Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group

HL Deb 30 July 1986 vol 479 cc946-75

10.25 p.m.

Lord Hatch of Lusby rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what action they propose to take after receiving the report of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, it may be of value to the quality of our discussion if I try first to define the objective of the question. It is not to ask whether sanctions should be applied against South Africa; they are already being applied. Let us not be mealy-mouthed; let us talk about "sanctions" and not about "measures". The Question is not about whether comprehensive, total or punitive sanctions should be applied. I have no desire to punish anyone in South Africa, and both comprehensive and total sanctions are probably impossible to apply, at least in the short term. The objective is not to destroy the South African state or the South African economy.

In view of what has been said in previous debates, let me say that the objective is not to hand over South Africa to Communist-dominated organisations. I point out at the beginning of the debate that I was in South Africa when the suppression of Communism legislation was passed in 1950, and part of the definition of "Communism" in South African terms is any action which aims at the encouragement of feelings of hostility between the European and non-European races of the Union. Anyone could be deemed a Communist by the Governor-General, as he existed at that time. In other words, the term includes anyone who opposes the system of apartheid.

Neither do I intend to discuss the mission of Sir Geoffrey Howe, except to say that its outcome confirms what the Eminent Persons Group reported to the Commonwealth and what many of us have been saying for years, that President Botha and any white regime in that country have no intention whatever of altering the basic principle of white supremacy.

The Question that I ask is based on the Eminent Persons Group report and in particular on a section which has been quoted before but which is worth requoting: The question in front of Heads of Government is in our view clear. It is not whether such measures will compel change: it is already the case that their absence and Pretoria's belief that they need not be feared, defers change. Is the Commonwealth to stand by and allow the cycle of violence to spiral? Or will it take concerted action of an effective kind? Such action may offer the last opportunity to avert what could be the worst bloodbath since the Second World War".

I am asking the Government to state their response to that conclusion of the Eminent Persons Group report.

The question of sanctions can be divided into two items. First, what is the target of sanctions? Secondly, how can they be used effectively? I suggest that the target is to bring the South African Government to negotiate with the genuine representatives of non-Europeans for the future of South Africa. It is also to reduce the South African state's powers to kill, to maim and to silence its opponents and to refuse the human right of equal participation for every individual in the government of their society. Such negotiations have been demanded by Africans for 80 years. They have been met by bullets, batons, imprisonment and torture. If any noble Lord wants to examine the attitude of the Africans today towards negotiations, I suggest that they read not only the Eminent Persons report but also the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Barber, in our last debate on South Africa.

For 80 years discrimination has been fuelled by Western investment, by Western trade and by Western diplomacy. To those who say that it is only by increasing the value of the economy of South Africa that apartheid can be undermined, let us point out that apartheid was at its most severe and most extreme during the period, particularly the 1960s and the early 1970s, when South Africa had the highest economic growth of its history.

I should like to ask the noble Baroness who is to reply whether it is not the case that it has now been revealed by United States officials that intelligence has been shared, up to and including last year, by the intelligence security organisation of the United States and of this country, particularly GCHQ, with South Africans, and that South Africans attended a conference only last year of the intelligence officers of the United States and of Britain. I would also suggest that the action taken only this week by the United States Administration of increasing textile imports from South Africa to the United States is further evidence that this subsidisation of apartheid by the West still continues. Yet, let us note that during the past 12 months, at a time when the rand fell sharply as a result of lack of international capitalist confidence in South Africa, minor reforms were made by the South African Administration. Yet. at the beginning of this year—in January and February—when debts were rescheduled as a Swiss gentleman acting on behalf of the South African Government succeeded in getting some financial support for the rand, and for the South African economy, the South African Government displayed the intransigence witnessed time after time in the Eminent Persons Group report.

The African revolt has become inevitable—inevitable because of the stubborn adherence to the main principle of the South African white community, particularly the Afrikaner community, that there shall be no equality in church or state, written into the constitutions of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State last century and continued ever since. It has become inevitable because of the constant and consistent refusal of the South African white regime to allow any constitutional means for change, added to the policies of the Western countries in passing by on the other side when appealed to consistently and constantly by Africans and other non-Europeans.

I hope that the noble Baroness can tell us that there will be no further postponement of approaching this problem directly: that the British Government will not tell the Commonwealth mini summit this weekend to wait until the next EC meeting in September. Postponement has been used to give the South African regime further time—now 12 months—to prepare for the imposition of sanctions, to stockpile and to prepare for the future. So much, my Lords, for the target of securing conditions in which the negotiations for which the blacks have been asking for 80 years are put into effect between all the communities—and here I would include Chief Buthelezi as well as other African leaders, the genuine representatives of all the communities in South Afica—to determine their future.

With regard to the effectiveness of the use of sanctions for this purpose I would suggest—and I would agree with the Government here—that, to be effective, sanctions have to be universal. In other words, we have to plug the leaks that have already appeared in the present sanctions measures, from Britain, the United States, West Germany, France and Israel. Therefore, the only way of applying sanctions effectively and universally is through the authority of the Security Council of the United Nations.

I shall give some examples of sanctions which could be effective in undermining the present white regime, in reducing its ability to terrorise the majority population, and encouraging those within the white regime who have the imagination to see the non-racial future of that country. I would suggest that there are a number of forms of sanctions which have been proposed and discussed. I shall give a few examples.

The most important are financial sanctions. I have already pointed out that the independent financial action of the world's banks 12 months ago had some effect, as well as what has been asked for within the Congress of the United States: the disinvestment of the great multinational companies which are based outside South Africa but which operate in support of the South African economy. I would also suggest a mineral boycott, including coal and diamonds. I mention again—as I did in the last debate—that here we need the co-operation of the Soviet Union, which is being urged at the Security Council to use its influence in its great diamond trade with South Africa. The boycott of minerals would also be effective in reducing the state of the South African economy. Sanctions on agricultural exports—on fruit and vegetables and so on—would effectively reduce South Africa's foreign trade and its ability to purchase imports.

The airways have been mentioned. Certainly the refusal of landing rights would bring home, particularly to the white population in South Africa, that the world regarded them as a pariah. There could be action on visas. Why should South Africans be treated as though they were commonwealth citizens travelling either to this country without visas, or indeed to the United States?

I am glad that the subject of gold sales has been raised because 1 have always suggested that if the United States and the IMF were to begin to sell gold on the open market, the reduction in the price of gold would be such that it would have a dramatic and instant effect upon the South African economy.

Above all, we must tighten the military ban which has been in force now for some 10 years. We must deal with matters like computers for use in Land Rovers by the police. In this connection, I would also specifically ask the noble Baroness why it is that the British Government, although they have withdrawn the British military attache from Pretoria, allow the South Africans to keep three such attachés in this country—a military attaché, a defence attaché and an air force Attaché—who I know are able to attend defence shows in this country making contacts and purchasing so-called defence (but in fact aggressive) weapons. Those are some examples, but they are only examples. I believe that the Commonwealth secretariat is sufficiently well-manned to work out the best methods of applying economic sanctions.

We must pledge ourselves and organise ourselves to assist the neighbours of South Africa who will be under attack. The South Africans are already blackmailing us. They are not saying that they will attack us; but they are saying that they will use force—particulary economic force—against their neighbours. We need to pledge economic and military aid to the front line states. We must, during what is bound to be a long struggle, keep close contact with the ANC, the UDF and the trade unions. After the years that have been wasted in hypocritical refusal to meet or to talk to the representatives of these people, I am glad to see that, first, Mrs. Chalker and then Sir Geoffrey Howe at least asked to meet the ANC. Why did it not happen 12 months or two years ago?

I hope that we shall hear no more about the accusation that it is immoral to advocate the use of sanctions against South Africa. Those of us who have advocated them have done so on the grounds that they are likely—and only likely—to reduce the period of violence which we have now seen has come, and come to stay. I hope that this weekend the British Government will take a deliberate, a considered, an organised—but above all a committed—lead through their position in the Commonwealth, through their position in the EC, alongside both Houses of the United States Congress and above all in the United Nations.

This is an issue of British economic self-interest as regards future trade with the whole of the African continent. There is a British political interest in shortening the period of the inevitable violence which has arisen throughout Southern Africa and which has arisen from 80 years of discrimination. There is a British moral interest in the values—if we still hold by the values—of justice, of human rights and of freedom. There is a British interest in influencing the character of the world that we bequeath to our children and our grandchildren.

10.44 p.m.

Earl Ferrers

My Lords, we seem to be quite intent on making our last evening a long evening. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, has introduced a very important subject. I intend to break the rule which I have always held, which is that unless you have been to South Africa you really have almost no right to express a view upon it. I have not been to South Africa and therefore I do not have a view upon apartheid that I would care to divulge or discuss, because I have always been of the view that whatever opinion you may have about that particular regime, if you went to South Africa you would return with a different view. It may be a stronger view; it may be a more understanding view; but it would be a different view. What I am concerned with is not to speak about apartheid but about our reactions to it.

It is convenient and easy to take a view and to criticise a regime and a principle when you are 8,000 miles away, and when happily you do not have those circumstances applying in your own country. Everyone has clamoured for sanctions to bring pressure on South Africa to remove apartheid. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, said this evening, "Don't let us postpone sanctions any longer". He said that he did not wish to hear anyone say that sanctions were immoral.

I am afraid that I am going to disappoint the noble Lord, because I take the view that it is morally indefensible to so conduct yourself as to try to bankrupt another country and bring it to its knees, in the hope that having done so it will change its ways. I do not believe that is a reality. I do not believe that sanctions will work that way. They never have done. They did not in Rhodesia and there is no reason to suspect that they will do so in South Africa.

My intervention this evening is. in effect, to congratulate, if I may do so without impertinence, the Prime Minister on saying in the midst of a sweeping tidal wave of demand for sanctions. "No, these won't work". It would have been the easiest thing to join that clamour and say. "Yes, we ought to apply sanctions". In fact, it took a great deal of courage to say, "No, we should not do this. There are other ways that ought to be tried". I believe that there are other ways that ought to be tried, and I congratulate the Government and the Foreign Secretary on having done their best to achieve another route.

Of course the trouble is that because the Prime Minister has said that she is against sanctions, that has been translated as being for apartheid. That is a travesty of the truth. That fact is that sanctions will not work and will not have the desired effect that everyone wishes, which is to see a change in South Africa. They may give some moral satisfaction to the participating countries, who will feel that they have thereby done their bit to try to encourage change, but they will not produce that change.

Worse than that, in my view they will have a reverse effect. I remember that as a child at school one was taught Boyle's law, Ohm's law, and Faraday's law. and I coined a law which modesty compelled me to call Ferrers' law. That simply says that everything has the reverse effect to that intended. Sanctions will have the reverse effect to that intended. They will unite South Africa in self-protection.

Countries frequently come to a sense of achievement far greater than they expect when they have a common enemy. During the war we had a common enemy when Hitler and the German armies were all facing the United Kingdom. That created a sense of unity in the United Kingdom which far outweighed numbers. We had a common enemy, if one recalls, back in the three-day week in 1974 when people were determined, because of the electricity cuts, to keep their firms going and their offices open. What was the effect? We achieved more in three days than we had achieved in five days. With the common enemy of sanctions, South Africa will find itself in many ways united. With such a prospect, a country rises to heights of self-preservation which it does not achieve without the stimulus of a common enemy.

If we or the Commonwealth or Europe or the world put sanctions on South Africa we will provide that common enemy syndrome which will have the reverse effect to that which is intended. Those in South Africa—and there are those who wish to see and to initiate change in South Africa—can only do so if they can mould public opinion in their country and bring along with them others who are less naturally so inclined.

One cannot change these things overnight, much as we may wish it to be done, but one can encourage change. Let the world apply the economic tourniquet and that flickering flame of change will be turned into a barrier of self-defence. Sanctions will not help the blacks in South Africa; will not help the neighbouring countries; will harm other countries and those who apply them, not least ourselves because of the scarce minerals and other commodities which we get from South Africa. The fact that all that will happen may be de minimis, though it is an important aspect.

I merely congratulate the Government on trying their hardest to negotiate and to do it by peace. We do not know yet officially how the Foreign Secretary has got on. It does not look as though he will be able to give a very exciting account of success, but that does not mean that the effort was not worth making. I hope that the Government will do all that they can to continue a dialogue and to continue persuading and not resort to the course of sanctions which I believe will have the opposite effect to that which is intended.

10.52 p.m.

Lord Chalfont

My Lords, I should have liked to take the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, very much more at length than I shall be able to at this late hour of the evening. I should, however, at the end of my remarks like to take up one specific point that he made. Before I make my brief contribution to tonight's debate I offer my personal congratulations to the right honourable Gentleman the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary for the patience, courtesy and fortitude with which he carried out a mission which was probably one of the most difficult missions ever undertaken by a British Foreign Secretary and which was undertaken in circumstances of enormous personal difficulty.

If the Government is being asked by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, to take into account the report of the Eminent Persons Group in formulating their policies towards South Africa or in changing their policies towards South Africa, may I suggest also that they should take into account the recent report of the Foreign Affairs Committee in another place, which seems to me to be an equally lucid, equally cogent, equally persuasive report, but one which comes to certain different conclusions?

First, I take a few moments to consider certain aspects of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group report itself and to make one or two comments upon it. I should make the point that I think that the introduction by the Commonwealth Secretary General should be totally ignored. It is not a part of the report, as was pointed out recently in your Lordships' House by the noble Lord, Lord Barber. It is emotive, it is intemperate and it attempts to translate and interpret the report in a way which was not intended, as I understand it, by the Eminent Persons Group. I want then to refer to a sentence at the top of page 23 of the report, where it says quite starkly: None of us was prepared for the full reality of apartheid". That seems to me to be a strange and very significant comment because, if none of them was prepared for this, it seems to me to imply that none of the Eminent Persons was at all familiar with the state of affairs in South Africa before they went there; and I would suggest that if they had been—if they had, for example, been visiting South Africa frequently, as I have, over the last 20 years—they might also have noted and recorded the very considerable and substantial changes which have taken place in that country over that period.

Lord Hatch of Lusby

My Lords, does the noble Lord not recall that Lord Barber pointed out to us that he had been travelling to South Africa for many years in his business capacity and therefore had had an opportunity, if he wished to take it, to see all the aspects of apartheid and the changes which the noble Lord is now suggesting have taken place.

Lord Chalfont

Precisely, my Lords. That is why I am surprised at the remark: None of us was prepared for the full reality of apartheid". It seems to me that anybody who had been visiting that country regularly and who had seen what has taken place there over the last 20 years would have been even more impressed by the reality of apartheid 15 or 20 years ago than he would be today. That is precisely the point that I was making.

May I go on to comment on another sentence, again at the head of a chapter, on page75? They seem to be very good at producing dramatic sentences at the beginnning of chapters. It is not for our Group to attempt to prescribe what the future constitutional structures of South Africa ought to be". I regard that as an eminently acceptable and admirable statement and, indeed, it is not for anyone outside South Africa to prescribe what the political arrangements of that country should be. Yet, certainly over recent months and over recent years, it seems to me, from Commonwealth countries, from the anti-apartheid movement, from a whole range of protest and political activist movements, we have heard nothing but prescriptions as to what the Government of South Africa should be—one man, one vote, in a unitary state. I think that we should take very careful note of what the Eminent Persons Group has said. "It is not for our Group"—or for this House or for this country or for any other country outside South Africa—to prescribe what its future political arrangements should be.

I move to Chapter Eight, the conclusions of the report. I was struck by the statement that: We were able to travel freely throughout South Africa, to visit black townships normally not accessible to outsiders and to talk to a diverse spectrum of opinion including opposition parties, trade unions, church leaders". and so on. I find that a very significant remark because I wonder where else in Africa a group would have been able to present itself from elsewhere in the world and receive that kind of treatment. Not in many countries, even in the Commonwealth, because in many black Commonweatlh countries in Africa there are no opposition parties to visit. There are no trade unions. Many of the Commonwealth counties of Africa outside South Africa are one-party states where there is no opposition, there are no political parties, to visit.

Finally, may I refer to the section at the end of the report which reports the views of the Government of South Africa. It begins—and I shall not read the whole of the section, for obvious reasons— The Government told us categorically that it was prepared to contemplate negotiations with a completely open agenda where everything would be on the table". That seem to me to be a fairly straightforward and unequivocal statement and yet it was not accepted by the Eminent Persons Group and is evidently not accepted by a great number of other persons in this country. I wonder why. It seems to me that when this group went to South Africa it was able to accept and to swallow without too much difficulty the statements made to it by leaders of the ANC and by leaders of other activist groups, but it was not able to accept what seems to me to be a fairly unequivocal statement from the Government of South Africa.

I think these points are worth picking out of the report, but 1 want especially to refer to its conclusions; and here I want to say something before moving on very briefly to the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee in another place. What the Eminent Persons Group referred to in its conclusions was the possibility of, the desirability of, perhaps even the inevitability of, "economic measures"—not "sanctions". The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, says, "Let us not be mealy-mouthed, let us call them sanctions." No. The Eminent Persons Group knew perfectly well what it was writing. If it had wanted to write "economic sanctions", it would have written "economic sanctions". The translation comes in the extraordinary and quite remarkable introduction by the Commonwealth Secretariat, which translates the word "measures" into "sanctions". There is a difference, as I shall now attempt to indicate.

Perhaps we may move briefly to the Sixth Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee in another place. I simply want to give two brief quotations from it. One, I think, is useful in terms of the background to this debate. At paragraph 7 it says—and this is an all-party committee with representation from all sections of another place: We do not believe that the choices to be made by Her Majesty's Government involve—as so many seem to believe—straightforward responses to straightforward moral questions. Even given our repugnance at apartheid, there can be no certainty that any one set of policies… may achieve… what they set out to achieve. I think that confirms to some extent what the noble Lord was saying in his speech a moment ago.

But let me go on to the section of this report which deals with what are called "positive measures". Quite clearly—and again for obvious reasons of time—I cannot go deeply into the report, but it is available for everyone to read. One of its important conclusions is that there are, in dealing with South Africa, such things as "negative measures", in which they include economic sanctions, punitive sanctions, comprehensive sanctions, and "positive measures", in which they include a whole range of other possibilities such as, for example, what they call a Marshall Plan for the black Africans of South Africa.

I make this point simply to say that it is quite wrong, quite misleading, and often deliberately misleading, to suggest that the only measures the British Government can take in respect to South Africa are negative measures, punitive measures. There are many positive measures that can be taken and I should have dearly liked to outline one or two, had there been time.

However, I want to make one penultimate point, which really confirms and underlines what the noble Earl was saying. It is this. Sanctions will not work in South Africa. I am not interested at the moment in whether or not they did in Rhodesia. I am not interested in whether the black people of South Africa want sanctions or do not—although I think Chief Buthelezi has made it quite clear what he thinks about that. My point is simply this. I know the Afrikaner reasonably well and it is my considered and quite unequivocal opinion that any attempt to coerce the predominantly Afrikaner Government of South Africa into changing their policies by this kind of pressure from outside will have precisely the opposite effect to that which it is meant to have.

I do not argue about whether it will hurt the blacks more than the whites; I do not even enter into the somewhat sterile argument about whether you can hurt the whites without hurting the blacks. My point is that if this is attempted, it will have quite the reverse effect, and I say to your Lordships' House quite solemnly that if we attempt to coerce the South African Government in this way, they will bring the whole thing down about their ears and about the ears of all the inhabitants of South Africa, with disastrous results for that country and for the rest of the southern part of the continent.

I want to take up briefly one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch. He used the word "mealy-mouthed" in talking about the difference—or, as he would have it, no difference—between sanctions and measures. I should like to suggest that we should equally not be mealy-mouthed about the ANC. The noble Lord was suggesting that he was not interested in the argument about handing over South Africa to a Communist-led organisation. I would simply like to point out and to reinforce something that I said in a debate in your Lordships' House recently. The ANC is the body which everybody wants to be, as they call it now in the new language, unbanned. The ANC is the party of Nelson Mandela whom people are seeking to have released unconditionally from prison, and I think that we should not be mealy-mouthed about what that party, what that organisation, is.

The ANC is a group which has a military wing which murders and intimidates and terrorises the people of South Africa, in many cases the blacks of South Africa. It has close links with the Communist party. I am sorry that this point has to be made over and over again. Of the 30 members of the council of the ANC, 23 are members of the South African Communist party. My Lords, if one is not going to call them Communists, what is one going to call them? Furthermore, of those 23, eight—more than 25 per cent. of the total council—have been trained in the Soviet Union, three of them for more than two years. This is a Communist organisation; it is a terrorist organisation. I think that one of the lessons of history is that those who seize power by terror will usually rule by terror when they get that power.

I want to finish, if I may, with another brief quotation. It is a quotation from Gatsha Buthelezi. I will not quote it at length. In a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal, Gatsha Buthelezi said that there is a way of bringing about change in South Africa: We can behave like civilised people. We can bring together blacks of the South Africa to sit down and negotiate a settlement which will bring shared power to all the people, black and white, of South Africa. It seems to me that perhaps we would be better engaged in a dialogue with Gatsha Buthelezi and Bishop Maqueno, who between them have at least as many followers as the ANC, than in attempting to give legitimacy to a terrorist organisation in South Africa.

11.8 p.m.

The Viscount of Falkland

We on these Benches are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, for giving us this opportunity of speaking yet again on the subject of South Africa and apartheid, and the attitude that we on these Benches have against that horrible repressive regime which exists in South Africa today. It is a pity that on the occasion of the excellent debate which we had in this House on South Africa we had to compete with supporting events which gave us the minimum publicity; and we have now to give voice to our feelings at a late hour when most of our internal clocks are not geared to bringing out the best.

I think that the document that we are here to talk about —and I shall talk about it briefly—is a historic one. I sense that so far tonight some noble Lords have reservations about it. We on these Benches—I cannot speak for everybody, but those with whom I have spoken at some length—see it as a document that is expressed in very clear and balanced prose. I accept that the foreword is somewhat emotive, I do not think, however, that one should ignore it. It is part of the document. It was, after all, inspired by the Commonwealth.

It is for that reason that I intervene tonight because we on these Benches value the Commonwealth. We have moved on alarmingly since we had our debate in this House towards a feeling in this country that the Commonwealth has lost some value; that the Commonwealth is a talking shop. The Commonwealth may produce emotive forewords to documents such as this, but at least it is a place where people talk, where they sometimes talk in terms which are strange and unwelcome to us, but it is a forum where international problems can be threshed out; where we can at least take time to consider all the aspects of international problems which affect all the members of the Commonwealth. It is a sad thing that in recent days we have seen the Commonwealth become a less united body.

It seems to be in fashion tonight to quote parts of the report. On page 129, in the chapter entitled, The Regional Dimension, the document sums up the future problem. It states: Nobody who cares for the future of a free and non-racial South Africa, rich in resources and productive in its trade and commerce. would wish to see the destruction of its economic and industrial base. Yet that will be the consequence if the continuing failure to dismantle apartheid and peacefully negotiate a political settlement is allowed to run in parallel with an external policy of conflict and destruction, involving the whole sub-continent. Apartheid South Africa poses a wide threat well beyond its borders. That is the message which has not been fully understood by people in this country. I think that this report should be circulated to every school in the country. Everybody who can read should be encouraged to read this document.

I have experience in black Africa, very close to South Africa. I have not yet crossed over the borders, but I feel, like the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, that I am entitled to express a view, because many of the countries with which I am familiar have close relationships with South Africa and I have spent many hours with people who have lived there. All the injustices that take place in South Africa, the deprivations, are very calmly stated in this book and yet the British Government have put themselves in a difficult position.

I cannot criticise, and yet I cannot congratulate, the Foreign Secretary. I cannot see how he could have done otherwise. I have heard the view expressed twice today: why did we send such a popular and able politician and statesman to be met with such a rebuff? But how could we have sent anybody else? If anybody else had gone, we would have asked: Why did we send somebody without the necessary weight? We sent the best man we possibly could. The press have been very unjust. A lot of popular newspapers gave a cheap description of his venture and of the reception he had there.

I suppose that almost everybody who has to deal with this problem has read this document. I am quite sure that the Foreign Secretary has read it. He must have known that his mission was virtually hopeless. As we said from these Benches during our debate, and it was echoed by my noble friend Lord Walston in a letter to The Times, the situation now in South Africa seems to have reached an absolute impasse between the two implacable interfaces. I am sure that the Prime Minister feels that. It will be interesting to know from the noble Baroness whether there has been any change of view since we had our debate. It was our view, and the view of my noble friend Lord Walston, that the situation is beyond recall and that we are bound to have a very violent conflict in South Africa. When it gets beyond a certain line other countries will be brought in and we shall be placed in a difficult position. Sanctions will not work—I would not disagree with that. The mechanics of sanctions will not work. South Africa has tanks of oil which by present calculations will last 10 to 12 years. They will be able to fuel everything except the blacks' motor-cars. They have been working on the possibility of economic sanctions certainly seriously for five years. They have worked out that they can pay for what they need in gold which will cause havoc on the markets and exchanges of New York.

Where further can we go? If sanctions will not work, and if people do not approve of sanctions, what else can we do? Argument does not work; persuasion does not work; where are we left? Are we just to turn our backs and say. "They must sort out their own problems? We are", as the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said, "8,000 miles away. It is difficult for us to know what goes on in a country". We know perfectly well what goes on in a country. We know that a country with a majority of black people has suffered repression, eloquently described by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, on this and many occasions.

To those on these Benches the situation is intolerable. It is intolerable because the principle of depriving one section of the human race of normal human rights because of its colour is abhorrent to us. It is also unacceptable to us because if we do not do anything about it, the problem will escalate. It will draw us into all kinds of other problems. I am perfectly sure that the right honourable lady the Prime Minister has the very best motives and I am quite sure that she spends sleepless nights over this problem. But where are we to make our impact? Where are we to make up for the lost opportunities—and there have been lost opportunities?

In black Africa since independence our record has been poor, as I have said before in our debate on this subject and in other debates. Our record has been poor. Surely we must now make an additional effort apart from pressure on South Africa, whatever that pressure may be—and I am not going to advocate sanctions here tonight or argue about sanctions. What are we going to do about black Africa in general? What are we going to do about people who in the year 2000 will amount to about 13 per cent. of the world's population—13 per cent. of the world's population who are becoming more and more educated, more and more motivated, and more and more dissatisfied?

How arc we going to cope with this problem? It is this which concerns us on these Benches. It is this which would concern the public at large in this country if they knew exactly the dangers. It has to be tackled. I cannot disagree absolutely with anybody who has spoken so far in this debate. But this is so urgent that we shall need to know—and I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to tell us—what is in the mind of the Government, although I understand that a Statement is due in your Lordships' House at some time in the near future. Can she give some indication of what we can now do. having come back from South Africa and having had further evidence of their intransigence? Not only our future, but the future of the world depends on solving this problem and on showing black South Africa that we care and that we are prepared to do something about it. If it is not sanctions. what else? I think that this is the most important matter that we have to decide in this country.

11.19 p.m.

Baroness Elles

My Lords, having had a major debate, an excellent debate, in this House on 4th July, I think the noble Lord. Lord Hatch, was singularly lucky in choosing this date today since it is the day that not the Foreign Secretary but the President in office of the Council of the European Community returned from his visit to southern Africa. It should perhaps be borne in mind that Sir Geoffrey Howe undertook as President of the Council to go on behalf of the European Community member states to see what further negotiations could be reached with all those involved so as to find a peaceful way forward in South Africa in order to end apartheid. As was said by my noble friend Lord Ferrers, we on these Benches certainly welcome back Sir Geoffrey Howe, having made a most courageous visit and having withstood insults from the beginning almost to the end of his visit. He remained ever courteous and calm. I am sure tha our message should go from this House to Sir Geoffrey.

One or two points should be made, because on Sir Geoffrey's return he made a statement that has been published in the paper only today. It is interesting that Sir Geoffrey came to the same conclusion as the EPG in one particular respect. He emphasised that there had to be a matching commitment from the ANC to call a halt to violence and to begin peaceful negotiations. That is precisely what Nelson Mandela is reported to have said on page 112—and we all seem to have done our homework today. There, Nelson Mandela confirmed his desire to see violence end and peaceful conditions prevail, so that fruitful discussions could be held between black leaders and the Government. Those are both very laudable sentiments, but what are the realities?

Can we really imagine that anyone, even Sir Geoffrey Howe, could go to see President Botha, and. on asking him to release somebody from prison, would receive the answer. "Yes, of course I will. Here are the keys". It is unimaginable. We must at least wait until 12th August, when President Botha has his party conference, to see what reaction is forthcoming there. It is well known, as President Botha himself has stated, that the president wishes to release Nelson Mandela on conditions of renunciation of violence. Surely that in itself is not an unreasonable wish.

In the EPG's report, Mrs. Helen Suzman, who of all people is renowned for her fight against apartheid for more than 20 years, states that her own efforts and those of her party, which received 250,000 votes at the last election in South Africa, were practically ignored. She herself recognises the enormous changes that have taken place in South Africa. They include the scrapping of influx control and of forced resettlements. Even the odious pass laws have been abrogated. Altogether, about 34 different laws have been repealed. Yet nobody seems to give credit to the South African Government for having achieved that. Of course it is not enough, but it should be acknowledged that much has been done over the past two years in an effort to improve the situation.

I am not sure why the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, referred to "even Chief Buthelezi". After all, he does have more than 1 million members in his party, Inkatha, and he is chief of more than 6 million blacks in South Africa. I should have thought that that would be sufficient to honour his title, considering that the ANC has only 9.000 members. The difference in size is surely quite considerable. In any event. Mrs. Suzman and Chief Buthelezi both deplore the prospect of sanctions, and both deplore the idea of disinvestment. Neither wants to see the economy of South Africa destroyed.

Chief Buthelzi attended at my invitation the European Parliament and told members there. "Half our population is under the age of 15. It is no use to us having an economy that is destroyed if we take over or share power as we hope to do in the near future. That would be no good for our citizens. We do not want to become another state similar to those neighbouring us, where they still queue for soap after five years of independence".

We must therefore examine what may be done. As the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, said, much can be done in looking for positive measures. The EC is giving 10 million ecus, which is about £6 million, to the victims of apartheid. That may be peanuts, but how is it being done? Through trusts run by the Churches. I understand, for instance, that Chief Buthelzi and Inkatha are not receiving any money from those funds. I should like to see massive investment into black Africa, perhaps through an urban foundation to set up businesses. That is what is needed far more, if we genuinely mean to help the black people of South Africa.

Let us consider quickly those who are pressing for sanctions. What countries make up the world community pressing for sanctions? The front line states, which would be the last to observe sanctions because of their geographical position, are indeed those into whose coffers money from our country and from multilateral aid flows. At the same time, thousands of their black citizens are escaping from those countries—from violence, poverty and famine—in order to go to that very country which their governments are condemning; that is, South Africa. We know that thousands are doing that—they are known to be from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and so on—in order to survive.

Has not the sanctions story lost all credibility when Colonel Mengistu, at the last OAU meeting, demanded sanctions urgently? That one country has massacred thousands of people on purely racist grounds—the Tigré and the Wollo tribes. People have been dying of starvation yet that country has received 3 billion dollars in aid over the past few years. How can anyone support that demand when such people are making that demand?

Finally, I refer to the ANC—the people who are perpetrating the most vile and odious torture and murder on the streets of South Africa. I regret to say that, on the very carefully worded amendment in the European Parliament just to condemn those acts of violence by the ANC, and particularly the necklace method of assassination, the British Labour Group fell in full honour and glory and refused to support even that amendment. If the Labour Party supports violence, I do not believe that all Members of your Lordships' House who are members of that party do support that violence in their turn; but I should like to hear it contradicted so that we can be reassured that it is not the stand of all members of the Labour Party.

Is there a way forward? I believe that the Prime Minister's stand is the right one. She has had the courage to say no to sanctions but she does not say no to other methods and other steps. Could it not be suggested to our Commonwealth friends, to those who want sanctions, that they say to their comrades in the ANC, "Why do you not stop violence in order that Nelson Mandela can be released? The key we all look for is his release." I put this to my noble friend the Minister to suggest at the weekend to the Commonwealth that they say no to violence by the ANC and then we might reach a situation where negotiations can go forward in South Africa in peace. There will never be negotiations while we have the war, violence and chaos that exist today.

11.27 p.m.

Lord Caradon

My Lords, I should like first to say a few words, with due restraint, to my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont. We worked together in the United Nations. I wish he had spent a little longer in the United Nations and perhaps not so long in South Africa. He put forward tonight a view that I do not think for one moment can be accepted. He said that we must not do anything further in regard to measures or sanctions; that nothing will work because of the intransigence of the South African Government.

But the intransigence of the South African Government was shown yesterday with the insulting reply which was made by that government to our representative. I ask the noble Lord to think again what steps can be taken to make the South African Government realise that they must be prepared to answer the practically universal request for them to allow the black majority of their country to participate fully in their government. I hope that the noble Lord will give his mind further to the matter and that when he has done so he will realise that it is essential at this stage that there should be an international unequivocal demand that the situation of white domination in South Africa should be ended. If they are prepared to say that, the whole situation for the future will be changed.

Lord Chalfont

My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, I want briefly to say that if the noble Lord will read Hansard tomorrow, I think he will find that perhaps he may somewhat have misinterpreted my remarks. I did not say that I do not think that any measures should be taken in the case of South Africa; I suggested that there were certain positive measures. I did not even say that we should not apply sanctions; I said that if sanctions are applied, let us be in no doubt but that they will not work. That is all I said.

Lord Caradon

My Lords, I am glad that I have had some effect on the thinking of my noble friend, who. in effect, in the comment that he has just made agreed that measures, even sanctions, may be necessary to bring about the right result.

I myself declare an interest—if I may be vain enough to declare an interest in such a vast matter. When I was 21 years of age I went to work in certain countries which were emerging from domination by other countries and were beginning to govern themselves. I have worked in Arabia, in Africa and in many other territories. I have worked in Jamaica and in Cyprus, both of which withdrew from the Commonwealth Games, I noticed. Over a period of 20 to 30 years I sought to work in full understanding with the peoples of those countries, and I agreed with them that they should run their own affairs and exercise self-determination. In the end, I saw throughout the wide empire an advance to the goals which had been set. I know the peoples of Africa. I know the peoples of the other countries in which I have served, and I have a great regard and respect for them. The fact that they feel so intensely on this racial issue does not surprise me. So far as they are concerned, it is the biggest issue of all.

It is not only a question of South Africa but it is now a question of the possible break-up of the Commonwealth and the dissolution of this great enterprise. In passing, perhaps I may just say that I resent hearing in this House unpleasant criticism of the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, who, in my own knowledge and experience, has performed a magnificent task. We are now faced with a division of the world on the basis of race, with the Commonwealth (and other countries too) swinging into opposition to the rest of the world on this racial issue, and, I hate to say, with our own country on the wrong side.

I believe that tonight, in this less than full House and at this late hour, we have before us an issue which is as important as anything in the world. It is the issue of whether the peoples of the world are encouraged to participate in the running of their own affairs and are not racially disregarded and treated with contempt. Therefore I believe that this is a matter of the greatest importance. The fact that in this Parliament there are some who would not take any action or advocate any action in respect of Namibia—it has been under mandate to South Africa which was granted by our country to South Africa years ago and has been left without any action being taken—is an example of the kind of action by our Government which has excited the animosity of the great majority of people in the world.

What we are discussing is of tremendous consequence and importance for the future. It is of course wider than that. We have seen lately an attempt to disrupt the United Nations—not to turn to the Security Council, which is meant to deal with such matters, but an endeavour by the United States by veto, by denying the necessary funds and by opposition to UNESCO and the law of the sea. We are seeing an attempt to destroy the international authority. This is part of that bigger problem.

Surely we in this country must justify what we have been saying to the people of Africa and elsewhere to my knowledge for so long. People should have the right to run their own affairs and the United Nations has a vital role to play. We have no time to go into every aspect of the issue tonight, but what we are talking about is the danger and the dreadful damage which will be done if we allow this to pass with a few polite remarks, hoping that matters will improve. We have to take strong, vigorous and decisive action at this time in order to achieve a purpose which will save the world from a bloody division.

11.36 p.m.

Lord Monson

My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, in particular, on his speech. Although he has never been to South Africa, he understands human nature far better than do the opponents of the Government; and human nature is much the same the world over.

So often when one is speaking at the end of a long debate late at night one finds that everything that one wanted to say has been said. But where South Africa is concerned that principle rarely seems to apply

I think it right to do the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, the courtesy of starting by discussing the Eminent Persons Group report specifically rather than South Africa in general. But before getting down to the report itself, it may be wise to correct a common misapprehension. Too many commentators both in this House and elsewhere, in trying to disarm Conservative or right-of-centre criticism of the report, have described the group's leader, Mr. Malcolm Fraser, as a Conservative. That is incorrect: he is a Liberal. Nor is it true that the Australian Liberal Party is the precise equivalent of the British Conservative Party.

Baroness Seear

Neither is it the equivalent of the British Liberal Party, my Lords.

Lord Monson

Indeed, my Lords; I do not dissent from that judgment for a moment.

Moreover, I suspect that Mr. Fraser is a Gladstonian Liberal, at least so far as foreign affairs are concerned, with all that such a description implies. While on the subject of Mr. Fraser, I was shocked to hear him describe on the "World at One" today President's Botha's insistence on the maintenance of group rights as unacceptable. I ask: unacceptable to whom? What business is it of outsiders effectively to order minority groups of other countries to put their survival at risk? In particular, how can they justify trying to impose one law for South Africa in respect of group rights and quite different laws for the Indian sub-continent. Sri Lanka, Quebec, Spain, Ulster, Cyprus, Lebanon and what, 40 years ago, was called Palestine?

To return to the report: one great weakness of the document is that no comparison is made with the rest of the African continent. Three and a half months ago I met a highly experienced and widely travelled black West African journalist, who approximately five years ago had undertaken a comprehensive tour of South Africa which lasted several weeks. Unlike the Eminent Persons Group, he had frequently alternated nights spent in four- or five-star hotels with nights spent in black townships. His conclusion, much to his surprise and contrary to his initial preconceptions, was that whereas South Africa undoubtedly compared badly with Western Europe and North America in terms of freedom and prosperity for the majority of its people, it really compared pretty well with the rest of Africa, in respect of which he went on to give many examples of corruption, police and army brutality, poverty and so on.

Having said this, there are, of course, a great many shrewd and sensible observations in the report, but apart from the basic defect I have mentioned, it is by no means free of error. I hope that if the suggestion of the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, is adopted, the booklet is revised before it is issued to schools. For example, it makes the customary, knee-jerk, left-of-centre condemnation of the self-governing states or homelands, as they are otherwise known—without having bothered to visit them—accusing the states of not being genuinely self-governing, an allegation that could easily be refuted if time permitted. I might only say that when Bophuthatswana became independent, the chief justice, an admirable individual, set to work repealing over 420 apartheid laws and other discriminatory laws. Only today the Guardian reported a strong attack by President Lucas Mangope on apartheid, by no means the first time that he has done such a thing, together with an attack upon the state of emergency coupled with complaints that Bophuthatswana television was being jammed by the South African authorities.

It is true that the South African authorities occasionally jam Bophuthatswana TV. Nonetheless, it has to be said that the Bophuthatswana press, television and radio are as free to criticise the Government of South Africa as the Finnish press, radio and television are at liberty to criticise the Government of the Soviet Union.

The report alleges on page 31 that blacks are paid much less than whites for doing the same jobs. This is simply not so. It certainly was true in the bad old days over 20 years ago when I first went to South Africa, certainly in the public sector: the private sector has always behaved much better. But it is no longer true today, thank heavens. Pay parity for all races has now been achieved in the medical and teaching professions, for example. I would not deny that it should have been done a great many years ago. But surely better late than never!

One particularly dangerous error, of far more than academic significance, is the assumption that white living standards, generally, are exceptionally high by the standards of Western Europe, North America and Australasia. This assumption, too, is simply not correct. Of course, there are very wealthy areas in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg and on the Cape peninsula—just as there are wealthy homes in Belgravia, Sunningdale, the upper east side of Manhattan and the seiziéme arrondissement. But, by way of contrast, many whites live in tiny bungalows of the sort one might see in Clacton. Fifty-five per cent. of whites earn less than £6,000 a year before tax: I am using the pre-crisis exchange rate which is more realistic than the present artifically depressed exchange rate. Ninety per cent. of whites earn less than £10,000 a year before tax—hardly a fortune, I would have thought.

That is why talk of cutting off all inter-continental air services to South Africa is so stupid, as well as being immoral and indeed aggressive, in my view. The sort of people to be hit by such a move would be the English-speaking population and the Jewish community, most of whom are liberal in politics anyhow. Most Afrikaners and other nationalist supporters and supporters of parties to the right of the National Party, who largely comprise those earning less than £6,000 a year pre-tax, simply cannot afford to travel abroad even if they wanted to, certainly not to Europe or to North America.

How, then, do we try to influence people in this group—the less affluent group of the white community but also, paradoxically, those with most to lose because they have the least skills? They do not speak foreign languages at all well—present-day Dutch bears very little relationship to Afrikaans—and they have nowhere else to go. The trouble is that most of the white population, not only the Afrikaners, now suspect that the Western world does not give a damn whether they survive or perish as a community in the medium to long term.

They suspect that the West is more concerned with striking moral postures, with currying favour with various third world countries—few of whom have clean hands themselves—and of using South Africa as a convenient scapegoat for diverting the world's attention from their own sins of omission and commission in the racial sphere. This last point applies particularly to the United States, where it has just been revealed that blacks on average own only one-twelfth in value of the personal possessions that whites do.

It would be nice if my suspicions were unfounded, but I fear they may be all too accurate, bearing in mind the almost total lack of Western concern when minorities in their millions were pushed out of other parts of Africa, and bearing in mind the relative lack of concern that 750,000 Africans have been murdered in Uganda (as the Ugandan President revealed yesterday) over the last 20 years, or about the many fewer killings in Sri Lanka which nevertheless are much more numerous than those which have taken place in South Africa over the last two years both proportionately and absolutely. (It is not that I blame the Government in Sri Lanka, who have inherited a terrible problem, just as the South African Government have done.)

If I am wrong in my assumption that the West does not care about the future of minorities in South Africa, I think it is vital that those of positions of influence and authority in the Western world start trying to convince the Europeans and Asians in South Africa of the sincerity of their concern for their long-term wellbeing, beginning with an assurance that they are not demanding the creation of a one man, one vote of equal value unitary state in which the black population explosion would very soon swamp the minorities. That is the only way that friendly persuasion has any chance of working.

In the absence of friendly persuasion we are left with bullying, otherwise known as the imposition of sanctions. Apart from the fact that it would be hypocritical and contemptible to impose punitive sanctions upon one tyranny and not upon other far worse tyrannies—whether Communist, Fascist or Islamic fundamentalist—I think it is well documented that most educated, numerate, long-standing opponents of apartheid are convinced that sanctions would be wholly counterproductive. I have to say that I would rate the collective judgment and economic realism of Mrs. Helen Suzman, Mr. Colin Eglin, Mr. Gavin Relly and Chief Buthelezi above the collective judgment and economic realism of Bishop Tutu, Mr. Oliver Tambo, Mrs. Winnie Mandela, and Mr. Neil Kinnock in this matter.

Sanctions, if they were effective, would drive out those whites and possibly a number of Asian and coloureds with internationally marketable skills, skills which South Africa badly needs if poverty and misery are not to escalate as a result of the economic slump, disinvestment and the population explosion. They would cause increasing unemployment and suffering among those blacks who are not funded from abroad and are therefore immune, and among other races also, thereby almost certainly precipitating hatreds which, happily, scarcely exist at the moment in contrast to most other countries beset by intercommunal rivalries.

Sanctions would kick from the ladder the rapidly increasing black middle class which is one of the most hopeful recent developments in South Africa. They would also tend to strangle at birth friendships increasingly being made across the ethnic divide, especially among women; women have perhaps more things in common which transcend ethnic and cultural barriers. After all, when people are desperate, civilities tend to fly out of the window.

The Foreign Secretary, through no fault of his own, was sent four or five weeks too early on his mission. No Head of State anywhere in the world can afford to be seen taking orders from abroad. Until after the National Party Congress due to start in two weeks' time it is too early to come to any firm conclusions. For heaven's sake, let us wait and see the results—which may be quite significant—coming out of this congress before any kind of decision is made.

11.50 p.m.

Baroness Seear

My Lords, anyone listening to this debate would think that the House was deeply divided on the issue of South Africa. I do not believe that that is so. I believe that everybody in your Lordships' House wants to see an end to apartheid. It is perhaps a pity that we have not focused on that aspect of the problem and talked less about the rights or wrongs of people who are arguing in favour of sanctions without defining what we really mean by sanctions.

It is perhaps unfortunate that we are having this debate tonight, as I assume that we shall be getting a statement from the Secretary of State, Sir Geoffrey Howe, who has returned from what must have been a most challenging and gruelling expedition. Indeed, I think that we must thank him for what he was prepared to undertake in the face of the most appalling difficulties. Whether or not he should have gone is another matter, but that he did his utmost while he was there is surely clear.

We are discussing today the report of the Eminent Persons Group. I remind your Lordships that the Eminent Persons Group went to South Africa as a result of the Nassau Conference in which it was said that there were certainly conditions which needed to be fulfilled if the Commonwealth as a whole was not to take further action against South Africa. The Eminent Persons Group went to South Africa. They had a list of matters that they were requesting. Those matters had all been seen and presumably agreed by this Government before they went. They went over with a reasonable list and they came back saying that they had been totally unsuccessful in carrying out the mission with which they had been entrusted at Nassau by the Commonwealth and Her Majesty's Government.

The issue upon which they focused, and which seems to me to be the centre of the argument and which makes it so incredibly difficult to see how we are to make progress, is that the crux of the matter is not the improvements which have been made—the Eminent Persons Group admit freely that there have been changes for the better and that some of the most hideous aspects of apartheid have been removed—but the question of whether there shall be a transfer of power based on democratic rights. How can any country of the West which stands for democratic values deny the importance of democratic values being extended to South Africa?

I know it was said in the debate that we had four weeks ago—and it will be said again and again—that African countries which have had their freedom and their ability to establish their own governments have not been models of the democratic process. That is perfectly true. But the fact remains—and the Eminent Persons Group underlined this—that the heart of the matter is: where will political power be? On that matter, the South African Government are absolutely adamant. It is very difficult to see how there can be compromise on that.

There have been speakers tonight who have asked how President Botha can negotiate unless Mandela and the African National Congress'agree to renounce violence. Suspend violence, yes. Ask people who do not have a right to vote, who do not have access to the democratic methods of bringing about political change. That is the heart of the matter. People who do not have access to ways of bringing about peaceful change cannot realistically be asked to renounce violence indefinitely, come what may. Suspend violence during negotiations, yes. However, if, as a result of any negotiations, there is no move towards other means—democratic, peaceful means—to bring about change, then nowhere in the world would people agree indefinitely to renounce violence. There is a very great difference there.

The problem is—and it is a pity that we have not been discussing it tonight—that we all want to bring about change; but how are we to do it? There has been a great deal of negative talk tonight, and it has been said that sanctions will not bring about change. However, I have not heard a single speaker say how it is to be done. The Government have said, "Let's try negotiations". It was stretching matters a bit after the Nassau understanding to say that we would leave it for six months and then take stronger action or stronger measures. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, did not define for us the difference between measures and sanctions, but I am happy to settle for measures if they will bring about the result that we want.

We asked four weeks ago—and we asked from these Benches—that given what we had said at Nassau, given the report of the Eminent Persons Group, what were we waiting for? The Prime Minister said, "Let us have another go at negotiation". She sent Sir Geoffrey Howe, and he had another go at negotiation. Where have we got to? So far as we know absolutely nowhere.

Negotiation has been tried again and again. Listening to some of the speeches tonight you would think that nothing had been done up until now; that there had been no attempt to persuade the South African Government to change. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, and to all those who have said, "What business is it of ours to interfere in what goes on in a foreign country?" that that is what we said when Hitler was beginning to murder the Jews.

Surely we have established that there is a degree of abuse of human rights which transcends the rights of sovereignty, and that if that abuse reaches a certain level, we challenge the right of a sovereign power to go on abusing rights to that extent.

Lord Monson

My Lords, surely the noble Baroness would not claim that what is happening in South Africa is worse than what is happening in Afghanistan? Surely the Afghan situation is a hundred times worse than anything happening in South Africa.

Baroness Seear

My Lords, I do not like either of them. I certainly would not say it is a hundred times worse. It is bad. I hate it. They both are bad. But the racial element in the South African issue is of transcendent importance in my view.

We have tried negotiation. Are we going to say that we go on trying negotiation if again and again the door is slammed in our face? What do we do? We can of course do nothing. We can say that we have tried negotiation, it has not worked, and we will pull down the blinds and pretend that nothing is happening in South Africa. It will not go away if we do that.

What will it mean if we say that we now do nothing? We shall be—and I tried to say this four weeks ago, and I feel it even more strongly now—letting down those moderate leaders in Africa who passionately want a settlement without violence, who want the bloodshed to stop. But we all know that behind those leaders, those moderate, patient men, are violent people.

If the moderate leaders fail to deliver, if the people who want violent measures can say to them, "Look, you waited for the West and the West never came. You relied on the democracies and the democracies let you down", then those men will be swept aside and the men of violence will take their place. Then, indeed, we will have such a bloodbath in Africa that we shall be ashamed that we took no part whatsoever in stopping that happening. If we stand aside and do' nothing, we shall have let those people down. What else will it do? It will mean if there is a resort to violence—and there will be—that Africa as an economy will be hopelessly weakened for decades, and Africa as an economy matters to our economy. We want to save it.

I have not recently been to Africa. My family were Rhodesian for quite a long time, and I must say I was stunned to find that I had a relation by marriage who was the only woman officer in Ian Smith's army. I went to South Africa and to Lesotho, and I have seen it, but I would not claim any great knowledge. But if we stand aside and leave it to violence, let the country decay—that rich country; and potentially it is an enormously rich country, a country that could be a great trading partner that could mean a great deal to us—what will its economic future be? A pretty poor one.

But there is more to it than that. At the moment, whether we like it or not—and it may be very unfair—we have put ourselves on the wrong side in the eyes of the Commonwealth. The eyes of the Commonwealth may be seeing things distortedly, but unquestionably that is how they are seeing it. I would echo what the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, said—that the Commonwealth is an instrument of great importance in a very divided world. It is a great multinational multiracial force. It is a remarkable achievement. What other world empire was ever succeeded by anything like the Commonwealth? Do we want to throw that away? We surely do not and we must act in such a way that the power of the Commonwealth can be sustained. Therefore we must show what is in fact true: that we are against racism, that we are against apartheid and that we are prepared to show this in deeds as well as words.

I am with the people who say, "Let us be positive as well as negative". I believe we must take measures. It is no use negotiating if they know at the end that they will say, "No" and that nothing whatsoever will happen. We must have power to show them that we mean business, but we also have two hands and at the same time can we not do much more to strengthen that economy? I do not believe for one moment in disinvestment, but I beg the Government and the European Community to look again at what they can do in some kind of Marshall plan, particularly to start with training and education for blacks who sooner or later will be filling the important positions in industry and in politics. They are still woefully behind in the skills and experience that they need.

Let us now, while the Commonwealth leaders are here, show them that we really do mean business, helping in their own institutions through the multinational companies that are there who are in a position to take a lead. Many of the best of them have been taking a lead in developing those skills. Through the use of our own educational and training institutions in the United Kingdom and in the rest of the European economy let us go with both hands with the determination to use measures but also with the determination to help Africa to reach a position in which it will be possible for a genuine multiracial community in Africa to build the strong economy which the South Africans are capable of doing.

12.2 a.m.

Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos

My Lords, we are grateful to my noble friend for affording us this opportunity to look again at events in South Africa. This is particularly opportune against the background of Sir Geoffrey Howe's return from his impossible mission. I do not criticise Sir Geoffrey personally. I admired his coolness in the most difficult and at times provocative circumstances. In my view, his own personal reputation has not been diminished one whit by the thankless task he was asked to perform.

Nevertheless, because of the British Government's position, particularly because of the Prime Minister's obdurate stance, he should never have embarked alone as the Community's representative. I think that the Dutch or French Foreign Minister or both should have gone. It would at least have spared the Foreign Secretary the humiliation of a public lecture by another head of state.

It must also be said that the Prime Minister's public utterances during the Foreign Secretary's mission were less than helpful to him. In view of the late hour and the fact that the background has been fully covered in this House in two recent debates on 30th April and 4th July, I shall be brief and try to concentrate on the immediate problems.

First, although we wished him well we feared that the Foreign Secretary was unlikely to succeed in his mission: that is to secure the unconditional release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners; to lift the ban on the African National Congress; the Pan African congress of Azania and other political parties and generally to try to get a dialogue started between the African leaders and the South African Government.

At an early stage in Sir Geoffrey's mission there appeared to be some faint hope that Mr. Mandela might be released, but this was soon rudely destroyed. It is now clear that the Foreign Secretary's meeting with the South African President was one of the least productive international negotiations of recent years. The President's prejudices and fears clearly made a constructive exchange of views between Sir Geoffrey and himself quite impossible. President Botha said: Let there be no question about it. I can never commit suicide by accepting threats and prescriptions from outside forces and hand South Africa over to Communist forces in disguise". He bluntly rejected the unconditional release of Nelson Mandela and warned that he would wage economic warfare against all the front-line states if sanctions are imposed. Furthermore, he made plain that he would in no circumstances consider a move towards universal suffrage.

The Foreign Secretary himself dealt with these points in a comment that he made after the meeting with President Botha when he said: The blunt truth is that sooner or later all the people of South Africa will have to get around the negotiating table. It is plain common sense that it should be sooner". It was a realistic response, and I agree entirely with Sir Geoffrey Howe in what he said. The prediction in the report of the Eminent Persons Group, now even more important than before, I think, has been confirmed. They said that the South African Government are, not yet prepared to negotiate fundamental change". They went on to say: there is no genuine intention to dismantle apartheid". And President Botha has made that very plain during the last few days.

The question is: what next? Where do we go from here? I fear that there is no broad highway. The Prime Minister's policy of persuasion is as dead as a dodo as, indeed, is President Reagan's idea of constructive engagement. President Botha and his party are not going to move, and the West must now consider the effective measures recommended by the Eminent Persons Group.

The Times today reports that the Reagan administration was clearly stunned by the virulence of President Botha's attack. and that the White House will bow to the immense Congressional pressure to impose tough sanctions.

The Commonwealth Meeting, which is to be held here in a few days' time, must concentrate the minds of the Prime Minister and her colleagues on the steps that Her Majesty's Government are now prepared to contemplate. Attempts at further delay would, in my view, be disastrous and would drive people to the conclusion that Her Majesty's Government support white rule in South Africa at any cost. That would be sad—and it would also be wrong—as I do not believe that that is the view of the noble Baroness who is to reply to this debate and it is not true of the great majority of her colleagues, either.

Sir Geoffrey Howe's account of his visit will be considered by the Cabinet in a few hours' time. I hope that they will now accept the reality of the position. The reality is described objectively by the Eminent Persons Group and so many other responsible observers. The Cabinet will have to decide whether to join our friends and allies in imposing effective sanctions. We have been told many times that this will hurt the black population, that it will hurt neighbouring black states, and that eventually it will hurt us in this country. The black leaders, as we know, urge that sanctions be imposed, on the grounds that they prefer to be hurt now than to endure their present conditions for ever. Chief Buthelezi, it is true, is an exception, but all the others take this view. It is an inescapable conclusion that sanctions now are infinitely preferable to, the appalling chaos, bloodshed and destruction predicted by the Eminent Persons Group in their report.

Whatever his denomination may be—and he is certainly on the Right of the political spectrum—Mr. Malcolm Fraser summed up the position ably in his article in last Sunday's Observer when he said this—and I think it is worth quoting: The unhappy fact is that the West has withheld substantial support for the blacks for so long that there is now no course that can guarantee peaceful change in South Africa. If the West does nothing, as I have indicated, we can be certain that change will be achieved through a very bloody struggle. If the West does offer substantial support through sanctions, there is a reasonable prospect that the level of bloodshed and killing will be very much less. If the West fails to act. the loss for the United Kingdom would extend far beyond its strategic and commercial interests in South Africa. The effectiveness of the Commonwealth would be destroyed by the withdrawal of many members or by moves for the withdrawal of Britain. For the UK. and the US in particular, there would be other consequences. Both countries through recent history have supported and reinforced great liberation movements. The moral integrity of great free world powers is important in the constant battle for ideals. Failure to give unqualified practical support to the cause of racial equality in Africa will destroy that integrity. Then we will all lose. Practical and sensible leaders must understand that on this issue self-interest and morality march hand in hand. That, in my view, was a notable statement.

The Cabinet will realise, and the noble Baroness. Lady Elles, must surely know, that the great majority of our European Community partners—perhaps all of them by now—and the entire Commonwealth, old and new. will want effective action and the United States Congress will most probably pass a Bill authorising heavy sanctions very soon. The question is: can we do less than join them? I do not think that, with honour, we can do less.

Action must therefore be taken now. There is no time to be lost to show the South African Government that Europe and the United States are in earnest; that we want to see a peaceful negotiation and measured evolution towards democratic government in which all races can play a full part. We do not want to see violence; we do not want to see ten years of bloodshed; we do not want to see the experience of Rhodesia rehearsed all over again. We want to see a peaceful South Africa, in which Afrikaner, those of British descent and the great black majority play a full part. That is the only hope for South Africa. There is no other expectation; no other real hope; nothing that will bring peace. The consequences of failure for Europe and for this country could be disastrous. We know what the right way is. It is the only way ahead for South Africa; and that is the way of bringing maximum pressure without military violence on the South African Government so that they at last will recognise the only sensible way ahead.

12.12 a.m.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young)

My Lords, this is the third debate since the end of April that we have had on the subject of South Africa, and I should like to begin by thanking my noble friends, Lord Ferrers and Lady Elles, quite particularly for their remarks in support of my right honourable and learned friend the Prime Minister and my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary. I will see that their remarks are brought to their attention. I should also like to say to the. noble Baroness, Lady Seear, that we are all agreed that we should like to see an end of apartheid. The question is: how to achieve that peacefully?

The report of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group was published on the 12th June. Your Lordships may recall that on the 17th June my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary gave the Government's reaction to the report in another place. He stressed the Government's respect and admiration for the expertise and experience which the Commonwealth was able to offer in setting up the Commonwealth Group of Eminent Persons and for the hard work which the group put into their task, which enabled them to make far more progress than many at the time thought possible.

He pointed out that the Government considered that the objectives which were set for the Commonwealth group's mission remained valid. Finally he said that the Government were considering urgently, in concert with their major economic partners, how best to take the process forward. Before turning to the details of that, I should like to say to both the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, and to the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, that naturally we endorse the importance which they both attach to the Commonwealth. But it is inevitable that opinions will differ among 49 members; and indeed, I think it is good to argue that the strength of the Commonwealth is that within it we can discuss matters quite frankly.

I should like also to say that I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, if I may say so, characteristically thoughtful. I should like to endorse specifically the point he made—that it is not for us to prescribe the future political order in South Africa. The European Community mission that my right honourable and learned friend undertook was aimed at establishing the conditions for dialogue. It did not set out to prescribe a solution.

At last month's European Council meeting at the Hague, we discussed the situation in South Africa in depth with our European partners. The European Council fully recognised the importance of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group in furthering the objective which the Commonwealth, the European Community and everyone in this House shares, which is to promote dialogue in South Africa and to achieve peaceful change.

It was because the European leaders wished to renew the momentum of the work of the Eminent Persons Group that they asked my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary, as President of the Council of Ministers, to undertake a fresh mission on behalf of the 12 European nations. The specific objectives of that mission, as set by the European Council, are in line with those of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group. They are the unconditional release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners and the unbanning of the ANC, the PAC and other political parties, a point to which the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, drew attention. At the same time the European Council agreed that the Community would enter into consultations with the other industrialised countries on further measures which might be needed.

At this point I should like to endorse what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, on the importance of positive measures, and to draw attention—because we do not perhaps say this often enough—to the fact that we now give £22 million in existing aid mainly for transport projects to the front-line states, we have given £2.9 million for educational activities in South Africa and we have made a modest contribution to trade union training. We have also undertaken a new commitment of £15 million over five years. An amount of £12 million will be mainly for education and training for non-white South Africans and £3 million will be for transport projects in the front-line states.

In order to carry out the mandate given to him by the European Council—and I am very glad that my noble friend Lady Elles drew attention to the fact that my right honourable and learned friend was sent by the European Council and not, as the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, suggested, by the Prime Minister—he visited southern Africa in the early part of this month for consultation with President Kaunda of Zambia, Prime Minister Mugabe of Zimbabwe and President Machel of Mozambique. He was able to have full and effective consideration of all the issues with those heads of government.

He returned to southern Africa on 23rd July and has since had lengthy discussions with President P. W. Botha and Foreign Minister Pik Botha in South Africa, with President Kaunda of Zambia, with President Masire of Botswana, with Prime Minister Bhekimpi of Swaziland, and with King Moeshoeshoe and General Lekhanya of Lesotho. He has also had a whole range of meetings with black and white South African business leaders, with Chief Buthelezi—and I noticed again that both the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, and the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, drew attention to the importance of this—and with other influential groups in South Africa.

He flew back to London this morning. The Government will be giving careful consideration to the outcome of his discussions in southern Africa in preparation for the Commonwealth review meeting which begins in London this weekend. I will be making a statement in the House tomorrow afternoon after my right honourable and learned friend has reported to the Cabinet.

Both the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, and the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, said, well, really, the mission was a failure. No, my Lords, we do not see it that way. The Foreign Secretary was given a mandate by the 12 to see whether there was a chance of establishing conditions for peaceful dialogue in South Africa. Given that alternatives to peaceful change are terrible to contemplate—a point that I think everyone who has spoken today made—it was absolutely right that this chance should have been taken.

My right honourable and learned friend was under no illusions about the difficulty of his task. He was well aware of the South African Government's attitude towards the outside world in trying to bring its influence to bear. But he did not see that as a reason for not pressing the Community's case for dialogue and, although the responses received so far do not constitute the progress that we have been looking for, the mandate entrusted to the Foreign Secretary is not yet over.

The noble Baroness, Lady Elles, asked an important question. She asked whether the Commonwealth should not urge the ANC to come out against violence. I can confirm that the Government have always argued that dialogue and negotiations should take place in the context of a suspension of violence on all sides. This was part of the Nassau mandate to the Eminent Persons Group, and it has certainly been a point made by my right honourable and learned friend in the course of his mission.

The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, asked what action the Government propose to take after receiving the report of the Eminent Persons Group. I have gone through the events since the publication of the report of the Eminent Persons Group in some detail, to show that the Government have not been sitting idly by since they received this most important report. They have already proposed and executed a whole range of actions specially designed to help further the key objectives which the Commonwealth Heads of Government laid down at their meeting in Nassau last October, and which the Eminent Persons Group strived so hard to meet. Now we will be discussing the outcome of those actions with our partners in the Commonwealth and the European Community and with certain other countries, with the aim of ensuring that the momentum is maintained.

The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, asked me three specific questions. First, he said that the emphasis of the Eminent Persons Group was on the fact that there was an absence of measures and that this had deferred any change. What we must all recognise is that it is the failure to concert action which would cause bloodshed, and if any kind of measures are to be at all effective they need to be ones taken in concert.

Indeed, we have taken a great many measures. At this late hour I shall not go through the whole list of them, but they are quite considerable. I think it is often forgotten by those who talk about this subject that for some time we have had the Gleneagles agreement, the United Nations arms embargo and the Luxembourg package of 25th September 1985. which included a whole group of measures plus those agreed at Nassau.

The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, asked whether it was not true that there had been intelligence co-operation between the United States, ourselves and the South African Government. As he will know, we do not comment on intelligence matters, but he and other noble Lords will have seen the comments by senior United States officials.

He finally asked me about the three military attaches in the South African embassy. Yes, my Lords, that is, in fact, true. It is also true that we ourselves have recalled our military attaches accredited to South Africa and we have refused to grant accreditation to further military attaches from South Africa. As for the three here, they, like all the other measures, can be considered at any time at a future date.

The noble Lord, Lord Monson, asked whether or not we were concerned about minorities in South Africa. We want to see proper safeguards for minorities—that is a universal principle—but, as I said in agreeing with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, it is not for us to prescribe solutions to ensure that. Again, that is a universal principle in this case. There is one point that I should like to mention, which was made by the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, who was critical of our policies over Namibia, and maintained that we had done nothing. That is not. in fact, the case. We as a government have worked hard to secure the only agreed independence settlement endorsed by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 as one of the five contact group countries, and we continue to press the South African Government to implement that plan.

Some noble Lords this evening have asked: why keep on saying the same things to the South African Government—they will not listen? This was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn. The fact is that the South African Government have made one important step forward in that they have explicitly recognised that apartheid must end. They now need to find the courage to follow that recognition through to its logical conclusion and to do so quickly before all hope of peaceful change is lost. As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary made clear in Pretoria last week, the South African Government cannot ignore what is happening in South Africa today. To all those outside South Africa the writing is clearly on the wall. The question is no longer whether South Africa will change, but how far and how fast that change will come. Will it come in peace or in deepening violence, and will the end result be a democratic, prosperous and non-racial society, or one torn by racial conflict?

The international community has a responsibility to face up to those questions. If there is a chance that we in the free world can do anything at all to help bring about peace and reconciliation in South Africa, we must seize that chance, even if it means that sometimes our message appears to fall on deaf ears. As my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary has said: At some time some South African Government is going to be persuaded by somebody to take the key steps". However much the South Africans resent the influence that the rest of the world is trying to bring to bear, that is no reason for our not continuing to press them to take the steps which have to be taken. We must keep on driving home the case for dialogue and for peaceful change.

House adjourned at twenty-seven minutes past midnight.