SECURITY SERVICE IN MALTA.

HL Deb 07 November 1934 vol 94 cc190-200

LORD STRICKLAND rose to call attention to the unsatisfactory conditions of the Security Service in Malta; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, little progress has been made either in another place or in your Lordships' House in obtaining information from His Majesty's Government as to what are the motives and reasons for the proposal in its original form of what is known as the Sedition Bill, and I feel it a duty to this House to fill that void by offering information. I do not propose to follow the very regrettable example of publishing, as we have seen in books widely sold, matters that should be secret, and as to which knowledge was obtained inside the Cabinet system. Any information which I think is useful to submit to your Lordships' House upon the subject is based upon facts of common knowledge, perhaps co-ordinated and put in an intelligible order. I feel that the real reason, above many others, that has justified the proposal of what is called the Sedition Bill in its original form is that vast sums of money are publicly provided in Parliamentary Votes—not merely tucked away as Secret Service provisions but provided for the purpose of propaganda—to diminish the authority of neighbouring Powers. The amount of money thus provided is really astounding. On the other hand, the amount of money that we provide as a counterweight in our Estimates is a trifle.

There is no sense of proportion in dealing with matter of the systematic expenditure of money in order to break down the British Empire, to undermine British trade and to divert it to other sources. The sums spent for that purpose are colossal. They are known to some extent to those who are in the know, but I think they should be made known to the public and to the responsible representatives of the electors in the other House through the Press. It will justify my asking for a little of your Lordships' time when I submit that I have had experience in administering similar constitutional laws as Minister of Police and experience of the administration of those same laws against myself and my political supporters by those who were previously my political opponents.

It may interest your Lordships to know that at the present moment—I do not know whether I come within the terms of the Sedition Bill now before your Lordships' House—I am the possessor of seditious literature printed in Russia for distribution in Malta at the time of the Invergordon riot. This is in the safe of my solicitors in the City, a firm deserving the full confidence of His Majesty's Government. That raises a legal point which may deserve study as to whether the law is efficient, but apart from that I wish to explain how this Security Service in Malta has proved its inefficiency inasmuch as it is connected with my possession of these seditious documents, beautifully compiled and badly printed in Russian. I have also the letter of the Bolshevist Agent in London offering a reward to Joseph Orlando Smith to distribute these documents in Malta. Orlando Smith, being secretary of the Parliamentary Labour Party in Malta, working in alliance with the pro-British Party for the purpose of achieving legislation for workmen's compensation and otherwise for the advancement of the working classes, did not distribute this seditious literature in Malta but took the advice of his co-secretary in the Maltese Parliament. He was advised to take this seditious literature at once to the Security Office and let them make use of it as they thought best.

Orlando Smith was thanked in a letter written and signed by a Security officer. I have in my time, in common with other people, done security work for His Majesty's Government on the understanding that if we failed we would be repudiated and if we succeeded we would be thanked. I have been once thanked in writing and I may say that I thought it a great mistake that I should be thanked in writing. Orlando Smith was thanked in writing. Let me pass on to examine how the Security Office had dealt with Orlando Smith. The Security officer who wrote that letter and who was very thankful to Orlando Smith was very efficient. He passed on to a Staff College, after having learned almost all that there was to be learnt in Malta, and all his work and experience was lost. So starved was the Security Office in Malta that suitable continuity, with a suitable staff of trained and responsible Security officers, was not possible. Consequently authority passed into the hands of a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. My political opponents were in power. A search was ordered of persons supposed to be in possession of seditious matter. But the seditious matter that had been in the hands of Orlando Smith for distribution was in my safe in Malta.

Police went to search his premises and they found nothing, but they went on with a vindictive prosecution against Orlando Smith, who, being secretary of that section of the Labour Party which was loyal in Parliament, had become a most useful and loyal link between the workers' movement and the Government. They found in his office books by Bernard Shaw and the ordinary books possessed by the editor of a Labour newspaper. I felt bound to write to the Governor: "We are told that you want seditious matter. Here it is." I took it out of my safe and sent it to the Governor and asked him to send it to the Secretary of State. I got a formal acknowledgment of sorts, and after a few days the stuff was sent back to me. My representation was not forwarded to the Secretary of State as I think I had a right to ask, as a member of the Maltese Parliament, should be done. Perhaps the noble Earl who represents the Colonial Office in your Lordships' House will tell us how many similar representations made by responsible persons in Malta to the Governor, with a request that they be forwarded to the Secretary of State in accordance with Colonial regulations, have not been forwarded, or have been delayed for a long time.

I will not dwell on the manner in which justice was denied to Orlando Smith. It would not be courteous to the noble Earl who has just sat down because it would involve technicalities of law. It was suggested that Joseph Orlando Smith had no grievance because he did not appeal to the Privy Council. There are on these Benches luminaries of the Bar who know perfectly well that to bring before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council an appeal in a criminal cause is a matter requiring most exceptional circumstances. It has to be done as a matter of grace, and such appeals are never granted unless there has been a denial of natural justice, or unless there are abnormal circumstances. Yet the secretary of the Labour Party, who is now elected as President of the Trades Union Council, whose business has been ruined by this vexatious and unjust prosecution, was told that he might have gone to the Privy Council. I ask your Lordships to accept the view that this sort of reply is far from charitable and certainly more than harsh.

Another reason for which I consider that the Security Service in Malta has been reduced to a parlous condition is this. Above all things a Security Service should be independent. There may be difference of opinion as to the ability of this man or that, there may be difference of opinion as to whether a very able man should not have immediate promotion and leave his office in less able hands, but there can be no difference of opinion as to the necessity of his being absolutely independent, and what is more of enjoying that aspect and that appeal of independence which, where called for in the public and the Imperial interest, will induce loyal citizens to give information to such a Service. What has happened in Malta? A representative of the Security Service paid from Imperial funds has been taken off the list of those paid from Imperial funds and put on the list of those paid by the Malta Government. He has been placed as a subordinate in the secretariat where he may have to serve, in the absence of Imperial officers, under influences which at times have been the subject of investigation by the same Security Service. That certainly does not add to the prestige of the manner in which it is managed at present. In order to increase the staff when the Treasury would not increase them, the money made available by paying one man from Maltese funds has been used to pay the Governor's Aide-de-Camp as Security officer. That has not added to the prestige of the organisation of the Security Service in Malta.

With modern developments in the way of large expenditure of money to undermine one Government or another by this or that Government, we are in the position in which England was during the War, when the submarine had to meet the submarine. We were told that it was disgraceful to English honour to employ submarines. We were told that during the War for three years running. Then, at last, it was found necessary to provide a sufficient force of submarines to meet the submarine. I appeal to your Lordships' House to make the Security Service in Malta efficient by an adequate expenditure of money. The Security Service is the only means compatible with a democratic and Christian Government like ours to meet the danger of the development of Fascism, which ends, when the crisis arises, in organised assassination. It may be said that we are sufficiently taxed, but that also was said during the War. I say that I for one feel it a duty to say in this House and to the other House that I would prefer taxation to be increased even to the point to which it was increased during the War sooner than have an inefficient Security Service or an inefficient Air Service. Let us either do things pro- perly or pray for the end of our physical and political existence.

The case of Joseph Orlando Smith is not the only one in which want of organisation of the Security Service has prevented that continuity of policy which would have assured his not being prosecuted or which would have ensured the prosecution being stopped when it ought to have been stopped, at once. There are other cases. A feature which is not connected particularly with the Orlando Smith case but with the general procedure of law, is no doubt well known to the noble Viscount, who is a luminary of the law. In the days of the Tudors, and even later, when it was decided to "down" an innocent man, he was put to the bar with two or three others who were certainly guilty, and the innocent man was treated as they were. Those cases are frequent. The obverse is also frequent. I have seen it happen myself outside Malta and outside England, too. When you want to free a man who is guilty you try him with some who are innocent and popular, and he gets off. Every step in procedure which the cleverest lawyers could devise was concentrated to punish Orlando Smith who had helped, and had received the written expression of the gratitude of His Majesty's representatives in Malta for his services.

Every step the cleverest lawyer could invent was applied to that case to defeat him because, by providing a majority of one, by organising his branch of the Labour Party, he gave Malta three years of pro-British government and excluded the pro-clericals from their place in the management in the Labour Party. For that he had to be punished, and His Majesty's representatives and His Majesty's officers in Malta have unwillingly been made the helpers of what we see to-day as the survival of the methods of the Spanish Inquisition. I hope my noble friend the noble Viscount who leads the House, when he remembers what happened in Ireland in similar circumstances, will feel with me and forgive the earnestness with which I plead this case. He must know equal, if not worse, cases in Ireland. He certainly is able to understand what I feel, and why I feel it to be a duty of honour, as long as I can, to move in any way legally to ask for justice in this case.

In Ireland justice was denied by upholding those on the spot, right or wrong, in a manner which could not show even the appearance of logic. And what was the consequence? Armed rebellion by Lord Carson, who was afterwards a member of this House. I am not going lo do anything of that sort, but within the rule of constitutional appeal I hope, sooner or later, to persuade this Government or some other Government to do justice in this case. I had every hope that justice was going to be done last year, from the courteous tone in which my appeal was received by my friends of the Colonial Office, but somehow or other the necessity of supporting those on the spot, right or wrong, overshadowed the expectations which I then legitimately entertained from the tone of that speech.

What happens in other countries to the Security Service? Those who spend astonishingly large sums of foreign money to undermine our Empire get value for it. They have their agents and they have dossiers of the life, habits and accessibility of all the principal persons in the country where they have to work, from the important typist to the most exalted of the land. We ought to be able to do the same. If this is too much, at all events it might at least be expected that a dossier would be available where it is a question of appointing a Minister dismissed for want of co-operation with His Majesty's Government and even worse. He should not be appointed without some reference to his previous history, his character as shown in his dossier.

It is not my business or my duty to go into that now, but I did give a challenge. And how was the challenge met? There was certainly obvious doubt on the part of the Colonial Office as to how much weight could be given to that recommendation. Mr. Stockdale was sent out to report. When I was in the Colonial Service, if people had been sent out to me to report I would have at once resigned. Mr. Stockdale is a high official in the West Indies, a great expert on prize pigs and poultry, and on sugar and South Sea Island cotton. He was sent out to Malta, and it is much to the credit of Mr. Stockdale that he simply reported that this ex-Minister knew nothing about agriculture but was very energetic. It is true that he was very energetic, especially when he was chief canvasser for the ultra-clericals in an electoral division where more votes were recorded than there were electors on the register. He was certainly very active and popular with the farmers in that division. I say that the Secret / Service in Malta should have a dossier of the ways and doings of all those who are Parliamentary candidates, and all those who are engaged in politics. I think they ought to have a proper dossier of myself, with all my failings, and then if I attempt to suborn the Fleet I might be proceeded against under the Bill which is now before Parliament.

I think, my Lords, I have said enough at this hour to point out that the Secret Service of Malta is very far from being in a satisfactory condition, and because it is not in a satisfactory condition anybody who is a taxpayer in England, and therefore pays for the maintenance of that Service, is entitled to call attention to it. The fact remains that one of the reasons why self-government in Malta is impracticable at present is that the Security officers are either unwilling or are unable to support loyal Ministers, and the loyal Police and the loyalists ale thoroughly discouraged. They feel that they are unsupported and undefended. The result will be that one friend of England after another will disappear, and when a time of distress comes there will be neither energy nor resources, and probably not even life, left to fight for the Crown and Government of England. If I have no other right to ask for recognition for anything I have done since I have ceased to be a direct servant of the Crown, I think the representations which I have made should at least entitle me to a little better hearing of them than they have received. I beg to move.

THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH

My Lords, the noble Lord's Motion reads as follows: "To call attention to the unsatisfactory conditions of the Security Service in Malta, and to move for Papers"; but I must point out that this Motion only appeared on the Order Paper for the first time this morning. The noble Lord gave me no notice yesterday that he intended to put it on the Paper. I did not therefore know in the slightest degree what he was going to say. He has, as a matter of fact, traversed a very large number of subjects, and dealt with a number of points which he had already raised in the course of the debate last week. It would therefore in any case be impossible for me to give him anything in the nature of a full reply.

The noble Lord has used the term "Security Service" in his Motion. I want to make it quite clear that the term "Security Service" has no official meaning whatsoever. What is understood colloquially by "Security" duties in Malta is that portion of the duties of the Police and Civil Government which relates snore particularly to the administration of laws such as the Official Secrets Ordinance, 1923, the Seditious Propaganda Ordinance, 1932, the Weapons Acts, 1931–22, the Press Law of 1933, and the Aliens Ordinance, 1933. But whether I had been placed in a position to give a full answer as the result of having been given notice of this Motion, or whether I was not in that position, I am sure your Lordships will agree that it is definitely not in the public interest that this subject should be publicly discussed, or that any detailed information should be given with regard to it. I would only say that from the information which they have at their disposal His Majesty's Government are fully satisfied that the so-called Security Service is functioning satisfactorily. With regard to the other matters which the noble Lord raised, and from which he drew certain implications which I cannot possibly accept, I can only refer him to what I said with regard to them during the course of my speech last week.

LORD STRICKLAND

My Lords, I shall be very brief in replying. I regret that the noble Earl has adopted the attitude that the Security Service in Malta is perfect and infallible. I hope that it does not involve the attitude that the Treasury, by failing to provide the Service with sufficient money and with sufficient personnel, is also perfect. Fulsome praise is not acceptable to men with brains and education. I am not concerned with the definition of the words "Security Service." Whether the new or the old definition is properly or improperly applied, or whether it has other meanings, the fact remains that we all know the meaning that it has had in fact. That is quite sufficient to support my argument. If that Security Service continues to report that no free pardon should be given to Joseph Orlando Smith, I have to say that, having been Minister of Police in Malta, having, even now that I am no longer in office, uncommon resources for obtaining information, and having done all I can to ascertain whether there is the slightest excuse for this obstinacy on the part of those who say they will not listen to the denial to his being guilty of sedition, I assure this House that I have been unable—and your Lordships can see it from the very terms of the official document I have here granting a niggardly pardon—to discover anything chargeable as sedition against Joseph Orlando Smith. It is a fact that he has been in possession of certain books. In a free country with assured religious toleration he may have been in possession of atheistic books, he may have been in possession of Socialist books and other stock-in-trade of the editor of a newspaper, but he had not the possession of the seditious documents when he was searched; the documents were locked up in my safe.

When a policeman makes a mistake he expects to be supported, right or wrong, as the Governor is supported right or wrong. In the absence of any representative government in Malta, where the people have no means of publicly demanding the redress of grievances in Parliament, this policy of supporting subordinates because they threaten to resign is gradually swaying the whole of the population away from that loyalty which it has been the work of my life to establish in a Party that was truly wholeheartedly and intellectually loyal, that was intelligently and truly loyal to England, a Party that was gradually becoming a majority last year on the swing of the pendulum. And we were not allowed to go to the polls because, even when responsible Nationalist Ministers were driven to do their duty by offering to resign, when they knew at last that it was their constitutional duty to resign, the Governor's private secre- tary was sent to dissuade them from resigning and performing their constitutional duty. That was what wrecked the Constitution. This was done, and not rightly done, to seize the opportunity for "one-man government." It is not trained administration according to law but a sort of amateurish effort to excuse the present system of selection. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.