§ 3.5 p.m.
§ Lord Jenkins of PutneyMy Lord, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
§ The Question was as follows:
§ To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will approve for inscription on the plinth of the proposed statue of the late Earl Mountbatten of Burma the following quotation from his Strasbourg speech of May 1979: "In the event of nuclear war there will be no chances, there will be no survivors—all will be obliterated".
§ The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Viscount Trenchard)No, my Lords. In any case, the quotation, taken out of context, does not accurately reflect the late Lord Mountbatten's view on nuclear deterrence.
§ Lord Jenkins of PutneyMy Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that to my knowledge the speech has not, in fact, been printed in full in any newspaper? In order that noble Lords may check for themselves whether or not the quotation accurately represents the speech, I have placed copies of the full text of the speech in the Library.
§ Viscount TrenchardMy Lords, I am delighted to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins—the chairman of the CND—has indeed reprinted the full speech and has placed copies of it in the Library. I would recommend noble Lords to read it. If the House would bear with me for a moment or so on this very important matter, I should like to point out that Lord Mountbatten, as Chief of Defence Staff, fully supported 1117 our policies of nuclear deterrence and of maintaining a nuclear balance.
In his Strasbourg speech in May 1979 he gave his audience all his feelings on the awesome nature of nuclear weapons and, indeed, his repugnance towards war, which I believe we all share in this House. But, having done that, if your Lordships will bear with me—because I believe that this speech has been quoted too often—he then continued:
But how do we set about achieving practical measures of nuclear arms control and disarmament? To begin with, we are most likely to preserve the peace if there is a military balance of strength between East and West. The real need is for both sides to replace the attempts to maintain a balance through ever-increasing and even more costly nuclear armaments by a balance based on mutual restraint".That is the Government's objective.
§ Lord BrockwayMy Lords, is the Minister aware that there is an historic precedent for this suggestion? Does he know that in 1924 the Minister for Works, Fred Jowett, added to the statue of Nurse Cavell, the heroic woman who was shot by the enemy, these words:
Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hate or bitterness for anyone"?The Minister said, "dig deep", and that was done, and those words are on Nurse Cavell's statue today.
§ Viscount TrenchardMy Lords, as to the question of any inscription on any public statue, that is a matter not only for the Government but for the family of the statesman concerned and for many others. However, the suggestion as to the terms of the inscription and the request that the Government support them are turned down for the reasons that I have stated.
§ Lord Boyd-CarpenterMy Lords, if statues to the recently dead are to be used as instruments of political propaganda, would it not be more appropriate, in view of the late Lord Mountbatten's lifetime of devoted service in the Armed Forces of the Crown, to use the latin quotation:
Si vis pacem para bellum"?
§ Lord Jenkins of PutneyMy Lords, is it not the case that in the speech to which I have referred Lord Mountbatten specifically condemned the exact quotation which the noble Lord has quoted? If noble Lords doubt that, I commend them to the Library where they may see it for themselves.
§ Viscount TrenchardMy Lords, I am afraid that I did not quite understand that, but I have nothing to retract. I hope that noble Lords will read the full speech, which shows all the late Lord Mountbatten's horror of these weapons, but that they will also concentrate on what he says when he gets to his practical propositions.
§ Lord KennetMy Lords, is it not the case that the Government, the CND and all shades of opinion in between, would be united in endorsing the general drift of the late Lord Mountbatten's famous speech?
§ Viscount TrenchardMy Lords, I think that this is undoubtedly true. The noble Lord knows well the date of the speech that Lord Mountbatten made, not so very long before he was tragically assassinated. It is a speech of a lifetime of reflections and a repugnance of war. But the recommendations of what to do about it are entirely in accord with the present Government's policies.
§ Lord ChalfontMy Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that the business of making selective quotations from public figures of this stature to support causes which they never themselves supported is somewhat distasteful and questionable? If there is to be a recommendation regarding the inscription on Lord Mountbatten's statue would not the other quotation to which the noble Viscount referred:
We are most likely to preserve the peace if there is a military balance of strength between East and Westbe a more appropriate memorial to Lord Mountbatten?
§ Viscount TrenchardMy Lords, it would be more appropriate. The question of any inscription is covered by one of my previous answers.
§ Lord LeatherlandMy Lords, can the noble Minister give us an undertaking that when statues are erected to the memory of any of us we shall have a voice in deciding what the inscription shall be?
§ Viscount TrenchardMy Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will check with his solicitor what is in his last words on this.
§ Viscount SlimMy Lords, is it not a fact that Lord Mountbatten would expect this country to survive and win any battle upon which we are engaged? I take completely out of context what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, has said.