SOUTH AFRICA (SALE OF ARMS)

HC Deb 03 March 1971 vol 812 cc1719-852

Mr. Speaker

Before I call the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. Harold Wilson) to move his Motion, I would inform the House that I have selected the Amendment standing in the name of the Prime Minister and his right hon. Friends. I would also inform the House that I know of many right hon. and hon. Gentleman who wish to speak in this debate. Therefore, I hope that all who catch my eye will make reasonably brief speeches.

4.4 p.m.

Mr. Harold Wilson (Huyton)

I beg to move, That this House regrets the decision of Her Majesty's Government to authorise the sale of further Wasp helicopters to South Africa, which has caused jubilation among the supporters of apartheid and has jeopardised the Eight Power Commonwealth Study Group on the Indian Ocean; and calls on Her Majesty's Government to demonstrate that this is not the thin end of the wedge by announcing that it will supply no arms to South Africa excepting those it is legally obliged to supply. This Motion is in two parts. The first refers to the Government's announcement of their intentions to supply Westland Wasp helicopters to the South African Government—helicopters which they claim. on the basis of the opinion of their own Law Officers, they are legally required to supply under the terms of the Simonstown Agreement. We do not accept this argument. We were not so advised, and, as I understand it, the Government have themselves made it clear that they are not standing any longer on legal obligations.

The Prime Minister—this has been repeated by the Foreign Secretary—clearly and deliberately told the House that they would give no undertaking to limit their arms supplies to the very restricted range set out in the Law Officers' White Paper, whatever their Amendment, which I think adds to the confusion, may I say. Our position is clear. We oppose arms sales to South Africa. We stopped arms sales to South Africa. We shall do so again.

Today's debate is not about Law Officers' opinions, although I recognise that different lawyers may, with absolute honesty, take different views about the interpretation of the Simonstown Agreement. But there is a further point. If the House traces back the whole history of the Prime Minister's personal commitment on this question, hon. Members will find that the whole question of legal obligation has been rather in the nature of a vehicle, an afterthought indeed, which he has used to try to justify a decision which he had previously taken on the most dubious of political grounds.

That decision, which they took and which they made public within three days of forming the Government, was simply, of course, a product of this new style of obsessional government, based mainly on commitments made under Right-wing pressure when they were in Opposition. The decision which they took after becoming the Government was based on a determination to carry out at any rate this pledge in their manifesto, although we have not always noticed quite the same obsessive determination to carry out other pledges—namely, those on which they won the election—[An HON. MEMBER: "You should know.") Yes, we know, and the housewife knows too.

The House last debated these issues on 22nd July. If it is a fact that we have not, as an Opposition, pressed the Government on this in all these months in parliamentary debate, it was because we still hoped that, as a result of the Commonwealth consultations on which they belatedly embarked after taking a decision and as a result of a further assessment of the damage which their policy would create, they might change direction. Unhappily this has not proved to be the case.

From November onwards, the right hon. Gentleman has tried to justify a policy decision taken on other grounds by reference to the putative obligation which he claimed to have found in the Simonstown Treaty. In his Guildhall speech, the Prime Minister went so far as to claim that we—that is Britain—have an obligation to supply to South Africa …the maritime equipment she requires to fulfil her side of the agreement. This is a very wide definition of the obligation, but the implication of that has, of course, been cut right down to size on the Law Officers' opinion which was set out in the White Paper.

I now turn to the decision announced by the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary on 22nd February to supply an unstated number of the Wasp helicopters which were referred to in the Law Officers' White Paper. I have made it clear that we do not agree about the obligation which the Law Officers have claimed to detect. With regard to these allegedly outstanding helicopters, we did not supply them, we would not have supplied them. I repeat—on the advice which we had and the policy which we followed, we would not have supplied them, we would have adhered to the decision which we took on coming into office in October, 1964, which was in fulfilment of the decision of the Security Council of the United Nations. Even if the House were to accept the Government's interpretation of the legal requirements—and the Government's Amendment, which I understand the Foreign Secretary is to move, seems to limit their South African arms policy just to the Westland helicopters—there is still a vital issue of timing in the supply of the helicopters which I think many of our Commonwealth partners will regard as a breach of faith.

I accept the Prime Minister's statement to the House that he reserved his position on timing and made no commitment to await the report of the Commonwealth Indian Ocean Working Party. He has told that to the House, and we accept it. But there have been suggestions in the Commonwealth that they understood differently and that they heard him say it. While not disputing the reservation he made, they assumed that he would not invoke it but would at least await completion of the Study Group's task. The Government announced their decision less than a month after the Singapore Conference. They did not wait even for the South African shopping list to materialise but anticipated it in their announcement.

But that is not all. Even if the House is prepared to accept the Government's right—or obligation, if hon. Members put it that way—in accordance with the Law Officers' opinion, to supply helicopters, I must point out the situation we have reached compared with what right hon. and hon. Members opposite used to say on these matters. In the debates in the last Parliament and in the country we were treated to descriptions of a glittering Eldorado of arms orders from South Africa—£100 million, £200 million, £300 million. Now it all comes down to an order of rather less than £1 million on which to wreck the Commonwealth and cause all this dispute.

The Prime Minister at least will not deny that this is what the Government when they were in Opposition held out as the prospect for South African arms sales. He will not deny the figures of £100 million and £200 million because, in a debate under Standing Order No.9 in December 1967, he himself quoted a figure of £200 million as the gain to this country for selling the pass on arms to South Africa. Now he is defending his glittering prize of less than £1 million. He has been prepared to disrupt the Commonwealth, to wreck the Commonwealth Conference and to stain our image in the world—because that is what he has done—all for that £1 million order for helicopters, which are to come from a production line which has ceased production and will have to be started up again. Perhaps in 1973 and 1974, if the supply has not been stopped in the interval, we shall see the trade returns showing another £1 million as an offset of the returns which will be lost on all the other trade we do with other Commonwealth nations. No one outside the Treasury Bench thinks that these helicopters will strike terror into the hearts of the Soviet Naval High Command. So much for them.

The second part of our Motion deals with arms supplies going beyond the Law Officers' narrow list. I am glad to see that the Law Officers do not accept that there is any obligation under the Simonstown Agreement to supply any arms beyond these Wasps—none at all. But that is not what the right hon. Gentleman implied in Canada, nor what he said at Guildhall last November, when he told his audience, referring to the Simonstown Agreement: Under these arrangements we have an obligation to supply to South Africa the maritime equipment she requires to fulfil her side of the Agreement. Was that meant to be rather less than £1 million for helicopters? If so, why did the right hon. Gentleman not say so to the Guildhall audience? They would have cheered him. Does he still maintain what he said then—that there is a legal obligation going beyond the helicopters? He referred in Canada to a legal obligation. He used the phrase, "required under the Agreement". If that did not mean legal requirement, I do not know what he meant. If it is what he meant, then he has been repudiated by his own Law Officers because paragrah 59 of their eminent publication reads: In our opinion it would not be reasonable, in these circumstances, to imput to the parties an intention to include a term in the Sea Routes Agreement which would place any general and continuing legal obligation on Her Majesty's Government to permit the supply of arms to the South African Government. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that? Perhaps before I finish he will stand on his own two feet and tell us. No doubt we shall learn a great deal because, if he does accept that opinion, two things follows.

The first is that an intention to supply other arms is a political decision of grave implications and falsifying the claims on which this was related to legal requirements. Secondly, it follows that the right hon. Gentleman is prepared to subordinate a United Nations decision which, it is at least arguable—and no doubt will be argued by lawyers—overrides bilateral treaties, not to the requirements of a bilateral treaty but to a stubborn policy decision. The two sides of the House may disagree about the helicopters. I would have hoped that that would not be so and that even those who have studied the White Paper would still feel that the right hon. Gentleman has created further difficulties for the Commonwealth by announcing the decision before the Indian Ocean Working Party has even got down to the job. But whatever disagreement we have about the helicopters, it is basically the arms outside the categories set aside in the White Paper on the ipse dixit of the Attorney-General that the Motion parts company with the Government and the Prime Minister. That is the second part of the Motion.

The Government Amendment is quite extraordinary in that it refers only to arms covered by the Law Officers' opinion as being required under the Simonstown Agreement. I do not claim that we should shorten the debate, because many right hon. and hon. Members feel strongly about this matter, but we could certainly face a different situation if the right hon. Gentleman would get up now and tell us that the Amendment, asking for the support of the House for supplying helicopters—the White Paper arms, as one might call them—means that nothing will be supplied beyond the helicopters. If he were to say that—and that must be the implication of this mealy-mouthed Amendment—I readily concede that that would be a welcome change in the Government's posture.

But if the Government intend to go beyond the White Paper arms there is a still more fundamental split in the House—a split as deep and fundamental as the split which the right hon. Gentleman has, with his divisive obsession, created within the Commonwealth. I want to deal with the moral stance adopted by the right hon. Gentleman and what it means for our standing in the world. I do not question his good faith when he expresses his aversion to apartheid. That is not in question in the debate. But there is an ancient legal doctrine which asserts that any individual must be presumed to intend the necessary consequences of his actions.

Last autumn, I said that South Africa's keenness to place an arms order in Britain was not so much related to its desire or need for arms as to get from Britain a certificate of respectability. I believe that the same argument has been used by a number of Commonwealth Heads of Government. Is this what the right hon. Gentleman really wants? Is that what his supporters really want? That is how it has been interpreted since the announcement of the Foreign Secretary in South Africa. There has been some difficulty in this country in getting the South African newspapers. I have made some efforts. But we have the reports, and I believe honest reports, in the British Press of what the South African newspapers were saying. The Daily Express headline was South Africa Cheers `Hero' Heath". Hon. Members have seen the other extracts in the British Press. The Economist, summarising South African Press reactions last weekend, said that they regarded the arms announcement as …a symbol of the country's acceptability as a military and diplomatic partner"— of the right hon. Gentleman. It cites Die Burger—if I pronounce it rightly—which …switched from its normally conservative typographical style to greet the news with a huge banner of two-inch headlines announcing boldly 'Arms ban is lifted', with a large picture of Edward Heath in the centre of the page.

Mr. William Hamilton (Fife, West)

Grinning.

Mr. Wilson

My hon. Friend, unusually, is wrong. The right hon. Gentleman was not grinning really. It was that Central Office picture showing him as a man of integrity.

Last week the right hon. Gentleman celebrated 21 years in this House, and his constituency entertained him. When he came to the House as an idealistic young Conservative, did he really think that he was going to be the hero of apartheid South Africa?

At any rate, the first response of the South African Government, basking in their new respectability, was to order a security service swoop on the homes of Christian ministers of religion in a search for seditious and disruptive documents—presumably the New Testament. On Saturday we had the testimony of an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Colin Davidson, summarily ordered out of the country last week by Dr. Vorster after Dr. Vorster's validation by this Government. The Daily Telegraph reported him as saying on arrival in Britain that the Government's decision gave …massive support to a white racialist regime. This clergyman was reported as saying This decision gives the South African Cabinet a sense of achievement and power…. They are saying that world opinion is coming round their way, and they see this as proof that what they were saying is right. This encourages the Nationalist government to move much more firmly against its critics, particularly those in the churches. Are right hon. Gentlemen opposite proud of that achievement?

Again, I quote the Daily Telegraph report of this clergyman's words: The system is so evil it has the seeds of its own destruction in it. I ask whether any right hon. Gentleman would really stand up and say that he rejects the assertion that the South African system of apartheid is essentially evil. And if it is evil, can any hon. Gentleman support a decision which, throughout white South Africa and, above all, in the newspapers which support that system of evil, has been hailed as endorsing what they are doing there?

There is no hon. Gentleman in any part of the House who was not revolted by Sharpeville, and certainly right hon. Gentlemen opposite, and equally my right hon. Friends, opposed it. But can they be proud that those in South Africa who defended Sharpeville are the ones who are cheering the right hon. Gentleman now?

I wonder whether the Government have seriously considered what an assertion to supply arms to South Africa—beyond the Law Officers' list—must mean to Britain's standing abroad, for our image—to use that over-worked word. For one thing, it means that in every issue, issue after issue that comes up at the United Nations, Britain, the British vote, and the British representative will be corralled, humiliatingly confined, in a small minority—colonialist oppressive Portugal, South Africa, and Britain—hardly any more, on deep issues of international morality. Is that what hon. Gentlemen opposite want? It is what they will be voting for tonight. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about the French?"] The French usually abstain on these issues, as a matter of fact. But if hon. Gentlemen want to defend the French shipments of arms, they will no doubt have the right hon. Gentleman on their side. For our part, we protested at this.

The Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Joseph Godber)

When?

Mr. Wilson

In June, 1967, in the Petit Trianon in Versailles, when I raised it myself with General de Gaulle.

The right hon. Gentleman who, 1 gather, will reply to the debate, when the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister should be replying, now has several hours in which to look that up before he speaks tonight. It was in 1967.

It means more than the United Nations question. It means that in bilateral discussions with the leaders of other countries, the right hon. Gentleman is hog-tied by the decision which he has taken. Months ago a newspaper cartoon depicted the right hon. Gentleman with the South African albatross around his neck. My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) said in a different context a fortnight ago that it was not the only albatross with which he had burdened himself. But the nature of a man with an albatross round his neck, as we know from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is not only that he becomes a bearer of burdens, but he also becomes a bore. Everyone he meets, nearly every speech he makes, reflects his burden. It is an ancient mariner, And he stoppeth one of three…. Everywhere he went at the time he took his decision, all the comments and all the discussions were dominated by his South Africa obsession. It was not one of three that he treated to this obsession; it was the lot. He negotiated with the President of the United States; all the time this was the centre of world comment. At the United Nations, with Canada, with visiting Commonwealth statesmen—there was nothing to talk about except this. All the time there were urgent and pressing British interests, urgent bilateral questions, urgent international and Commonwealth problems, which could not be pressed on Britain's behalf, because the albatross dominated each and every conversation.

The danger of an obsession of this kind in foreign policy is that other countries can play on it. They can ask the obsessional country for its support or its refusal to press a national interest in return for support for acquiescence in the subject of the obsession.

For the right hon. Gentleman, South African policy became what the Hallstein doctrine became for the German Government in the late 'fifties and early 'sixties. It had to be traded. It was the subject of pressures, even blackmail, though at least the Germans could claim that a vital issue of principle was involved with the Hallstein doctrine. Not so the right hon. Gentleman on the subject of arms to South Africa.

The right hon. Gentleman will say that there is more at stake here than the moral or Commonwealth issue. He will say that there are military arguments, the freedom of the seas around the Cape, British trading and economic interests. Do they seriously argue that we have to supply arms to South Africa to maintain the freedom of the seas? If that is so, why have they failed to persuade the principal maritime nations of the world, Scandinavia, Western Europe, and the United States? If the Soviet threat to the Indian Ocean threatens world and British freedom, could not the right hon. Gentleman, with all his eloquence and persuasion, have convinced the Pentagon? The Pentagon is not difficult to convince where Soviet threats are said to operate.

There has been a reference to the closure of the canal in June, 1967. But from June, 1967, to December, 1969—the House has been told this—35,000 ships have rounded the Cape. Only 3,000 were British. Are the national Governments responsible for the remaining 32,000 regardless of the danger which the right hon. Gentleman sees? Do they agree with him about the need to maintain the freedom of the seas?

We hear oil mentioned many times in this context. The House will have seen the words of Sir David Barran, Chairman of Shell, who was reported on 16th November last as saying that he was "rather indifferent" to having two or three British frigates floating around in the Indian Ocean. He said: The flow of oil in tankers round the Cape of Good Hope is not threatened by a Russian presence there. The right hon. Gentleman is obviously not looking at a peace-time situation, he is looking at the dangers of war or he would not be doing all these extraordinary things. Supposing war were to come, involving a Russian naval presence. Is the right hon. Gentleman convinced after the attitudes struck in the Second World War that Dr. Vorster, a self-confessed adherent of Hitler, would be the reliable ally of Britain on whom the right hon. Gentleman would feel it right to stake his all and the all of Britain too?

Mr. John Biggs-Davison (Chigwell)

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. On the moral case that he is making and on the strategic case, does he really think that it was right for the Administration of which he was the head to hold joint naval exercises with the South African Government, having regard to what he has just said about Dr. Verwoerd as a reliable partner?

Mr. Wilson

Dr. Verwoerd and Dr. Vorster? Yes, Sir. We fulfilled the terms of the Simonstown Agreement but we did not stretch those terms to supply arms—[Interruption.]—which were not required and which right hon. Gentlemen only want to supply because of pressures from Right-wing members of the party such as the hon. Gentleman.

I ask the right hon. Gentleman, is it not simply the fact that if the Soviet armed strength were to challenge the West, including Britain, the United States and Western Europe, in thermo-nuclear conflict, this threat would have to be met, not in the Indian Ocean on a localised basis, but worldwide and by the whole of the armoury of the West, not three or four frigates, with or without the Law Officers' helicopters?

Defence today in a global way must be collective, it must be global not "go it alone" still less "go it with racialist South Africa". If the motive is fear of Communism in the area, and this is the argument we have been asked to accept, then the House must look at it in a different dimension, the dimension of land and not sea. Before October, 1967, the Foreign Secretary, as Prime Minister, regularly warned the House of the dangers of Communist political penetration of Africa. Some of us were not fully persuaded then as he was, but later I learned how seriously these warnings should be taken.

Why then does he not draw the lesson from his own warnings? He may agree that the problem is not the danger of Soviet penetration of Africa countries or the danger of Chinese penetration of African countries, it is the danger of competition between Soviet and Chinese penetration because competition intensifies effort, for good or ill. All competition escalates, Communist competition escalates absolutely. The whole House would like to see a combined operation between the Western world and the Communist world for developing the nations living in poverty, as a combined world war on poverty.

But until conditions exist for that to become possible there is a struggle and this struggle is taking place every day in Africa. It is a struggle for the whole of Africa and Asia and other areas of the developing world, a struggle between the contributions which Britain has led, over successive Governments, for a democratic post-imperialist world, against a Communist theory. This is a world interest but it is also a hard-headed British interest too. British arms to South Africa are in this respect calculated to play into the Communists hands.

This is the defence argument, if it is defence we are debating. What does it profit a man—or a government—to gain control, through three or four helicopters of a few more square miles of the Indian Ocean—it is no more than that—and to lose the battle for hundreds of millions of hearts and minds on the continents washed by the ocean? I say nothing today—even in the context of hardheaded British national interests—of our economic interests, trade and investments which right hon. Gentlemen are apparently willing to set at risk. Our trade, our investment north of the Zambesi far transcends the totality of our economic interests south of the Zambesi. That must be known to right hon. Gentlemen opposite when they examine policy for South Africa or, as they may shortly be doing—and we shall be watching them on this—a policy in relation to Rhodesia.

If hon. Gentlemen want to know the figures for the first half of last year, the total imports from "white" Africa were £161.2 million and exports £178.8 million. Total "black" Africa imports were £232.7 million and exports £187.1 million. If we take all Arab and black Africa together, and these two go together, the imports total £342.5 million and exports £227.1 million as against exports for white Africa of £175.8 million. If we want more hard-headed argument about trade let us have all the figures from the Government.

Equally, I ask not whether the right hon. Gentleman proposes to use his new acceptability south of the Limpopo to get an undertaking from the South Africans that they will withdraw their police and other forces which are illegally deployed in support of an illegal régime in Rhodesia. I do not propose to do that because I regret the very basis on which he has won that acceptability. The right hon. Gentleman will know that even Mr. Smith told me that he did not want South African security forces in Rhodesia. The right hon. Gentleman as a result of his activities in South Africa is getting mixed up in some pretty ugly company, with some pretty ugly projects.

But if the right hon. Gentleman, converted as he has long been to the harsh doctrines of cost benefit analysis, assertive as he claims of the requirements of British national interests, would submit his South African arms policy to the rigours of such analysis then in terms of hard cash, trade, investments, British economic interests he would secure an answer which demands a reversal of the policies with which he has become identified.

Having asked the right hon. Gentleman if he will do this cost benefit analysis of his policy, because he obviously has not done so as he would only get one answer, I want to put to him a wider issue of British interest, of world interest. I want to ask him to look at this question in terms of history. What in his view does Britain stand for? If British policy and British standards in world affairs have meant anything right since the days when Clem Attlee granted independence to India in 1947, they have meant that we have presented to the newly-emerging independent world a doctrine, a philosophy, a way if life which could he set against the appeals of the Communist philosophy, be it Soviet or Maoist.

That philosophy was our belief in democracy as a living and moral alternative. This was true in 1947–51, following independence in India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon; it was true in 1951–64; it was true in Mr. Macmillan's "wind of change" Government which was cheered at by hon. Members opposite. It was true in 1964–70. Successive Prime Ministers, six in all over 25 years of British and world history, have recognised, as I believe the majority of this House has always recognised—at any rate until today—that in the world struggle for ideas and ideals we are concerned in a fight for the soul of Africa and Asia and of new peoples in other parts of the world. I hope the right hon. Gentleman would agree with this analysis. If he does not feel this to be a moral issue in his heart then it is impossible for me or any of us to seek to convince him. This is what it is.

The House recognises the importance of the issues we are debating. I have distinguished between the limited arms supplies for which the Government, rightly or wrongly, claim legal validation, a legal requirement, and arms supplies which, on the Government own arguments, can carry no such legal support or legal obligation. It could be that the House is confused by the Amendment of which the Government have given notice. It may be that hon. Members will conclude from this that the Government ask for their support only for the helicopters covered in the White Paper because that is what the Amendment appears to say.

I oppose and deplore the shipment of those helicopters; I hope that I have made that clear. I oppose all arms shipments to South Africa. I support, as I insisted on supporting by our action the day after we took office, the Security Council resolution of 1963. I support it in the terms in which it was moved, disregarding the unilateral interpretation which right hon. Members opposite sought to place upon it at that time. I hope that this is the purport of the Government's Amendment.

We welcome the intervention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney-General in the debate. We would welcome still more the intervention of the Prime Minister. It need take no more than a minute at any time between now and ten o'clock. The right hon. Gentleman is personally and obsessively responsible for what we are debating today. If he will get up and say that his Amendment means what it appears to mean—that Her Majesty's Government will give an undertaking that there will be no arms shipments beyond the helicopters referred to in the Amendment—he will have ended a desperately unhappy and totally unnecessary chapter in Britain's history of overseas relations. He will have done more: he will have created a more hopeful basis for the future of the Commonwealth.

We are not concerned about the votes in the House or debating points. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] We are prepared to let those go in order to get the right answer. We have not pressed this matter in the House for eight months when we could have had excellent votes and made debating points. We are concerned with the real economic and political interests of this country, of our standing in the world and the future of the Commonwealth which, with all its faults—and the right hon. Gentleman can see only the faults, apparently—is a microcosm of the world in which we live.

What we are concerned with is the authority of a valid United Nations decision which neither the Government of the day nor any other Government proposed and which it is in British interests to support. Above all, we are concerned with ensuring that on the issue which transcends all others on the world stage—that of racialism and human rights and the dignity of our fellow human beings, regardless of colour, and of their freedom—the voice of Britain and the leadership of Britain is clear and understood throughout the nations of the world.

4.44 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Sir Alec Douglas-Home)

I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof: endorses Her Majesty's Government's willingness to grant licences for the supply of arms to South Africa in accordance with our legal obligations in relation to the Simonstown Agreement, as set out in Command Paper No.4589". This debate was originally requested to discuss the statement which I made in the House on 22nd February and to hear from my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General why he felt it right to advise Parliament that to supply the limited number of helicopters fitted to frigates built under the Simonstown Agreement for the South African navy was a legal obligation on the British Government. The Opposition Motion has, perfectly properly, widened the debate, but the Government Amendment brings it back to the matter under discussion—[Interruption.] I well remember the request that we should have a debate to discuss the Attorney-General's White Paper. I will reply to the Leader of the Opposition, but I am perfectly entitled to say that what we are discussing primarily is the recommendation—

Mr. Denis Healey (Leeds, East)

rose—

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

May I finish the sentence? I am entitled to say that the main topic which we are discussing this afternoon is whether there is a legal obligation to sell helicopters—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—and, if there is, should the British Government meet it?

Mr. Healey

The House will recall that my request for a debate was in order to discuss the Foreign Secretary's statement on 22nd February. The right hon. Gentleman, in his statement, said that the Government reserved the right to sell arms to South Africa, irrespective of legal obligations, if they felt that it was in Britain's interests to do so. That is why we tabled a Motion in the terms of today's Motion, and that Motion is the subject of today's debate.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

The right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends need not get so excited. I said that the Leader of the Opposition had, perfectly rightly, raised a wider question, and I intend to answer it.

When my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as I hope he will, of course, he will explain the law. It is better that he should give the legal interpretation. I should, however, like to get one matter out of the way.

It is within the recollection of the House that the Leader of the Opposition made an off-the-cuff accusation against me on 22nd February that I was guilty of something improper in that I implied that the Government had seen documents not available to the Law Officers of the last Administration or had access to opinions by them. The convention, as the right hon. Gentleman understands very well, is that Ministerial documents of one Administration are not made available to Ministers of the next. I am advised, however, that formal opinions by Law Officers are regarded as exceptions to this convention.

In this case—and I am sure that the Leader of the Opposition will be glad to hear this—the question does not arise. I could not have said anything improper even if I had wished to do so because, strange as it may seem, there was no formal opinion given by my right hon. and learned Friend's predecessor on this very important legal question.

Mr. Harold Wilson

I will accept anything that the right hon. Gentleman says on this matter—and I hope that he will come to the real issue about arms for South Africa in a moment. What he said on that occasion was that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones) had not asked to see certain documents. If he said that, it was an improper thing to say. But, on the question of what he has just said, most modern Governments do not have to rely on written opinions. Most modern Governments, including I am sure his own when he was Prime Minister, invite Law Officers to the meetings of the Cabinet and Cabinet Committees to set out the position in law, and this we did.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

This is why no formal opinion was asked by the right hon. Gentleman of his right hon. and learned Friend. It is a very extraordinary thing, when South Africa was challenging the legal view of the Government of the day, that no formal opinion was in fact asked of the Law Officers at that time. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition cannot complain if I answer this point. He is very apt off the cuff, in a hectoring tone, to accuse various people of making improper statements. In this case my statement was perfectly proper. I could not have said, even if I had wished to say, anything improper on this matter because no formal opinion was given.

As to the documents, official documents emanating from officials—and in my own Department this particularly applies to correspondence with representatives of foreign Powers—are, of course, available from one Administration to another. My right hon. and learned Friend will explain why in this case—this is very important to this argument—certain correspondence between Departments of the British Government and representatives of the South African Government were shown to him in circumstances from which he inferred that his predecessor had not seen that correspondence.

Secondly, a point which the right hon. Gentleman made much of was the fact that he implied that there was a tacit understanding at the Prime Ministers' meeting in Singapore that no arms would be sold beforehand to South Africa, not even those for which there was a legal obligation, and he said that certain Commonwealth countries felt that to do this before the group had met could be described as a breach of faith. Those were his words. All right. I should just like him, if he will not take my word for it, to consider what was said by the Prime Minister of Australia in his Parliament and the Foreign Minister of Canada in his Parliament.

On 22nd February, in the Ottawa Parliament, Mr. Sharp said: I should add however that the British Government never did say it would withhold action on the sale of arms to South Africa, because of the formation of the Committee.

Mr. Harold Wilson

I said that.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

The right hon. Gentleman's speech is very well within the recollection of the House.

On 25th February the Prime Minister of Australia in the Australian Parliament said: Everybody should be quite clear that the Committee was not set up to consider the question of the sale of arms to South Africa…At the time that it was set up, the British Prime Minister made it abundantly and unequivocally clear that the setting up of this Committee was quite satisfactory to him, but that he would be in no way inhibited as to the timing of any action he thought he should take in British interests"—

Mr. Harold Wilson

I said that.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

The Prime Minister of Australia further said: There was nobody who could have left that Conference under any misapprehension as to this. So there could not have been a breach of faith. What is more, the Prime Minister told his colleagues at the Prime Ministers' Conference what the legal obligation, as we understood it, was. So it was quite clear in all our minds that there was no question at the Singapore Conference, or following it, of a breach of faith in this respect. Therefore, this particular criticism can be dismissed.

I hope that the Committee will meet. I think that it will be useful to all of us to survey the problems of security and of the interests of the countries around the Indian Ocean. We shall certainly do our best, if the Committee meets, to make a constructive contribution to it. I hope that that will happen.

Mr. Healey

Nobody has ever disputed that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister made it clear that they would not be bound in timing by the Agreement to hold the 8th February Conference, and, indeed, my right hon. Friend made that point. The point is that a number of Commonwealth Foreign Ministers, including Mr. Singh of India, also made it clear at the time that if this country took a decision on sale of arms before the group met, that would render its work unfructious, and the Government had full warning in Singapore from representatives of a number of Commonwealth Governments that they could not expect to have this Conference held if they took this decision now.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

The right hon. Gentleman was not at Singapore.

Mr. Healey

They made it clear.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

They did not make this clear. What is so typical of the right hon. Gentleman is that he said he accepted the Prime Minister's word on what he said at Singapore and then he accepts it when somebody else says that there was a breach of faith.

Mr. Harold Wilson

What I said was that I accepted that the Prime Minister said this. He told us in the House of Commons, and we accepted that fact, that he reserved his position and was not bound to defer an arms decision till after the Working Party had finished its work. He said that. [Interruption.] If hon. Gentlemen were not listening, those who can read can look it up in HANSARD tomorrow. I said that. I then said that some Commonwealth countries hoped that he would not press his reservation and I thought that they regarded it as a breach of faith.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

I hope that the right hon. Getleman, in fairness, will read HANSARD, because he used the words "breach of faith", and they will be in HANSARD tomorrow.

So the Government believe in keeping their legal obligations. I trust that the Opposition do, too. If the Opposition do not believe in keeping their obligations, I hope that we shall know it.

I turn to the Simonstown Agreement as a whole. This was raised by the right hon. Gentleman. The Simonstown Agreement was conceived in 1955 as a contribution to the defence of the sea routes leading to Britain and Western Europe. It was recognised by the Conservative Government of that day that the Cape area was an area of key strategic importance in the security of the seas. If it were important then, it is far more important now. Then, we were not nearly so dependent on oil; then, the Suez Canal was open. If the Simonstown Agreement was important then, it is far more important today.

The strategic importance of Simonstown in the context of the possible expansion of hostile navies was, therefore, foreseen. It has nothing to do with apartheid, although apartheid at that time was practised. The Simonstown Agreement, incidentally, is one of the areas where there is a modification of apartheid. But the Simonstown Agreement is concerned with and exists solely in the context of the security of the sea routes. The Socialists, in Government, constantly underlined its importance in the context of defence. It is important in the context of defence, or nothing.

On page 46 of the White Paper it is recorded that as late as March, 1970, the late Government were saying that the Agreement was important and was still in force, and presumably at that time they were carrying out legal obligations. The right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) was even more effusive—as he is—and even more explicit. He interpreted Britain's rôle as one of shared responsibility with South Africa. He sent the British Navy on shared exercises, exercises in the context of the defence of the sea routes against possible hostile interference. But now he argues that there is none. What were the exercises for? He valued joint action, but when asked by the partner in the sharing for some tools to help to do the job of sharing, he said, "No. We will accept all the advantages of Simonstown. We will continue manoeuvres. You go and get your arms from somebody else on the side." That is not a very heroic posture for the right hon. Gentleman.

The right hon. Gentleman, as I understand from his speeches and writings, now discounts any development of a threat in the future from an expanded Soviet Navy in the Indian Ocean. I hope he is right, but I am entitled to remind him that lately he was wrong—and in a very big way—about the Mediterranean. Only two years ago he told us that the Soviet naval presence was so insignificant in the Mediterranean that it could be sunk in a matter of minutes. He was right, but only for 18 months. Then there were ten fighting ships in the Mediterranean, now there are 40. Then there was no air cover for the Soviet Mediterranean Fleet; now that Fleet operates under the cover of Soviet bases on United Arab Republic soil. It is no use pretending that in the Mediterranean the balance of strength has not been dramatically changed by the expansion of the Soviet Navy in a remarkably short time.

With great respect, the argument is not whether the Soviet Union, for example, on land in Europe will launch a direct attack on Germany, nor is it an argument whether the Soviet Union can be expected to sink the ships of the British Navy. The argument is this: if a Communist Power is left in monopoly of any area, then its purpose is to close the options one by one of the West and the free. That is the Soviet purpose.

I will give one example which will illustrate to hon. Members what I mean. Only a few months ago, in the middle of the night, the Soviet Union said that they were going to close the Berlin air corridor. Action had to be taken. Action had to be co-ordinated, at a moment's notice, between the British Government, the United States Government and France in the middle of the night. The point is that, if an option like this is closed, the peaceful countries have to make a military response and are forced to do so by the actions of the Soviet Union. I deduce from this that we in this country should never put ourselves in the position—least of all on our main trade routes—in which we can operate only by somebody else's leave. That would be a terribly dangerous situation in which to put ourselves.

Simonstown provides the services we need. The South African Navy is a useful reinforcement in the defence of the sea routes. The Motion asks the Govern- ment to pledge themselves never to sell any more arms beyond the terms of the Simonstown Agreement. My answer must be twofold. No Government, in the light of the expansion of the Soviet Navy, could sacrifice the Simonstown base, or risk doing so in any circumstances. Secondly, the British Government of the day must retain the right to judge what is necessary to keep that Agreement in good repair.

The Leader of the Opposition has sought to take a moral stance on the sale of arms—

Mr. Healey

rose—

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

I cannot give way. Many back-benchers wish to speak. The Leader of the Opposition has sought to take a moral stance on the sale of arms. I am glad that he accepted that we on this side of the House are against apartheid—it would have been intolerably mentally arrogant of him had he not done so. I have tried to discover what moral principle he and his Government followed in relation to the Simonstown Agreement.

Licences were granted by the previous Administration for a whole range of military equipment. Hon. Members will find some of it on page 43 of the White Paper. They sold, for example, 4.5 inch gun ammunition. What is the moral principle there? Westlands joined with the French company Sud-Aviation to manufacture 20 per cent. of the Puma troop carrying and assault helicopter. These helicopters are being supplied to the South African market. The right hon. Gentleman and his friends entered into an agreement with the French under which they had no right to object to sales to South Africa or any other country. What is the moral principle there?

Mr. Healey

The right hon. Gentleman has just asked me a question; am I to be allowed to reply?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris)

When people ask questions they do not always expect an answer.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

The right hon. Gentleman and his Government held joint naval manœuvres with the South African Navy after Sharpeville. I was interested in the reply given by the right hon. Gentleman to my hon. Friend when asked why he did this. He said: We kept the Simonstown Agreement. Exactly. That is all we are asking the Opposition to recognise.

The right hon. Gentleman accuses us of selling arms which we are obliged to sell, if requested, to a South African Government with police in Rhodesia. So did they, and he knows it. I can find no moral principle in the right hon. Gentleman's policy. There is none, from start to finish. I can find only expediency writ large.

As is the right hon. Gentleman's wont, he became very personal in relation to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and the effect that he said the Prime Minister was having on the Commonwealth. Curiosity got the better of me, and I looked for a few things that President Kaunda and President Nyerere had said about the right hon. Gentleman. The House will no doubt be interested to hear them.

President Kaunda in 1967 said: I have reached a state of total disillusion with the Labour Party in Britain. On 5th October, 1967, he said: They have deceived and cheated us all. President Nyerere on 15th December, 1967, said: If Mr. Wilson— [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman expects us to take what he says quietly when he accuses my right hon. Friend. He should listen to my reply. I will finish by quoting President Nyerere: If Mr. Wilson has some ambition to be the British Prime Minister who broke the Commonwealth, I can regret it but cannot stop him fulfilling his ambition.

Mr. Harold Wilson

If I said any unkind words about the Prime Minister, they were his words I was quoting, not what President Kaunda said. Will the right hon. Gentleman now agree that every one of those quotations by President Kaunda and President Nyerere was made because I refused to use military force in Rhodesia? Did the right hon. Gentleman at that time press me to use force there?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

If I recall aright, it was in relation to the statement by the then Prime Minister that the Rhodesia question would be settled in weeks, not months. The Conservative Government's policy has been consistent ever since the inception of the Simonstown Agreement. When a resolution was passed in the Security Council calling upon States to ban arms to South Africa—a resolution which the Opposition always forget to say is non-mandatory—the Conservative Government of the day explicitly reserved its right to sell arms for defence.

Miss Joan Lestor (Eton and Slough)

Before or after?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

Later we narrowed the definition to the defence of the sea routes. That is the context in which we intend to reserve our complete freedom of action. In face of a rapid expansion of the Soviet Navy into the oceans, it would be folly to sacrifice a base which offers security of tenure. The Opposition have widened the debate as they were entitled to do; they have widened the range of parliamentary discussion, as they are entitled to do. But the issue that is before us today, after the House has heard the learned Attorney-General, is to decide whether there is a legal requirement to sell to the South African Government helicopters and whether—

Miss Lestor

On a point of order. Would it be in order to ask—

Hon. Members

No.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. The only question the hon. Lady could ask would be on a point of order to me. She must not ask the right hon. Gentleman a question through me.

Miss Lestor

On a point of order. In order that the House can be absolutely clear on what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, was the reservation on arms at the time—

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. That cannot possibly be a point of order. Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

I want to conclude by saying that of course the right hon. Gentleman is right when he says—

Mr. Stanley Orme (Salford, West)

Why does not the right hon. Gentleman talk to the Motion?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

—that apartheid is detestable and raises great moral issues concerning human rights. Of course that is true. We debated these matters at length in Singapore. There was not one single person at the Singapore conference who did not admit that our intention to fulfil our obligations under the Simonstown Agreement had nothing to do with racialism. They said that time and again to us. Nobody, even if the right hon. Gentleman will not accept it, has accused us of following a policy of racial bias.

When we come to the Division this evening, my right hon. Friend who winds up the debate will ask the House to reject the Motion and to accept the Amendment, since we have a legal obligation to sell helicopters to South Africa and we mean to meet it.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. Jeremy Thorpe (Devon, North)

In two respects the Foreign Secretary has followed paths of great wisdom in his speech. The first was to say that he would leave the legal argument to the Attorney-General, and he certainly practised what he preached by giving us no legal justification for the position which is being taken by Her Majesty's Government. Bearing in mind the exchanges in this House on 22nd February, to which I shall refer in a moment. when the right hon. Gentleman found himself in disagreement with the Law Officers, perhaps it is a good thing that the professional man on the spot should be given the last word.

The second point was that he could find no moral principle involved in the debate. Having heard his speech, I entirely agree. Had I been in this House 35 years ago and had the noble Lord, Lord Dunglass then been at the Despatch Box, I would not have expected to have heard a very much different speech from that which the Foreign Secretary gave us today. [HON. MEMBERS: "Cheap."] As I shall seek to show, this policy will not be "cheap", but will be likely to be very expensive for the interests of this country.

The right lion. Gentleman raised certain criticisms that had been made of the former Prime Minister by President Kaunda and President Nyerere. I would say in passing that I would rather be a white face in Zambia than a black face living in South Africa. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why does not the right hon. Gentleman go and live there?"] I do not live there because there is enough racialism to combat in this country with our immigration laws. Those two Presidents were making their criticisms against the then Labour Prime Minister for policies which were then backed by the Conservative Opposition. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman's point was somewhat facile.

Accepting all the qualifications entered into by the present Government in Singapore, it must be remembered that they turned down the Study Group which I put to the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister in November last. Fortunately, the Liberal Prime Minister in Canada put forward that suggestion and it was accepted in Singapore. It was nonetheless believed that we attached some importance to this Study Group and that would not jump the gun and take a decision. If the contrary was taken, why has Nigeria already announced that she is to withdraw? There is the proof.

I believe, unlike the Foreign Secretary, that the present Prime Minister was right on 19th December, 1967, when we had a debate on the issue of South African arms following a Standing Order No.9 Motion. He then said that it was natural that in such an issue emotions should run high and that it was also right that a large part of our discussion should be devoted to questions of morality. But, notwithstanding the Foreign Secretary's speech, I hope that the Conservative Party will feel that morality plays as great a part in this issue as legality. If they do feel that, they will accord with the spirit in which the present Prime Minister spoke on behalf of the Official Opposition when we last debated this matter in 1967.

I have been in the House for only 1l½ years but have been in politics for 23 years. With one exception in the last 15 years, namely 1956, there has been no political issue on which I personally have felt more passionately than on the issue of the supply of arms to South Africa. I shall say why in a few moments.

Disregarding for a moment the merits of this issue, the way in which the present Government have handled the matter has breached every canon of good government for which they sought to castigate their predecessors. What happened? Within days, not weeks, of the election Dr. Muller presented himself at the Foreign Office, looking, as one correspondent said, like a thirsty man waiting for opening time. Without even giving the Cabinet an opportunity to discuss and consider the matter, the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary said, "You need not worry. Arms will be supplied." So much for instant Government.

Then we got the Law Officers' opinion in the White Paper, in paragraph 59 of which we are asked to accept: In our opinion, it would not be reasonable…to impute to the parties an intention to include a term in the Sea Routes Agreement which would place any general and continuing legal obligation on Her Majesty's Government to permit the supply of arms to the South African Government. The Government were asked on 22nd February whether they agreed with that view; were we merely talking of the limited category of arms within the Simonstown Agreement; did they accept their Law Officers' view? They were particularly reticent in giving any answer to the question, and they have been reticent today. So much for open Government.

Then the Foreign Secretary was asked by the former Solicitor-General, the right hon. and learned Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Sir A. Irvine) on 22nd February: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there will be general agreement on both sides of the House with the conclusion set out in paragraph 59 of the Law Officers' advice in the White Paper? Does he confirm that there is no general or continuing obligation to permit the sale of arms to South Africa? The Foreign Secretary replied: As I understand it, there is a legal obligation to do this, but surely that is a matter for debate rather than an exchange across the Floor of the House at Question time."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd February, 1971; Vol.812, c. 40.] So much for united Government. The Law Officers take one view. The Foreign Secretary, perhaps not at that stage modestly declaring his lack of legal knowledge, takes a contrary view.

Then the Government who profess to abhor apartheid are doing the one thing that brings aid and comfort to the one régime which practises it. So much for double standards. Indeed, the Prime Minister, who says that the Government believe in freedom, travels the world in order to convince the world that the partners whom we need for the defence of the free world are those who practise one of the most oppressive régimes in the world. So much for the sincerity of their motives.

However, on the issue of the Commonwealth, I believe that the present Foreign Secretary has at least on one occasion been entirely right. This must be an important statement of Tory policy because it appears in their manifesto for the last election. On 9th December, 1967, the right hon. Gentleman told the Royal Commonwealth Society: I believe it would be a crime to throw away an essay in practical co-operation in which until now the Commonwealth has set an example. I profoundly hope that it will continue. So this co-operation took the form of the Commonwealth Study Group for the Security of the Indian Ocean. I accept straight away all the qualifications, including the rights which the Government said that they must retain. But I ask the right hon. Gentleman the question that I asked him the other day. Does he believe that it was really vital to take this decision, which will not bear fruition for 18 months, before the Commonwealth Study Group even met, let alone reported? Does he believe that that will strengthen or weaken the Commonwealth? I am asking him what the Prime Minister said. I accept that, with all its qualifications. But the mere fact that he and the Prime Minister carved out for this country certain rights of initiative does not mean that they have to take what many of us believe to be a wrong decision. So much for the value of their election pledges.

What is an extraordinary thought is that the main naval power in the Indian Ocean is not South Africa. It is India, which happens to be a member of the Commonwealth. Might not it have been a good idea perhaps to have consulted the Indian Government first, and at least to have had one meeting of the Commonwealth Study Group, before this petulant decision of the Prime Minister was taken?

What is perfectly plain is that, since the General Election, the Prime Minister has strained every nerve to justify the sale of arms to South Africa. He has sought to justify it on what has been constantly shifting ground. To start with, he talked about redressing the balance of power. One more pump from that argument, and the bicycle tyre would have burst. Then the right hon. Gentleman talked about the spirit of Simonstown. But his spiritual incantations were contradicted by the view of the 100 bishops of the Communion of which he is a member, and the theological arguments went. The next argument, we were told, was that this would contain Russian imperialism. The laughter in Washington and in Ottawa put that argument out of court—

Mr. Orme

And in Moscow.

Mr. Thorpe

Not only in Moscow but, I suspect, amongst the Chiefs of Staff here as well.

The Government now say that they are falling back on our legal obligations. They cannot even tell us whether they are merely speaking of our legal obligations or whether they want to go very much further and supply more than we need supply under the Simonstown Agreement. So much for open and frank Government.

The question which has been put repeatedly to the Treasury Bench is whether the limit of the Government's intentions is under Simonstown or whether they are Simonstown, plus an open-ended commitment. To that, there has been no reply, and this House, the country and the Commonwealth are entitled to an answer to that question. I believe that the Prime Minister said that we want frank questions and frank answers. We have not had them yet.

So we fall back on our treaty obligations. The Prime Minister is perfectly right about treaty obligations as they affect the Commonwealth. I well remember 30th January, 1962, when he was asked by the then hon. and gallant Member for Arundel and Shoreham, the late Captain Kerby, why we had not gone to the armed assistance of Portugal with whom we had a treaty obligation, when Goa was invaded by India. He said that the then Foreign Secretary had made it quite clear that there was no question of a commitment of British arms or armies because we were not prepared on this issue to have a con- frontation with the Commonwealth. How right the right hon. Gentleman was. At that stage, he had his priorities right.

So now the balance of power argument has gone, the argument about containing Russian imperialism has gone, the argument about the great defence of those few people who will defend the world has gone, and we fall back on the legal obligation, the one fig-leaf covering the Prime Minister's political inadequacy.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath)

The right hon. Gentleman was kind enough to refer with a certain amount of praise to my speech on 19th December, 1967. In that speech, I set out all the arguments on which the then Opposition based their policy. Those arguments have remained throughout our years of Opposition. They were explained at the last election. They were put before the Singapore Commonwealth Conference in detail. They remain the same.

Mr. Thorpe

I must concede straight away that, on the issue of South Africa, the Conservative Party has always been consistent. It is a long-established tradition which has been similarly applied not by the Prime Minister but by his Foreign Secretary to other régimes of a comparable nature in the 1930s. All that I was saying to the Prime Minister—and I repeat it in case he wishes to deny the point that he made—was that, when he opened the debate for the Opposition he said that, naturally, emotions would run high and that it was inevitable that a large part of the discussions would centre round questions of morality. Does he hold to the view expressed in that speech?

The Prime Minister

I hold to that view. I was saying that, when the right hon. Gentleman concluded his speech by suggesting that there is now only one argument being used, which is the legal obligation set out in the White Paper, he could not be more wrong. All the arguments are set out in my speech. They were held throughout our years in opposition. They were held throughout the General Election, and they were explained to the Commonwealth Conference in Singapore.

Mr. Thorpe

First, I have bad news for the Prime Minister. That was not the conclusion of my speech. There is very much more to come. Secondly, the Prime Minister cannot get away from this fact. The right hon. Gentleman was perhaps not listening with the attention which we might have hoped, to his own Foreign Secretary who was saying that we were legally obliged to supply arms. Perhaps the Prime Minister has not read the Amendment tabled by his own party.

Therefore, I come back to the premise from which, I am afraid, the Prime Minister cannot shift. The Government are now justifying their policies in regard to the supply of anus to South Africa by saying that they are under a legal obligation to supply arms. Does the right hon. Gentleman deny that? His silence is eloquent.

The Prime Minister

The right hon. Gentleman does not seem able to grasp this point. There are certain legal obligations which are sot out in the Attorney-General's White Paper. There are a considerable number of other arguments, many of which on the counter side have been put forward by the Leader of the Opposition today, others of which have been put forward by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and myself at Singapore. They are the same arguments which have been used since December, 1967. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that these arguments have been consistently put forward right up to the time of Singapore, and that they are still valid?

Mr. Thorpe

The Prime Minister cannot treat us as being as naive as the South African Government treat him. The Prime Minister has consistently shifted the grounds of his arguments until now he comes before this House and asks for approval of a legal document which he has asked his Law Officers to provide to show the legal basis on which the Government say that they must supply arms to South Africa. If the Prime Minister is now saying that there are moral grounds on which we have to supply arms, we should like to hear them. If the right hon. Gentleman is saying that this will redress the balance of power in the world and that President Nixon may be wrong—the Pentagon is not always right—then we should like to hear that.

The argument put forward by the Foreign Secretary is that the Govern- ment's present action is because we are legally bound under a certain agreement to supply arms to South Africa. That is why we are debating the White Paper, which is a legal document.

It is no good the Prime Minister shaking his head. He is not in the organ loft now. That is why the Government have moved their Amendment. It is no good the Prime Minister trying to get out of it. This is the basis on which the Government say that they are going to ship arms to a Fascist régime.

Mr. Healey

I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman has fully taken the point that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have now overthrown the basis of the carefully constructed compromise reached in the Cabinet on which they hoped to get a unanimous vote tonight. They have widened the argument and are now asking the House to approve a policy defined in 1967 with the arguments attached to it. I hope that that will be noted by all hon. Gentlemen opposite who have consistently, to their honour, rejected those arguments in that policy.

Mr. Thorpe

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey). I shall make two points on that and then leave it. If I have failed to convince the Prime Minister on this issue, then I must give up on it.

The Amendment tabled by the Government endorses Her Majesty's Government's willingness to grant licences for the supply of arms to South Africa in accordance with our legal obligations in relation to the Simonstown Agreement, as set out in Command Paper No.4589". Command Paper No.4589 talks about the legal obligations of Her Majesty's Government arising out of the Simonstown Agreement. If they cannot read, I give up hope even for this Government. That is what we are debating and that is the basis of their argument. Therefore, I ask what is the legal basis and whether it is binding on this country.

It is no good the Prime Minister looking at his watch. If he has to go, he has to go. This is a debate which will affect—

An Hon. Member

The Prime Minister has gone.

Mr. Thorpe

For which relief, much thanks.

This debate has divided the Commonwealth ever since this Government came into power. It has dominated the Singapore Conference and it has cast charges of bad faith on this country in the eyes of the world. Whether the Tory Government like it or not, it is a matter upon which many people in Africa and Asia and in this country feel profoundly and believe that the Government are wrong.

The Simonstown Agreement—I hope that I have the agreement of the Attorney-General—is limited as to time. Initially it was from 1955 to 1963 regarding the supply of equipment. This was extended for technical reasons. It was limited as far as arms are concerned in its objective, to the expanion of the South African navy. I am talking simply and exclusively about arms. I am not talking about the relationship of the commander-in-chief or the purpose of the Agreement. I am talking merely about the supply of arms, because that is the issue in the debate.

Under clause 7 it was limited as to its geographical extent. It was not for the defence of the Indian Ocean; it was for what was known in the Agreement as the South African area, which ended south of Mauritius.

I believe that the last Labour Government cannot reconcile the Harrison letter of 9th March, 1965, which said that there would be additional helicopters provided without any qualification, with the Allen statement of 31st May, 1965, which said that there would be replacements as a result of accident, but not for wear and tear.

Mr. Healey

He did not say that there would be. He said that they would be considered.

Mr. Thorpe

I do not accept that those two views are reconcilable. That is a matter of opinion and I merely put mine forward.

We have to rely for expectations on what the South Africans themselves were expecting. That is contained in page 9 of the White Paper. In January, 1967, they made a specific request for four helicopters. Those four helicopters were supplied by the previous Government. Therefore, the first question I ask is whether the Government accept paragraph 32 of the Law Officers' opinion, that in practical terms what is involved is whether Her Majesty's Government is under any obligation to permit the supply of any further Wasp helicopters. I think that the Attorney-General was right. That is the issue for the Government. I want to know whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman is able to carry his Administration with him. The only legal issue is whether the Government are under an obligation to supply further Wasp helicopters. I hope that the Attorney-General is able to carry his Administration with him, but so far we have not heard.

I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is able to carry his Administration with him on paragraph 59, that there is any general and continuing legal obligation on Her Majesty's Government to permit the supply of arms to the South African Government. But again we have so far had no reply.

The Foreign Secretary—if I misquote him no doubt he will correct me—said that we would have to reserve our liberty of action. We want to know whether we are discussing the strict legal obligations under the Simonstown Agreement. Whilst I deplore that that Agreement was ever entered into, I concede that we are legally bound. If that is the end of the matter much of the bitterness and hostility and the misunderstanding can be at an end after this debate. But if the Government are saying, "No, we are going to reserve our position; we may want to supply very much more, perhaps in dribs and drabs. We are a great sovereign Power. We will not be interfered with. We must keep our national sovereignty", then, at the least, we shall not have a straight answer from the debate and, at the worst, I believe that there will be grave consequences in the Commonwealth.

Then my criticism is that the White Paper is what I believe international lawyers would call a partial document; it does not take into account what international lawyers would regard as mutuality. If in one's relations with a foreign Power that foreign Power is in breach of its legal obligations, at the worst one is entitled to take reprisals and at best to look at all one's legal obligations. Under Article 7 of the United Nations Charter any resolution of the Security Council is mandatory. South Africa has not only breached mandatory obligations in regard to Rhodesia, which is a British Colony, but, has stated in paragraphs 287, 300 and 301 of the 1966 U.N. documents, that it does not intend to be bound by those mandatory obligations. So the South Africans are in international law in breach of their legal commitments to us.

Let us consider Simonstown itself. I read the remarks of the British Ambassador which the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary was kind enough to put in HANSARD on 22nd February. He did not answer many of the questions. For example, was the South African Evening Post wrong when on 25th February, 1968, it pointed out that Simonstown had been declared a white group area and that a coloured community of 1,200 had been ordered to move out of the area and go to Slang Kop 10 miles away, where there were no schools, no churches, no meeting halls, no roads and no accommodation? If that is the case, it is, to quote the Prime Minister's own theological phrase, "in breach of the spirit of Simonstown". Was the Archbishop of Capetown wrong when he said how much sympathy he had with the 4,000 coloured people who had been removed from the Simonstown area because it was a white group area?

It is a strange doctrine that at the United Nations one votes for a resolution but does not necessarily—

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles (Winchester)

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Before you took the Chair, Mr. Speaker requested that all speeches this afternoon should be short. It might assist the House if you would repeat that remark, because the right hon. Gentleman apparently did not hear.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris)

Order. That is not a point of order. Once an hon. Member has the Floor, provided he is not tediously repetitious, he can speak for as long as he remains in order. All that the Chair can do is to assert a wish that to get as many people into the debate as possible speeches shall be of a moderate length.

Mr. Thorpe

There is very little more I wish to say, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise to the House that we have been detained by the hon. and gallant Gentleman, who has prolonged my speech.

I want to come to a legal argument, on which I know that I shall have the close attention of the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General. It is a strange concept that one can vote for a recommendation—not admittedly a mandatory resolution—and then have certain reservations so that one is not bound by it. That is a strange concept of international law, and it is not one shared by the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary. On 5th July, 1950, there was a recommendation of the United Nations, for which we voted, to the effect that troops should be committed to Korea to deal with an act of armed aggression. The House decided that although that was only a recommendation we were bound by it because it was a recommendation for which we had voted. One of those in the Lobby on that date, as can be seen in Vol.477 of HANSARD, was Lord Dunglass. I believe that that was a view of international and political morality and legality which was wholly correct.

Before the Government use their sophistry, saying that we can vote for a recommendation but not be bound by it if we have reservations, perhaps they will have regard to Article 103 of the U.N. Charter, which says: In the event of a conflict between the obligations of the members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail. I have not seen any move by the Government to have that Charter amended, nor to give up their membership. The argument about Sir Patrick Dean's qualification in 1963, that we voted for the recommendation but said that we were not really bound by it, is just about as creditable as an hon. Member voting for an income tax proposal but saying that it does not apply to him if the Inland Revenue asks him to pay up.

I believe that we are bound by that United Nations Resolution as members of the United Nations. I believe that South Africa has been in breach of international law in regard to this country on Rhodesia. Our commitment to the United Nations is binding, and the South Africans themselves are in breach of Simonstown. I further believe that our obligations were fully discharged by the supply of the four helicopters mentioned in the aide-memoire of 5th March, 1970. Therefore, we are entitled to know from the Government whether what we are being asked to vote for tonight is the strict legal obligations of Simonstown or for an open-ended commitment.

It is no coincidence that the Prime Minister is the toast of Pretoria. Seldom has a British Prime Minister been more popular in South Africa since the war, because the right hon. Gentleman has given the seal of respectability to an evil and vicious régime which he himself is the first to criticise and deplore. The tragedy is that he and his Government have been so naïve as to be used by the South Africans for their own purposes.

I have always believed that if there is a third world war—and, please God, there will not be—it will not be on the clash of ideologies, that it will not be capitalist versus Marxist. It will be on a clash of colour, the white faces opposed to the others, and it will be China that has stimulated that political polarisation.

One of the great problems of the House has been the lack of understanding of feeling in Africa. It was because the former Prime Minister did not understand the mentality of the post-war immigrant to Rhodesia, and to a very large extent some of the immigrant population, that we had U.D.I., which could have been averted. It is because the present Prime Minister does not understand the passionate feeling in Africa that he has even contemplated renewing arms sales to South Africa.

If you have a black face, Mr. Deputy Speaker—

Mr. Sandys (Streatham)

He has not.

Mr. Thorpe

Indeed, he has not, and what a disadvantage he would be under if he had and the right hon. Gentleman were in power!

If you are a man with a black face and you belong to a Commonwealth nation you would find that the Commonwealth is one of the few organisations in the world in which people of every colour and every creed, from every continent, can sit down in relative trust and complete equality, but then you see the oldest, most senior member of that Commonwealth selling arms and underpinning a régime which believes that a man's status is determined from the second of his birth. That is much worse than Marxism, because it is the colour of the skin that determines the man's status. When the Government understand the feelings of such a man they will begin to realise why people in Africa and Asia feel so passionately about the matter, and why it is much more important than the Prime Minister's stubbornness and determination to show that he will not give in on a comma, because to do so would be thought an act of weakness.

That is why this is a profoundly wrong decision. It will imperil the chances of the continuance of a multi-racial Commonwealth, which is one of the greatest influences for peace in the world. That is why I believe that the bitterness it will set off will imperil our investments and trade with black Africa and imperil our own nationals who live in many parts of Africa and Asia.

That is why I say to the Government with all the passion I can summon that this is a profoundly wrong decision. It is wrong morally, it is wrong legally, and it is contrary to the best interests of this country.

5.50 p.m.

Mr. Sandys (Streatham)

I do not propose to follow the somewhat sanctimonious sermonising of the right hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe). The Leader of the Opposition also lectured us about moral principles and received a devastating reply from my right hon. Friend.

In earlier debates I fully explained my views on South Africa's racial policy. All I wish to say today is that, in my opinion, ostracism is not the best way to bring about a change. I am glad, therefore, that several black African leaders are now advocating a dialogue with South Africa.

I can summarise my views on the sale of arms in a few words. The most basic duty of any Government is to defend their people and vital interests against external attack. The responsibility for deciding what action is required to discharge that duty rests on the Government, and the Government alone. The Government cannot in any circumstances shift that responsibility on to the shoulders of any other authority, whether it be the United Nations or a Commonwealth Study Group.

In the opinion of Her Majesty's Government—an opinion which I fully share—the supply of certain types of naval armaments could not conceivably affect to any appreciable extent the ability of the South African Government to maintain internal order. But even if the possession of these arms were to strengthen the hands of the South African Government in resisting opponents of apartheid, this would not absolve Her Majesty's Government of their basic duty to the British people.

The Leader of the Opposition claimed that the sale of helicopters to South Africa would drive the black African countries into the arms of the Communists. Some have gone so far as to says that Tanzania and Kenya would retaliate by providing naval bases for the Russians. I just do not believe it.

In the case of Tanzania, after the bitter experience of Zanzibar, where the Chinese have established virtual domination, President Nyerere is not likely to risk losing control of Tanganyika as well by offering the Russians a naval base at Dar-es-Salaam.

As for Kenya, the Government of President Kenyatta have shown the most resolute opposition to Russian and Chinese penetration, which they recognise as a grave threat to their internal security. No amount of emotional feeling is likely to deflect them from this carefully considered policy.

Then there is the threat of certain countries to withdraw from the Commonwealth. I have no more desire than any hon. Member to see a rift in the Commonwealth. But whether or not one believes those threats to be serious, we should not respond to that sort of pressure. If Her Majesty's Government once show that they can be forced to change their policy by the threat of resignation, the same tactics can be repeated on other occasions.

Of course we fully understand the feelings and anxieties of the black African countries about apartheid, but they. too, should try to understand our feelings and anxieties about the growth of Soviet military power which threatens our very existence as a free nation.

Whether or not we have legal obligations to supply arms to South Africa, Her Majesty's Government have an inescapable obligation to take whatever measures they consider necessary to protect the vital interests of the British people, and I hope that no pressure from the Opposition or elsewhere will deter them from doing their duty.

5.56 p.m.

Mr. Raphael Tuck (Watford)

I wish to raise a point which I felt was important some time ago. As it has so far not been mentioned today, 1 was beginning to think that perhaps I was wrong. I will raise it nevertheless, particularly as Mr. Geoffrey Byng dealt with it recently in The Times. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal Party alluded to it in his speech, but did not bring it to its logical conclusion.

The point in question refers to Article 103 of the United Nations Charter. It provides: In the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail. That means, of course, that if there is a United Nations obligation and an international one, the United Nations one takes precedence. Paragraph 3 of the Resolution of 7th August, 1963 Solemnly calls upon all States to cease forthwith the sale and shipment of arms, ammunition of all types and military vehicles to South Africa. That was accepted on 4th December, 1963, by Sir Patrick Dean, who said: Because some way foward must be found we are therefore prepared to support the draft Resolution which has now been tabled by the representative of Norway. This entails our acceptance of paragraph 5"— I think he must have been referring to paragraph 3, because there was no paragraph 5— of the draft Resolution which '… calls upon all States to cease forthwith the sale and shipment of equipment and materials for the manufacture and maintenance of arms and ammunition in South Africa'.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home

Would the hon. Gentleman read on, to the reservation? Sir Patrick Dean was acting on the instructions of Her Majesty's Government. I trust that the hon. Gentleman will tell us that the resolution was non-mandatory.

Mr. Tuck

The right hon. Gentleman has anticipated me. Certainly the resolution was non-mandatory, but it was accepted by the United Kingdom; and if a resolution is so accepted but is afterwards declared by the United Kingdom to be non-mandatory, then in my view that is sheer hypocrisy. In any event, it was non-mandatory only until we accepted it. Once we accepted it, we were in duty bound to honour it.

Mr. Thorpe

Is it not a fact that we refused to vote for the resolution on Gibraltar because we were not prepared to be bound by its terms? We voted for this one, but surely there is no legal justification to vote for something and then say that it is not legally binding.

Mr. Tuck

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention.

Mr. R. T. Paget (Northampton)

is my hon. Friend saying that any nation can unilaterally repudiate a treaty by voting for a non-mandatory United Nations resolution? That seems an extraordinary proposition.

Mr. Tuck

I am saying nothing of the sort. I am merely pointing out that once we accept a United Nations resolution which is non-mandatory we are, having accepted it, in duty bound to honour it. This resolution was accepted by Sir Patrick Dean, no doubt on the instructions of the Foreign Secretary. The Foreign Secretary of that day was a man by the name of Lord Home, possibly a relation, but obviously a very distant relation, of the right hon. Gentleman who now occupies that position—[An HON. MEMBER: "Ha, ha, ha."] This is no laughing matter. Sir Patrick Dean went on to say that we would comply with it in the sense that no arms would be exported to South Africa from the United Kingdom which would enable the policy of apartheid to be enforced. First, this was a legally binding obligation, and if it conflicts with the international obligation under the Simonstown Agreement, assuming that there is an obligation to sell arms to South Africa under that Agreement, it must prevail and Simons- town becomes nullified and of no effect because of that superior obligation under the United Nations.

Sir Patrick did go on to say that no arms would be exported to enable the policy of apartheid to be enforced. Is it really the Government's view that these helicopters will not enable apartheid to be enforced? Are they sincere when they say that the helicopters are necessary for the defence of our sea routes? Does the Prime Minister really believe that, if Russia were to launch an all-out offensive in the Indian Ocean, the presence of what the Russians might call these Lilliputian defences would deter them from doing so?

What these helicopters are really being used for can be seen in Vietnam. The Vietnamese call them "gun ships". They are being used in large quantities to stem the advance by the North Vietnamese and to destroy them on the ground. They are being used internally and that is how they can and will be used by South Africa, if need be.

South Africa is very afraid. She knows that she has trampled underfoot, beaten, whipped and shamed in every possible way her coloured population. She has tortured them at times and she is afraid of the day of retribution whenever it shall arrive. She wants these helicopters so as to be able to counter that retribution and destroy her internal enemies. She knows that she can use them internally. She is only afraid of retribution not from her own coloured population but also from the coloured states around her. That is why she wants these helicopters.

The Government must know this. They must have the intelligence to appreciate this fact. Further, is the Prime Minister so lacking in intelligence that he does not realise that, if he persists in his aim and sells arms to South Africa, he will only be driving the coloured African states into the willing arms of the Communists? Is this really what he wants?

As for the moral issue, we have the spectacle of the Prime Minister and his Government expressing horror and indignation at the way in which South Africa is treating her coloured population, but agreeing to sell her arms at the same time to condone her acts. I seem to remember a similar case in the 1930s, when a Conservative Government expressed horror and indignation at the way in which Hitler was treating the Jews, but lent him money and sold him arms at the same time—[An HON. MEMBER: "And Mussolini."] Yes, but mainly to Hitler.

I told the Prime Minister a short while ago that he would go down in history as Robin Hood in reverse, because Robin Hood robbed the rich and gave their money to the poor, whereas he robs the poor and gives their money to the rich. I wish he were here in his place now, because I have something else to tell him. He and his Government will go down as the third Conservative Government in 32 years who have done their best to besmirch the name of Britain, to drag it in the mud and to make its citizens feel truly ashamed.

The first such occasion was when Chamberlain waved that ridiculous piece of paper in our faces when he returned from Munich in 1938. That was an affront to the intelligence of every one of us. The second occasion was the Conservative Government's action over Suez, which was condemned by every nation of the civilised world. Finally, we have this contemptible and despicable action by the Prime Minister and his Government. I hope that the Prime Minister is proud of that record.

6.5 p.m.

The Attorney-General (Sir Peter Rawlinson)

I would start by apologising to the House and to my hon. Friends for intervening at this stage, when perhaps some other of my hon. Friends might have caught your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Nevertheless, it seemed important, considering the legal issues involved here, that I should intervene when other hon. Members will be able to follow, so that they may be able to debate the submissions which I shall make.

I appreciate that this is a subject—we have just seen the evidence in the speech of the hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Raphael Tuck)—which involves emotional and political passion. However, I think that most hon. Members would agree that that is rarely the best state of mind in which coolly to review issues of law, which is the task that I have to carry out.

It is essential for the proper consideration of the agreement, in order that the House, whatever it does over the matters of policy, can face up to the matters of law, to examine the purposes and objects of that agreement, to apply the rules of international law as to the interpretation of treaties, and in so doing to examine the practice of the parties to that agreement—mainly, Her Majesty's Government and the South African Government—and especially to examine the conduct of those parties towards that agreement in the years 1961 and 1963. Without that, it is impossible to assess the full implications of that agreement and to be able to establish, are there or are there not any legal obligations under international law?

It would be impossible, in my view, for any lawyer to be able to give comprehensive advice without precise instructions about the practice of the parties in 1961 and 1963 in respect of the requirement and the conversion of the vessels to take a particular type of helicopter, designed for a particular anti-submarine rôle.

Before turning to some of the legal arguments, I should like to assure the House, and in particular the former Attorney-General, that I have not improperly seen, or sought to see, our predecessors' papers. I am sure that he will take that from me. The normal convention would have permitted me to see any formal opinion given by our predecessors, as it gives me the right to look at prosecutions which have previously been instituted. It is obviously for better government that there should be that convention. The only papers that I saw of the previous Government were those papers published in the White Paper. There was, as my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said, no formal opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown prior to this, and so I did not see any such.

It seemed that all the documents which were placed before me by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office were presumably seen by my predecessors, but during the consideration of the legal problem, further material became available to me in circumstances which made it apparent that our predecessors may not have seen that material. That is the only comment which I should like to make on this matter.

I should like now to turn to the White Paper and some of the legal arguments which have been addressed—

Sir Elwyn Jones (West Ham, South)

Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that the giving of a formal opinion has become a somewhat unusual experience now in the Law Officers' Department, and that more frequently opinions and advice are given by letter, and even more frequently orally in Cabinet or Cabinet committee?

The Attorney-General

I accept that advice is given by letter and orally in Cabinet or Cabinet committee. But there is significance attached to a formal opinion by the Law Officers, because in such a case there are formal instructions and formal consultations with lawyers of the Department and, of course, a formal written opinion is submitted. There is significance in that the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown is recorded and looked at thereafter, particularly if it relates to the interpretation of a treaty.

I turn now to the argument which has been foreshadowed by the right hon. and learned Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe) and by the hon. Member for Watford and which has also been advanced in the newspapers. It would seem to be the only argument which has been advanced questioning the advice which the Law Officers have tendered in this matter. It is that a non-mandatory Security Council resolution constitutes a treaty obligation, that any State which accepts it comes under an obligation to the United Nations, that therefore Article 103 applies, and that this United Nations obligation prevails over other treaty obligations.

I suggest that this doctrine has never been accepted. It is a novel argument. I do not accept that it is correct in law. In any event, the United Kingdom made clear in the Security Council the extent to which it would define each resolution and the manner in which it was intending to apply it. It did not accept the recommendations in the resolution in this case so far as they concerned the supply of arms required by the Sea Routes Agreement. There was, therefore, no disguising of the position which the United Kingdom was adopting in these terms. The doctrine was not accepted by the last Government, who continued to supply spares and other equipment and ammuni- tion between 1964 and 1970, presumably because of the view they took of the obligations of the Simonstown Agreement.

I notice that The Times, in its new style journalism, asserts that the Law Officers never examined that argument. I shall explain that non-mandatory Security Council recommendations under Chapter VI, as opposed to decisions under Chapter VII, have never been accepted as imposing legal obligations. As this argument has been advanced, however, I will deal with it in some detail.

Chapter VI is headed, "Pacific Settlement of Disputes". Chapter VII is headed: Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression". These are both parts of the functions of the Security Council. Chapter VI deals with non-mandatory resolutions and provides for recommendations only. By contrast, Chapter VII includes provisions for binding decisions of the Security Council. Thus, Chapter VII is concerned with mandatory resolutions, and, if the Security Council so determines, under that Chapter it can make recommendations or decide what measures can be taken under Articles 41 and 43 that would equal a decision—a decision, I accept, under Article 103 of the Charter, which provides that, in the event of a conflict of obligations on members of the United Nations, their obligations under the Charter shall prevail. A decision under Chapter VII would be applied by Article 103, but a recommendation under Chapter VI would not attract Article 103 and would not be obligatory. There is a distinction between the two Chapters. So the conclusions of The Times are wrong in law, quite apart from the special facts about the United Kingdom statement about the obligations of the resolution in this case.

Sir Arthur Irvine (Liverpool, Edge Hill)

The right hon. and learned Gentleman has no doubt seen the article by the right hon. and learned Member for Devon (Mr. Thorpe) and the reference to the resolution about Korea. I recognise, as we all do, the total difference between that case and this one. But does he attach importance to the fact that the House of Commons by Resolution chose to regard the recommendation about Korea as an obligation?

The Attorney-General

I understand that what the House of Commons did in 1950 with regard to Korea was to express by vote its attitude to the resolution.

Sir A. Irvine

It referred to the "obligation".

The Attorney-General

I have just been shown the terms. It expressed the obligation but it did not express the legal obligation which I suggest is the distinction between Chapter VI and Chapter VII of the Charter.

All the resolutions concerning South African arms were under Chapter VI. The first, No. 181, of 7th August, 1963, called upon all States to cease the sale and shipment of arms and ammunition of all types and military vehicles to South Africa. The last Government did not accept that as mandatory or that they were obliged to do so, since they continued to supply ammunition and various other things to South Africa.

The United Kingdom abstained on the resolution and expressed its reservations in an oral statement which said: In view of our arrangements of cooperation with South Africa for the protection of the sea routes, we must reserve our position in the light of the requirements regarding the supply of equipment appropriate to these purposes. The United Kingdom made its reservations perfectly clear at that time. Sir Patrick Dean went on to say that he had listened to the United States representative, who had made it clear that the resolution, which the Security Council had just adopted, and the measures it called for all States to take should not he regarded as being a resolution under Chapter VII. This was followed by a written communication to the Secretary-General, in which the United Kindom said: With regard to the particular terms of the resolution Her Majesty's Government wish to point out that they do not regard the resolution as being of a mandatory nature within the framework of Chapter VII of the Charter or, indeed, as falling within the terms of Chapter VII at all. It went on again to express the distinction made by the Government between arms for internal repression and arms required by the South African Government for external defence, and in par- ticular in order to be able to play their part in the joint defence of the Cape routes.

So, both oral and written reservations were expressed to the Secretary-General and to the Security Council. The oral reservations were made in August, 1963, and the written representations in September, 1963. They were followed in December, 1963, by resolution No.182, in which again the representative of the United Kingdom said: In giving support to this resolution, we do so because we regard the recommendations to Governments which it contains as being consistent with the powers of the Council in Chapter VI of the Charter and within the framework of that Chapter. We were again reasserting the position we had taken up on resolution No. 181 and emphasising the powers being exercised in Chapter VI.

Finally, there was resolution No. 191 in June, 1964, in which the twelfth paragraph was important. It reaffirms …its call upon all States to cease forth-with the sale and shipment to South Africa of arms, ammunition of all types, military vehicles, and equipment and materials for the manufacture and maintenance of arms and ammunition in South Africa. The use of the word "reaffirms" indicates the reference back to resolutions 181 and 182, and again, the United Kingdom delegate reminded the Security Council that the United Kingdom abstained, in August 1963, on resolution 181, and reminded the Security Council that the United Kingdom had stated its reservations on resolution 182 in December, 1963. The United Kingdom delegate at that time repeated the position of his Government on the export of arms, as stated in the Secretary-General's report, that report being the official record of the Security Council.

In conclusion on this matter, from the record it is wholly clear that the United Kingdom clearly intended, as she was entitled, to apply the resolution in such a way as would permit the United Kingdom to supply weapons or ammunition in pursuance of the Simonstown Agreement. Moreover, any vote cast by the United Kingdom was cast on a basis that resolutions were recommendations only.

My advice to Parliament would be that the non-mandatory resolutions, under Chapter VI of the Security Council do not create legal obligations. That is a view which has been held for many years in the past. In any event, the United Kingdom made its decision on the application of the resolutions quite plain. Indeed, the last Administration obviously followed that by supplying ammunition and equipment between 1964 and 1970.

Mr. Raphael Tuck

If a resolution is passed in September that is non-mandatory and Great Britain says that she has reservations and will not support it, and later on, in December, she says that she accepts that resolution, does that not make that resolution binding upon her? If not, what is the difference between expressing a reservation in September and expressing her acceptance of the resolution in December?

The Attorney-General

The hon. Gentleman has misheard me. The reservations were expressed on both occasions, and they were made perfectly clear, both orally and in writing, in August and September, 1963, and repeated in December, 1963.

What is clear is that the difference between Chapter VI and Chapter VII is that under Chapter VI the non-mandatory resolution does not attract to itself Article 103, and in Chapter VII, where there is a decision, it does. As these were resolutions under Chapter VI, there was no question of the attraction of Article 103 to these particular resolutions.

Mr. Robert Hughes (Aberdeen, North)

I wonder if the right hon. and learned Gentleman will explain why one votes for the resolution at all, following the kind of curious logic we are getting, that if one votes for it with reservations it has no meaning. So why bother to vote for the resolution?

The Attorney-General

As the hon. Gentleman appreciates, the particular resolution was of many paragraphs. There was only one paragraph to which there was a reservation. This is in the last of these resolutions. The United Kingdom was making clear that its attitude was that it would not be supplying arms for internal operations but that it would retain its rights and obligations under the treaty which it had with South Africa.

I deal shortly with two other points which I have read about or to which reference has been made. One point was as to why the Vienna Convention of 1969 was quoted in the White Paper. The reason was that those paragraphs of Article 31 of that Convention are a concise, authoritative and the most up-to-date statement of the relevant rules under the customary international law. The Law Officers were well aware that it is not in force, nor in any case applicable to treaties completed before it came into force but the Convention was quoted for convenience and because it expressed what is concise, modern and up to date with regard to the interpretation of the law on the interpretation of treaties.

On the point raised by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal Party with regard to employment at the base, the instructions which I have received are to the effect that South Africa is carrying out its obligations under paragraph 4 of the letter of 30th June, 1955. But in any event, that is ancillary to the bases agreement. This is not the sea routes agreement, and, for it to affect termination of the other agreement, it would have to be essential to the accomplishment of the purposes of the Treaty. In these circumstances, if it is not essential to the purposes of the treaty, then it cannot affect the legality or the obligations of the Treaty which subsist.

The sea routes agreement is a treaty. A treaty creates rights and obligations. This treaty remains in force. The Leader of the Opposition, when Prime Minister, said …the Agreement is not capable of unilateral denunciation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th November, 1964; Vol. 702, c. 201.] In March of this year, the Aide Memoire dispatched by the previous Government said that the previous Government did not regard the Simonstown Agreement as relevant to or affected by this decision to refuse to allow the licensing of helicopters. After 1964 and the embargo of that time, the previous Government were licensing the supply of spare parts and ammunition.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. George Thomson), when Minister of State, said It is an accepted principle that a contract to supply equipment carries with it an understanding that the necessary spare parts will normally be provided."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th January, 1965; Vol. 705, c. 150.] Clearly that was one of the obligations which arose.

Mr. Thorpe

I do not ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman to answer my question at this stage if it breaks the chain of his argument, but I should like an undertaking that he will try to tell us whether the Government have accepted paragraphs 32 and 59 of his White Paper, that there is no general and continuing obligation, and that we are merely legally bound. I ask whether the Attorney-General will tell us that those legal obligations are accepted as being the exclusive legal obligations by the Government?

The Attorney-General

I can answer that by saying that the legal obligations set out in the White Paper on the advice which the Law Officers gave to Parliament and previously to the Government, were accepted by the Government as the limit of the legal obligations which they have.

In view of what has been said by my right hon. Friends, I emphasise the legal obligation, and that is limited, as we have said in our advice to Parliament and to the Government, to the initial equipment, which, in effect, amounts to the helicopters and the replacement spare equipment, and does not involve a general obligation.

On the supply of Wasp helicopters and the figures for that, I do not propose to recite the whole White Paper, which was presented to Parliament so that Parliament could look at the argument based upon the facts and the documents. It is impossible to do that in a speech to the House.

May I clarify the facts? The original supply of Wasp helicopters was prior to 1964 and was six, of which two were later written off, which amounted to four helicopters. In 1966, there was a supply of four more, and so, by July of 1967, there were eight in operation. At that time, in 1966, the South African Navy had two former Royal Naval destroyers, the "Van Riebeek" and the "Van der Stel", which had been purchased between 1950 and 1952, prior to the Simonstown Agreement and wholly separate from any obligation under that Agreement. From 1962 to 1966 the South Africans converted those vessels to carry Wasp heli- copters. The complement for destroyers, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, is two on board plus 2.5 back-up, which equals nine helicopters for the destroyers. The eight very nearly filled the complement for those two pre-Simonstown ships.

In 1966 when those four Wasp helicopters were supplied—as I understand it, these were subsequently prayed in aid as fulfilling the obligation under Simonstown—the conversion of the three antisubmarine frigates provided under the Simonstown Agreement, the "Kruger", the "Steyn" and the "Pretorious"—to take helicopters had not even begun, let alone been completed. The first was not completed before 1969–70.

Therefore, looking at the Agreement as a matter of law—after all, the Agreement must be construed having regard to how the parties behaved—those four Wasps in 1966 could not have been supplied under the Simonstown Agreement. They were the complement for the frigates. The complement for the frigates is one on board plus 2.5 back-up. So the three frigates needed 11. Therefore, the provision of helicopters in 1966 was not, and could not have been, partially completed by the four Wasps which were in fact provided for the two Royal Naval destroyers. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman says that that is wrong, but he will see from the document that the South Africans were making an inquiry.

I again ask the House to recollect the purposes of the Agreement and to recollect that the Agreement must be interpreted in good faith. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to remember that the inquiry was made by the South African Government after the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had said that oustanding commitments would be fulfilled.

The South African Government made an inquiry as to Wasp helicopters and asked what the British Government were going to do. As appears from head (d) on page 34 the South African Government categorically asked for (i) Replacement of Westland Wasp Helicopters which may be written off strength as a result of accidents or wear and tear, or augmentation in numbers to meet S.A. Naval requirements. (ii) The continued supply of the complete range of spares and anti-warfare equipment to maintain Westland Wasp Helicopters in operational service. That was the inquiry posed by a party to a binding obligation. The other party asked for time to answer that inquiry. It received time to answer the inquiry. It was in these words that Her Majesty's then Government replied to the other party to an agreement which was then subsisting—these words appear on page 37: I am writing to let you know that Her Majesty's Government will be prepared to supply additional Wasp helicopters to meet South African naval requirements. In reaching this decision, Her Majesty's Government have taken account of the fact that these specialised aircraft are integral parts of a complete antisubmarine weapons system supplied to South Africa under the Simonstown Agreement.

Mr. Healey

I shall deal with this matter in more detail when I wind up. May I just put this to the Attorney-General at this point. This statement of general principle in response to a request by the South African Government for a statement of general principle was made immediately before the South African Government, having received this statement, asked Westland if it could make a contract for the delivery of four helicopters. The contract was not even drafted for another six months. The helicopters were delivered a year later. For other reasons which I shall explain later, there is no doubt whatever that the four helicopters delivered by the Labour Government were requested as part of the Simonstown Agreement to equip the frigates supplied by Her Majesty's Government under that Agreement. I shall adduce more detailed evidence from the present Government to support that contention when I wind up.

The Attorney-General

The right hon. Gentleman will recognise that he has prolonged my intervention by making that statement. Others will argue moved by their political passions or their emotions. I am pointing the attention of the House to the inquiry and to the reply to that inquiry. The right hon. Gentleman must be careful in his choice of language and in asking the House to accept his version of the interpretation to be put upon the Aide Memoire. The South African Government, in making the inquiry, said: it is not quite clear what the United Kingdom Government considers the precise scope to be of the 'outstanding commitments by the Ministry of Defence' which the then Prime Minister had stated that he would fulfil. Under "Westland Wasp Helicopters" the South African Government specified augmentation in numbers to meet South African Naval requirements and The continued supply of the complete range of spares and anti-submarine warfare equipment to maintain Westland Wasp Helicopters in operational service. Then there came a reply from the Government of the day. The right hon. Gentleman must, in reviewing this matter, cast aside his views on the political argument. The then Government stated categorically that Her Majesty's Government will be prepared to supply additional Wasp helicopters to meet South African naval requirements. I ask the House to note the words "naval requirements". The then Government went on to say: In reaching this decision, Her Majesty's Government have taken account of the fact that these specialised aircraft are integral parts of a complete anti-submarine weapons system supplied to South Africa under the Simonstown Agreement. I submit to the House that, on a correct reading of this document, it can only be an answer to an inquiry as to what the future will be with regard to the supply of Westland Wasp helicopters under the Simonstown Agreement.

Mr. Healey

rose—

The Attorney-General

No, I will not give way.

Mr. Healey

The Attorney-General has not met my point in any way whatever.

The Attorney-General

I am coming to the right hon. Gentleman's point. I submit that Her Majesty's Government's letter dated March, 1965, was a categorical reply to a categorical inquiry. As a categorical answer it was an answer saying," We will supply Wasp helicopters under the Simonstown Agreement". So be it. That was what they said. It was in reply to an inquiry by the South African Government themselves in which they had asked for clarification of the statement by the then Government of the United Kingdom that they would fulfil Ministry of Defence outstanding commitments.

Mr. Healey

The right hon. and learned Gentleman has not met my point. Of course I concede that this was a reply to an inquiry, but a great deal of the Attorney-General's case is based on the assumption that the four helicopters which the South African Government requested immediately afterwards, and which were supplied 18 months afterwards, were not intended for the Simonstown frigates. This is not the case and this is known not to be the case at present, and I shall produce evidence to this effect.

The Attorney-General

The right hon. Gentleman keeps talking about his evidence. Those four helicopters, which first did not meet the complement of the frigates but which, second, did meet the complement of the pre-Simonstown destroyers, were delivered at a time when those frigates were not capable of taking those Westland Wasp helicopters. They could not have been. Therefore, they were not supplied under the Simonstown Agreement.

Mr. Healey

Absolutely wrong.

The Attorney-General

The right hon. Gentleman keeps on saying that I am wrong. How can the four go to make up the 11 which would be required for the frigates and which could not have been delivered under Simonstown because those frigates were not even ready or converted able to take the helicopters?

Mr. Healey

I will answer the question which the Attorney-General has asked me. It is not a question of law.

The Attorney-General

I am not giving way.

Mr. Speaker

Order. We cannot have two right hon. Gentlemen on their feet at the same time. I understand that the Attorney-General has not given way.

The Attorney-General

On this occasion, no. I have already given way many times. It is not correct for the right hon. Gentleman to claim that those four helicopters were supplied under the Simonstown Agreement, because they could not have been delivered at that time for that purpose because the ships were not fitted to take them. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman will have his opportunity to put his case. I have been speaking now for about 40 minutes. The argument is set out in the White Paper and I am repeating it.

If the right hon. Gentleman seeks to rely upon letters from officials as setting out what are the legal obligations, I suggest to him that the letters that he must have received from an official certainly have no bearing upon our legal obligations unless they disclosed any new facts or documents which are relevant. These helicopters could only have been supplied under the Simonstown Agreement at a time when the ships were ready to receive them.

Mr. Thorpe

Will the Attorney-General please read paragraph 25? This may answer his point.

The Attorney-General

Is the right hon. Gentleman saying page 25 or paragraph 25?

Mr. Thorpe

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is saying that the order for helicopters was on a date before conversion. I should like to refresh his memory. Perhaps he would turn to page 9, paragraph 25. South Africa asks for a final four helicopters which was the totality of those orders which were supplied.

The Attorney-General

These were not delivered for the frigates, they were delivered for the destroyers. When the frigates were converted in 1969 and 1970 the complement was 11 but the destroyers need a complement of nine so that there is a complement of 20 helicopters. When they asked for those four it was for the Royal Navy destroyers.

Mr. George Cunningham (Islington, South-West)

The right hon and learned Gentleman said, I am sure correctly, that letters from officials cannot constitute any modification or legal obligation. It is natural that the debate should be centring around page 22 in the White Paper. That is a letter from an official, and he seems to be praying it in aid as a gloss upon the legal obligation and strenthening the legal obligations which would otherwise exist. Does he not think that there iF inconsistency there?

The Attorney-General

The letter is quite clear. It is from Sir Geoffrey Harrison on behalf of Lord Chalfont the then Minister of State. It said: When you saw Lord Chalfont on 18th February he told you that we would try to let you have a reply … we are now able to let you have a reply about one of these points, namely, your inquiry about Wasp helicopters. In Lord Chalfont's absence in Washington I am writing to let you know that Her Majesty's Government will be prepared to supply additional Wasp helicopters to meet South African naval requirements … It was a letter expressed on behalf of the Government.

Mr. Cunningham

But not part of the treaty.

The Attorney-General

In the interpretation of a treaty there has to be good faith. It is also necessary to look at the practice of the parties after the execution of their obligations under the Agreement.

My duty in this debate is to comment upon the White Paper setting out the legal obligations. I acknowledge that it is difficult to consider these issues outside the context of strongly-held political attitudes. It is necessary before going on to consider what attitude every hon. and right hon. Gentleman will decide to adopt on the wider issue. Some parts of the White Paper are unpalatable to some hon. Members. The analysis of the interpretation in the White Paper is correct, the argument presented is supported by the facts and I suggest that the principles of law have been correctly applied.

6.45 p.m.

Sir Elwyn Jones (West Ham, South)

I know that the House will be grateful to the Law Officers for giving it their opinion on the legal obligations arising out of the Simonstown Agreement. The precedent of setting out a Law Officer's opinion in a White Paper is perhaps new, but I have no objection to that being done. The opinion of the Law Officers considers two aspects of the problems of the obligations which arise under the Sea Routes Agreement which I will consider. The first question they ask themselves is to do with what they call the general obligations which arise from the Sea Routes Agreement. The second question, which I invite the House to consider, is the extent, if any, to which the United Kingdom still remains under any specific obligations to permit the supply of equipment for the anti-submarine frigates which were supplied to South Africa under the agreement.

On the first question, whether the Sea Routes Agreement imposes any general and continuing obligation on the United Kingdom to supply arms to the South African Government, the answer of the Law Officers is a very firm "No." I entirely agree with that conclusion. In my view the considerations which led the Law Officers to that conclusion on the question whether there was a general and continuing obligation to supply arms are relevant in considering what, if any, specific obligations still arise in respect of the Wasp helicopters and the equipment of the frigates.

The principles are set out in paragraphs 54 to 58 of the opinion. The Law Officers begin in paragraph 54 by underlining the outstanding fact that: The only express obligation in relation to the supply of arms or equipment that is imposed upon Her Majesty's Government by the Sea Routes Agreement is spelt out in paragraphs 2 and 3 of the Agreement. That is, of course, confined to the naval vessels there set out. Any further legal obligation on the part of Her Majesty's Government to permit the supply of additional vessels or equipment can only arise if such an obligation could be implied as a term of the Sea Routes Agreement". They go on then to deal with the question of the implied term. The principle to be applied in considering this question is that a term should only be implied in a treaty when it is necessary to do so in order to give effect to the intention of the parties. Applying this principle it is necessary to reach the conclusion, in the light of the treaty itself, and other surrounding circumstances, that the parties must have intended to contract on the basis of the inclusion in the treaty of a provision whose effect can he stated with reasonable precision. I agree. In paragraph 57 it is said: … the Agreement does not require the South African Government to maintain its maritime forces at any specified level nor with any specified type of armaments, nor does it impose any obligation on the South African Government to place future orders for naval equipment in the United Kingdom. So far as the provisions made in the Agreement were concerned, both parties retained their freedom to act as they thought best in determining the size, armament and sources of supply of their fleet. The undertakings in paragraphs 2 and 3 of the Agreement contained only limited obligations to purchase and supply arms. Then we come to the critical paragraphs. Paragraph 58 says: In face of these conflicting arguments one must face the final question. If any term of the kind now under consideration is to be implied, how is such a term to be defined? It is here that the suggestion of any general and continuing obligation appears to run into difficulty. To what kind of quantity of equipment would any implied term extend? Over what period? And in what circumstances? I submit that those questions—which, when asked in relation to the question of a general obligation proved in the view of the Law Officers incapable of answer so that no limitation could be put on this proposed implied obligation—arise precisely when one comes to consider the quality and limitations of any implied obligation that has to be included in the interpretation of the famous paragraphs 2 and 3 of the Sea Routes Agreement. It is clear that there is certainly no express obligation in those paragraphs 2 and 3 to continue to supply specific equipment. and certainly no provision to establish or create a general and apparently continuing obligation of an open-ended character to replace equipment for those frigates which is lost, destroyed or subject to fair wear and tear. It is conceded that there is no such express obligation and it is not possible, by virtue of the impossibility of defining the extent of the limits of the obligation, to read the proposed implication into paragraphs 2 and 3.

If some general and apparently continuing obligation of an open-ended character to supply spares and replacements exists, what are the limitations of that obligation? For instance, does the obligation extend to the replacement of the frigates themselves or of the minesweepers lost or worn out? The Attorney-General says, "Of course not". But where is the line to be drawn? Apparently it is to extend to the provision of an indefinite number of spare helicopters for an indefinite period.

The Attorney-General

Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman explain how, as we see from page 41, the Government whom he was advising were prepared to give in unrestricted quantities all matters neccesary for the modernisation of the South African Navy ships, and how does that arise under the Simonstown obligation if it is not the obligation to maintain the anti-submarine frigates efficient for carrying out the purposes of the agreement?

Sir Elwyn Jones

The previous Administration spelled out very clearly the limitations to which they regarded themselves as bound by the Simonstown Agreement and set out plainly what was to be supplied, whereas the mischief of the advice which the Law Officers have given to the House is the character of the commitment which they imply into paragraphs 2 and 3, the open-ended nature of which one can judge very readily by looking at the Summary of Conclusions. Paragraph 60 speaks of reserves of helicopters without giving any indication of how many, and of other equipment for vessels without giving any indication of what the equipment is, save that it is such other equipment…as is necessary to keep the vessels efficient for the purpose of carrying out the objects of the Agreement. That is a wide, open-ended commitment which cannot be read into the agreement by any kind of implication. Answers to these questions are important so that the House may know what the Government regard as their duties and the extent of their obligations under the Simonstown Agreement.

The obligation in the agreement is on the South African Government to purchase 20 ships in the United Kingdom. It is limited to a cost of £18 million and the period which is specified in the agreement is 1955 to 1963. Are those limits to be ignored? Further, does the Attorney-General say that the South Africans are under an obligation to buy all required replacements of the frigates, minesweepers and their equipment from the United Kingdom and nowhere else? If so, what is the basis of that implication?

The Attorney-General

As I have said, it is to supply replacements to keep the vessels efficient for the purpose of carrying out …the Agreement. Page 33 of the White Paper shows that the Government to whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman was adviser wrote to the South African Embassy on 17th December, 1964, saying: It is not the Government's intention to withhold replacement parts that are necessary to maintain the South African Navy's ability to carry out its rôle in the defence of the sea routes round Southern Africa in accordance with the Simonstown Agreement". Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman say whether that accords with the advice which he is now giving the House, and whether that was the view expressed by him at the time?

Sir Elwyn Jones

I am saying that the previous Government spelled out the kind of replacement parts that they contemplated supplying. A shopping list was sent and in reply there was a specific statement by the Labour Government as to which items were to be supplied, whereas there is no limitation of a similar character in the Law Officers' opinion.

If the South African Government are not under a legal duty to purchase replacements from the United Kingdom—and I do not think they are—I cannot follow on what basis a duty of a complementary character can lie on the United Kingdom. The sole duty of the United Kingdom under the agreement is to act as agent for South Africa in South African purchases of equipment in the United Kingdom and to permit the licensing of sales of that equipment to South Africa. No United Kingdom arms-producing company is under any legal duty by virtue of the Simonstown Agreement, to sell arms to South Africa. If through the Admiralty agency a legally enforceable agreement is made between South Africa and a United Kingdom armsproducing company, it will be governed solely by the terms of the agreement and, unless that agreement says so, it will not bind either party to obtaining future replacements, still less will it bind a shipbuilding company or any other company by implication to procure helicopters for South Africa.

Therefore, in my opinion, the Simonstown Agreement creates no legal obligation on the United Kingdom to act as agents for the South Africans in obtaining replacements, the need for which has been caused by ordinary wear and tear or accidents.

Paragraph 43 of the Law Officers' opinion implies an open-ended duty on South Africa and on the United Kingdom which cannot be spelled out from the agreement or by implication from it. Paragraph 43 may be appropriate to a practical arrangement between allies, but it does not involve any legal obligation. The conclusions in paragraph 51 which culminate in the sentence that there is a duty to include replacement of such a number of helicopters as are necessary to arm and provide a reasonable establishment of reserves for the frigates is not well founded.

As to the precise question of what normal equipment of helicopters, for instance, should be supplied with the 20 vessels or less, as the events turned out to be, referred to in paragraph 2 of the agreement, the agreement itself specifies no normal complement. In 1966, four Wasp helicopters were supplied and it has been of the essence of the Law Officers' opinion that they were supplied not in relation to any Simonstown frigate obligation, but in respect of the two former Royal Navy destroyers. They based their contention on the fact that when the four Wasps were supplied by the Labour Government the frigates had not been converted for carrying Wasps.

No evidence has been produced in the White Paper to suggest that any commitment was owed by the Labour Government in 1966 to supply further helicopters for the former Royal Navy destroyers. South Africa had already received six Wasps in respect of those before 1964. Still less is there any evidence that the United Kingdom recognised such a commitment, and in the circumstances it is highly unlikely that it did.

It is even less likely that the United Kingdom Government, after announcing the arms embargo, as they did, would, in the circumstances, act in breach of the terms of that embargo and supply Wasps for destroyers in respect of which there was no kind of international duty to supply the helicopters. Prima facie, therefore, it would seem likely that the supply of four Wasps in 1966 was in fact related to the commitment to equip frigates rather than re-equip destroyers, and if my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) catches your eye, Mr. Speaker, in due course he will develop the factual basis on which it can be said that it was the Government's clear understanding, as I understand from him, that the four helicopters were supplied for the frigates which are referred to under the Simonstown obligation.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Geoffrey Howe)

Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman explain to the House why the Government of which he was a member, apparently so reluctant to supply Wasp helicopters to the South African Government, were on this occasion and in this respect apparently so enthusiastic that in 1965 they asserted their willingness to supply those and in 1966 to do so, three years before the frigates were ready to receive the helicopters?

Sir Elwyn Jones

There is no reason whatever why the helicopters should not have been supplied before the frigates were re-equipped. They would be needed for training, they would he needed for experience in handling; and, though I was not in the Royal Navy myself, I gather they do not need the deck of a frigate to learn to take off and land, but, no doubt, experience in so limited a space would be valuable in due course—but I will not go on to ground I do not understand.

In dealing with this part of the argument—and I am sorry if it is a somewhat arid part of the argument, but it has to be faced—the Law Officers rely in paragraph 38 of their opinion on the Harrison letter of 9th March, 1965, which is Appendix 22, and that concludes with the sentence: In reaching this decision, Her Majesty's Government have taken account of the fact that these specialised aircraft are integral parts of a complete anti-submarine weapons system supplied to South Africa under the Simonstown Agreement. The explanation of the terms of that letter clearly relates to the commitment under the Simonstown Agreement and the letter itself, as I submit, must be read in the context of the announcement of the arms embargo by the then Government subject to outstanding Ministry of Defence commitments. Those commitments were, of course, commitments under Simonstown, and the Government of the day explained that announcement in the documents No. 22 and No. 23, and it is apparent from a reading and examination of those documents, and the clarification which they contain, that the reference was to the frigates and to helicopters intended to be supplied for the frigates.

In my submission, looking at all those documents, it is clear that the four Wasps which were supplied in 1966 were intended for the frigates and not for the destroyers, and the only possible construction in the exchange of letters, as I submit, was that the Government would permit the supply of Wasps for the Simonstown frigates whether as the original complement or as being lost in accidents or through mechanical defect, in the light of the circumstances in each case, but it was made clear that the Wasps would not be supplied in respect of helicopters written off as a result of fair wear and tear.

In my submission, it is not relevant that the frigates had not yet been converted, and I submit that the Wasps could have been, and plainly were, supplied in the knowledge of the proposed conversion and in anticipation of it. In my submission that interpretation of events is supported by the correspondence in documents 26 and 28 of the exhibits to the opinion.

As I have said—and I apologise for taking so much of the time of the House, but it is a matter of fundamental importance—in document 27 the Government, on 5th March, said that any assurances contained in that letter"— that is, the Harrison letter of 9th March, 1965— were met by the supply thereafter of four additional Wasp helicopters and that the United Kingdom obligation in respect of the three frigates had thereby been discharged. In my submission, a fair reading of the exchanges which took place support and justify that conclusion.

The Simonstown Agreement itself, as I have said, makes no reference to the normal complement of helicopters. It is significant that the 1967 request from South Africa, which we see set out in paragraph 25 of the Law Officers' opinion, says, Originally six Wasp helicopters (of which two have been written off) and recently a further four, net total 8, have been acquired. 12 AS helicopters are required. Will the additional four be supplied during the period 1971-1973.

Mr. Healey

Long after the frigates were at sea.

Sir Elwyn Jones

Long after the frigates were at sea, as my right hon. Friend reminds me. As the first six supplied had been allocated to the destroyers it would seem that in 1967 the South Africans themselves were claiming two Wasps for each frigate, that is to say, six in all. As I submit that four were supplied by the then British Government, it would seem, on this basis, that the whole argument turns on two helicopters, and it is about those that the Commonwealth has been torn asunder.

The fact is that the United Kingdom never accepted that the claimed complement was the correct or obligatory complement, nor was it under any compulsion to do so.

Mr. Ian Percival (Southport)

The right hon. and learned Gentleman's argument in conjunction with the intervention by his right hon. Friend seems to amount to this—that the four helicopters supplied in 1966 completed all the outstanding obligations under the Simonstown Agreement.

Sir Elwyn Jones

Yes.

Mr. Percival

I am glad that the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirms that. I can come to my question. How does he reconcile the letter in paragraph 25 with that proposition? Because the letter referred to in paragraph 25 was written after the supply of the four helicopters and it is asking for another four helicopters.

Mr. Healey

rose—

Mr. Percival

No, I do not think I can allow the right hon. Gentleman to interrupt me while I am interrupting his right hon. and learned Friend. Let me gather my thoughts. Four more helicopters were being asked for in the letter referred to in paragraph 25, and they were four more, in addition to those supplied in 1966. If the view of the Government then was that the obligations had been fully discharged by the supply of the previous four, why did they not write and say, "There are no more to come—"

Mr. Healey

We did.

Mr. Percival

—instead of what appears in paragraph 27?

Mr. Healey

That is precisely what we did.

Sir Elwyn Jones

That is precisely what the Labour Government did, and the reference is clear. That was done, among other things, in the letter of 5th March, 1970, where the matter is set out clearly.

Mr. Percival

Three years later.

Sir Elwyn Jones

I do not want to take any more time on this. There were other communications before that which will be seen. My right hon. Friend who was dealing with these matters at the time will no doubt give authoritative information about them when he catches your eye, Mr. Speaker.

There remains the question of the meaning of Document 23 which is on page 37 of the Opinion, the letter of 31st May, from Sir Roger Allen. Taken with the other documents, it is consistent with the view that the United Kingdom's legal liability under this agreement could be limited to permitting the provision of licences for a complement of four Wasps for three frigates, for the replacement of Wasps lost in accidents or through mechanical defect in the light of the circumstances of each case as it is put, that is to say, where blame could reasonably be attributed to the manufacturer, and not otherwise, but not for replacements required by normal wear and tear, and not for Royal Naval establishment standards in so far as they exceeded either the South African claim or the complement of four that was supplied.

My conclusion from this is that the liability resting upon the United Kingdom is stated, if I may say so with respect, far too widely in paragraph 39 of the Attorney-General's Opinion, in that it first overstates the initial complement, secondly, wrongly allocates to the two ex-Royal Navy destroyers the four helicopters which were plainly supplied in pursuance of the Simonstown undertaking to equip frigates, and, finally, wrongly accepts an open-ended obligation of replacement. In my opinion, the legal obligations on the United Kingdom arising under the Simonstown Agreement are at the highest shadowy, and a strong case can be made out that they have long since been fulfilled by this country.

I do not, of course, exclude the possibility that my opinion may be wrong. It would surprise me if the right hon. and learned Gentleman were not prepared to say the same about his opinion. In view of the importance which Her Majesty's Government attach to this legal issue, I submit with great seriousness and respect that we should be well advised to consider seeking the advice of the Privy Council upon this matter. I am not alone in expressing this view; on the limited problem of the construction of the Agreement there is distinguished support for it. This country has, happily, the outstanding authority, distinction and independence of the Privy Council, and in respect of this grave matter that is the least that Her Majesty's Government can do.

7.14 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Wall (Haltemprice)

It is not for me to follow the legal arguments adduced by the two right hon. and learned Members. I want to deal with the problem which the House faces, not only the legal obligations, which have been discussed in detail, but the moral obligations of maintaining a defence agreement with another country.

Before doing so, may I say that many hon. Gentlemen opposite in this debate have tended, as we all do, to condemn apartheid. But they fail to realise or to say that there are in South Africa an independent Parliament, independent courts, independent newspapers and independent trade unions, although I recognise that membership of those trade unions is limited. I ask the House how many African countries can claim the same?

My complaint is that too often in this country and sometimes in the House double standards are applied when we are talking about South Africa. I am the first to condemn apartheid. I believe it to be not only a wrong but a stupid system, but when anything happens in South Africa there are immediate condemnations in the Press and in the House. Why are there so few protests about Zanzibar? Why were there so few protests by the Government of the day when Othman Sharif, who was a member of the Zanzibar/Tanganyika Government, was sent back to Zanzibar and executed? He was a man I knew well, but I heard very few protests in the House at this futile murder of a former member of the Zanzibar Government. There were few protests about the recently reported forced marriages and about the members of the legal Government of Zanzibar who were so many years in prison.

I do not want to labour this, because we are not discussing race relations today, but all too often when talking about South Africa we apply double standards. Let us compare like with like. Let us compare what is happening in South Africa with what happens in other parts of the African continent. There have been 32 attempted revolutions in 23 countries in Africa in the past six years.

Why is racialism always reported in this country as white v. black? What about Fiji, Ceylon, Guyana, Malaysia? What about the troubles in Nigeria. Biafra, Uganda, Chad and so on? Why is South Africa always condemned by comparison with British rather than African standards? Why these double standards?

We are told by the leader of the Labour Party, who seems to be obsessed with race, that we are heading for a race war in South Africa. To talk of a "blood bath" is nonsense, because the situation in South Africa is changing. I say straight away that it is changing all too slowly. It used to be Baascap, which I define as the divine right of whites. Then came apartheid, which I define as first-and second-class citizens. It is moving rapidly towards separate development, which means that the races live in their own communities, which most of them prefer. The evil part of apartheid is that those who want to mix cannot.

I believe that job reservation is breaking down. The South African Government have the chance of increasing industrial output and the standard of living by dropping job reservation. If they do not drop job reservation their industrial output will immediately decline.

Mr. Gavin Strang (Edinburgh, East)

May I give a quotation from the Johannesburg Star of 27th February, the edition which carried the news of and the political comment on the Government's decision: No relaxation in jobs. Continuing the anti-verligte trend the Government this week stood firm on its job reservation policies, insisting they would not only remain on the statute book but would, in fact, be implemented more strictly in the future.

Mr. Wall

I do not know if the hon. Gentleman has been to South Africa. Those who have know that job reservation broke down several years ago and is increasingly disregarded by the authorities. In the near future it will be recognised that the better jobs can be held by white and black. This is the only way in which the economy of South Africa can continue to expand.

I remind the hon. Gentleman that when I was in the United Nations I said: "Apartheid is morally abominable, intellectually grotesque and spiritually indefensible. I believe that, because the effects of apartheid are evil and because apartheid is based on fear. Some hon. Gentlemen opposite are stirring up this fear whenever they can. They therefore intensify apartheid, intensify fear and make the situation in South Africa so much worse. Who would gain by revolution in South Africa? Would the whites? Would the blacks? The only people who could gain are the Communist Powers.

Mr. John Mendelson (Penistone)

As one who has been to the Republic, may I say that the hon. Gentleman should not make play with the fact that my hon. Friend has or has not visited that country. He knows that when he talks to leading industrialists their main complaint is that economic progress is being prevented by strict adherence to job reservation. He is not condemning apartheid. He is whitewashing it, as he does all the time.

Mr. Wall

There was not one industrialist in South Africa who recognised that job reservation was being maintained as the law says it should be maintained. It is breaking down and the hon. Gentleman knows it. Let us encourage this to continue.

I condemn hon. Gentlemen opposite who openly encourage guerrilla fighters in Southern Africa and who themselves by so doing are attempting to sabotage the standard of life of everybody and to destroy all races in Southern Africa by encouraging chaos. The only country which might gain from this is not so much the Soviet Union but Communion China, because Communist China wants chaos in this part of Africa. The South Africans believe that the Communist powers have plans to cut Africa in half from Zanzibar to Brazzaville. Hon. Gentlemen opposite may think that this is far-fetched, but it is fair to say that there is a considerable danger that this might happen.

South Africa believe, and they are right to believe, that there should be a southern hemisphere defence pact. Let us recognise the vital importance for the West of the industrial areas of the southern hemisphere in South America. in South Africa and in Australia. This could be linked through Britain to N A.T.O. as for political reasons N.AT.O. is unlikely to be extended to cover the Cape.

Hon. Gentlemen opposite, particularly the Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson), must appreciate that the choice in Southern Africa is between revolution and evolution. I know that the hon. Gentleman wants to see revolution. How is he to get revolution?

Mr. John Mendelson

The hon. Member is supporting the racialists.

Mr. Wall

There are three ways in which revolution may be carried out. The first is by internal revolution—and anybody who knows South Africa knows that that is unlikely. The security in the country is such that internal revolution is extremely unlikely. Then there are the incursions of the guerrilla fighters. I have travelled from one side of Africa to the other, along the black-white frontier from Muede to Villa Cabral, along the Rhodesian frontier from the Portuguese frontier to Kariba and also to the Caprivi Strip. I have seen this area and know how impossible a frontier it is for guerrillas to cross. I do not believe the guerrilla fighters will have any success in the south. This is shown above all in Rhodesia where they have not even the support of the other Africans who immediately report the "freedom" fighters to the authorities. If they have been so unsuccessful in Rhodesia how much less successful will they be in South Africa.

Then there is the question of external attack, with which Dr. Banda dealt satisfactorily when he suggested that Rhodesia could take on the rest of Africa together. How much more so South Africa!

Perhaps what the hon. Gentleman is hoping for is United Nations intervention and blockade. That is most unlikely, certainly now the present Government are in power, as I hope that any such suggestion, if it ever came before the Security Council, would be vetoed. I believe that the United States and the French would do the same.

What we believe in, and what I believe all people of good will should believe in, is evolution rather than revolution in Southern Africa. I believe that it can happen. I have visited South Africa over a number of years, but in case any accusations are made against me, may I say that I have no business interests there. Each time I go there I see a slight improvement. I will not exaggerate the improvement, but it is a slight one. Things are moving gradually in the right direction.

Mr. John Mendelson

Whitewash!

Mr. Wall

This can be seen from the general elections and the provincial elections where the H.N.P., the extreme rightwing party, was totally defeated. My experience is that the nationalist youth is different from the previous generation. When one talks to them about apartheid they say "We cannot see any alternative at the moment, but we recognise that this situation may not last very much longer." That is different from the concept of Baascap believed in by many of the older generation.

The evolution is slow but sure. In the Transkie there are 3,900 black civil servants and only 334 white civil servants; there are 7,000 black teachers and only 53 white. At least we have learned in our decolonisation of Africa that once one passes over the Civil Service, one passes over power. The Transkie will when it so desires be as independent as Lesotho or Swaziland. I believe that the good neighbour policy is beginning to pay great dividends both to South Africa and to her neighbours. This has been effective in relation to Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Malagasy Republic, the Ivory Coast, Gabon, Dahomey and Ghana. I believe that these independent Africa states should have our support, in their desire for a dialogue with South Africa.

I would remind the House that the Simonstown Agreement was signed when South Africa was part of the Commonwealth. It was therefore signed between friends and allies. Perhaps it was not spelt out as much as it should have been. Certainly if one makes an agreement with a foreign country it is usually spelt out in much more detail than an agreement made as between Commonwealth partners. Perhaps this is half the difficulty in the regard to the legal arguments we have heard today.

The South African Government made an agreement and they expect it to be implemented, not only legally but morally, by both sides. I do not believe that the Labour Administration implemented the agreement as a defence agreement between two partners. Let us remember that the agreement does not only give us the use of this harbour in Simonstown, but the use of all South African ports in time of war, whether or not South Africa itself is involved. What other countries in Africa would offer us such advantages?

I believe that there is grave danger in the Soviet maritime expansion which has been taking place in the Indian Ocean, although this has been laughed at by right hon. Gentlemen opposite. I would remind the House that only today the Chief of Naval Operations of the United States Navy was reported in the Press as saying that the Americans were worried about the increased Soviet maritime infiltration in the Indian Ocean which, he said, would outflank N.A.T.O. within a generation. Yet we are told by the Opposition that the Americans do not support my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in his intention to implement the Simonstown Agreement. I believe the danger from the Soviet Navy is that it is the right arm of the political power of the Soviet State as has been proved in the Mediterranean. The whole of the northern seaboard of Africa, with the exception of Morocco, Tunisia, Israel and Turkey, has become potentially hostile to the West. One of the reasons for this is the activity of the Soviet Fleet in the Mediterranean. Neither side of the House wishes to see this story repeated in the Indian Ocean. That area is extremely important to us and, unlike the Mediterranean it cannot be covered by aircraft from shore bases.

When with two of my hon. Friends I visited Southern Africa last May we were shown a maritime plot in Simonstown. We were shown photographs which illustrated the growth of movements of the Russian task force in the Indian Ocean particularly when any trouble arose. There was a task force off Somaliland when there was a revolution in that country. There was also a task force off the Natal coast when there was trouble in Lesotho. This is what I meant when I said that the Soviet Navy is the right arm of Soviet political power. This is the danger that we have to face.

Let us not forget that political power can be exercised through a third party, through some other country in Africa which might be egged on by the Soviet Union. We must remember what happened in Indonesia which was armed by the Soviet Union and where President Sukarno was supported both by the Communist Party and the army. Largely due to confrontation in Malaysia, when the two sides clashed the Communist Party was defeated. If that had not happened there would have been serious consequences indeed in the area. That kind of thing should be repeated in Southern Africa.

I sincerely believe that the Soviet Government are not looking for war, but they are looking for opportunities to expand their influence and political power in various areas. Only strength will deter the Soviet Union, as it did over Berlin, and also over Cuba. Indeed N.A.T.O. itself was set up to deter Soviet aggression at the end of the last war and has been an outstanding success.

I believe that the Cape is the back door of N.A.T.O. and that Britain must be the link between that area and N.A.T.O. since, for obvious reasons, N.A.T.O. cannot extend its influence to the southern hemisphere. Britain lives by its seaborne trade, and by seaborne trade alone, and the West lives largely on Middle East oil. During our visit there were over 1,000 ships within 10 days' steaming from Cape Town. Some 1,250 ships called at South African ports within one month last year. Half a million tons of oil passes Cape Town each day. A short while ago, a Question was answered in this House saying that 50 per cent. of the oil imported by us, 25 per cent. of our foodstuffs and 5 per cent. of our minerals pass the Cape. That information was given in answer to a Parliamentary Question, so presumably it comes from official sources, whatever the hon. Gentleman opposite may say.

One of the dangers of Soviet sea power is the vast nuclear submarine fleet, which is larger than those of America, Britain and France put together. For that reason, it is very important for us to have an anti-submarine base on the key trade route round the Cape. In documents released only a week or two ago, it was said that, during the last war, the British Government contemplated taking over the Southern Irish ports by force because we needed an anti-submarine base on what was probably our most important trade route. Fortunately, it was not done, but it was contemplated. I think that that illustrates the importance of an anti-submarine base on a key trade route. It also underlines the fact that reinforcement of the South African Navy would be disproportionately effective. The South African Navy is after all almost wholly an anti-submarine navy designed to support the West. The Government have concluded that our legal requirement is to supply South Africa with Wasp helicopters. However, I hope that they will go much further. Above all, South Africa needs Nimrod anti-submarine aircraft, which are probably the finest in the world. The hon. Member for Penistone knows that if we do not supply them, the French will sell South Africa their Breget Atlantique, which is greatly inferior to the Nimrod. I assume that the hon. Member for Penistone would prefer to see French workmen benefiting than his own people. I disagree with him entirely, as, I am sure, do most hon. Members.

South Africa also wants a supply of Sea Cat surface-to-air weapons. In time of war, the South Africans are bound to service our ships in Simonstown. If they have not the expertise in the use of these new missiles, they can hardly be expected to carry out this service efficiently. I hope, too, that the South African Government will want replacement frigates probably of the smaller Vosper-Thorneycroft type. Her Majesty's Government have said that they will consider requests on their merits. I hope very much that these requests will come and that they will be approved.

I hope, too, that the Government will consider supplying more Buccaneer aircraft. In that connection, I remind my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary that he undertook in my constituency, where the Buccaneer is built, that when we came back into power these aircraft would be supplied to South Africa.

The Leader of the Liberal Party quoted many remarks made by my right hon. Friend when he was Leader of the Opposition. I will point out one that he did not quote—it is probably the most significant remark on this subject made by the Prime Minister. In winding up that debate in December, 1967, my right hon. Friend said about the previous Administration: The Government have taken the wrong decision. They have failed entirely to justify it to the House. It is damaging to our national interests in finance, in trade and in defence, and a Conservative Administration will reverse it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th December, 1967; Vol. 756, c. 1152.] I believe that the Conservative Government are now fulfilling their legal obligations. I hope that they will go beyond the strict letter of the law and very soon fulfil their moral obligations, which form another part of a vitally important defence agreement. The fulfilment of those moral obligations would be enormously to the advantage of Britain, the West and the Commonwealth.

7.35 p.m.

Sir Arthur Irvine (Liverpool, Edge Hill)

Quite rightly, the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) has taken this matter rather away from the quiet waters of legal discussion which occupied our attention earlier. I return to the legal aspects of this matter only because I feel that there are one or two points which can usefully be deployed. I speak in this debate as a lawyer, and I am concerned with the legal points which arise on this matter.

I want to stress, first, the importance that I attach to the interesting fact that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones) and the Attorney-General are at one on the matter of law contained in the conclusion in paragraph 59 of the White Paper. I join with them in their agreement. It is a very important one. It is excellent that lawyers on both sides of the House should be at one on this matter.

The paragraph expresses the conclusion that …it would not be reasonable …to impute to the parties an intention to include a term in the Sea Routes Agreement which would place any general and continuing legal obligation on Her Majesty's Government to permit the supply of arms to the South African Government. I am sure that the House will appreciate how important it is that common opinions are held on both sides about this legal effect of the Agreement.

I turn, then, to the Summary of Conclusions contained in paragraph 60, and I desire to put forward two qualifications on what is contained in that paragraph. The first is a minor qualification. The other raises somewhat wider considerations.

The minor qualification is that I am not content with the expression "together with reserves" in subparagraph (1). It is a rather vague and open-ended expression. I mention that in passing since I feel that it would have been better to have had a clearer limitation upon the width of the effect of the paragraph.

My wider qualification is that the Law Officers' opinion contains no reference to resolution 191 of the United Nations which was made in 1964. Let me remind the House of the content of that Security Council resolution. It called upon all States to cease forthwith the sale and shipment to South Africa of arms and ammunition of all types, military vehicles and equipment, and materials for the manufacture and maintenance of arms and ammunition in South Africa.

I want to make it plain that I am concerned with the legal aspect of the matter. I leave aside ideological questions of how one regards the United Nations and how much or how little hope one reposes in that institution for the future. Looking at the matter as a lawyer, I suggest that it is not or should not be possible to ignore that resolution. Yet the main body of the observations and the opinions expressed in the White Paper, the value of which I acknowledge, make no reference to that resolution. The only reference to the resolution is in the annexe in the Aide Memoire dated 5th March, 1970, quoted on page 46.

If hypothetically all supply of arms to South Africa were stopped and the point were taken in the International Court that we, by stopping the supply, were in breach of contract and of treaty, I put forward the view that, to put it at its lowest, that United Nations resolution would, as a matter of law, possess some importance and would be a relevant point to take up.

The Attorney-General

I appreciate that it seems to be a matter of some importance in law. Perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman will tell the House what importance it has in law. The right hon. and learned Gentleman will recollect that resolution 191, if he says that this creates an obligation, refers to calling upon all states to cease forthwith the sale and shipment, among other things, of ammunition. The right hon. and learned Gentleman was a Law Officer in the last Government, so he will appreciate that that Government licensed the supply of ammunition and other equipment during their years in office. Was that in breach of the United Nations resolution?

Sir A. Irvine

I mean no discourtesy —I hope that that goes without saying—when I say that that is a party point.— [HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—I think that it is.

Mr. Wall

What about torpedoes?

Sir A. Irvine

What I am suggesting is that the resolution cannot be ignored. The Attorney-General will surely recognise that I choose my words carefully in a matter of this kind. What I said, just before the right hon. and learned Gentleman interrupted me, was that I could not believe that the fact that this resolution had been passed in the Security Council would be regarded as unimportant if the question of a breach of treaty or of contract came before the International Court. I deliberately did not go further than that. One measures one's terms carefully when making a speech of this kind on this subject.

The importance which, as a matter of law, attaches to this point was indicated in the observations of the right hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe). The right hon. Gentleman reminded us of the resolution which was passed on Korea. It will be recalled that that Resolution was a recommendation. It was something less, it may be thought, than the call which is expressed in Resolution 191. The House of Commons chose to treat that recommendation as an obligation in terms in a Motion carried in this House without a Division. That afforded the very foundation of the presence of Commonwealth forces in Korea.

It is a relevant point. I go no further than to say that. It is true that the Motion which was carried did not refer to legal obligations. I acknowledge that that is so. But I draw attention to the point that, quite gratuitously, so to speak, this House took a recommendation and called it an obligation. It is fair to put it in that way.

If this matter came for consideration before the International Court, I believe that some weight would be attached to that resolution. I have already indicated that I do not want to be caught up in the ideological issues to which the expression "the United Nations" is apt to give rise. But it is a serious matter if the point has been reached, on an issue of this kind, at which the House of Commons goes through the whole issue of obligation and liability under contract and treaty and pays literally no attention to a resolution of this kind. It is interesting and may possess some importance that the White Paper has the characteristic of ignoring the resolution to which I have referred.

Mr. Percival

I assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I do not wish to get caught up in ideological or party arguments. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has drawn the attention of the House to the fact that the Korean resolution which was adopted by this House expressly by a resolution in terms which involved the acceptance of an obligation. Surely that is the difference between the two cases. In this case, this resolution was not adopted by the House by a similar Motion. On the contrary, our vote at U.N.O. was subject to express reservation.

Sir A. Irvine

I take the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival). I fully recognise that in the respect which he has mentioned, and in others, there is no close parallel between the two. I am merely saying that in that instance the House took cognisance of a recommendation and chose to speak in terms of an obligation based upon it.

Mr. Percival

But did not do so in this case.

Sir A. Irvine

We must remember the over-riding position. If there be any content in the proposition which I have thus far put forward, we must remember the language of Article 103 of the Charter, which the hon. and learned Gentleman will remember: In the event of a conflict between the obligations of Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail. I do not go further than to put before the House the possibility that, as a matter of law, the point has been reached that when considering the continuing legal obligations under the Simonstown Agreement it is not necessarily right and proper totally to ignore a resolution of the United Nations. That is putting the case, heaven knows, with moderation, and I offer it for the consideration of the House.

7.50 p.m.

Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter (Kingston-upon-Thames)

Although I was once in chambers with the right hon. and learned Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Sir A. Irvine), or perhaps for that very reason, I do not propose to follow him in the legal argument which he has just addressed to the House. I do not do so not because I under-rate the importance of meticulous observance by this country of its legal international obligations but because the legal aspects of the matter have already been more than sufficiently ventilated in the debate. Nor do I believe that the debate turns on the legal aspects, important though they are. We are concerned, with all respect to the law which I once served, with matters of bigger import, the relationship of nations and the defence of the realm, with great moral issues on either side that properly raise the passions of Parliament and people. It is more on those great issues that I should like to say a word or two this evening.

I am very glad to have caught that elusive organ, your optic, Madam Deputy Speaker, for two reasons. The first is that I was, in the Government of my right hon. Friend the present Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary and in the closing years of that of Mr. Macmillan, the Minister directly responsible, as Chairman of the appropriate committee, for licensing the export of arms, including of course arms to South Africa. The second reason is that I was very recently in that country, and only a few weeks ago had a long conversation at Simonstown with the very distinguished officer who commands the South African Navy. Therefore, I should like to offer one or two comments on the general problem.

Up until October, 1964, under the system which it was my duty to administer, exports to South Africa were licensed of arms required generally for defence against external aggression but not of arms specifically intended or probably to be used for purposes of internal repression. I know that there were marginal cases and that difficult, almost philosophic, arguments can be adduced on the uses of a particular weapon. But that was the policy which was applied for a great many years, and applied with general acceptance. Today the Leader of the Liberal Party talked of the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions in Africa, there was talk about splitting the Commonwealth, and giving a certificate of respectability to apartheid. All these issues that appear now to arise were never raised. The policy was accepted, and it operated—I think that this is of importance in this situation—without any of the dangers and difficulties which we are now told will occur if anything like that is done now.

It seems to follow that the state of affairs we are now in, and the emotion in the House and outside which I acknowledge, are not the necessary consequences of the sale of arms for the purposes of external defence but are the direct consequence of the policy of the late Government and the deliberate emphasis which they and others outside have given to the emotional aspects of the matter. They promptly, and in a most ill-considered way, reversed the policy in the autumn of 1964 and operated instead a policy wholly devoid of logic and common sense. For they were proud to trade with South Africa. Less than a year ago the right hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason), as President of the Board of Trade, loudly acclaimed at the Dispatch Box the size of our exports to South Africa. The Opposition talk about giving a certificate of respectability to apartheid. Is not £180 million-worth of exports a rather more substantial certificate than the sale of a limited quantity of arms?

Under the Labour Government the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force took part regularly in joint naval exercises with the South African Navy, and they took part in mutual planning. The clear implication and inescapable impliaction was that in war we should be fighting as allies. That was apparently all right. No certificate of respectability of apartheid was implied in it. But, with a complete and lamentable lack of logic, the Labour Government jibbed at supplying our partner in the exercises and our potential ally in war with the instruments necessary to enable that partner to be efficient. That is logically wholly indefensible.

A curious lighter note is that, while the late Government refused the country with which it was undertaking exercises the ships and aircraft that would enable it to keep its forces up to date for the very purpose which the exercises were designed to test, there was no restriction on the export of handcuffs to South Africa, the plainest example of an instrument required for repression.

The Labour Government did not deprive South Africa of many of the arms it needed. The French have been supplying submarines, yet no one regards the French as committing a morally despicable act, degrading their reputation.

Mr. Robert Hughes

Yes, we do.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

This is very new. The African countries do not appear to do so. Monsieur Pompidou has just returned from a triumphant tour of Africa, where he received the plaudits of the African countries. It is only if Britain supplies arms that it is apparently so morally perverse. If France does it, and French workmen gain the employment for which our shipyards are crying out, that is apparently all right, but it is wrong if Britain does it.

Two things have happened since 1964 to alter the situation, and alter it enormously in favour of the then policy. One is the arrival of the Russian fleet in the Indian Ocean. Whatever the Russians are there for, they are not there for the fishing. The expense of maintaining a large fleet a long way from any base is very heavy, and that expense is undertaken only for very definite political purposes.

My hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) referred to the plotting of the movements of that fleet by the South African naval and air authorities. I saw perhaps more recent plots. There is great significance in the movement of that fleet. Sometimes it lies in its anchorage north of the Seychelles, but whenever there is trouble in any part of Africa a squadron moves close inshore. It is perhaps not without significance that that squadron always includes a submarine, which is the obvious vessel for landing people for subversive purposes.

Strange things are going on in those waters. Aerial photography shows what look like merchant ships with, certainly in one case, a full-sized helicopter and a launching pad on the stern, and another carrying sea-to-air missiles. It is foolish for the House, as it would be for the country, to ignore what is going on there.

The other change is the closure of the Suez Canal. Whether the Canal will ever reopen, I do not know. But the Cape route will remain the most important route even if the Canal reopens, because shipowners have developed very large bulk carriers for oil and other cargoes which could not use the Canal even if it were reopened. So the route is vital to us.

Of course, we could defend it without South Africa. In an article on the matter a few weeks ago, the Economist pointed out that technically this could be done if we created a great fleet train and provided air cover with aircraft carriers, but that it would cost many scores of millions of pounds a year and great capital expenditure. Do Labour hon. Members advocate that?

Assuming, as I must, that they do not wish, any more than we do, to see the defences of the country made precarious —that they do not want to see the Communists left with overwhelming power in a vital sea area—is their repugnance to doing anything in partnership with South Africa such that they are prepared to see our defence expenditure raised by perhaps £100 million or £150 million a year?

If so, I would feel that they had a respectable and tolerable argument. If not, then are they not putting themselves in the position of allowing their understandable dislike of the South African system to cause them to advocate a course of action which must, in a very dangerous world, undermine some of the vital defences of this island?

It is an attitude which I am certainly not prepared at any price to adopt. I prefer the policy which was applied before 1964—of co-operation with South Africa in these matters—and of course that involves, as it must logically involve, not allowing their Navy or Air Force to get out of date. It involves supplying, in due course, corvettes, which I understand they want and Nimrod aircraft for maritime reconnaissance work. It involves supplying them with these and other items not because—I hope I need not repeat this again—I have any affection for their system but on the coldly calculated basis that it serves the vital defence interests of this country.

I must, of course, face the argument that this will disrupt the Commonwealth and will not, therefore, be in our interests. The argument is adduced that countries in Asia and Africa will flounce out of the Commonwealth in high dudgeon if we resume the policies in which they apparently acquiesced happily up to 1964. I do not believe it, and to suggest that they will do it is to cast a reflection of puerile amateurism on the leaders of those countries, which is unjustified.

I am sure that they will protest, but the Commonwealth has existed because while we are free to protest, we nevertheless consider ourselves to be independent Members of this great organisation. After all, Pakistan and India went to war with each other a few years ago, but both remained loyal Members of the Commonwealth. India outraged feeling in this country and involved our treaty obligations when she overran Goa, but there was no question of India being driven out of the Commonwealth.

I cannot accept that the Commonwealth is such a fragile affair as some people make out. If I am wrong, then probably it is already near being finished because sooner or later another disagreement must arise. At present we are not faced with having to weigh our national defence in this area against outraging the Commonwealth.

I have left to the last a reference to a matter which many of us consider to be the heart of this issue, and that is the effect of this in South Africa and on South Africa's policies. There is no question but that the South African system of apartheid—which I very much disliked when I saw it, as anybody dislikes it when they see it—will not be upset by force. It will, I believe, be upset by the developing economic forces of a growing commercial and industrial economy.

We are, after all, talking of a country in which there is an apparent political paradox, with the extreme upholders of apartheid—or the extreme Right, if one wishes to put it that way—being the unskilled workers in the trade unions and with the multi-millionaires on the Left. This is a country which, as it develops commercially, demonstrates the complete impracticability of separate development in the modern world.

It was possible for a pastoral society to have job reservation and restrictions on residence, but these cannot stand up to the growing forces of economic progress. As I saw for myself, one must add, I am glad to say, the strong influence of the younger generation of Afrikaaners.

I do not want to mislead the House and I agree that this will take time—[Interruption.] perhaps many years—but there is one factor which could halt it. If there is any racial stock which is more obstinate and less willing to be browbeaten and bullied than our own, it is the Dutch, and we are dealing in the ruling races in South Africa with a mixture of both. If the world seems to gang up on them or denies contact with them, they will go into laager, as their forebears did for 300 years.

Thus, when dealing with an issue on which the House is united—we all want to see improvement and change in their internal affairs—the argument is really the reverse of what was stated by the Leader of the Opposition. By full renewal of proper defence contacts, not on the basis of what is our precise and limited legal liability but generously and fully, we shall help the forces of change in that country, by example and by contact.

I do not like reliance on harsh legalism. For example, one would almost have to provide each naval commander with a legal adviser who would say whether or not the firing of a particular salvo is justified in all the circumstances. One cannot have co-operation on that basis, and nobody should wish to impose it.

If we return to the policies which worked before 1964, so far from helping the imposition of apartheid, we should be doing the precise opposite. We should be strengthening the forces—which are considerable in that country—which recognise the embarrassment which faces them in world opinion and we should be strengthening them by contact, example and argument.

South Africa, though it is bedevilled by policies which are perhaps more foolish than wicked, can offer a bright future to all its races, who already enjoy the highest material standards of living in the Continent of Africa. Human history shows how often indulgence in attitudes of self-righteous moral indignation, treating whole peoples as untouchables, leads to blood, death, misery and ruin. I pray that this may not be so in this case.

8.8 p.m.

Mr. R. T. Paget (Northampton)

From the debating point of view, it is unfortunate that I found myself in agreement with so much of what the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carptenter) said.

If I may express my own credo, it is this. The principles which have giuded me during the 25 years that I have been in this House lead me to believe that in the dangerous world in which we live, the various and different ideologies must learn to live and associate with one another.

Living and associating with different ideologies is the first function of foreign policy. Ideological and emotional foreign policy such as that expressed by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal Party is far too dangerous to the world in which we live. Reform must come from within. It cannot be introduced from without. Reform comes to dynamic and not to static societies, and it comes through contact not from segregation. Attempts—this applies throughout the world, whether to China, Rhodesia or South Africa—to stop by embargo or to confine by segregation serve only the kind of policies which one wishes to see ended.

I am not impressed by the naval argument, though I will not develop it. If Russia is showing its flag, which it undoubtedly is, then that is not something with which we can interfere. If she were to intervene in a local war, we should not dare to intervene, any more than we did when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia or when Nasser invaded the Yemen. If it were the general engagement of a great Power, we should probably have the post mortem interest of a cinder. Our chances of survival would be measured inversely to our capacity to hurt the Russians.

We are concerned with order, which is a more respectable concern—order in Southern Africa, in a great investment area, in our third biggest trading area, in the area most capable of expansion. I do not believe that this is a disreputable interest. Under international law, the community of nations is obligated to respect the right and to recognise the duty of all Governments to maintain order within their territories—[An HON. MEMBER: "And justice."] No, not justice. That is the concern of the country itself and not of the international community.

Even when there is imposed disarmament in an armistice by a victorious Power on a defeated Power, the reservation is always made of the right of the defeated to obtain and maintain the arms necessary for internal order and the security of its frontiers.

We are apparently asking that Her Majesty's Government should forbid the supply of such requirements of internal order by British nationals. I question whether this is legal. To enforce an embargo on the supply of police weapons to a Government with whom we are at peace, being part of a general design to assist armed rebellion and the armed violation of frontiers is unlawful, and it does not become any the less unlawful when it is promoted by the United Nations, an organisation precluded by its constitution from interfering in the internal affairs of its members.

I hope that, at some time, the Foreign Office and the Attorney-General will consider the general proposition in international law, which is profoundly important. Certainly, this conspiracy against order to which we are parties in Southern Africa is novel in international history. In fact, we have to go back to the reign of Elizabeth I. when the Pope released Elizabeth's subjects from their allegiance, called upon them to murder their sovereign and called upon her neighbours to invade her territory.

We have recently celebrated the canonisation of 40 martyrs whose opposition in England the Pope's policy had made treason. When we find some pressure in Southern Africa on ministers of religion, we have to remember also that a similar policy by the World Council of Churches has had a similar effect, although certainly the South Africans are being a good deal less rough than were the Ministers of the first Elizabeth.

This is a conspiracy against order of which we are asked to be part—and just in Africa. We have a Fascist Government in Spain who got there in a terrible civil war. No one really suggests that we should try to reopen that civil war or have nationalist volunteers in Gibraltar to raid across the frontiers. No one suggests that we should do that sort of thing in Czechoslovakia, where much rougher things have happened. Why do we make this assault on one order, that of South Africa?

After all, it is an order which does not require a wall to hold its citizens in It is an order which has provided services better than any African Government has. It has provided wages for Africans better than those of any other Africans. It has brought into being a population whose very survival depends on the continuation of an effective industrial order. This we are asked to conspire to destroy—to put what in its place?

There is no African police force to put there, there are no African armed services, there is no African civil service, there is no African alternative Government. All we could put in its place is a sort of new Congo. I can understand that this might be to the taste of the liberals. Heaven knows, humanity has suffered much from liberal idealism. But what British interest would be served by this contrived anarchy I just cannot imagine.

One interest which apparently would be served is that it would please the Commonwealth. I am in some doubt as to just what the Commonwealth is. It is certainly not an alliance. Most of it would be on the other side. We have had references to the Eight-Power Study Group. When there is a group to study how one is to defend the Indian Ocean against the Russians, it is interesting to know what side it is on. Australia and Canada are certainly on our side, but what about India, if Mrs. Gandhi has to bring the Communists into the Coalition, as seems extremely likely? This seems to be a nonsense.

Again, we are told that we can exert influence through consultation. Mauritius grants the Russians naval facilities: she does not consult us. Tanzania enters into armament agreements with China: she does not even tell us. Uganda decides to nationalise 65 per cent. of our investment: she does not even tell us. Yet these people claim the right, on which they insist with the hysteria of spoiled children, of interfering when we are considering our own interests.

France does not have a Commonwealth. I believe that she is extremely wise. She supplies arms to South Africa if it suits her and there is not a word of protest. She has commonsense agreements with her ex-colonies and expects from them the civility which is due from a beneficiary to a benefactor. We have a similar arrangement with Ireland. How grateful I am that Ireland is not in the Commonwealth and does not have to parade periodically to assail us for our colonialism. Our relations would not be half so good if she did.

Then we have the United Nations. The first speech that I ever made in the House was on the United Nations and I expressed my doubts then. I pointed out that, unlike the old League of Nations, when the many were much stronger than the one, and in which the many could give effective security to the others, neither Russia nor America had the slightest intention of being coerced. The United Nations was never really designed to be anything except the secretariat of a great Power concert to enforce the will of the great Powers among the lesser.

It broke down, as I thought it inevitably would, when the victorious allies fell out with each other and began to compete for the favour of the defeated. It was bound to happen and, in my very first speech of 25 years ago, I said that I did not believe that this had any capacity for being a security organisation.

Nothing since has changed my mind. We have had two phases of the United Nations. The first was when it was controlled by the Americans. Then, the Russians constantly used the veto and we screamed our indignation. Then the United Nations passed into the control of the Communists and Afro-Asians. We were inhibited by our previous screams from voting in our own interests and got ourselves involved in a lot of extremely silly resolutions produced by the Communists and Afro-Asians.

It has been an astonishing achievement. Czechoslovakia is ignored; Hungary is ignored; the genocidal war in the Sudan is ignored: the slavery in Abyssinia is ignored; the civil war in Nigeria is ignored. All that happens is that there are screams of indignation at the oppression of Gibraltar and Aden. This is the thing which we are up against. I do not think we should be influenced by it. But at any rate the great achievement of this phase of the United Nations—as a public relations exercise it has been quite astonishing—is apartheid.

Let us think about it. Just a few years ago, until the majority changed, South Africa was a member of the Commonwealth in good repute. She was a founder-member of the United Nations. In a period of some 10 or 12 years. she has been converted into the pariah of the nations by a group of nations whose tyranny is far more severe and whose racialism is far more brutal than anything occurring in South Africa. The Jews of Russia can look with great envy upon the Africans of South Africa, who are free to go to any African country they choose. Having said this, let us look at apartheid a little without this haze of fury which has been built up and to a large degree imposed upon us. After all. South Africa has built-in means of change, and is changing. To that degree, she is a democracy. She is one of the 30 out of the 130 members of the United Nations where opposition is legal.

The old policy was Baaskap, which was the religious conception that the black man was condemned for all eternity to be the white man's servant. Apartheid—separate development—was the idea that came into being to get away from that. I do not know whether any of my hon. Friends know who the Karl Marx of apartheid was, the originator, the person from whom it was drawn. It was Abraham Lincoln. The reformers—the anti-Baaskap people—in South Africa looked to an alternative and they found it in the writings of Abraham Lincoln. He was murdered before the could put it into operation, so premature integration and the carpet-bagger destroyed the Southern States for a century.

But still, as a step between the two, if it were honestly and reasonably applied, there is something to be said for separate development. The things that are wrong with separate development are the cruelty and absurdity of its application in all sorts of cases. Dr. Goebbels would have observed that even a United Nations led by the Russians could not achieve a propaganda triumph without some basis of truth inside it, and there is a great deal that is horrible in apartheid and must be objected to. But it is not comparably horrible with what happens in several Communist countries.

Mr. Elysian Morgan (Cardigan)

rose—

Mr. Paget

No. I do not want to give way. I am going to conclude with a personal story which illustrates what I am saying. My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar (Mr. Mikardo) came to see me one day and asked whether I could help a Jewish boy who had been convicted of taking part in a bomb outrage in which people had been killed in South Africa and had been sentenced, as he would have been anywhere, to a long term of imprisonment.

My hon. Friend told me about the boy's childhood in the sewers of Warsaw and how terrible it had been. I said that I would do what I could. I got in touch with my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), who was then Home Secretary, and asked him whether he would admit the boy if South Africa would release him. I wrote to Mr. Vorster and received in reply a somewhat curt letter saying that my letter had not been expressed in the terms he was accustomed to receiving from members of my party, but he would see what he could do. Within a matter of weeks, I got a green card and up to my room came this boy. Mr. Vorster had gone to see him in prison, had had a long interview with him and had then ordered his release. That sort of thing does not happen in a Communist country.

I believe that the benefit of South Africa and of the Africans there depends, as the right hon. Gentleman said, upon the dynamism of its economy. As that economy goes forward, apartheid will break down. Those of us who have been there know that it is breaking down and we have seen it breaking down. It will not work in a dynamic, developing society. But one way to keep apartheid working is to prevent that economic development.

In making British policy, let us learn a little from the French experience. Let us firmly pursue our national interests and have a policy that is ours—not a policy that is given to us by the United Nations or by the Commonwealth. Then we shall be respected, as France is respected, in Africa, and not despised as Britain is despised.

Several Hon. Members

rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson)

Mr. Brocklebank-Fowler.

Mr. George Cunningham

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. After the disgraceful contorted logic of the speech by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), would it not be appropriate for you to call—

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman has been here long enough to know that that is not a point of order. It is perhaps necessary to draw attention to the fact that I have called a maiden speaker who has been waiting all day to speak in the debate. Mr. Brocklebank-Fowler.

Mr. Cunningham

After the speech we have just heard, would it not be appropriate for you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to call another hon. Member on this side?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. I have already expressed myself on that matter.

8.28 p.m.

Mr. Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler (King's Lynn)

I rise to ask the indulgence of the House in making my maiden speech. Since the formation of the constituency in 1918, King's Lynn has usually been represented by a member of the governing party. In expressing my delight that the electorate there has continued this custom, albeit by a small majority, I must nevertheless pay tribute to my immediate predecessor, Mr. Derek Page. Hon. Members opposite at least will know that he enjoyed the considerable respect and affection of a large number of his constituents.

I hope that the House will also allow me on this occasion to refer briefly to another former Member, Denys Bullard, who represented South-West Norfolk from 1951 to 1955, and King's Lynn from 1959 to 1964. I am sure that the House will remember with pleasure Denys Bullard's rich contributions to agriculture debates in particular, and wish him well.

The King's Lynn constituency has many features worthy of remark not least the town itself, with its 1,000-year old port and its medieval, Elizabethan and Georgian architecture, which reflect the wealth of the port throughout the ages. Primarily a market town, King's Lynn is now an expanding town, having an overspill agreement with the Greater London Council and offering a first-class environment for industrial expansion. The marshland area of the constituency is notable because almost all of it was reclaimed from the sea by Dutch engineers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its unique flat landscape and fertile soils, divided by waterways and overlooked by the great wool churches, is the home of some of Britain's finest and most independent horticulturalists, fruit growers and small farmers.

To the north of Lynn, around the coast, with its marshes and superb sand beaches, lie the resorts of Hunstanton and Brancaster which, together with numerous other coastal villages, are popular centres for family holidays, a wide range of outside recreation and, increasingly, for retirement. Inland to the north and east of Lynn are some of the huge agricultural and sporting estates where, in the 18th and 19th centuries, British agricultural systems were the envy of the world. The tradition of large-scale and scientific agriculture is still very much alive today.

No description of the constituency would be complete without reference to the royal residence at Sandringham and to William Kent's masterpiece at Houghton, built for Sir Robert Walpole as the country home of the Cabinet of the day. Our first Prime Minister had his political critics, but few could deny that this superb building is a fine memorial and a national treasure.

Sir Robert Walpole was first elected to represent King's Lynn in 1701, and his family was the main political force in West Norfolk for many generations. Indeed, at one time there were five parliamentary seats in the family's gift in my present constituency. However, in Norfolk we prefer to remember the Walpoles for their motto, "Say what you think", which, though unfashionable in some political circles today, is the first duty of any Member of the House who represents a constituency in Norfolk.

I am conscious that there are dangers in following that advice in speaking on the subject which we are debating today, but I hope that the House will respect my motives for doing so. I have no financial interests in Africa, but I have enjoyed the privilege of both living in Kenya and travelling widely in East and Central Africa. I still speak some Swahili and I have maintained and developed private friendships with Africans over nearly 20 years.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his determination that our relationship with friends in Africa should be based upon the firm foundations of the law. I hope that this policy will lead to fewer misunderstandings.

The terms of the Motion raise three important points—first, whether there is a legal obligation on the United Kingdom to supply certain replacements and spares under the sea routes agreement; second, whether there is a legal obligation to supply further arms; and third, whether it is now the intention of the Government at some point in the future to supply further arms to the South African Government.

On the first two points it is clear—or at least, it was reasonably clear until we had the legal discussion earlier—that Britain's legal obligations under the Sea Routes Agreement, summarised in paragraphs 51 and 52 of the White Paper, require her to supply certain replacements and spares. But it is clear from paragraph 59 that there is no … general and continuing legal obligation on Her Majesty's Government to permit the supply of arms to the South African Government. As a layman, I accept those views of the Law Officers in respect of this obligation. I ask my right hon. Friend, in winding up for the Government, to confirm that he accepts all the legal advice set out in the White Paper and that he will undertake to ensure that the South African Government meet in full her legal commitments, especially those relating to employment in the naval base agreement. Will he also ask the Attorney-General to report to the House on the legal status of the South African police presently supporting the rebellion against the Crown by the illegal régime in Rhodesia? lf, as I suspect, their presence in defiance of the wishes of Her Majesty's Government is illegal, will my right hon. Friend insist that they are withdrawn so that the legal niceties are observed in every aspect of our relationship with South Africa? If the Government will accept this advice, I am sure that it will go some way to restoring the Commonwealth's confidence in Britain's integrity and purpose.

Turning to the third question, I shall now consider the wisdom of exceeding our legal obligations and supplying further arms to South Africa. Undoubtedly such a course of action would cause irreparable damage to the Commonwealth and would undermine our still considerable influence in the third world. The adverse effect on our short and long-term economic interests and the threat to the security of British expatriates are too awful to contemplate. Communism would gain its greatest boost since Suez. Is the marginal strengthening of our bilateral defence capability really worth all this?

Nevertheless, the rapidly increasing presence of Soviet ships obviously is a threat to the freedom of the seas which cannot be ignored. But, can, or indeed should, Britain and South Africa together assume the total responsibility for the defence of the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic? To accent this proposition would be to condemn the British taxpayer to paying for forces on an imperialistic scale and would be to the detriment of many of our other interests throughout the continent of Africa.

Surely long-term and effective defence can be provided on this scale only by an alliance with the United States of America or between all the friendly nations which depend upon the sea routes through these areas and whose countries are vulnerable to attack from the sea.

The Government have already reconised the value of multilateral cooperation in the Far East. I urge the Government to delay any move to increase the scale of our bilateral cooperation with South Africa until much greater thought has been given to the alternatives.

The issues underlying the debate have serious and long-term implications for Britain's interests. Rather than reacting quite so quickly to pressure from the South African Government, surely we ought to make a more catholic assessment of where our interests really lie. We must raise our sights to consider the prospect of real partnership with Africans in their desire for equal rights and economic expansion. If we will support them, the ties of language and affection can ensure our access to a vast expanding market for both investment and trade which may yet be vital to our own economy.

We should also remember that Communism is as alien to Islam and to the African tribal tradition as it is to us. It flourishes in Egypt, not through lack of British arms, but because Britain was slow to accommodate the aspirations of the Egyptian people. One is entitled to ask: will Britain ever learn?

8.40 p.m.

Mr. Michael Stewart (Fulham)

I have great pleasure in congratulating the hon. Member for King's Lynn (Mr. Brocklebank-Fowler) on his maiden speech. It was a speech most elegant in form and most pertinent in content to the subject of our debate. It enabled him to live fully up to the motto, "Say what you think", and if he were more loudly applauded by his hon. Friends when he stood up than when he sat down, he has at any rate the consolation of knowing that he has said what he thinks and that what he thinks is very much to the purpose.

I share his feeling about the legal arguments which we have heard. I suppose that if any one of us were asked to pronounce a judgment, having heard the Attorney-General and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones), it would be said of any one of us that our judgment was politically prejudiced. I believe that if someone who had never expressed or formed any opinion on this matter had heard that argument he would be bound at the very least to consider that if there were a balance of legal argument one way or the other it was extremely tenuous.

It is on this tenuous platform, even assuming that the tenuous balance is the Government's way, which I do not admit, that the Government erect a policy involving something far more than legalism, a policy that has grave moral implications and very great political implications for this country, for the Commonwealth and for Britain's position in the world. Most remarkable of all—and we are grateful to the hon. Member for King's Lynn for rubbing this point in—it is still necessary to ask the question whether the Government's policy is to go further than their legal obligations.

If we read the mere wording of the Amendment, the Government are resting themselves only on the legal obligation. Can we have quite expressly what the situation is? Is the Government's intention to supply arms to South Africa strictly limited to the legal obligations as defined in the White Paper? The extraordinary thing is that we still have to ask this. This ought to have been made clear long ago. The Foreign Secretary made a speech, but at the end of it the question was still unanswered. We ought to know before the debate comes to an end. If the answer is that the Government are to go no further than their legal obligations, then that is very different from the impression which the Prime Minister was giving to the South Africans some months earlier.

Another legal point touched on by the hon. Gentleman, which if we are to argue the issue legalistically ought not to be ignored, has to do with the position in Rhodesia. Since it cannot be in dispute that the South African Government are actively supporting a régime in rebellion against the Crown, are we under a legal obligation to go on supplying arms to them? I believe I am right in saying that all contracts about the sale of arms can be interrupted for grave reasons of State.

I should like to know whether there is a precedent for our allowing a country supporting a rebellion against the Crown to purchase arms in this country. I do not pretend to know the legal answer, but surely it is a question which ought to have been put to the Law Officers. It has not been put to them. Have the Government taken any legal advice about this or did they just forget the matter in their hurry to make some pronouncement about the sale of arms to South Africa?

It is remarkable, throughout the progress of this affair, since the Government came into power, to see the extent to which they have used arid legalisms and dry expressions of principle which have no flesh and blood to hide the monstrous nature of the thing they were doing. The Prime Minister's description of the Government's policy began with a solemn assertion that each independent Commonwealth country has the right to be the judge of its own interests and to do what it feels is in its own interests. As a legal principle, that has not been disputed. The question is this: is what the Government propose to do right or wise?

No one questions that they have a sovereign right to do it. Under the law of the country, a man has a legal right to commit suicide, but only a fool demonstrates his independence and sovereignty by doing so. The Government have confused what we have a legal right to do with what it might be wise and right to do. We are arguing about what is wise and right, and the Government try to thrust this into a legal, constitutional straitjacket. It is the same with this long argument about the exact nature of resolutions at the United Nations, ignoring the one simple fact that this country is a permanent member of the Security Council. If a resolution is going forward there which we are convinced we either cannot practically or in honour carry out, our duty is perfectly clear, namely, to use our power to prevent it from being passed, to explain why, and to bear such odium as may come from using the veto. What is not excusable is to let it go through, pretend we are keeping it and hedee it round with reservations which mean that we are dodging that responsibility. That is what the Government have done.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) does not think very much of the United Nations, or, for that matter, of the Commonwealth—or, as far as I can gather, most of mankind.

Mr. Paget

They are two not very successful organisations.

Mr. Stewart

What my hon. and learned Friend should grasp is that an organisation whose job is to try to keep mankind at peace will not be successful in its early stages. It will probably be about as effective as this Parliament was when it was first assembled seven centuries ago. It was then no good trying to pass laws by a majority vote and expecting them to be obeyed throughout the country, but one could get the great and powerful to see a bit further than the ends of their noses where their common interests lay.

That is what we must try to do in the political work of the United Nations. We shall not do it by dodging about and playing with the legalities of resolutions in the way in which the Government have done over the question of arms for South Africa.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton does not think much of the setting up of the eight-nation group. Presumably the Government do, otherwise why did they set it up? We are told, as if it were a matter of pride, that the Prime Minister gave no pledge that he would not sell arms to South Africa before the eight nation group had finished its work. Was the determination to sell arms to South Africa and making a statement to that effect before the eight nation group had finished its work a right or sensible thing to do? Why was the group formed? Presumably because the Government thought that the common counsels of these nations would be of service in framing defence in the Indian Ocean.

Apart from any pledge which the Prime Minister did not give, anyone with common sense must have know that to announce a decision to sell arms to South Africa before the group had finished its work was an insult to it and must have known that this would be the effect. Better not to set up the group than to do it in order to palm this gratuitous insult on it. We are told, "It is all right because the Prime Minister did not promise that he would not do it", as if a refusal by the Prime Minister to promise to do good is a subsequent justification for his doing any kind of mischief that he can lay his hands on.

But beyond that there is the great politico-moral issue to which many speeches have been addressed. We do not dodge it by pointing out that there are many tyrannies in the world and that we must put up with them and co-exist with them. But it is a new doctrine that because we have to co-exist with various régimes it is either logical or wise to supply arms to them. Much as we deplore many aspects of Communist tyranny, we accept that we must co-exist with Communist countries. Nobody, however, argues that because one believes in co-existence they therefore have logically a right to obtain arms from this country. Yet that has been the argument advanced by some speakers about South Africa tonight. The right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) said that because under the last Government there was a substantially peaceful trade between South Africa and this country, it was therefore logical for us to sell arms to South Africa. Would anyone accept that logic in relations between this country and the Communist world?

Further, it is suggested that we shall somehow make the South African tyranny better if we allow the South Africans to buy arms in this country. It was argued that if they are increasingly boycotted and put in a corner they will get worse. Hon. Members opposite were putting forward that argument and at the same time saying that South Africa has been boycotted, attacked, put in a corner, and that her régime is getting better and better all the time. Both those statements, mutually contradictory, have ben advanced on the other side of the House.

As to whether the savageness of apartheid is relaxing—well, witnesses come, witnesses of our own nation and of our own religious faith, one by one from South Africa telling us what is inevitably the story of the tyranny of a people who begin by tyrannising over another race and have to end up by tyrannising over their own race. That is what is happening in South Africa.

It does not answer the point to say that there are worse tyrannies elsewhere, because this tyranny, and this particular form of tyranny, occupies a key position in the world at the present time. The new nations of Africa, preoccupied with their own problems, none the less cannot avoid feeling that the one great question for Africa is this: is apartheid going to come to an end or is it going to spread—in South Africa and the Portuguese colonies and Southern Rhodesia? That will be the greatest international question in their minds, and what the British Government, by their present policy, are saying to all Africa is, "On this great question Britain is ranging herself on the wrong side." I do not believe that there is any getting away from that.

I visited Nigeria early this year, a country where there is great affection and regard for Britain. I remember being among a group of people, some British, some Nigerian, and the conversation turned on this question which we are debating tonight. One of the British in the company put the perfectly fair question to a Nigerian, "Why do you make so much fuss if we sell arms to South Africa when you know perfectly well that other European countries do it?" The Nigerian's answer was, "If my brother does me a wrong I feel that more than if it is done by a stranger who has no similar obligations to me." That is the feeling, the potential good will, which this Government are doing so much to outrage. They will enable every Russian, every Chinese, propagandist in Africa—and there are quite a number—to say all the time, "You may not think very much of us, but this is a vital question with which you are concerned of racial equality, and which side are the British on?"

We have had pictures of the danger of Communism to the liberties of mankind. It has never been a danger which I have overlooked or underestimated, but what we are arguing about is this: is the British Government's action increasing or diminishing that danger? Does not the history of the year 1939, and of the years preceding it, show that if we try to hold off this danger by getting on tolerable terms with unspeakable tyranny we shall defeat our own ends? It is an extraordinary thing that in the years since the end of the First World War there have been, in my judgment, so far two major errors of British foreign policy. One we associate with the word "Munich" and the other we associate with the word "Suez".

Both policies were intended to contain Communism and to reduce its influence in the world, but both in the end had the opposite effect. There is a further similarity. Both policies were pushed through by an obstinate, opinionated Prime Minister against a great weight of informed opinion and against the conscience of humanity. If the Government get through this policy, this will be the third error, resembling the others in all those respects.

8.55 p.m.

Sir Frederic Bennett (Torquay)

In the last few moments we seem to have returned to the note of Opposition high moral fervour with which the debate began, and with which I have no doubt it will end so far as the Opposition Front Bench is concerned. The right hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. Michael Stewart) seemed to be criticising us because, unlike him, we thought that co-existence meant that we should supply arms. That is precisely what his Government did, but in a more limited range. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that it is immoral to supply arms for the sake of co-existence, does he think it moral to have joint manœoeuvres in which British sailors are put under South African admirals in the South Atlantic? Where does the line or morality go? The one message above all others that should go from the Chamber tonight is the unbelievably hypocritical effrontery of the Labour Front Bench, and most of all of the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) who is to wind up. I have time to give only two examples.

During the period after 1965 there was a continuing supply of some arms, some directly, some under licence, and some in conjunction with the French. The arms supplied in conjunction with the French were of far more use in enforcing apartheid than anything we are now considering. Reference has been made to the unlimited number of handcuffs which have been sold to South Africa in the last few years. Are not they sometimes possibly a little more useful in a repressive State than three or four helicopters? What about the land rovers with which the police forces and armies in South Africa are equipped and for which unlimited licences were given by the Labour Government? I do not object to the Labour Party's practical outlook, but I do object to this extraordinarily shabby white sheet which they adopt.

Then there is the arrangement for joint exercises, some of which were pending when my Government took office last June. Such exercises have taken place over and over again, often not known to back benches opposite, in which British sailors and British ships combined closely in joint naval exercises with only one purpose in mind—what we might need to do in a war against some foe, with South Africa on our side and with British sailors placed under South African command.

Right hon. Gentlemen opposite adopt a moral attitude in which it is all right to have joint manoeuvres with the South Africans, and it is all right to put British sailors under apartheid-minded admirals, provided that they are on ships supplied by another power such as France. Where is the moral? If the sailors are in a British ship that becomes immoral, but if they are in a French ship it is all right.

The right hon. Gentleman will not be surprised if I ask him to clear up a point that has been troubling many of us for a long time. It refers to the memoirs of his noble Friend a former Foreign Secretary. I wish I had time to read more of it.—[Laughter.] I will gladly read the whole passage if it will please hon. Gentlemen. Lord George-Brown was saying that: The arms in question included Buccaneer aircraft and other items of mainly naval equipment such as frigates for South African defence and the implementation of the Simonstown Agreement between us and the South Africans. I did not see how the argument could be sustained that the sort of arms and equipment which the South African Government was anxious to obtain from Britain could really be said so to jeopardise the position of black South Africans as to make it wrong for us to be willing to supply. He went on to say: Mr. Healey and myself, who had jointly submitted the original memorandum and recommendation, and those others who were originally in favour of supplying these limited arms, had become a pretty small minority, and we were no longer able to carry our colleagues with us. Will the right hon. Gentleman say once and for all tonight whether his colleague Lord George-Brown is telling the truth? If he is telling the truth, then if ever there were an example of Satan rebuking sin, it is what we are about to hear.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Mr. Healey.

Mr. Healey

On a point of order. This is a Supply Day, and since the House is debating a Motion put down by the Opposition, is it not the duty of the Opposition to open and close the debate?

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. This is not a matter for the Chair, as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman must realise. If the matter continues in dispute, I have no option but to put the Question.

Mr. Peter Tapsell (Horncastle)

rose—

9.2 p.m.

Mr. Denis Healey (Leeds, East)

If the Government want to have the last word in this debate I shall be delighted to let them have it. In any case, the sooner I can speak the better for the House and, in particular, for Her Majesty's Opposition.

I join with all other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for King's Lynn (Mr. Brocklebank-Fowler) on his remarkable and courageous maiden speech. I say this without the slightest intention of damaging his political prospects in the future. It was noticeable that many of his hon. Friends, who must have disagreed with what he was saying, were most impressed by the manner in which he said it. I know that the whole House will welcome the combination of courage, wisdom and experience which he showed. I have no doubt that on many future occasions I shall find his views less palatable than I found them today.

This debate has been to some extent unsatisfactory since we are still uncertain about what is the precise policy of the Government on arms to South Africa. The Opposition's Motion, whether hon. Members agree with it or not, is clear, unequivocal and wide-ranging. The Government have put down an Amendment which is extremely narrowly drawn.

When the Foreign Secretary opened his remarks he indicated the intention of confining himself largely to his own Amendment as drafted. Yet within a short time he had been triggered off into fantasies about the Red Navy in the Indian Ocean very similar to those with which he regaled us in July. A moment or two later he was robustly asserting once again, as he had in July and on similar occasions since, the right and intention of Her Majesty's Government to supply any arms to South Africa at any time in a form which, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, would help them to carry out their part in checking the threat of the Soviet Navy to the trade routes round the Cape whether or not they were legally obliged to provide those arms. If that is the Government's policy, the Amendment which they have put down for debate is hypocritical and misleading.

In the gratuitous interventions which the Prime Minister made in the speech of the Leader of the Liberal Party, the right hon. Gentleman went a great deal further even then the Foreign Secretary. He said that, as Prime Minister, he maintained exactly the same position as that which he had adopted when he was Leader of the Opposition in the debate in the House on 16th December, 1967. No doubt like many other right hon. and hon. Members, I have taken the trouble to refer to what the right hon. Gentleman said on that occasion. He committed himself to supporting the sale of £200 million-worth of arms to the South African Government. One of his arguments was that this would be necessary to prevent the French Navy acting in South Africa in the same way as the British Navy. I hope that the Minister of State will say tonight whether it is the policy of Her Majesty's Government to supply arms on this scale and for this purpose, among others.

There was at least one comment that the Foreign Secretary spared us. We heard nothing of that hobgoblin of Conservative mythology, the Russian harbour master in Aden, with whom the Prime Minister has been regaling journalists and foreign politicians for the last nine months and who turns out to be an inoffensive Indian lent to the South Yemen Government by the Indian Government.

However, we had from the Foreign Secretary—it was echoed by the hon. Member for Torquay (Sir F. Bennett)—the same story about Puma helicopters. But it was very different from that which the Foreign Secretary put to us about 10 days ago. Then, relying unwisely, as his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer could have warned him, on a story by Mr. Chapman Pincher in the Daily Express, the Foreign Secretary told us that the Labour Government when in power had not protested against the sale of these helicopters. He now knows that that is not true. He knows that, when we were consulted on the sale, we said that we were strongly against it and that it was quite contrary to the policy of the Government but that, as I told him last week, we were not in a position to prevent the sale because, under our agreement with the French Government for the production of three helicopters, we were unable to get a common consent clause about sales for a helicopter which was 80 per cent. produced by France.

The Foreign Secretary made one point which he has made before, and it was well answered by his hon. Friend the Member for King's Lynn. Once again the right hon. Gentleman pointed out that the Soviet fleet in the Mediterranean presents more of a threat to the West today than it did four years ago because, today, the Soviet Union has military aircraft in Egypt. That is perfectly true. But why are there Soviet sailors, soldiers and airmen in Egypt? No one knows the reason better than the Foreign Secretary himself. In 1956, a Conservative Government, in the mistaken belief that they were protecting Britain's interests, acted against the advice of all our friends in the Commonwealth and all our allies except one and used force to secure those interests. With one bound, as a result, the Soviet Government were established as a major political influence in the Middle East and as a major military power. They have never looked back since that day.

The other achievement at Suez which is relevant to the issue which we are discussing today is that, in one stroke, a Conservative Government destroyed a position of paramount influence in the Arab world which it had taken 50 years to build. That, incidentally, led directly to the assassination of Britain's best friend in the Arab world, Nuri-as-Said.

I ask the Foreign Secretary, who knows a great deal about these matters, to consider whether there is a danger of that situation being repeated if the Government are not prepared to tell us tonight that they will not go beyond what they regard as their legal obligations in selling arms to South Africa. Nobody who followed the agony of the Singapore Conference—no one followed it more closely than the right hon. Gentleman—can have the slightest doubt about the conse- quences for the Commonwealth, for Africa and, as the hon. Member for King's Lynn pointed out, for British lives and property in Africa if the Government persist in their present policy.

The Foreign Secretary was not at his best in speaking earlier this afternoon, and he has not been at his best at any stage in this long tragedy of Tory policy in South Africa. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman was at his best in Singapore, because, from many reports in the Press and many reports which I received privately, it appears that he worked like a Trojan to try to get the Prime Minister off the hook on which the Prime Minister had impaled himself.

The right hon. Gentleman was responsible for persuading the Nigerian Government—I ask him to deny this if it is untrue—to put forward the proposal for an Eight-Power Study Group to consider security in the Indian Ocean. The right hon. Gentleman did a great deal at that Conference to limit the damage created so far by Government policy. I deeply regret that the right hon. Gentleman has not had the courage to carry his conversion through and to make it clear to his colleagues and to the House that enough is enough and that it would be disastrous for Britain's interests if we were to carry the sale of arms to South Africa one inch beyond the legal obligations as the Government have defined them.

I must now say a word or two about the legal obligations, because much of the Government's case so far hangs on the Attorney-General's White Paper. However, from what the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary said this afternoon, the legal argument, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said, is irrelevant. It is quite clear that the Government are not standing on the legal argument; they propose to go ahead and sell whatever arms they think fit to the South African Government whether or not there is a legal obligation under the Simonstown Agreement to do so.

There are two great merits in the Attorney-General's White Paper. First, it throws some light on the degree of candour with which the Prime Minister is prepared to treat the House, the country and the world. The Prime Minister, in his Guildhall speech, said: Under the Simonstown arrangements we have an obligation to supply to South Africa the maritime equipment she requires to fulfil her side of the Agreement. The right hon. Gentleman elaborated that, when he spoke at a Press conference a month later in Ottawa, by saying: Under that Agreement we have the obligation to supply arms for maritime defence to South Africa. The right hon. Gentleman made no attempt to qualify those statements; he gave everybody the impression—deliberately so—that there was no limitation whatever under that Agreement. Yet we now know from the White Paper, which we understand from the Attorney-General is accepted in toto by the Government, that, as paragraph 59 makes clear, there is in fact no continuing legal obligation on Her Majesty's Government to permit the supply of arms to the South African Government. Another very valuable service has been done by the Attorney-General's White Paper. It showed, and gave chapter and verse, what scrupulous care was taken by the Labour Government to carry out the United Nations embargo, subject only to the inherited commitments which were legally binding on the Labour Government when they came into office in 1964.

The hon. Member for Torquay and other hon. Members have tried to make out that in carrying out our minimal legal obligations under Simonstown we in some way behaved exactly as badly as the present Conservative Government plan to behave. In his speech at the Singapore Conference, which was published, President Nyerere said on this question: … we are very well aware of the problems of inheritance. African states themselves inherited many Agreements which they have since regretted but have not felt able to renounce.… It would therefore be unrealistic for us to complain, in 1970 or 1971, about Britain fulfilling the minimum of engagements with South Africa which she undertook in 1955. What we do expect, however, is that a government inheriting obligations which are contrary to its interests in changed circumstances. will do the minimum it is obliged to do, and will endeavour always to lift these obligations from its back. Those are wise and very moderate words. That was the feeling of all the African Governments with which the Labour Government were in communication for the six years from 1964 to 1970. I think that members of the Government Front Bench at any rate understand that there is a basic political difference, and difference of principle, between doing the minimum that one is committed to do by inherited obligations and accepting an unlimited political commitment, irrespective of all one's legal obligations, to do a great deal more and to do things which are regarded by the African members of the Commonwealth with exactly as much repugnance as Jews in the 1930s would have felt about the supply of arms to Hitler.

Mr. Peter Rees (Dover)

Since clearly the right hon. Gentleman's Administration attached so much importance to their minimum obligations, did they ever ask their Law Officers what the precise scope of those obligations was? Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House what advice he received?

Mr. Healey

This was done earlier by my right hon. Friend the then Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the then Attorney-General, and I am just passing to this point.

The whole case made by the Attorney-General boils down to his opinion that the Government are obliged to supply eleven helicopters as the complement for three frigates. He rightly said that the Labour Government admitted the need to supply Wasps for the three frigates, and they did so in 1966. But in the Labour Government's opinion that concluded their obligations under the Simonstown Agreement. The right hon. and learned Gentleman argues that that did not conclude their obligations for two reasons: first, because the four Wasps supplied in 1966 were not intended for the Simonstown frigates, and, second, because the complement for the three frigates was 3½ each, making 11 in total.

These are matters of opinion, not of law. The right judgment here depends not on law but on knowing a little bit about the facts and about naval practice. The four Wasps supplied in 1966 were supplied for the Simonstown frigates. They would not have been supplied otherwise. I have very good authority for this. A letter, of which I was sent three separate drafts by the Defence Department in December and as late as last night, makes it absolutely clear. The second draft, reference MO 6/1 dated 11th December, 1970, says of the four helicopters: Subsequently a letter from the Foreign Office … explained that these helicopters were being supplied because they were regarded as integral parts of the anti-submarine equipment of the frigates which had already been supplied as part of the Simonstown Agreement. That is the view of the Ministry of Defence under the Conservative Government. [Interruption.] I am referring to the second draft sent to me on 11th December. The Government were obviously embarrassed to know that the Ministry of Defence took a different view, so last night they sent me a further letter—[Interruption.] It was not sent in confidence. There is no inscription on it. I assure the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Kirk) of this and he can see the letter if he wishes. The letter I received last night put it rather differently, and said that the letter of 9 March 1965 … explained that in reaching their decision … H.M.G. had taken account of the fact that these aircraft were integral parts of a complete antisubmarine weapons system supplied to South Africa under the Simonstown Agreement". There is no question whatever that those four helicopters were part of the Simonstown Agreement, and that was the view of the Ministry of Defence.

When we are asked why they were supplied before all the frigates had been converted, the answer is simply that one cannot train helicopter crews and the people who must operate this sophisticated anti-submarine equipment without practice. These helicopters would have been used before the conversions were completed, and they were so used, to provide anti-submarine defence for Simonstown from land bases. The Minister could easily have checked that with the Ministry of Defence if he had bothered to do so.

All the rest of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's case is that we were obliged to supply more than four helicopters because there was a higher complement. This is a question not of law but of naval judgment. Nevertheless, what are the facts? It is quite clear that the South African Government regarded the four that were supplied as the complement and the initial reserve for the three Simonstown frigates because in 1967 they asked for four more, and not eleven more, to be delivered between 1971 and 1973. Indeed, the last of those four would not have been delivered until the frigates had been at sea and operating for four years.

What is absolutely clear is that those for which they asked, and for which they are asking now, are not the initial complement and reserve for the Simonstown frigates but are intended as replacements for helicopters which perhaps crashed or became worn out, and we have no obligation to supply replacements for those. We warned the South African Government years ago that we should not supply any helicopters to replace those which wore out. We warned them of this in 1965, and this is in the letter which is in the right hon. and learned Gentleman's White Paper. He should read his own White Paper, even if lie does not consult the Minister of Defence.

The Attorney-General

The right hon. Gentleman said that the Labour Government had warned the South African Government. Earlier he said that some information had been given in 1967. It does not appear that anything was heard until 1970. Is he saying that it took three years for them to send such a message?

Mr. Healey

I am saying that the right hon. and learned Gentleman did not bother to find out that when Admiral Bush went to renegotiate the Agreement at the beginning of 1967, he told the South African Government that Her Majesty's Government would not entertain their shopping list, and this was confirmed in writing at the beginning of 1968. These details do not appear in the White Paper, but I am not responsible for the document. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is responsible for that.

I simply add my plea to that made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General—[Interruption.] I should, of course, have called him the former Attorney-General. I am being a little premature. I support his plea, on the legal question, that if there is a genuine dispute between the two Front Benches—in so far as I could understand the arguments adduced by the present and former Attorney-Generals, there seems to be a dispute—cannot the matter be referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for decision? This has often been done in the past. I have no doubt that the present Attorney-General is quite as distinguished a legal luminary as Sir Reginald ManninghamBuller, but it happened to Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, and he was found to be wrong, and I do not see why we should not try the same again.

The Attorney-General

In fact—I do this in loyalty to Lord Dilhorne—as hon. Gentlemen might not know, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller was in a minority of one in the Select Committee—

Mr. William Hamilton

He always was.

The Attorney-General

Hon. Members had better wait. When the Judicial Committee reviewed the decision it supported Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, who was in a minority of one, and said that he was right and everyone else was wrong.

Mr. Healey

For the right hon. and learned Gentleman's sake, I only hope that he has the same experience and that he is prepared to submit himself to the same test. This is all we ask for. Whatever may be the legal situation here, nothing can excuse the way in which the Government actually reacted to the White Paper. They had set up this Eight-Power Commonwealth Study Group. They might have waited until it had met. They might have waited for the South African Government to ask for helicopters. Instead, they sent a telegram immediately to the South African Government. They took the initiative and said, "You can have eleven helicopters. Do you want them?". Greatly to their disappointment, the South Africans said, "No, we only want seven ". So much for this complement argument.

They did this the very week that the Church in South Africa was undergoing an all-out attack from Mr. Vorster. They did it the very week that the South African Government were conspiring in Salisbury with rebels against the British Crown to put forces into British territory against the express wishes of the British Government. And they did it as their first contribution to the International Year Against Racial Discrimination.

It is not surprising that Mr. Vorster now regards the present Prime Minister with almost as much affection as he regarded Hitler 30 years ago—[HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw."] It is not surprising either that members of the Commonwealth, Ministers who have publicly stated their view in Singapore that they would not participate in the Eight-Power Study Group if the Government took a decision before it had met, have now told the Government that they will not participate.

But there is still some way to limit the damage. I appeal to the Minister of State, who is about to reply to the debate, to make it clear to the House and the country that the Amendment which the Government have chosen to put on the Order Paper represents the extent of the Government's present ambition as regards arms sales to South Africa. If they will do so, many of us on this side and millions throughout the world will feel that it is at least a cheap way of escaping from catastrophe.

But if the Government are unwilling to give this pledge, if the Minister takes the line taken by the Prime Minister in those unguarded interventions this afternoon, then I fear that the consequences for Britain, for our interests in Africa, for our interests in Asia, for our good name in the world, for the lives and property of our fellow nationals, will be catastrophic. And the responsibility will lie on one man—a Prime Minister who is neurotically obsessed with the need to prove that he is a man.

9.30 p.m.

The Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Joseph Godber)

We have had a somewhat complex debate. The right hon. Member for Leeds, South-East (Mr. Healey) chose to raise a number of scares which I shall deal with, but first I join him in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for King's Lynn (Mr. Brocklebank-Fowler) on his maiden spech. It was well delivered. There may have been parts of it with which I did not wholy agree, but it was a courageous speech and I gladly acknowledge it. We look forward to his further contributions with great interest.

The Motion uses some very extravagant language. It bears the clear stamp of the right hon. Member for Leeds, South-East. The Government Amendment, by contrast, is simple and straightforward and brings us back to the issue before the House.

Mr. Harold Wilson

No.

Mr. Godber

It is no good the Leader of the Opposition shouting "No". If he will exercise a little patience, I will explain to him in due course. His and other speeches ranged widely and I wish to comment on some of these matters. I want to analyse the situation as I see it and to try to clarify the issues from some of the nonsense and cant we have heard from the Opposition.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General has already spelt out the legal position clearly in his intervention. Hon. Members opposite have tried to cast doubt on our legal obligations but they have failed to undermine the logic either of the White Paper or of what my right hon. and learned Friend said. It is a pity that the last Government did not go to the same pains to set out their legal obligations when they were responsible. The right hon. and learned Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones) has said that he himself was consulted, and we accept that he was. He suggested that it was not always customary or necessary to have formal opinions. Nevertheless, the legal opinion set out by my right hon. and learned Friends has been of real help in directing people's minds to specific issues as we see them.

Sir Elwyn Jones

Would the right hon. Gentleman mind answering a question which has always interested me? Was a formal legal opinion sought before the invasion of Suez?

Mr. Godber

The right hon. and learned Gentleman must be very hard up for ammunition if he is trying to distort the issue in that way. It does not help towards clarification. This is not a comparable situation at all and his intervention is an indication of the barrenness of the Opposition's arguments.

To me, as a lay man, the strong impression left, after reading various communications from the last Government to the South African Government, as set out in the annexe to the White Paper—

Mr. Harold Wilson

It is not all there.

Mr. Godber

—is that, from 1964 onwards, they sought by degrees to wriggle out of the commitment to honour undertakings under the Simonstown Agreement. Late in 1964 and in early 1965, there were attempts to reassure the South African Government that the undertakings would be honoured. In particular, the terms of a letter of 9th March, 1965, with reference to the Westland Wasps, were very specific. But after that, the position rapidly deteriorated until we come to the very negative Aide-Memoire of 5th March, 1970. That was the first statement which the right hon. and learned Gentleman was able to call in evidence in support of his claim that a declaration had been made that only these four helicopters were going to be supplied. We asked him repeatedly and he could give no earlier date. I find it difficult indeed to accept that it would take all that time to come to such a decision. It is clear that the party opposite, when in power, were seeking all the time to wriggle away from their obligations. It was only in the early months of 1970 that they really spelled them out in the form of the Aide-Memoire of 5th March, 1970. That is the position.

Mr. Healey

I dealt with this point. One of the difficulties in which the Government have found themselves is that they appear to be totally unaware that the request for four helicopters in 1967 was refused in 1967 verbally and at the beginning of 1968 in writing. There was a further request for helicopters at the end of 1969 which was refused in 1970. That is the further request, not made until 1969, which is the one referred to here.

Mr. Godber

I am coming to the right hon. Gentleman's point regarding his quotations and letters. I want to make clear what the position is, as I see it. In so far as his intervention was directed to the points he was trying to make during his own speech in regard to the letters from the Ministry of Defence, I found it strange when he told the House, first of all, that none of these letters was marked "Confidential". The copy which I have of the letter from which he quoted, dated 11 th December, says in the last paragraph I should be grateful if you would treat this in confidence. Those are the words in the letter. However, what is much more serious and what the right hon. Gentleman cannot get away from is that in the letter last night, which he admits he received, he was told that the facts were not given correctly in the letter of 11th December, and yet he chose to quote from the letter of 11th December. If that was not an attempt to mislead the House, I do not know what is.

Mr. Healey

The right hon. Gentleman has accused me of attempting to mislead the House. Is this in order? If it is, may I refute this terminological inexactitude?

Mr. Godber

The right hon. Gentleman was quoting from the letter which referred specifically to four helicopters. The letter which he received last night said clearly that the word "four" should not have been there.

Mr. Healey

I did not quote it.

Mr. Godber

The right hon. Gentleman did not quote the word "four" but he quoted the arguments related to the word "four", because he was basing himself on the supply of four helicopters. The purpose of the letter last night was to say that the undertaking was not limited to four helicopters. It is no good—[interruption.]

Mr. Clinton Davis (Hackney, Central)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for a Government who come to the House on this issue with unclean hands to allege fraud against my right hon. Friend?

Mr. Speaker

That is not a point of order.

Mr. Godber

I make the point perfectly clearly that the right hon. Gentleman was quoting from a letter which he knew had been corrected and he made no attempt to tell the House that it had been corrected. He did not say that the letter he quoted from was specifically said to have given facts not accurately and was in confidence. So it is clear that the right hon. Gentleman rested his case on a false point.

Mr. Harold Wilson

On a point of Order, Mr. Speaker. We want to hear the right hon. Gentleman's speech—[HON. MEMBERS: "Then sit down!"]—If you would now rule, Mr. Speaker, that the right hon. Gentleman, having quoted part of an official document, must lay it on the Table, we should be able to hear him.

Mr. Speaker

I think that the right hon. Gentleman was summarising what was in the document.

Mr. Godber

The first quotation came from the right hon. Member for Leeds, East. If he likes to lay his copy of the letter on the Table, I will be very happy to lay mine. That should clear up the position without any doubt.

I move on to the question which has been the basis of so many speeches today, namely the question of the moral case. It has been said today that the very enactment of apartheid is such a moral outrage that any legal arrangement with South Africa should have been abandoned when apartheid was adopted and that Britain therefore is entitled to ignore legal obligations of this kind.

I do not accept that thesis, although I can understand the feelings of those who advance it. But nor did the previous Government accept that thesis. If they had accepted it, they would have repudiated the Simonstown Agreement and they would have said that, irrespective of Britain's needs, they would have nothing more to do with South Africa in the context of defence. But the previous Government did not do that. They said that they attach importance to the Simonstown Agreement and regard it as still in force."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th February, 1968; Vol. 758, c. 232.] Those are the words of the Leader of the Opposition. I think that the previous Government were right to do that, but I think that they should have honoured their side of the bargain.

Mr. Harold Wilson

We did.

Mr. Godber

My point is that a moral judgment cannot afford to be selective. I yield to no one in my abhorrence of apartheid—[HON. MEMBERS: "Come off it."] Most certainly. But there are other countries whose internal activities I also find very distasteful, and I have never thought that Britain could base her foreign policy on her attitude to the internal politics of other States.

In my view, the only way in which a moral judgment could be properly invoked in regard to the supply of arms to South Africa would be if those arms could be shown to be directly related to the enforcement of apartheid. There are those who have attempted from time to time to say that this is the case, even with such limited a uantities as we are now discussing, but I reject that argument as absurd. It has been argued that a helicopter supplied for one purpose can be used for another. Why on earth should the South African Government bother to do this with a few Wasp helicopters when we know that she has ample supplies of other helicopters supplied by other nations against whom the moralists either here or elsewhere have scarcely bothered to breathe a word of protest?

The Opposition have made a great deal in this debate of the possible effect of our decision on other African countries and on other members of the Commonwealth. One of their main arguments appears to be that, whatever justification there may be for the supply of these very limited quantities of arms, we ought to have delayed announcing any decision to supply them until the Commonwealth Study Group had reported.

In this respect no one could have been at greater pains to explain Britain's decision in this matter, particularly to Commonwealth countries, than my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. I hope that all the countries, both in the Commonwealth and beyond it, which hold strong views on this matter will recognise the quite exceptional efforts that we have made to explain to them the reasons why we feel this move to be necessary.

However, we must claim the same right as any other sovereign member of the Commonwealth claims to come to our own conclusions as to our essential interests, and no more than any other independent member of the Commonwealth could we allow others to exercise or seek to exercise any power of veto over the decisions of Her Majesty's Government.

The Commonwealth was never conceived and has never operated in such a spirit, and other Commonwealth members would be the first to protest if any member of that association should seek to determine their policies for them. That I should have thought must be self-evident to every Member of this House.

When we last debated this matter my noble Friend the Minister of State for Defence expounded in great detail the defence aspects which convinced us of the continuing need to maintain the Simonstown base. The Opposition, when in office, never denied the importance of that base. If we were not to fulfil our obligations as we see them we would have no right to expect to continue to enjoy the facilities of that base and that is something which hon. Members opposite have never faced up to.

They must look in particular at the last Aide-Memoire of the White Paper which sets out very clearly the attitude of the South African Government in relation to that. If they look at the first paragraph of page 47 they will see the strong words used by the South African Government. Right at the end of the White Paper the last two sentences show the implications of the way in which the South African Government's mind was moving over the future of the Simonstown Agreement when right hon. Gentlemen opposite were responsible for our affairs.

It would be very unwise for anyone to assume that we would be entitled to look for the facilities of this base if we did not honour the undertaking as we have said we will. The real balance of advantage is not, as I have heard it argued today, the balance between trade with South Africa and trade with the rest of Africa. The real balance must have regard to the danger of the loss of facilities under the Simonstown Agreement that must eventually have followed our failure to honour our undertakings under that Agreement. That is an essential aspect of this which hon. Gentlemen opposite would have done well to acknowledge.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon (York)

rose—

Mr. Godber

I am not prepared to give way. From the speeches by members of the Opposition one would be led to suppose that the difference between the two sides of the House is one of unimpeachable virtue on the opposite side and complete degradation in the attitude of the Government. Those of us, on both sides, who have worked with the representatives of black African State at the United Nations, and I am one of those who have, known that the position is looked at very differently by the Africans. They are not satisfied, and in the nature of things they never can be satisfied, by anything so limited as the banning of the sale of arms to South Africa.

What the African nations really want is not just the banning of arms, they want the banning of trade with South Africa; they want penal sanctions against South Africa and they want those sanctions enforced by a naval blockade. Finally, they would like to see the present régime in South Africa subjected to military invasion. Everyone who has discussed this with those representatives knows that that is the case. We can all understand that view although there are very few in this House who would go along with it. When the fact is stated it serves to show how far short the policies of both the major parties of this House fall from what many Africans would wish.

The party opposite felt that if they made their declaration banning arms for South Africa they had gone a long way to meet the African point of view. But Lord Caradon soon found at the United Nations that the step they had taken merely led to demands to go further. Within less than a year we find him making an impassioned speech at the United Nations defending Britain's right to continue to trade with South Africa.

If there are those on the opposite side of the House who have views on this I would like to quote one paragraph of a speech which Lord Caradon made to the Special Committee on Apartheid on 1st December, 1965. I do not think that anyone in this House will accuse Lord Caradon of extreme Right-wing views. He said: First I wish to re-state the principle regarding trade. This has often been clearly declared by my Government. It is no new attitude to meet a particular situation, it is a basic principle that trade is not a weapon to used to express political detestation of a régime in a particular foreign country. We trade with many countries in which the policies pursued by the Government for the time being in power are in our opinion misguided or worse but there is nothing dishonourable in this. If trade had to be dependent on satisfying a political test … world trade would soon wither away. [Interruption.] Perhaps hon. Members opposite do not like it, but that is what the representative of their Government expounded at the United Nations, and it is as well that they should know it.

I come to the point about the commitment to supply arms. The immediate cause of our debate was the announcement made on Monday last week of our readiness to supply Wasp helicopters in conformity with our legal obligations as we see them. We are being urged, however, even if we do supply them, not to provide any further supplies of arms with the exception of spare parts which, I understand, even the Opposition do not deny we should supply. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary today and the Prime Minister at Singapore made absolutely clear that we must retain our right to make our decisions in the light of Britain's interest as we see it. It is important, however, to consider this within the limits which we have prescribed.

When resolution No. 181 was before the Security Council of the United Nations in 1963, Sir Patrick Dean stated the then Government's position. He said: It is the position of my Government that no arms should be exported to South Africa which would enable the policy of apartheid to be enforced. Later he said: In view of our arrangements on co-operation with South Africa for the protection of the sea routes, we must reserve our position in the light of the requirements regarding the supply of equipment appropriate to these purposes. Those were the limitations imposed then, and they were repeated in slightly different form on the two later resolutions.

There has been argument about whether the voting on the resolution was mandatory. A lot of hon. Members do not realise that the normal practice of the United Nations is to vote for a generality and to reserve one's position on certain specific aspects. Reservations were made at the time and the definition was restricted. But it is important to note that when my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary made his statement on 20th July last year, the words which he used were very much more restrictive. He referred to …certain limited categories of arms, so long as they are for maritime defence directly related to the security of the sea routes."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th July, 1970; Vol. 804. c. 49.] No commitment has been given at this stage for any supply beyond the terms of the statement made by my right hon. Friend on Monday last week.

The point I am making is that even if further orders were accepted they would have to conform to the very strict limitations spelt out last July. Hon. Members opposite may attack us for retaining that right; they should not distort the position or exaggerate it in the way that some of them have tended to do today. It is this very restricted aspect which will embrace any decisions we make in future in this regard. This is the point I wish to emphasise in relation to any further commitments which are undertaken. We have said that we are willing to supply the Wasp helicopters within the terms of the White Paper, but any further consideration will be limited by the words I have read out. This is a very important restriction indeed.

In our debates on this matter many Members have spoken with a sense of deep conviction. I respect the views of those who take an attitude which is opposite to mine, even though I cannot agree with them. But there is one Member whose views on this subject I find it very difficult to respect. I refer to the right hon. Member for Leeds, East. He may have chanced his view when he was defeated in Cabinet, but, having held so strongly previously that it was right to supply arms to South Africa, I find it difficult to accept the fervour of his present protestations.

One of my hon. Friends has already quoted what was said by Lord George-Brown in regard to the events of 1967. It is absolutely clear. The right hon. Gentleman has never denied the fact that he was closely associated with it, and if he were, then for him to get up on the basis of moral fervour, as he tried to do, is the sheerest humbug, and he knows it. I would add that I do not think it helps him particularly when his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition springs to his defence, as he did on Monday last week. I do not wish to be rude to the right hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] Well, if I am encouraged then I will tell him that his credibility gap is such that when he makes a bald statement unsupported by any evidence it cuts very little ice on this side of the House; it cuts very little ice in the country—and I am not sure how much ice it cuts on the benches behind him. If he says it is true, then it is open to him to convince us by producing the documentary evidence at the time. His colleague, Lord George-Brown certainly did not take that view, and his colleague, Lord George-Brown may have certain faults but I do not think anybody accuses him of being a liar.

Coming back to the main theme of the debate, I want to repeat that I respect the feelings of all those who feel deeply about the moral issues involved, but no Government of Britain has ever carried out a successful and viable foreign policy based primarily on the internal policies, however abhorrent, of other countries. If one looks back at history one can see, if our policy had been so based, how dangerous it would have been to Britain, just as it would be to other countries. If we were so to base our policies, we should have to revise our view of many other countries in the world. We have only to remind ourselves of what happened in Czechoslovakia not so long ago to see what I mean.

To those who speak of the balance of advantage I say that I do beg them to be absolutely sure that they are weighing the right issues in their minds. In my judgment there can be no question that it is Britain's security, Britain's sea routes, which must weigh most heavily, and if hon. Members opposite do not accept that, I find it very strange indeed.

To both those groups to whom I have just referred, I would say that we must be absolutely clear about what we are debating tonight. It is not so much the supply of arms to South Africa, or even whether Britain may fulfil her obligations freely entered into under the Simonstown Agreement—and maintained by the Labour Party when in power. It is our legal obligation, and our determination to honour it, that we are voting on tonight. Those who feel that, for party reasons, it is their duty to attack us, may do so, but our policy is securely, soundly based on legality, on logic, and on Britain's security and Britain's interests, and I commend it to the House.

Question put, That the Amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 311, Noes 275.

Division No. 227.]	AYES	[10.0 p.m.
Adley, Robert	Farr, John	King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)	Fell, Anthony	Kinsey, J. R.
Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)	Fenner, Mrs. Peggy	Kirk, Peter
Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian	Fidler, Michael	Kitson, Timothy
Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)	Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)	Knight, Mrs. Jill
Astor, John	Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)	Knox, David
Atkins, Humphrey	Fletcher-Cooke, Charles	Lambton, Antony
Awdry, Daniel	Fookes, Miss Janet	Lane, David
Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)	Fortescue, Tim	Langford-Holt, Sir John
Baker, W. H. K. (Banff)	Foster, Sir John	Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Balniel, Lord	Fowler, Norman	Le Merchant, Spencer
Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony	Fox, Marcus	Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Batsford, Brian	Fraser,Rt.Hn.Hugh(St'fford & Stone)	Lloyd, Rt.Hn.Geoffrey (Sut'nC'dfield)
Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton	Fry, Peter	Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)
Bell, Ronald	Galbraith, Hn. T. G.	Longden, Gilbert
Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)	Gardner, Edward	Loveridge, John
Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)	Gibson-Watt, David	McAdden, Sir Stephen
Benyon, W.	Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)	MacArthur, Ian
Berry, Hn. Anthony	Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)	McCrindle, R. A.
Biffen, John	Glyn, Dr. Alan	McLaren, Martin
Biggs-Davison, John	Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.	Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Blaker, Peter	Goodhart, Philip	McMaster, Stanley
Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)	Goodhew, Victor	Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Body, Richard	Gorst, John	McNair-Wilson, Michael
Boscawen, Robert	Gower, Raymond	McNair-Wilson, Patrick (NewForest)
Bossom, Sir Clive	Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)	Madden, Martin
Bowden, Andrew	Gray, Hamish	Madel, David
Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John	Green, Alan	Maginnis, John E.
Braine, Bernard	Grieve, Percy	Marples, Rt. Hn. Ernest
Bray, Ronald	Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)	Marten, Neil
Brewis, John	Grylls, Michael	Mather, Carol
Brinton, Sir Tatton	Gummer, Selwyn	Maude, Angus
Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher	Gurden, Harold	Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)	Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)	Mawby, Ray
Bruce-Gardyee, J.	Hall, John (Wycombe)	Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Bryan, Paul	Hall-Davis, A. G. F.	Meyer, Sir Anthony
Buchanan-Smith, Alick(Angus,N&M)	Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)	Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Buck, Antony	Hannam, John (Exeter)	Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)
Bullus, Sir Eric	Harrison, Brian (Maldon)	Miscampbell, Norman
Burden, F. A.	Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)	Mitchell,Lt.-Col.C.(Aberdeenshire,W)
Butler, Adam (Bosworth)	Haselhurst, Alan	Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Campbell, Rt.Hn.G.(Moray&Nairn)	Hastings, Stephen	Moate, Roger
Carlisle, Mark	Havers, Michael	Molyneaux, James
Channon, Paul	Hawkins, Paul	Money, Ernle
Chapman, Sydney	Hay, John	Monks, Mrs. Connie
Chichester-Clark, R.	Hayhoe, Barney	Monro,Hector
Churchill, W. S.	Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward	Montgomery, Fergus
Clark, William (Surrey, E.)	Heseltine, Michael	Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)	Hicks, Robert	Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Clegg, Walter	Higgins, Terence L.	Morrison, Charles (Devizes)
Cockeram, Eric	Hiley, Joseph	Mudd, David
Cooke, Robert	Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)	Murton, Oscar
Coombs, Derek	Hill, James (Southampton, Test)	Nabarro, Sir Gerald
Cooper, A. E.	Holland, Philip	Neave, Airey
Cordle, John	Holt, Miss Mary	Nicholls, Sir Harmer
Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick	Hordern, Peter	Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael
Cormack, Patrick	Hornby, Richard	Normanton, Tom
Costain, A. P.	Hornsby-Smith,Rt.Hn.Dame Patricia	Nott, John
Critchley, Julian	Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)	Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally
Crouch, David	Howell, David (Guildford)	Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Crowder, F. P.	Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)	Oosborn, John
Curran, Charles	Hunt, John	Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)
Dalkeith, Earl of	Hutchison, Michael Clark	Page, Graham (Crosby)
Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)	Iremonger, T. L.	Page, John (Harrow, W.)
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry	Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)	Parkinson, Cecil (Enfield, W.)
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, JamesMaj.-Gen.	James, David	Percival, Ian
Dean, Paul	Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)	Peyton, Rt. Hn. John
Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.	Jennings, J. C. (Burton)	Pike, Miss Mervyn
Dixon, Piers	Jessel, Toby	Pink, R. Bonner
Dodds-Park, Douglas	Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)	Pounder, Rafton
Douglas-Home, Rt. Hn. Sir Alec	Jopling, Michael	Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch
Drayson, G. B.	Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith	Price, David (Eastleigh)
du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward	Kaberry, Sir Donald	Prior, Rt. Hn, J. M. L.
Dykes, Hugh	Kellett, Mrs. Elaine	Proudfoot Wilfred
Eden, Sir John	Kershaw, Anthony	Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis
Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)	Kilfedder, James	Quennell, Miss J. M.
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)	Kimball, Marcus	Raison, Timothy
Elliott, F. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,N.)	King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)	Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James
Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter	Soref, Harold	Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.
Redmond, Robert	Speed, Keith	van Straubenzee, W. R.
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)	Spence, John	Vaughan, Dr. Gerard
Rees, Peter (Dover)	Sproat, Iain	Vickers, Dame Joan
Rees-Davies, W. R.	Stainton, Keith	Waddington, David
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David	Stanbrook, Ivor	Walker, David (Clitheroe)
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon	Stewart-Smith, D. G. (Belper)	Walker, Rt. Hn, Peter (Worcester)
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas	Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)	Wall, Patrick
Ridsdale, Julian	Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.	Walters, Dennis
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey	Stokes, John	Ward, Dame Irene
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)	Stuttaford, Dr. Tom	Warren, Kenneth
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)	Sutcliffe, John	Weatherill, Bernard
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)	Tapsell, Peter	Wells, John (Maidstone)
Rost, Peter	Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)	White, Roger, (Gravesend)
Royle, Anthony	Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow,Cathcart)	Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William
Russell, Sir Ronald	Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)	Wiggins, Jerry
St. John-Stevas, Norman	Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N.W.)	Wilkinson, John
Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.	Tebbit, Norman	Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick
Scott, Nicholas	Temple, John M.	Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher
Scott-Hopkins, James	Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret	Woodnutt, Mark
Sharples, Richard	Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)	Worsley, Marcus
Shaw, Michael (Sc'h'gh & Whitby)	Thomas, Rt. Hn. Peter (Hendon, S.)	Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.
Shelton, William (Clapham)	Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)	Younger, Hn. George
Simeons, Charles	Tilney, John
Sinclair, Sir George	Trafford, Dr. Anthony	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Skeet, T. H. H.	Trew, Peter	Mr. Reginald Eyre and
Smith, Dudley (W'wick & L'mington)	Tugendhat, Christopher	Mr. Jasper More.
NOES
Albu, Austen	Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)	Hooson, Emlyn
Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)	Deakins, Eric	Horam, John
Allen, Scholefield	de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey	Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)	Delargy, H. J.	Howell, Denis (Small Heath)
Armstrong, Ernest	Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund	Huckfield, Leslie
Ashley, Jack	Dempsey, James	Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Ashton, Joe	Doig, Peter	Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Atkinson, Norman	Dormand, J. D.	Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)	Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Barnes, Michael	Douglas-Mann, Bruce	Hunter, Adam
Barnett, Joel	Driberg, Tom	Irvine,Rt.Hn.SirArthur (Edge Hill)
Beaney, Alan	Duffy, A. E. P.	Janner, Greville
Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood	Dunn, James A.	Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)	Dunnett, Jack	Jeger,Mrs.Lena(H'b'n&St.P'cras,S.)
Bidwell, Sydney	Eadie, Alex	Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Blenkinsop, Arthur	Edelman, Maurice	Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Boardman, H. (Leigh)	Edwards, William (Merioneth)	John, Brynmor
Booth, Albert	Ellis, Tom	Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur	English, Michael	Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
Bradley, Tom	Evans, Fred	Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Broughton, Sir Alfred	Faulds, Andrew	Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,W.)	Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.	Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)	Fisher, Mrs. Doris(B'ham,Ladywood)	Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Brown, Ronald (Shoreditch & F'bury)	Fitch, Alan (Wigan)	Jones,Rt.Hn.Sir Elwyn(W.Ham,S.)
Buchan, Norman	Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)	Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)	Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)	Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)	Foley, Maurice	Judd, Frank
Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James	Foot, Michael	Kaufman, Gerald
Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)	Ford, Ben	Kelley, Richard
Cant, R. B.	Forrester, John	Kerr, Russall
Carmichael, Neil	Fraser, John (Norwood)	Kinnock, Neil
Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)	Freeson, Reginald	Lambie, David
Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)	Galpern, Sir Myer	Lamond, James
Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara	Garrett, W. E.	Latham, Arthur
Clark, David (Colne Valley)	Gilbert, Dr. John	Lawson, George
Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)	Ginsburg, David	Leadbitter, Ted
Cohen, Stanley	Golding, John	Leonard, Dick
Coleman, Donald	Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.	Lestor, Miss Joan
Concannon, J. D.	Gourlay, Harry	Lever, Rt. Hn. Harold
Conlan, Bernard	Grant, George (Morpeth)	Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Corbet, Mrs. Freda	Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)	Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)	Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)	Lipton, Marcus
Crawshaw, Richard	Griffiths, Will (Exchange)	Lomas, Kenneth
Cronin, John	Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.	Loughlin, Charles
Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony	Gunter, Rt, Hn. R. J.	Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard	Hamilton, James (Bothwell)	Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Cunningham, G. (Islington, S.W.)	Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)	Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Dalyell, Tam	Hannan, William (G'gow, Maryhill)	McBride, Neil
Darling, Rt. Hn. George	Hardy, Peter	McCartney, Hugh
Davidson, Arthur	Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)	MacColl, James
Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)	Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith	McElhone, Frank
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)	Hattersley, Roy	McGuire, Michael
Davies, Ifor (Gower)	Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis	Mackenzie, Gregor
Davies, S. O. (Merthyr Tydvil)	Heffer, Eric S.	Mackie, John

Mackintosh, John P.	Pavitt,Laurie	Stewart, Rt. Hn, Michael (Fulham)
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)	Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred	Stoddart, David (Swindon)
McNamara, J. Kevin	Pendry, Tom	Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John
MacPherson, Malcolm	Pentland, Norman	Strang, Gavin
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)	Perry, Ernest G.	Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)	Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.	Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)	Prescott, John	Swain, Thomas
Marks, Kenneth	Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)	Taverne, Dick
Marquand, David	Price, William (Rugby)	Thomas,Rt.Hn.George(Cardiff,W.)
Marsh, Rt. Hn. Richard	Probert, Arthur	Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy	Rankin, John	Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E,)
Mayhew, Christopher	Reed, D. (Sedgefield)	Thorpe, Rt. Hn. Jeremy
Meacher, Michael	Rees, Peter (Dover)	Tinn, James
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert	Rhodes, Geoffrey	Tomney, Frank
Mendelson, John	Richard, Ivor	Torney, Tom
Mikardo, Ian	Roberts, Albert (Normanton)	Tuck, Raphael
Millan, Bruce	Roberts,Rt.Hn.Goronwy(Caernarvon)	Urwin, T. W.
Miller, Dr. M. S.	Robertson, John (Paisley)	Varley, Eric G.
Milne, Edward (Blyth)	Roderick, Caerwyn E.(Br'c'n&R'dnor)	Walden, Brian (B'm'ham, All Saints)
Molloy, William	Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)	Walker, Harold (Doncaster)
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)	Roper, John	Wallace, George
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)	Rose, Paul B.	Watkins, David
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)	Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)	Weitzman, David
Morris, Rt, Hn. John (Aberavon)	Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)	Wellbeloved, James
Moyle, Roland	Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)	Wells, William (Walsall, N.)
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick	Short,Rt.Hn.Edward(N'c'tle-u-Tyne)	White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)
Murray, R. K.	Short, Mrs.Renee (W'hampton,N.E.)	Whitehead, Phillip
O'Halloran, Michael	Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)	Whitlock, William
O'Malley, Brian	Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)	Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Oran, Bert	Sillars, James	Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)
Orbach, Maurice	Silverman, Julius	Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)
Orme, Stanley	Skinner, Dennis	Williams, W. T. (Warrington)
Oswald, Thomas	Small, William	Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, Sutton)	Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)	Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)
Paget, R. T.	Spearing, Nigel	Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)
Palmer, Arthur	Spriggs, Leslie
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles	Stallard, A. W.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Pardoe, John	Steel, David	Mr. William Hamline and
Parker, John (Dagenham)	Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)	Mr. Joseph Harper.

Main Question, as amended, put:—

The House divided: Ayes 308. Noes 275.

Division No. 228.]	AYES	[10.12 p.m.
Adley, Robert	Buck, Antony	Eden, Sir John
Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)	Bullus, Sir Eric	Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)	Burden, F. A.	Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian	Butler, Adam (Bosworth)	Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,N.)
Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)	Campbell, Rt.Hn.G.(Moray&Nairn)	Farr, John
Astor, John	Carlisle, Mark	Fell, Anthony
Atkins, Humphrey	Channon, Paul	Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Awdry, Daniel	Chapman, Sydney	Fidler, Michael
Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)	Chichester-Clark, R.	Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Baker, W. H. K. (Banff)	Churchill, W. S.	Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Balniel, Lord	Clark, William (Surrey, E.)	Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony	Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)	Fookee, Miss Janet
Batsford, Brian	Clegg, Walter	Fortescue, Tim
Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton	Cockeram, Eric	Foster, Sir John
Bell, Ronald	Cooke, Robert	Fowler, Norman
Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)	Coombs, Derek	Fox, Marcus
Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)	Cooper, A. E.	FraserRt.Hn.Hugh(St'fford & Stone)
Benyon, W.	Cordle, John	Fry, Peter
Berry, Hn. Anthony	Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick	Galbraith, Hn. T. G.
Biffen, John	Cormack, Patrick	Gardner, Edward
Biggs-Davison, John	Costain, A. P.	Gibson-Watt, David
Blaker, Peter	Critchley, Julian	Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)	Crouch, David	Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Body, Richard	Crowder, F. P.	Glyn, Dr. Alan
Boscawen, Robert	Curran, Charles	Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Bossom, Sir Clive	Dalkeith, Earl of	Goodhart, Philip
Bowden, Andrew	Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)	Goodhew, Victor
Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John	d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry	Gorst, John
Braine, Bernard	d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, JamesMaj.-Gen.	Gower, Raymond
Bray, Ronald	Dean, Paul	Gray, Hamish
Brewis, John	Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.	Green, Alan
Brinton, Sir Tatton	Dixon, Piers	Grieve, Percy
Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher	Dodds-Parker, Douglas	Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)	Douglas-Home, Rt. Hn. Sir Alec	Grylls, Michael
Bruce-Gardyne, J.	Drayson, G. B.	Gummer, Selwyn
Bryan, Paul	du Cann, Rt. Hn, Edward	Gurden, Harold
Buchanan-Smith, Alick(Angus,N&M)	Dykes, Hugh	Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Hall, John (Wycombe)	McNair-Wilson,Patrick (New Forest)	Royle, Anthony
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.	Maddan, Martin	Russell, Sir Ronald
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)	Madel, David	St. John-Stevas, Norman
Hannam, John (Exeter)	Maginnis, John E.	Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)	Marples, Rt. Hn. Ernest	Scott, Nicholas
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)	Marten, Neil	Scott-Hopkins, James
Haselhurst, Alan	Mather, Carol	Sharples, Richard
Hastings, Stephen	Maude, Angus	Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh & Whitby)
Havers, Michael	Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald	Shelton, William (Clapham)
Hawkins, Paul	Mawby, Ray	Simeons, Charles
Hay, John	Meyer, Sir Anthony	Sinclair, Sir George
Hayhoe, Barney	Mills, Peter (Torrington)	Skeet, T. H. H.
Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward	Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)	Smith, Dudley (W'wick & L'mington)
Heseltine, Michael	Miscampbell, Norman	Soref, Harold
Hicks, Robert	Mitchell,Lt.-Col.C.(Aberdeenshire, W)	Speed, Keith
Higgins, Terence L.	Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)	Spence, John
Hiley, Joseph	Moate, Roger	Sproat, Iain
Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)	Molyneaux, James	Stainton, Keith
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)	Money, Ernle	Stanbrook, Ivor
Holland, Philip	Monks, Mrs. Connie	Stewart-Smith, D. G. (Belper)
Holt, Miss Mary	Monro, Hector	Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)
Hordern, Peter	Montgomery, Fergus	Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.
Hornby, Richard	Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)	Stokes, John
Hornsby-Smith,Rt.Hn.Dame Patricia	Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.	Stuttaford, Dr. Tom
Howe, Hn, Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)	Morrison, Charles (Devizes)	Sutcliffe, John
Howell, David (Guildford)	Mudd, David	Tapsell, Peter
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)	Murton, Oscar	Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
Hunt, John	Nabarro, Sir Gerald	Taylor,Edward M.(G'gow,Cathcart)
Hutchison, Michael Clark	Neave, Airey	Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)
Iremonger, T. L.	Nicholls, Sir Harmar	Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N.W.)
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)	Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael	Tebbit, Norman
James, David	Normanton, Tom	Temple, John M.
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)	Nott, John	Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret
Jennings, J. C. (Burton)	Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally	Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)
Jessel, Toby	Orr, Capt. L. P. S.	Thomas, Rt. Hn. Peter (Hendon, S.)
Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)	Osborn, John	Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon,S.)
Jopling, Michael	Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)	Tilney, John
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith	Page, Graham (Crosby)	Trafford, Dr. Anthony
Kaberry, Sir Donald	Page, John (Harrow, W.)	Trew, Peter
Kellett, Mrs. Elaine	Parkinson, Cecil (Enfield, W.)	Tugendhat, Christopher
Kershaw, Anthony	Percival, Ian	Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.
Kilfedder, James	Peyton, Rt. Hn. John	van Straubenzee, W. R.
Kimball, Marcus	Pike, Miss Mervyn	Vaughan, Dr. Gerard
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)	Pink, R. Bonner	Vickers, Dame Joan
King, Tom (Bridgwater)	Pounder, Rafton	Waddington, David
Kinsey, J. R.	Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch	Walder, David (Clitheroe)
Kirk, Peter	Price, David (Eastleigh)	Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)
Kitson, Timothy	Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.	Wall, Patrick
Knight, Mrs. Jill	Proudfoot, Wilfred	Walters, Dennis
Knox, David	Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis	Ward, Dame Irene
Lambton, Antony	Quennell, Miss J. M.	Warren, Kenneth
Lane, David	Raison, Timothy	Weatherill, Bernard
Langford-Holt, Sir John	Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James	Wells, John (Maidstone)
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry	Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter	White, Roger (Gravesend)
Le Marchant, Spencer	Redmond, Robert	Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)	Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)	Wiggin, Jerry
Lloyd,Rt.Hn.Geoffrey (Sut'nC'dfield)	Rees, Peter (Dover)	Wilkinson, John
Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)	Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David	Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick
Longden, Gilbert	Rhys William, Sir Brandon	Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher
Loveridge, John	Ridley, Hn. Nicholas	Woodnutt, Mark
McAdden, Sir Stephen	Ridsdale, Julian	Worsley, Marcus
MacArthur, Ian	Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey	Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.
McCrindle, R. A.	Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)	Younger, Hn. George
McLaren, Martin	Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy	Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
McMaster, Stanley	Rost, Peter	Mr. Reginald Eyre and
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)		Mr. Jasper More.
McNair-Wilson, Michael

NOES
Albu, Austen	Fraser, John (Norwood)	Mackintosh, John P.
Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)	Freeson, Reginald	McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Allen, Scholefield	Galpern, Sir Myer	McNamara, J. Kevin
Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)	Garrett, W. E.	MacPherson, Malcolm
Armstrong, Ernest	Gilbert, Dr. John	Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Ashley, Jack	Ginsberg, David	Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Ashton, Joe	Golding, John	Marks, Kenneth
Atkinson, Norman	Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.	Marquand, David
Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Gourlay, Harry	Marsh, Rt. Hn. Richard
Barnes, Michael	Grant, George (Morpeth)	Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy
Barnett, Joel	Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)	Mayhew, Christopher
Beaney, Alan	Foot, Michael	Meacher, Michael
Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood	Ford, Ben	Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)	Forrester, John	Mendelson, John
Bidwell, Sydney	Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)	Mikardo, Ian
Blenkinsop, Arthur	Griffiths, Will (Exchange)	Millen, Bruce
Boardman, H. (Leigh)	Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.	Miller, Dr. M. S.
Booth, Albert	Gunter, Rt. Hn. R. J.	Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Bottomley, Rt. Hn, Arthur	Hamilton, James (Bothwell)	Molloy, William
Bradley, Tom	Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)	Morgan, Elysian (Cardiganshire)
Broughton, Sir Alfred	Hannan, William (G'gow, Maryhill)	Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,W.)	Hardy, Peter	Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Proven)	Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)	Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)
Brown, Ronald (Shoreditch&F'bury)	Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith	Moyle, Roland
Buchan, Norman	Hattersley, Roy	Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)	Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis	Murray, R. K.
Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)	Heffer, Eric S.	O'Halloran, Michael
Callaghan, Rt. Hn, James	Hooson, Emlyn	O'Malley, Brian
Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire,W.)	Horam, John	Oram, Bert
Cant, R. B.	Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas	Orbach, Maurice
Carmichael, Neil	Howell, Denis (Small Heath)	Orme, Stanley
Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)	Huckfield, Leslie	Oswald, Thomas
Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)	Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)	Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, Sutton)
Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara	Hughes, Mark (Durham)	Paget, R. T.
Clark, David (Colne Valley)	Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)	Palmer, Arthur
Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)	Hughes, Roy (Newport)	Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles
Cohen, Stanley	Hunter, Adam	Pardoe, John
Coleman, Donald	Irvine,Rt.Hn.SirArthur(Edge Hill)	Parker, John (Dagenham)
Concannon, J. D.	Janner, Greville	Pavitt, Laurie
Conlan, Bernard	Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas	Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Corbet, Mrs. Freda	Jeger,Mrs,Lena(H'b'n&St.P'cras,S.)	Pendry, Tom
Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)	Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)	Pentland, Norman
Crawshaw, Richard	Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)	Perry, Ernest G.
Cronin, John	John, Brynmor	Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.
Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony	Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)	Prescott, John
Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard	Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)	Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Cunningham, G. (Islington, S.W.)	Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)	Price, William (Rugby)
Dalyell, Tam	Johnston, Russell (Inverness)	Probert, Arthur
Darling, Rt. Hn. George	Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)	Rankin, John
Davidson, Arthur	Jones, Dan (Burnley)	Reed, D. (Sedgefield)
Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)	Jones,Rt.Hn.Sir Elwyn(W.Ham,S.)	Rees, Merlyn (Leeds, S.)
Davies, Ifor (Gower)	Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)	Rhodes, Geoffrey
Davies, S. O. (Merthyr Tydvil)	Judd, Frank	Richard, Ivor
Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)	Kaufman, Gerald	Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Deakins, Eric	Kelley, Richard	Roberts,Rt.Hn.Goronwy(Caernarvon)
de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey	Kerr, Russell	Robertson, John (Paisley)
Delargy, H. J.	Kinnock, Neil	Roderick,Caerwyn E.(Br'c'n&R'dnor)
Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund	Lambie, David	Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)
Dempsey, James	Lamond, James	Roper, John
Doig, Peter	Latham, Arthur	Rose, Paul B.
Dormand, J. D.	Lawson, George	Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)
Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)	Leadbitter, Ted	Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)
Douglas-Mann, Bruce	Leonard, Dick	Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)
Driberg, Tom	Lestor, Miss Joan	Short,Rt.Hn.Edward(N'c'tle-u-Tyne)
Duffy, A. E. P.	Lever, Rt. Hn. Harold	Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton,N.E.)
Dunn, James A.	Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)	Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)
Dunnett, Jack	Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)	Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)
Eadie, Alex	Lipton, Marcus	Sillars, James
Edelman, Maurice	Lomas, Kenneth	Silverman, Julius
Edwards, William (Merioneth)	Loughlin, Charles	Skinner, Dennis
Ellis, Tom	Lyon, Alexander W. (York)	Small, William
English, Michael	Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)	Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)
Evans, Fred	Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson	Spearing, Nigel
Faulds, Andrew	McBride, Neil	Spriggs, Leslie
Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.	McCartney, Hugh	Stallard, A. W.
Fisher,Mrs.Doris(B'ham,Ladywood)	MacColl, James	Steel, David
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)	McElhone, Frank	Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)	McGuire, Michael	Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)	Mackenzie, Gregor	Stoddart, David (Swindon)
Foley, Maurice	Mackie, John	Stonehouse, Rt. Hn, John

Strang, Gavin	Tuck, Raphael	Whitlock, William
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.	Urwin, T. W.	Willey, Rt, Hn. Frederick
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley	Varley, Eric G.	Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)
Swain, Thomas	Walden, Brian (B'm'ham, All Saints)	Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)
Taverne, Dick	Walker, Harold (Doncaster)	Williams, W. T. (Warrington)
Thomas,Rt.Hn.Ceorge (Cardiff,W.)	Wallace, George	Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)
Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)	Watkins, David	Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)	Weitzman, David	Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)
Thorpe, Rt. Hn. Jeremy	Wellbeloved, James
Tinn, James	Wells, William (Walsall, N.)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Tomney, Frank	White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)	Mr. William Hamling and
Torney, Tom	Whitehead, Phillip	Mr. Joseph Harper.

Resolved, That this House endorses Her Majesty's Government's willingness to grant licences for the supply of arms to South Africa in accordance with our legal obligations in relation to the Simonstown Agreement, as set out in Command Paper No. 4589.