban weapons, and in this respect I am afraid that my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Chatham has missed a magnificent opportunity.

I was surprised at some of the revolutionary implications in the speech of the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg). He is apparently in favour of a libertarian régime for children. So am I. I agree with A. S. Neil. But that is not the sort of thing that we usually expect from Eton. When I asked the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether his children were to have all this freedom and to see all these plays and films, he immediately drew back into his shell. Nor was he very convincing on the subject of smoking. It certainly stirred up thought as to how far we are in favour of children playing with the kind of toys that they like. I am in favour of children playing with any kind of toys, and I am also in favour of adults and Governments setting them an example.

When we ban the bomb and the bomber, and the napalm bomb which burns the villages in Vietnam, and when we stop making money out of sending arms to Jews and Arabs alike, then is the time to tell children, "You must not play with these awful little replicas of the things we use."

Question put and negatived.