§ 5.18 p.m.
§ LORD PORTSEA had given Notice that he would ask His Majesty's Government whether they will consider the advisability of dropping leaflets over the islands of Jersey and Guernsey giving information of the progress of the war and the safety and welfare of relatives of the inhabitants of those islands now in this country; and move for Papers.
§ The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am going to ask you for special indulgence on this topic, because it is too big for me. I do not in any way hate the German, but I do not trust his war communiqués. At the present moment the people in Jersey and Guernsey get nothing but what the German chooses to give them. I dare say your Lordships have noticed that in the raid on Dover the other day we assert—of course truthfully—that we had twenty raiders down. The German account is that they had twelve English 'planes down and also three ships. That is the kind of news that is reaching Jersey, and it is not fair that the islands should have that kind of information, and that kind only, doled out to them.
§ I do not propose to keep your Lordships for many minutes, but I think it would be only right to give some of the reasons why I think the inhabitants of these islands should have some measure of justice handed out to them. They have the right to assistance in that way from us, if in no other. I will use no adjectives and no superlatives; the bare facts are more than enough to meet the case. Your Lordships are aware of the history of the islands, which are the oldest possessions of the Crown. They gave all that they could. I was there in the early part of June, before the French defeat and before anyone even dreamed of the possibility of our giving up, without a shot being fired, the oldest possessions of the Crown. I understand that millions of leaflets have been dropped over occupied and unoccupied France to try to prove to Frenchmen, loyal and otherwise, that the version given by their Government of the 95 manoeuvres and fighting at Oran is incorrect, and that the British view is the only correct one. To me, with a slight knowledge of France, that seems to have been a waste of time and money. The credulity of the French is great, but it is not equal to that. I also see that a very important member of the Government, together with a great soldier who is a member of your Lordships' House, flew to Morocco on a mission which, unfortunately, did not succeed. Presumably they had an escort of aircraft. Morocco is over a thousand miles away. Is it too much to ask, therefore, that leaflets should be taken by air and dropped in Jersey and Guernsey, which are within half an hour of these shores, giving accurate war news and telling the people there that their families here are safe, and if possible giving their names?
§ Frankly, the reason given to the public for the abandonment of these possessions of the Crown did not appeal to anyone. It was honestly meant, of course, but in my view there was a smell of cowardice about it. As a consequence of that abandonment, it seems to me that a cloud the size of a man's hand has arisen both in the East and in the West, and we hear of the possible barter of British possessions in the West. As I once said in another place, the British Empire is not for sale or barter; but acts of this kind may lead people who do not know us to believe that what we do in one place we may also be willing to do in another. The information that we were to be abandoned was made gratuitously worse when we were told that the islands had no military value. Presumably the Army experts were consulted, but I should like to ask, if I may do so within the terms of my Motion, whether the naval authorities were also consulted. Before the world war, Count Blücher leased from the Government an island just off Guernsey. He was a charming person and had many friends, and there was not a single secret about Guernsey or the islands which was not known to him and to his friends. He knew that by a fast boat Guernsey is within half an hour of mid-Channel, and also that there are 35 square miles of safe anchorage in Guernsey itself. That is one of the values of the island of Guernsey. Napoleon, who is generally considered to have been an able soldier, called the islands "The stepping stones to England." Guernsey 96 is 18 miles from Jersey, and Jersey is a good 14 miles from the coast of France. Guernsey is farther from France than Dover from Calais. The seas between them are very perilous; the rise and fall of the tide is between 38 and 40 feet, which is enormous.
§ The islanders were told that they would be defended. Troops poured into Jersey, and next day they poured out again. Up to now the islanders have defended themselves. They have had their own Royal Militia, and in the last seven hundred years have defended themselves against ten attacks from France. For a period of six years the French held half the island of Jersey, but they could not conquer the rest of it, and finally they were put out of the half which they had held. The only successful occupation of Jersey was by an Army of 5,000 men under Admiral Blake, sent by Cromwell, with 80 ships of war. The islanders fought them and did their best, and it was only at the express wish of the King (who was then in France) and on being accorded the most honourable terms of war, that they surrendered. Parliament ordered the ministers in this country to "Give thanks to God for the taking of Jersey Island" In those days they did attach a certain value to those little rocks that we call the Norman Islands.
§ How did they defend themselves? They defended themselves by a system which was hundreds of years old, a system of universal, obligatory, unpaid service. When, by means which I do not think were good, they were induced to change that system for a system of paid Volunteers—they had to pay, of course—which placed their men under the Army Act, the men did not volunteer. During this war, every single able-bodied man volunteered for service, and they came to this country for that purpose. The islands gave freely of their money; one Jerseyman gave £120,000 of his own money to assist in the war. When they had done that, when they had sent their men, their money and their agricultural produce to this country, they were told that the islands would be abandoned. The noble Earl who spoke in this House the other day mentioned that his battery was composed almost entirely of Channel Islanders. That is where they are; they could not stay to 97 defend their islands, because they were on this side of the Channel to light for the larger issue of King and Country. Had they been left in the islands they would willingly, like their ancestors before them, have fought for their little country.
§
Lord Palmerston built a fort in Jersey which cost even in those days, 140 years ago, £1,000,000, and he built breakwaters and harbours in all the three islands. He had a different idea of the value of the islands from that which prevails at the present moment. I think the islands have a right—I do not use the word in an offensive way—to ask that they shall be assisted in some way, at any rate. We read to-day that there are going to be meatless days—that is the German communiqué. It is not likely to be less than true. They are a small people, they are the remnant of what was a great people who made their name all over the world, and who fought on every possible occasion for their King and their country. There was a great man at the time of the last world war who said:
So long as the blood endures I will know that your good is mine, you shall know that my strength is yours.
It is only the word of a great author, but it was on that and on many other things that we; founded our belief that it was impossible for anyone even to suggest that these islands should be given over to the enemy—islands which had never been conquered for over a thousand years. They are your people, they are the same as you are, they speak your language, they have the same forms of religion, and their loyalty is at least equal to that of any on this side of the Channel.
§
A friend of mine, a man of unquestioned honour, said in another place last week:
I think it is a matter of some satisfaction that so many people were successfully brought away, and that the islanders, however hard their lot may have been, were spared the cruel horrors of bombardment and of modern warfare.
That is a Pétain argument, with which I have no sympathy, and I have no sympathy with my honourable friend, although, as I say, he is a man of unquestioned honour, and I doubt very much if he would have acted in that spirit in his own country. My Lords, I am a very old man, but do not imagine, even the youngest of you, that because the
98
sands of life are running out those few sands are less valuable. They are not. They are hoarded, hoarded with "miser care." But I say to this House, and I say it in all truth and all honesty, that, if I could go tomorrow to submit to that bombardment with any chance whatever of recovering those islands I would go. And I say to your Lordships that there are some things which are more than life itself, and among those the greatest of all is honour, and in honour's name I call upon this Government to do something for my fellow countrymen. I beg to move for Papers.
§ 5.35 P.m.
LORD STRABOLGIMy Lords, I am sure your Lordships must have been very much impressed by the eloquent speech of the noble Lord, and my only regret is that more members of His Majesty's Government have not seen fit to be present here to listen to the speech made by my noble friend on a matter about which he must feel very deeply. I rise to assure him that those of us who have no connection with the Channel Islands feel just as deeply and just as sympathetically for the people of these ancient possessions of the Crown as any inhabitants of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney or the other islands. This matter was debated in your Lordships' House before, and the official answer then was made—I am sure with great discomfort—by my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack. I understand that the noble Duke, the Duke of Devonshire, is in charge of the Government reply on this occasion, and I do not envy him his task either.
Since that debate I and, I dare say, other noble Lords who took part in it, have been inundated with correspondence from Channel Islanders complaining of the extraordinary muddle, the vacillations, the contradictory instructions given, and the plight in which they now find themselves. I have asked many of the correspondents to communicate with my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack, and I hope they have done so. I pointed out that my noble and learned friend had the duty of defending the Government's action and they ought to communicate with him. The other letters I have sent on to the Home Secretary and I have asked him to advise me how to reply to those people. I have had a very courteous answer saying he will inform me 99 what to say to these correspondents. They are all unknown to me; they only wrote to me because I supported the noble Lord, Lord Portsea, on the last occasion when this was debated.
The only reason why I have risen to support my noble friend, apart from the reason I have already given, is that I think this is an occasion when what we call recriminations can serve a most useful purpose. This whole episode of the abandonment of the Channel Islands, and the treatment of the inhabitants in the course of it, is so bad that it is necessary to assail, as I now do, His Majesty's Government for their part in it, in order that they may be warned that this sort of conduct will not, I hope, be tolerated in future. The noble Lord, Lord Portsea, quoted the statement of a Minister on another occasion, that the British Empire was not for sale or barter. We have neither sold nor bartered these possessions: we gave them away. I will give your Lordships the facts. I had not got all the facts when your Lordships discussed this subject before. There is no dispute about them; in fact, they have been admitted in another place. On that occasion the Government thought fit to put up an Under-Secretary to reply. It was in the other House; it is not for us to complain. But he was speaking for his chief, who did not see fit to be present, and these were briefly the facts.
The War Cabinet decided—this is on the authority of the Government spokesman—on June 19 that the islands should be demilitarised. Actually the German occupation took place on June 30 and July 1. The first air raid on the islands, which the inhabitants were told they were going to escape by this extraordinary action, was on June 28. Between June 19 and June 28 contradictory instructions were given from London and from the authorities in the islands. There was an encouragement given to evacuate certain of the inhabitants. Most of the school children were taken to safety. Ships were sent, and in many cases came away half empty. The sinister thing is this, that the local authorities, the local Bailiffs, or certain of them, actually discouraged the people from evacuating, and I think that matter is a fit subject for inquiry. It looks to me very much as if Count Blucher, or the German party who were in possession of the leased island, 100 exercised a good deal of influence on these people.
§ THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIREI must intervene. Count Blücher is a very gallant officer in my own regiment, now serving.
§ THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIREIn the Yeomanry.
LORD STRABOLGII mixed him up with his family who are of German descent. The noble Duke did not correct my noble friend Lord Portsea, but if Count Blücher is serving in the British Army I say nothing whatever against him. I shall leave his name right out of my argument. But it looks very much, from the facts admitted and disclosed, as if German influence was at work in the islands, otherwise what explanation can we have of these local Bailiffs, after the Military Governor had obeyed his instructions to withdraw, advising the people not to take advantage of the facilities provided? The result is that out of a total of 93,000 inhabitants or thereabouts in the three principal islands, only 25,000 left. I should like to ask the noble Duke, if I have not offended him too much by my unfortunate slip about Count Blücher, through pure ignorance, whether all the able-bodied men were taken away. That is very important indeed. We know what the German custom is. When it suits them, these able-bodied men will be shipped off to Germany for forced labour. It has been done in Holland and Belgium, and it will be done in the Channel Islands. As for these people who have been told not to leave their homes which they have occupied for centuries, not to abandon them, if there is a set-back in German fortunes, as we trust there may be soon, they may take the whole of the inhabitants away and colonise the islands with peasants from East Prussia or elsewhere. That is their policy. It is absurd to suggest that these people who have lived there for centuries will be left undisturbed by these Prussian tyrants.
That is my first question. The second—and it is all very relevant to this question of dropping leaflets—is whether we shall take every means we can by broadcasting in the patois and in English 101 and French, and in other ways, to give them accurate information. I hope leaf-lets will be used and, for myself, if I am furnished with the means, I guarantee to get messages into the islands, and so would anyone else who knows the navigation of the Channel, in order to keep up the courage of these people and let them know that while a blunder has been made, it will be put right as soon as possible. What guidance was given by the British Government to the Channel Islands, and were these local, magistrates justified in openly discouraging the people from taking advantage of evacuation? The suggestion made—I do not know what Lord Portsea's authority is, and I did not hear it said myself—that the islands are of little military value, is an astonishing statement. It is absurd. These islands, with their magnificent anchorages, their aerodromes, and their easily defended position, are on the flank of any German advance by sea, or by air for that matter, on these islands from the Brittany coast. They are of the greatest strategic value. Whoever advised any member of the Government to say such a thing is not worthy of holding any position as an expert to advise the Government. Of course they are of the greatest military value. No naval officer who has studied the problem would say otherwise for one moment.
The truth of the matter is this. During those days when the French Government collapsed—we may as well face it—either the members of the War Cabinet or their professional advisers at the time, some of whom I am glad to say have been changed, or both, lost their heads. We may as well face up to that. As my noble friend Lord Portsea said, on the Thursday they poured troops and guns into the islands, and on the Friday they evacuated them again. They decided to evacuate all the inhabitants first of all, and then apparently they allowed this discouragement to be given. There was confusion of counsel, and I am afraid it is not the only example during those hectic days of mistakes of this kind being made. People who cannot keep their heads when an unexpected reverse occurs in war fail in the great test of statesmanship. That is the time when the clearest counsel should prevail, and when the coollest judgment should be shown. By that test the 102 action with regard to the Channel Islands will not bear too much investigation.
As I say, there is a use in recriminations. I have only a very small influence in the political life of this country or with my Party, but I believe I am speaking for a great many of my colleagues in both Houses of Parliament, with whom I have discussed this matter and who have been very disturbed by this whole episode of the Channel Islands, when I give the members of the Government present the most solemn warning that they will reap great trouble if this sort of conduct is repeated. These islands should have been prepared for military defence immediately. The helpless and the sick should have been taken out. It is absurd to say you cannot evacuate people compulsorily. We are doing it from our own coasts. You must do it in time of war. The men for the defence should have been left there, and reinforced. This argument that the islands would have suffered from intense aerial bombardment is no more valid than if it were used in the case of any village or town in most of the British Isles. The fact that the nearest island is fourteen miles from France, in these days of aeroplanes flying at 350 miles an hour, makes it no more vulnerable to air attack than are the majority of towns in the south of England. There is no real difference between fourteen miles and one hundred miles when modern aeroplanes come to attack in masses. If we are going to abandon any more of His Majesty's possessions, I warn the Government they are going to create a position which will lead to their downfall. I think we should do everything we can to let these unfortunate victims of our mistake know the truth about the war and tell them that their deliverance will not be long delayed.
§ 5.47 P.m.
§ THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIREMy noble friend Lord Portsea had on the Paper a quite definite question, which was whether the Government would consider the advisability of dropping leaflets over the islands of Jersey and Guernsey. That matter falls within the Department of the Home Office, on behalf of which I answer in this House, and I can answer it, but the noble Lord to some extent, and the noble Lord opposite to a much greater extent, has enlarged the question to very much wider issues in- 103 volving all kinds of military and naval questions of which I have had no warning, and about which I am unable to speak. I hope my noble friend will forgive me, therefore, if I only answer the question he put on the Paper. It is the policy of the Government to give all possible information to the inhabitants of the Channel Islands both as to the progress of the war and with regard to the safety and welfare of their relatives who have been evacuated to this country. My noble friend's suggestion about doing this by means of pamphlets dropped from aeroplanes will be borne in mind and will be carefully considered, but he obviously will not expect me to give an answer of any kind to the suggestion. It would clearly be undesirable to warn the Germans either that we are going to send pamphlets to the Channel Islands or to absolve them from the necessity of making preparations against them.
As announced in the other House yesterday, the question of whether communication with the islands could be 104 established through the Red Cross has been taken up with that body, and I can assure my noble friend that whatever can be done in this connection, and generally, for the relief of the islanders is being done. It was announced on the wireless last night that the Post Office is prepared to accept letters for the Channel Islands by arrangement with Messrs. Cook and Son, who, I believe, dispatch the letters to the Channel Islands, but I can, of course, give no guarantee that the letters will arrive. My noble friend can rest assured that the Government are conscious of the very hard position of the islanders, and that they are most anxious to do anything they can to alleviate it.
§ LORD PORTSEAMy Lords, I thank the noble Duke for his answer and I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
§ Motion for Papers, by leave, with-drawn.
§ House adjourned at ten minutes before six o'clock.