TRAFFIC IN ARMS.

HL Deb 03 April 1935 vol 96 cc567-75

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD had the following Notice on the Paper: To ask whether it is true that the representative of the British Government on the Sub-Committee at Geneva dealing with the manufacture of and trade in arms has finally refused to agree to international control on the spot; whether any other Power is supporting this point of view, and if so, which; and what is the reason for which the British Government is taking this attitude which, in the view of several other Governments, is fatal to the success of the negotiations; and to move for Papers.

The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I have put this question in fairly full form, and I hope that it will be intelligible to the Government. When the so-called deadlock occurred in the disarmament proceedings, it was decided that there were two or three subjects which might still be discussed in the Committees of the Disarmament Conference while the main questions were in suspense, and among those subjects was that of the traffic in arms. In order to permit a discussion of that, it was referred to a Committee of the Conference, and that Committee was called together a few weeks ago. When it was called together the American delegation put forward certain proposals for the regulation of the traffic, and the main point of those proposals was that each Government should assume responsibility for the sale of arms. It is not exactly the solution that I personally should have liked—I would have gone further—but it was, many of us thought, a very important proposal which might, at any rate, do something to remove the undoubted difficulties which have been deplored by the head of the present Government and by others in connection with this traffic in arms.

There was a discussion in public. The British Government, while expressing general friendliness to the proposals, announced that they were going to move important amendments which it was an open secret that the American delegation regarded as a very serious deterioration of their proposals. The matter was discussed in public, and then it was referred, I think very unfortunately, to a Committee sitting in private for further discussion. We do not, know, we have not been told by the Government—I believe, in fact, they have refused to tell us—what amendments they have moved, or given notice of in this private Committee. I deprecate that attitude. I think it very important that in a matter of this great moment, which excites very great feeling in the country, we should have been kept fully informed of what exactly the Government were doing. However, they thought differently.

It is now stated in the Press—I do not know with what accuracy—that on a very important matter, with the details of which I do not propose to trouble your Lordships, but which is sufficiently referred to in this Question, the British Government insisted on moving an amendment which was opposed, as is stated—of course, I do not know—by almost the whole of the other Governments represented. Indeed, I am told that only one Government supported the British Government in their proposal. I am told that they moved a second amendment, dealing with another matter affecting the nature of the returns that were to be made to show what traffic in arms was actually going on, and on that occasion the British Government received only the support—so I am told: I do not know whether it is true—of Persia and Afghanistan. I think it only right that we should be informed whether those reports which have been printed in the Press are accurate or not. We should know what is the attitude of the Government on this matter, and that there is no danger of a repetition of what has happened so frequently in the Disarmament Conference, where discussions in public have seemed to be so near to leading to an agreement, and then there has been a reference to these private Committees when all hope of agreement has vanished. I beg to move.

EARL STANHOPE

My Lords, I am, of course, not at liberty to state what is happening in the Sub-Committees at Geneva. My noble friend knows that these Committees are sitting in private, and therefore if I tell him and other people what is happening in private, obviously I am transgressing the rules that prevail in any assembly which meets under those conditions. I am certainly not going to tell him or anybody else whether the suggestions made by the Press are accurate or otherwise, but I am in a position, of course, to tell him that naturally our delegation is taking the same general line in regard to these matters that I took in the open sessions which I attended at Geneva last month.

From the remarks which my noble friend has made before, I think he is not quite aware of what is the actual intention of this Convention, and therefore I think it would be advisable, if I may, to tell the House the history and the objects of this Convention and how it arose. The mandate given to the Committee which is sitting on this proposal was given to it by the Bureau of the Disarmament Conference, and it was of a strictly limited character. The Committee was instructed to draw up three separate protocols on three different subjects, and the one with which we are concerned was for the regulation of the manufacture of, and trade in, arms. Now the objectives which we had before us in that Committee I defined in the speech that I made at Geneva in the early part of the proceedings, and if I may I will quote them, because they have, I think, been generally agreed by all the delegations which attended the Conference.

I suggested that the objectives were these:

1. "(1) To introduce adequate and practicable measures of regulation and publicity, internationally agreed upon, in regard to the operation of arms manufacture;
2. "(2) to devise a similar system of regulation and publicity in regard to the trade in arms, whereby that trade is confined to legitimate channels and only passes through responsible hands;
3. "(3) to ensure that the world should have timely information of any material increase in the armaments of any country whether by import or manufacture."

Then I ventured to add a further one which was rather outside the terms of reference given to the Committee by the Bureau—namely: To provide the machinery for the immediate imposition of an effective embargo on the export and import of arms if and when such action should appear to be advisable. That was generally agreed by all the various delegations as being an accurate description of the objectives which we had in view.

The House will recognise that of course the task before the Committee had nothing to do either with the reduction or limitation of armaments. The proposals submitted to the Committee by the United States in their draft protocol were based on two principles: (1) National control of arms manufacture and trade on internationally agreed lines; and (2) international publicity and supervision to ensure that the objects of the Convention are attained. The system proposed by the United States seemed to us unnecessarily complex for the object in view. We were all of us agreed that the control both of manufacture and trade should be of a national and not international character, and therefore when it was proposed in the United States draft that there should be set up international committees, who should be in every country, to supervise this control and to supervise the returns, we felt that such a system was unnecessary. We proposed instead that it would be sufficient if the returns which were given on a national basis were to be supervised at Geneva by the Permanent Disarmament Commission which it had been proposed should be set up there.

Supposing that the United States proposal had been accepted, and supposing these committees had been set up in every country, what would these committees have had to deal with? I do not know whether my noble friend knows about the manufacture of arms. Of course the manufacture of arms is very much ate same as the manufacture of any other kind of product. It is a continuous process, and if you have to decide how many and what kind of arms have been produced in a particular factory, it would be necessary to have the committee there very often, in order to see what was happening and to see whether the amount put forward as the production was accurate or not. Supposing the committee had discovered that the return was incorrect? All that would happen would be that the country in question would say: "Oh, we are very sorry, the proper figure should be so-and-so"—because under the Convention as proposed there was absolutely no question of any limitation of any sort or kind, qualitative or quantitative, and therefore any country had a perfect right to make any number of any kind of arm it pleased.

Therefore your Lordships will see that to set up these committees was really getting us nowhere, and we—that is the United Kingdom delegation—felt that it was extremely unlikely that anybody would commit a mistake deliberately in order to falsify a return. There was really no reason why they should, for they could make as many, and as many different kinds of arms, as they pleased, and if they did there was nobody who could object to their action in any sort of way. The proposal which I put forward on behalf of the Government was that the Permanent Disarmament Commission should have the right to supervise these returns, when they came to Geneva, and should have the right to call for further documents, and to send for individuals and examine them. That is by no means a new system. A somewhat similar system works admirably, I understand, in regard to the drug traffic, and one of the greatest things to the credit of the League is the way in which the drug traffic has been controlled. I am told that similarly, with regard to publicity, the Budgetary Publicity Committee is proposing to set up exactly the same system, by which further returns can be sent for and verbal examination made of witnesses, in order to verify those returns.

Your Lordships will see that we are not by any means opposed to supervision. It is merely a question of degree. The United States proposed to set up supervision in each country, on each article, and we proposed that supervision should be at Geneva, on the returns for which each country is responsible. The noble Lord asked if we were not alone in our proposal. Far from it, but once again I am not in a position to tell the noble Viscount who was with us and who was against us on this matter. He must possess his soul in patience, because I think presently the Committee will make its report in public, and then he will be able to find out who agrees with us.

Apart from the reasons I have given, I want to put forward two very cogent reasons for taking up this attitude. The first is that we know that if we put forward a Convention setting up permanent and automatic supervision in each country, which is not attached to a Limitation of Arms Convention, there are certain countries who are not going to ratify that Convention and therefore it will never come into force. Personally I am extremely doubtful whether, when it comes to the point, the Senate of the United States will agree that an International Committee with Japanese and other representatives upon it should be allowed to go and inspect American factories in order to see whether the United States Government is telling the truth and rendering an accurate return to the League of Nations. It seems to me it is a matter we may find ourselves in some difficulty about, and on which the Senate may take a view not less contrary than that which it took in regard to the International Court.

But quite apart from the United States and ourselves, there are in fact other countries who have intimated that they are not prepared to have this inspection in their own country unless it is accompanied by a Limitation of Arms Convention. The result of that will be that the Convention will not have come into force, and once again a proposal will have been put forward by the League of Nations which will have fallen to the ground. A further failure of this kind—and unfortunately there has been more than one—does not tend to the prestige of the League of Nations. We advocated a short step because we believed a short step would prove to be effective. We would not be tempted into an ambitious one which would only lead to failure.

But we had a further reason, perhaps the most cogent of all, and it is this. We still believe that a Convention for the limitation or even for the reduction of arms is possible. I may be accused, and the Government may be accused, of being hopeless optimists. I admit I think a Convention of that character will have to be on very limited lines, possibly merely on the qualitative line that guns over a certain calibre or tanks over a certain tonnage shall be destroyed and shall never be manufactured; but at any rate let us try to take a small step, even if it is a small step, because sometimes from a small beginning you may in the end get a great achievement. To try and make these large Conventions which are not ratified leads us nowhere, and only causes doubt and suspicion as to the effectiveness of the League of Nations.

My noble friend knows better than I do that there are certain nations who are extremely anxious to get this inspection sur place in each country, but they are also in some cases the nations who have raised considerable difficulties in regard to the reduction of armaments. It would be folly for those who, like ourselves, hope for a Limitation of Arms Convention to give away now one of the greatest inducements we have to offer by agreeing to local inspection when we are not at the same time getting a limitation of arms. Not only should we be destroying the prospects of this Convention by agreeing to local inspection when we know other countries will not accept it unless it is coupled with limitation, but we should throw away the chances of getting a Limitation of Arms Convention by having already surrendered our most telling inducement. I believe your Lordships will agree that in adopting the attitude we have, in refusing to accept inspection on the spot and going for inspection at Geneva of documents and individuals, we have not only taken the right step for this moment, but one which is wise in looking to the future of the possibility of a Limitation of Arms Convention.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

My Lords, I am very much obliged to my noble friend for the fullness of his answer, but I confess I am a little puzzled by the reasons which he gives. I take the last one first, because I really am at sea as to exactly what it means. If I understand him rightly, he says we are holding back the concession on the question of local inspection because we hope, by giving it later on, to induce other countries to agree to limitation of armaments. It seems to me a very unlikely calculation that if there is a real objection to limitation of armaments they will agree to it by being offered the possibility of local inspection. It may be so, because anything may be so, but it seems to me a most extraordinary and unlikely state of things. The other argument was that he was afraid, if too much were put into this Convention, it would be rejected by certain Powers. I do not deny the force of that as a reason, but I think it is perfectly hopeless to speculate as to what the Senate of the United States will do with regard to any treaty. No one can tell, and they are just as likely to reject a treaty on the ground that it is too small as they are to reject it because it is too large. You cannot tell, and the only thing to do is to do the best thing for the interests of the treaty itself and hope for the best when it gets to America.

EARL STANHOPE

I do not want my noble friend to think I was referring only to the United States. In fact I was referring less to the United States than to other countries.

VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD

It was the only country my noble friend actually mentioned. That is why I mentioned it. I do not know to what other countries he was referring. I shall not go into the question of drugs, because there is no doubt that anybody who has watched that tremendous struggle will admit that, though a great deal has been done, the actual proposals with regard to drugs are constantly being evaded, and every year the authorities at Geneva have to stop a new hole that has been created in the system. That was the reason for my hesitating to accept the example of drugs as an altogether encouraging one for any other proposal. But it was the first part of my noble friend's reply which puzzled me most, because he said this is to be a Convention for the national control of armaments. I understand that thesis, but it involves also international supervision, even on my noble friend's thesis, because he proposed international supervision, only it is to be international supervision at Geneva and not on the spot. I do not see what bearing that prelude, that the thing was to be constructed on national grounds, had on the difficulty that has arisen in this matter.

The real issue is simply this. Granted that it is of importance for the purposes of the Convention that there should be some kind of international guarantee that the returns made by the various countries are accurate, that is common ground between my noble friend and myself. The question is what that international guarantee shall be. That is the only question. It is admitted there must be some guarantee. The whole question is what guarantee. In spite of the discretion of my noble friend, it appeared even in the open discussion that the majority of the countries represented on this Committee supported local inspection. They say that is the best guarantee. I do not know whether that is so or not. That is a matter on which I can only form a kind of man-in-the-street opinion; but on that kind of ground it would certainly appear to me to be more likely you would get a valuable guarantee by going to the country itself and seeing what is done than by taking the returns at Geneva and cross-examining some official as to their accuracy, which I understand is the proposal of my noble friend.

I should have thought it was clear that local inspection is more likely to be of service than such a system as my noble friend suggests. From my point of view it is not so important whether local inspection or inspection at Geneva is the better plan. But here is a proposal, a very mild, moderate proposal, dealing with a great international and national evil, and it does seem to me a great pity that in these circumstances, without overwhelming reasons, the British Government should appear in an obstructive capacity. I think it is very disastrous and I do deeply regret the action which the Government have taken in this matter. And not only on this question. As my noble friend knows, there were one or two other amendments of a similar character. I hope and trust that when it comes back to the full Committee it may be possible for the Government to take a more generous view of these questions and agree with the proposals of the United States. I beg to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.