Lords Sitting of 24 March 1970

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Portsmouth.

MOTOR VEHICLES' EXHAUST FUMES
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what further progress has been made in preventing or diminishing drastically the emission of exhaust smoke and fumes from cars and heavy vehicles; whether devices are now available in this country, as in the U.S.A., to prevent this nuisance and danger to health; and whether manufacturers of all vehicles can be induced to provide these in all new products.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, research by the motor industry and by Her Majesty's Government into the control of motor vehicle emissions is a continuing process, and United Kingdom manufacturers currently produce equipment for export models which meets the American requirements. My right honourable friend the Minister of Transport is now considering all aspects of policy in regard to motor vehicle emissions, including what additional devices should be required by law.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether that means that there is included in this research the particular device (which I understand is very effective although it still needs some improvement) to which I referred in my Question?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, we are considering all aspects of the particular device to which the noble Lord referred and which reduces the matter by about
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20 per cent. But in the light of our present problems in this country that is only a very marginal decrease.
LORD POPPLEWELL: My Lords, could ray noble friend give any indication when he hopes that consideration will come to an end and action will be taken? This is a matter that has been going on for a long time and one suspects that there is not quite the good will behind this research to get effective action. Can my noble friend say when a decision will be reached?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I cannot give an indication when a decision will be made; but having regard to the concern I think I should say that in the view of Her Majesty's Government and their medical advisers there is no danger in British cities in this matter.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he can comment on the accuracy or otherwise of a statement in an article in the Sunday Times of February 15 which said that Britain had not yet adopted even the mild anti-emission rules now current in Germany and France, and whether the consideration that he has indicated as being given to this problem includes the possibility of adopting similar rules?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, naturally we are looking at all devices and whatever rules and regulations may be made. As I said earlier, the present circumstances are not such that we should take great concern in it so far as public health is concerned.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that improvement in this situation depends to some extent upon the co-operation of the oil industry in altering the composition of the petrol used; and would he say whether the oil industry is giving its co-operation in this field?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, my right honourable friend will certainly be consulting with all parties in this matter. I hope that a White Paper will be issued under the auspices of my right honourable friend, Mr. Crosland, but I cannot give a date.
LORD SWANSEA: My Lords, apart from the research which the noble Lord mentioned, could he say whether

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research is also proceeding into an efficient and economic alternative to the internal combustion engine?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, a good deal of research is going on in this matter, but I think that those who know will appreciate that the possibility of replacing the internal combustion engine is a long way away.
LORD SORENSEN: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether the Government appreciate that this is a very urgent matter; and in view of the ever-increasing number of cars and vehicles emitting smoke and fumes the atmosphere in congested areas is becoming so toxic as to be dangerous to the population?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I have been trying to keep my supplementary answers short, but in view of what my noble friend has said and the alarm which may come from it I should point out that for industrial premises the regulations are that work shall not be permitted where there are 50 particles of carbon monoxide per million. Normally in our streets, even in the conditions of a heavy traffic jam, it is a mere 20 p.p.m., which in the view of medical research does not confront us with a medical danger.
LORD SORENSEN: But the jams are becoming increasingly frequent.
LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, is not the answer to the question the use of platinum as a catalyst?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I think I had better have notice of that question.

DEPENDENT TERRITORIES: OMBUDSMEN PROPOSAL
2.40 p.m.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will recommend to British Colonial Governments that they should appoint Ombudsmen.]
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, any member of the public in the Dependent
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Territories already has the right to petition the Governor, the Secretary of State and Her Majesty The Queen about any grievances he may have. But should the Government of any Dependent Territory express a wish to appoint an Ombudsman Her Majesty's Government would of course give the matter careful and sympathetic consideration.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that Answer, may I ask whether it is the practice of Her Majesty's Government to give advice on constitutional and social innovations to Colonial Governments? If so, is it not important that advice should be given on the innovation of the office of Ombudsman which has been such a success in this country?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, of course we give advice, but in the main it is for the Territories themselves to decide whether they should accept that advice. I think the noble Lord should bear in mind that our Ombudsman in this country has a special relationship to Parliament, and many of the Dependent Territories have not yet reached the same Parliamentary basis as we have in this country. But this is a matter to which we have already drawn the attention of the Dependent Territories.

DECIMAL COINAGE: DESIGN OF NEW PENNY
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to change the design of the new 1p piece in view of the marked similarity in size of the present 6d. piece and the proposed new 1p piece, and the fact that both coins will be in circulation concurrently.]
LORD BESWICK: No, my Lords. The decimal new penny is designed in a metal of quite different colour from that in which the sixpence is made and, in addition, will have a plain instead of a milled edge. The two coins will therefore be readily distinguished when used in cash transactions between people, and so far as slot machines are concerned those

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properly adjusted to operate on sixpences will not take decimal one penny pieces.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that reply. Is it not a fact that the difference in diameter of these two coins is less than a millimetre? Does he believe that machines designed to take sixpenny pieces will be able to discern such a small difference?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, my information is that in fact the difference is a millimetre and, as I said in my main Answer, properly adjusted machines will be able to discern the difference.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, may I ask whether the coins are readily distinguishable by blind people?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I take the noble Baroness's point, which is a serious one. I understand that there is a difference in the feel of the two coins, particularly because one is milled and the other is not.

IMMIGRATION: PROBLEMS OF KENYA ASIANS
LORD O'HAGAN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government why they are confident that there are no Kenyans of Asian origin who are British subjects and who are de facto stateless.]
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this is a tendentious dsscription of the position of the Kenyan Asians. The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 did not deprive them of their citizenship; it introduced a control on their rate of entry to the United Kingdom. This control is essential in the interests of the large numbers of Commonwealth immigrants already here, to whom we have as great an obligation as we have to those United Kingdom passport holders who have not yet been able to come here.
LORD O'HAGAN: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord to specify the advantages of British citizenship at present enjoyed by the six Kenyan Asians who are in Ashford Prison, the seven in Can-
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terbury Prison, the four who are marooned in Brussels and the three who are marooned in Paris?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the noble Lord has dealt with a number of Kenyan Asians who are in prison for having entered this country without the necessary papers. Those who are in various airports are unable to come here because they do not possess those papers which they knew they required before they could be accepted into this country. As I indicated to the noble Lord on a previous occasion, in the main most of these young people are, in fact, jumping the queue of people who are in the same position as themselves: who wish to come to this country, and who are prepared to wait their turn to enter.
LORD O'HAGAN: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he discredits these words which are contained in the letter in The Times today:
"Asian holders of British passports now stranded in Kenya without any source of livelihood are in a pitiable plight."
Does not the noble Lord feel that this state of affairs means that we ought to do something about these British subjects?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am well aware of the difficulties of some of the Kenyan Asians in East Africa. We are seeking to meet their problem by the entry system that we have in mind which, as the noble Lord knows, takes into account the personal position of the applicant. We must bear in mind the million and a quarter coloured immigrants in this country, in particular their children and their grandchildren, and their relationship with the ordinary people of this country. As I said on the Second Reading of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, we are trying to obtain time to deal with the social problems.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: My Lords, is not a person who is not allowed into the only country of which he is a citizen de facto stateless? If he is not de facto stateless, what is the difference between his position and that of being de facto stateless?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the noble Lord will be aware of the statement made by my right honourable

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friend the Home Secretary. We do not intend to keep these people out of this country, but what we must do at this moment is to regulate their flow so that we can deal with the social problem that we all know exists in this country.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, may I ask whether my noble friend agrees with the recent statement made in Australia, to the effect that these people who are not able to come to Britain are not missing much?

NORTHAMPTON CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
NORWICH CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
HAMBROS BANK BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 2) BILL
Brought from the Commons, endorsed with the Certificate from the Speaker that the Bill is a Money Bill within the meaning of the Parliament Act 1911, and read 1a.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That Standing Order No. 41 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with for the purpose of enabling the Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Bill to be taken through all its stages this day; and that the Bill be taken first.—(Lord Shackleton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CONSOLIDATED FUND (No 2) BILL
Read 2a (Standing Order No. 41, having been dispensed with): Committee negatived; Bill read 3a, and passed.

MERCHANT SHIPPING BILL
2.52 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD BROWN): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. We have before us today a Bill which will represent probably the greatest improvement that there has ever been in the lives of those who work in our merchant ships. It has already been welcomed by all sides of the industry and has received approval in another place. I trust that it will enjoy an equally generous reception in this House. I hope noble Lords will bear with me while I remind them of the circumstances surrounding the Bill and attempt to place it in its broader context.
After the seamen's strike in 1966, a Court of Inquiry was set up, under the chairmanship of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearson, and produced its Final Report in February, 1967. This impartial and very thorough Report was accepted, in general, by all sides in the industry and it is the framework upon which we have, with the generous co-operation of all interested parties, constructed the Bill. It was felt that there were two major factors which lay at the root of the 1966 strike. These were the system of industrial relations within the industry and the antiquated provisions of the 1894 Act. The first of these has been the subject of negotiations in the National Maritime Board and considerable progress has, I understand, been made.
It is the second of these which the present Bill seeks to provide a remedy for. The Report recommended a large number of revisions and repeals over the entire range of the old Acts in as far as they relate to the terms and conditions of service of seamen. We have been remarkably fortunate in having such a distinguished and equitable Report, which covers so thoroughly and comprehensively all the matters of concern to seamen, as the basis for this legislation. I think it is fair to say that the combination of the implementation of the recommendations on industrial relations and the revision of the old Merchant Shipping Acts has been seen by all sides as a thoroughly acceptable package.
I should add at this point that though, of course, the Pearson inquiry dealt only

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with merchant seamen, we have taken the opportunity to apply most of the provisions of this Bill to fishermen as well. It would have been quite wrong to exclude this large section of our seafaring labour force from the benefits which will flow from the proposed legislation. Indeed there is another Bill, at the moment under consideration in another place, which also seeks to raise the standards of safety of our fishing vessels and thus improve the conditions of service of our fishermen. In some ways, of course, fishermen are not directly comparable to other merchant seamen, and there we have seen fit, in consultation with the industry, to make different and additional provisions for fishermen, which are contained in the first Schedule to the Bill. Here again we have kept in close touch with the industry in direct consultations with all parties.
The Pearson Report recommended that there should be widespread repeals of the multiplicity of obsolete provisions and unnecessary details contained in the 1894 and subsequent Acts. This we have undertaken in the three years since that Report came out. It has been a monumental piece of work. We reviewed 400 sections of the old Acts and decided that over 200 of them should be repealed without any re-enactment, either in this Bill or in the regulations to be made under it. The basic idea for the new legislation put forward by Lord Pearson's Report was that we should draft a Bill setting out the broad principles and policies governing these matters. This would allow for flexibility and thus foster rather than inhibit, as the old Acts had done, any future developments.
It has been very difficult in the past for the industry to take the fullest possible advantage of the advances made in technology, in management, in industrial relations and in welfare services when faced with the restrictive minutiæ of the old Acts. In the bad old days when they first appeared on the Statute Book they probably served a valuable purpose. As Lord Pearson's Report said (paragraphs 156–7):
"They were made at times when maritime, international and industrial conditions were very different from those we have now. In 1894 most seamen were illiterate, most ships had sails and not engines, voyages could last
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for many months, a ship at sea was altogether out of touch with land, and a ship in a foreign port was still out of touch with the United Kingdom. Also the British Empire was in full vigour. The structure of society was much less egalitarian than it is now.
"A very important difference between conditions as they are now and conditions as they were then is the growth of Trade Unions, who can look after the interests of their members generally and negotiate with the Employers' Federations on a wide range of questions connected with wage rates and conditions of service. Being protected by their Associations and Unions, the seamen do not now need so much protection by statutory provisions, though undoubtedly some statutory protection for them is valuable and ought to be preserved."
Nowadays, then, a much less paternalistic ittitude is called for. The seaman is in a far better position to look after his own interests, and his employers are no longer the potential exploiters of their men that they perhaps once were. Though the special circumstances in which this industry works demand a rather higher degree of special legislation than average, there are vast numbers of matters which can now be left to administrative practice, or at least to regulations made under the Bill. These regulations will, of course, be drawn up with the fullest consultation with all sides of the industry, as has been the practice of the Board of Trade throughout. This is, of course, an important consideration in view of the wide range of powers which is sought in the Bill. There is, moreover, in Clause 95, a firm requirement that such consultation should take place.
At this point, I should like to turn to a brief outline of the Bill itself. The first group of clauses, Clauses 1 to 18, deal with employment on ships and payment of wages. For many years, seamen have attached great importance to the protection given them by their articles of agreement, a contract covering their employment on a specified ship or ships for a defined period. While providing for more flexibility to enable the industry to negotiate its contracts more freely in the future, we have retained the basic protection which these agreements offer. The requirement for a Board of Trade official to supervise the signing of every agreement has been removed as being unnecessarily avuncular, though a power to supervise if necessary is provided.
The use of a form of contract is fundamental. We have no wish to change that practice, but we hope that the new Bill

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will encourage general contracts in preference to individual crew agreements whereever possible. After all, many seamen are now in the regular employment of large companies and a contract covering general employment in the company is therefore desirable from the point of view both of flexible use of manpower and of savings in administrative costs. The Board of Trade would, of course, be empowered to ensure that such contracts were up to a high standard and afforded adequate protection to all parties.
Perhaps at this stage I should interpolate this. When I read the Bill for the first time I was very puzzled about the use of the term "crew agreement" at one time and "general contracts" at other times, because "crew agreement" has the connotation to me, as an ignorant person in this realm, of an agreement with the crew as a whole. I ought to point out that these crew agreements are in fact individual contracts as between seamen and the master of a ship or a company with agreement to serve on a range of ships. I think this ought to be understood, because I am afraid that those who are not, as the lawyers say, versed in the art, might run into the same confusion as I did in reading the Bill for the first time.
I move on to Clauses 19 to 26 which deal with safety, health and welfare— the matters which, perhaps even more than his money, are closest to a seaman's heart. The provisions for safety regulations in Clause 19 were introduced in another place and will enable us to implement any moves towards safer working conditions which are likely to arise in the future. The provisions on health and welfare do not embody any major changes of policy, except that, by enabling Regulations to be made, they will allow a constant improvement of the living conditions.
I deal next with Clauses 27 to 33 and 34 to 38 which are concerned with discipline and safety. The Pearson Court of Inquiry reached the conclusion that it was clear beyond doubt that a special disciplinary régime of some kind is required by the special conditions of sea-faring life. In paragraph 287, they considered that,
"discipline is necessary in the interests of safety, in order to secure prompt and co-
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ordinated action by the crew on any occasion of emergency for saving the ship, the crew, the passengers and the cargo from the perils of the sea. Discipline is necessary in the interests of efficiency, in order to secure the proper operation and handling of the ship and its equipment at all times. Also discipline is necessary for preserving law and order in the confined and inescapable conditions, because the ship is a 'total' institution, in which the seaman works, eats, sleeps and spends his leisure time in the same limited area and with approximately the same people as his work-mates, companions or neighbours."
But at the same time, it is important that the discipline which such conditions necessitate should be made compatible with the standards of modern industrial life. The Bill therefore seeks to deal with misconduct as far as possible by the same means as the general law applicable to the rest of industry and to invoke special provisions only to a very restricted degree.
First of all, misconduct can be regarded as a breach of contract and dealt with as a civil liability. Clauses 39 to 41 limit civil liability in certain cases. Secondly, there are minor forms of misconduct for which it would be wrong to invoke the criminal law and which can be dealt with by a system of fines to be imposed by the master under Clause 34, or by a shipboard committee set up under Clause 36 of the Bill. We regard these shipboard committees as a very worthwhile development and we hope that in due course they will come into extensive use. Lastly, there are the very few cases of serious misconduct which might put the ship and those on board at serious risk. These comparatively rare offences would be outside the scope of the master to deal with and might well warrant prosecution in a court on shore. The real strength of all provisions concerning misconduct is, of course, not in the ultimate sanction which they mete out to those who offend against them but in the passive power which they have to preserve law and order. They preserve an atmosphere of discipline which powerfully assists safety at sea.
May I sum up these clauses? Clause deals with misconduct of a flagrant character which is likely to endanger the ship or the people on board, and Clauses to 31 deal with actions which, though in themselves less serious, could nevertheless be dangerous, such as drunkenness on duty, disobedience to lawful commands, persistent neglect of duty,

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combination with other seamen to disobey commands, neglect of duty or impeding the ship, and absence without leave. It is to be noted that it is only dangerous misconduct which carries a penalty of imprisonment. I should perhaps say that there has been some criticism of the provisions of Clauses 29 to 31. We regard them as right and necessary at the present time. However, should circumstances change and should one day a consensus emerge in the shipping industry that changes should be made then this would be something which the Government would have to consider seriously, though in doing so we should have to bear in mind our responsibility and concern for safety at sea. This Bill is an important landmark, but it is not the end of the road. No doubt in due course there will have to be changes and improvements through amending legislation.
Clause 42 deals with trade disputes. It removes the exclusion of seamen from the protection of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875 and enables them to withdraw their labour from the ship in appropriate circumstances. Clauses 43 to 61 deal with manning and certification, inquiries into conduct and investigation of casualties. The principal advance here is a far greater measure of flexibility. There are likely to be many important developments in the manning field in order to make the industry more competitive with its foreign rivals, and it is important to remove any statutory obstacles to the development of new methods of manning the ships and deploying the labour. Some control is, of course, still necessary in the interests of safety of life at sea and we have sought a balance between these factors. We have also made provision for the maintenance and repatriation of seamen left behind abroad, and, though we have not sought to make any major changes, we have tried to simplify the procedures. However, we think that the financial liability should be more for the ship-owner, and not the taxpayer, to meet in the future. There follow clauses dealing with deceased seamen, documentation, stowaways, administrative and other miscellaneous subjects.
The last provisions of major importance are those covering fishing vessels, Clause 91 and Schedule 1. As I have already
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said, there are certain important differences between life in fishing vessels and life in merchant ships and we have tried to take this fact into account. So, although most of the provisions of the Bill will apply to fishing vessels, the regulations made for them will be different. This will apply in particular to discipline. The fishing industry operates in a different way from the Merchant Navy; there is already a system of port disciplinary committees in operation and fishing vessels almost invariably operate from one port, to which they return frequently. Of course, safety is as important in fishing boats as elsewhere, and just as inseparable from discipline, and we think that there is a good chance that these can be maintained by the present arrangements.
Thus, Clauses 27 and 28 will, under this Bill, apply to fishermen as well as to seamen, but other misconduct will be left to the industry's procedures. However, we have made provision in Schedule 1 to apply to fishermen provisions about statutory offences similar to those contained in Clauses 29, 30 and 31 should that prove necessary and desirable to preserve safety at sea. These would be made by Affirmative Resolution procedure.
In this Bill we have the result of a long process of self-examination in the shipping industry, of a certain amount of unrest perhaps, but also of an enormous degree of co-operation both between the various sides of the industry and between the industry and my Department. One of the major obstacles to the harmonious working and the progress of the industry will have been removed with the passing of this Bill. It is vital for the present and future prosperity of this country that our Merchant Navy should continue to make its invaluable contribution to our invisible earnings and overall balance of payments. This, we hope, the Bill will make possible while ensuring that those whose working lives are spent in our merchant ships enjoy the prosperity and wellbeing that will ensue. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. —(Lord Brown.)
3.10 p.m.
LORD SANDFORD: My Lords, the House as a whole is, I am sure, grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brown, for his

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skilful presentation of this Bill to us and for his explanation of its purpose. It is, as he said, something of an historic event, for what we are being invited to enact is indeed the first amending legislation of any significance since 1894 covering the field of industrial relations in the ships of the British merchant fleet. For that reason it seems to me to be good to begin by recalling to ourselves, in slightly more detail than the noble Lord perhaps allowed himself, the contrast between conditions at sea now. in 1970, and conditions at sea then, in 1894. Another reason, but perhaps a rather less good reason, for doing this is that I believe this is the first opportunity I have taken or been given since joining your Lordships' House eleven years ago of speaking on any subject to do with the sea, the element in which I spent the first 17 years of my working life. The temptation to reflect—just briefly, I assure you—about life at sea as it used to be 70 years ago, long before my time, and as it is lived to-day, I found irresistible.
As the noble Lord said, 70 years ago the change over from sail to steam was by no means complete. Protracted un-predictable voyages of 200 days or so were quite common form. There was no contact at all with home during that period except, perhaps, by speaking to another passing ship, and with bad luck it might take anything up to three or four weeks, for instance, to round the Horn. Nearly all of this time would be spent soaking wet, whether up top setting sails or even down below. There was certainly no air conditioning in those days, and there was no refrigeration either. Fresh stores soon ran out and what was left soon succumbed to tropical heat. A few weeks' delay in adverse winds soon had the whole crew on ships' biscuits and their accompanying weevils.
To those ordeals add the normal hazards of life at sea, and add on top of that the dangers of overloading, because at this time Mr. Plimsoll's efforts in another place had barely begun to have any effect. The loss of life at sea, through one cause or another, was not far short of 4,000 a year. Nor did the advent of steam ease everyone's lot, because to start with all the boilers were coal-fired. A fireman or stoker did not
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just spend his time watching gauges and turning valves on and off; he might, working watch and watch through 24 hours, shovel a total of 10 tons of coal into his boiler, and rake out the ashes. And that, in a trawler fishing hard in the North Sea, is no light task. It is small wonder then that it was not easy to get volunteers to serve at sea under those conditions. No wonder that masters then relied on crimps to recruit their crews! I do not know whether all your Lordships know about crimps. They were the keepers of what might be called lodging houses, inns and brothels combined, and the offer of the services of their establishments, on credit, could lure seafarers of all sorts into their clutches. They could then despatch these men, while still insensible, on board ship; and the wretched seaman might well find himself awakened from his carousals standing out to sea off Deal or Dungeness, bound for Hong Kong or the River Plate.
Incidentally, it was a colleague of mine of the Cloth, the Reverend James Fell, who was also a boxer, and the Missions to Seamen, who beat the crimps. What a happy contrast to find what I found last week while preparing for this debate! I was down at Gravesend, where the National Sea Training School train 2,600 ratings a year for our Merchant Navy. There is now a long waiting list of boys eager to go to sea in the ships of our modern merchant fleet. So there is a tremendous change for the better which we ought fully to recognise. But, good as that is, all has not been well with our merchant fleet in recent years. The 1960 seamen's strike gave notice to all concerned that something needed to be done, and the needed improvements, particularly in relations in the industry, hinged a good deal on more up-to-date legislation. It was the last Administration who, immediately following that strike, started the long process and were able to announce progress towards amending legislation, in consultation with all sides of the shipping industry. They announced such progress in another place towards the end of 1963.
So far as I can judge, the present Government allowed that preparatory work to lapse, as the next event in the story was the seamen's strike of 1966, which, apart from the contemporary

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issues clustering around the actual dispute, drove home once again the lesson that the strike of 1960 had already taught about the stale of affairs in our merchant shipping fleet and the urgent need for more legislation. At any rate, at that point Her Majesty's present Administration took action and appointed a Court of Inquiry with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearson, whom we all look forward to hearing in a moment, as Chairman. Under the stimulus of that Inquiry, the work, first begun under the Tories in 1962, went forward once more. The first fruits, as the noble Lord has reminded us, appeared with the Report in February, 1967, and the next fruits are the Bill that we have before us to-day.
So much for the historical background, and so much for the origins of the Bill. I felt I should amplify a little in those two ways what the noble Lord, Lord Brown, said in presenting the Bill to us, in order to set the record straight and perhaps fill in a little of the back-ground. I now turn to the Bill itself. I turn to it first of all to give it a very warm welcome from these Benches and to wish it a smooth passage on to the Statute Book. We shall have a number of points to probe, some matters to raise, and maybe Amendments to put forward at the next stage. We shall have something to say about consultation with the fishermen, and about the number of different clauses and parts of the Bill.
None of those merits much attention now compared to the welcome which we accord the Bill in general, or the congratulations which we should like also to bestow on those responsible—and many parties have been involved—in bringing it forward for our consideration. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearson, and his colleagues on the Court of Inquiry, the staff of the Board of Trade, the leaders of the various parties who come together in the National Mari-time Board, all these have worked long and hard and played their distinctive and honourable parts in preparing at different stages in its long story this legislation and in bringing it forward to-day.
Our merchant shipping industry is pre-eminent, if not unique, among the traditional industries such as coal mining and cotton spinning—preeminent among the traditional industries of Great Britain in
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maintaining still to-day its international standing in the contemporary world. If it is not now quite the biggest merchant fleet—it is the third biggest—who is there to say that it is not still the best, to say nothing of its being one of our largest earners of industrial exports: over £250 million net per annum? We particularly welcome, therefore, this successful attempt by the Board of Trade, and the others I have mentioned, to furnish at least this industry, this vital industry, with a modern, up-to-date framework of law for the conduct of its affairs and the regulation and development of industrial relations in particular. One can only wish that in other Departments of State, and in other countries, there had been the same patient and steady seeking after righteousness. The noble Lord, Lord Donovan, and his Royal Commission, like the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, and his Court of Inquiry have now reported, but the attempts of Her Majesty's Government to put the findings of the Donovan Royal Commission into practice have been fainthearted indeed.
There are two further points to notice as we consider the Pearson Report and this Bill on Merchant Shipping. First of all how futile it is to say that statutory legislation has no part to play in industrial relations! How right it has been here, in the shipping industry, to employ a wide range of methods to deal with the problems that arise. As the noble Lord, Lord Brown, himself has said, there have been, first, encouragement for more and longer contracts between the individual seafarer and the single company which he serves; second, the development of further co-operation within the National Maritime Board and the other committees that cover the whole industry; third, very properly, the relegation of many issues from Statute Law to Board of Trade Regulations—I under-stand that there be 32 separate sets of regulations under this Bill. But there will be the retention, very properly, of many other matters, occupying 90 clauses in this Bill alone, on the Statute Book. Of course, statutory legislation has an indispensable part to play in industrial relations, and the better, clearer, fairer, more up to date it is, the batter the other matters can be deals with by regulations, industry-wide negotiations, company contracts and so on.

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If I may, I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to one other factor; namely, how by far the greater part of this maritime legislation has operated in favour of the employee, the seaman: controlling his recruitment, safeguarding his pay, securing his victualling, protecting his safety. 1 cannot think of any other party covered by this legislation who has benefited more than the employee, and I challenge anyone to mention any other employee who in the past 75 years has had more legislation devoted to his welfare than the seaman. It seems to me that those in the unions who are now resisting legislation covering the field of industrial relations have a very short memory and scant appreciation of how much it has operated to their advantage and in their favour in the past.
There are just a few questions to be raised at this stage about the Bill. First, I think we have to ask ourselves this question. Does the Bill fulfil its main purpose of putting into effect what the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, and his Court of Inquiry recommended? This is a matter to be examined in much more detail as we come to each separate clause later on. But I suggest that it will be done very much more easily and readily when we have, as we shall in a moment, the benefit of the views of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, himself on this point. Secondly, is there a case for modifying in any substantial way the recommendations of Lord Pearson and his Court of Inquiry or for going outside the matters that engaged the attention of that Court? I would think not. Thanks to that Inquiry, and to this Bill, substantial progress has been made, and I think the important point now is to secure what we have got.
Furthermore, there is in session, as your Lordships know, the Committee of Inquiry into Shipping, chaired by the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, whose terms of reference end with the words—and I quote from Hansard of April 19, 1967:
"The Committee should take into account"—
that is the Committee of the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale—
"the first and subsequent Reports of Lord Pearson's Court of Inquiry into certain matters concerning the shipping industry."
It would, I submit, therefore be unwise to depart far at this stage, before Lord
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Rochdale's Committee report, from that matter which Lord Pearson's Court of Inquiry had before it.
I should think there would be one further reason for now accepting this Bill substantially as it is, and it is this. As the noble Lord, Lord Brown, said, Lord Pearson's Court of Inquiry was a balanced, impartial body. They took evidence from every side and have produced, as he said, an equitable, balanced Report. It did not perhaps please everybody—that was not its purpose—but it was accepted as a basis for further discussion within the industry and for further legislation in due course. It was accepted, not because it gave everybody what he wanted, but because it carried forward the consensus that had been achieved after so much toil after 1964; and because it represented a fair deal of work for all those who go to sea in ships. On the basis of this Report, a Bill is being presented for us to make into law.
Of course, it is ultimately up to Parliament to decide what the law of the land is to be. There is everything to be said for those who have certain interests at stake to draw those interests to the attention of the legislators and to have them considered. Yet it is as improper as it is counter-productive to couple an approach to Members of Parliament with threats, veiled or unveiled, of strike action in support of Amendments that may be desired by one of the parties. The Times on March 12 reported that such a thing had occurred in connection with certain clauses on this Bill in another place. I have no way of judging whether there was any accuracy in that report. But we should, I believe, greatly welcome the fact that, despite this, the Bill comes to us unaltered in the manner called for; and we assure the Government that we shall look to them to see it through here unweakened in that way at all. The firm assurance that the noble Lord, Lord Brown, has already given us on that point will be welcome.
I should like the noble Lord, if he can, when he winds up this debate, to spell out a little more precisely what he means by the term "one day". It will be worth looking at Clauses 27 to 31 again; but, after the disciplinary committees have been introduced and given a fair experimental period, and after Lord Rochdale's Committee has reported, it must mean, I should have said, "after a lapse of time of

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at least two years". Subject to the noble Lord's being able to increase his assurance to us on that point in that manner, we can assure him of our support for this admirable Bill.
3.30 p.m.
LORD MILFORD: My Lords, the very conditions of the seamen in the Merchant Navy can give rise to a state of mind which makes them feel frustrated, irritable and antagonistic; and this can happen to the officers as well as to the men. The people on the boat may be leaving a difficult situation at home. There may have been family quarrels, or a child or wife may be ill, so that when the men go to sea they may be all tensed up. Therefore it is important that any rules, regulations or legal restrictions in a new Bill must avoid anything which could cause irritation, resentment or any sense of grievance. In a broadcast on May 16, 1966, Mr. Wilson said:
"There are petty and now outdated restrictions and frustrations arising from the fact that life at sea is regulated by an outdated Act of Parliament of 1894."
He went on to say that the Ministry of Labour offered the Seamen's Union a Court of Inquiry which, after dealing with wages and overtime, would examine all the other issues that have poisoned relations in the industry for so many years. It was recognised that there was a great deal to be inquired into and a great deal that needed to be changed, and he promised that the full authority of the law and the full help of the Government would be available to assist and speed the process of change.
At that time the biggest issue was the equivalent of the penal clauses. Later, in the House of Commons, on May 23, Mr. Wilson made it clear to the Executive of the National Union of Seamen that the Government are well aware that one of the major contributory factors in this situation has been the failure over the years to deal with an outdated and archaic system of regulation of the terms and conditions of seagoing employment. He said:
"It is the Government's intention to arrange for a powerful, thorough and independent inquiry into all the complex issues affecting the terms and conditions of seagoing employment."
Thanks to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearson, we have now had the Pearson Report, and it will be interesting
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to hear the noble Lord speaking this afternoon.
On March 11 this year the Under-secretary of State for Employment and Productivity admitted that the National Union of Seamen did not like the clauses on penal legislation, Clauses 28, 29, 30 and 31: the Union said that their existence was a daily provocation. He therefore suggested that the unions and employers should come together under the National Maritime Board, and said that if they got agreement and under-standing, the Government would be ready and happy to go along with them. But on the same day there seemed to be a contradiction on the Government Front Bench in another place, because a few hours later the Junior Minister at the Board of Trade said this:
"…. we can reasonably hope that almost all offences will be dealt with on board ship by the master, assisted.… by representatives of his crew. The exceptions will be those coming within the scope of Clauses 28, 29, 30 and 31. … The disciplinary provisions are right and necessary for the present time, but circumstances can change."—[Official Report, Commons, 11/3/70, col. 1504.]
In other words, he envisaged changes, and a further Bill, in the future. The National Union of Seamen wonder how long that future is going to be. The last Act was passed 67 years ago: how long are they going to wait before these Clauses 28, 29, 30 and 31 are changed?
I admit that fines have been substituted for imprisonment but let us examine these clauses to which the National Union of Seamen is still strongly objecting. To take Clause 28, why is there so much drink on board? Would it not be better to look at the causes and opportunities that have made it possible for a man to resort to drink or drugs? Has a man who has drunk too much yet has done nothing which results in loss, destruction or serious damage to the ship, to be criminally penalised? In regard to Clause 29, who decides the source of a lawful command? There are other officers giving orders besides the master. This clause is much too open to misinterpretation. A man may have an entirely reasonable complaint but may be told to "shut up and carry on". Is he to be penalised and fined if he objects?
Clause 30 is the one which the Union dislikes most because it sees, carrying on from the question of lawful command, the clause as a possible threat to trade

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unionism; to members of the crew getting together for a trade union discussion, or working out what the trade unions could do. In regard to Clause 31, if a man misses his ship he has then got to prove that he was not absent deliberately and without cause, or was not reckless. The whole proof must be on that man. This also the Union thinks is not fair. Lastly, why should ship owners be in a special, privileged position to have legislation at their disposal to enforce industrial agreements? Why, when Her Majesty's Government have withdrawn their proposals for penal legislation in industrial relations (I am referring now to In Place of Strife), must our merchant seamen be exceptions? Treat seamen like anyone else; trust them. Penal clauses can irk and may lead to strife or, through resentment, to things which the man does not really want to do. Let us get rid of these causes of strife.
3.37 p.m.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, before addressing a few words to your Lordships in support of this Bill, I am in duty bound to remind you that as a director of the Cunard Line I have an interest to declare. In a more un-Parliamentary sense I hope that everybody has an interest in a Bill concerning the Mercantile Marine, so closely is it linked with the health, wealth and happiness of this country. Naturally I welcome the Bill, but as the noble Lord, Lord Milford, has just indicated, in the last few days it has run into muddy waters. Up till now it has been a detailed and technical but generally agreed measure. Now controversy has arisen, and I do not criticise the noble Lord, Lord Milford, for having raised what may at first sight seem to be Committee points; they are more than that. He is right: a matter of principle is involved, and there has been a good deal of heavy breathing behind the scenes and a good deal of to-ing and fro-ing. I, for my part, was puzzled, as I think my noble friend Lord Sandford was also, to know how the matter now stood. Having listened to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Brown, I am still puzzled, although now of course on a much higher level.
These clauses arise directly out of the recommendations of the Pearson Committee, and we are looking forward with pleasure to hearing what the noble Lord,
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Lord Pearson, has to say. They were, in a way, a package deal. There was a compromise, with all the usual pros and cons of a compromise, but it was, I think—and most people think so, too— a reasonable recommendation. I was therefore glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Brown, say that the Government proposed to stand by the Pearson recommendations. I look forward to hearing the answer he gives when he comes to reply to this debate, to the question put to him by my noble friend Lord Sandford about the time factor.
I cannot agree with those who maintain that the penal clauses, as they are called, reflect an undignified relationship and one which is not sympathetic to the industrial concept of the 1970s. As my noble friend Lord Sandford pointed out, and the noble Lord, Lord Brown, too, discipline at sea must inevitably be stricter than it is on land. We live, as we know, in a permissive—some of us would even say licentious—society. We live in an age in which all discipline is automatically questioned. That is one of the reasons why the police have difficulty in getting recruits, and the Armed Services too. It is one of the reasons why the turnover of merchant seamen is as high as it unfortunately is. But obviously, the standard of discipline called for in a heavily laden merchantman in a Force 8 gale is greater than that which would be acceptable on a warm Saturday afternoon in the King's Road, Chelsea. We must accept that. Life is different at sea, where the safety of a ship, its crew and cargo, depend on a standard of discipline which is unacceptable in less confined conditions ashore. We do not, for instance, find any stowaways in the King's Road; we find some very odd people admittedly, but not stowaways.
I would say, in passing, that this Bill is a little gentle on stowaways and on those members of the crew who help them. But at sea so much depends on the man next to you behaving reasonably and predictably. A master cannot work his ship without reasonable discipline. What a master wants is nothing unreasonable or tyrannical or antediluvian. He merely wants a clearly defined discipline with no grey areas, a discipline which the crew can understand and respect. If a man is not prepared to understand and respect the reasonable proposals put forward by

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Pearson and embodied in this Bill, then he ought not to go to sea. You really cannot have ships run by committees or run by some syndicalist system, and to those who think you can I would only say, have a look at the standard of discipline in the Russian Merchant Marine, where it is very stiff, particularly in those ships—I am certain this will be of interest to the noble Bar.oness, Lady Summers kill —which have women masters.
I repeat, there is, I think, a reasonable solution in the Bill. The 1894 Act was a very different Act from this Bill, and I hope, therefore, that the Government will be supported in their decision to stand by these proposals; not of course by every comma—by all means let us look carefully at these clauses and see if there is some way of improving them. I must say I have sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Milford, had to say on the question of drunkenness—it is of course important that sobriety be upheld at sea —but I can appreciate that a young commis waiter going ashore at a cruise port and coming back having had "one planter's punch" too many is one thing, and a quartermaster drunk at the wheel quite another.
This Bill also demonstrates how times have changed in the industry, and they are still changing rapidly, not only in disciplinary matters but also in relation to conditions generally and to the whole concept of the role of the Merchant Navy. I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, describing some of his own experiences at sea, though he does not of course go back 76 years. But in 1894 when the old Act was put on the Statute Book there was no radio, scant comfort, and voyages took you months away from home. Now in addition to radio we have refrigeration and air conditioning, which have brought about a revolution in food, accommodation and general well-being.
Not wishing to prolong the debate for another three hours, I will omit for practical reasons any reference to the pay of Merchant Navy officers and seamen. There have been other changes and they have been immense, not only in crew conditions but in the industry as a whole; in types of trade, in types of ship, in managerial techniques and in inter-national relationships. And yet the wheel
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is now coming full cycle. We now have tankers that have to tie up so far away from port that the crew never see land in the whole round voyage. Perhaps I may be excused for drawing on my own experience, but the three passenger ships in our line are all based in America at the moment and do not see their home port. Their crews are relieved by an air lift.
When I first went to Cunard I went to clear out the desk they had given me in the old South Western Hotel in Southampton. Many of your Lordships will remember it. It is now the Cunard office. I found a cutting there from an old local newspaper; it must have been dated about the mid 'twenties. It showed a photograph, taken from our roof, of the docks which contained at that moment 22 major passenger liners. Out of idle curiosity I climbed up to the roof and looked from exactly the same place from which the photograph had been taken, and there were only three passenger liners in the docks that afternoon. That shows one of the many changes which have taken place in the period covered by this Bill. I am not of course suggesting the death of the passenger liner; far from it. There are, I think, something like 19 building in the dock-yards of the world to-day, and another seven under discussion. But it does emphasise how in all aspects the industry has in the last few years undergone a fundamental change, and that is why this Bill is important to us at this particular moment.
The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, referred to Lord Rochdale and his forth-coming Report. I am really puzzled to know what more Rochdale can recommend that has not already been achieved. This Bill takes account of all those changes. It is overdue, but under-standably so, because it has been a complicated measure, and it is important that as much of it as possible should have been agreed upon. I hope it will remain an agreed measure. It is important for the future wellbeing of the industry that as much as possible of this measure should be removed from the role of controversy.
May I read a small passage from a letter written by a Mr. Abraham Howlett, deckhand in the Brocklebank ship "Tigris", in 1865 to a younger brother

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inquiring whether he should take up the Merchant Marine as his life's work. Mr. Howlett says:
"Our master, Captain Miller, is a hard man but brave and skilful. Our work, too, is hard, but the victuals, though they might not satisfy the Lord Mayor, suffice us well enough.
"The heat in Indian waters is well-nigh insupportable but I have not had to face my wife for 147 days; and for this may Providence be praised!"
I do not know whether that was typical then, and I hope not now, of the able seaman's life. But the seaman has always been able to take the rough with the smooth; it is the very nature of his calling. I hope, therefore, that the Merchant Marine and your Lordships' House will support this Bill as it is. It accentuates, and rightly so, a great deal more of the smooth than the rough.
3.48 p.m.
LORD PEARSON: My Lords, on behalf of the Court of Inquiry, to which perhaps some reference may already have been made—and may I say to the House that I am very sorry I was not able to be in my place earlier in order to hear what has been said—I should like to say a few words of especial welcome and support for this Bill. We had the considerable privilege—and it was a privilege, although it involved considerable labour—of holding a number of meetings and listening to evidence and argument and receiving memoranda from all sides of the industry, and with that great help we prepared eventually our Report. But that was more than three years ago, and we know that since then there have been further discussions and deliberations, and it is therefore no surprise and no disappointment to find that in a number of respects the Bill has departed from what we had recommended.
It is, however, of great interest to us to observe that the five or six general recommendations which we made in paragraph 162 of our Report have been accepted and are now adopted in this Bill. I should like to read paragraph 162, because I consider that these general points are of major importance. We said:
"Therefore we suggest, as an outline of the methods to be used in revising the relevant Parts of the Merchant Shipping Acts, the following points:—
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(a) there should be a newly-drafted Act, not merely amendments of the existing provisions;

(b) there should be extensive jettison of obsolete provisions and unnecessary detail;

(c) the new Act should be designed to deal broadly with matters of principle and permanent policy, and to foster and not to inhibit future developments;

(d) the new Act should confer powers for all the details and the administrative requirements to be worked out, and changed from time to time as may be necessary, by Regulations and Orders of the Board of Trade;

(e) many matters should be left to be dealt with by contractual arrangements and industrial negotiations."

Those broad general propositions, to which I would attach considerable importance, have been skilfully implemented in this Bill.
There are three specific matters on which I should like to say a few words. The first is rather a matter of detail, but I think it is just suitable briefly to be mentioned on Second Reading, and I am anxious to take this opportunity of mentioning it because I think there is a minor defect at this point in the Bill. Clause 8 imposes a penalty on employers for non-payment of seamen's wages. That is eminently sound, because of course seamen are in a peculiarly disadvantageous position if their wages are not paid promptly. They want to be going on leave and then on the next voyage, and they are not well placed for holding meetings with their trade union officers and bringing actions and so on. It is right, therefore, that there should be a severe penalty.
But I think that where this clause is not quite right is that this severe penalty is not in any way related to the amount of the unpaid wages involved. The penalty is one of up to 56 days' wages if the wages remain unpaid for 56 days or more. That penalty is quite reasonable if a large sum of wages remains unpaid—£200 or £100 or something of that nature. Then the penalty is perfectly reasonable. But should the amount unpaid be a small one, say the trifling sum of 10s., then this penalty of 56 days' wages is so excessive as to be utterly unreasonable, indeed absurd; and I would respectfully suggest that that absurdity ought to be removed from the Bill.

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The second point I want to mention on the same clause, in view of what was said in another place, is that there is an exception from liability in subsection (4). But as I read that subsection, I do not think it is wide enough to relieve employers of liability if they make an innocent, minor mistake in working out what is the amount due; if the employers have miscalculated and have paid, say, 10s. less than they ought to pay then they are in default. 1 do not think that subsection (4) affords them any protection. At any rate, if I may speak informally, I think that a "sea lawyer" would fix on this point with great glee, and would have a good chance eventually of getting away with it.
I want now to mention the clauses relating to offences by seamen, especially Clauses 27 to 31. Speaking from memory, I think that of these, Clauses 27 and 30 are the most important. But Clauses 28 and 29 have raised the greatest amount of dispute. So far as they go, these clauses are entirely in line with the recommendations contained in paragraphs 311 and 325 of the Report of the Court of Inquiry. Some parts of the recommendations have been omitted from the Bill, but I do not wish to say anything about that. The provisions that remain in these clauses are, in my opinion, likely to assist in the maintenance of good discipline on board ship.
In paragraph 287 of the Report we expounded our reasons for saying that good discipline on board ship is a most essential matter. I do not think there is any dispute about that. The question that has been disputed is whether provisions on those lines—that is to say, provisions for possible prosecution in courts on shore in respect of misbehaviour at sea—would or would not be conducive to good discipline. There is a serious conflict of opinion on that question. My own view, which harmonises with the unanimous recommendation of the Court of Inquiry, is that the existence of such provisions would be helpful to the maintenance of discipline on board ship. Therefore, I welcome the inclusion of these provisions in the Bill.
I should like to say a few words about Clause 36, that important and, it may be, highly controversial clause which relates to the proposed innovation of ship's disciplinary committees. This
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important proposed innovation is referred to in paragraphs 293 to 296 of the Report, where we set out at some length the arguments for and against the proposal. In the debate in another place, complaint was made that paragraph 296, setting out the conclusions, was somewhat obscure. It was not meant to be at all obscure. The points involved can be shortly stated. On the one hand, no one can say at the present time whether this proposed innovation would be successful or not; therefore it would not be right to introduce it generally at the present time. As we said in the Report, jurisdiction should, for the time being at any rate, remain vested in the master. On the other hand, the proposed innovation is sufficiently hopeful to make it right to try it out experimentally in some ships to see how it works. That we recommended. Presumably, if the experiment works well, the system will be extended; if it works badly, it will be dropped. I still think that that is a reasonable approach to this most difficult and important question.
As to future stages of the Bill, I hope to be able to attend when your Lordships consider the details in Committee. But as at present advised, I am not intending to take much part because I feel sure that there are many noble Lords who have first-hand experience of these matters, whereas my information is only at second-hand, although it is true to say that three years ago, in common with those sitting with me, I received a great deal of interesting and valuable education and instruction on all these subjects. In conclusion, may 1 say that we have deep affection for and admiration of the British Merchant Marine, and we hope that this Bill will make its suitable contribution to the peace and prosperity of this great and essential industry.
3.58 p.m.
THE Marquhss OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR: My Lords, I ask leave to make quite a short intervention at this point, and to refer particularly to the position of people at work in shipyards. In the first few days of this century I myself became an apprentice in a shipwrights' society—in fact, I still hold my certificate as a member of that society. At that time it was all a question of working in wood, and a great many of us became anxious when first iron and then steel began to take the place of wood.

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Occasionally there was unemployment. This was unfortunate. There always remain with me the words of a mate, who said, "D'ye ken, Dudley, it's bad when you're idle and the kids start roaring for grub?" I have always remembered those words. But we did go ahead. Perhaps I may recount one thing that happened to me. I was caulking a deck, and the shop steward said," You're going too fast. You mustn't go quite so quickly as that." That is, of course, just a recollection from my own experience. This is not a Bill about building ships, but a Bill dealing with how to work them when they are built, and I apologise for just mentioning my own experience, the memory of which has stayed with me all my life.
4.0 p.m.
VISCOUNT RUNCIMAN OF DOX-FORD: My Lords, I must first, as a shipowner, declare my interest in this Bill, and secondly, in the same capacity, welcome it most heartily; the more so as it is, over so great a part of its ambit, agreed to—and I think with something like enthusiasm—by all the parties affected by it. Particularly are they agreed on the sense of gratitude they feel to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Pearson, for the Report which forms the basis of the Bill. Until a very few days ago, one had hoped that there was agreement on everything in this Bill; but, as has already been said this afternoon, issues have now emerged on which it is clear that certain persons feel strongly. It is disappointing that this should be so, particularly in the light of what has just fallen from the lips of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, himself.
It is no good pretending that a ship is like a factory ashore. Neglect, drunkenness, absenteeism and disobedience are no doubt regrettable anywhere, but at sea any one of them may give rise, and at very short notice, to serious and damaging consequences, certainly to the efficient prosecution of the voyage by the ship herself, and even to her safety and the safety of those who sail in her. I should have thought that it was pretty well self-evident that under such conditions one is bound to look for more strictly codified disciplines than are always necessary in shore-going occupations. Indeed, so far as my own small experience goes,
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I think it is true to say that the happiest ships are those in which discipline is strict, impartial and clearly understood— a point which my noble friend Lord Mancroft has already made.
I also find it extremely difficult to believe that the average British seafarer is as readily provoked as the noble Lord, Lord Milford, seems to think. A vast majority of seafarers have nothing to fear from this sort of disciplinary clause. It is extremely unlikely that any one of them will ever come into personal contact with it during the whole course of his seafaring career. But if one bad man in a ship can cause difficulties which affect the work and shipboard lives of all the rest, it seems to me only sensible that the rest should be protected by the knowledge that any one man who may set about doing this sort of thing is subject to appropriate penalties.
Nevertheless, as has been indicated already this afternoon, the representatives of the shipowners have stated their willingness to see these clauses reconsidered if, in the light of two or three years' experience, they are found to be unsatisfactory. I would only add that it is very much easier to mitigate the effects of a provision that is found to be too strict than to tighten up a provision that is found not to be strict enough. Meanwhile, the owners and the officers' associations who bear a heavy responsibility in these matters, have declared their full support for the Bill in its totality and as it stands. Therefore I welcome the assurance given by the noble Lord, Lord Brown, that Her Majesty's Government intend to stick by the Bill, and the whole Bill.
One agreeable feature, among many in this Bill, is that it is largely an enabling Bill, in that it provides for a wide range of matters to be dealt with by regulations. I trust that when the Board of Trade come to consider the regulations, the whole 32 sets which they are empowered to initiate, they will not feel that, just because they are empowered to make regulations, they have immediately to set about doing so over the whole field. I hope they will allow experience to show what is needed and that they will move through that. The Bill wisely requires consultation with the appropriate organisations before regulations are made. This power, well used, can,

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and I hope will, encourage the great advantages of flexibility and indeed of experiment (particularly in certain directions) which this Bill now makes possible.
The Bill should be taken as a whole. There are inevitably things in it, and things not in it, which some would wish otherwise. At the risk of a small digression I may say (if I may speak for a moment in another capacity, as a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum) that I am sorry that it has not been found practicable to include in the Bill provisions to amend the 1894 Act to protect from depredation what are generally known as historic wrecks. This is a matter of some concern to those who seek to preserve for the nation objects often of great historical or archæological value. However, I venture to hope that Her Majesty's Government may yet find means, if not in this Bill then in some other way, to achieve this object before it is too late.
As has been said, this is the first comprehensive revision of the law relating to merchant seamen and to the Mercantile Marine which has taken place for a very long time. It is welcome for many reasons, but one of the chief of them is that it takes a stage further the expression of the principle that, while a general surveillance of the affairs of the Mercantile Marine by the Government is proper and desirable, a detailed intervention in its everyday affairs is neither; and that these detailed daily affairs will be best ordered, so far as possible, by those whose livelihood they directly concern. In fact, if I may so put it, the best position for a Government to adopt in these matters is, like Dibdin's; Cherub,
"To sit smiling aloft, to keep watch for the life of poor Jack ".
4.7 p.m.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, I intervene very briefly. I think the House will be interested to know that I am probably the only person present who has ever sung the Merchant Shipping Act 1894. Strangely enough, it was made into a song—and for a very good reason. Most of the seamen of that date could not read, so some genius, either in the early trade unions or at the Board of Trade, made it into a sea shanty, with each verse as a separate
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clause. I remember singing this at sea as a deck officer in order to keep a young crew active during the long night watches. I will not sing it to your Lordships this afternoon: I am a very bad singer, and I am sure you are all very relieved. I might, however, recite two verses. It started off:
"If you want to join a British ship,
You must not roam at large;
If you want to join a British ship,
You must have a good discharge.
It must be signed by the Board of Trade.
And everything exact,
Or there will be no month's advance,
According to the Act."
Later, it goes on:
"Now when you sign the Articles,
You have to hear them read.
They tell you of your pork and beef,
Your water and your bread,
Your coffee, tea and butter,
And everything exact,
For nothing goes on in a British ship
Contrary to the Act."
My Lords, must we not all wish that our present, modern legislation were all made so clear and so very memorable?
4.10 p.m.
LORD BROWN: My Lords, it has been a very pleasant experience to listen to the reception which has been given to this Bill by (he House, and I would start by saying how grateful I am to the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, for his extremely kind remarks. They were addressed to me, but I shall see that they are conveyed to my right honourable friend the Minister of State, who has had a lot to do with this Bill at the Board of Trade, and to officials and those who drafted this Bill who, I agree, have done a very good job indeed; not only in terms of its content, but also in terms of the type of drafting, which has been simpler than usual.
It is unusual for a Bill that contains 32 opportunities for the Board of Trade to make regulations to be accepted with such acclaim by this House. I have spoken in this House on many occasions and have created great anxiety by unfolding details of a Bill which allowed for far fewer regulations than this one. That only underlines the great difference between the seafaring industry and other realms of our life; where people are far away from home and where there is, perhaps, a greater need for law and order to preserve safety and life.
I noted the words of the noble Viscount, Lord Runciman of Doxford, and I

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entirely agree with him. The Board of Trade are not avid to introduce these 32 sets of regulations; indeed, it is a work of great labour to do so. I think this is faced with some degree of horror by officials, who know that they are going to have to do a good deal of work, and I am sure that their appetite for doing too much will be curbed by the sheer endeavour that it will cause. So I think I can reassure the noble Viscount on that point. I am sorry that this is not felt to be an appropriate place for introducing legislation on historic wrecks. As the noble Viscount will recognise, this Bill has very specific objectives and it would have been a pity to diversify them by matters of another sort, however important they may be.
Of course, I noted that the main remarks made by all speakers were concerned with what we might refer to as the disciplinary clauses. With great respect, I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, was a little heavy-handed on this subject. That is a pity, because reference to syndicalists running wild on board ship, or whatever it was that he said, is likely to exacerbate feelings rather than to calm them down. What one has to observe about the disciplinary clauses is that they are an outcome of the Pearson Report, and of the deliberations in the National Maritime Board which followed, and they are in this Bill as they stand largely because of the advice received by the Board of Trade from those two sources.
Apart from that advice these are, fundamentally, fairly arbitrary matters. It is not a black and white decision as to whether certain offences should be statutory offences, and certain others should not. It is feeling about the situation in the shipping industry which is largely conditioning the matter. We have seen fit to follow the consensus of opinion coming from the Maritime Board, because we think that they know best. Also, in answer to the very specific question of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, I do not think that modifications should be tied to particular dates or particular events. As my right honourable friend said in the House of Commons, they should follow a change in the consensus of opinion on the Maritime Board. That is where these clauses started and they
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are the people who have this feeling about the matter, of which we ought to take full cognisance all the time.
I should like to recite the reasons for our attitude on these disciplinary clauses a little more fully. The main reason for the existence of these provisions is to provide a proper atmosphere of discipline, to assist the safe navigation of the ship. I want to get these remarks on the record and if I bore noble Lords a little perhaps they will bear with me. Any ordinary day-to-day offences should be dealt with by the master and by the shipboard committees that I hope will be formed. The way in which the master can exercise his powers will be prescribed in regulations after consultation with both sides of industry, and will only be within the provisions laid down by Clause 35. However, the overwhelming proportion of troubles on board will be covered. The Bill provides for the new experiment of shipboard disciplinary committees in place of the master acting alone. But while I hope that, as this procedure comes into use, it will become both widespread and effective throughout the British merchant fleet, it will not, I am sure, in any way usurp or undermine the power of the master, who we envisage as the chairman of these committees with the authority which that position bestows.
On balance, it appears very necessary that the disciplinary clauses should be retained in the form in which they have emerged from another place, and that is the decision of Her Majesty's Government. The merchant fleets of other countries have similar or more severe disciplinary provisions, and it is essential to maintain sufficient discipline to safe-guard safety at sea. Safety is the basis of these clauses, and that has to be remembered all the time. As the noble Lord, Lord Milford, said, it is possible for these clauses to be interpreted in different ways. It is very difficult to draft in such a way that a clause is directed at safety, but that is the basis for certain offences being made statutory offences. The eye is firmly on safety. There is another reason which I should like to recite. We should not forget that much tonnage under the British flag is owned by international companies which also have ships registered in other countries. It is to the advantage of this country and of our balance of payments that new

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ships which are building should be registered in Britain and not elsewhere, otherwise we shall lose both income and employment.
These clauses are all in accordance with the recommendations of the Pearson Report which was written after the Court had heard full evidence on this topic from all interested parties. Indeed, where we have departed at all from those recommendations it has been in favour of the seamen. As I have said, the prime reason for such disciplinary provisions is the maintenance of safety, and from past experience we expect that there will be very few prosecutions in court. But the existence of such clauses helps to maintain the atmosphere of discipline which assists the safe navigation of the ship.
The clauses are much less rigorous than those of the Merchant Shipping Act 1894 which they replace. The necessity for them was urged on the Pearson Committee by both the British Shipping Federation and the various officers' associations, such as the Merchant Navy and Air Line Officers' Association, which together represent about 45 per cent. of the British seafarers serving in British ships. In addition, they are supported by the Amalgamated Engineering Federation, which represents a number of engine room staffs.
The noble Lord, Lord Milford, put his points very fairly and very properly but, as I said, this is not entirely a black and white matter. However, there is this consensus in the Maritime Board and we are providing, in the event of the Maritime Board changing its opinion, to consider adaptation of this legislation at some time in the future. In the meantime, it is the Government's wish that these disciplinary clauses should go forward as they are now written into the Bill.
I am grateful to the noble Viscount Lord St. Davids, for giving us a little light amusement on this subject, and I wonder whether it would be a good thing if more of the legislation coming to this House were translated into rhyme for the benefit of the public. I leave that to some genius we may have in our midst to consider as his future work. I am not one of those who feels that it is necessary to pay due respect to this House by insisting that speeches should be fairly lengthy, and I do not want anybody to feel that
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because I am about to finish my speech, which your Lordships may think has been very short in relation to the length of the Bill and its importance, I am showing any disrespect to the comments made, which have mostly been favourable. This is a very important Bill and I hope that we are going to have a very constructive series of discussions when it reaches the Committee stage.
Before I cease speaking, I must refer to the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, on Clause 8, with regard to the penalties arising through delays, or possibly mistakes, regarding wages. I have noted those points. I am not in a position to refer in detail to them now, but I shall have them looked at. It may be that there is a technical fault here which we could correct, because certainly nobody has any intention to penalise a shipowner or the master of a ship for an innocent mistake, to the extent envisaged in the Bill. Fifty-six days' wages would be a heavy penalty for such a mistake. I shall have this matter looked at. I shall also have another look at the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, on the disciplinary committees. I have taken note of those matters.
LORD PEARSON: I thank the noble Lord very much.
LORD BROWN: With that, my Lords, I think I have said all that has to be said in response to this extremely pleasant debate. I am very grateful for the way in which noble Lords have accepted the Second Reading of this Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA: BRITAIN AND RUSSIAN OCCUPATION
4.21 p.m.
LORD ST. OSWALD LORD ST. OSWALD rose to ask Her Majesty's Government, in the light of the Foreign Secretary's entirely commendable statements on August 21 and 26, 1968, regarding Britain's official attitude to the Czechoslovakian victims of invasion and to the Warsaw Pact aggressors, whether this attitude has since then been adjusted or modified in any respect or degree, and if so, why. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should like to begin by saying

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how much I regret the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, will not be making a speech from the Liberal Benches, because he has been prevented from doing this. I regret this as much as anything because I had assumed that he would be saying certain things which I would therefore have omitted from my speech, which will be to some extent lengthened as a result. I also wish to declare at the outset that this Question is addressed to Her Majesty's Government far more in sorrow than in anger—despite the compelling cause for anger contained in the present agony of Czechoslovakia.
On August 26, nineteen months ago, I was one of the many who flew back considerable distances to Britain, after the recall of Parliament, to attend the debate on the invasion of Czechoslovakia. I did not join in the debate in this House, partly because my 'plane arrived with such delay that I missed the whole of the speech of the noble Lord the Leader of the House and part of the opening speech of my noble friend Lord Jellicoe, and a matter of apparent, though involuntary, discourtesy might have been involved. There was another reason which your Lordships may remember. At the beginning of the debate it was reported by the news agencies that the Warsaw Pact armies were about to withdraw. Had that been true—and it was totally, cruelly, and I suppose deliberately, false—my speech on that occasion might have been regarded as pitched in terms more vehement than the apparently developing situation warranted. So, faint though my own hope was of any withdrawal of the invading forces, I contained myself in silence and listened to others.
The noble Lord the Leader of the House had already foreseen the tenor of that debate when he said:
"… I am quite sure that there is unanimity in the House in our condemnation—to use the words of my noble friend Lord Caradon at the Security Council—of this evil invasion of Czechoslovakia."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26/8/68, col. 514.]
Immediately before he had said, again rightly:
"It would be very unfortunate indeed if the impression were given that this Motion implied in any way that we took a neutral attitude."
My Lords, these words, which I shall pick up again before I end, were admir-
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able words to my way of thinking. So was the content of every speech which followed. But in my bones at the time I had an uneasy, I hoped unworthy, sensation through the whole course of that debate. The mood seemed to me to be indentifiably ephemeral, evanescent. I had a feeling that indignation was being expressed with sufficient force at the time to justify its dissipation, its comfortable dismissal from the mind, as soon as possible.
My sorrow to-day stems from a sensing that this reluctant suspicion was to a large extent justified. There have been a number of instances to demonstrate this. There have been far more instances when a lack of response failed to disprove that suspicion. The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, who I regret is not here, will know of one such instance that I have in mind. On the 10th of this month I put down a Question, to which he replied, asking why the Red Army Choir, which had earlier been prevented from visiting this country by Government intervention —an intervention to which, on that occasion, I could give full approval—was more welcome now than it had been in the summer of 1968. What was sorrowfully significant to me was that in the course of supplementaries the noble Lord replied:
"My Lords, that was on August 26, 1968. This is now March, 1970".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10/3/70, col. 696.]
I suppose the noble Lord must have assumed that I knew the dates, so it follows that he regarded that observation as being a complete answer to my Question: the gap of 19 months extenuated all. Here lies the root of the tragedy, not for Czechoslovakia—for that tragedy is of a different nature—but for this country. Perhaps he was being faithful to the Prime Minister's maxim that, "in politics, a week is a long time". That is a maxim which has two edges here. Nineteen months—76 weeks—has been a very long time indeed for the Czechoslovak people; weeks such as I hope the people of this country will never have to suffer.
Part of the substantive Answer by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, to my substantive Question was brief and to the point. To the Question itself, as to what had taken place in Czechoslovakia to make the Red Army Choir more welcome

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than at that earlier date, he replied distinctly, "Nothing". But when I asked him, a little later, whether nothing at all had happened in between, he answered a separate and unconnected question. In fact, a great deal has happened to that stricken country since our debate of August, 1968, and all of it points to one clear conclusion: that the Red Army in any form or representation should be less, not more, welcome than it was in 1968. I shall give a few selected and very brief examples of this before I finish.
First, and in parenthesis, I should like to deal with a small and totally unresented injustice which the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, did me at one point in our exchange on that earlier occasion. It will also help, I think, to clarify a little my own attitude to this matter, which could hardly be brought out in the form of Parliamentary question and answer. When I quoted the Foreign Secretary as having said in Parliament on August 26, 1968:
"It would be totally wrong for the Red Army Choir to come to this country, and this has been made clear to the impresario concerned",
the noble Lord accused me, twice, of not having taken into account a previous passage of his right honourable friend's speech. This was not at all the case, and I feel prompted now to make specific references, in paraphrase—but not, I hope, misleading paraphrase—to some of those earlier observations by the Foreign Secretary regarding what he described as
"many different kinds of contacts we have with the Soviet Union".
First, he said that attempts to break ordinary trade between us and Eastern Europe were not relevant, would not be useful and were not the proper line of policy at that time. I agree entirely, although some of my friends, in and out of Parliament, do not agree. Then he announced that he had cancelled his own projected visits to Hungary and Bulgaria as being possibly taken as evidence that Britain really did not mind what had happened. He also said in this context:
"Nor will for the present other ministerial visits take place".
The operative term was "for the present"—and a fairly fleeting "present"
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it proved to be, as I shall show. The Foreign Secretary commended the fact that the T.U.C. had withdrawn its invitation to Mr. Shelapin. He also said (and here, I think, is the precise reference that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, had in mind), with direct reference to a whole-sale ban of cultural activities:
"I do not believe that there should be a complete breakdown in these but I am bound to say that it will be extremely difficult to make the impressive steps forward in this field that we had hoped to make before this disaster fell …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 26/8/68, col. 1418.]
Here also I would agree in general. But I would add as a rider, without, I trust, being too pedantic, that the disaster did not exactly "fall". It was no accident; it was certainly no act of God. as the phrase implies. It was deliberately planned and ruthlessly executed by the Warsaw Pact forces directed from Moscow. The spear-head and the main instrument of might against right in that invasion was the Red Army.
That is why I distinguish—and I should be surprised to find myself alone in this to-day—between the Red Army Choir, which opens its performance in the London neighbourhood next week, and, for instance, the Russian Ballet. I do not know whether any member of that Red Army Choir would be entrusted with the steering or gunnery of a Soviet army tank. But they wear the uniform, they are on the payroll, they accept the discipline and they share the stigma of the fores which invaded and still oppresses the Czechoslovak people. It is the continuing and worsening nature of this inequity which I believe is almost universally ignored by the world outside, by the public, by Parliament and by the Government.
It could be that, so far from neglecting that relevant section of the Foreign Secretary's speech, as was charged by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, I had read it even more carefully than he. From it I received two distinct impressions. The first was that the reference to the Red Army Choir was more categorical than the other references, general or specified, to international contacts. I quote again:
"It would be totally wrong for the Red Army Choir to come to this country and this has been made clear to the impresario concerned."
There was no reference there to a limited period. Is it now the case that it is totally right for the Red Army Choir to come or simply that the second time round this has not been made clear to the impresario and he has proceeded unimpeded on the former assumption? That is the question that I put to the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, for answer to-day.
My Lords, my second impression from the 1968 speech of the Foreign Secretary, and equally logical to my mind, was that an improvement in relations would be dependent upon some lightening of the cruel tribulations of the Czechoslovak people as imposed at that time. Has it occurred? The opposite has occurred. The increasing misery and humiliation of that highly-civilised nation since the invasion merits a whole volume of shameful history to itself. My own dry. staccato catalogue may mislead by its very lack of detail and by its understatement. In place of the Czechoslovak pattern of Communist life there has been imposed the Soviet pattern of life; it has been ruthlessly imposed upon Czechs and Slovaks alike who only recently in their short spring of what some of us would call relative freedom gave so convincing and noble a demonstration of their total abhorrence of that alien Soviet pattern. Honourable, patriotic men and women beyond number—artists, writers, professors and journalists—have been victimised. I will omit the details of their victimisation, but I will say that one aspect of it is that once their pay and pensions have been forfeited they are spitefully and inhumanly banned from obtaining other employment. All travel abroad has been prohibited to anyone but the faithful or slavish Party adherents. Czechs and Slovaks occupying posts at British universities have been ordered by the authorities, now puppets of a foreign Government, to break their contacts and return home.
Those who have been understandably reluctant to do so have been outlawed, their dwellings confiscated and other occupants put in to replace them. Out of 53,000 Czechoslovak citizens who were out of the country immediately
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after the invasion, 28,000 have been formally branded as "illegal emigrants".
For those other millions living there, life is drab, constricted and governed by fear. There has been a banning of all non-Communist organisations, including the club of former political prisoners with a membership of 60,000. There is a total censorship of Press and broadcasting and a banning of all papers which supported the Dubcek régime. There have been arrests of journalists, some beaten up, others kept in prison without trial. In one night, in one mammoth police operation, 18,000 people were questioned and the majority of them detained. Those of any influence whatever who will not recant earlier statements in support of the "Czechoslovak Spring" are dismissed from their employment. There has been an instruction to universities that every member shall report on ten others regarding their behaviour during the invasion week and later—and that includes lecturers and students. There is whole-sale exploitation of the country's industrial products, exported by order to Russia, leaving the population with dull, scarce food and household goods at high prices, sometimes out of stock for long periods. All these factors and the general back-ground of despair have led to the suicide by burning not simply of the young student Jan Palach (about whom the world heard with almost incredulous horror on January 16 last year) but of 20 others whose deaths went unpublicised.
My Lords, there are two measures graver than anything I have mentioned. The Soviet Government have imposed upon the country a stooge government, utterly and punitively opposed to the Dubcek Administration which had won the undoubted admiration and respect of their countrymen and which had awakened a hope now savagely assassinated. Here I must call into evidence another statement of the Foreign Secretary, made outside Parliament, of which I have given implicit notice in my Question by mentioning the date of August 21, 1968. At a Press conference on that day, the day of the invasion, Mr. Michael Stewart made this clear statement, applauded I should think by almost anyone who read it:
"We recognise and propose to go on recognising what is now the legitimate Government of Czechoslovakia. We could not recognise

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a Government merely because the Government of the Soviet Union said that it was the Government of Czechoslovakia."
At this moment, Her Majesty's Government are doing precisely what Mr. Michael Stewart said his Government could not do. They are recognising a Government that they said they could not recognise. Does the noble Lord accept that this is the case? I ask this, I promise him, with no animosity. I am not suggesting that there is a feasible or helpful alternative. This is not an attack on Her Majesty's Government, as I hope to make clear in my closing remarks. That statement by the Foreign Secretary was a hostage to fortune. Perhaps he did not know how remorselessly doomed that hostage was; but I admire him for the words. Since they were spoken, a totally stooge Government has been imposed on the country by Moscow. Over this period all those who led and counted in the endeavour to achieve "Socialism with a human face"—and I should have preferred to hear it called, "Socialism with a human heart"—have been dismissed on orders from the Kremlin.
I had reason to mention in a debate last December the Foreign Minister, Dr. Hajek, dismissed; the Minister for the Interior, General Pavel, arrested and dismissed; the brilliant economic architect of the country's recovery, Otto Sik, dismissed in exile; the heroic leader of the Party, Mr. Dubcek, dismissed and humiliated; and the Speaker of the Parliament, Mr. Smrkovsky, dismissed. Even since then the existing Prime Minister, Mr. Cernik, has been dismissed. Not one is left in office.
My Lords, if I had wished to dramatise this situation to-day, I suppose I should have led off with the news which we learned this week, that Mr. Dubcek has been expelled from the Party itself. Not one is left in power, not one of those who inspired such uplifting hope in their country two short years ago. Instead they live in daily danger from the new foreign-appointed rulers of a crushed and sullen nation. The members of Her Majesty's Government are not men and women who would willingly countenance oppressive treatment of other human beings. I recognise the limitations imposed by Office, and I should expect that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, and most of their
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colleagues, would prefer to state their repulsion more starkly and more frequently than is looked on as expedient. The most antagonistic thing I shall say to-day, addressed to the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, is that sometimes I believe they err needlessly and harmfully on the side of caution. I think they sometimes look the other way for fear of seeing something ugly in the woodshed.
I will quote very briefly a remarkable man in our political life who at the time of his death was an honoured Member of this House. He once said:
"Whilst I deprecate aggressive policies intended to provoke war, I also deprecate an undue softness, a bias in favour of the other side, in the unfortunate cold war which the Communist countries started, and a willing-ness for us to concede to the Communist countries and to help provide propaganda opportunities when we are denied such opportunities truthfully to described our own way of life and plead the cause of freedom in the totalitarian state."
That was said in April of 1963 by Lord Morrison of Lambeth. I believe that if he were alive to-day he would be making this speech instead of me and it would be the better for that. I think that this non-objection, this looking the other way as the Red Army Choir arrives, is a case of softness, unacceptable softness, as described by Lord Morrison.
There is another case, one which I hesitate to describe because it concerns a present Minister for whom I have a great personal liking and good cause for that liking. In July of last year it was announced that Mr. Goronwy Roberts, then Minister of State at the Foreign Office, would be going on a goodwill visit to Czechoslovakia in the first days of September. A Committee on which I serve urged him seriously not to do so because, as we said, on August 21 there would have been popular manifestations on the anniversary of the invasion. Those manifestations would have been punitively suppressed, perhaps involving death and injury; certainly involving many imprisonments specifically in the town of Brno; and he would arrive, apparently condoning this retribution, as a guest of the authorities who had meted it out. He replied, courteously of course, that his information was that there were unlikely to be any such manifestations. Our information contradicted his and we i were not to be convinced. We said, in

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essence, "If it turns out that we are right and you are therefore wrong as to events on the anniversary, will you then cancel your visit?" He replied, fairly enough, that should anything so totally inconceivable as the Foreign Office being wrong occur, he would consider cancelling his visit.
As was, in the nature of things, to be expected, and as we all now know, there were manifestations. Some of the most savage repression was carried out at Brno itself where Mr. Roberts was to go. There were people killed by the police and many injured, and many more imprisoned. The members of our committee waited, fairly confidently (and logically, we thought), expecting to hear that Mr. Roberts had found some diplomatic reason to call off his visit. A day or two before the end of August he announced publicly that his visit would go ahead as planned. This was followed almost immediately by the public announcement from the Communist Government that the invitation had been withdrawn on the ground, if it please you, that no one in Brno had time to see our Mr. Roberts that week. I think I am right in saying that his intention to go was announced on August 25 and the withdrawal of the invitation was reaffirmed on August 26.
My Lords, I relate this factual tale with no satisfaction whatever; the very reverse. All I would claim is that it tends to demonstrate that if you stoop over backwards to please a Communist regime you will receive in reward, not gratitude or respect, but contempt. I am not contemptuous of Mr. Goronwy Roberts. He took the advice of his Department. Although I personally consider that he should have rejected that advice there was nothing despicable in accepting it. If he had cast his mind back to the previous year he might have been a little more prudent, pondering the ministerial opinion of Mr. Denis Healey, Secretary of State for Defence, which was uttered in the House of Commons on July 25, 1968. These were the oracular words of Mr. Healey on that occasion, to be found in column 1019 of Hansard:
Indeed, we can comfort ourselves that the situation between East and West in Europe today is comparatively stable; it has been so for nearly 20 years."
That was 27 days and summer nights before the invasion of Czechoslovakia, which threw Europe into its greatest turmoil since the end of the War.
I mentioned earlier that there was another measure of great gravity, apart from the nominating of a purely puppet Government for Czechoslovakia, which the Russians were taking, or appeared to be taking. At the time of the invasion both our Houses of Parliament and the United Nations as a body called on the Soviet Government to withdraw their troops from Czechoslovakia. Now 19 months have gone by, and what is happening is the opposite of what was demanded by the Free World. There are signs, and very concrete signs, that the Russian Army of Occupation is there to stay. Barracks and headquarter buildings are being constructed for the Soviet troops.
There was a fairly sinister leak from the meeting last month of the Slovakian Communist Party, in which a request had been formulated for the Soviet Army of Occupation to be declared permanent. We do not know, or at least I do not know, the terms of the new SovietCzech treaty of friendship initialled last week in Prague by Mr. Gromyko. Among those who study Central European affairs it is speculated that this may contain a clause giving permanence to the Russian occupation. That, for the Czechoslovaks, would be servitude comparable to the permanent occupation of Britain by the Nazis had the Nazis overrun us and carried on to win the War. We cannot, in the words of the noble Lord the Leader of the House, be neutral in face of such a possibility. To ignore this, in between crises, is all part of the not-so-new but undoubtedly "with it" permissive diplomacy, a reaction, I daresay, to the gunboat diplomacy of an earlier epoch. The two have this in common: they are all too often carried out at the cost of somebody weak and therefore expendable.
I speak with far less bitterness of this particular example than I did, and do, of Mr. Neville Chamberlain's permissive diplomacy at Munich and the treatment, the insensitive treatment, of the Czechoslovaks on that occasion. That did not prevent war: it made war certain by blurring the features of the evil we faced and weakening our own resolve. Communism is vulnerable to stated facts. I

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claim that in this speech I have given a number of facts. To the best of my belief the only conjecture that I have introduced is with regard to the formalised plan for permanent Russian occupation of the country. The rest are facts as I believe them to be. I would far rather they had been expressed and exposed by the Government of my country, because in this way they would carry more weight and carry it further and deeper. I see it as a duty of government to give facts, even to create the pretext for giving those facts, without flinching away from any immediate discomfort.
If Communism could be disposed of by the death of a thousand facts, Communism would be dead by now. But we know the hide is thick, the heart is a mechanical and remorseless pump, and conscience is a mailer for derision among the men who control the Communist world. Moreover, the ears of those beyond its present grasp, but in valid danger, are often deaf to disturbing news and ugly omens. For all that, Communism too is vulnerable, sensitive now and then to the strong light of truth, if only that light can be maintained and focused upon the evil which is being inflicted.
Our failure is that each time, after Hungary in 1956 and after Czechoslovakia in 1968, to name only two examples, the beam of revealing truth flickers and fails and falls away from its target. It is our business to maintain and direct that beam, for our own sake as well as the sakes of those who, at this moment in history, must look to us for the source of that light which can. at long last, bring the deliverance of which they dream.
4.52 p.m.
THE EARL OF LYTTON: My Lords, when I telephoned to put my name down for this Unstarred Question, I had no idea that I should be chanting, in a sense, a duet with the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, and it may be that he would have been better on his own. I wrote to him and suggested that I had prepared nothing but would listen to what he said and join in, if I felt it might be useful. My chant in support of the noble Lord is in part an ancient one, like that of the Ancient Mariner, because I wore His Majesty's uniform in circumstances which
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enabled me to see the grievous consequences of the demarcation line that the high military and political powers had set across Europe.
One day a notable in a certain East European country asked me to take note of a list on the wall of a town and to realise that this was a list of those people executed allegedly for collaboration. He said, "None of these people, all of whom we know, were anywhere near the enemy and the enemy was nowhere near us. It is because of their attitude to the new regime that they were taken away from their homes at night and their bodies were found later on a municipal dump. Nobody was asked to attend their trial or to speak for them in their defence, and the men who took them away were wearing your British uniform".
That is the reason why, 25 years later. I come back to try to see if anything whatever can be done to help the people who are captive, in part because we arranged that they should be. I therefore am in total sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, has said. I even wish, and I would be present if I possibly could, that some such speech on behalf of one or all of the captive nations could be made in this House yearly, so that we could be reminded of and not sleep on the consequences of leaving some people so far from free. It would be the tribute that freedom pays to captivity that it celebrates and commemorates and brings captivity to mind once a year. Therefore, I am delighted to be perhaps the only speaker in support of the noble Lord's general remarks.
On the other hand, this is a debate, and I want to put a point of view which has worried me throughout the 25 years. I have been trying to consider what should be done. To a large extent we are faced with the misuse of military power, and in these circumstances I assume that, be it Hungary, be it Czechoslovakia, we alone—maybe NATO alone—cannot solve the issue in the battlefield in Prague or in Budapest or anywhere else. Therefore something must be done in the field of diplomacy, if possible. I am embarrassed to know what.
The noble Lord mentioned orders from the Kremlin. I would tell a story in this connection. I was at the time the Chief Staff Officer of the Military Government of the British Section of Vienna. The

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Soviet military commander summoned an emergency meeting—the only way that was ever summoned—in order to consider the widespread food poisoning and hospitalisation of citizens in Vienna after eating corned beef circulated by the British in their rations. The rations was a matter on which there was feeling between the Allies. The Allies had decided to feed the Viennese on a scale of calories exceeding that which was the ration of the Soviet Red Army soldiers, and that was a grievance to start with. At that time our meat was exceedingly popular. It was the most popular of the rations to be had. Some rations were rather poor. There were pulses that looked like what you see at the bottom of a parrot cage, and other things were disagreeable. There were soya "links" which people would eat when they were starving but not when they had had a good meal.
The Allies met together and I was there, because I was in part responsible for the issue of this food. From my contacts I immediately ascertained that there was no epidemic, no food poisoning and nobody in hospital. Only one person in hospital in the whole of Vienna had had diarrhoea, unconnected with the beef, which he had not eaten. There was no such thing as an epidemic of food poisoning. I asked my chief what we were going to do about it. My chief was one of those who spoke several languages —Russian, French and German, with complete fluency and with considerable inaccuracy in all of them. After inquiries he came back and said, "You must not get 'het up' over things like this. The Russian general has had a telephone call from Moscow and he has got to do it. He cannot escape it." I asked, "Well, what are you going to do? It is entirely untrue." He said, "It is untrue and he knows it is untrue as well as anybody else, but he cannot say so. That is the position he is in. We have to back him up. We will have a meeting and decide to form a committee to inquire into this thing, though there is nothing to inquire into. He will report that there is a tripartite agreement on the matter, and we shall hear nothing more. We keep him as a friend, anyway. We will not 'down' him and gang up against him, because he has had an order with which he is obliged
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to comply." So we did get this gentleman as a friend, and nothing more was said about it, except that it was duly published that British supplied meat had poisoned the population of Vienna, and we had to suffer in silence.
That is one factor. There is another, more recent, factor that I should like to mention, from the other side, as it were. I was in intimate touch with a nonaligned African nation, and the Secretary of the Cabinet during our conversation produced a paper in French, printed in Brussels, which purported to be an information centre for circulation to nonaligned States. It was marked "Confidential". He put a pen through the word and said: "It is not confidential any more. Make of it what you like." In the course of reading quite a long document, I saw a most plausible account of what purported to be a plot by the C.I.A. to put certain elements in the country, which I knew personally and well, against others, and so arrange that on a certain occasion there might be a coup. I said to the man: "Is there any truth in it?". He said: "Sometimes there is truth in what comes from this source, but I do not know any more than you do. Put your own estimate on it." I have never been quite sure that it was not true that this was being planned. If I am unable to detect the truth in a circumstance of that kind, is it not likely that the Soviet Union, prone to much greater suspicions than we British are, may have the same sort of suspicions?
I have often wondered whether the C.I.A. is under proper control in the United States; and I sometimes wonder whether M.I.6—a very mild institution compared with any other Secret Service —is under proper control here. I remember identifying a member of M.I.6 on an occasion in Vienna when there was a Red Army celebration, with orchestral music, all the high people in their places, and Marshal Koniev in the Russian box; but the British High Commissioner was missing. One of my contacts said: "It is not a very good thing that the British High Commissioner should not be here on this Red Army occasion." I said: "I agree with you. We will go along together." And I went in and masqueraded for a short time as the British High Commissioner. I noticed in a box next to me, with the

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French High Commissioner, a member of M.I.6, who was somebody I knew. The French High Commissioner was exasperated beyond belief at this man, who had nothing whatever to do with the affair, being in his box. So, naturally, I winkled him out.
Do we know what our people are doing? Is there any excuse for a suspicion that coups and espionage are afoot? Have we proper control over our own people? I do not know. All I know is that in this particular case of Czechoslovakia it is clear that the Soviet Union believed that an effort was being made to establish some kind of coup. We cannot overcome that belief merely by denouncing it, horrible though they may be in what they do. I think it means taking some steps, little by little, to get in touch with people. One can always get some people on one side, and by degrees the whole atmosphere may soften. It has taken 25 years; but 25 years without disaster in Europe is at least something. Therefore I am wondering what the Minister is going to say about what we should do. It is not the injustice of what has been done by the other side that I am quarrelling with in any way, but asking what we can do. My Lords, I leave it at that.
5.5 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR OF GRYFE: My Lords, like the noble Lord who initiated this debate, I was prevented from attending the Sittings of this House which took place to condemn the invasion of Czechoslovakia. I was at that time in Czechoslovakia. During the preceding weeks I had lived in Czechoslovakia, and had the true thrill and excitement of the revolution that had taken place there. I stood at the street corners with young students who were debating, clearly and openly, the course which their country might follow. I talked with trade unionists and people in industry, and sensed that industry, too, had a new vitality, because it was released from the inhibitions arising from association with the COMINFORM. In the plays, in the Press, in all the areas of communication there was this great sense of uplift and liberation.
I had experienced a similar occasion at an earlier stage of my life. I was in Vienna when the Nazis marched into Austria, but in Vienna at that time there
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were people lining the streets, welcoming the Nazi armies. In Czechoslovakia there was no one who expressed any support or welcome for the invaders. It was an experience that I shall never forget, because people were bright with the opportunities that freedom offered, and then were suddenly cast down into a permanent eclipse. Consequently I welcome the opportunity from time to time to condemn what took place in Czechoslovakia.
During the intervening period I have tried to maintain regular contact with people in Czechoslovakia. I am sure that my trade union friends on this side of the House will realise that what has taken place there has been the destruction of the trade union movement as an independent force. The co-operative movement has been incorporated in the State, and all the leaders of these democratic organisations who refused to come to heel have been dismissed. When one considers that within that country there are only two employers, the co-operative movement and the State, one realises what that means in terms of the domestic life and the future of the individuals who have been cast out. The story was told recently of Emil Zatopek, hero of the people and a colonel of the army. He was dismissed from his rank as colonel. He was subsequently dismissed from the army, and was put on duty in the streets, clearing garbage; but so many people went to help him clear the garbage in the streets and to show that they were associated with him that he had to be removed from public activity of any kind. That is the nature of the situation in Czechoslovakia, and it is right that all who cherish freedom and value democracy should condemn these things.
At the same lime, may I say that in this matter we should have no double standards, and in condemning lack of freedom in Czechoslovakia we should be condemning lack of freedom elsewhere. Consequently I will not go to the Red Army concert; neither will I go to watch the Springboks. The noble Lord who has just spoken asked a question: "What do we now do?" So far as the people of Eastern Europe are concerned, any justification for the action which has been taken has been by playing upon the fear of those people of invasion or attack from the West. Those people still have vivid

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memories of the war, and consequently it is easy to play on that fear and to justify the aggression in Czechoslovakia by saying that it was necessary to protect Eastern States from invasion from the West. We may ridicule or dismiss that fear, but it is a fact in the situation, and any policy which we may now devise in dealing wth East/West relations should be so constructed as to remove that fear so far as possible.
For that reason I welcome the initiatives that have been taken by Willy Brandt in Germany. Willy Brandt is a freedom lover; he is a democrat. He believes in all the values that have been spoken about so eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald. Willy Brandt sees that the only way we can secure liberation, or any easement of the situation, in East European countries is to build bridges, to remove misunderstanding and fear. There should be no reluctance on the part of all of us who cherish freedom and democracy to speak to Communists. Neither should there be any inferiority complex about dealing with Communists. Willy Brant symbolises the kind of policy which this Government must pursue. We should be talking and endeavouring to build bridges, while not accepting the philosophy to which they subscribe. I know that this kind of policy will be misunderstood; I know that frequently it will be rebuffed and frustrated. We must pursue it with patience, for simply to condemn is simply to end up without any possibility of positive bridge-building or peace-making. So while I welcome this opportunity of subscribing to the expression of the noble Lord, I hope that Her Majesty's Government will not be deterred in the positive work of building bridges to the East, maintaining contact with the East, and endeavouring to secure some easement and liberation as a result of that kind of positive policy.
5.14 p.m.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I did not know until I came into the Chamber that my noble friend, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, was unable to take part in this little debate. I think, however, it is desirable that some voice should be raised from the Liberal Benches, and I hope in what I say I shall not depart too far from what my Liberal friends may think. The relations we should
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have with the Soviet Government and the minority Czech Government after the outrageous aggression of the Soviet Union on Czechoslovakia nineteen months ago presents a difficult problem, and personally I sympathise, as I am sure we all do, with much of what the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, said in his speech and with the other two noble Lords who have intervened so far.
Inevitably, when we consider this problem we have to consider our attitude also towards the rebel Government in Rhodesia. That Government is now being ostracised for a policy which is not, in itself, any worse, considered objectively, than the policy pursued by the Russian Government as regards Czechoslovakia. Indeed, the so-called "Brezhnev doctrine", whereby the Soviet Government maintains that it has the indisputable right to occupy the territory of any Government that dares to upset what it considers to be a Socialist regime, is a direct violation of the United Nations Charter. Apart from that, the actual aggression upon Czechoslovakia is something which must be condemned by all people who have any feeling for international law of any kind. There is no doubt about that. In some ways the Russian action is even worse than that of Mr. Smith. After all, Mr. Smith in any circumstances would have been allowed to maintain—anyhow for some years and with our consent—a minority Government. There is no excuse whatever for the Russians imposing a minority Government on a civilised people with whom they are allied. So, as I say, that crime is even worse.
When we have said all that, the question arises, what should we do? Here there are certain points which we must consider. In the first place—and this is perhaps a technical point, but it is valid so far as it goes—whereas Mr. Smith and his rebel Government have been formally condemned by the United Nations, there has, rightly or wrongly, been no such condemnation of the Soviet Government by the United Nations as such. This has not happened for obvious reasons; but the two situations are to that extent dissimilar. In the second place, and here I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe said, what good object would be achieved if we broke off cultural relations with the Soviet Government and even with the

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stooge Government in Prague? What good effect would it have on the unfortunate Czechs, or indeed on the unfortunate inhabitants of other nations in Eastern Europe? It would do no good; it would only make the situation worse. There is no doubt about that. Lord Taylor of Gryfe referred to the action of Herr Willy Brandt in trying to maintain contacts with the East. That is very praiseworthy. We are all in favour of trying to maintain some kind of suitable relations with the East in order to arrive one day at some political arrangement, which, of course, is a different thing from cultural relations—
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, if the noble Lord will excuse me, I hope he is not under the misapprehension that I was advocating the breaking off of all cultural relations. I specifically was not.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, the noble Lord says that he is not in favour of breaking off all cultural relations; but is he in favour of breaking off some cultural relations?
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, I mentioned only one specific instance.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I may have been under the wrong impression. In any case, I am merely arguing that breaking off or indeed gravely interfering with cultural relations, or any manifestation of them, would not do any good. Further we must realise that the cultural representatives, both of the Soviet Government and of the Czech Government, who may come over here are probably by a majority—even the Russians who come over here—in their heart of hearts deeply ashamed of what their respective Governments have done. They have to support it officially for obvious reasons, because they would be in a concentration camp if they did not. These therefore seem to me to be the main reasons why, after the element of shock and impact to which the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, referred has worn off, we should not do anything which could discourage cultural exchanges either with the Soviet Union or with the Czech Government; and I hope that the Government will in fact pursue that path.
However, there remains the matter of good-will missions—and here I must say that I think a good-will mission, as
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such, after the outrage that has been committed by the Soviet Government, is not something which we ought to favour, at any rate in this country. Any breaking off of cultural relations would obviously do no good; but, equally, good-will missions would do no good, either. It is something quite different to negotiate with a Government, whether it is the Soviet Government or the Czech Government or any other. That is a matter between States. But "good will" is totally different. For this implies that there can be good will towards a Government—not the people but the actual Government—which has committed this particular outrage. I see the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, nodding his head, and I hope that he will develop this theme much more powerfully than I can. It really is the essential point. So the conclusion, so far as I can see, is this: cultural exchanges, yes; go on with them: good-will missions, think again.
5.21 p.m.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, will appreciate that I feel just as deeply upon this issue as he does. I do so for two reasons. The first is a political reason, which he will not share. The second is a personal reason, which he has not shared. The political reason is this. I am a Socialist, a Democratic Socialist. I want to see a democratic Socialist society develop to which both the Communist nations and the Social Democratic Parties of the West can contribute. Those of us who belong to Social Democratic Parties in the West have to recognise that we have not got very far. We have to appreciate that the Communist Parties of the East have also not gone very far towards a democratic society. When Mr. Dubcek and his colleagues broke through in Czechoslovakia with his human Socialism, it was a great star in the sky to those of us who believed in democratic Socialism. The destruction of that by the Soviet Government was a tragedy to us: I think a tragedy greater than it could be to those who did not sympathise with the democratic Socialist society which Mr. Dubcek and his colleagues were seeking to construct. For that reason, because of political dedication, perhaps I am more deeply sad about what had happened than is the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald.

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The second reason, which is personal, is this. Since the 1920s I have been the friend of many of those who were associated with Mr. Dubcek. I am not going even to mention their names publicly, because possibly they would be further penalised. But I know them as friends and associates; and, because of my friendship, what they have suffered has been a suffering to me as well. Therefore I say to the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, that I feel just as deeply about this issue as he can possibly do.
I go on from that point to pose this question: if we are seeking to renew the basis of democracy in Czechoslovakia and the personal liberties in which we believe, what is the way to do so? The noble Lord will forgive me for saying that I thought his contribution to the solution of the problem was terribly inadequate. He built up this enormous picture of Soviet suppression. May I say, incidentally, that I have some little doubt whether a protest against what has happened in the terms of which he spoke is going to help the Opposition in Czechoslovakia. They are Socialists; they are human Communists. The argument against them by the Soviet Government is that they are supported by those who are against Socialism and who sought the overthrow of the very basic system of Socialism in Czechoslovakia. I put this moderately. I would suggest that those who desire to see a new liberalisation in Czechoslovakia, and who are fundamentally opposed to the basis of Socialism, perhaps should keep a little quiet, because their denunciation is going to assist the anti-Socialists, the anti-human Socialists. The Soviet Union, in maintaining their suppression—
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, I think the noble Lord is being very un-fair here. Whatever I stand for that he does not like, I certainly stand for co-existence; and the Soviet Union has proved that it does not stand for co-existence even with its own satellites if they get slightly out of hand.
LORD BROCKWAY: Yes, my Lords; I appreciate that. I do not want to put it too dogmatically; I am trying not to. I am just saying that, in the present picture of Eastern Europe, championship of the cause of human Socialism by those
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who are fundamentally opposed to Socialism itself may do more harm than good to the liberty of those who desire democratic Socialism. I do not put the point more strongly than that. I think that the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, will recognise, when he thinks about it, that there is something in what I say.
However, what I am concerned about is that this debate should contribute to conditions which will again allow liberalisation and democracy to return in Czechoslovakia. I would put this very strongly indeed. I said that the noble Lord's solution was inadequate. What did it amount to? That we should not invite the Red Army Choir to this country. My Lords, despite all my appreciation of Russian culture—art, ballet and dancing—I will not go to see that choir; but also I will not go to see the South African cricket team. I take that stand on the same basis. Both the choir and the cricket team represent systems to which I am fundamentally opposed. I hope the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, will agree with me that those who oppose the visit of the Red Army Choir should also oppose the visit of a South African cricket team which is based on the principle of apartheid and racialism.
How are we in a practical, pragmatic way to contribute towards the return of liberalisation and democracy in Czechoslovakia? I put this point to the noble Lord. The Soviet argument was that there was danger from the West. Give them ground for building up that argument, and they can intensify their repression of Czechoslovakia. On the other hand, we should seek to remove that argument; seek, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, said, to apply from our Foreign Office the policy of Herr Willy Brandt in Germany towards the East—a policy not merely of co-existence, but of co-operation, of seeking solutions. Do that in the East and you immediately destroy the ground upon which the Soviet Government has been able to carry out its policies in Czechoslovakia.
My Lords, my second hope is this: education in the Soviet Union. Education in the Communist countries is expanding the whole time, and I cannot believe that as education expands an educated people will accept the kind of policy which has been pursued either in

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Moscow or, through it, in other Warsaw Pact powers.
Therefore, while I sympathise with the sense of outrage which the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, feels about what has happened in Czechoslovakia, I do not accept the policy which he has proposed. I believe that U Thant, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, was right when, after the tragedy of Czechslovakia, he expressed the hope that it would not lead to a breach in East/West relationships, because those relationships form the greatest hope for the return of the kind of liberalism and democracy which we desire to see in the East. I hope that the result of this debate will be that, while we sympathise and identify ourselves with the very courageous democratic Socialists in Czechslovakia, and particularly the youth, who there, as all over the world, are the hope of the future; while we say that, we also indicate that we are going to pursue policies which will encourage the return of democracy to that country by co-operation between East and West.
5.33 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I should like to add a word or two to what my noble friend Lord Brockway said when he spoke about the feelings of so many of us in the winter and, more particularly, in the spring of 1968, when the spring song of hope rose in our hearts after the years which we had spent looking at the dictatorship of Novotny in Czechoslovakia. Then to have it dashed and broken as it was in those terrible August days of 1968, made one feel sad and depressed.
It is an extraordinary thing that Russian imperialism, which really started before British imperialism, right back in the sixteenth century, should have outlasted our own imperialism, as it quite obviously has done. No doubt it takes a different guise from that which it took in Czarist times, but it is not as different as all that. I am sure that the whole outlook of the Revolutionaries who brought about that situation in the old Russia under the leadership of Lenin was entirely different. I have the greatest admiration for Lenin, and in my own mind and heart I have no doubt that if he could be back here with us now he would condemn what happened in August, 1968, just as much as my noble friend Lord Brockway, because it was entirely out of
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keeping with his whole outlook on politics. One hopes that this year, in which falls the centenary of Lenin, who was a great man as well as a great revolutionary, there may be some alleviation of the situation in Czechslovakia.
Things can change very rapidly. When my noble friend Lord Brockway and I were children, looking ahead and looking around on the British Empire (as it then was), at least as powerful, and indeed more powerful, than the Czarist Empire, it would have been impossible to see that within fifty or sixty years it would have ceased, as indeed it has done, although no doubt Mr. Breznev would deny that this was so. It gives one a certain feeling of optimism that eventually, and perhaps just as rapidly, this Russian imperialism may also collapse. The invasion of Hungary, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, is just a kind of imperialism; and imperialism feeds on itself until it reaches a stage when, so to speak, it bursts. We were still being imperialists when I was a boy and it is really quite astonishing how it has all vanished. One hopes that that may well be so with Russian imperialism. It is difficult to see how it could be brought about, but there are forces in the U.S.S.R. at the present time. Every now and then brave men and women in Moscow and in the other great cities of the U.S.S.R. publicly denounce some of the things that are going on there in the name of Communism when it is not really Communism at all; it is just another form of dictatorship and imperialism. I believe that eventually these brave men and women will be heard by the great mass of the Russian people and that in that way we may eventually see Russian imperialism disappear from the face of the earth just as rapidly as the British species of the same terrible form of politics did.
5.38 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD CHALFONT): My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord St. Oswald, in introducing this short debate this evening, was, I thought, comparatively restrained, for him; but while I think he has most of the House—indeed, all of the House—with him in his sense of outrage and condemnation of the events of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, it is obvious that he has not got much support, if

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any, for his proposal that in order to signal our sense of outrage even now we should condemn equally the visit of the Red Army Choir to this country. He was careful to say that it was only this single thing to which he was objecting; he was not objecting to general cultural exchanges. I think the fact that while everybody agrees with his sense of out-rage no one, so far as I can gather, has supported his specific proposal, is indeed the difference between the making of subjective judgments about the behaviour of other Powers, which we are perfectly entitled to do and which indeed are elements in the formulation of any foreign policy, and the actual making of foreign policy, which is a much wider matter than that. What we have to look at is not only the behaviour of others and our reaction to it but the interests of the people of this country, and indeed the interests of people all over the world. It is in that light that we formulate our attitude towards the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and towards the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries now.
The short answer to the question which the noble Lord has put is that there has been no change of any kind in the attitude of Her Majesty's Government since it was defined by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in another place on August 26, 1968. That attitude is quite simply to condemn unequivocally the invasion of Czechoslovakia, but to persist in a policy of seeking better understanding with all the countries of Eastern Europe. I must confess that in my view, contrary to what the noble Lord has suggested, the current visit of the Red Army Choir to this country is not at all inconsistent with the words which the Secretary of State used on that occasion, since he was referring quite clearly to a particular invitation then at a particular time. Whether such a visit was now appropriate was a question for those who arranged it to judge. Of course, the noble Lord may not agree with the judgment they made, but that is not to say that it is in any way inconsistent with what the Foreign Secretary said in 1968.
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, I would point out that it was not left to their judgment in 1968, and the Red
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Army is still occupying Czechoslovakia. Why should it be left to their judgment this year?
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, because, as I think my noble friend, Lord Shepherd, pointed out to the noble Lord in a sort of simple exercise in calendar months, it is now the spring of 1970, and there is a change simply in the fact that time has passed. We are trying to further our understanding with the countries of Eastern Europe, and when the impresario concerned this time asked whether a visit would be approved he was, in the context of this policy, simply told that he was responsible for making that decision and that the responsibility, if he invited them to come, would be his.
It is true that since 1969 we have been reverting to normal practice so far as cultural exchanges with the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries are concerned. We have also resumed other contacts which were interrupted at the time. For example, as the noble Lord said, there have been several Ministerial visits to countries in Eastern Europe, but they have been to discuss practical matters of mutual interest. They have not been, as the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, said, visits of good will.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I did not suggest that they were. I merely said that I was against visits of good will.
LORD CHALFONT: I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention. These visits were not of the kind that he deplores; they were practical visits designed to further our mutual interests.
My Lords, what I want to emphasise is this. When the Secretary of State made his speech in 1968 (and this is the speech to which the noble Lord has referred) he made it absolutely clear that the interruption of such contacts at the time of the invasion was not to be permanent. I know that the noble Lord has studied this speech carefully, and I know he will agree with me that the Foreign Secretary made it quite clear in another place that this was a temporary interruption of contacts which he implied would be resumed in due course. Of course, the invasion of Czechoslovakia was a severe setback in the development

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of relations between ourselves, the whole of Western Europe, and the invading countries. Perhaps it would be useful if I were to quote what the Secretary of State said on August 26, 1968. He said:
" Although the prospect of achieving under-standing is inevitably pushed further into the future, the main essentials of the policy must remain."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 26/8/68, col. 1420.]
Another very clear exposition of our policy was the speech of the same Minister, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, in the United Nations, on October 14, 1968, when he spoke of the need to continue efforts to achieve understanding in East/ West relations, despite the fact that our confidence had been shaken by events in Czechoslovakia.
I am making these points, my Lords, simply to deal with one aspect, as I see it, of the noble Lord's Question, which is that there is some inconsistency between what was said in 1968 and what is being done now. In my view, there is no inconsistency. There has simply been development in the course of time in between. There has been no adjustment or modification of our attitude since 1968, and everything we have done or said since has been consistent with, or even implicit in the words of the Foreign Secretary on August 26, 1968.
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, I am genuinely anxious to avoid a confrontation with the noble Lord on this matter. He is on the subject now, as his noble friend was a moment ago, of building bridges. We all want to build bridges, but I would ask him to take into account the fact that the Russians insist upon building a bridge of their own design, a bridge intended to be one way, to funnel Soviet propaganda into the West and receive nothing in return. I should like to draw the noble Lord's attention to the names of three distinguished men, three former Ambassadors, Sir William Harper, Director of the British Eastern European centre, Sir Cecil Parrott and Sir William Barker, all of whom worked courageously and hard to build these bridges and have been vilified by the Soviet Press for attempting to build bridges with Eastern Europe. It is not as simple as the noble Lord makes out. I should like to
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know whether Her Majesty's Government have sent protests to the Soviet Government on the vilifications of these three distinguished public servants which have appeared in the Soviet Press.
LORD CHALFONT: My Lords, I cannot answer that question immediately; I am not aware of the circumstances. With all respect to the noble Lord, I think it is really rather irrelevant to the argument I am trying to develop. It is our policy that I am talking about. Other countries must speak on their own policies. I do not know that I would go along with this image of building bridges. It is an analogy that breaks down if one carries it too far. What we are trying to do is to improve relations with Eastern European countries, and it may be that often that will seem to us a one-way traffic, but unless we continue these efforts towards detente, if we give up because the going appears too hard, then I suggest that we shall never bring down this artificial barrier in the centre of Europe; and it is our policy to continue to do this.
I have said that our condemnation of the invasion has not changed; I can assure the noble Lord of that. Nor is there any doubt in our minds about the doctrine to which the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, has referred, the Brezhnev doctrine, which seeks to rationalise the invasion of Czechoslovakia. We do not mince any words about that. But some noble Lords who have spoken have said that it is not enough to condemn; we must also ask ourselves what we can do.
I think it might be useful if I were to say a few words in conclusion about our policy towards the countries of Eastern Europe. The noble Lord, Lord, St. Oswald, has been good enough to say that he is in favour of a policy that seeks to further our relations with these countries. He is on the single subject of the Red Army Choir. To see the policy of Her Majesty's Government clearly, I think we must look at it not only against the background of developments in one country, such as Czechoslovakia, but also in the context of East-West relations generally. The first point that I would make is that this policy is not one that we are pursuing alone; this is not simply the policy of Her Majesty's Government. Perhaps I might ask the noble Lord to refer, if he has not already done so. to the communiqué issued on

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December 5 last year after the Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Brussels, where the Ministers of all our Allies in Western Europe meet and discuss policy. The communique began by recalling that for twenty years the members of the Alliance had dedicated their efforts to the preservation of their freedom and security and to the improvement of East-West relations in the aim of reaching an ultimate peaceful solution of outstanding problems in Europe. This they would continue to do.
The declaration which accompanied that communiqué referred to the lack of a common interpretation of the principles upon which peace and security in Europe must rest, to the need for further study of issues and procedures for possible negotiation, and also to the need for greater freedom of movement of people, ideas and information between the countries of East and West. I draw the attention of the noble Lord to those last words subscribed to by the Ministerial Council of NATO representing all our Western allies:
"the need for greater freedom of movement, of people, ideas and information between the countries of East and West."
This is the background against which our policy is carried out; and I think it is right to say that we have been consistent about this policy over the years. There have been setbacks, and I have no hesitation in agreeing with the noble Lord that the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968 was perhaps the worst and most shocking of these. But we think that in the longer term our policy is correct, and that we should stick to it unless circumstances make it impossible to do so.
The noble Lord said a good deal about the present situation in Czechoslovakia. It is true that the official position of the Government has changed since 1968, but I do not think it would be right for me here to make judgments on that. It is for Governments to describe their own views and their own policies, and I do not believe that it would be prudent, either in our interest or in the interest of Czechoslovakia, to comment in any detail on the noble Lord's catalogue of criticisms of the current regime there. There are, of course, limits to the extent
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of agreement in any political dialogue with Communist countries. I would go as far along the noble Lord's road as that. But I still believe that it is wholly in our interests that we should respond to any desire for exchanges in the political field, and also any desire for ex-changes in the other fields, such as trade and technology, and cultural exchanges, where the prospects of practical benefit to both sides may seem to be more immediate. I believe we are right to concentrate, with our allies, on the future of relations between East and West, to work to secure any possible improvement in the future, without any illusions, and without losing sight of the principles on which we are divided.
I think I am right in reflecting that in the course of this short debate there has not been great support for the noble Lord's condemnation of the current visit of the Red Army Choir, although, quite rightly, there has been full and whole-hearted support—indeed, I would go so far as to say unanimous support—for his sense of outrage at and condemnation of the 1968 invasion. But I believe that, in spite of the events of 1968, we should now go ahead with the policies that 1 have outlined, and that we should try to do so without too much public recrimination, as noble Lords behind me have said, because I think this neither advances our policies, nor will help to improve the situation about which all of us are deeply, and rightly, concerned.

ROYAL ASSENT
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD GARDINER): My Lords, I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified Her Royal Assent to the following Act and Measures:
Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Act,
Collegiate Churches (Capital Endowments) Measure,
Sharing of Church Buildings Measure.

CHRONICALLY SICK AND DISABLED PERSONS BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
EXPORT GUARANTEES AND PAYMENTS BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT (FOOT-PATHS AND OPEN SPACES) (SCOTLAND) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
GAME BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to with an Amendment: the said Amendment to be printed.
NATIONAL TRUST BILL [H.L.]
  SOUTHEND-ON-SEA CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
    WEST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [H.L.]
      LIVERPOOL CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
        GLOUCESTERSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [H.L.]
        Reported, with Amendments.