Sitting of 8 November 1956

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS

  SELECTION
  Committee of Selection nominated:
  Sir Herbert Butcher, Sir Roger Conant, Sir Alan Gomme-Duncan, Mr. Glenvil Hall, Sir Norman Hulbert, Mr. Kenyon, Sir Frederick Messer, Mr. Oliver, Mr. Popplewell, Brigadier Prior-Palmer, and Sir Gordon Touche.—[Mr. Bryan.]

  CLYDE NAVIGATION ORDER CONFIRMATION
  Bill to confirm a Provisional Order under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1936, relating to Clyde Navigation, presented by Mr. J. Stuart; and ordered (under Section 7 of the Act) to be considered Tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 8.]
  OBAN BURGH ORDER CONFIRMATION
  Bill to confirm a Provisional Order under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1936, relating to Oban Burgh, presented by Mr. J. Stuart; and ordered (under Section 7 of the Act) to be considered Tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 9.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Gaitskell: May I ask the Lord Privy Seal whether he will announce the business for next week?
The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. R. A. Butler): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
The debate on the Address in reply to the Gracious Speech will be continued on Monday, 12th November, and brought to a conclusion on Tuesday, 13th November.
It would be convenient, Mr. Speaker, if you would be good enough to indicate to the House which Amendment or Amendments you propose to call and the days upon which they will be taken.
WEDNESDAY, 14TH NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Police, Fire and Probation Officers Remuneration Bill; and of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, and Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolutions.
Consideration of Motions to approve the Import Duties (Geneva Agreement) Order; the Silk Duties (No. 2) Order; and the Additional Import Duties (No. 3) Order relating to Kentia Palms.
THURSDAY, 15TH NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Homicide Bill.
FRIDAY, 16TH NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Agriculture (Silo Subsidies) Bill, and Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution.
Committee and remaining stages of the Police, Fire and Probation Officers Remuneration Bill.
Mr. Gaitskell: Can the Lord Privy Seal advise us on the statements which will be made by the Government about the international situation? He will recall that yesterday the Prime Minister said that he was unable to make a statement then, but hoped to be able to do so later. I understand that he will not be able to make a statement immediately this afternoon. May we expect one a little later? Will the Lord Privy Seal bear in mind the desirability of either the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary coming to the House, in this tense international situation, and giving us the latest possible information every day?
Mr. Butler: Nobody can complain about the Prime Minister, or, indeed, the Foreign Secretary, because they have been here every day, and, in fact, have debated the subject every day, except Sunday, and, no doubt, will desire to serve the House to the best of their ability. The Minister of Defence hopes to make a statement immediately, and that will cover his sector of the operations.
I cannot give an absolute undertaking that the Prime Minister will make a statement, because it will depend on whether he has anything to tell the House, but I think it probable that he will make a

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statement later. This being the debate on the Address, he will, of course, be able to intervene in the ordinary way during the course of the debate. I will endeavour to let it be known in the House if he is to make a statement and what time it will be; I will certainly let the Opposition know through the usual channels. That is the position today, and I think that that is the answer to the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Speaker: It might be convenient if I responded now to the request of the Leader of the House about the Amendments to the Address. Of those on the Order Paper, I have selected both Amendments in the name of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition and other right hon. Gentlemen. I understand that the first of these is to be debated today and the second on Monday.

EGYPT (MILITARY SITUATION)
The Minister of Defence (Mr. Antony Head): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a statement to the House.
I can now give a fuller statement concerning the military operations and general situation in Port Said. Before the assault took place photographic reconnaissance had shown that there were dug-in tanks, guns and strong points along the buildings facing the sea front in Port Said.
It was, therefore, decided that, 24 hours before the assault, an air drop should take place with a view to clearing these strong points and emplacements before the assault went in and this task was carried out so effectively that the need for a preliminary bombardment, which would undoubtedly have caused considerable destruction and civilian casualties, was avoided. The assault itself was carried out most successfully and organised fighting ceased in Port Said during the night following the landings.
Troops were then engaged in dealing with looters, organising public services and administration, and clearing up. Normal life in Port Said will, it is hoped, be resumed in a few days, or sooner if the Egyptian Administration co-operates.
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During the day of the landing there was stubborn street fighting in Port Said, because the enemy had resorted to sniping and several buildings had been turned into strong points which had to be dealt with. A number of Egyptians took part in this fighting dressed in civilian clothes. British troops going down the Canal reached a point just north of Kantara before the cease-fire was ordered. The French are now holding Port Fouad.
Yesterday evening, the Egyptians broke the cease-fire at El Cab when a patrol of between 35 and 50 men advanced north up the Causeway from El Kantara past a company, who refrained from firing and did not disclose themselves. The patrol then approached a troop of tanks. The Egyptians opened fire on them with Brens and rifles. On this, the tanks returned fire in self-defence, killing two Egyptians and wounding one. The patrol made off past the advance company, who still refrained from firing in view of their cease-fire orders. General Keightley has emphasised that our company could have wiped out this patrol, but refrained from doing so.
In Port Said itself, the unloading of stores and administrative units is taking place smoothly, and marine divers and salvage units are clearing the obstructions at the entrance to the Canal.
I still have not final details of casualties but information so far to hand suggests that British casualties for all three Services do not exceed 85, of whom not more than 20 were killed.
I would like to stress two points: first, that there were considerable fixed defences and dug-in tanks among the buildings facing the sea front in Port Said. To have achieved the landing and the capture of the town with such small casualties and with so little infliction of damage to the town and casualties to the civil population is a feat of very considerable military skill which needed the utmost judgment and control by those concerned with the planning and execution of the operation.
Secondly, during all these operations by land, sea and air, our forces have exercised the greatest restraint throughout, and I am sure that the whole House, whatever their political views, would wish me to commend all those concerned in

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this operation for the way in which they have carried out a difficult and in many ways unprecedented task.
Mr. Stokes: May I join with the Minister of Defence in expressing our appreciation of the way the troops, no doubt under extreme provocation—those of us who have been in action know what that means—have carried out their instructions to show restraint? May I also say how glad we all are that the casualties were so light? Of course, there should not have been any, but that is something altogether different. On behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I should like to express our sympathy with the relatives of those who lost their lives.
On the question of the military operations, may we be informed of two things? First, we were told that tanks were dug in and were in action in the original attack on Port Said. Were any tanks in support of our own troops? Secondly, in the, not action, but inaction in which two Egyptians in a patrol were killed, were the original troops in the southern extremity of our position equipped with tanks, or were the tanks found to be a considerable distance in the rear?
Mr. Head: The initial assault, carried out by British commandos and French troops, was supported by tanks as soon as they could be got ashore in L.S.T.s. It is typical of all assaults that infantry must get ashore and make a small bridgehead before L.S.T.s can be brought in to land tanks. So far as this patrol in violation of the cease-fire is concerned, the tanks were immediately behind the leading company and in support of it.
Mr. Ian Harvey: In view of the observation of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes), does not my right hon. Friend agree that, but for the intervention of British troops. Israeli and Egyptian casualties by this time would have been very heavy indeed?
Mr. Wigg: Will the Minister be good enough to tell us what distance was advanced by British forces between the time the Prime Minister made his announcement at six o'clock the night before last and the actual standstill at midnight? Will he explain how it was that the French Ministry of Defence
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announced that French and British troops were in Ismailia, or had they been in Ismailia and withdrawn northwards to El Kantara?
Mr. Head: I do not know the precise distance covered in those six hours. I cannot say on what information the French Ministry of Defence announcement was made. All I have given to the House is the information available to me.
Mr. Stokes: In view of the quite definite Press reports and noises on the wireless, had our forces, in fact, reached Ismailia, or were those reports merely pure fabrication?
Mr. Head: So far as I am aware, with all the information available to me, no British troops have been beyond Kantara.
Mr. M. Lindsay: Is it proposed to recognise outstanding acts of gallantry and leadership in this remarkable and courageous military operation by the usual decorations and awards to the Air Force and Army?
Mr. Head: These matters, as my hon. Friend may know, rest with a special honours and awards committee, but I have no doubt that they will be very carefully considered.
Mr. Healey: Has the Minister any figures of Egyptian civilian and military casualties? Can he confirm that at present allied troops are occupying only one-quarter of the length of the Canal and are, therefore, neither separating the combatants nor in a position to secure the safety of this great international waterway?
Mr. Hirst: Shameful.
Mr. Head: I have no knowledge additional to such facts as have been published in the newspapers about Egyptian casualties. I feel that the presence of British troops in Port Said has not only stopped a great deal of fighting, but has gone a long way to ensure the Canal's freedom.
Mr. Dugdale: The Minister said that he could not say how far the troops had advanced after the cease-fire. Had they advanced at all after the cease-fire? [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Can the Minister confirm or deny reports that he himself paid a visit to Cyprus to make

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quite certain that the troops were in a sufficient state of readiness for the Cabinet to give the order for the advance in Egypt?
Mr. Head: I have never stated at any time that any of our troops advanced after the cease-fire. This particular order was observed absolutely meticulously and I should have thought that the statement I have made would have shown that.
Secondly, my visit to Cyprus was carried out purely with one object in view. That was to have close liaison with General Keightley to ensure that the operation would be carried out in a way which would ensure the minimum not only of casualties to our own troops, but of damage and civilian casualties to the other side.
Mr. P. Williams: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is still some concern about the possibility of getting the Canal open at the earliest possible moment? [Laughter.] Is my right hon. Friend aware that at any rate we on this side of the House do not regard this as a laughing matter? Can my right hon. Friend state what action has so far been taken about the removal of the block ships?
Mr. Head: As I stated earlier, work is proceeding very intensively on block ships at present in Port Said and it has already progressed sufficiently for unloading to take place. It is, I think, of vital interest to all hon. Members and their constituents that subsequent operations should proceed as quickly as possible. We have already made representations with the United Nations, offering to put the resources available to the French Government and ourselves under the United Nations for the rapid clearing of the Canal. That, so far as I know, was not initially accepted by the Egyptian Government.
Mr. Stokes: I appreciate what the right hon. Gentleman says about putting our skill at the disposal of the United Nations, but have the Egyptians said categorically that they will not accept assistance from either the French or the British? Is the Minister able to tell us whether the block ships sank either in the Canal or in the fairway in what I call the Port Said harbour area are hulks or barges, or other vessels filled with concrete?
Mr. Head: As far as we know, the ships sunk in the Port Said harbour do not look like being a major problem of clearance. With regard to those in the Canal, our information at present is entirely reliant on aerial photography, because we have not been there to see. Until a more close reconnaissance of the actual physical problem has been made, it is impossible to say. The reaction of the Egyptian Government is a matter that is at present in the hands of the United Nations. I only hope, for the benefit not only of this country but of all users of the Canal, that an arrangement will rapidly be reached whereby the work can proceed.
Mr. Stokes: I understand the right hon. Gentleman's point about the United Nations coming into it. It is a pity that the Government had not thought of that before. What I want to know is whether the Egyptian Government have said categorically that they will not accept the assistance of skilled men, and whatever it may be, for the purpose of clearing the Canal, whether they be French or British.
Mr. Head: The whole point of this is that the Canal cannot and must not be solely the concern of the Egyptian Government. That is what all this has been about. Further, I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that the blocking of the Canal has been carried out by the Egyptian Government. All that Her Majesty's Government and the United Nations, and, indeed, the free world as a whole, wish to achieve is that this vital waterway should be cleared as quickly as possible.
Mr. Bevan: Why does not the right hon. Gentleman answer the question? It is a very simple one. Have the Egyptian Government refused to permit the technicians of France and Britain to assist in clearing the Canal, and is not it a fact that the United Nations administration has decided that the British and French should not be associated in the operation?
Mr. Head: As far as I am aware, from the discussions of the United Nations, the Egyptian Government did not signify their assent to the clearance of these blocks in the Canal. So far as the United Nations ruling is concerned, I

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know nothing to support the remarks which the right hon. Gentleman has made. It would seem to me that if the United Nations has any purpose in this in solving world problems, one of the major ones is to get the Canal cleared as quickly as possible.
Mr. Gaitskell: In view of the fact that the General Assembly of the United Nations yesterday passed, by a vote of sixty-five to one, a Resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of British and French forces from Egypt, and in view of the fact that the British Government themselves appear to accept that British and French forces will stay only until the United Nations forces arrive, will the Minister give an assurance that the lending of stores will be strictly limited to what is necessary to supply our forces for the shortest possible period?
Mr. Head: On the question of the administration and the security of our forces ashore, nobody can be certain at what time the international force will take over. It would be madness to take steps banking on a very short period. What we are doing, without prejudice to handing over at any time the Government orders, is to ensure that should that period be prolonged we shall not run out administratively and we shall not put ourselves in an insecure position.
Dame Irene Ward: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether he can confirm or deny that the Egyptians are busy repairing the airfields which we put out of action?
Mr. Head: Our reports are that very active work is now taking place at considerable speed to repair the airfields.
Mr. Stokes: In view of what the Minister of Defence has said, not about the length of time but about the time when British troops will leave the Canal or the Port Said area, may I ask him whether he has considered how to obtain the support of the other Arab nations until the British troops are off the Canal bank? It is quite impossible for the other Arab nations to rally to the support of our point of view—or Her Majesty's Government's point of view—[Laughter.] There is nothing to laugh at about this; nothing to laugh at at all. The situation is that if Her Majesty's Government pursue the course which they are now
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pursuing they will drive all the Arab nations into the Russian camp. Has the Minister thought of that? If so, what is the attitude of the Government? What is he going to do about it?
Mr. Head: I am not entirely clear what was the purpose of the right hon. Gentleman's question, but if he was suggesting that our forces should get out before an international force was in control, the answer is "No". On the other hand, if the right hon. Gentleman was suggesting that to make sure that the Arab world should rally to our cause we should leave a complete vacuum without any agreement having been reached in the United Nations, that, in my opinion, would be a course of utter folly.
Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: We seem now to be getting into the realms of the debate which is still to come.

BILLS PRESENTED
  AGRICULTURE (SILO SUBSIDIES)
  Bill to make provision for the payment of subsidies in respect of the construction or improvement of silos, presented by Mr. Heathcoat Amory; read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 5.]
  POLICE, FIRE AND PROBATION OFFICERS REMUNERATION
  Bill to authorise retrospective provision to be made for the remuneration of members of police forces and fire brigades and of probation officers, presented by Major Lloyd-George; supported by Mr. J. Stuart, Mr. H. Brooke, and Mr. Deedes; read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 6.]
  WHITE FISH AND HERRING INDUSTRIES
  Bill to amend the provisions of the White Fish and Herring Industries Act, 1953, relating to grants by the White Fish Authority and the Herring Industry Board towards new vessels and engines and to the white fish subsidy, presented by Mr. Heathcoat Amory; supported by Major Lloyd-George, Mr. J. Stuart, Mr. H. Brooke, Mr. Nugent, and Mr. Henderson Stewart; read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 7.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY
  QUEEN'S SPEECH

    DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS
    [THIRD DAY]
    Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [6th November]:
    That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as follows:
    Most Gracious Sovereign,
    We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.—[Mr. Vane.]
    Question again proposed.
    3.0 p.m.
    Mr. Kenneth Younger: I beg to move, at the end of the Question, to add:
    but humbly regret that, in view of the grave international situation and the division in the Commonwealth resulting from your Majesty's Government's policy of armed intervention in Egypt, the Gracious Speech contains no reference to any proposal by Your Majesty's Government to convene forthwith a conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers so as to bring to bear all the resources of the Commonwealth in support of the authority of the United Nations.
    From the time of the announcement of the ultimatum by Her Majesty's Government and others to the Egyptians on Tuesday, 30th October, until the Prime Minister's belated announcement of his orders for a cease-fire on the following Tuesday, 6th November, which brought the seven days war to an end, our anxieties in this House were inevitably concentrated, I think rightly, on the immediate fighting area and upon the repeated requests which were being made throughout that week by the United Nations to Her Majesty's Government and to the French Government to desist from the operation.
    There is still a great deal that has to be asked and said about what Her Majesty's Government have done and should now do in Egypt. I will return to these matters rather briefly at the end of my remarks. The cease-fire, which all of us must hope will be fully maintained by all parties, has enabled us in the meantime to spend rather more time than we could last week upon considering the
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    wider implications of what has happened in Egypt. In particular, it gives us the opportunity to consider how we can make a start in repairing the dreadful damage which has been done to Britain's position among her friends and Allies and in the wider community of the United Nations.
    It is the purpose of the Amendment, while not excluding in any way any other kind of international action, that we should give the highest priority to attempting to restore some measure of unity within the group of countries with which we should be and normally are most intimate, the Commonwealth, and that we should at least seek to restore a sufficient measure of understanding so as to enable us within the Commonwealth to respect one another's point of view, even if there still remain differences, and thereby to enable the Commonwealth to be once again what it has certainly been in the last ten years, a force for peace and stability within the United Nations.
    Before I speak in more detail of the Commonwealth situation, I should put in perspective this point that I am making. It has long been recognised throughout the Commonwealth that no one centralised foreign policy for the Commonwealth is attainable, and nobody seriously aims at anything so rigid. It is recognised by all of us that we have such widely differing geographical positions, economic requirements, and so on, that these must be reflected in the differing arrangements which the respective countries seek to make with other countries in the world. Since the war, this has been particularly noticeable in the strategic field. It is within the knowledge of every hon. Member that there are a number of military groups and pacts covering in one way or another most of the Commonwealth and that even Britain does not come fully into all of them. There are different members belonging to different groups. There is, of course, also an Asian element in the Commonwealth which has followed a policy of remaining uncommitted militarily and which belongs to none of these military organisations at all.
    I am therefore not calling for any rigid uniformity. With, I think, the single exception of the South African racial policy, which unfortunately seems to be on quite a different plane, there has

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    always been, despite our differences, an underlying understanding between all of us in the Commonwealth about the common aims which we are seeking to pursue in our differing circumstances and following our different paths.
    What has happened to Commonwealth relationships in the last ten days is quite different from the differences to which I have been referring. It is my duty this afternoon to remind the House just how far this rift has gone in this short and catastrophic period. The differences have been put in dramatic form in the proceedings of the United Nations, so perhaps I may refer firstly to that side of the matter.
    Ever since this episode started, there has been a series of resolutions put forward in the Security Council and in the General Assembly of the United Nations, embodying major issues for British foreign policy. What has happened to the Commonwealth in the Assembly throughout this time? In the main, as Her Majesty's Government naturally like to emphasise, we have had the support of the Australian and New Zealand Governments, though it is fair to note that even Australia abstained on one of the Security Council votes where we cast our veto. Moreover, although both those Governments have supported us, it must be common knowledge that the two countries are just as deeply split on this issue as we are in the United Kingdom.
    There have been many reports in the Press about this. I read one report very recently regarding Australia which said that out of eleven leading daily newspapers in Australia only four supported their Government in voting alongside Her Majesty's Government, and in some of the papers today are reports of, demonstrations in Melbourne exactly on the lines which have become familiar in this country. This is the rather cold comfort that Her Majesty's Government can offer to us all in the way of Commonwealth unity behind their policy.
    The fact is that, apart from procedural resolutions, in all these ten days in the United Nations the United Kingdom has never voted together with any of the Asian members of the Commonwealth. We have usually been in opposite lobbies, always excepting the occasion when the United Kingdom abstained and its Asian
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    colleagues were supporting a resolution. Twice these Asian members have been sponsors of very powerful resolutions aimed against the British Government's policy, resolutions which in each case have obtained overwhelming support. In the one case there was a positive vote of 59 and in the other a positive vote of 65.
    This process culminated last night in what has been described as the "Bandoeng Resolution," which demands our immediate withdrawal. That obtained a positive vote of 65 and included the votes of both Canada and the United States of America.
    I would like to make one comment on this deep and continuing divergence with our Asian colleagues. On this side of the House we have noticed throughout our debates an extraordinary tendency on the part of some hon. Members on Government benches to behave as though the disagreement of the Asian members of the Commonwealth were something that just had to be taken for granted. There has even been laughter and sneering at the very mention of the name of India, let alone that of Mr. Nehru. I really cannot imagine that that attitude is shared by Her Majesty's Ministers.
    Mr. Beresford Craddock: I am one of the people who has rather taken that attitude. [HON. MEMBERS: "Shame".] I did so quite honestly. When one thinks of what Mr. Nehru and his Government did at Hyderabad, Kashmir and other parts of India, it is not right that we should pay much attention to him.
    Mr. Younger: I am glad that the hon. Member has seen fit to confirm my view that there are hon. Members opposite to whom this matter, if not of very little importance, is one which they take for granted and on which they do not feel in any way critical of their own Government. That is not the view we on this side take of the matter. What I was about to say when the hon. Member interrupted me was that it may well be—it would be very natural if it were so—that in trying to get agreement among the members of the Commonwealth the most difficult thing often is to obtain agreement between the countries of Asia and the older members of the Commonwealth whose circumstances and experience in recent history

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    has been so very different. It may well be that that is the hardest of the tasks facing Commonwealth statesmen, but it is also infinitely the most worthwhile. In a period when relations between Asia, Africa, Europe and America are all in the melting pot and changing at a tremendous speed, it is the inter-continental nature of our Commonwealth which makes it so great and useful a conception. I believe that if that were to go, Commonwealth influence for peace would be reduced to a shadow.
    So much for what has happened inside the United Nations, but the news coming out of Asia has been equally disquieting. As everyone must know, there have been repeated condemnations in all the Commonwealth countries both from official sources and the whole of the Press of what her Majesty's Government have done. I will not weary the House by going through any long list of those statements. I will pick out one from the Indian Government, an official statement reported in The Times on 1st November, and from that I will pick out only two phrases. That statement referred to the action of Her Majesty's Government as:
    "a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter and opposed to all the principles of the Bandoeng Conference."
    It also said:
    "This aggression is bound to have far reaching consequences in Asia and Africa and may even lead to war on an extended scale."
    One could find fifty such statements from all the Asian Press of the Commonwealth without the slightest difficulty.
    Moreover, it is a well known fact, frequently reported in the Press, that in each of these countries, almost from the first day there has been talk of that particular country leaving the Commonwealth. There has been ample confirmation, too, of the fact that the only thing which so far has held those Governments in check from taking any step of that kind has been their knowledge that there is powerful opposition to the policy of Her Majesty's Government in this country and that the British people should not be identified with the policy of the Government.
    Mr. Julian Ridsdale: Could the right hon. Member say why the Government of India and other Asian Governments have not so thoroughly condemned the Russian action in Hungary?
    Mr. Younger: Apart from the fact that I think they have all done so in some form or another, and, therefore, the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) is wrong on his facts, the question of any inter-connection between the two issues—which, I can assure him, is not advantageous to the Government—is something with which I propose to deal later in my speech.
    As to the remark on which the hon. Member rose, my statement that the only reason why these countries are not yet reaching the point of leaving the Commonwealth is that they are not yet prepared to identify the British public with the policy of the British Government. I should like to add that there is in today's newspapers confirmation of that attitude from no less a person than the Prime Minister of Ceylon, one of the responsible statesmen faced with this issue.
    In Pakistan there were headlines in the weekend Press reading, "Hate Britain Riots Erupt in Pakistan" followed by a report that the Government were mobilising the Moslem members of the Bagdad Pact to organise economic sanctions against us in aid of Egypt. It is only a few weeks since Ministers in this House were telling us that there were two pillars to their policy in the Middle East, the Bagdad Pact and the Tripartite Declaration. They have repudiated the latter and the former has ended in this situation.
    There are also fairly numerous reports from the Federation of Malaya and Singapore of deep fears of anti-British reaction among the Moslem Malays—a group of the population in that area who, above all others, were likely to be favourable to the British connection
    Finally, by no means least, there is Canada. I suppose we have no stauncher friend in the world, a friend of medium and rapidly growing power and influence in the world, whose attitude in international affairs since the war has earned her the deep respect of every continent. I speak with personal feeling, having been at almost every United Nations Assembly for the whole of the first six years of that organisation. I do not believe any country, however great, has made a bigger contribution to the upholding of the. Charter than Canada. Her efforts, in which she never ceases, to reconcile the sometimes conflicting policies of her two greatest Allies—Britain and the United

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    States—have never led her to forget her over-riding obligations to the Charter whether she was trying to exercise restraint on excesses of United States policy in the Far East, or as now, alas, on excesses by the United Kingdom in the Middle East. Never at any stage has she lost sight of the fact that it is the fundamental interest of all of us to build up the authority of the United Nations.
    What is her record? It is true that she abstained once in this week in company with us. That was the only occasion on which we have found ourselves together, for she voted for the so-called Afro-Asian or Nineteen Nation resolution which called upon us, among others, to comply within 12 hours with the provisions of the United States resolution. She voted for it and we opposed it. Last night she voted for the Bandoeng resolution and we abstained.
    What is more humiliating than the votes on those resolutions involving the principle of the matter is that Canada, having taken the trouble and shown the foresight that she did in introducing two resolutions, one at a fairly early stage, proposing a United Nations force, designed expressly as a possible way in which the trouble in Egypt could be stopped whilst allowing Her Majesty's Government some way out, we supported neither—neither the first Canadian resolution nor the second. Both in the United Nations and here in this House we have haggled, we have quibbled about administrative details, and the Prime Minister was still doing that in his statement to the House yesterday.
    All this is fact; it is not opinion, it is on the record for the world to read. This is what has happened to the Commonwealth in the last ten days. I must emphasise that the issues which have been at stake have been no mere question of tactics or methods, they have been the issues of peace and war, of allegiance to or repudiation of the United Nations Charter. It is on that that the differences have arisen. What is to be done to try to put this right? Not just some change of tactics, not just some deft diplomatic trick which might see us through another week or two in Egypt—although, goodness knows, a little deft diplomacy would be welcome. What has shocked and split the Commonwealth is Britain's violation of the Charter.
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    This is the charge which is being made against Her Majesty's Government throughout Asia, in Canada and, incidentally, in the United States too, out of the mouth of President Eisenhower last week. It is also the charge being made in this country, not only from these Labour benches, but by all-party bodies like the United Nations Association—of which I believe the Prime Minister is an honorary president—by the churches and by hundreds of thousands of men and women of all parties and of none.
    In very recent days—in the last three or four days—the new line of the Government has been—I emphasise "the new line"—"We did it all to strengthen the United Nations." "If", they say, "a United Nations force is created, it will be due to us; we will be the people who have raised it." It is rather as though the North Koreans had boasted that they were responsible for the formation of the United Nations command in 1950.
    I can say with complete conviction to hon. Members opposite that however it may sound to them when they get among some of their Tory stalwarts in the constituencies, in the world at large this new line of argument will only increase their already large reputation for hypocrisy. One of these days, as the dust settles and all the details come out—and some are already coming out—of what has been said and done in recent weeks, right back at least to 26th July, by Her Majesty's Government in various capitals and in various conferences, and when that is compared with the statements made day by day over these last ten days in the House, one statement scarcely ever giving just the same reason as was given the day before, I believe that the indictment will be such as no British Prime Minister has had to face in this century. When all these details are available, as they will be, we shall have to have an inquest on them.
    For the moment, I content myself with stating what I think is beyond any doubt—that at this moment nobody in the outside world believes a single word of this argument of the Conservative Party.
    I have talked about the key issue being the violation of the Charter. We have been told by some people in the course of these debates—and we were told it by that really rather disgraceful character, the editor of The Times, in an

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    article some weeks ago—that it is a great mistake to approach any of these problems from the point of view of legality and that to do so is mere pedantry and is to ignore the realities of power and the realities of national interest.
    I am not going to take the House into any legal argument today, but I must challenge that proposition—the proposition that to be interested in the legality or otherwise of our Government's action under the Charter is to be a legal pedant. The steady narrowing down of the grounds which are considered acceptable under international law as justifying the use of force, a development which was brilliantly described in another place by Lord McNair only a few weeks ago, has not been due to legal pedantry. This great legal change over 50 years has not been due to the lawyers or to the pedants. On the contrary, the main documents embodying that change, the Covenant of the League, the Kellogg Pact and now the United Nations Charter, are the world's recognition of the intolerable consequences of resort to modern war for settling disputes. They are a recognition that, in an inter-dependent world, once force is invoked nobody can be sure where it will stop. They are the recognition of reality and not legal pedantries at all.
    I cannot believe that when Her Majesty's Government took their reckless decision nine or ten days ago they foresaw even one-tenth of the consequences which are already seen to be flowing from their action. Let me refer to one or two of these consequences. Did they foresee the massive Soviet political intervention in the Middle East? Did they, for instance, foresee that within a single week the Parliament of Jordan, so lately their special Ally and Protegé, would be passing a resolution of thanks, as it is reported to have done in The Times today, to the Soviet Union for having upheld the right cause and having supported Egypt in these last few days, a resolution saying that Jordan will remember who its friends are and demanding that its ally, Iraq, should denounce the Bagdad Pact? Did they anticipate that? Did they foresee the growing flood of arms into Syria which, according to our information, has greatly increased since these events began? Had they thought of the threat of volunteers from Russia?
    Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: They were already in Egypt.
    Mr. Younger: This threat, I believe, could be real. I am inclined to agree with what the Prime Minister of Canada said about the larger threat of bombing this country—that we should not tremble at it. It probably was talk and bluff, although it is nevertheless a reminder of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) said the other day: we should recollect that we are no longer the greatest Power in the world and may one day ourselves want the protection of the international community.
    However that may be, the threat of volunteers is something which could be real. It probably is already real in some countries, and there are certainly countries in the Middle East today willing to accept Russian volunteers who would have hesitated to do so before Tuesday a week ago.
    Had the Government also foreseen that in the face of this Soviet intervention it might be that Israel would be more desperately isolated in the world, less sure of effective great Power support from any quarter, than she has been at any time in her brief and stormy history? Does anybody doubt that that is her position today? It may be that, unlike my right hon. and hon. Friends, Her Majesty's Ministers and hon. Members opposite do not care very much about Israel. She has no doubt served their turn and they will now forget her; but we shall not.
    In a slightly different connection it may well be that we shall never know—and I freely admit that I do not know at the moment—how far events in Egypt have contributed to the tragedy in Hungary. [HON. MEMBERS: "Humbug."] Let me put the issue in this way. Let us see whether hon. Members opposite feel they can disagree with this. We know as a fact that on Monday, 29th October, before any of these events in Egypt had occurred, the eyes of the world were on Eastern Europe. The Kremlin was rather obviously balanced between the two possible decisions, whether they would allow the Hungarian revolution to go as they had allowed the Polish revolution to go, or whether to intervene massively. We may fairly surmise, may we not—I put it

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    no higher than that—that one of the considerations in their mind was the damage which a brutal intervention on their part would undoubtedly do to the world-wide Soviet pretensions to be the champions of national independence, especially in Asia and Africa.
    We know that by Tuesday night all eyes, and particularly the eyes of Asia and Africa, had switched to Egypt. We know that the news of the aggression by Western Powers against a Moslem nation, against an Afro-Asian country—and if ever a country can be so described it is Egypt—effectively blotted out the news of Soviet repression in Hungary and continued to do so right up to the cease-fire. I ask hon. Members, is there any one in the House who feels entitled to assume that this did not enter at all into the calculations of the Soviet decision?
    I said earlier that I would come back, towards the end of my remarks, to the immediate problem on the ground in Egypt. Since yesterday three new things have occurred. The Secretary-General has confirmed that a cease-fire has been accepted by Israel and Egypt. There has been a fresh demand by the United Nations, backed by 65 votes, for the immediate withdrawal of French, British and Israeli troops. There has also been further progress towards the setting up and putting into operation of a United Nations force, and the Secretary-General has given the assurance that was being demanded by Her Majesty's Government that, on the basis upon which it is now being planned, it is capable of being effective.
    Yesterday, the Prime Minister said these things about it:
    "There is no question whatever in our mind of withdrawal by the United Kingdom and her Allies, unless and until there is a United Nations force to take over from us."
    Then, a little later on, he was asked by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. A. Henderson):
    "Can we have an assurance from the Prime Minister that, in the event of the General Assembly of the United Nations deciding that neither France nor Britain shall participate in the international police force, Her Majesty's Government will not insist upon retaining their forces in Egypt?"
    The Prime Minister replied:
    "I do not think that I could possibly give an assurance like that."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 7th November, 1956; Vol. 560, cc. 143–145.]
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    Mr. Speaker, we thought those propositions of the Prime Minister untenable yesterday. They are doubly untenable today.
    I should like at the same time to refer back to what the Prime Minister himself said on Tuesday, 30th October, when he first announced the decision to go into Egypt. He was pressed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition:
    "… whether he would make it plain that it is the intention of the Government, in making this proposal"—
    That was the proposal for the operation—
    "… simply to safeguard the lives of British nationals and that as soon as they are satisfied that those lives are safe the forces will be withdrawn?"
    The Prime Minister replied—and I think that I had better read the whole sentence so that there can be no question of misrepresentation—
    "I used the word 'temporarily' deliberately in my statement. There are some who think that we could have invoked other treaties to do what we are doing. I did not want to do that. We have based this action simply on the present situation. We certainly should not wish to keep any British forces there, and I am sure the French would not wish to do so for one moment longer than is absolutely necessary to deal with this immediate situation and the very real danger of fighting across the Canal."
    A little later on he said:
    "The hon. Member for Brightside (Mr. R. E. Winterbottom) and one or two other hon. Members asked whether British troops, and other troops, will be withdrawn once the present hostilities cease. Of course that will be so; certainly."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th October, 1956; Vol. 558, cc. 1281–1347.]
    Mr. David Ormsby-Gore: The right hon. Gentleman has no doubt heard that Mr. Cabot Lodge, the United States representative, interpreted the United Nations Resolution as meaning that British and French troops would withdraw on a phased programme as United Nations troops became available.
    Mr. Younger: I am coming to that. I am aware of that. The only comment that I would make at present is that if the hon. Gentleman and hon. Members opposite are basing themselves on the views of Mr. Cabot Lodge I wonder why our representative there did not find himself in the same lobby with him. In the light of the events of the last twenty-four hours to which I have referred, it is the view of myself and my hon. Friends that

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    we must defer to the policies upon which the United Nations is insisting; and that in so far as there may be any rôle at all which our troops have to play in that area, it can only be such a rôle as the United Nations request them to perform.
    The Government may say that there is still danger to the Canal. I do not believe it. Nevertheless, even on that assumption, they do not control the Canal by staying there. In fact, the safety of the Canal today, as has been the case throughout the whole of these last ten days, has depended, not upon British or French military actions, but on the unwillingness of Egypt to destroy it; and a large area of the Canal is still unguarded by any of our troops and could be destroyed if that were the intention. But it is not at all likely to be the intention.
    We, on this side, believe that the proposition about danger to the Canal was never more than a bogus excuse, but in these remarks today I am deliberately not going in detail over the past. All I want to say is this. Do hon. Members really believe that now, whatever may have been the case some days ago, either Egypt or Israel wish to destroy the Canal and are being prevented from doing so only by the presence of British and French troops over a very small part of the area? Then, what about the danger to British lives? Well, there were no attacks that I have heard of upon British lives in Egypt during the fighting—why should we anticipate them now during a cease-fire?
    I am trying to anticipate some of the things which the Government might say. They might say that they are there because Israel has said that she will not withdraw, but how can we help in persuading Israel to obey the United Nations resolution so long as we ourselves are in defiance of it? And as to our remaining there having any connection with the settlement of the Suez Canal dispute—something which was never openly admitted in the early stages, but which came into the Government statements a few days ago—we, on this side, believe that we never had a shadow of right either to go in or to stay on that pretext. Moreover, there is surely this further factor; that there is no chance now either of the United Nations or of the world at large
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    allowing us to reach any long-term settlement about the Suez Canal with Egypt on the basis of the present military situation, or under threat of military force.
    Every day that we stay in this area in a state of aggression in defiance of world opinion and the Charter, we enhance the danger of Soviet war material and Soviet volunteers pouring into the Middle East, as they are doing just now. We enhance Soviet prestige against the prestige not only of ourselves but of all the Western Powers who are seeking still to retain some shreds of association with us.
    We are, indeed, making the position of our friends absolutely impossible, and, perhaps most of all, that of any remaining friends we may hope to have in the Middle East, such as Iraq; not to mention such friends as Canada and the United States. I think that the vote and the speech of Mr. Cabot Lodge in the Assembly yesterday indicates a decision by the United States that if we remain in our present stiff-necked position they can no longer support us. I believe that that is the explanation of the vote.
    Sir Beverley Baxter: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I happen to have left a luncheon with some prominent Canadians of great authority? They take a view completely on behalf of Her Majesty's Government.
    Mr. Younger: The hon. Gentleman is not the only person who has spoken with responsible Canadians in London in recent days. I do not know what weight he expects me to attach to a private conversation with unnamed Canadians. I prefer the attitude of the Canadian Government reinforced by what I myself have heard.
    Therefore, I conclude by saying two things to Her Majesty's Government. First, it is our demand upon them that they should now obey last night's United Nations resolution and go. They should go in such order and in such timing as the United Nations may require, either immediately and unconditionally, or in a phased programme such as that referred to by Mr. Lodge—but under the United Nations' decisions and not under our decision. They should forthwith begin to repair the wider damage that has been done to Britain, to some of which I have referred, by enlisting the help of Commonwealth Prime Ministers without

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    whose support our sadly tarnished name cannot, I am afraid, be restored. They should start now the huge task of rebuilding British policy upon the ruins in which the present Prime Minister and Government have left it.
    3.41 p.m.
    The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Alan Lennox-Boyd): The right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger) was so anxious to go over so much of the ground that has already been very fully covered that when he was almost approaching the end of his speech, I was a little afraid that he would forget to refer to the Amendment relating to the calling of a Commonwealth conference. I attach a little more importance to that suggestion than he did, and I propose to deal with it at some greater length than he did, though he was meant to be moving that Amendment.
    The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the unfolding, as he said, of the story of the last few weeks, and he appeared to think that as this story unfolds it will in some way serve to discredit Her Majesty's Government.
    Mr. George Craddock: They are discredited.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: We shall welcome the full unfolding of this story. We made a decision which we knew was bound to be temporarily unpopular and which could lead, as it has led, to the most violent misrepresentation. We made it in the full knowledge of all the considerations, a great many of which are not known to hon. Members opposite, and in full knowledge also of all the likely consequences.
    We are quite satisfied—we are, indeed, profoundly satisfied—that the action that we have taken will prove to be abundantly right. I am sure, also, that more and more people will come to agree with the wisdom of the steps that we have taken, and not least in those Dominions and Colonies which it was, I thought, the main purpose of the right hon. Gentleman to talk about and to which, in the earlier stages of his speech, he undoubtedly referred from time to time.
    The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the dreadful dangers in which he claimed we had put the Commonwealth relationship, but I am sure that when the whole story unfolds, there will be widespread
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    recognition of the fact that the United Kingdom, with its particular Commonwealth responsibilities, as the centre of the Commonwealth, was right to take the action that we did, and that the resolution and the strength that we were prepared to show will have led to a general lessening of tension in the world.
    Our aim throughout the whole of this business has been to keep the warring parties apart. Israel had accepted our proposals. If Egypt had also agreed, then there would have been no fighting at all. We had no desire whatever either to fight Egypt or to destroy her, but we believe with unmistakable conviction that we have saved the Middle East and the Arab States from the horrors and the virtual certainty of a general war. We are quite satisfied that as more and more people are coming to that view, so it will be universally held when the full story of all these things can be generally known.
    We have ceased fire, and gladly ceased fire, after a campaign in which regard for human life has been outstanding. We have ceased fire because the parties have ceased fire, and we have acted because of the considerations that we set out in the communication that was sent to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the evening of 6th November. [Interruption.] I do not know whether hon. Members opposite would like to hear a considered answer. I must say that it is a curious way in which to contribute to the unfolding of the fact if attempts are made to prevent Ministers from making their own contributions.
    Mr. F. Beswick: I am trying to follow what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. He is saying that the Government have now agreed to cease fire because the Egyptians and the Israelis have agreed to cease fire. Was this the objective of the original assault, to get these two countries to cease fire?
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I thought that every hon. Member now knew that that was the primary purpose.
    Mr. Beswick: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving us a little more assistance. If that was the primary purpose, why did we not say so?
    Hon. Members: We did.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I do not know where the hon. Gentleman goes for his sources of information. I thought it was generally known that that was indeed the primary purpose. I was careful to add that we had acted in accordance with the terms of the communication that we sent to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the evening of 6th November.
    Mr. Philip Noel-Baker: The right hon. Gentleman is responsible for what happens in Cyprus, and that, no doubt, is why he is speaking today. If the purpose of the operation is what he now says it is, can he explain why we told the Egyptians in those leaflets which went from Cyprus that the purpose was to bring down Colonel Nasser?
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that a very full answer was given to that point a few days ago. [Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. This debate is on a very serious topic, and it cannot be conducted by interventions or by noise. I hope that the House will treat the debate with due care. I think it is common knowledge that the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger) was heard with very little interruption.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: It is perfectly true, as the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mr. P. Noel-Baker) said, that I have a large responsibility for the affairs of Cyprus. One thing that I believe has dawned on hundreds of thousands of people who hitherto have not grasped the fact, is that if we are to be in a position to play any part at all to bring about tranquillity in the Middle East, the sovereignty of Cyprus is vital to the United Kingdom.
    As I was about to say, because of our resolute action a United Nations force is being created. I was asked by the right hon. Member for Grimsby a number of questions about that force, and I can only at this stage repeat what the Prime Minister said yesterday:
    "There is no question whatever in our mind of withdrawal by the United Kingdom and her Allies, unless and until there is a United Nations force ready to take over from us."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th November, 1956; Vol. 560, c. 143.]
    The British representative to the United Nations, Sir Pierson Dixon, made a lengthy intervention in last
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    night's debate in the United Nations on the two draft resolutions that were before the Assembly One, the draft resolution signed by some seven Powers, was voted on, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly said; and the other, the resolution which is called generally the Afro-Asian resolution, was also voted on.
    Sir Pierson Dixon made certain comments on those resolutions. He, on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, said:
    "we welcome the conception of an international force. But it will naturally be under-stood that further study will be needed of some of the features of so intricate and important a project."
    I cannot at this stage give any further information than that or add, on that particular point, to what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said yesterday.
    Dealing with the 19-Power, or Afro-Asian, resolution, Sir Pierson Dixon referred to the request for the immediate withdrawal of British and French forces. He said, on behalf of Her Majesty's Government:
    "If these forces were withdrawn before a United Nations force were able to arrive and take control, the separation of the parties which we have achieved would break down. The risk of hostilities between the parties would revive in an acute form, and the United Nations force might arrive too late to prevent a new conflagration."
    He added:
    "There would also be once again a serious threat to the security of the Suez Canal. This in fact, would amount to a return to the dangerous and uncertain conditions which have obtained in the area for many years."
    I must earnestly direct the attention of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to some other observations which Sir Pierson Dixon made on behalf of the Government at the same time. These are rightly regarded as matters of the first importance. I thought it was now generally recognised—indeed, Sir Pierson Dixon himself said so last night—that the idea that a shield of some kind be between the potentially warring factions is essential. If that is universally accepted at the United Nations, surely it might also be so accepted in the British House of Commons. If it is now generally accepted that the idea of a shield is essential, it therefore follows that there must be no vacuum between the withdrawal of one shield and the arrival of another.
    Mr. George Wigg: Does the right hon. Gentleman not realise that the shield is necessary now because of the conspiracy of the British, French and Israeli Governments—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—to provoke an attack through Eilat under the cover of British troops?
    Hon. Members: Withdraw.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The rules of the House, I suppose, demand that I refer to the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) as the hon. and gallant Gentleman; but if I could say what I really think, I should do it in rather simpler form.
    Sir Pierson Dixon, speaking for the Government, added:
    "It is our belief that this international force should be authorised to prevent the resumption of hostilities between Israel and Egypt and secure the withdrawal of Israel forces. It is the earnest hope of Her Majesty's Government that the presence of the international force in the area will help to bring about, amongst other things, a generally acceptable settlement of the Palestine and Suez Canal problems. In the view of Her Majesty's Government the international force should remain in the area until all these problems are solved, and we think that the logic of events will make this clear."
    He then referred to the need for the clearance of the Canal, which was referred to by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence.
    Now that we are within measurable distance of real creation of a United Nations force, we are I think, entitled ourselves to ask right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite one or two questions. At this moment, I limit myself to one. Do they really seriously believe that we should now be near the creation of such a force but for the Anglo-French resolute action? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] I cannot believe that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who have served in the Socialist Government or in the Coalition Government could believe that, whatever more gullible back benchers might feel. Instead of this hopeful sign, the first hopeful sign, for a Middle Eastern settlement for the last ten years, we should have had resolutions, denunciations and warnings, but no action of any kind, save the virtual certainty of a Middle Eastern war.
    Mr. Younger Mr. Younger rose—
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I must finish this observation.
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    Since 1948, as the Foreign Secretary pointed out yesterday, the Security Council has held over 200 meetings on Palestine alone, nearly half of all the meetings of the Security Council. Resolutions have been passed and ignored by both sides. Tension has mounted, and it was brought to a head quite recently by the announcement of the Joint Command for Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Hon. and right hon. Gentleman can get a little temporary popularity by an outcry against the Government, but our people are beginning to understand—[HON. MEMBERS: "They are"]—and inevitable disillusion for the Opposition is not far distant. But for the surgical operation that we have had reluctantly, but resolutely, to perform, we should have failed in our duty as a responsible Government.
    Mr. Younger: The right hon. Gentleman put a very direct question to the Opposition, as to whether we really thought there would be any chance of a United Nations force coming into being but for this operation. Is he not aware that the great and admitted difficulty of the United Nations throughout all its life so far has been to find any great Power willing to commit itself forcibly in support of a resolution? Does he not appreciate that there would have been no criticism on this side of the House had Her Majesty's Government, if necessary, taken immediate action, and asked for the sanction of the Security Council upon it, as was done in Korea—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—and that the whole dispute arises precisely because Her Majesty's Government has used force, but not in support of the Charter and not with any United Nations authorisation?
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The House as a whole, the country, and many others will be very interested in what the right hon. Gentleman has just said. It is clearly quite unrealistic to compare the situation in Korea with the situation in the Middle East—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"]—as Russia was not a member of the Security Council at the time and therefore was unable to veto the subsequent decision.
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker Mr. P. Noel-Baker rose—
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I must complete my argument. The right hon. Gentleman ought to know that we notified the

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    United Nations immediately of the action which we felt it necessary to take in a critical situation. At a very early date we made it absolutely clear that if the United Nations would take over the responsibility, we should be very ready to hand it over.
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: The right hon. Gentleman has asked, should we have got a United Nations force? We made one in Korea, and, of course, the situation is exactly the same. [HON. MEMBERS: "Who did?"] The Security Council did, with our co-operation and help, with the support of the whole of the Commonwealth, and with Commonwealth Forces fighting in a Commonwealth Division. [An HON. MEMBER: "But no Russia."] The Government now have attacked a victim of aggression in violation of the Resolutions of the United Nations, and if we had supported the Council there would have been no veto.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I believe that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby, South will, on reflection, realise that had the United Kingdom Government taken the action they did, then notified the United Nations and asked permission from the Security Council for that action, first the veto would have operated, and, secondly, a general war in the Middle East might well have ensued.
    Mr. Hugh Gaitskell: The right hon. Gentleman persists in misunderstanding what my right hon. Friends have said. He has challenged us on this point and we are entitled to give a clear answer. What conceivable objection could there have been if the United Kingdom had gone to the Security Council, supported the Resolution which was carried there by nine votes to two—there would have been no veto in those circumstances—and followed it up by proposing that the Security Council Resolution should be enforced by a United Nations police force, to which we would be prepared to make contributions?
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Surely the right hon. Gentleman, in the present relative calm of the situation, has not forgotten the rapidity with which the forces were moving together—
    Mr. Gaitskell Mr. Gaitskell rose—
    Hon. Members: Sit down.
    Mr. Speaker: I must ask even right hon. Gentlemen to remember that this is not an argument. It is a debate. If there is an answer to what is being said, by all means let it be given later; but we cannot have speeches interrupted every time by arguments in this way.
    Mr. Gaitskell: The right hon. Gentleman has said—
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd Mr. Lennox-Boyd rose—
    Mr. Speaker: I do not know whether the Minister had given way to the right hon. Gentleman.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd Mr. Lennox-Boyd indicated dissent.
    Mr. Speaker: He gave way to me.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd Mr. Lennox-Boyd rose—
    Hon. Members: Give way.
    Captain Richard Pilkington: On a point of order. Some of us on this side of the House want to hear what my right Friend the Minister is saying. We listened in silence to a most provocative and partisan speech from the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger). Is it not possible for us to hear what the Minister has to say without this continual interruption from the Socialist benches?
    Mr. Speaker: I hope that the House will keep order. Mr. Lennox-Boyd.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: As has been rightly said, the House listened in almost complete silence to what the right hon. Gentleman said. As hon. Members opposite claim that they are anxious that people should know every side of this story, I do not think it is unreasonable that they should listen to what I have to say.
    I now pass on to the first part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech relating to consultation with the Commonwealth. He suggested that there had been a breakdown in the machinery and, even more serious, in the spirit of that consultation. I believe that to be quite untrue, and I believe also that as this story unfolds, to use his own language, so there will be found throughout the British Commonwealth a growing conviction that we took the only possible action in the circumstances.
    Hon. Members: Nonsense.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The right hon. Gentleman said that there were many differing voices in the Dominions themselves, and he said that, I suppose, to cast doubt, for example, on the right of Mr. Menzies or Mr. Holland to speak for Australia or New Zealand in this matter. If that is true, I am equally entitled to say that there are many differing voices also in other parts of the Commonwealth, where, up to now, their political leaders have not felt able to give Her Majesty's Government their full public support. [An HON. MEMBER: "And in this Government too."] My hon. Friend the Member for Southgate (Sir B. Baxter) interrupted the right hon. Gentleman to make a comment of that kind in relation to widely-held views in the Dominion of Canada.
    It is quite true that there are differences of opinion in the Dominions, as there are here, but it would be much better if we did not ourselves—I have no wish to do it—get involved in trying to interpret the rights of Dominion Governments to speak for their own people.
    Mr. Aneurin Bevan: You, Mr. Speaker, have quite rightly asked the House to listen patiently to what the right hon. Gentleman says, but is he not putting a very great burden upon us in suggesting that we should accept a report of a recently-held luncheon in face of the official statements of the Canadian Government? It really becomes rather intolerable.
    Mr. Speaker: We have nothing to do with luncheons. What is said at luncheons is another matter.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Had I thought that the right hon. Gentleman's question would take precisely that form, I might have reserved giving way for a more formidable contribution.
    Consultation between Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and the Dominions and the closest and most intimate possible liaison between us are very near and dear to our hearts and their importance is constantly present in our minds. Of course, there are bound to be differences of opinion, and not by any means always on unimportant matters or matters of detail. There may frequently be—we pray that they will not be often—
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    differences of opinion on great matters of principle or policy, but this is inseparable from the free society and free association which is the main claim to fame and renown of our Commonwealth. Differences are inevitable in any society like ours unless it is to be a monolithic structure in which everyone must think and act in precisely the same way.
    The right hon. Member for Grimsby referred to the fact that in certain votes in U.N.O. our differences had been more marked between the United Kingdom and Asian Dominions than in any other way. Naturally, it is deplorable when there is any difference of opinion on a public platform between any parts of the British Commonwealth and we regret it as much as any hon. Member or anybody else in any of the Dominions.
    I think, however, that it would be also part of the duty of the right hon. Gentleman, in what I believe to be his own genuine anxiety to narrow the divisions and to bring people together again in a Dominion partnership, that he should from time to time refer, for example, to remarks such as that made either today or yesterday by Mr. Menzies in relation to the suggestion that India and Australia have different points of view. Australia, he added, did not believe that the interests of India must be in conflict with those of Australia or the interests of Asia in conflict with those of Europe. That is our profound conviction too.
    "But"—
    Mr. Menzies added—
    "I would think badly of myself and my colleagues would think badly of themselves, if we remained silent or neutral under circumstances in which the Government of the United Kingdom has been assailed for taking action which we regard as both practical and courageous."
    The right hon. Gentleman went out of his way to find many differences which had been expressed between Dominion leaders and ourselves. I would remind him again of what Mr. Menzies also said a week or two ago. After all, Mr. Menzies has had more practical experience of Middle Eastern affairs than a great many of us. Mr. Menzies said:
    "Differences which proceeded from honest divergences upon matters of judgment could easily be fanned into bitterness by intemperate statements by observers."
    I am not suggesting that the right hon. Gentleman is an intemperate observer, for I have respect for the right hon.

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    Gentleman and my feeling is that he is genuinely anxious to see the British Commonwealth working together in friendliness and harmony. I hope, however, that he will always bear in mind the very real certainty that if those observations of Dominion leaders, designed to bring and to keep our people closer together, are never quoted, and observations which show differences of opinion always are, they are bound to be exploited by people whose sense of public duty is very different from that of the right hon. Gentleman.
    The Amendment which has been moved by the Opposition makes the proposal that a Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference should be called with a view to finding a common approach towards matters concerning the United Nations and collective responsibility. Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom are always most ready to invite such a meeting if the Commonwealth Prime Ministers desire it, and they fully appreciate and deeply value these meetings and the exchange of views that they represent. There are, however, certain obvious practical difficulties on the proposal that has been made for the immediate future.
    The Commonwealth Prime Ministers have lately been in London and they may well feel that in these critical days and at the shortest of notice they cannot leave their own countries. Next week the Commonwealth Ministers responsible for foreign relations are going to meet in New York. It is almost certain, and we very much hope, that the Foreign Secretary will be there. That will give an opportunity for an exchange of views on this among many other questions.
    Lest the speech of the right hon. Member for Grimsby should give the impression that over Middle Eastern policy and other developments in recent months there has been virtually no consultation I must, I am afraid, weary the House a little longer with one or two illustrations of how continuous that consultation has been. From the very beginning of the Suez Canal dispute last July we have been in the closest possible touch with the Commonwealth Governments as the situation has developed.
    For three months a great quantity of communications, I think unequalled—I understand from the Commonwealth
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    Relations Office that it is unequalled—has passed between us and the other members of the Commonwealth. The Prime Minister himself has sent from time to time personal messages to his Commonwealth colleagues. Our High Commissioners in other Commonwealth countries have transmitted messages setting out developments as we saw them. There have been meetings, of course, between the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and the Commonwealth High Commissioners in London. Scarcely a day has passed since last July without some communication on the subject of Suez passing between London and the offices of the Commonwealth representatives. I am entitled to claim, on behalf of the Government, that consultation with the Commonwealth Governments has never been closer about any issue than it has been over the unfolding situation in the Middle East.
    Then we had in London a meeting of 24 countries chiefly concerned with Suez, from 16th August, as the House will remember. This meeting was attended by representatives of all Commonwealth countries except Canada and South Africa, but we kept in the closest contact with them, and we ensured throughout those talks that the Canadian and South African High Commission Offices were kept in the closest touch with what was happening.
    Then came the readiness—the most welcome readiness—of Mr. Menzies, the Prime Minister of Australia, to join our councils at that time, and he sat with British Ministers and gave us the benefit of his advice. He it was who led the 5-Power delegation to put the 18-Power proposals before the Egyptian Government. Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan were present at the second meeting in London at which we discussed the setting up of the Suez Canal Users' Association. We kept other Commonwealth Governments fully informed of developments. Mr. Krishna Menon came to London after that conference and had discussions with the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary.
    Hon. Members: We know all this.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I am going to finish this because it is so easy for hon. Gentlemen to go round making generalisations to give a wholly wrong impression, and I think that for the record this story should be told.

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    A further opportunity for an exchange of views occurred when the Suez Canal Users' Association was itself inaugurated at the beginning of October. Meanwhile we had decided to go to the Security Council, and we explained fully to the Commonwealth Governments the reason for this decision and the line which we proposed to take, and again Mr. Menon had further discussions with us here and with our representatives in New York.
    Throughout the last three months we have spared no effort whatever to keep the Commonwealth Governments informed of what was happening. I do not say that it has been always possible to consult them fully in advance before every decision has had to be taken, but we have done our very utmost to keep in continual touch.
    The events of the last few days have confronted us with very real difficulties and responsibilities. The first news of the Israeli invasion of Egypt was received in London on the evening of Monday. 29th October.
    Mr. Wigg: The Government knew of it long before.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: There was clearly no time whatever to consult the Commonwealth in advance if we were to take timely action to protect the Canal and to stop the conflict. Mr. Menzies, whose words, I think, should be listened to with respect by hon. Members, even if my reading of them is interrupted, said:
    "Hostile armed forces were approaching each other and an extensive combat was imminent. There was literally no time to be lost. Effective consultation"—
    He said "effective" because a mere form of consultation would have been quite useless—
    "would plainly have occupied a considerable time, and the position might have fallen into irretrievable disaster. In the opinion of the Government of Australia, Great Britain, whose interests are so vast, was correct in proceeding upon her own judgment and accepting her own responsibility."
    He added what hon. Members would do well to remember:
    "We are not living in an academic world. The normal processes of consultation should always be followed wherever possible, but there are instances like the present ones in which events move too fast for normal processes."
    I think that those facts should be borne in mind. To dismiss them, as one hon. Member did, as humbug, when they
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    come from a Prime Minister who agrees with the United Kingdom Government, does, I think, cast some doubt on the sincerity of the motives of those who do dismiss them when they make a parade of their imperial outlook.
    Mr. Bevan: The right hon. Gentleman has made one statement which I should just like—
    Mr. George Isaacs: On a point of order. The Colonial Secretary was looking straight at me when a moment ago he used the word "humbug." Was he suggesting that I said that?
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: No.
    Mr. Isaacs: Then you ought to get your eyes put straight.
    Mr. Speaker: There is nothing like that wrong with my eyes, though I do wear spectacles.
    Mr. Bevan: In order to get the record straight, I would ask the Colonial Secretary a question. He started his speech by saying that the purpose of the intervention was to bring the Israeli-Egyptian conflict to an early conclusion and to try to induce the United Nations to take vigorous action. Just now he said that the other purpose of the intervention was to try to protect the Canal. There were two objectives. Does he consider that the second has been achieved?
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that it was quite clear that hostilities would have taken place on the banks of the Canal, and what the purpose was of our intervention. I would once more remind him of the phrase used by the Leader of the Opposition about the premature ending of hostilities in the Sinai Peninsula.
    Mr. Wigg Mr. Wigg rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Has the Colonial Secretary finished?
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Yes, Sir.
    Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman has given way so often that I was not sure whether he was giving way to another intervention or whether he had finished his speech. Mr. Grimond.
    4.17 p.m.
    Mr. J. Grimond: It is apparent from the closing remarks of the Minister that there was, in fact, no consultation with the other members of the Commonwealth on the most important act in foreign policy since the war. It may be that the amount of time available did not allow it when Israel attacked Egypt, but I think we are entitled to know whether there was any consultation with the other members of the Commonwealth about what should be done in the event of war breaking out between Israel and Egypt, for that was not entirely an unlikely eventuality.
    The right hon. Gentleman said that now there was to be a police force under the United Nations, and took credit to the Government for having given them a lead in the creation of United Nations forces. That really does appear to be too much. It is rather like a burglar's claiming that his skill and violence have compelled the police to improve their methods. It would have been possible at any time during the last four or five years for this country by a little aggression to have compelled the United Nations to resort to force.
    The right hon. Gentleman also said that the credit of the Government would be restored when the full facts were known. I do not think that the most important matter before us is whether the credit of the Government will be restored or not. Unfortunately, the credit of the Government is associated with the credit of the country, and what matters is whether the credit of this country can be restored. Furthermore, is the unity of the Western world, in the face of one of the most serious threats of Communism since the war, to be restored?
    It is hinted that the Government have some secret reasons, not yet produced, that will convince everybody that they are right. We have already had various reasons put forward for the course of action that they have pursued, and they have not always been compatible with one another, but there may yet be a hidden reason. There may be intelligence known to the Government which is not known to people in general.
    I have been asked by one or two very responsible people what the position is and, if this were the case, how far the
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    Government would inform the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition of such intelligence. I do not know, but if there are secret intelligences known to the Government, which would put a different complexion on their actions, I think that many people in the country would want that question explored and answered and would feel happier if the Government had taken the Leader of the Opposition into their confidence. If there are no secret reasons, it is merely confusing the issue and muddying the waters to hint at them now.
    There are, of course, differences between members of the Commonwealth, though most people in the Commonwealth are anxious to put the most favourable construction possible on our acts, but whether the differences are between one part of the Commonwealth and another, or within the countries of the Commonwealth themselves, for us to be divided at all at a moment like this might have proved, and might still prove, to be disastrous to the Western world.
    I cannot share the optimism of hon. Members opposite. In all sincerity I wish I could, because, like some of them, I quite agree that there are difficulties in relying upon the United Nations, and these difficulties have been most tragically brought home to us by the recent events in Hungary. The fact is that we all stand impotent because of the ultimate blackmail of the hydrogen bomb. It would not be in order for me to pursue the subject of Hungary, but if anything could be done, possibly by stating that as we withdraw from the Middle East and allow the United Nations to take over the Russians should do the same thing in Hungary, that should be done.
    I have never held that this country would never be justified in acting on its own in defence of absolutely vital interests or in defence of peace which could not be preserved in any other way, but I cannot conscientiously say that the Suez Canal is such a vital interest that it was worth breaking up the unity of the West and fragmenting the Commonwealth in order to safeguard the Canal which, of course, was not blocked at that time. Now it is.
    As to keeping the peace, if I believed that the Government really took action to restore peace on the borders of Israel I think that they would have had a very

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    good case, but I do not believe that that was so. I do not believe that any impartial person reading the ultimatum that the Government sent out could possibly say that this was purely designed to keep the peace and check the aggressor. I have the greatest sympathy with Israel. She was provoked and there have been many occasions in the past when we could legitimately have upheld her, but on this occasion we chose the one case where, I regret to say, she was the aggressor.
    There are hon. Members opposite who have taken the view that some such gesture as this was needed to show that Great Britain was a great Power and was capable of forceful action, but I fear that the world will regard this not as a sign of strength but as the outcome of frustration, exasperation and irresolution. It reminds me of the sort of action which Europe used to expect of such empires as Austria-Hungary, in their latter days, something which caused war and threats of war and which sprang not from strength but from uncertainty and frustration. The Government's present action springs fundamentally from a lack of any consistent policy throughout the Middle East for years.
    If there is one thing in which we can take pride it is the loyalty of our Allies in the Commonwealth and the Western world. We owe a very great debt to Mr. St. Laurent and Mr. Pearson. Whatever we may think of Mr. Dulles's behaviour in the past—and I agree that it has been exasperating and a great deal to blame for what has happened—nevertheless the President of the United States and the American nation have stood by us. It would be a mistake to think, however, that the conduct of our Government will be forgotten all over the world overnight if only this project of theirs is over quickly and can be claimed as a success.
    If anyone is inclined to think that, let him consider what his feelings would be if Canada or the United States had behaved like this to us. Suppose that America or one of our Dominions, in the last week of our General Election had taken this action. Confidence in the Government's professions must be shaken. For example, the Tripartite Declaration was held up week after week as the absolute corner-stone of Government policy on Arab-Irael relations. It was
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    devised exactly to meet a situation like this, but when the situation arises it is thrown out of the window on the excuse that the Egyptians did not agree to it. No one ever suggested that they did or would agree to it.
    I cannot, for those reasons, altogether blame the Americans for supporting the United Nations resolution whose purpose is to remove our forces and those of the French from the Canal. I hope that I have made it clear that I do not approve of the methods by which our forces ever got there, but now that they are there this is a very serious matter indeed. I do not by any means rule out a further outbreak of fighting. I cannot assure myself that if there were such an outbreak the Russians might not send volunteers. We owe a very great debt to the members of our Services who carried out this very difficult operation, and I do not feel at all happy about the cease-fire arrangements that have been made. I feel a little in the position of some of us after Munich, when guarantees were given to two countries of Europe which many of us felt could not be carried out, but which we could not oppose because we felt that they should have been given earlier.
    While I regret the position reached, I do not feel that it can be left where it is. Our troops are siting on a comparatively narrow bridgehead in a hostile country. They are not keeping Egypt and Israel apart and they are not protecting the Canal. The Government have undertaken that no more troops will be landed, no advance made and that only the necessary stores will be put ashore. I am not an expert, but I think that that is a most unsatisfactory position for our forces to be in. We owe a very great debt to them and it is our duty not to jeopardise them by putting them in an impossible position.
    Viscount Hinchingbrooke: The hon. Member says that the present position is intolerable. Is he going to say that we should withdraw or consolidate? Will he say which?
    Mr. Grimond: I am not a military expert, although the noble Lord may not believe it. First, we must impress upon the United Nations that its force must be brought in very quickly and must be an effective force. Secondly, the Government have probably to go further and say that sufficient tanks and guns must be landed and left in our positions to ensure that

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    if we do not advance we can at least protect our troops and take further action if necessary.
    Another point is that we have undoubtedly crushed the Nasser myth. Personally, I welcome that. At least, we have crushed it militarily, but Colonel Nasser is still in power and is now supported, or can say that he is supported, by a great weight of public opinion. I cannot believe that it was necessary to do such damage to our own reputation to ensure some deflation of Colonel Nasser's military power. We could have done that when Israeli ships were prevented from going through the Canal or by taking action against his provocations of Israel.
    A further result of what we have done is that we shall now have the Arab world seething against us. Everyone knows that the Arab States are not great military Powers. They did not intervene in this fight and I do not suppose that it would have made a great difference if they had. But the Arabs are good saboteurs, the Arabs have extremely long memories. The Arabs will now be an extremely fertile ground for Communism, and the Arabs control two-thirds of the oil reserves of the world.
    Was it really the policy and aim of the Government that we should put the Middle East in this position? Can it be said that it is a good result that we have perhaps crushed the military might of Colonel Nasser at the expense of leaving the Middle East wide open for Communist infiltration, that we have perhaps made Egypt and Russia more popular in the Arab world in the long run?
    Last Saturday, the Prime Minister undertook to put the Israelis back behind their frontiers. Presumably that means out of the Gaza strip. Are we going to hand that work over to the United Nations, which many hon. Members think is such a feeble body? We have a right to know if the Prime Minister really intends to put the Israelis back behind their frontiers and how he will do it.
    Sir Robert Boothby: But the Israelis have already said that they intend to stick to the Gaza strip and to Ismalia.
    Mr. Grimond: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will put that point to his Leader, because that was the undertaking given by his Leader over the wireless in a scripted broadcast, presumably vetted by all his officials, and repeated in the House.
    Mr. C. N. Thornton-Kemsley: If the hon. Gentleman looks at the report of that broadcast—I have not the text here—he will find that my right hon. Friend said, in effect, that when we and our allies, the French, had attained those positions which we mentioned in the ultimatum, and had command of the Canal, we would then see that the Israelis left Sinai.
    Mr. Grimond: There was a specific undertaking given in the broadcast. The over-riding danger, I believe, is the division of the West and if, by having a further meeting of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers, we can do something to restore unity, I would certainly support that as a most important step.
    I believe that we should now call in our Dominions—Canada and Australia—to try to restore our position with the Africans and the Asians. I think that there have been faults on the part of the Indians. I think there are difficulties in dealing with the Asian Dominions, but I cannot accept that we can see the disruption of the Asiatic part of the Commonwealth without making some attempt to retrieve the position.
    I believe that we can rely on the abiding good will of the Americans, but we have no common policy with them. It may be that we shall need to have some new machinery for consultation with our Dominions to prevent the repetition of snap decisions being taken, because if we take these again our alliances with the Commonwealth will break up. Also, there may need to be some form of quicker and more effective consultation with America.
    I believe that it is impossible now to reconstitute the old frontiers of Israel and that the United Nations will have to fix new frontiers for that country, giving a firm guarantee. In that, no doubt, we shall have to play our part.
    Mr. Philip Bell: Would the hon. Member direct his mind to a point upon which he has only touched? A practical issue will face us if we have

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    to withdraw before the new troops come in. The hon. Member talked about overlapping. What is his view about that?
    Mr. Grimond: That we go to the United Nations and say, "You must get this police force set up at once." Until then, in the area we hold we must maintain sufficient troops to prevent, for instance, reconstruction of the airfields and the outbreak of war again. How this can be phased with the arrival of U.N. troops I do not know, but it is not a situation out of which we can pull and leave a vacuum.
    I hope that we shall now set about resettling the refugees and I ask the Government what is happening to those who were in the Gaza strip.
    In the long run, I think that we shall need international agreement about the oil. I do not think that we can leave this entirely to private contracts. We may have to face many "Suez situations" throughout the East if we do. We must have the contractual rights of the supply companies and the consumers guaranteed under some system of international agreement.
    However, these are long-term problems. I agree that if, out of all this, we get an effective United Nations police force it will be a great gain. I am surprised at the enthusiasm which this proposal has received. It has been cheered by the most unlikely people who, a week or two ago, would have said that it was totally impracticable. For my part, I still think it is a very long shot. I imagine that the force will be under the Security Council, and we all know who are the members of that Council. But where will it make its headquarters and who will recruit it?
    Sir Henry Studholme: Does the hon. Member realise that it is only because of the action of Her Majesty's Government that there is now to be this force?
    Mr. Grimond: Another enthusiastic burglar, if I may say so.
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: The international force will be under the authority of the General Assembly, with an advisory committee of seven members, of whom four are Commonwealth countries.
    Mr. Grimond: I am glad to hear that, but I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree that this is a complex and difficult matter, especially if the force is to be used in what I believe is a very explosive situation on the Canal.
    Mr. R. T. Paget: If I may interrupt, one point which worries me is where is this international force to go? Is it going to the Canal? Is it going to the old armistice frontiers? I have read that it is going to the latter, but I cannot see how it will get there.
    Mr. Grimond: Like the hon. and learned Member, I can see great difficulties, but I imagine that the force is going to the Canal. However, I may be wrong.
    I foresee great difficulties to be met in the future. We should at least be grateful to the despised United Nations for many of its decisions. What this incident should do is not only to shake up the United Nations, as has often been said, but also our own thinking about our international obligations. Are we really sincere in our protestations about loyalty to the United Nations? How do our various commitments to N.A.T.O. and our allies fit in with the United Nations conception? [An HON. MEMBER: "What about Hungary?"] If we are to gain anything—and I think that we shall have great difficulty in salvaging much—from the wreck, there must be a shake up not only in the United Nations, but also throughout this country.
    4.39 p.m.
    Mr. Walter Elliot: The first duty of anyone speaking after the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) is to congratulate him on his first appearance as leader of his party in this House. I am sure that he will uphold the tradition laid down for so many years by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies). The House certainly did not spare the hon. Member in his "maiden speech", and throughout his remarks he had the full cut and thrust of the active interest which the House shows in this problem. I am sure that his plea for a general consideration of this problem at this time will be echoed throughout the House.
    We are in the presence of an immense problem, every aspect of which will have

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    to be considered. The Amendment quite rightly speaks of a Commonwealth conference, but before we consider that we need to go a little further into our own ideas and principles. I should say that, at present, our three objectives are, first, to maintain the Commonwealth; secondly—and to me this is of vital importance—to maintain the Anglo-American alliance, and, thirdly, to contain the growing expansion of the Soviet empire.
    That last objective is also very important, as we see by the events in Central Europe, which the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland referred to in his speech. The question has been asked whether that action of the Soviet Government was accentuated by the action recently taken by Her Majesty's Government. I do not think anyone can deny that the scale of that one intervention shows that the preparations for it were long-established, and I do not myself believe that military interventions of the Soviet Union are touched off by small causes, at single points and by single events. These are long-contained policies which we see coming to fruition, carried through with a ruthlessness which shows that there is no hesitation whatsoever in putting them forward in the areas where they are being put forward—and there may very well be an intention to expand those actions beyond those areas.
    In considering the general position, I am sure that we must take note of the massive intervention by the Soviet Union in the Middle East in the past year, which has overleapt all the frontiers. The sale of arms was a sympton, and we now realise that it was on a very much larger scale than we had thought, and that the penetration was much deeper than we had conceived. There are the recent events in Syria, for example—the destruction of two big pumping plants. That was no casual raid by Arabian saboteurs, but a long-thought-out, highly organised operation of war. Those were not trivial installations; they were equivalent in power to the electric light station of a modern town.
    Mr. William Warbey: If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that the blowing up of the pumping stations and the cutting of the pipelines in Syria were carried out by Soviet infiltration, can he
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    explain how it is that the British Foreign Secretary protested to the Syrian Government, saying that these actions had been carried out by the Syrian Army?
    Mr. Elliot: It is well known that the Syrian Government in fact did not approve of the blowing up of those installations; that it was carried out, not by a Government instruction, but obviously by some force within the force, by some State within the State.
    That is exactly the point I was trying to bring home. The infiltration is not merely a matter of physical infiltration, the consignment of a certain number of arms, but the preparation for a widespread taking over of whole Governments. The events in Syria show very clearly that at any rate in one of the Middle Eastern States this has reached a fairly advanced stage. These were not, as I said, small installations; they had a capacity of 1,500 h.p. or more, and it takes 10,000 h.p. to move the oil across the deserts through the pipelines.
    I say that these actions were carried out against the will of the Syrian Government, and the fact that there is a force within Syria capable of taking an action like that against the opinion of its own Government shows very clearly that we are here dealing with an infiltration which has gone on for some time and which we must certainly consider when reviewing the circumstances which have led up to the present outbreak.
    It was said that the sale of Russian arms might have been counterbalanced. I do not think that the sale of more arms to Israel offered a good or practicable solution. The idea of a bucket of arms for Syria, a bucket of arms for Egypt and two buckets of arms for Israel was not the way in which the solution could be looked for. The very fact that the Canadian Government had signed a contract for the delivery of a large consignment of most modern fighters to Egypt and that it is the Canadian Government which has condemned Israel for its present action shows how complicated the situation has become.
    The suggestion that this was simply an aggression out of the blue by Israel seems to me to ignore the plain facts. Where is the treaty of peace between Egypt and Israel which has been broken? There is no such document. There was a state

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    of war between the two countries—a state of war which was continually invoked by Egypt itself. It was in virtue of that state of war that Egypt claimed the right to arrest the passage of Israeli ships through the Canal.
    Egypt cannot have it both ways and say simultaneously that, on the one hand, they are at war and, on the other, that they are at peace. They cannot claim that they are at war and therefore have the right to stop Israeli ships passing through the Canal, and then say that they are at peace and therefore cannot be attacked. À la guerre comme à la guerre. If a man draws the sword he must expect the enemy to draw the sword against him—and not always at the most convenient moment.
    Mr. Emrys Hughes:
    "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."
    Mr. Elliot: Everyone knows the end of that quotation. Anybody who, like myself, has been brought up in Scotland, can complete a Biblical quotation. But the hon. Member must not assume that every sentence that refers to a sword is drawn from the Bible.
    Mr. Hughes: A very bad quotation.
    Mr. Elliot: It is not a quotation. I must be allowed to make my own sentences, even if Holy Writ has anticipated them to some extent.
    We are, however, in the presence of a very serious situation. We have been arraigned before an international body of the highest competence, of which we ourselves are members; we have argued our case, and it has not found favour. It is a very serious situation, I quite agree, and I wish to face the fact and make a proposal with regard to it. Let us face the weight of the case. It is no use trying to get out of it by some quibble of one kind or another. This is an intimate problem for all of us; it affects the life of every one of us. It may concern the very survival of our country.
    We claim, as was said last night by the Foreign Secretary, in his very able broadcast, that it was a case for action. There is always the argument either that action is wrong or that it is the wrong time to act. I have been through all this before. I remember well, and so do one or two other hon. Members—such as my right
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    hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) and my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North (Mr. J. Amery), whose father was closely concerned, both on the opposite side to myself—that tense moment when we had to consider whether action was to be taken against Hitler.
    On that occasion the Empire was split, as it is now; the country was split, as it is now. Many of those who now are strongest in their claims that no steps should be taken without the consent of all the Commonwealth were then the most vehement of our condemners for not giving a lead, for not going forward and "calling Hitler's bluff." We of the then Government waited. It is true that we then obtained a wide measure of unanimity in the country—and we have been blamed ever since. We have been called guilty men. Well, let us consider that. It is an accusation which those of us who were concerned in those actions will always have to take into consideration. Because we would not take the action which was then suggested—
    Mr. Bevan: What action?
    Mr. Elliot: In 1939.
    Mr. Bevan: Does not the right hon. Gentleman mean 1938?
    Mr. Elliot: I am sorry—1938. There were repeated occasions.
    Mr. David Weitzman: Right or wrong?
    Mr. Elliot: I think right—but it cost 20 million lives. I do not think, however, that we could have taken a risk of that size with a House of Commons such as we have seen it in the last few days, when the life of our country was immediately at stake, and we were in mortal peril. I do not think that was a course which any Government could take. I think the Government, in spite of all the difficulties, had to wait until they could get practical unanimity in the nation and in the Commonwealth before they could take that desperate hazard. I am only saying that we should remember that that was another occasion on which there was a divided House, a divided nation, and where we deferred to those wishes. As I say, we brought the nation into action

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    as one, but at a cost which Europe still remembers. It certainly is a very serious situation. It may be considered always wrong to take action. There is always a strong argument against it. But if we never take action, we go from bad to worse.
    It may be said that Nasser is not a dictator like Hitler; that this is a cardboard figure; that he is a small man. But the Soviet Union is a dictator like Hitler. The Soviet Union is strong and active and, it may well be, a greater menace to the world even than Hitler was. We have seen recently the kind of action which the Soviet Union is willing to take; the disregard of public opinion, of world opinion, which it is willing to incur. How different would be the situation—hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite denounced us—but how different would be the situation were the Soviet Union to say today, "We have been called upon to cease fire. We have done so. We welcome an international force. We will defer to world opinion over Hungary." But there is not a scintilla of a suggestion of that kind, and it only shows a very wide difference—[Interruption.]—I am trying to make a serious speech, but it is difficult because the right hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes) has a pleasing voice which carries without the slightest effort throughout the whole of the Chamber. Let him be merciful to those of us who have not that advantage.
    A wise Frenchman has said, "If you live long enough you will see everything and the reverse of everything." We were speaking of Hungary. I remember as a very young Member of this House at the end of World War I, when Hungary lay at the feet of the allies of the day, visiting that country. I visited Budapest, which was under military occupation. The allied forces were supreme throughout the city. What did I see in that city? I remember seeing there from the balconies the election meetings which they were having—free elections—with the contestants putting forward their case without the slightest interference. Free contests were going on and free men were voting freely, though they had suffered terrible losses and had been the cause of terrible losses to their neighbours. That is the difference between the
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    present position in Hungary and the time when the West was in control of that area. The position in Hungary today is terrible. I agree with the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland that one of the tragedies of the present situation is that we are inhibited from considering, far more actively, taking action on this dreadful menace which, as I say, may well be extended.
    I do not wish merely to say these things without bringing forward some positive suggestion. The crux of the whole thing is that we have diverged from one another, not merely in the Commonwealth, but with the United States. We are at loggerheads with the United States at this moment.
    One factor in coming to that position has inevitably been the Presidential elections. During that time there is only one slogan, one maxim, on the desk of everyone who has any concern with the United States, and that is, "Keep out. Do not interfere. Do not say anything which may be taken in any way as an attempt from the outside to prejudice the course of the election one way or the other." But it certainly has led to a very wide gap.
    Mr. Dulles has been blamed. I do not blame Mr. Dulles as much as some people do, because I think he has done his utmost to interpret faithfully the views of his country to ours, and to ascertain the views of our country and interpret to his. But no one can deny the difference and the divergence. We have seen the plea put forward by Mr. Cabot Lodge, which at first sight looked distasteful and even unreal. It is now stated that his proposal for a withdrawal, an immediate withdrawal, of our troops which are on Egyptian territory has been further interpreted as a withdrawal to go step-by-step with the evolution in the command which we exercise there just now. That we should be perfectly capable of examining and interpreting. But it shows how wide is the divergence when a phrase like that; coming over the tape or the wireless: could be taken—as, indeed, I certainly took it at first—as a request for an immediate withdrawal, without further ado, of our troops, and the restoration of a vacuum into which inevitably would pour forces from either side.
    I agree with the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland that this is still a

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    very explosive situation. A cease-fire means one thing, that after the cease-fire there should be a stand-still, and certainly an exploration of the line on which the various parties stand. I never in my life saw a truce which was not concluded between two sides. But this truce has been concluded by a series of unilateral declarations to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and it will need a good deal of clarifying before the true situation is apparent.
    I do not believe that the immediate evacuation of our troops, as was in fact demanded by the Bandoeng Powers resolution, would be an advantage. I think it would be no advantage to the world if the ring of steel round Budapest were paralleled by a ring of steel round Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, as it might be, if certain new forces were available in those areas. This is not a situation in which merely after blowing a whistle everyone lays down their arms.
    The Israelis have taken a desparate risk. Her Majesty's Government may be composed completely of dunderheads noodles, chuekleheads—but no one ever said that about the Jews. These men have staked their heads on the result of their action, and, believe me, anyone who has had anything to do either with Jews in general or the Israeli leaders in particular—and I have known several of them, including Dr. Weitzman, Ben Gurion, and Moshé Sharett, many of their leaders—know that these are not men who ignore the casting up of odds before they determine what they are to do. To use a Biblical quotation if I may—
    "Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulted whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand."
    That is their calculation, leaving out altogether Her Majesty's Government.
    Mr. Emrys Hughes: Tell that to the Soviet Union.
    Mr. Elliot: Really, the hon. Member will find nothing about the Soviet Union in Holy Writ.
    I say that the Israelis are fighting with a rope round their necks. It is that, among other things, which has undoubtedly led to the desperate character of the adventure on which they are engaged. It will make them difficult men
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    to handle—impossible without a competent force.
    I now come to my proposals. I think that we have to consider going even further than the terms of the Amendment. As was stated by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies, an opportunity for a consultation amongst the Commonwealth will take place at the forthcoming Assembly of the United Nations which is now coming together.
    Mr. Bevan: The Foreign Secretaries.
    Mr. Elliot: No, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies said that there would be an opportunity for a meeting of Ministers—
    Mr. Bevan: No, the Foreign Secretaries.
    Mr. Elliot: I beg the pardon of the House—the Foreign Secretaries at the forthcoming Assembly of the United Nations. I would go further. I would suggest that on this occasion the Prime Minister himself should for a time lead the delegation of this country and should take advantage of that visit for a consultation at the highest level with the President of the United States. I think it would serve a double purpose. I think that a consultation at top level with the United States is overdue.
    To the newly-elected President of the United States we extend all our congratulations and all our sympathy, for he is taking on a weight of responsibility paralleled by no other man alive; and I think that a consultation between a man newly-elected, coming to this tremendous power, voted into it for four years, and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, is one of the most urgent and immediate necessities of our time. The fact that by happy good fortune that could be combined with a meeting with Commonwealth Ministers, and others, at the United Nations, is an added advantage, not a disadvantage.
    Mr. Bevan: Why the Prime Minister?
    Mr. Elliot: Because I think that no one can deny both the adroitness in debate and the cold courage of the Prime Minister. We do not wish to have this decided in a corner or to shirk any of the issues. We are free men and we want it argued out in the face of all the world.

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    We are not at all afraid to go to Washington or anywhere else supposing that there exists a case on which we hope to get world opinion.
    Mr. Bevan: I was only trying to elicit what the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting. The proposal in the Amendment is that there should be a meeting of Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth for the purpose of trying to reach some accord, or at least some mutual understanding, about what has been happening, and what can be done. If the Prime Minister leads the British delegation to America he will not be meeting the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth. Is it not desirable that he should meet them first before attempting to present his views to the President of the United States?
    Mr. Elliot: I should have thought that the mere question of logistics, to use a favourite term, would make that almost impossible. Ships are actually sailing now to the Assembly, which is just about to be convened. These are all matters of great urgency. I do not think that we could organise a Commonwealth conference in time to deal with the urgency of the situation with which we are faced. Besides, we here are in no position to lay down what other members of the Commonwealth should do. I suggest that we should make a gesture, by our own Prime Minister leading our own delegation to the United Nations and there carrying out the arguments and discussions which would inevitably follow.
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: Could not my right hon. Friend also suggest that the other members of the Commonwealth might also like to send their Prime Ministers to lead their delegations on this really vital issue?
    Mr. Elliot: I would not go quite so far as that. Let us make the proposal ourselves. Prime Ministers attract Prime Ministers as magnets attract iron. We shall find that if a consultation at that level is taking place other important figures will inevitably move towards it; how important these figures are it is a little difficult to say. I am sure however that to deal with the intensity of affairs in which we are, some such discussion is absolutely necessary. Because we are not at the end of this—this is the beginning. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Yes,
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    and they began before this present disturbance arose. We are at the beginning of enormous changes, and what is the end we cannot say. We are going to move into a period of turmoil in an area of the world which has not previously known such an atmosphere of tension and of potential hostilities.
    We of the West have regarded these areas as under our aegis, under our umbrella. We have to get rid of that idea altogether. New forces are at work; new ideas are afloat in those regions, and certainly thought will be as necessary as action in dealing with their problems. I make a plea for thought and that talks should be conducted, at the highest level; that is to say, in the first place, between the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
    5.5 p.m.
    Mr. Leslie Hale: I have always listened to the right hon. Member for Kelvingrove (Mr. Elliot) with interest and respect. He, at least, has a honourable record in connection with the United Nations and support for law, and therefore he speaks with more authority in this debate. Without wishing to be discourteous, I find myself often in agreement with many of his observations, but at the conclusion I am not always perfectly certain which side he is on.
    I had hoped today to address the House without indulging in any recrimination or any provocation. I think that the time for recrimination is over. My right hon. Friends have made the case with such ability that there is very little more to say. Indeed, I think that there would be nothing more to say but for one thing. I think that the right hen. Gentleman will agree on this, that the House of Commons is entitled to the facts. Day after day Ministers have come to the House and denied us the facts. Day after day Ministers have come here and misrepresented what we know to be the facts. In the debate today, the Colonial Secretary has got up and made his usual rumbustious and carefree speech on one of the most tragic days of our recent history. He has given no information at all about consultation and has certainly conveyed the impression that he desires to suppress the information and is unwilling to give it to the House because it would prove too shocking if he did.

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    I must, therefore, call the attention of the House to one or two dates. It was on 25th October that Her Majesty's Government first received information of the Israeli mobilisation. So far as I have been able to find out by a careful tracing of all the speeches that have been made—and there have been many made on the subject—all that the Prime Minister ever said to the House was that we urged restraint.
    Mr. Ormsby-Gore: The hon. Gentleman will also be aware that the day before the new Government of Jordan had been formed and one of its first actions was to set up a joint military command.
    Mr. Hale: What on earth that has to do with it, I do not know. It is a fact well known to every Member of the House, and how it is relevant to the Israeli mobilisation in this sense, I do not know. The hon. Member presumably makes the point, which has been made by 50 or 60 speakers in the course of 50 or 60 speeches, that Israel had submitted to a great deal of provocation and the unified command was no doubt a threat to her existence. I do not think there has been a single speech made on either side of the House in which that fact can be denied. [Interruption.] I think it would be more courteous if hon. Members would allow me to finish my sentence and complete the thought before making interruptions which place one rather in the situation of a harassed master at a school of mentally retarded juvenile delinquents. We ought to be discussing this on rather high grounds of policy.
    On 25th October, Her Majesty's Government received information of the Israeli mobilisation. Was any communication sent to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers then? We have asked that time after time. We have received no assurance. It is known that M. Mollet was in touch with Israel during that period. It is known that when M. Mollet came to London on 30th October he did so with the decision that the French were going into it alone unless we went with them. These facts are at least known and not contradicted. [An HON. MEMBER: "How do you know?"] If the hon. Member would read the French Press he would find ample information
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    on the subject. [An HON. MEMBER: "And the Italian Press."] It was on 29th October that the Foreign Secretary came to the House and announced to the House that information had been received that Russian tanks had ceased to withdraw from Hungary and were manoeuvring on the border.
    I beg hon. Members—I am not trying to be provocative; I hope in a few minutes' time to cease to deal with the controversial part of this matter altogether—to consider just what that situation was. There had come to us in the preceding week or fortnight news which was perhaps the best that the world had received since the end of the war. There had come the news of a triumph of the spirit over oppression, perhaps greater and finer than can be seen in all the long history of human persecution. Men were emerging from the tomb in which they had been buried. Men were coming out to a new light and a new liberty.
    Let us at least be fair about this up to a point. It had been due to a relaxation of the terrorism of the Stalinist régime that this had become possible. It had at least been due to a modest amount of—I do not like to use the word—liberalising of the dictatorship that this had occurred. A new dawn was rising in the East. There were new hopes. The people could greet their old friends on 29th October.
    But on 30th October Her Majesty's Government did this. I do not believe there is a man on either side of the House who believes that the object of the intervention in Egypt had anything to do with parting the combatants. We know on all the evidence that the object was the Canal. We know that the Prime Minister had been pleading with America to come in and had pleaded with the Commonwealth countries to come in and had been urging military action ever since he so unnecessarily called up our forces in July.
    That was the position on that vital day when so much hope of liberty came. It used to be said under the Nazi régime that there was one advantage, and one only, of being immured in the living tombs from which one had little hope of emerging; it was the one place under the Nazi régime where a man could speak

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    freely. Byron understood that when he talked of the:
    "Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
    Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
    For there thy habitation is the heart"—
    We started this. What is the measure of our responsibility? I do not know; but if we share only a small percentage of the responsibility for the crimes which have happened since, the burden upon us is one of which we can only acquit ourselves by a conscientious attempt in the future to redeem the errors of the past and a conscientious attempt—
    Viscount Hinchingbrooke: What responsibility do we share for Hungary? Be precise.
    Mr. Hale: I have just been talking on that subject. Does not the noble Lord agree with me? I have always admired his honesty and integrity. I have always done that, and so have other hon. Members. The noble Lord has just walked into the Chamber. If he had listened to the debate, he would have heard what I have said time after time. I respected him the other day when adulatory hon. Members were cheering the Prime Minister but the noble Lord retained his seat, sitting tight-lipped as did so many others who were not noticed by the Press, and as indeed did one of Her Majesty's Ministers. I repeat that I have always respected him for his integrity.
    I was one of those who in 1947 and 1948 urged the establishment of a permanent Commonwealth Conference—not with any legislative functions, of course—because I had found on those limited visits which I had been able to pay to Commonwealth countries, at my own expense—the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association has never during eleven years invited me to make a visit, although I have conveyed its greetings and messages to Commonwealth Parliaments on two occasions—that there were many subjects on which I believed that there ought to be permanent consultation. However, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Beresford Craddock) says that he does not worry much about the opinion of India. Many of us do.
    Mr. Beresford Craddock: The hon. Gentleman must not misquote me. I said that I cannot see how India can take part in these discussions at the
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    present time in view of her attitude over Hyderabad and Kashmir in the past. That was my statement.
    Mr. Hale: That is, of course, a devastating attack upon the Government. How can we discuss Hungary after Egypt? How can we discuss Egypt after Cyprus? How can we discuss Cyprus after Kenya? Where docs the argument end? Let me remind the hon. Member that it was Mr. Nehru's wisdom, patience and courage that helped to bring the armistice negotiations in Korea to a satisfactory conclusion—
    Mr. Bevan: In Indo-China, too.
    Mr. Hale:—and solved the problem of Indo-China. We get some tittering from the other side of the House when Mr. Nehru's name is mentioned. He is one of the great men of the world. He would be the first to say that there was a greater than he who preceded him, whom right hon. Gentlemen opposite used to call "a half-naked fakir".
    This lack of consultation has done us infinite harm in Asia. Anyone who has been in touch with Asian opinion knows what the Asians were thinking long before this expedition was decided upon. They were saying, "This is an act of colonialism. The Prime Minister of England is using language to Colonel Nasser, a coloured man, which he would never use to a European Prime Minister." They were saying, "These are threats against a weak country by a strong country." They were saying, "This is a relic of the old imperialism."
    I think that was an over-simplification, and I do not by any means agree with it, but it must be understood that this was the position. It was rather unforgivable of Mr. Foster Dulles to make his reference to colonialism. It is one of the new experiences for hon. Members in this House that after eleven years in Parliament we can now criticise Mr. Foster Dulles without having Tory shouts of "anti-Americanism".
    I was one of those who raised the question in respect of Guatemala. My right hon. and noble Friend Earl Attlee, opening a foreign affairs debate, mentioned Guatemala with the moderation which he always used in his speeches. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) said that

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    it was a long whine against America. That was the attitude then.
    The worst thing in the world today—if we are to get the United Nations right and working, let us start with the first thing—is the American colonialism in China, which has held the bar against any major reform. Is there an hon. Member who would say that he thinks that Chiang Kai-Shek should be representing 500 million Chinese on the Security Council at a moment like this? Do hon. Members realise the anxiety of the Chinese for resurgence and their desire to take part in international life? That will not be realised, perhaps, by anyone who has not been to China and has not talked to those kindly, cultured, decent people who have lived for so long in the shadows and are now trying to emerge. Anyone who has done that cannot but be convinced that their Communism is not Russian Communism.
    The Chinese have established a very curious contradiction in terms. They have something approaching both a democracy and a dictatorship. They have their full freedom of criticism. It may very well be that one could not alter that régime. They have party systems which are different from ours. However, there is no question that they are much more anxious to be in the Indian orbit than the Soviet orbit in foreign affairs.
    If we are going to start again—I hope we are going to start again—without undue recrimination, one of the first things that we have to do if we are to have China seated at the Security Council is to say that we will not worry so much about whether our policy is going to be political or economical but will start doing the thing because it is right. I believe that a foreign policy based on that principle might have some hope of success.
    China is a nation of 500 million people, many of them, of course, still living in acute poverty. I think that some of the claims made about the magnitude of the economic recovery have been absurd. There are areas of China to which few people have gone since the revolution, but we can see their educational institutions and everywhere we can see modern Russian machines, modern Bulgarian machines, modern Hungarian machines, but nothing from the United Kingdom because of the silly blockade.
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    So a new generation, arising in what will become one of the most powerful countries in the world as time goes by, will not be touched by our thought, will not know our literature, our traditions and the contribution that Britain can always make, or always could make, to international moral standards. It is a tragedy and we should say that that state of affairs will come to an end.
    I want to return to dealing with the Middle East, and here it may be that I shall strike a discordant note. I have never seen why someone should not nationalise a canal if they so want. If there is a breach of treaty obligations, that is another matter. One has to have consultations and seek to revise the treaty. However, I have always taken the view—and, indeed, I am pleased to see how some of my old views are now becoming popular—that there should, be international canals, internationally owned and internationally defended.
    If hon. Members care to read a pamphlet published in 1947 and called "Keep Left", they will find that suggestion, but of course we did not say what places in the world we wanted nationalised. One says that Panama must be nationalised and the Straits of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles and, possibly, the Barian Sea and that one must try to establish a new rule of law and get it accepted. It is easier to suggest these things than to get them carried out, but at least I have always taken the view—and it seems to be a reasonable view, although all experience contradicts it—that if one is to have foreign policy at all, it is a good idea to know which way one is going, to know one's ultimate objectives, even if they are not all immediately practicable.
    There was a rule of the House that one did not criticise the head of a friendly State. I remember that when I wanted to say that King Farouk was a dirty old lecher I came under rebuke. That rule seems to have fallen in abeyance. I urge the House to remember that Egypt is a country of about 20 million people, most of them very poor. King Farouk was ejected by a coup d'etat and replaced by a military dictatorship. No one knowing my views would expect me to regard a military dictatorship very highly, but it is the Government of that area, and, in the words of the famous tribute

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    paid to our Prime Minister, the best one Egypt has got at the moment.
    If our interest in Egypt had been a constructive interest, if our interest in Egypt had been an interest in the people of Egypt, then indeed it might have been worth while. What is the history of this matter? It is of a foreign policy in the Middle East dominated by Standard Oil and its subsidiaries. Here I now begin to see the Labour Party returning to its old traditions. We shall have a debate on oil. We used to talk a lot about oil. It is extremely important to talk about oil and this great international cartel which in power transcends half a dozen small countries.
    The situation in the Canal was not on the whole a very satisfactory one even before Colonel Nasser made his rather foolish and rather provocative nationalisation statement. We are told that it was under international control. Of course it was never under international control. It was run by a company with headquarters in Paris and doing extremely well and paying an annual dividend about six times as much as the original capital. In spite of the fact that the value of the franc has come down to 1,025 to the £, the over-all value of the shares has increased.
    There are nine directors of whom six represent shipping interests and three the Government. The company did not undertake the international control. Until the present Minister of Defence decided to evacuate Egypt, that task was undertaken by the British soldier. The British taxpayer paid the cost of defending the Canal and the company in Paris collected the dividends. That is not international control of the Canal any more than Standard Oil has international control of the Saudi Arabian oilfields.
    The Prime Minister came to the House some time ago and said that he had established—and it was a cornerstone of his policy—in that area the Bagdad Pact, a conference of five countries which would meet and provide an effective barrier to Russian infiltration in Egypt. It was the old theory of the cordon sanitaire. If one is to have a cordon sanitaire it must at least be a cord. It must at least hang together or its members hang separately.
    Today we heard the news that the four other Bagdad Pact countries have met
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    and passed a resolution asking us to get out of Egypt. Those countries include Pakistan, a Commonwealth country which up to now has been by far the most docile Commonwealth country we have ever had. I do not recollect any previous disagreement with Pakistan on international affairs. So the Bagdad Pact has gone.
    Later there came the trade negotiations with the Soviet Union. There followed—and personally I do not blame Her Majesty's Government for this, because they were absolutely helpless over the Aswan Dam—Washington's decision to take no action, and then Mr. Dulles coming along with the World Bank behind him and offering 200 million dollars for the Aswan Dam. I complained at the time, because we did not attempt to consult Commonwealth countries and colonial countries approaching Commonwealth status.
    Riparian nations in the Commonwealth were not consulted. However, one wanted to help the people of Egypt and had it been done in that spirit, it might have been an act of real statesmanship. Had there been a conference and a plan to settle the conflicting needs of the countries involved, it might have been very good, because, behind this picture of Colonel Nasser—and there is no value in referring to the head of a State as a barrow-boy or a cardboard dictator, or making up these phrases if one can avoid it—are the fellaheen.
    Five thousand years ago in that lovely and fertile narrow gorge of the Upper Nile, the fellaheen began with their shadouf, their balancing stick of bamboo or some other wood, loaded at one end with some dried mud, to bucket out water from the Nile and irrigate the surrounding lands. The record of Egypt can be summed up in the one sentence; there came the days of Egypt's fame; there came the whole story of the Pharoahs and their power; Egypt at one time was one of the dominating countries of the world; there came the Roman occupation, the withdrawal into Africa, the years that the locusts ate and, centuries after, the British occupation which lasted 70 years; and at the end of that 5,000 years the fellaheen in the Upper Nile today is still there with his shadouf and his little tripod, bucketing out his water and pouring it on to his land.

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    That is the extent of the progress which civilisation has given to him. In the poorest of continents, he is still one of the poorest. Yet, a few miles up the Nile, one can see under the Anglo-Egyptian condominium the Gazeira scheme from which, with a little help and a little organisation, they have been able to attain a standard of prosperity enjoyed by no other peasant in Africa.
    The tragic approach which has been made from time to time to the problem is exemplified in one thing more than any other. We rush in with the offer of £50 million or so to Egypt—at least the United States do. We rush in with an offer that means something to Colonel Nasser—something which I believe has been a major ambition, because I believe that he does want at least to help his own people, whether he is right or wrong about his methods. We rush in without any consultation, and yet up the Nile and the Blue Nile there is Ethiopia with all its problems, Ethiopia with its mud still going down the Nile and forming the soil which gives the Sudan and Egypt their prosperity, Ethiopia without the necessary afforestation to protect its hillsides and give it prosperity. No one thinks about Ethiopia because Ethiopia is not a threat, Ethiopia is not a menace, Ethiopia is not a Power.
    Last night I turned to an old book that I had not turned to for many years. It was first published in 1902 and recently reissued. It is John A. Hobson's study, "Imperialism". If hon. Members will pause for a moment on the situation today in Hungary and the Middle East, they might listen to these words and feel that the Asian view on our policy was not perhaps so unfair as has been sometimes suggested:
    "Aggressive imperialism is virtually confined to the coercion by stronger or better armed nations of nations which are or seem to be weaker and incapable of effective resistance. Everywhere some definite economic or political gain is sought by the imperial aggressor. The chivalrous spirit of imperialism leads neither Great Britain nor any other state to assail a powerful state however tyrranous or to assist a weak state reputed to be poor."
    I do not think there is a more classic statement of the events of the last few weeks, because those of us who are loudest in demanding United Nations action in Egypt are a little appalled at
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    the consequences of United Nations action in Hungary. Let us face it. The right hon. Gentleman referred to Munich. It is a long time since I blamed the appeasers of Munich. It is a long time since I condemned the action, because I thought that when Mr. Chamberlain said that he was the one man who could look into the abyss and realise the consequences of action, at least he was saying something which was moving and which was true. We all of us in the last day or two have been brought to look into an abyss much worse than that envisaged in 1938. Most of us would recoil from the prospect if it were humanly possible to do so.
    Therefore, we are brought to two propositions. I must conclude now because I have been speaking for 27 minutes and I had not intended to exceed that time, but there are two things I want to say. What is the foundation of an effective foreign policy? Treaties? They are constantly torn up. We have torn up one or two. There was the Tripartite Declaration quite recently. Alliances? Secret diplomacy still persists. The United Nations? It is impossible for the United Nations to act with sufficient speed in an emergency. Though I am all for standing by the United Nations, it is folly not to recognise that if Russian tanks crossed the Elbe there is nothing the United Nations could ever do in time, and France would be occupied before their deliberations were finished.
    One of my right hon. Friends said that he did not think it was possible to agree a foreign policy in the Commonwealth. I do not myself call myself Christian. We call ourselves a Christian country and certainly I have found in the New Testament as good a foreign policy as I have ever found in a party pamphlet. I base that foreign policy on one statement that I copied yesterday from a United Nations publication recently issued. They are the opening words:
    "Out of the world's 900 million children two-thirds—or 600 million—lack adequate food, clothing, shelter and protection against disease. All they can look forward to is a short life burdened by privation and debilitating ills. Because most under-privileged children live in countries with the least means of improving child health standards, international aid is both essential and welcome."
    Mr. Speaker, you do not make friends of people by lending them money. I have

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    lent quite a lot in my time, when I had some money, and I made a lot of enemies by that process. Mr. Speaker, you do not make permanent friends of people because you are in a common jam together, but you can make friends of the people of the world if you preach a doctrine of love instead of a doctrine of hate, a doctrine of sympathy and help instead of a doctrine of power.
    This House was confronted yesterday with one of the direst problems it has ever been called upon to confront. I mentioned it in my opening remarks, and I will not repeat it. We finished on a little note that we would send a little help to refugees. People went away with a pious satisfaction that something at least had been done, that we had shown our sympathy with the suffering, and yet Europe is full of refugees whom we have neglected since the end of the last war. There is an organisation to look after them but it has no money. Year after year it has published reports that its work is frustrated by the failure of people to give help.
    We gave £80,000 to this organisation, and we are a country that can spend £1,500 million on armaments. I am not attacking the present Government on this; my own Government was pretty bad. This has been the policy for the last ten or eleven years. If we go on with this policy we stand condemned as whited sepulchres before the whole world. For the refugees we give the equivalent of 1d. per year for every person in the Kingdom. There are 850,000 refugees in Arabia, and 200,000 in the Sinai Peninsula, and for them the figure works out at ¼d. per year per head that we give out of our goodness to the poor and suffering of the world.
    When we decided to spend £1,500 million or £1,600 million a year on armaments. I remember that my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) expressed dubiety whether we should get value for it. He said at the time, in a speech which I should not like to recall now because of the circumstances in which it was made, that there was such a shortage of minerals and of material and labour that all we should do would be to put prices up; but I do not think that he, in his most brilliant and thoughtful moments, ever thought that we should get less. I do not think that he thought that we should be told, after
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    four or five years of this stupendous rearmament in which we nearly doubled the normal post-war expenditure and multiplied by twelve or thirteen the prewar expenditure, that we had not got any aeroplanes or army and that if we wanted to take on one of the weakest countries in the world we should have to call up reservists and train them for three months.
    My right hon. Friend, in his brilliant speech last week, made reference to the hydrogen bomb. We have now reached the stage when arms are useless, utterly useless. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member has got hiccups, I suggest that he goes outside and puts a key down his neck. Does the hon. Member wish to intervene in Hungary with armed forces?
    Sir Robert Boothby: I have not made a sound.
    Mr. Hale: I am not talking to the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Sir R. Boothby) but to someone behind him.
    Let us face the fact that it would require very terrible circumstances indeed in which any Government of Great Britain could envisage the possible use of the hydrogen bomb. We have reached a stage where we failed to divert Colonel Nasser from his purpose. In those circumstances, we are entitled to wonder what is the good of it. Let us at least start by a substantial cut in what is a grossly wasteful expenditure and let us apply that money to the ends of decency.
    Let us send our lads out, this time as messengers for health, as scientists who will try to bind wounds and cure disease, as men who will apply modern science to the 50 million people in the tropics who are suffering from yaws and the 150 million people suffering from malaria. Let us try to wipe out the great scourges that afflict mankind. If we do that, we shall have started a foreign policy which will win us the enduring respect and the love of many of the peoples of the world
    5.41 p.m.
    Mr. J. J. Astor: I hope that the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) will forgive me if I do not follow the theme on which he has spoken. I would not attempt to match either his speed of delivery or the wit which he so often brings to the House in his speeches.

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    I would intervene very briefly to put a somewhat different view from that which has so far been put from these benches in these debates. When the Government announced that British troops had been committed to the Middle East the country was naturally bewildered and the House was deeply divided. At the time, I supported the Government, not on the merits of the case then but because our troops were in transit and, set against the background of a divided House, any dissent in the party responsible for Government would have put our troops in an impossible position.
    Now the Government have had occasion and time to deploy not only their troops but their arguments. We have reached, as it were, the end of one phase of this operation. It would be less than honest and less than generous not to pay great tribute to the courage and resolution shown by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary, and their colleagues, in carrying out what they considered to be the right policy: cold, cool courage. It will be less than honest not to say that if, out of the confusion and of the situation that we now find, there is a better possibility of U.N.O. realising that it must have force, that is a partial success. I think every hon. Member would agree that if that does emerge, that must be considered a success.
    Hon. Members opposite would not agree with me when I say that the majority of the country, on the evidence that we have at present, is behind the Government in this action. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] That is my belief. It is entirely hypothetical, and one does not know. I am sure that the vast majority of my hon. Friends are behind the Government, and I believe that the Conservative constituency associations are also behind the Government.
    There comes a time when, if one does not agree with the Government, one has to make one's position clear. It is said that there is never a good time to be a rebel, but if one takes that view one might as well keep eternal silence. I should only like to say that, as the Government deploy their reasons and their evidence, I am more of the opinion that
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    their policy was unnecessary and wrong. [An HON. MEMBER: "Go over to the other side."] To suggest that I should be on the other side is a suggestion that this is a party issue. It is not. It is too important for that. If we take the view that the Government's action was unnecessary we must accept that if no action had been taken there were many very grave risks. I accept that.
    To take the view that the Government were wrong—I hesitate to use the word "moral" because in politics the word does not mean very much—to say that the Government were morally wrong, is to suggest that they have put the whole status of England in a worse position than it was some weeks ago. I accept that that, I am afraid, is the position. Against that background, which is my sincere and very deep feeling, I can only hope that the Government will show as much courage in extricating our forces as they had to have in sending them in. I hope that the method of extricating our forces may provide some way in which we can find unity. I hope that those who are critics of the Government can agree with that.
    I have intervened only to make one point to the Government: it seems essential that the withdrawal of our troops must be under some arrangement with U.N.O. I question whether this House is competent to decide on the details of the phasing of the exit of our troops and the entry of another force, and of the composition of the other force. With events moving so fast, I do not think we are able to judge the exact details.
    I do urge the Government to realise that we are not in a position to lay down too many conditions. Naturally, every effort must be made to see that our troops are safe, but the idea that we are either materially or morally in a position to make too many conditions would be wrong. I only hope that that is in the back of the Government's mind in the negotiations which we hope are going on.
    It would be a credit to the House if we could find some unanimity in the method of extricating our forces. For my part, I think that a more or less complete concession to what U.N.O. demands is, unfortunately, the inevitable consequence of a policy that was neither necessary nor right.
    5.48 p.m.
    The Rev. Llywelyn Williams: The House of Commons is the proud possessor of many fine traditions. One of them is its willingness and preparedness to acknowledge moral courage. As the speaker following the hon. Member for Sutton (Mr. J. J. Astor), I applaud the moral courage of his speech, to which we have just listened. In my political life I have always held loyalty to be one of the cardinal virtues. Therefore, I can appreciate that it must be very difficult for people who are jealous of party loyalties to speak as the hon. Member has spoken, when the tone and message of the speech are not in agreement with the general outline of his party's policy.
    While I am referring to this matter, perhaps the House will allow me to refer with sincere gratitude and real appreciation to the moral courage of the former Minister of State for Foreign Affairs who, too, showed the moral courage which the House is always prepared to admire.
    We have all been witnesses of, and indeed in one sense participators in, something closely resembling a Greek tragedy, according to the Euripides tradition. A Greek tragedy is supposed to evoke feelings of terror and of pity. Many of us have known how those two basic emotions have been evoked during these last ten days. It seemed sometimes as though as a nation we were being driven inexorably and inevitably to a terrible disaster.
    If my recollection of the tragedies of Euripides is correct, towards the end of those Greek tragedies a special dramatic contrivance known as the deus ex machina appeared and the appearance of that intervention was for the purpose of solving the seemingly insoluble. On Tuesday some of us felt that the Prime Minister appeared in that guise, but it was a very short-lived release from the tragedy which seems to be heightening and intensifying day by day.
    I hope that I do no injustice to hon. Members opposite, but generally their theme song during these debates has been one which could be summed up in the phrase, "The end justifies the means". I say this to their credit, none of them has seemed to indulge in any fictitious glorification of the means adopted—but they have insisted throughout that at least the end for which they and the present
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    Government are striving has justified and will justify the means necessary for that action.
    That is a very dangerous political philosophy to adopt. It has the element of something very Machiavellian in it. I personally believe that a much wiser approach and a much sounder philosophy was uttered by a great Free Churchman fifty years ago, when he said:
    "What is morally wrong cannot be politically right."
    I take my stand on that.
    What were the means that the Government felt to be necessary and inevitable in the present circumstances? They flagrantly ignored the United Nations Charter—a very dangerous approach to any international problem—they delivered an impossible ultimatum to a nation which cannot be spoken of in the same breath as Britain in the military sense, and when, as was obvious, that ultimatum could not be accepted, they immediately commenced military operations. When the first bomb dropped, probably on some military airfield in Egypt, it jettisoned not only dynamite, but also the good name of this country. The repercussions of that first bomb and the bombs which followed it have yet to be fully evaluated.
    What were the ends, what were tie objectives which the Government had in mind? They have been stated in this House time after time. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have insisted that the chief objective was to bring about a cessation of hostilities between the Israelis and the Egyptians. At the present juncture that has been achieved. Surely, however, this present cessation of hostilities—even though the United Nations police force is now being set up and may well be taking up its position, as all of us agree it should be taking its position in the near future—does not ensure—because people remember for more than a few months—that the Egyptians and their fellow Arabs will not remember for years to come the humiliation which has come to them as a result of this act of aggression on the part of Israel. We have not come to the full reckoning of that, nor of its implications, in our debates.
    The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and other hon. Members have reiterated time after time that they were very concerned about British lives and

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    British interests and about the freedom of the Canal. It is true that so far as we know now lives of British nationals have not been jeopardised to any great extent, but the whole point is that the bills for this tragic disaster will be coming in for years and years to come. It may be that someone three years hence will have a dagger in his back for what has been done in these last ten days. History unfolds itself in very strange ways in this world. We must not think that because up to the present stage there has been no serious loss of British lives everything is finished. There will be an aftermath, and he will be a very brave man who would confidently prophesy how this will affect even British lives in future.
    The announcement made by the Minister of Fuel and Power yesterday at least gives the lie to the claim that British interests have been safeguarded. The oil supplied to Britain and Western Europe is not freer now. We have already had a 10 per cent. cut, and everyone knows that that is just a precursor of more serious and drastic cuts to come in the very near future. In an evaluation of the means which have been used in this terrible business, we should not lose sight of the considerations which I have put before the House. Let us for a short time think of some of the consequences of the action of the Government. I felt very sad indeed that some of the cynical references made here to the United Nations were made, at least on two occasions in two speeches, by my hon. Friends. Cynicism is not very compatible with Socialism in my understanding of those words.
    I must regret the references to the United Nations by the Foreign Secretary in particular. I exempt the Prime Minister to some extent, but I have been very saddened by some of the references by the Foreign Secretary to the United Nations, and particularly by the intonation of his voice when making them. In this House we can fasten on to the intonation of the voice as well as the content of the remarks. Let us get this perfectly straight: the United Nations as an organisation is as strong as the constituent nations make it. If Britain sabotages the United Nations and weakens it, how can it possibly function as a powerful institution? We must not think of the United
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    Nations as something abstract and divorced from the nations which make it up.
    We have rendered a great dis-service to the functioning of the United Nations during the last few days. I can well believe that our alliance with America will stand the test of the misunderstandings which have occurred during the last days. It is as much to the interests of the Americans as it is to ours that that alliance should be indissoluble. But no one should pretend that real harm has not been done to the good will which is felt in many quarters in the United States towards Britain and Britain's particular problems and difficulties in these days. To see that one has only to read some of the letters in The Times and the Manchester Guardian, written by Americans who proudly claim themselves as Anglophiles, and who have been saddened to the very foundation of their being by the way in which we have acted during the last few days.
    I thoroughly agree with the part of the Amendment which stresses the importance of summoning without any further delay a conference of the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth. So far as I can see, it is very difficult to know how much harm has been done to the Commonwealth as a body. Our old friends, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, will remain our friends whatever happens, but some hon. Members opposite, including the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Beresford Craddock), who is listening to me now and has already made his personal position clear, must remember that the words spoken in this House travel all the way to India and to Pakistan.
    Sir B. Baxter: Hon. Members opposite should remember that.
    The Rev. Ll. Williams: All the words spoken in the House travel to the East. I deprecate very much the scurvy way, the cheap and the sneering way in which some people have seen fit to refer to Pandit Nehru. We have not so many friends in the world today—I say that with regret—that we can afford to lose the friendship of a leader like Pandit Nehru and a nation like India. We shall need a bridge in the East. China is on the way towards no one knows what in future development. No one understands

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    the Chinese better than the Indians. No other nation has a closer affinity with that strange people, 600 million of them, who are marching forward to some strange destiny. We may well need the friendly good offices of the leaders of the Indian nation in the future in that respect.
    May I refer very briefly, because I admit immediately that this is very speculative, to the tragic events in Hungary? I say without any equivocation that we have plunged ourselves, open-eyed, into very serious disaster from the moral standpoint, but both quantitatively and qualitatively what has happened in Hungary is much worse. Qualitatively it is worse because at least in our military attack on Egypt we confined ourselves, by and large, to military airfields and other military targets, and also because we have not tried to interfere with the Egyptian people's ideas of how they should be governed. I think it is right and fair that that should be said—that the nature of our, I think, follies in Egypt do not compare with the savage brutality which has been revealed in the Russian attitude towards Hungary. Quantitatively, it is worse because, although we have no official estimates, it is very likely that the casualties in Hungary are infinitely greater than the casualties in Egypt.
    It is very difficult, I admit immediately, to discuss the causal relationship between our military intervention in Egypt and this terrible business in Hungary. Some of us may overstress the causality. Some of us perhaps tend to minimise the possibility of a link between the two tragic events. I find myself in the middle position. I believe that they are linked, but only perhaps in a psychological sense. Egypt was a smokescreen for Hungary. It was, I am certain, not an instigation of Hungary. That may be regarded as a quibble, but we are dealing with imponderables and no person can speak dogmatically on these things, about which we have such scant information.
    I want to bring my remarks to a close by bringing the subject to a sharper focus. It would be impertinent of me to probe into the domestic matters of the Conservative Party, and I do not intend to do so, except to make this reference. I believe that most hon. Members opposite have been troubled because they feel as all decent people feel—that we have
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    been standing and are now standing on the brink of a disaster. But they have been actuated, understandably, by considerations of party loyalty and loyalty to leaders.
    Nevertheless, I cannot speak without bitterness about one section of the Conservative Party. I am not unmindful of the fact—goodness knows, all of us have sufficient imagination to know—that any Prime Minister carries on his shoulders a terrifying burden of responsibility. I have thought very often and very sincerely about that burden on the Prime Minister. But I must speak my mind. I feel that his shoulders are too weak to carry the burden any longer, and that that burden has been made heavier by the pushing and the prodding of the people who, notoriously, are known as the Suez group. How can any statesman carry a heavy burden of responsibility when he has been harrowed and harassed and driven by people who do not share that responsibility but who, in their political thinking, are a danger to the destiny of this nation?
    I finish on this note. It may not be too popular, perhaps, to quote any words spoken by Mr. John Foster Dulles, but he used one expression which has remained with us because of its dramatic impact. He referred, albeit in another context, to the need for "an agonising re-appraisal". I am one who loves this country. We are sometimes taunted that we do not love our country, and the obvious reply is that we may not love the same things in our country as do some hon. Members opposite; they may love other things in our country. What I love is the Welfare State and the fundamental decency of the British people. I am not concerned about military might. These taunts are, therefore, pointless and serve no useful purpose.
    All of us, surely, are mature enough at this time not to harbour the idea, "My country right or wrong, in all circumstances and in any circumstance". That surely is something which we have left behind long enough ago.
    We are a divided nation, and we really must try now to see what oar position in the world is. We are not the military power that we were. Economically, we are not as powerful as I should like us to be. We must have an appraisal, a

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    re-appraisal of what we can do, and, as I see it, our greatest contribution for the future will be to reveal the moral leadership which I am certain this country is still capable of revealing to the world.
    That is why I feel so genuinely, so terribly sorry that during these last few days the present Government stand condemned for what they have done. I do not want to speak too much in a party sense on this issue, which concerns the destinies of nations and not the fluctuating fortunes of Elections, but I feel terribly sad that an opportunity was granted—and was missed.
    6.11 p.m.
    Mr., Julian Ridsdale: In following the hon. Member for Abertillery (The Rev. Ll. Williams), I would like to say at once that I do not hold to the philosophy—indeed, I think that today very few people in the free world do—of "My country right or wrong, I serve thee." The chief burden on all of us who are faced with today's ghastly problems is concerned with preventing a third world war. My approach to this Middle Eastern problem has been entirely along that line, and as I listened this afternoon to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Mr. Elliot), I could not help but recall the saying that the more things change the more they remain the same.
    In 1936 this country faced a situation somewhat similar, in my view, to the situation in which we now find ourselves. The question then was whether we and the French should act together to prevent the German occupation of the Rhineland. I was then a soldier at Aldershot, and I remember so well the words of the generals ringing in my ears, when they said that war with Germany was inevitable. I remember how one May afternoon in 1936 I went over to Chequers to meet Stanley Baldwin and my aunt, and when I was talking with him at that time I could see what weighed so heavily with him. It was the adverse effect that any action he might take would have, first, on American public opinion and on opinion in the Commonwealth, and secondly—and he was a sincere man—the great difficulty he would have in committing a divided country, especially a democracy, to war. Looking back on those events, I am convinced
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    —and I do not say this lightly and with-our feeling—that had Baldwin taken a different course and come to a different decision the Second World War would probably have been prevented.
    Sir B. Baxter: And would have destroyed Hitler.
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker Mr. P. Noel-Baker rose—
    Mr. Ridsdale: I would prefer to make my speech in my own way. I believe that action, if taken then, would have been the stitch in time to save nine and would have prevented the Second World War.
    Against this background of history I have been judging the events of the last nine days, and I am convinced that the action that our Prime Minister has taken has averted a third world war in spite of the present difficulties. In common with many other people in this country, I must say that I admire the superb moral qualities in the Prime Minister, because I know with what great difficulty he must have come to this decision, as indeed all of us do who conscientiously support him.
    Right hon. and hon. Members opposite have been speaking about Asia. Some of them may have experience of Asia, others may have made visits there. In my twenties I lived in Japan, and to the best of my ability I tried to understand a race very different from ours. If there is one thing more vital than anything else in dealing with oriental countries I should say it is that in order to bring them with us we must not wash our dirty linen in public.
    I know the sincerity of right hon. and hon. Members opposite in bringing forward the views which they have expressed, but unfortunately in the East that is taken as weakness. If there is any reason why India, Pakistan, Iraq and Ceylon and other countries in the East are not following us today it is because this country is speaking with a divided voice.
    Mr. R. H. S. Crossman Mr. R. H. S. Crossman (Coventry, East) rose—
    Mr. Ridsdale: No, if I could make my speech in my own way I should prefer it.
    I would remind hon. Members opposite of what happened in Europe before the war when we spoke with a divided voice. Alas, some of the then leaders of

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    the Opposition, those experienced Labour statesmen, are no longer with us; they have confessed their shortcomings. Those were the years when Mr. Lansbury, then Chairman of the Labour Party, said that the best way to peace was to lay down our arms. I must say that it was that attitude which was taken up by the German Ambassador, Ribbentrop, who telegraphed back to his Government and said that this country was soft. [Interruption.] I will ask hon. Gentlemen opposite to weigh their words when talking about—
    Mr. Warbey Mr. Warbey rose—
    Mr. Ridsdale: I cannot give way.
    Mr. Speaker: I cannot have two hon. Members on their feet at the same time. The hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) has not given way.
    Mr. Ridsdale: I will allow the hon. Member to intervene on this occasion.
    Mr. Warbey: I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for giving way. I merely wanted to ask him this. When he was talking about the divided voices in this country before the war, would he include among those voices the voice of the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) who was attacking the Chamberlain Government?
    Mr. Ridsdale: It was a very different voice from the voices of other people on the other side of the House who did not wish to rearm the country at that time.
    The point that I am making is that we have seen the example and consequence of disunity in Europe and how it led to the Second World War, but have hon. Members opposite weighed the consequence of disunity in Asia? In 1932 when the Japanese invaded Manchuria we tried to preserve the League of Nations by getting the Americans to act with us. Unfortunately we failed. We tried throughout the whole summer of 1941 again to get the Americans to act with us against the Japanese intention to move southwards in the Pacific. We failed to obtain that unity. In 1950, at the time of Korea, American policy and British policy were out of step. Again we saw the result in an aggressive move in Korea.
    If we are to prevent the Third World War it is not enough to have a divided
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    House and a divided country. Let those who talk about India, Pakistan and cither Commonwealth countries not corning with us weigh some of their words, because in the same way as in the past actions of disunity have caused wars, I believe that one of the great factors which may bring on the Third World War, whether we like it or not, will be our failure to act with the Americans and with the Commonwealth, and that failure, above all else, is caused by the utterances of hon. Members opposite.
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: May I ask the hon. Gentleman a question? He has spoken of events in 1936. I voted in an all-party committee with Sir Austen Chamberlain for action in the Rhineland. That action could have been taken under the Covenant or the Locarno Pact with the League of Nations approval. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Goebbels explained in 1938 that Hitler went into the Rhineland because Britain and France had sabotaged the League of Nations over Abyssinia? Is the hon. Gentleman further aware that the Labour Party Conference in 1935 voted by a majority of 93 per cent. for military action against Mussolini to stop the invasion of Abyssinia?
    Mr. David Llewellyn: And then voted against conscription.
    Mr. Ridsdale: The point that I was making was that our failure in those years before the war arose from the fact that the Labour Party, although it may have voted, never supported the defence of this country. By this very disunity in the country, the Second World War was started.
    6.24 p.m.
    Mr. F. H. Hayman: I should like to take up one or two points which have been made by the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale). I suggest to him that during the 1930s the Labour Party had collective security as one of the foremost planks in its programme, so that there would be a collective force, the kind of international police force which is being lauded by the party opposite.
    I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that when Japan invaded Manchuria at the beginning of the 1930s it was the then Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon as he then was, who refused to agree to the

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    suggestion put forward by the American Secretary of State that economic sanctions should be applied against Japan. He also said—I forget his exact words—that the more things change, the more they remain what they were before. It is the purpose of my speech to make some points along those lines.
    We are facing as a country one of the greatest crises that we have ever had to face. The second Commandment says that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children until the third and fourth generation. I do not want to enter into any ecclesiastical arguments about personal salvation, but we must be aware by looking around us today that we are in some ways having to pay the price of the mistakes of our forefathers, even centuries ago when they instiuted, for instance, the slave trade.
    I will not go any further into that, but I should like to refer to The Hague Conference of 1899 which was called on the initiative of the then Tsar of Russia. I should like to quote from Lowes Dickinson's "International Anarchy". He refers to German documents published after the First World War and says that Lord Salisbury, our Foreign Minister, in conversation with the German Ambassador at a private interview, gave him
    "the distinct impression that this country will take part in the Conference, and will recognise to the full the peaceable intentions of the Russian Tsar, but in the discussions will assent to nothing which may limit the further development of the fighting efficiency of the English Fleet or compel England to submit important English interests to the decision of third parties."
    I suggest that the action of the Government during the past three months has been precisely along those lines. They hold that Britain has special interests in the Canal. I do not deny that, but the supreme difference between the Government and the Opposition is that we believe that international difficulties of that kind should be settled by a third party and that we should not resort to force.
    Indeed, the Kellogg Pact, to which we were signatories twenty years ago and which is still binding, laid down—and we agreed—that we should renounce armed force in settling our affairs. But in this case the Government have prepared deliberately for the use of force in support of our interests in a foreign country.
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    That is the difference. To the world and to many of us here it seems that the Government used the Israeli attack against Egypt in Sinai last week as an excuse to use force, as indeed they had prepared for it at the end of July and the beginning of August, to settle an international dispute, instead of referring it to the International Court or to the United Nations.
    I am old enough to have remembered as a boy the Russo-Japanese War of 1903. I quote again from Lowes Dickinson:
    "The result was a crushing victory for Japan, and, as future historians may have to record, a turning-point in the history of the world."
    Reference has already been made today to the over-running of South-East Asia by Japan in six weeks in 1942. Hong Kong, the Philippines, Borneo, Indo-China, Indonesia, New Guinea, Malaya and Burma were over-run by Japan in six week. We cannot afford to antagonise Asia. We cannot afford to think that anybody who is not of the white race is some inferior kind of being. That is impossible today.
    The League of Nations, at the end of the First World War, gave Britain and the world a great hope. Many hon. Members here will recall those weeks before the day in November, 1918, when the Armistice came, which we shall be celebrating on Sunday. Nobody can forget the hope that surged through Britain, and through Europe particularly, at the suggestion of President Wilson that we should try to form some kind of international organisation. The League of Nations failed because the countries in it were not prepared to support it to the full. At the end of the Second World War, the United Nations organisation was formed.
    All these three institutions to which I have referred, The Hague Conference of 1899, the League of Nations in 1920, and the United Nations organisation in 1945, were organisations to support the rule of international law. That, I think, is why we on these benches, being so hurt, have voiced our opposition to the Government and the party opposite most strongly, because the party opposite has resorted to war in support of Britain's interests in the Suez Canal instead of referring them to a court of law or to an international court of some kind.

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    The Government, in 1954, decided that it was necessary to withdraw from the Canal Zone the British forces which had been there for many years and, I think, totalled about 70,000 or 80,000, because to hold the Canal under modern conditions, with the hydrogen bomb always in the background, was an impossibility. Two years later, we have gone into the Canal Zone again without thinking, I would suggest, of the inevitable consequences. In July, 1956, the Prime Minister succumbed to the pressure of the so-called Suez group within his party, and from that moment he and his Government, as I think, were preparing to move info the Canal Zone, with force, to control it.
    In September, 1956, after two days of dramatic debate here, it was not until the last moment that the Prime Minister agreed to refer the dispute to the United Nations. It was an equivocal acceptance of the principle, but nevertheless he made it. It certainly seems to me that last week the Government and the Prime Minister used the excuse of an Israeli invasion of Sinai to do what they had already prepared to do and hoped to do, and intended to do until that date in September to which I have referred.
    The great issue seems to me to be the flouting of international law and of solemn pledges not to resort to force in such a situation. We have incurred irreparable consequences. One of those consequences, I suggest, is that we are branded as an aggressor. As one or two speakers on these benches have already made clear, we are as patriotic as hon. Members opposite. This is our country. We love our country—of course we do. We are proud of our country and of its institutions. But we believe that the honour of our country has been stained by what has happened in recent days.
    We have disrupted the Commonwealth. We hope it may be possible to heal the breach. But undoubtedly this aggression in Egypt by Britain and France has raised acutely once again the clash of colour, the clash between the white races and the coloured peoples of the world. It is reminiscent of nineteenth century imperialism. I am not blaming our country for that; those were days when the conception of international law as we
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    have seen it emerge in the twentieth century had not dawned.
    The Government say that they went into the Canal to keep it open. We were told yesterday that the Canal is blocked, and it may take months to re-open it. The pipelines from Syria have been cut, and we have been given instructions to cut down the use of oil fuels and petrol in this country. The Government are trying to avoid introducing petrol rationing. I suggest that before many days are over, we shall all be deluged with complaints from garage proprietors because the Government have thrown on their shoulders the responsibility for administering a terribly difficult ordinance. The dollar cost of American oil will be terrific. I am not a financier, but it seems a simple assumption to make that we shall face an extremely difficult situation in our balance of payments.
    The gravest consequence of all has been the stain on our national prestige. The Bagdad Pact, of which the Government were so proud, is today in ruins. We never believed that it was worth as much as they thought it was, but it is they, by their action last week in going into Egypt, who have destroyed the Pact which the present Chancellor worked so hard to get.
    Before I sit down, I should like to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Sutton (Mr. J. J. Astor) for his couragous speech this evening, and to other hon. Members opposite who have taken a courageous stand in these last few days. We know how difficult it must be for them. We respect them. I particularly refer to the hon. Member for Sutton because both he and I are West Country men.
    6.40 p.m.
    Mr. Beresford Craddock: The only comment I should like to make on the remarks of the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman) is that he has advocated, and rightly so, that these matters should have been referred to the United Nations. Surely, that is exactly what we did. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] We acted under one of the articles of the Charter in trying to reach agreement on the Canal. We then called together the 24-nation conference, which resulted in complete agreement on the proposals which should

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    be put before Egypt by 18 nations. That was endorsed by the Security Council.
    What has happened since? The Security Council asked Egypt to arrange for discussions on those 18-Power proposals, but so far nothing has happened.
    Mr. Hayman: Surely, what the ordinary person will think about the Government's action in regard to the 18-Power proposals is that Britain and France intended to insist on those proposals being implemented to the full without being regarded as a basis for discussion. Many of us think that the Indian proposal might well have been accepted by Egypt.
    Mr. Craddock: I cannot accept that. Her Majesty's Government did subscribe to those proposals, and certainly were willing to use them as a basis of discussion. We cannot disguise the fact that Egypt has made no attempt whatever to get together with the nations concerned to discuss these proposals, or indeed to put forward any others.
    Mr. Warbey Mr. Warbey rose—
    Mr. Craddock: I am speaking only for a short time, and unless the hon. Gentleman has an important point to make, I am not prepared to give way.
    During all these lengthy and protracted debates that we have had on the problems of the Middle East, in August, in September and then last week, I did not on any occasion attempt to intervene, acting on the principle that the situation was such that one should follow the old saying, "Least said, soonest mended".
    Last Sunday evening, however, the Leader of the Opposition made a broadcast, on sound and vision, and on that occasion he issued to my colleagues on this side of the House a curious invitation. He invited us to desert the Leader of our party—our Prime Minister—and to appoint another gentleman in his place. The Leader of the Opposition went on to say that if we did so, the party opposite would support the Government side of the House to the full.
    Mr. Younger: On this issue.
    Mr. Craddock: I listened to the broadcast. I see in the Press today that the main purpose of the Opposition in tabling the Amendment is to give hon. Members on this side an opportunity to
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    respond to that invitation on Sunday evening.
    Let me make my position quite clear; it is important that many of my hon. Friends should do so. I have, and do, and will support the Prime Minister wholeheartedly in all that he has done in recent weeks. I should like, briefly and without indulging in any polemics or party politics, to give my reasons for so doing. Long before this so-called Suez Canal crisis arose, when Colonel Nasser seized the Canal, I took the view that we were in a period absolutely comparable with that of 1933 to 1939. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) has made a brief reference to that, and I want to extend that reference, because it is the basis of my agreement with the actions of the Government in the present crisis.
    In 1933, I remind the House, Hitler came to power. At that time we had the League of Nations, with no support or membership on the part of the United States of America. It was a weak institution, its members quarrelling amongst themselves. In 1936, as we have already been reminded, Hitler marched across the Rhine. In his speech of 2nd August, the Leader of the Opposition likened Colonel Nasser to Hitler and Mussolini. He has been contradicted on that on his own side of the House, but I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. At that time Hitler and the German army were weak. Hitler had not had time to build up the German strength to what we knew it to be in 1939. If the League of Nations had acted then and stopped him crossing the Rhine, I am quite certain that it would have made a vast difference to the events which followed.
    Then we had, as the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger) reminded us, the Abyssinian crisis. The League of Nations imposed sanctions on Italy. I was in the Middle East at that time and I saw Alexandria harbour filled with warships. There were only British warships. I think it was said in this House at that time we were the only country to move a man or a ship on that occasion. In the result, there was not very much effect. I believe profoundly that at that period the inability of the then League of Nations to act was really the cause of the 1939 war.
    Mr. Wigg: If the hon. Member is giving us a dissertation upon pre-war happenings, I hope that he will not forget the Hoare-Laval Pact and the Anglo-German naval agreement.
    Mr. Craddock: I am not forgetting them. I am obliged to the hon. Member, but I am only trying to give the House, briefly and, I hope, honestly, my reasons for supporting the Prime Minister so strongly. As I say, I believe that we are in a position comparable to those years.
    It may be asked, where is the comparison? I believe that the comparison lies in this direction. We all know that the ambition of Colonel Nasser has been to become the leader of a great Arab world, not only in the Middle East, but right along the coast of North Africa, and indeed probably further south in Africa. I do not suggest that even if he did attain that position, Colonel Nasser would then start a world war such as Hitler did—he would not do it. But we well know, and there is abundant proof, that practically ever since he came into power he has been the tool of Soviet Russia.
    I do not believe, nor do I subscribe to the view, that Soviet Russia has abandoned her ideas of ultimate world conquest. I am not persuaded by the recent so-called apparent friendly attitude of the leaders of Soviet Russia, nor am I persuaded by visits of such institutions as the Bolshoi Ballet, that Soviet Russia has altered her ultimate intentions. I believe that if she got a chance, she would attack Western Europe and this country, if the occasion suited her and the conditions were such that she felt that she could carry the attack through quickly. That is my view, and I suggest that it is not an unreasonable one.
    We might have to face Soviet domination of the whole of the Middle East, including the Suez Canal, and the whole of North Africa—indeed, Western Europe and ourselves—flanked on many sides by a mighty Power. Above all, our vital supplies of oil from the Middle East, which would be necessary for a war effort on our part and on the part of Western Europe, to combat such a move would be entirely cut off.
    Mr. Crossman: I follow accurately what the hon. Member is saying. How does he make his reason for supporting
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    the Government compatible with the Government's indignant denial that their moving of troops to Egypt had anything to do with Colonel Nasser's régime and their assurance that they were solely concerned to put a shield between the Israeli and Egyptian armies? If that is the Government's view, is the hon. Member not embarrassing them by giving a lot of other reasons which the Government do not themselves give?
    Mr. Craddock: If the hon. Gentleman had waited he would have heard me explain that, or, at least, try to do so I want to be very brief, because I promised Mr. Speaker that I would speak for only a few moments, because there are many hon. Gentlemen who want to catch Mr. Speaker's eye. Therefore, without any discourtesy to the House, I must say that I propose not to give way again. However, I shall follow the question which the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) has put.
    In my view, what I have outlined is the situation which might very well arise. What would happen, supposing that it did? There would be no time for the United Nations organisation to come to the rescue of Europe or our country before we were overwhelmed. Therefore, I believe that the answer to the hon. Member for Coventry, East is that the Prime Minister has rendered great service, not only to this country but indeed to the whole world, by focusing the whole world's attention on that vary danger. By sending troops, with our French allies, into the Middle East, as has been done, I believe the Prime Minister has undoubtedly focused world opinion on the danger presented by that whole area.
    The absolute necessity, if the United Nations organisation is to be an effective force for world peace, is, to use the common phrase, that it should have teeth. That is the finest service which any Prime Minister of any party could render in these difficult times. That is what the Government's action has succeeded in doing.
    In due course, I believe, the country will, after reflection, agree with that view, and above all it will be thankful that in these difficult and dangerous days in which we live we have a man of such tremendous courage as the Prime Minister.
    6.53 p.m.
    Mr. G. A. Pargiter: The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Beresford Craddock), like many others, is rather embarrassing the Government by praising them and by the reasons for which he praises them. What appears to be perfectly obvious is that the general opinion on the Government side of the House is that the real object of sending troops into Egypt was not to separate the combatants but to do what the Government intended to do originally—to get the Canal back from Nasser. The secondary object probably was to discredit the Nasser régime altogether. That at the moment appears to have been done fairly successfully.
    Since that has been done, what are we to put in its place? I cannot see that we have achieved anything at all by discrediting Nasser, because we have made more enemies than friends in the Middle East as a result. If we cannot make any friends out of this policy, then it seems to me that, apart altogether from the ethics of it, it is a bad business altogether. Not only have we destroyed our moral standing in the world but we have also destroyed our friendships there, and, as far as one can see, the Bagdad Pact, too. It was in a ruinous state before, and though I, for one, have never been very much in favour of it, and shall not really regret its passing, yet the Government had great faith in it, and it seems to me that what they regarded as one of our props in the Middle East has also gone.
    Our troubles in the Middle East have been due to the vacillations of British policy over many years. They are not due to the United Nations or to anybody else recently. These troubles had their origins a long way back in time. We failed ever clearly to define what we meant by the Balfour Declaration. Had we said clearly and unequivocally what we meant, and that we meant that there should be a State of Israel, at least there would have been a clear understanding. If that was what we meant, we should have said it, instead of leaving the issue to be fought out and the State of Israel to be established by force, as it was.
    There have been failures on the part of British Governments comprised of all parties. The State of Israel having been established, and we having accepted that there was a viable State of Israel, the
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    British Government of that day should have done something further towards the stabilisation of the Middle East. They could have done what it may still be possible to do. Israel, the only stable democratic force in that area, could have been admitted a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations. This may not seem very acceptable to some hon. Members. Some hon. Members may be pro-Arab and anti-Israel. However, we have always said that membership of the Commonwealth is open to any democratic country which may care to join.
    Had Israel been admitted to the Commonwealth that would have guaranteed her frontiers, and it would have made perfectly plain to the Arab world that Israel was there to stay. Thus many of the troubles which we have had since could have been avoided. We should not even have had our troubles about Cyprus or about having a base in the Eastern Mediterranean. We could have had a first-class Commonwealth base in the best strategic position in the Middle East, a much better one than we have at present.
    It may not be too late to admit Israel to membership of the Commonwealth even now. I suggest that even now we offer that to Israel, on condition that she withdraws her forces from Sinai. It would give her the protection of the British Commonwealth, and would give a guarantee to her neighbours that they will never have to fear aggression again from Israel. Israel, for her part, would not need to think any more in terms of counter-action against the Arab States, because the guarantee of her safety would be her membership of the British Commonwealth.
    That would be a contribution to doing what we are trying at the present time to do, to find means by which the dispute can be finally settled. Does anybody believe that the sending of a police force will settle the situation in the Middle East, any more than the Armistice Commission has done? I do not believe it will.
    At the moment it looks as though we shall not withdraw our forces from the Middle East and as though we shall use any pretext to keep them there. We must have a clearer undertaking from the Government than any they have yet given us that they are prepared to accept and implement the decision of the United

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    Nations that we should withdraw our forces, irrespective of the time at which the United Nations forces go in their place. We ought to leave it to those United Nations forces to endeavour to make peace in the area. It means that we have to retrace our steps if we possibly can, and it will be very hard to retrace our steps, and to regain the position in the world which we have sacrificed.
    Mr. Speaker: Mr. Wigg.
    Mr. George Wigg: I was extremely amused when the right hon. Gentleman—
    Mr. Speaker: I am very sorry. I will call the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) next. When I called him I was looking in the wrong direction. I ought to have been looking at the other side of the House, but my attention was distracted.
    6.59 p.m.
    Mr. Bernard Braine: I agree with those hon. Members on the other side of the House who have said that this is a moment when one must search one's conscience. In company with a good many of my hon. Friends on this side of the House and a good many of my constituents with whom I have spoken, I have been doing a great deal of heart searching. If I do not impugn the motives of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, I would ask them in their charity not to impugn my motives or those of my hon. Friends who take a view contrary to theirs. This is not really a party matter. I have been surprised by the number of people, not only on the benches opposite but among my constituents who are not Conservative supporters, who are inclined to the view that the Government, faced with an exceedingly difficult decision to make, took the right course; contrariwise, a large number of people who normally support my party have had grave misgivings and have had the courage and sincerity to express them to me.
    Nevertheless, I take issue with those who suggest that because there is disunity, and after all the Government alone have had the responsibility of taking a decision, it follows that we must be wrong. One hon. Member who spoke
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    sincerely from the heart suggested that there was a link between the action we had taken in the Middle East and what has happened in Hungary. That has been said so often that I think the contrary view must be put. I do not believe that hon. Members imagine that, prior to our action in the Middle East, the Soviet Union had suddenly become a reformed character. It is not the first occasion that Soviet tanks and guns have been used against people desirous of liberty. My mind travels back to the East Berlin rising and to the Poznan riots.
    I ask hon. Members to ponder a point which I think is just as valid as the contrary one which they have advanced. It is that one reason why the Soviet Union has suddenly thrown off the mask is that she has discovered, in the outcry against the Prime Minister's courageous action, that a great many people in the West, from America to Britain and elsewhere, are content with no more than passing resolutions in the face of aggression.
    If we are to judge for ourselves the decision that the Government took, we must consider the background. If I may, I will take one line of argument and then go on to another. It is suggested that the Government have behaved immorally because they acted in a situation which was likely to lead to war—and in fact war had actually broken out—and did not first consult the United Nations. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Hon. Members applaud that sincerely, but they forget that in the case of Korea the United States, with forces on the spot and weighing up the situation at that time, took action on her own and was subsequently supported by the United Nations—but only because of the accident that Russia had absented herself from the Security Council.
    Mr. Pargiter: Is not the hon. Member aware that the State Department had written off Korea and had withdrawn its forces, but General MacArthur forced the issue against the Department's advice on the ground that it was vital to American security?
    Mr. Braine: I am concerned not with the motives but with the realities of the situation, with what actually happened.
    There are times when a responsible Government must take a decision irrespective of the consequences. Only last year in

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    the case of Quemoy, the offshore island, President Eisenhower asked Congress for authority to intervene outside the United Nations in the event of a Communist attack because he knew perfectly well that if an invasion took place the conflict might spread into a general conflagration but effective action would be blocked because the Soviet veto would operate.
    Mr. Nigel Nicolson: I, too, have been troubled on this point, but surely what we are getting at is that it is not that we acted outside the United Nations that causes us moral doubts but that we acted in such a way outside the United Nations as to cause the United Nations later to express its disapproval of what we had done.
    Mr. Braine: My hon. Friend raises a point which he might like to elaborate later if he is called to speak. [Laughter.] Hon. Members laugh, but it is a point to which I will return later if my hon. Friend, who has been making so many speeches on the subject, would be a little patient and let me develop my argument.
    My answer to him is that we cannot consider this issue in a vacuum. My mind travels back to 1947 when the Labour Government were unable to handle the Palestine Mandate. I make no party point about that. The situation had been transformed because the war had driven large numbers of Jewish refugees out of Europe into Palestine. The Labour Government, unable to handle the situation, handed the Mandate over to the United Nations. That body made a partition plan that the Arabs would not accept. I remember being in Hamburg at that time, during the very week when British ships were shipping illegal Jewish immigrants under armed guard back from Palestine to, of all places, Germany.
    Mr. Crossman: Shame. I hope that the hon. Member protested.
    Mr. Braine: Certainly. Indeed, I took the opportunity to visit what was then the largest camp in Europe for Jewish refugees. It was situated at Belsen in barracks outside the former extermination camp. I spoke to a number of those who were in the camp. There were men there of every European nationality, the
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    pitiful remnants of the concentration camps. One man told me that his wife had died in Theresienstadt and his parents in another terrible place, and that he did not know where his child was. When I asked him, "What are you going to do now?", he replied, "What can I do? There is only one place for me to go, and that is Palestine."
    Those who went to Palestine and founded the Israeli State were dedicated people who understood the simple paradox that so many people today fail to understand—that sometimes in order to live one must be prepared to die. That is only one side of the medal. In order to establish Israel, a million Arab refugees were driven out of land which their ancestors had occupied for centuries.
    Mr. Crossman: No, it is not true that in order to establish the State of Israel a million Arab refugees were cleared out. Surely, the hon. Member will be fair and say that after the attack by the Arab armies, a disastrous war ended with a million refugees. Surely, the hon. Member did not put the matter quite correctly.
    Mr. Braine: I would accept that from the hon. Gentleman, who has dealt with this subject with great courage and candour through the years. I read in the New Statesman and Nation on 6th September that he said the argument on this subject started
    "with the awkward fact that our own Labour Government sowed the seeds … in the Middle East of the harvest of hate which Sir Anthony has been reaping."
    Mr. Ellis Smith: Farther back than that.
    Mr. Braine: I am not attributing blame for the hatred and the tension, because I think that the whole world is to blame. All I am concerned with is that the present Government were faced with a situation where, from 1948 onwards, the United Nations had deliberated scores of times on this dreadful situation. Here were two peoples gripped with fear, less than 2 million Israelis surrounded by 40 million Arabs. Resolution after resolution was passed and was ignored. Egypt herself was in defiance of the Security Council. She regarded herself as still at war with Israel. That was her excuse for refusing the passage of Israeli ships

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    through the Canal—under international law she regarded it as her right to refuse those ships passage through the Canal because she was at war with Israel. Thus, I join issue with those who say that Israel committed aggression on Egypt. Technically, yes, but if the case of Egypt was that Israel was at war with her, what Israel was doing was taking reprisal for the sufferings and pressures which she had endured for long years.
    I am not concerned with taking sides but with an existing and explosive situation where war had broken out and within a matter of hours the Canal might have been over-run. There would have been prolonged fighting, the conflagration might have spread to other Arabic States, and from there throughout the Middle East, and our other commitments—to Jordan for example—might have forced us to participate, and to participate in far worse circumstances.
    I say that having brought the Israeli-Egypt war to an end in seven days is a massive achievement. I do not regard it as immoral. [Laughter.] The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) may laugh, but I would suggest that in the perspective of history this Government have done what so many other Governments have failed to do; they have acted when faced with a situation which might have led to a third world war. The right hon. Gentleman may laugh, but in the end the nation will judge.
    Mr. Crossman: May I say one thing to get the record right? The hon. Gentleman now says that the great achievement of the Government is that they have brought the Israeli-Egypt war to an end in seven days. Is it his point that our Government contributed towards assisting the Israelis in liquidating the Egyptian Army by bombing the Egyptian bases? Is that his feeling, or in what sense does he think that our Government can take credit? I have read Mr. Ben Gurion's speech and my impression is that he thought he had something to do with ending that war in seven days.
    Mr. Braine: I will not be led along that line of argument. I am concerned with the facts and the geography of the situation. The Israelis were sweeping forward. Within a matter of hours of the Government taking the decision they
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    did the Israelis might have crossed over the Canal. Who will say that they would not have done so? Has the hon. Memer for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) any special knowledge? I believe there was that danger. There was certainty a danger that the major forces of the Egyptians which were not committed might be thrust forward over the Canal eastwards, and that the conflict might then have become so confused that it would have been impossible to stop it. Anyone with any knowledge of that area must know that the only place where it was possible to interpose, and to interpose successfully and quickly, with the minimum danger to the lives of our own men as well as to the combatants, was the Canal.
    I end on this note. I am not in the least ashamed of the action that Her Majesty's Government have taken. [An HON. MEMBER: The hon. Gentleman ought to be."] I started by saying that I was not imputing motives. But I go so far as to say that I think the whole world is in the grip of fear, and that a lot of people are trying to excuse their own fear by attacking this Government for having had the courage to act to stop a war. That is my honest belief. We can talk about law, but law is meaningless unless we have the power to enforce it. We can talk about morality and virtue. There has been a great deal of talk on that subject during the course of this debate. The greatest of all human virtues is courage, for it is the only virtue which guarantees the rest.
    7.15 p.m.
    Mr. George Wigg: Having listened to the hon. Member for Essex. South-East (Mr. Braine), I entirely agree with him that the world is in the grip of fear but, having followed him closely, I believe that it is also in the grip of the most profound and pompous ignorance.
    Before coming to the House, the hon. Gentleman would have done well to establish the facts and to ask himself why it is that the Government will not vindicate themselves? If the hon. Gentleman will listen to me for a couple of minutes, I will explain why I ask this question. The Government can easily vindicate itself before the bar of world opinion. This afternoon I interrupted the Secretary of State for the Colonies to ask him whether

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    the shield of which he boasted was placed as a result of a conspiracy between the British, French and Israeli Governments. The question whether there was a collusion or a conspiracy does not depend on whether I hold the view or not. It is held throughout the civilised world and it can be established one way or the other quite easily.
    I have put questions on the Order Paper and I hope that I shall get replies. I have asked the Minister of Defence on what day and at what time the G.O.C. Middle East Forces was first told that major operations were pending by the Israelis against the Egyptians. I have put down another Question to ask the time at which the Officer Commanding British troops at Eilat told Middle East Headquarters that such an attack was impending.
    I have just come back from the Middle East. I was in Egypt less than a fortnight ago. The one thing I discovered when I returned was a profound and colossal ignorance of the most simple facts. There were rumours in the Middle East about the Israelis mobilising. And yet the Government would have us believe that they were taken by surprise. Surely no hon. Gentleman opposite would deny that the British Government had time to protest and that there must have been accurate information that something was "cooking". I ask why the attack upon Egypt was launched from Eilat—it is called Eilat on the Israel side and Akaba on our side. At Akaba are stationed the 10th Hussars and one company of the Middlesex Regiment. It is inconceivable that an operation of this magnitude could have been launched without the knowledge of the O.C. troops in that area.
    What happened? From the attack from Eilat the Israelis repeated the Rundstedt operation—they achieved tactical surprise by the use of desperately difficult terrain and, later, they linked up with another movement across the frontier at Nahel and, again repeating the technique of the Germans in 1940, there was a pushing on of light units—probably not more than a handful of troops—in order that the first step in the psychological war could be taken. There was an announcement on the radio that Israeli troops were within ten miles of Suez.
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    The Israelis then drove northwards, following the lines of the major raid of 28th February, 1955, and got in behind the Egyptians—the Egyptian airfields were neatly bombed; I pay tribute to the gallantry and efficiency with which British and French aircraft carried out the affair—and the poor old Egyptians once again had had it.
    There have been nine occasions in the last hundred years when operations have been the subject of public inquiry. After the Jameson raid a Select Committee of this House was set up to inquire into the events which led up to it. The only difference between that raid and the present one is that in the Jameson raid warlike actions were undertaken by private individuals, and in this case warlike operations have been undertaken without a declaration of war, a fact which itself is a breach of international law. When German generals did that they were arraigned before the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal as war criminals, yet the Government have asked British officers to undertake this, a task which must rest on their consciences for the rest of their days.
    There is an even better example than the Jameson raid. There was the Report of the Royal Commission on the Dardanelles and Mesopotamia, inquiring into the origin, inception and conduct of that operation of war. I suggest to the Government that they should appoint either a Select Committee or a Royal Commission. If they will not do that, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition or another of my right hon. Friends, speaking with the authority of the party, will give an undertaking that as soon as the Labour Party assumes office, such an inquiry will be made in order to establish the facts.
    The crisis which has faced us in the last nine days is not primarily a political one; it is a crisis of misappropriation—and by that I mean not dishonesty, but the wrong arrangement of the priorities of our defence forces. On 26th July, Colonel Nasser nationalised the Canal. I say now what I said then, namely, that I am in favour of the internationalising of all important international waterways. I also think that the methods employed by Colonel Nasser were a mistake. I would point out to the Government that opinion among educated Arabs is the

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    same all over the Middle East. They believe that Colonel Nasser acted wantonly and without regard to Egyptian interests. In 1968, the Canal would have fallen into Egypt's hands like a ripe plum.
    When Nasser nationalised the Canal, educated Arab opinion throughout the Middle East thought that it gave the British and French Governments a first-class chance to negotiate a new Canal settlement, perhaps for a period of another hundred years. But the Government did not do that. We had mobilisation over the August Bank Holiday weekend. At that time, I raised my lone voice to say that when I heard hon. Members on both sides of the House calling for strong action they made me sick. They made me sick then, and they make me sick now, because this country was not then in a position to take strong action. There was not a single swept-wing fighter squadron in the Middle East.
    Let us go a little further and consider the question of tank-landing ships. If any hon. Members want the facts of the matter, let them turn to the fifth volume of the history of the last war written by the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill), and read his description of the Anzio operation. They will see how it was held up. The right hon. Gentleman describes how 88 tank-landing ships were necessary for two divisional operations.
    How many tank-landing ships had we on 1st August last? After an expenditure of £6,000 million by the present Government, we had two tank-landing ships in operation, and 28 in reserve, 25 of which were leaking when they were taken out of their mothballs. The truth is that on 1st August the Government wanted to "have a go" but they could not. They then waited until they had mobilised and had realigned their reserve forces, and until they had pulled back the Parachute Brigade from the Middle East in order that it might undergo essential training.
    What else had they? There is not an hon. Member opposite who has had any military experience who does not know that in war the one thing that must not be done is to use specialist troops in a rôle other than that for which they have been trained. We had put the Parachute Brigade into Cyprus in order to deal with the internal security problem there, so that when, on 1st August, we needed
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    the parachute troops—and the Prime Minister may have wanted them for a quick drop—they had to be pulled back to this country and trained before they could undertake any operation. The truth is that we had to wait five or six weeks because the Government had so mis-spent the moneys voted for defence that we were not in a position to undertake the operation which the Government, in their political judgment, thought necessary.
    If hon. Members opposite think that I am being a little unfair and that, after all, six weeks is not too long to carry out mobilisation, I would ask them to undertake a little more research and study the first volume of the history of the First World War, and see how the mobilisation plans were carried out in 1914, when our defence expenditure was merely a drop in the ocean compared to what it is now. We then mobilised six infantry divisions, each consisting of 18,000 men and 9,000 horses, and one cavalry division, consisting of 9,000 men and 9,000 horses—60 per cent. of all the men were reservists; and 120,000 horses had to be impressed. We started on 4th August; the first troops were conveyed to France on 9th August, and contact with the enemy was made by C Squadron of the Fourth Dragoon Guards at first light on 22nd August. In eighteen days we did the trick. Now it takes us six weeks.
    Then, of course, we have the operation of 29th October. I have indicated what I believe happened. I do not say that the Government are wholly responsible. I think that the criminals in this matter—and I use that word advisedly—are the French. The Israelis have trebled the area under their control—says Mr. Ben Gurion—as a result of their operations in the last week, but they have paid a very heavy price for it; they now have the French as allies. I hope that they have a little better luck than we have had.
    If hon. Members doubt what I am saying, let them look at the history of French duplicity in the Middle East over the years. Let them look at the actions of M. Franklin-Bouillon, who carried out negotiations behind the back of a British Government with Mustapha Kemal. They will find that in 1922 British troops and the British people faced a crisis at

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    Chanak which took us to the edge of war. I do not believe that the Israeli raid was anything more than a well-organised, well-equipped and well-planned attack to liquidate the Fedayeen and the dumps which were being built up. I do not believe that it was a major operation destined to go across the Canal.
    If my demand for a Royal Commission or Select Committee is accepted by the Government, I think that it will be established beyond any shadow of doubt that there was not a single military adviser of the Government who thought for a moment that the Israeli Government ever contemplated a great and sustained major operation against Egypt. Their lines of communication would have been far too long. Those who have seen the Israeli army on its manoeuvres have a pretty shrewd idea of its weaknesses, and I do not believe for a split second that this Government ever thought that operations on a major scale were on the go.
    Here again, I think that the French, as usual, have not only double-crossed the Israelis by failing to make it clear that their operations were going to be boosted up into a major operation, but they have double-crossed us. I do not think that we were told all the story. But, as I say, these are simple questions of fact. The Government can tell us tonight what the truth is. The world can be told the truth. If I am wrong, let the Government say so. But my interpretation is that the Government heard that the French had got in and what they were up to only two or three weeks beforehand, but I believe that right hon. Gentlemen opposite were sufficiently intelligent to have been able to see what was involved.
    I believed in the N.A.T.O. shield. I was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) when N.A.T.O. was first brought into being and I know when war intervened N.A.T.O. was established to secure the peace of Europe. It was a defensive alliance. I have also followed with great care the way in which N.A.T.O. has been equipped. With great generosity the United States of America authorised dollar expenditure for offshore purchases and supplied Britain with 515 of
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    all the Hunters we have, besides 100 Seahawks; she also allowed offshore purchases to France, and all that country's Mystère IV's and Thunderstreaks were supplied on the same basis.
    But before America authorised these purchases we had to undertake that we would not use offshore equipment supplied for N.A.T.O. for any other purpose without the permission of the American Government through the Supreme Commander. Last Saturday I asked the Minister of Defence a Question of which I had given him notice, because I did not want any snap questions and answers across the Floor of the House. I asked how much of the equipment supplied for N.A.T.O. had been used in the Middle East without permission. Of course, I understand that "smart Alec." He said he could not give an answer. I do not believe him. Neither do the Americans, because on Sunday I read in the papers the statement by the American Government warning Britain and France that they must not use N.A.T.O. equipment without the permission of the American Government.
    The seriousness of this can be seen when one reads with care the menace contained in the Russian Note to us. They threatened us with rockets, and I am convinced that that was no idle threat. The Russian T.2 has been in mass production for a considerable time. This country has not even begun to solve the problem of inertial guidance. We have no answer to the rocket, nor have we a rocket. Nor is there any prospect of this country manufacturing a rocket.
    I think that the Americans hold an overwhelming supremacy with the hydrogen bomb and the means whereby to deliver it. But the Americans have no rocket, and if tonight the Soviet Union undertook those warlike operations in Europe, about which we have been wondering ever since the Korean war, and undertook them as a result of the action of this country and France, Europe would be defenceless. It is a terribly dangerous position because can we ever go again to the Americans, with this Government in office, and ask them for offshore purchases? Can we ask them for equipment? Can we pledge our word of honour that the equipment will be used for a certain purpose when in fact we have broken our word?

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    That is not all the story. I hold the view that this country has sustained a political and a military defeat the magnitude of which cannot yet be understood. If hon. Gentlemen opposite think I am being unfair or unpatriotic, very well, they must think so, but I would say this. Ever since I came to this House I have fought, sometimes against my own colleagues, to get some realism into our defence policy. Even when we last had a defence debate I abstained from voting. I was in a minority of one.
    But I believe that the weaknesses for which we now suffer must be understood by the people of this country. That is the only hope we have, now that we are morally and politically bankrupt and defeated in a military sense. Make no mistake, the world has taken note of the fact that we went into the Canal Zone with carefully laid down military objectives, none of which we have attained. If hon. Gentlemen say, "Well, that is a political and not a military defeat," may I refer them to the textbooks, which tell us that war is only diplomacy by other methods. The Prime Minister jumped the gun. He sought a solution by other methods and he has failed.
    To be a supporter of Israel now is a popular thing. It was not always popular, as I know to my cost. I remember being caught by the jacket in a corridor of this House by the late Mr. Ernest Bevin because I dared to encourage some of my colleagues to abstain from voting when planes were shot down in this same Sinai Desert. I remember being spoken to rather abruptly by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison). In my small way I welcomed the coming of Israel as something to make up for the terrible tragedies of the war, those terrible tragedies of the concentration camp and the gas chamber. As long as I live I shall never forget the little grotto behind the Tomb of David in Jerusalem where lie the ashes symbolising the remains of millions of Jewish people who went to the gas chambers.
    But I think that the people of Israel have made a terrible mistake. They have become caught up with the Machiavellian, corrupt decadence of, above all, the French. They have destroyed the basis on which Israel could ever become viable.
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    My mind goes back thirty years, to the time when, as a young sergeant, I found myself at Easter time in Jerusalem and I went to the First Station of the Cross. There, above the place where Pilate sat, were written the words:
    "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."
    That, in all charity, I hope applies to the Government. It applies to the Jewish people. For in sorrow must I say that I regret that after 2,000 years of wandering, of the ghetto, the concentration camp and the gas chamber, the Jewish people have learned nothing.
    7.35 p.m.
    Sir Ian Fraser: The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) has acquired a reputation in this House for fair speaking and wise thought about military matters. He has made a great study of the soldier and I think that all hon. Members will agree that he has done much good for the soldier in many ways. But I hardly think that his proposal that a Royal Commission or a Committee of Inquiry should sit on these matters is very sensible, or one which would commend itself to either Front Bench.
    There is no war crime here. There is no parallel with the Jameson Raid. It is legitimate enough for Parliament to discuss what the Government have done, but there is no question for a Royal Commission to inquire into what the Services have done. Surely, that is quite out of the question. Nor can it be right to suggest that generals and soldiers, in carrying out their orders, have committed crimes, or have committed anything like the crimes which brought the German generals to Nuremberg. Surely the hon. Gentleman does not mean that; it is so out of relation with all the facts.
    The hon. Gentleman likened the present action of Her Majesty's Government to the Jameson Raid. He said that those who took part in it would have their consciences troubled for the rest of their lives. As a South African, let me tell him that only about 800 people actually took part in the Jameson Raid. Every survivor of that time is proud of the fact, and there are at least 8,000 who say they were in it. I cannot believe that the action of the troops in these later days will lie on their consciences.
    Mr. Wigg: Just in order to get it correctly, may I say that I did not comment on the action of the troops. I said that the German generals were tried at Nuremberg because they had waged war without a declaration of war, and that that had happened in this case.
    Sir I. Fraser: That is no reason for having a Royal Commission. We may as well have a Royal Commission on the action of the Labour Party over Korea, because exactly the same conditions applied. There was no declaration of war.
    May I turn to the Amendment before the House? I shall vote against it, not because I think there is no sense in it. I think there is some. It is also very artful. But I shall vote against it because it is quite impracticable, which makes me suspect that it was put down for other reasons than the hope that it would be accepted. We could not conceivably get the Dominion Prime Ministers to come rushing over here in a few days or weeks for consultations. They were here only a few weeks ago. I think that the suggestion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Mr. Elliot) is far more appropriate and that we should see whether it is possible to suggest, even with his other duties and responsibilities, that the Prime Minister go to the forthcoming U.N.O. meeting in New York and meet President Eisenhower. The presence of our Prime Minister might attract other Prime Ministers, Mr. Menzies and others. But this present Amendment is clearly impracticable, which seems a good enough reason for voting against it.
    But in voting tonight many of us will have other reasons for our action. Since I have not had the opportunity of saying a word about this crisis in the last week, I hope I may be permitted now to explain myself and my thoughts to the House, as well as to many of my constituents who will expect me to reflect their view and the view of many others who, from time to time, have expressed their views to me and have been good enough to take some small account of my view also.
    I came out of the First War grievously wounded with no reason to think well of war. I turned to the League of Nations with hope, and time showed that hope was in vain. I do not think that was anyone's fault. It was just that mankind was not ready for it. I came out of the
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    Second War, having spent most of my life trying to heal people's wounds and fully conscious of the grievous damage done by war, and I turned with hope to the United Nations, as we all did.
    Anyone who is honest with himself cannot but admit that we have been disappointed; not that we all of us have not done our best to give it a good start, to encourage it, to help it by sending some of our most able Ministers to speak at it and by spending large sums of money to support it. But mankind is not ready for judgment of human affairs entirely by moral standards. I am afraid that is a fact. It has been borne in upon me for some years and now demonstrated most vividly that something more than moral standards is required.
    We have to come back to the simple issue that good behaviour in a village is a very good thing, but the final sanction of that good behaviour in the village is the presence of the policeman and that it is just as well that the policeman should carry a truncheon in case he should need to use it. That fact is evident even to the most law-abiding person. Whereas we are not yet able to live peaceably in our villages without a policeman, although we call upon him so seldom, we as a world are not able to live together peaceably without some kind of force which can be brought to bear at the right moment and at the right place to try to settle our disputes.
    I am not a constitutional lawyer, nor am I versed in all the text of the United Nations Charter and the subsidiary documents, nor in its practices and customs, but I suspect that we have not broken the law of the United Nations by the action that we have taken. I suspect that it permits a nation to make its own decisions on its action on certain matters from time to time and that the actions of the last week are legal.
    Now let us turn away from legality to morality or equity. They are not quite the same thing. There may be some things which are legal but which nevertheless may be immoral or inequitable, and to judge whether they are we must look a little more widely than at the precise point of the quarrel or even the immediate time of the quarrel. We are pledged to try to give a chance of life and of survival to the Israeli nation. We have undertaken that. We founded it, we nursed it, we guarded it, we handed

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    it over at the proper time to the United Nations and we have done what we could by international agreement and arrangement to give it life and to sustain it.
    We all of us are under some obligation to see that the experiment survives and has a chance of success. One of the requirements which morality puts upon us is to do just that. Another moral requirement is to try to behave in international affairs as we would wish others to behave, but we cannot judge our action in the one without taking into account our action in the other. I do not think that an impartial inquiry would show that the Jewish people had committed aggression. There is, first, the point that they were already at war with Egypt. There is the next point that they were in fact threatened not merely by words but, I suspect, by plans and deeds. Time will probably show that. I do not believe that we committed an aggression in going into Egypt as we did. I believe that looking back at the matter from a long distance as a historian does, it will be seen that we were engaged in a minor preventive war.
    This brings me to deal with the morality, very briefly, first, of a preventive war. I respect the views of my constituents and others who think that force is not permissible at any time. I respect it, but I do not agree with it. I think that there are occasions when force is needed and is equitable, proper and right, and the most notable of these kinds of occasions are when the use of some force may promote peace. That is the justification for the policeman's use of force. That is the justification for our use of force now.
    Another possible reason for a justifiable use of force would be for survival, and I do not think that it would be morally right for us to stand by and see our nation throttled to death and starved of resources without which it could not survive without our lifting a finger at an early stage to stop it. How much better to lift that finger at an early stage than at a late stage when it is so much more hazardous, so much more costly and so much more dangerous. That was why I found myself supporting Her Majesty's Government when this action was
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    premeditated. Of course, I did not know about it before it was announced.
    Mr. WarbeyPremeditated?
    Sir I. Fraser: I hope that it was premeditated, because anyone who goes into battle without premeditating would be a fool. I hope that you will never do that, Sir. When this was first brought to public notice—perhaps that is a more correct way of putting it, because I did not know about the previous plans—I supported it on the grounds I have given, but when battle was joined I supported Her Majesty's Government for another reason in addition, and that was my belief that when our troops are engaged in war it is a good thing for those at home to stand by them. I will not elaborate that, because I do not want to make right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite cross—there has been too much crossness about this altogether. I think that anyone who discourages unity and support for Her Majesty's Forces when they are engaged in mortal combat is very much to be censured. I feel that so strongly that I must say it.
    Let me say a brief word about the results of what has happened so far. I believe—and I think that the historian looking back from, say, 2000 A.D. will see—that this week Israel was saved from extinction. I believe that she has been saved. I believe that she would have been extinguished, not necessarily in that week but in the weeks that followed, if we had not intervened. That is point number one. It is an important one for the world as well as for our morality. I think it is possible that we have now inspired-jogged—the United Nations into realisation of its weakness, and if mankind is now ready to make up a force which can intervene, and intervene swiftly and timely, then I believe history will show that we have rendered another notable and signal service to mankind. I do not believe that any but incidents of the kind that we have recently witnessed could have jogged a dilatory, talkative Assembly and a thwarted, frustrated Security Council into the degree of thought which they have now reached in this matter. That, I think, is the major gain to be put on the credit side of the events of this last week.
    I should like to say a word about the U.N.O. force which is said to be coming

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    in. I am very glad that it is now apparently in concert with United Nations opinion that we are to stay there and come out phase by phase as a United Nations force goes in. That is highly intelligent and highly sensible. To have followed the course recommended by the Labour Party would have been to come out before the United Nations force was ready and to leave a vacuum—which must be filled—to the danger not only of both Israel and Egypt, but of the Middle East. I am glad that it is now generally recognised, even by U.N.O. itself, therefore, by implication, that our action was right and that we are to come out phase by phase instead of ignominiously and in a futile manner.
    Secondly, I hope that the United Nations force will be a military force. It may be called a police force and its function may be to police, but it must be a military force. It must be well armed and well generalled and it must have more than side-arms or rifles, otherwise it will have no chance of carrying out its task.
    The hon. Member for Dudley told us that it took the British Expeditionary Force four days to reach France and 22 days to join battle. He blamed the Government because we were not ready earlier to intervene in Suez. Even with the preparations that have been made in the last few weeks, which I applaud and of which I approve, it still took us some five or six days after the warning expired before the troops landed—and they were in an island nearby and were ready.
    How long will it take an adequate force, properly armed and instructed, properly cohesive and integrated, to get to the Middle East? It is all very well to say that the Canadians will fly a battalion in—that is very good of them and much appreciated; but one battalion will not suffice. Who else can fly anything in? Who has the forces ready? We must be realistic in this matter and see that after the efforts and sacrifices we have made—and, I consider, right sacrifices—we do not hand over our charge until we are quite certain that we hand over to an authority that can keep the peace.
    I earnestly hope that the cease-fire has left our troops in Port Said and the French troops on the other side of the water in a viable position. I say no
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    more about that than that once it is the policy of Her Majesty's Government, with the assent of U.N.O., to stay there until they come out phase by phase, they should be sure that our troops are in a position that can be held, and held comfortably. A soldier cannot sit on a bit of ground no bigger than his bottom. He must have room to move around, and he must have room to provide himself with air cover in case he is threatened.
    The whole British people, and especially all our old soldiers, sailors and airmen, who know something about these matters from experience, will have nothing but the highest sense of admiration for the troops, from the top downward, of both the Army, the Navy and the Air Force.
    7.55 p.m.
    Mr. William Hamilton: The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser) referred to the suggestion by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) of appointing a Royal Commission to establish the facts in this situation. In my view, one of the things that has bedevilled the situation from the outset has been the lack of facts or the giving of contradictory so-called facts by the Government side.
    The hon. Member referred also to the Amendment and said that its terms were impracticable and that, therefore, he would vote against it. I would be inclined to go some way with the hon. Member in that direction, but what is quite clear is that there must be some kind of top-level meeting among our Commonwealth erstwhile friends.
    I deprecate the suggestion of a top-level meeting between our own discredited Prime Minister and President Eisenhower. I have never in any event been very much impressed by the importance of top-level conferences. Even when my own party was pressing the Government to have a "Big Four" meeting, I was never very optimistic about the outcome. In the event, I was probably right.
    The hon. Member referred to this as being a police action and said that we cannot expect the law to be obeyed unless we not only have the policeman but the policeman also has a truncheon. I remind the hon. Member that our policeman does not have a gun. That is the important distinction that we on this side make.
    Sir I. Fraser: In principle, there is no distinction whatever.
    Mr. Hamilton: Indeed there is. I remind the hon. Member that on the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill his hon. Friends made a great distinction between the two, and they will do so again when the Homicide Bill is before the House.
    Little reference has been made to the speech of the Colonial Secretary. It was almost the only speech on the Government side which has made no reference to events in Hungary. The right hon. Gentleman talked about the misrepresentation of the United Kingdom case. If there has been any misrepresentation, it has been due primarily to the lack of information from the Government. If, as the Colonial Secretary said, the whole story has not yet been unfolded, we impress upon the Government the need for a White Paper dealing with the leaflets, for instance, which was asked for from this side of the House but to which, as far as I know, we have as yet had no reply. That is just the kind of information we want if we are to get the facts in perspective.
    The Colonial Secretary said that as these mysterious events unfold opinion will come round to the Government's side. Almost every hour brings a defection from that side of the House. We have had one hon. Member coming out openly today for the first time in all these debates. I do not know whether he will abstain from voting, but at least he spoke against the Government. Another hon. Member who is waiting his opportunity to speak has come out openly against the Government. The hon. Member for Norfolk, Central (Sir F. Medlicott) has already written a letter to the Prime Minister saying that he is not supporting the Government. The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs has resigned. The Prime Minister's public relations officer has given up his job. All of this is the cumulative effect, to use the Colonial Secretary's words, of the nation's mature assessment of the situation.
    The most ludicrous point in the Government's case is that good will come out of the present situation in that we will get a United Nations force. That is the biggest bit of humbug of all. All that will happen is that it will go on record
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    that this force has been established to stop precisely the kind of unilateral military action that the Government have taken. It will be recorded in the annals of history that we have an international police force to stop the kind of national gangsterism practised by this Government. That is what will go on the records historically.
    The right hon. Member for Kelvin-grove (Mr. Elliot) repaired the Colonial Secretary's omission to some extent in that he made some comments on events in Hungary. It may be that Russia needed no incentive from the Tory Government to do what she did. I have fought Communists in four Elections in this country, and I have never thought that there has been the slightest deviation from the long-term policy of the Soviet Government. What our Government have done may not have encouraged the Russians one way or another, but what is undoubtedly true is that we can no longer say to the Russians, without being charged with hypocrisy, "You are military aggressors putting down ordinary humble workers"; because our Government are tarred with the same brush.
    The military victory for which hon. Members clamoured was certain from the outset. I talked to one hon. and gallant Member opposite and he said, "Give us a week." Of course they would get the military victory in a week. We had only to watch the almost hysterical jubilation on the other side of the House when the Prime Minister made what turned out to be a premature announcement of a cease-fire being ordered at Port Said. There was immediate hysteria and jubilation on the other side of the House.
    We have had our victory, the result of the expenditure of £9,000 million by this country in the last six years, and I do not know how much by France and Israel. We have won a victory over an illiterate, poverty-stricken, feudal little country. Is that something of which we should be proud? What a wonderful achievement!
    Against this victory we have to offset the irreparable long-term damage which has been done to our reputation in the world. Let hon. and right hon. Members; opposite not underestimate the deep

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    cleavage of opinion within our Commonwealth. The most discouraging and disturbing aspect of it is that it is very much a colour line-up. At the very time when we are trying to convince people that the Commonwealth is a multi-racial unit for the first time in the history of the world, we get a cleavage within that unit based largely on colour.
    One of the interesting omissions from the Government's case about this episode is that the closure of the Canal will, in my view, hit the Asiatic countries harder than it hits us. There has been very little mention of that hardship imposed on innocent parties by the unilateral action of white imperialist countries. Whether the damage done to the Commonwealth is temporary or permanent, I should not like to say. We all hope, I think, that it is temporary. The same comment applies to the alliance with the United States of America. But what will be much more enduring is the hatred of the whole Arab world. That will be a long time dying as a result of this action. What I call the international floating voters will take a long time to forgot our action in this connection.
    The Government case has been as much damaged by the varying reasons advanced for it as by the action itself. Here the ostensible reasons have been, first of all, to get between the combatants; secondly, to stop the war—to put out the fire, as I think it was put. We do not normally put out a fire by spraying it with petrol. The third ostensible reason was to safeguard the Canal, the fourth was to safeguard our nationals and the fifth was to help poor Israel.
    If the Government were paid by results they would be on National Assistance by now. Not one of those objects has been achieved as far as I can tell. Are we between the combatants? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] The fact is that the combatants could start again tomorrow. Indeed, the fighting has not yet stopped, and one of the biggest dangers today is that the Government do not know whether it will stop or where it is going. We are existing on a day-to-day policy. We expect a statement from the Prime Minister day after day and we do not know what it will contain. The Canal is blocked, although to maintain the Canal open was one of the major causes of our intervention, if not the major cause.
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    I do not want to use too strong language, but the most hypocritical claim of all was that we went into the Middle East to help poor Israel. Let us have no crocodile tears about this. We recall the five or six years of the prevention of Israeli ships from going through the Canal with not a finger lifted by the right hon. Gentleman to allow them free access. We recall the Prime Minister's Guildhall speech. We recall that Israel was not invited to the Suez Conference. There is strong circumstantial evidence—I put it no higher than this—that there has been active collusion between Britain, France and Israel on this issue—and that is another fact which will have to be brought before the light of day. There is a strong volume of opinion in America which is convinced that collusion took place. We shall not be satisfied until we get the facts.
    Even if that suggestion were untrue—let us put the best light on it—I would say that Israel's provoked aggression was a Godsend to the extremists on the other side of the House because it gave them the very chance they wanted to teach Nasser a lesson and to get control of the Canal. Let me be quite frank to the House on the crucial question of the Canal. I believe that, along with other international waterways, it should be under some kind of international control. It is an interesting philosophy to come from the Conservative Party that what is of international concern should be internationally controlled. Do they apply that nationally? Do they think that what is of national concern should be nationally controlled?
    If they apply this principle internationally, ought they not to apply it to the Panama Canal, the Dardanelles, Gibraltar and the oil itself? If they are concerned to establish a United Nations force and to propound the idea that what is of international concern should be internationally controlled, then let the Government declare themselves on the suggestion made in the Manchester Guardian leading article this morning that we should give this United Nations force access to our bases in Cyprus. As that article points out, the events of the last few days have shown the extreme importance of substantial air power for this organisation. If that be the case, what finer base could they have than one in

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    Cyprus? I should be glad if the Government would give an answer on that.
    In any event, whatever the constitution of this United Nations police force and wherever it might be based, the all-important thing is to get it speedily set up. The Foreign Secretary is to discuss the organisation and constitution of this force. As my right hon. Friend said this afternoon, let there be no bickerings; let the Government issue no ultimatum or lay down conditions about it. Let us get it set up as quickly as may be.
    I would conclude with this. We are over there now, but we will go into international consultations, international negotiations, with blood-stained hands. I can only thank God that this party took the stand which it has taken in the last few weeks. I am not one who is clamouring for the resignation of the Prime Minister. That is not the solution. The resignation of the Government is the solution, and then we shall get a Government that can, at least, go to the United Nations and say, "We negotiate and consult with clean hands."
    8.11 p.m.
    Sir Alexander Spearman: Two or three hours ago, in a speech more restrained than that to which we have just listened from the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. Hamilton), the hon. Member for Abertillery (The Rev. Ll. Williams) said that the wealth of this country in relation to that of the rest of the world was very much less than it used to be. That is a fact which we have to face, and shape our policy accordingly. There was a time when we really policed the world. It was a self-appointment, and I am bound to say that it was a pretty good appointment. I think that we kept the peace of the world for a long time fairly successfully.
    In those days our bankers were financing the world, our industrialists were equipping the world, and our Navy ruled the seas. Alas, those things do not apply today. Today, there is a Channel which our Navy cannot control, because things other than ships can cross it. Today, our weapons are few as compared with those of other countries, and our resources for the getting of those weapons are only a fraction of those of the United States and Russia. And there
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    is the hydrogen bomb and the rockets to which the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) referred.
    I have always been against the use of force in this issue—alone, or alone with France. In so far as the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary know of my existence at all, they must know that I feel that, because I have made it very clear all the way through. I may very well be wrong. There are many facts which are not known, and cannot be known, to us on the back benches. But what is, to me, very clear, is that if I were wrong, as so many of my hon. Friends may think, or if I am right, as I still think, it could only have been right to use force as a temporary holding operation.
    If I see a man trying to commit a felony and I am courageous enough, or he is small enough, I will go and seize him; but it is not for me to do anything but hold him until the police come along. It is not for me to mete out punishment to him, or for me to dictate to the court what his sentence should be. I therefore think that in this issue it is now vital that this matter should be handed to the United Nations without any delay at all.
    Now I come to almost the end, but to the difficult part of my speech. There has been talk that we are to impose conditions. I believe that this is no time for conditions, and I am bound to ask my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade if he will give an assurance—as I so profoundly hope, and as so many of my hon. Friends so profoundly hope that he will—that we will hand over unconditionally as soon as the United Nations forces come in. The situation to day is so grave that I believe that that is the only solution, and it is the only wise solution which I could happily support in the Lobbies tonight.
    8.15 p.m.
    Mr. William Warbey: We have heard a most courageous speech by the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir A. Spearman), which follows equally courageous speeches, and action, delivered or taken, earlier today by other hon. Members opposite. Indeed, this movement of declaration or of resignation is becoming almost a snowball, and I greatly fear that if it goes on very much longer the snowball may fall upon the

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    right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, who is, I understand, to wind up the debate tonight. Indeed, the fact that we are honoured with his presence here in a debate of this character at all is doubtless due to the fact that the Government's ranks are so rapidly thinning that he has to hold the fort for them.
    This movement on the opposite side is one which we welcome greatly. It does credit to those who are taking part in it, but I can only say this, even to those who have announced their position today. We understand that they felt that they could take no action whilst our troops were actually in transit or engaged in operations, but it is a very great pity that some of them did not declare themselves in time to stop those operations taking place altogether. That would have been very good indeed, not only for the welfare of our men but also for the good name and standing of this country.
    This afternoon we had from the Colonial Secretary an attempt to explain why it was that most of the countries of the world had been against us in our actions during the past week. He tried to explain why it was that only one statesman in the whole wide world outside Britain and France has wholeheartedly supported the British Government during the past ten days. Apart from Mr. Menzies, I do not know anywhere in the world of a statesman, either in government or in opposition, who is wholeheartedly backing the actions of the British and French Governments.
    All that the Colonial Secretary could say was that when the full story was unfolded people would then understand. It is a pity that the Colonial Secretary did not begin to unfold some of that story today; that he did not begin to enlighten hon. Members, who day after day have called for the facts and have been denied them. Nevertheless, some of the story is beginning to unfold.
    We now know, for example, what at the beginning of August we only suspected—that the British and French Governments planned to use force to seize the Canal and solve the Canal problem at the beginning of August. The President of the Board of Trade will be unable to deny that. He will be unable to deny it, because it was said by M. Pineau in the French Assembly that they were stopped
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    from using force only by Mr. Dulles. And President Eisenhower has said in a television broadcast to the United States that some of their allies—and everyone knows that that means Britain and France—wanted to use force to solve the Suez Canal problem at the beginning of August.
    That is the beginning of the story. Then it moved away from what appeared to be the sphere of force into the realm of negotiation. After pressure from this side, and from elsewhere, it was referred to the Security Council, and it looked for a time as though the whole question was subsiding, that the heat was coming off and that the matter would be settled by peaceful negotiations with Egypt. Indeed, the latest information that we have on the subject is first that the Foreign Secretary was prepared to give serious consideration to the Indian compromise plan, and secondly that the Egyptian Government had proposed a meeting in Geneva on 29th October, a significant date, for hon. Members will recall what happened afterwards—not negotiations in Geneva, but the Israeli attack on Egypt which launched this whole business.
    What was actually happening in the meantime while public opinion was being lulled to sleep, and while everybody thought that the Government had departed from the course of insanity and had come back to reason? The military build-up was going on all the time, in Malta and Cyprus, in preparation for what actually took place last week. As the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser) said, it must have been premeditated. It would have been wrong, he said, if the Government had not made ample preparations for the action which they took last week. Of course, it was premeditated.
    The information was let out by Mr. Ben Gurion in Israel, and M. Pineau in the French National Assembly, on almost identical days. Mr. Ben Gurion said, "At last Israel has found a true ally in France", and M. Pineau told the French Assembly, "We have some cards up our sleeves which we shall play when the moment is ripe." The moment was ripe when Israel mobilised and when the British Government officially told them not to attack Jordan. By shining the red light against the road to Jordan they shone the green light on the road to

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    Egypt. That is a little of the story which the Colonial Secretary might have unfolded this afternoon and which I do not think the President of the Board of Trade will be able to contradict when he replies later this evening.
    What was the purpose of all this? What were the objectives, and how far have those objectives been realised? Some hon. Members opposite are concerned about that aspect of the matter. The hon. Member for Preston, North (Mr. J. Amery), who I hope may have an opportunity to state his views, is concerned, as, for example, is the Daily Telegraph today, to know why this operation was called off before even our military objective had been realised. The Daily Telegraph says:
    "The talk prevalent in some quarters about 'victory' and the unqualified achievement of objectives is notably unguarded. The original purpose of the Anglo-French forces was defined as the occupation of key points along the whole length of the Canal, thus making it an effective buffer line between Israel and Egypt. But the standstill has been declared when, apparently, only a part of the Canal has been brought under control. No reason for the halt short of our original conception has been stated."
    I am sure the hon. Member for Preston, North and his hon. Friends will be very much concerned to ask the Government to state the reasons why they halted before these military objectives were realised.
    Why, in fact, was the cease-fire ordered? This House has not yet been told. We still do not know the reasons. Perhaps the President of the Board of Trade will tell us this evening. Certainly, it could not have been ordered because our military objectives or our war aims had been achieved. What were our war aims? As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has said, they change from day to day. Some of them have been clearly stated. First, we have been told that the purpose was to put an end to hostilities between Israel and Egypt. We have achieved that, at least for the time being. We ended the hostilities between Israel and Egypt by furnishing military aid to the attackers and helping them more quickly to defeat their victims.
    We were also told that our aim was to separate the combatants. We have put in a tiny little wedge at the top of the Suez Canal, and the combatants, if they
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    wanted to, could be at arms at any moment throughout the whole length of the Canal except that tiny wedge at the top.
    We claimed that we were going in to protect British lives in Egypt. Not a single British life in Egypt has been threatened by the Egyptians. In fact, I must say that under the greatest provocation the discipline of the Egyptian population during these last ten days has been simply fantastic. British correspondents have paid tribute to it. But British civilians in Egypt were only threatened by British bombs which might have fallen upon them.
    Then we were told that the aim was to protect our shipping, £50 million of it, according to the Prime Minister, heading for the Canal. The next day we were told that the ships had been routed round the Cape. That is how we saved that £50 million worth of British shipping, not by our military action in Egypt. Then we were told that it was to keep the Canal open; and we blocked it. Then we were told that it was to secure our oil supplies; and we made certain that those oil supplies would be reduced by some 75 per cent. by the blocking of the Canal and the sabotaging of the pipelines. Or perhaps the President of the Board of Trade will tell us the amount of oil supplies coming into this country at the present time and expected during the next three weeks.
    Then there was the secret war aim—not publicly proclaimed by the Prime Minister, but known to everybody as the secret and special personal aim of the Prime Minister, namely, to topple over Nasser. Has that been realised? I am sure the hon. Member for Preston, North will be very upset indeed that that war aim has not been realised and that today Nasser is still there.
    Mr. Emrys Hughes: Stronger than ever.
    Mr. Warbey: I regret to say this, because Nasser is a military dictator and I do not like military dictators, but instead of toppling Nasser and slapping him down the Government's actions have built him up. Today, he is the hero of the Arab world instead of being only the petty dictator of Egypt.
    Since then there have been two additional war aims—belated ones which

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    were revealed at the last moment. One is to get the Israelis to go back to their own frontiers. We have heard what Mr. Ben Gurion has had to say about that. Of course, the British Government have not, and cannot, achieve that war aim. I regret very much indeed that Mr. Ben Gurion has said in effect, "What we have, we hold." This is going to do great damage to the cause of Israel, and, as one of those who helped to do what little he could, politically and otherwise, to bring the state of Israel into existence, I can only say that if they try to hold on to the fruits of an undoubted act of aggression, they will forfeit their friends throughout the world.
    The other war aim, which we have only just been told about, is to create a United Nations police force. This, if I may say so, is almost too funny for a tragic situation. This is to say, of course, "Long live the gangster. Long live the murderer. They have created the police force."
    I hope it will have happened that out of this evil done by the British and French Governments good may yet come. That is the only hope for this country and for the world. But, if this good is to come, the Government must, of course, having begun to retrace their steps, retrace them fully and wholeheartedly. Let them comply fully with the conditions put by the United Nations. Let them not haggle about it. Let them agree with the United Nations when and how our troops shall get out.
    Let them not pretend that we have any claim to be a part of the United Nations police force. None of the great Powers has any such right. All of them have sinned one after another—Russia, Britain, France and America—America by her action in Guatemala in getting rid of a Government there and putting in a stooge Government and a military dictator who has since used force. None of the great Powers has shown itself fit to be a member of the United Nations police force.
    Let us not haggle any more about it. Let us make sure that at least this good comes out of it, and, in order that it may come, let this Government go.
    8.30 p.m.
    Mr. Nigel Fisher: I will not follow the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Warbey) in his aŕguments directly, because many of my hon. Friends wish to
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    intervene, if there is time, and I do not wish to detain the House for long.
    No one would claim, I think, that our problems and anxieties in the Middle East are at an end. The Russian threats of aggression or of intervention in that area cast a sombre shadow of which we are all only too conscious. Yesterday, the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond)—to whom, if I may, I would add my felicitations to those already expressed—asked a question of the Prime Minister. My right hon. Friend's answer, or perhaps I should say, lack of answer, must temper any optimism which any of us may feel. Nevertheless, with that reservation, a very important one, I acknowledge at once, I should myself submit that events so far have seldom so justified the policy of a Government as they have done in the Middle East, and in very quick time.
    In one week, we have achieved much of what we sought. I sincerely believe that the courage and resolution of the Prime Minister have already brought many benefits to this country and the world. Ten days ago, the Government—it will be agreed, I should imagine—were faced with an extremely difficult choice. The choice which they had to make was a straightforward one between two alternatives: first, we could have left this whole matter of the Israeli-Egyptian war to the United Nations, or, as the second choice, we could act ourselves in concert with the French. Much the easier choice, of course, was to leave it to the United Nations. No one would have criticised that, but nothing would have happened. The United Nations would have passed resolutions, as it has done about Hungary, but, as in the case of Hungary, it would not have acted because it had nothing to act with; there was no international police force. The only forces available which could act were the British and French forces in the Mediterranean.
    What are the results so far of this intervention? To begin with, there is a small but beneficial result to those concerned. We have, I suppose, saved many Israeli lives because we put the Egyptian Air Force out of action on the ground. Secondly, we have limited the size and area of the war, because our prompt action has prevented the intervention of other Arab States on the side of Egypt,

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    and possibly, too, has prevented the Israelis from invading Jordan. Thirdly, we brought the war to an end within a week. [Laughter.] I do not know why hon. Members opposite laugh.
    Mr. Percy Wells: Was it a war?
    Mr. Fisher: It may be that the Leader of the Opposition thought it was a premature result, but nevertheless it certainly would not have occurred if we had not been there. I believe that my right hon. Friend never said a truer word than when he observed that in order to prevent a big war it is sometimes wise to take strong action to stop a small one.
    What were our objectives and motives in taking the action we took? They were motives which were deliberately introduced by hon. and right hon. Members opposite, and by the Leader of the Opposition in particular. I believe we had two motives. The first was to protect vital British interests. The whole standard of living of our people depends on the oil of the Middle East and on the Canal to bring it through. [HON. MEMBERS: "That is blocked."] That is temporary. I find nothing morally reprehensible in a Government seeking to defend the living standards of its own nationals. I should have thought that was the first responsibility of any Government.
    The second motive, and just as important, was that we took effective action to reduce the size of the conflict and bring it to an end. In that we have been completely successful, 100 per cent. successful, in a week. We went into Suez in order to divide the main forces of the combatants from each other. [HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] It is all very well for hon. Members opposite to say "Rubbish", but that was the only place for us to go in and we were the only people capable of achieving that at the time.
    Mr. James Callaghan: The Government have not separated them now.
    Mr. Fisher: Certainly the main forces of the combatants are separated. I should have thought it would have been obvious to hon. Members that law, both domestic and international, is often quite ineffective
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    without a police force to implement it. That is the job which we have done on this occasion.
    As the Prime Minister said in the House a week ago, and as Sir Pierson Dixon said in the United Nations, of course we will willingly, gladly, hand over this task and responsibility to a United Nations force as soon as one can be organised to take over the job properly. I hope that we shall stay there until such a force arrives in sufficient strength to keep the peace in the Middle East. In bringing these hostilities between Israel and Egypt to an end, we have had absolutely no help at all from the party opposite. Instead, we have had the bitter hostility of hon. and right hon. Members opposite, the unedifying scenes in the House of Commons all through last week and then the disgraceful and politically inept broadcast of the Leader of the Opposition. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] It was politically inept because it has rallied most of us round our own leader. I believe that all these things will prove a boomerang to hon. Members opposite.
    I have never before in this House said things personally unfriendly to hon. Members opposite because I have many friends on the opposite benches, but I must say that, with a few notable exceptions, I believe the Opposition have put themselves in an absolutely impossible position by the attitude which they have taken, a position in which, in order to save their own political reputations, they have had practically to hope for the failure of this country and this enterprise. [HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] Oh, yes; in the result it is not, of course, this country which has failed, but the Socialist Party which has failed this country. In support of my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Beresford Craddock) I must say that Mr. Nehru frequently finds himself in the same position.
    One of the least endearing features about some hon. Members opposite is that they seem to think that in so many international situations their country is invariably wrong.
    Mr. Sydney Silverman: This is an old taunt, but there were a great many countries which took part in the General Assembly vote. Is the case of the hon. Member that this country was the only one in step?
    Mr. Fisher: I do not want to go into that at this late hour. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] We have been into all these arguments again and again. I am merely defending the Government, as I think I am perfectly entitled to do. The Government's policy was a courageous policy and a strong policy, carried through by a strong Government. How wrong some people were who nine months or a year ago thought the Prime Minister might make a weak Prime Minister. How wrong they were.
    Of course, there were risks in this policy, and I do not deny that. One of the risks was that our policy would be misunderstood abroad, and deliberately traduced at home. Those things happened. The Government accepted those risks, and the Prime Minister himself bore the burden of the insults which were hurled at him all last week across the Floor of the House with a cool dignity and courage which enhanced his stature in the House as it lowered the stature of those who insulted him.
    Mr. E. M. Braddock: Twenty men have died.
    Mr. Fisher: Very soon this country and the world will, I believe, begin to reap the rewards of this policy. [HON. MEMBERS: "We are already."] We have accepted the risks. I believe we shall soon see the prizes. Already there is the prize that the war between Israel and Egypt is at an end. That is the first prize.
    When the international force materialises our own forces can come home. I repeat what other hon. Members have said, that one of the most important benefits that may come out of this enterprise can be a permanent international police force for the world, a police force permanently organised and permanently in being, which will give the United Nations the power to act as well as to talk. That would be of great benefit not only to ourselves but to the whole world.
    Another result important for the world as well as ourselves can be the internationalisation of the Canal, with, of course, free passage through it for Israeli ships. I myself should prefer our own forces to remain there until that objective is achieved. Certainly the international force should not be withdrawn until it has been achieved.
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    Lastly, I believe that we can get out of this enterprise a complete settlement of the whole of the Middle East, and with it a great enhancement of British authority in an area which was rapidly falling under Russian influence. I am proud to have supported wholeheartedly from the outset a Government who by their courage and resolution have brought about the prospects of such benefits to our country and to the world.
    8.42 p.m.
    Mr. Ellis Smith: It was my intention to say something about democracy in this House, but I have not the time to develop that subject tonight, and I shall look forward to having a chance of speaking on that on another occasion. We are considering the world. We ought to consider also what is happening on our own doorstep. Now I shall produce evidence to show the worsening of the situation.
    Many explanations have been given of how this situation was brought about. I believe that most of what has been said has contributed to it, but fundamentally the issue has been caused first of all by the American House of Representatives, secondly by the Senate, and thirdly and in particular by the American Standard Oil Company. In the short time available to me tonight I propose to prove what I have said.
    Oil is the blood-stream of modern life, and no large industrial country can keep going unless it can have a guaranteed supply of oil. Consequently, oil brought about a change in the centre of gravity of power in the world. For fifty years now that centre has been the Middle East. The authorities in this country have a terrible responsibility for this situation there, because they have taken no action worth talking about to deal with it, and now they are risking the lives of millions of our people—to safeguard the oil for them.
    Oil has determined the centre of the struggle for power and to a great extent determined the foreign policy of all the large industrial countries. If anyone doubts me, I refer him to one or two pieces of evidence which I will quote briefly because of the very limited time that the sons of ordinary people have to speak in the House.

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    M. Clemenceau said,
    "A drop of oil is worth as much to France as a drop of blood."
    In 1916 the British Government, at great risk, attacked the Rumanian oilfields in order to undermine Germany's military power. Oil is required for power for most forms of transport and is an element in many by-products required by industrial countries. It has been responsible for producing more millionaires and greater profits than any other form of industry. It has produced its Sir Basil Zaharoffs and its Sir Henry Detterdings and it is no coincidence that they have all been knighted. [Laughter.] What is the joke?
    Mr. Victor Collins: I suggest that some of those hon. Members who have been recently knighted have today made very useful statements.
    Hon. Members: Arabian "knights."
    Mr. Ellis Smith: If my hon. Friend's intervention was intended to be helpful, I cannot see it. This is what we have to face when some people are trying to be just too clever.
    I repeat that it is no coincidence that many of the big millionaires who made their money in oil have received what my hon. Friend seems to know nothing about. It is the British, French, German and, above all, American oil companies who are fundamentally responsible for the world situation today. They have extracted the maximum amount of oil from the Middle East and have put relatively little back into those countries, except in order to extract more oil. The result is that the whole of the Middle East is economically backward and the natives are living in appalling conditions. The treatment meted out to the workers in the Middle East is a disgrace to the countries I have mentioned.
    I intend to produce evidence to prove that this is the fundamental reason for the Suez situation. All this accounts for power politics and the fact that the lives of millions of people are being risked in the manoeuvres and intrigues for oil in the Middle East. The oil companies of the world for generations have taken millions of pounds in value out of the Middle East and have put relatively little
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    back except in modernising plant to extract more oil to make greater profits and make more millionaires.
    I refer hon. and right hon. Members who are sufficiently interested to check the facts to a statement made by the right hon. Gentleman the present Leader of the House on 15th February, 1955, which is well worth reading. The right hon. Gentleman, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the Government's holding in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, originally £5 million, was at that time £233 million. By 1955 a £I share had gone up to £11 and its market value was £50. People talk about inflation. Here is an example of inflation, and it is typical of what has been going on in the Middle East.
    Now I shall quote the one-time Secretary of State of the U.S.A. If anyone doubts its authenticity, I will gladly let them see the quotation if they will come to me after the debate. Mr. Harold Ickes said on 25th March, 1945:
    "Here we are, your country and mine, in a dither over Russian influence in the Middle East, which means nothing but Iranian oil. When I was in London in September, I found there was no difficulty in arriving at mutually agreeable understandings between our two countries with respect to our oil interests. I wanted to try the same procedure with Russia, but so far we have done nothing except to waste time and get closer and closer to another brink of another disaster."
    My right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) should hesitate before becoming involved in oil controversy. I ask my right hon. Friend if he remembers the Lord Beaverbrook-Cordell Hull-Harold Ickes oil agreement of 1945? That agreement would have provided for the international control of oil. Had it been completed we would not have been faced with the situation we are in today. But what happened? First it was submitted to Congress, which opposed it. Then it was submitted to the Senate, but forces behind the scenes insisted upon its withdrawal.
    Does my right hon. Friend also remember the watered-down agreement which he signed with the late Hector McNeil, Harold Ickes and other United States officials? This is the explanation of why the world is in its present situation. Many of us, when on the Terrace of the House of Commons, have pointed to the real government with the clock: the mighty oil companies have been determining

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    policy behind the scenes. It was the Standard Oil Company, together with the other oil companies, which insisted on that international agreement being withdrawn from the Senate.
    Could we have a White Paper showing the negotiations which took place? First, the Beaverbrook negotiations and, secondly, the negotiations in which my right hon. Friend and others were involved? Could we be given the whole history, and at the same time could we be told the profits made by the millionaire oil magnates through extracting oil from the Middle East? In such a White Paper could we have a report of what took place during the last war when these oil magnates were negotiating while our boys were fighting all over the world? Could we be given the reports of the British Ambassador from Teheran on what took place between August and December, 1944, and all post-war history of oil in the Middle East?
    That brings me to my next point. In 1946 a friend wrote to me from Abadan an indictment of the treatment of the natives of the Middle East. Never have I read a blacker account of the treatment of men and women. So concerned was I at this report that I saw the late Mr. Ernest Bevin and handed it to him. I have here the confidential letter from the Foreign Office indicating that it was going to go into this matter.
    This is part of the explanation of the present situation. Because the natives at that time had never organised themselves they were treated in a far worse manner than were the people of this country during the industrial revolution. This House needs to be reminded that if the policy of the International Federation of Trade Unions or of the Co-operative Alliance had been applied this would never have occurred because, both before and since the war, those two organisations have said that conflicts over oil resources are an ever-present threat to world peace.
    I have here further evidence of the intrigue and manoeuvring which has been carried on by some of these oil magnates, with whom some people seem to be very friendly. I now wish to quote from the American newspaper Time of March, 1947. It says:
    "In the subterranean world of petroleum it is the international oilmen who play the blue-
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    chip game. The players must back their gambling spirit with refineries, tankers, filling stations—and millions in hard cash."
    It goes on to say:
    "The concessions were wangled from wily old Ibn Saud Arabian American Oil Company … jointly owned by Standard Oil Company of California and the Texas Company."
    So one could go on giving examples of the stakes played for by these people, many of whom have been brought here and feted in certain centres in this great capital. The time has arrived when the people of the old world—especially in this centre in London—ought to insist that the resources of the world should be owned by the people of the world, and the whole of the world's resources used for mankind's benefit. The time has arrived when, no matter who they are or how highly placed they may be, these people should be swept out of power so that never again shall mankind be faced with a situation of this kind, with this Government risking the lives of millions of our people during the past two or three months.
    8.58 p.m.
    Mr. Aneurin Bevan: When my right hon. and hon. Friends decided to put the Amendment on the Order Paper we had two considerations chiefly in mind. One was that in a crisis of this magnitude it is the duty of the Opposition to try to secure the general welfare of the nation, and the other to try to make sure that when the Opposition succeeds the Government the situation is not irreparable. The Amendment, therefore, is aimed primarily at trying to undo some of the mischief that has already been done and to prevent more from being done.
    My right hon. Friends and I were alarmed by statements that came from the Commonwealth about what may be the intentions of members of the Commonwealth. I have a good many friends in India, and I was shocked by some of the statements made, which at first sight appeared to show that very great influences were at work in India and Ceylon to get them to withdraw from the Commonwealth. And, as we all know, it is awfully difficult, if not impossible, to get nations back once they have gone out.
    I was most influenced by a statement made by an Indian statesman whom I

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    have the honour to know quite well, Rajagopalachari, who is an Indian ex-Minister of influence, and whose economic views are no means those of myself, but who has powerful influence in the Congress Party, although he has now retired from active life. He has been advising Pandit Nehru to take India out of the Commonwealth as a consequence of the policy pursued by the Government in the last few weeks. The Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations must be very well aware of the agitation which has been going on.
    The first thing we wanted to do was to give the House of Commons an opportunity of saying something, or doing something, which might express the wish of the House of Commons that the Commonwealth should continue as strong as ever it has been and to make it still stronger. I am afraid, however, that we have not got that from the speech of the Secretary of State for the Colonies this afternoon. I was rather surprised at the reasons he gave for not accepting the Amendment. He suggested that it would be awfully awkward to arrange it; that the timetable might be difficult.
    One of the most astonishing and encouraging features of the last ten days has been the fact that the Security Council was able to meet so quickly, and that the United Nations Assembly and Security Council have been in almost constant session. It would seem, therefore, that there should be no mechanical difficulties in the way; and one would have thought that at a time of such peril as this, when there are so many ominous portents coming in from abroad, the first thing the Prime Minister would desire to do would be to surround himself with the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth and to obtain their counsel. After all, he seems to have been having very bad advice these last few weeks.
    Right hon. and hon. Members opposite will not, in the privacy of their own hearts, suggest that the counsel which the Prime Minister has been obtaining and acting upon has been invariably sagacious. One would have thought, therefore, that in these circumstances the Government would have considered it to be a highly desirable thing to get the Commonwealth Prime Ministers together. Of course, we are satisfied that
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    if they did, they would hear something that they would not like to hear. But in these days, when the Opposition cannot influence the Government very much—at least obviously and openly, because party alignments in the House of Commons make party loyalties very difficult to bend or break—it would have been the best thing to have called in people from outside who would be able to give advice from a variety of points of view. We are rather shocked, therefore, that we obtained from the Secretary of State for the Colonies so lame an answer to the Amendment which we have moved.
    In any case, there is nothing in the Amendment which does not state the facts. How does it read?
    "… in view of the grave international situation "—
    does anybody suggest that it is not grave?—
    "and the division in the Commonwealth resulting from Your Majesty's Government's policy of armed intervention in Egypt"—
    Does anyone suggest here that divisions in the Commonwealth have arisen from any other action? That is the second statement of fact made in the Amend-men—
    "the Gracious Speech contains no reference to any proposal by Your Majesty's Government to convene forthwith a conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers so as to bring to bear all the resources of the Commonwealth in support of the authority of the United Nations."
    I ask hon. Members opposite, if they set aside for a moment any consideration of party prestige, is there anything in that Amendment to which they can take exception?
    Are the facts wrongly stated? Are they stated in exaggerated form? Is it not, in all the circumstances, a very modest and moderate Amendment? Indeed, we were hoping to hear from the Government a statement almost immediately to the effect that they proposed, as soon as may be, to act upon the Amendment. Instead of that, we had this afternoon a speech from the right hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] We are getting accustomed to this. Hon. Members opposite are shouting down their own doubts. It is noticeable, however, that as the doubts arise the shouting also dies.
    I was saying, before the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister came in

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    just now, that the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Colonies did not in any way satisfy us. In fact, he once more got on the escalator. I wish that he would realise that a catalogue is not a description. We had a long catalogue of the occasions on which the members of the Commonwealth had been consulted in the last few months, but, of course, on the one single occasion when it was most important to consult them they were not consulted at all.
    As we said on a previous occasion, the reason they were not consulted was that it was not possible to consult them in a project which had to be carried out so secretly and so quickly. So we asked them to repair that. Because, after all, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger), who opened this debate on behalf of the Opposition, in what I thought was an admirable speech, pointed out, diversity which is to some extent a part of the weakness of the Commonwealth is also in circumstances of this sort a source of strength. No one will deny for one moment that the relationships between Ceylon and India and Russia and Egypt are different from those of Great Britain. Would it, therefore, not have been a very important thing to have had a confluence of views of various kinds brought to bear upon this problem?
    I have tried to say before that I regard these problems as entirely novel and that they will be with us for some time to come. I do not quite honestly believe that there exists any body of statesmen in the world at the present time fully equipped with all the answers to all these problems. If that be the case, why have we denied ourselves the advice of people who are so easily available and who can draw upon so big a pool of knowledge from different parts of the world?
    Furthermore, there is another argument which I should like hon. and right hon. Members opposite to consider. They have said over and over again—in fact it has been the leitmotiv of this debate from the beginning in speeches from the other side of the House—that the great difficulty about the United Nations is that it is too powerless, that it is composed of so many disparate elements that it is unable to come to any coherant de-
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    cision and carry it out. Surely, if that be the case, it is all the more essential that a body of opinion like the opinion in the Commonwealth, a body of nations, should act in as much concert as possible in order to give significance, meaning and coherence to the United Nations.
    Ought we not to try to avoid a state of affairs in which members of the Commonwealth speak with so many different voices in U.N.O.? Therefore, if we are to deal with what remains of this problem now, it seems to me that the first thing we ought to do is to get the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth together in order that we might be able from now on at least to have as common a policy as it is possible to work out in the circumstances facing us. That is what we have to say about this Amendment. We hope that we shall have from the Government a rather better reply than the speech which we had this afternoon from the Colonial Secretary.
    As has been said more than once, this is like a serial story. Day after day it unfolds itself, almost like those old serial stories of the cinema when we had to leave the cinema, full of apprehension because we saw Pearl White hanging on to a precipice. I have never seen anything so like the drawn faces which we used to witness among those leaving the cinema when they had a whole week to wait before knowing what was going to happen to her as the faces of members of the 1922 Committee in the course of the last few days.
    We had a further instalment of the serial story tonight. Hon. Members opposite have never been able to make up their minds on what was the object of the Prime Minister's first project. We do not blame them; we cannot make it out ourselves. We do not know which is the mask and which is the reality. We believed at first, and it subsequently transpired to be the case, that going in to separate the forces of Egypt and Israel was a mask and behind that mask the real intention was to achieve the objectives which the Prime Minister has had in mind ever since last August—the seizure of the Canal and, of course, the downfall of Colonel Nasser.
    Now and again the mask becomes the reality because hon. Members say, "What a wonderful thing it would be if, as a result of our intervention, we put teeth

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    into the United Nations and had a United Nations police force". We want to know from the Government today, is the mask now to become the reality, or is there another reality behind the mask?
    Last night the Foreign Secretary made a speech on the radio and I have been trying to understand it. Probably it is my fault if I do not understand it; the right hon. Gentleman will probably explain. Speeches from the Front Bench opposite are so blurred; there is something going on inside their minds quite different from what they are saying. They make speeches like a boy spelling and not being quite certain whether the "I" comes before the "E" or the "E" before the "I". So he makes both look the same.
    I will read what the right hon. Gentleman said. This is very important because one or two hon. Members opposite have indicated that what they will do tonight will depend on what the Government say in reply to the debate. The Foreign Secretary said:
    "Having taken this action,"—
    that is, landing in Egypt—
    "… we are not going to be deflected from seeing that it achieves the results we desire."
    What are the results? Are they confined to a United Nations force? If so, why not say so? If from this emerges a United Nations force, in so far as France and Britain are concerned, from that point on are they then prepared to leave all the matters to the United Nations?
    The Foreign Secretary said:
    "In addition to the short-term objectives"—
    mark what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said—
    "of stopping hostilities and separating the combatants we want a permanent settlement of the situation in the Middle East."
    So do we. But is a permanent settlement in the Middle East a condition for getting out of Egypt or is it to be a purpose pursued by Her Majesty's Government through the medium of the United Nations? We want an answer.
    To continue the quotation:
    "We must ensure the withdrawal of Israeli forces, and a proper determination of the frontiers between Israel and the Arab States, which all will then respect."
    So do we. Is that a condition for the withdrawal of forces from Egypt? Is that one of the objectives which we still
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    have for remaining there? It is essential that we should know.
    "We want the future of the refugees assured".
    So do we. But do we stay in Egypt until that is done?
    "We want satisfactory arrangements made for the operation of the Suez Canal in accordance with the 1888 Convention".
    That takes us back to August. Are we making that a condition for withdrawing our troops from Egypt? We want to know, and hon. Members on the opposite side of the House want to know.
    "We want to make plans for the economic development of the area to redress some of the great inequalities of wealth which now pervade it."
    So do we. Is that a condition for withdrawing from Egypt?
    The right hon. and learned Gentleman said,
    "These are not easy problems. I believe that we have made them more soluble by our action; but they will only be solved if the United Nations make up its mind to take over from us in a real and effective way the tasks which we have begun to discharge."
    It is quite simple. All the right hon. Gentleman has to say is this: that provided the United Nations sends in a police force under conditions determined by the United Nations at a time to be determined by the United Nations, with no other conditions whatever, Her Majesty's Government will take the troops out of Egypt.
    We want an entirely unequivocal answer to that, because unless we get it we shall never know which is the reality and which is the mask. We are prepared for right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, if they wish, to declare a limited dividend on their operation and to say that whatever may have been their original intention, they will have achieved the existence of a United Nations police force in the Middle East. What we want is for them to say tonight whether they are going to be satisfied with that limited dividend; or is the ambiguity of that language once more concealing intentions which they have not revealed to the House?
    We are entitled to know. We ought to have an end to this equivocation. It has been going on far too long. The Minister of Defence today, in answering a question, italicised the doubts in our

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    own minds by saying that we were not going to leave the Suez Canal to the authority of one nation. Does he mean that the troops remain there until we get a satisfactory settlement of the Canal problem? Is that what he meant? If he did not mean that, why did he use that language?
    All the while, we are having these sentences dropped, or these blurred paragraphs from the Government, concealing from us and from the world what the real intentions of the Government are. And the time has come for it to stop, because we really do object bitterly to British lives being risked, and lost, for reasons concealed from the House of Commons. They are being concealed all the time. That is the first major point which we want to obtain from the Government this evening.
    Furthermore—and I am, myself, deeply worried by this—I do not believe that it is possible to separate the events in Hungary from the events in Egypt. I wish that hon. Members would consider this very seriously. The country is becoming deeply troubled by what is now happening, and from some of the news it does look as if uglier events are going to supervene.
    Mr. Stephen McAdden: It is a pity that some of the right hon. Gentleman's friends went to the Russian Embassy party last night.
    Mr. Bevan: We are, indeed, on the edge of peril. I have been looking at the timetable of these events, and they have a most macabre appearance. I have believed, and I have stated here on more than one occasion—I have sincerely believed that profound changes are taking place in Russian society. I believe that there are deep divisions among Russian leaders. I do not believe that the Russian Government are any more monolithic than are the Government sitting on those benches opposite.
    I believe that there are serious divisions, and protracted divisions—although rather less hopeful than those in the party opposite. I believe that these developments obey a tempo which attends upon world events just as much as upon events in Russia itself. If the world enabled Russia to relax; in other words, if
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    moderate elements in Russia can find in the world a congenial condition in which to press themselves, they will do so. If, on the other hand, the world is uncongenial, then those developments in Russia are retarded.
    This calendar of events all goes to show that, as Russia was dealing with an entirely unexpected situation in Poland and in Hungary, the Russian leaders were equivocating; the elements that were making for a tolerant attitude were in the ascendancy. For example, who suggests, for a single moment, that the Russian leaders' descent upon Warsaw, and then their departure from Warsaw having had to accept the independent Government of Gomulka, was what they expected when they arrived?
    Would they have subjected themselves to an affront so sharp as that if two things were not happening at one and the same time—changes in Russia herself, and changes in the attitude of the people around her towards Russia? Is that not clear from this timetable, from the fact that even after the invasion of Egypt by Israel, even after the ultimatum sent by Her Majesty's Government to Egypt, the Soviet Prime Minister was still speaking about the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. [Interruption.] Yes, certainly. Hon. Members really ought not to accept so dismal, indeed, so ominous a conclusion that no change for the better can ever be expected from behind the Iron Curtain. It really is a grim prospect for the world if that is so. All we are saying on this side of the House is that Her Majesty's Government ought to direct their policies to encouraging moderation instead of giving an example of brutality such as we have seen.
    As the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Colonies said, as events unfold themselves we shall know the whole story. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) suggested this afternoon that we should have a Select Committee, such as sat, for example, on the Jameson raid. So we should. Only in that way could the facts become known, because the facts are now being concealed from us.
    All the Opposition can do at the present time is to try to mobilise as much pressure on the Government as we possibly can to drag it in civilised directions. I myself am not going to say any-

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    thing which will make it more difficult for the Government and for hon. Members opposite to try to retrace their steps. These are very ugly days. People all over the world are getting frightened. There is a lot of ignitable material lying about and we never know whether the conflagration is going to become universal.
    We have had from hon. Members opposite today a number of speeches in which they have expressed their disagreement with the Government's policy—brave speeches. There comes a time in the life of every hon. Member when he has to choose between what he considers to be the welfare of the country and the claims of his own party. I believe I have as much right to speak about that as has any hon. Member in this House. I do not believe that it accords with the dignity, the status or the well-being of this nation that any man in any part of the House should set the loyalty of his party before what he considers to be the well-being of the country and the world.
    It is never an easy thing to part from colleagues. It is a long and agonising process to go through to decide to make up one's mind that one must take a decision which may be misunderstood by many.
    Air Commodore A. V. Harvey: The right hon. Gentleman ought to know.
    Mr. Bevan: I do know. I am not sure that that knowledge has yet penetrated to the hon. and gallant Member. What I know is this. When hon. Members opposite go into the Lobby this evening, all I hope is that they will be able to come out of it genuinely believing that, having cast their votes, they will have served the best interests of their country; but if there are any hon. Members opposite who feel that the time has come when the solid façade of the party should be broken in order that common sense and dignity may creep in, now is the opportunity for them to do so.
    9.28 p.m.
    The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Thorneycroft): I rise to say a few words in concluding this debate and, in doing so, may I say that I am conscious that the background of the discussion we have had concerns much more
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    than the future of either political party. It concerns perhaps much more than the future of this country, because the decisions which are taken, whether they are taken in London or New York, in Paris or in Moscow, are going to shape in a very special sense the future of the world in which all of us have got to live.
    The Amendment that we are discussing tonight proposes a Prime Ministers' conference. May I say that I accept that as a serious and positive contribution, and I do not challenge or question the motives which lie behind it, even if I do not—and I shall say why—advise the House to accept it. It is a suggestion simply that we should add another, and very important and historic, forum for discussion of these great events.
    The first thing I would say about the Amendment is that probably there has never been more discussion within the Commonwealth than is going on at every level at this time. The suggestion here is for a conference, and I accept that the intention of hon. Members in all quarters with regard to such a conference or any such discussions would be to put the accent on the amount of agreement within the Commonwealth rather than upon any divisions of opinion which might take place. It is not suggested, and it has never been suggested, that all countries within the Commonwealth should find universal agreement on all issues. As the right hon. Gentleman himself said, it is perhaps part of the strength of that great body that we do hold different opinions and come from so many parts with such diverse interests in the world. The Commonwealth is not like the Soviet Union at all; that is the body where one finds a single and common opinion on foreign policies. The Commonwealth is something quite different. What all of us hope for in the Commonwealth and what we generally, in the long term, though not necessarily in the short term, achieve is some general measure of agreement.
    As to the calling of a conference at this moment, I would only say that I do not believe that this is a moment when the heads of Government of the various Commonwealth countries—and I draw a distinction between them and the Security Council in this matter—should necessarily leave all their countries and assemble together. What is in fact happening is

    395
    that consultations and discussions are going on at the highest levels. They are going on, especially at the United Nations today; and last night, on the Argentine resolution, every Commonwealth Government, with the exception of South Africa who had special and particular reasons, was agreed in supporting that resolution which urged the Prime Minister's proposal for a United Nations police force. No less than four members of the Commonwealth are upon the committee forming the plans for that force, and every member of the Commonwealth, again apart from South Africa, has offered to contribute to it. It is, therefore, not true to say that on all occasions, particularly on this great issue, we have been opposed to the views of the Asian members of the Commonwealth.
    There is another matter upon which the Commonwealth is agreed, and I think it is well that we should emphasise it. From Eastern Asia to Western Canada, all members of the Commonwealth are agreed on warning the Russians of the dangers of extending the area of conflict. I think they are agreed on the one main principle, that is, the vital Commonwealth interest in the Middle East. It is common ground—at least, I believe it to be common ground—that an Arab-Israel war in that area would be calamitous to all the interests of the Commonwealth. It is common ground amongst the members of the Commonwealth that we should stop it, and it is common ground that we should see that it does not start again.
    I believe that the final judgment in the Commonwealth on these events will be determined by our success or failure in these tasks, and our ability or otherwise to persuade other nations to discharge their responsibilities in these matters, and that it is these, far more than the timing of any conference, which will govern our future relations. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan), and others, as they were perfectly entitled to do, hung much more upon the Motion. Indeed the debate, as it was expected to do, has ranged over the whole problem of the Middle East.
    I recognise the sincerity with which the views opposed to my own are held. I hope that hon. and right hon. Members
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    in the House will at least do me the credit of believing that I hold with equal sincerity—indeed, passion—the view that the Government's action has been right in these matters.
    I wish to put the arguments before the House as simply and sincerely as is in my capacity to do. I should like to start by saying something about the vital character of the area which we are considering and the background to the events of the last seven days, because I believe that they have been somewhat omitted by the right hon. Gentleman.
    Of course, the Middle East is vital to the Commonwealth—vital for the oil interests, certainly; vital because it is the bridge between Asia and Africa, and vital because men have also made it the gateway between Europe and the East. I do not believe there is any hon. or right hon. Member who would suggest for one moment that any member of the Commonwealth could contemplate the continuation of a war between the Arabs and Israel in that area of the world. There is no country of the Commonwealth which is not vitally affected and very few countries outside the Commonwealth which are not affected in some very important manner. In that area, the Israelis and the Arabs have lived in a condition of war or near war for many years.
    The Labour Party renounced the Palestine Mandate. I am not criticising that or quarrelling with it. All I am saying is that it may be impossible for the West to renounce its responsibilities in that part of the world. Somebody has got to take that responsibility. Somebody must assure some kind of peaceful coexistence, at the least, between the people who inhabit it. I do not question the good intentions of either Government or any Government in this matter, but if ideals or moral precepts or good intentions could solve the problems of the Middle East they would have been solved long ago.
    I do not know how many resolutions have been passed, recommendations made and committees established. I believe that the Security Council has had something like 200 meetings on Palestine. But in the lands of which we are speaking resolutions are, perhaps, not much read or discussed—certainly they are not much agreed; and the Israelis who have been

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    farming their land have watched the Arabs across their frontier raiding them as opportunity occurred. I do not suppose that we need be too much shocked by warfare of some kind in that area; it has certainly gone on since Biblical days. It is not a new thing in the area. Always there has been a history of war, of pillage and of destruction.
    There is, however, a new factor. The new factor is that in the modern world there is provided the massive power of modern weapons to back internecine strife of that character; and the Egyptians, regardless of the poverty of their people, have devoted their resources to the purchase of arms on a vast scale from Russia. The weapons of mass destruction were placed in the hands of Nasser. And there is one other weapon that was used—the weapon of propaganda, the radio, the incitement to revolt.
    The right hon. Gentleman compared Nasser to Hitler and Mussolini. I do not quarrel with that—I agree that it cannot be pressed too far and I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman sought to press it too far; but I think that Nasser intended to achieve his aims not simply by conquest, though conquest he intended, as I shall show, in the case of the Israelis, but by internal revolution stirred up by propaganda in the Arab world. There is one thing above all that he intended: he intended the extermination of the State of Israel. That was his firm purpose.
    Mr. R. R. Stokes: Rubbish.
    Mr. Thorneycroft: Here in this House we need be neither pro-Jew nor pro-Arab. Nor do I think we are. I think all of us, whatever our race or religion, have risen above that in the debates which have taken place here. But let us be quite clear what Nasser intended. He stated it in no uncertain terms on 14th October, 1955, when he said:
    "Arab loathing of the Jews is so great that any talk of peace is idle."
    Those were the words of Nasser himself in that area of the world.
    On 11th April, 1956, the Egyptian Minister of Religious Properties broadcast as follows over the Cairo Radio:
    "There is no reason why the faithful Fedayeen, hating their enemies, should not penetrate into Israel and transform the lives of its citizens into a hell. Yes, brother and sister Arabs, the Fedayeen will be victorious because their
    398
    motives are holy and their aims are of the highest. They will be victorious because they are more diligent in death than Israel in life."
    Those were the words being addressed to Israel, and there was no stopping at that. There was a trade blockade. There was the stopping of the Israeli ships in the Canal. There was the blockade of the Gulf. There was the accepted and declared war.
    Mr. John Hynd: Will the right hon. Gentleman explain why, after all that, the Prime Minister assured the House that we stood by the tripartite commitment to defend Egypt against attack from Israel?
    Mr. Thorneycroft: I wish to follow this up, because I think this argument is important. I refer to those things for this reason. Not to raise the past, because that does not refer to the past. That is the situation at this moment. Let us by all means judge those words as they sound to us in the House of Commons here in England, but let us try to imagine at least how they sounded to the Jew, his wife or his children, as he ploughed his land looking north to Syria, east to Jordan or south to Egypt.
    It was at this stage and in that situation that Egypt announced the formation of the joint military command between those three countries, and Israel found herself virtually surrounded. It was at this stage that Egypt restarted raids across the frontier. I do not applaud or defend the Jews, and certainly I do not defend the last statements of the Premier, Ben Gurion. I do not defend them, but I do not believe that one can be so naive, in view of that history, as to call the Israelis the burglars and the Egyptians the householders. Israelis can claim, at least with some force of logic behind them, that their intention was to strike the dagger from the hand of the assassin. I do not believe there is anybody in this House who doubts that it was the intention of Egypt, declared and avowed, to annihilate the State of Israel.
    Mr. Stokes: I will tell the right hon. Gentleman what Ben Gurion said.
    Mr. Thorneycroft: The question, of course, arises as to what we should have done at that moment. We have debated it in many debates. We shall go on debating it, and I have no doubt that historians will debate it in the future. Of

    399
    course, we could have done nothing at all. Or we could have pursued the advice of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby, South (Mr. P. Noel-Baker) and withdrawn our Ambassador from Tel Aviv, had a naval demonstration, or started a blockade. We could have used all the moral pressures which reflect a fruitless and frustrating policy over eight years. Egypt and Israel—and we must face the facts of it—were locked in combat, and locked in combat across the Suez Canal. [Laughter.] Hon. Members think it a matter for laughing.
    Mr. Bevan: Apart from the literary excellence of the metaphor, where is the fact there?
    Mr. Thorneycroft: It is the simple truth that the battle was joined between the Israelis and Egypt. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Syria and Jordan would have joined in, or that the Egyptian Air Force would have inflicted massive retaliation. War would be raging today. Rightly or wrongly—and I concede the sincerity of those who hold a different view from us—we decided to intervene. I sincerely believe that if we had relied then upon resolutions rather than upon resolution, it would not simply be Budapest in flames tonight but Tel Aviv, Cairo and the whole of the Middle East.
    I want to try to deal with some of the comments which have been made in the course of the debate. The right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger) hung on the debate a full discussion of our Middle Eastern policy, as he was entitled to do. He thought that we haggled and niggled about details. I say to him in all sincerity that we do not believe that it is details that we discussed in these matters. We believe that it is fundamental to a solution of these problems that any force that is put into the area should be effective and able to carry out the policies and the functions which the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale was outlining to the House just now.
    It is not a detail to press for that. It is not haggling to ask that these things should be fulfilled to ensure that the force that is to be put in should be capable not only of keeping the war stopped but to carry out some of the other long-term projects to which the right hon. Member referred and to which I shall be referring in a little more detail presently.
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    The right hon. Gentleman then claimed that the issue which was really being debated in the House of Commons was the issue whether we gave allegiance to or repudiated the United Nations Charter. That is not the issue. The issue is how and in what way force can be put behind the rule of law. And, whatever differences we hold about the solution, it is a great and worthy issue to be discussed inside or outside the Commonwealth.
    The right hon. Member for Grimsby and the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale and others turned to the question of Hungary.
    Mr. Bevan: Before the right hon. Gentleman goes to Hungary, can we ask him whether in fact it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to withdraw their forces from Egypt immediately the United Nations asks them to do so? [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Certainly. Or whether there are any other conditions attached to their withdrawal in addition to the actual existence of United Nations forces?
    Mr. Thorneycroft: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made that absolutely plain yesterday. All we ask for is an effective United Nations force capable of carrying out these functions.
    Mr. Bevan Mr. Bevan rose—
    Hon. Members: Answer.
    Mr. Thorneycroft: I have answered. I have made it absolutely plain. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), who made his first contribution as Leader of the Liberal Party, struck a rather more practical note. He sought to face the issue. [HON. MEMBERS: "You face it."] He made it absolutely plain that any idea of an immediate withdrawal was an impractical proposal. He produced a devastating answer to the interpretation of the Afro-Asian Resolution which had been put forward by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Grimsby.
    Mr. Godfrey Nicholson Mr. Godfrey Nicholson (Farnham) rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Order, order. Let us have one speech at a time.
    Mr. Thorneycroft: The truth is that any force which is put into this area must inevitably face large and grave problems. The Israeli and the Arab armies are facing one another. I believe it is the

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    wish of every hon. Member in this House, wherever he sits, to ensure that the handover to the United Nations forces is done properly and done to forces effective for the purposes which we have in mind.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. J. J. Astor) paid a tribute to the Prime Minister and his courage. I can assure my hon. Friend that if we showed courage in intervening, if we showed speed and effectiveness in action, we shall show equal decisiveness in securing the development which all of us wish to see in the effective introduction of a United Nations force into that area. I regret that we differ from him on some matters. I think he will recognise that one of the penalties for courage—and he showed courage in his own speech—is that one may sometimes have to differ from one's friends.
    My right hon. Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Mr. Elliot) recalled us to the facts of life. He said that never in history can decisions be made in this field other than in an atmosphere of controversy. The arguments against action, the instincts against action, the preference for debate and discussion and resolution, for anything other than decision, are often overwhelming. Yet there come moments in history when the dangers to the future of one's country and the Commonwealth are too great to brook delay. Sir, whichever way one takes the decision, there are grave risks. I believe we chose aright. My right hon. Friend also referred to the United States of America, and I agree very much with the sense of what he said.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir A. Spearman)—who is a friend in many real senses as well—said that at one time we policed the world with the British Navy. He said, and said rightly, that plainly we cannot do all that today. I do not think anyone would quarrel with that statement, but someone must police these areas of the world. We cannot leave them without any police force at all.
    I say this to my hon. Friend: Of course we wish to hand over to an effective force. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made that plain. My hon. Friend said that we should do it on no conditions. But surely there is one condition which we should lay down, namely, that there should be a force, that it should be
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    effective, that arrangements should be made for the takeover and a proper plan produced.
    Mr. Bevan Mr. Bevan rose—
    Mr. Thorneycroft: Of course we have to be satisfied of that.
    Mr. Bevan: Give way.
    Mr. Thorneycroft: I am trying to tell the right hon. Gentleman. Of course Her Majesty's Government must take the responsibility for seeing that those conditions are satisfied.
    What, then, has been achieved? In seven days a cease-fire has been secured in that area. There is something else as well. There is one explanation of the Russian dismay at these events. Her plans included, and I think are now shown to have included, the take-over of the Middle East, using Nasser as her instrument. Certainly our intervention disclosed that they had been armed to the teeth by Russia. The truth is now apparent. We intervened to stop the war, and we perhaps stopped it in the nick of time, before the Egyptian air force, organised by Russia, ran amok in the Middle East. If we stopped war prematurely, we make no apology either to Russia or to the Opposition.
    Mrs. E. M. Braddock: You sent the arms over there.
    Mr. Thorneycroft: We intervened with the minimum of casualties. We are not to be compared with the Russians in Hungary. They started a war; we stopped one. The Russians sought to seize territories; we seek no sovereignty in that area. We seek no sovereign rights; we ask only for one thing—we ask our friends and neighbours for Heaven's sake to face the facts and realities in the world, whether they are great Powers or small. We must secure what we think is not contrived by the passing of resolutions or attacking those who seek to keep the peace.
    A great task has to be done, and we have created an opportunity for the United Nations to do it. We share then objectives—the withdrawal of Israeli forces; the protection of the Canal, and a long-term settlement of the problem. I recognise the differences that divide us on these matters. I would only say that

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    I, for my part, have been proud to share in these decisions. I believe them to have been right, and I am happy to have taken what part I could in taking responsibility for them in the days that have now passed.
    Mr. Bevan Mr. Bevan rose—
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Edward Heath)The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Edward Heath) rose in his
    place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
    Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.
    Question put accordingly, That those words be there added:—
    The House divided: Ayes 262, Noes 320.

    Division No. 1.]

    AYES

    [10.0 p.m.

    Ainsley, J. W.

    Fienburgh, W.

    Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson

    Albu, A. H.

    Finch, H. J.

    MacColl, J. E.

    Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

    Fletcher, Eric

    MoGhee, H. C.

    Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)

    Forman, J. C.

    McInnes, J.

    Anderson, Frank

    Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

    McKay, John (Wallsend)

    Awbery, S. S.

    Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.

    McLeavy, Frank

    Bacon, Miss Alice

    Gibson, C. W.

    MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)

    Baird, J.

    Gooch, E. G.

    MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

    Balfour, A.

    Cordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.

    Mahon, Simon

    Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.

    Greenwood, Anthony

    Mainwaring, W. H.

    Bence, C. ft. (Dunbartonshire, E.)

    Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.

    Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfd, E.)

    Benn, Hn. Wedgwood (Bristol, S. E.)

    Grey, C. F.

    Mann, Mrs. Jean

    Benson, G.

    Griffiths, David (Bother Valley)

    Mason, Roy

    Beswick, F.

    Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)

    Mayhew, C. P.

    Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw Vale)

    Griffiths, William (Exchange)

    Mellish, R. J.

    Blackburn, F.

    Grimond, J.

    Messer, Sir F.

    Boardman, H.

    Hale, Leslie

    Mikardo, Ian

    Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.

    Hall, Rt. Hn. Glenvil (Colne Valley)

    Mitchison, G. R.

    Bowen, E. R. (Cardigan)

    Hamilton, W. W.

    Monslow, W.

    Bowles, F. G.

    Hannan, W.

    Moody, A. S.

    Boyd, T. C.

    Harrison, J. (Nottingham, N.)

    Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)

    Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth

    Hastings, S.

    Mort, D. L.

    Brockway, A. F.

    Hayman, F. H.

    Moss, R.

    Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

    Healey, Denis

    Moyle, A.

    Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)

    Henderson, Rt. Hn. A. (Rwly Regis)

    Mulley, F. W.

    Brown, Thomas (Ince)

    Herbison, Miss M.

    Neal, Harold (Bolsover)

    Burke, W. A.

    Hewitson, Capt. M.

    Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)

    Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

    Hobson, C. R.

    Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. (Derby, S.)

    Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)

    Holman, P.

    O'Brien, Sir Thomas

    Callaghan, L. J.

    Holmes, Horace

    Oliver, G. H.

    Carmichael, J.

    Holt, A. F.

    Oram, A. E.

    Castle, Mrs. B. A.

    Houghton, Douglas

    Orbach, M.

    Champion, A. J.

    Howell, Charles (Perry Barr)

    Oswald, T.

    Chapman, W. D.

    Howell, Denis (All Saints)

    Owen, W. J.

    Chetwynd, G. R.

    Hubbard, T. F.

    Padley, W. E.

    Clunie, J.

    Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)

    Paget, R. T.

    Coldrick, W.

    Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)

    Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)

    Collick, P. H. (Birkenhead)

    Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

    Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)

    Collins, V. J. (Shoreditch & Finsbury)

    Hunter, A. E.

    Palmer, A. M. F.

    Corbet, Mrs. Freda

    Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)

    Panned, Charles (Leeds, W.)

    Cove, W. G.

    Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)

    Pargiter, G. A.

    Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

    Irving, S. (Dartford)

    Parker, J.

    Cronin, J. D.

    Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.

    Parkin, B. T.

    Crossman, R. H. S.

    Janner, B.

    Peart, T. F.

    Cullen, Mrs. A.

    Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.

    Pentland, N.

    Dairies, P.

    Jeger, George (Goole)

    Plummer, Sir Leslie

    Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.

    Jeger, Mrs. Lena (Holbn & St.Pncs,S.)

    Popplewell, E.

    Darling, George (Hillsborough)

    Jenkins, Roy (Stechford)

    Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)

    Davies, Rt. Hon. Clement (Montgomery)

    Johnson, James (Rugby)

    Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)

    Davies, Ernest (Enfield, E.)

    Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)

    Probert, A. R.

    Davies, Harold (Leek)

    Jones, David (The Hartlepools)

    Proctor, W. T.

    Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)

    Pryde, D. J.

    Deer, G.

    Jones, Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)

    Pursey, Cmdr. H.

    de Freitas, Geoffrey

    Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

    Randall, H. E.

    Delargy, H. J.

    Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)

    Rankin, John

    Dodds, N. N.

    Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)

    Redhead, E. C.

    Donnelly, D. L.

    Kenyon, C.

    Reeves, J.

    Dugdale, Rt. Hn. John (W. Brmwch)

    Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.

    Reid, William

    Dye, S.

    King, Dr. H. M.

    Rhodes, H.

    Edelman, M.

    Lawson, G. M.

    Robens, Rt. Hon. A.

    Edwards, Rt. Hon. John. (Brighouse)

    Ledger, R. J.

    Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)

    Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)

    Lee, Frederick (Newton)

    Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)

    Edwards, Robert (Bilston)

    Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)

    Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

    Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

    Lever, Harold (Cheetham)

    Ross, William

    Evans, Albert (Islington, S. W.)

    Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)

    Royle, C.

    Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)

    Lewis, Arthur

    Shawcross, Rt. Hon. Sir Hartley

    Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)

    Lindgren, G. S.

    Short, E. W.

    Fernyhough, E.

    Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.

    Shurmer, P. L. E.

    Silverman, Julius (Aston)

    Taylor, John (West Lothian)

    Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.

    Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)

    Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondde, W.)

    Wilkins, W. A.

    Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)

    Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)

    Willey, Frederick

    Skeffington, A. M.

    Thornton, E.

    Williams, David (Neath)

    Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke, N.)

    Timmons, J.

    Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Ab'tillery)

    Slater, J. (Sedgefield)

    Tomney, F.

    Williams, Ronald (Wigan)

    Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

    Turner-Samuels, M.

    Williams, Rt. Hon. T. (Don Valley)

    Snow, J. W.

    Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn

    Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)

    Sorensen, R. W.

    Usborne, H. C.

    Williams, W. T. (Barons Court)

    Sparks, J. A.

    Viant, S. P.

    Willis, Eustace (Edinburgh, E.)

    Steels, T.

    Wade, D. W.

    Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)

    Stewart, Michael (Fulham)

    Warbey, W. N.

    Winterbottom, Richard

    Stokes, Rt. Hon. R. R. (Ipswich)

    Watkins, T. E.

    Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.

    Stones, W. (Consett)

    Weitzman, D.

    Woof, R. E.

    Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.

    Wells, Percy (Faversham)

    Yates, V. (Ladywood)

    Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)

    Wells, William (Walsall, N.)

    Younger, Rt. Hon. K.

    Stross, Dr. Barnett (Stoke-on-Trent, C.)

    West, D. G.

    Zilliacus, K.

    Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.

    Wheeldon, W. E.

    Swingler, S. T.

    White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

    Sylvester, G. O.

    White, Henry (Derbyshire, N. E.)

    Mr. Bowden and Mr. Pearson.

    Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

    Wigg, George

    NOES

    Agnew, Cmdr. P. G.

    Currie, G. B. H.

    Hay, John

    Aitken, W. T.

    Dance, J. C. G.

    Head, Rt. Hon. A. H.

    Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)

    Davidson, Viscountess

    Heald, Rt. Hon Sir Lionel

    Alport, C. J. M.

    D'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry

    Henderson, John (Cathcart)

    Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)

    Deedes, W. F.

    Hesketh, R. F.

    Amory, Rt. Hn. Heathcoat (Tiverton)

    Digby, Simon Wingfield

    Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.

    Anstruther-Gray, Major Sir William

    Dodds-Parker, A. D.

    Hill, Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)

    Arbuthnot, John

    Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.

    Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

    Armstrong, C. W.

    Doughty C. J. A.

    Hill, John (S. Norfolk)

    Ashton, H.

    Drayton, G. B.

    Hinchingbrooke, Viscount

    Atkins, H. E.

    du Cann, E. D. L.

    Hirst, Geoffrey

    Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.

    Dugdale, Rt. Hn. Sir T. (Richmond)

    Holland-Martin, C. J.

    Baldwin, A. E.

    Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.

    Hope, Lord John

    Balniel, Lord

    Duthle, W. S.

    Hornby, R. P.

    Ba, Anthony

    Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir David

    Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.

    Barlow, Sir John

    Eden, Rt. Hn. SirA.(Warwick&L'm'tn)

    Horobin, Sir Ian

    Barter, John

    Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)

    Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Dame Florence

    Baxter, Sir Beverley

    Elliot, Rt. Hon. W. E.

    Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)

    Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)

    Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn

    Howard, Hon. Creville (St. Ives)

    Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)

    Errington, Sir Eric

    Howard, John (Test)

    Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)

    Erroll, F. J.

    Hudson, W. R. A. (Hull, N.)

    Bennett, Or. Reginald

    Farey-Jones, F. W.

    Hughes Hallett, Vice-Admiral J.

    Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)

    Fell, A.

    Hughes-Young, M. H. C.

    Bidgood, J. C.

    Finlay, Graeme

    Hulbert, Sir Norman

    Biggs-Davison, J. A.

    Fisher, Nigel

    Hurd, A. R.

    Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel

    Fletcher-Cooke, C.

    Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'gh, W.)

    Bishop, F. P.

    Fort, R.

    Hutchison, Sir James (Scotstoun)

    Black, C. W.

    Foster, John

    Hyde, Montgomery

    Body, R. F.

    Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)

    Hylton-Foster, Sir H. B. H.

    Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.

    Fraser, Sir Ian (M'Cmbe & Lonsdale)

    Iremonger, T. L.

    Braine, B. R.

    Freeth, D. K.

    Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

    Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)

    Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.

    Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)

    Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.

    Garner-Evans, E. H.

    Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

    Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry

    George, J. C. (Pollok)

    Jennings, Sir Roland (Hallam)

    Brooman-White, R. C.

    Gibson-Watt, D.

    Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)

    Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)

    Glover, D.

    Johnson, Eric (Blackley)

    Bryan, P.

    Godber, J. B.

    Johnson, Howard (Kemptown)

    Buchan-Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. G. T.

    Gomme-Duncan, Col. Sir Alan

    Jones, Rt. Hon. Aubrey (Hall Green)

    Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.

    Gough, C. F. H.

    Joseph, Sir Keith

    Burden, F. F. A.

    Gower, H. R.

    Joynson-Hicks, Hon. Sir Lancelot

    Butcher, Sir Herbert

    Graham, Sir Fergus

    Kaberry, D.

    Butler, Rt. Hn. R, A. (Saffron Walden)

    Grant, W. (Woodslde)

    Keegan, D.

    Campbell, Sir David

    Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R. (Nantwich)

    Kerby, Capt. H. B.

    Carr, Robert

    Kershaw, J. A.

    Cary, Sir Robert

    Green, A.

    Kimball, M.

    Channon, H.

    Gresham Cooke, R.

    Kirk, P. M.

    Chichester-Clark, R,

    Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)

    Lagden, G. W.

    Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)

    Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)

    Lambert, Hon. G.

    Cole, Norman

    Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.

    Lambton, Viscount

    Conant, Maj. Sir Roger

    Gurden, Harold

    Lancaster, Col. C. G.

    Cooper, A. E.

    Hall, John (Wycombe)

    Langford-Holt, J. A.

    Cooper-Key, E. M.

    Hare, Rt. Hon. J. H.

    Leather, E. H. C.

    Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.

    Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N. W.)

    Leavey, J. A.

    Corfield, Capt. F. V.

    Harris, Reader (Heston)

    Leburn, W. G.

    Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)

    Harrison, A. B. C. (Maiden)

    Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.

    Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.

    Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)

    Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)

    Crouch, R. F.

    Harvey, Air Cdre, A. V. (Macclesfd)

    Lennox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. A. T.

    Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)

    Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)

    Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)

    Crowder, Petre (Ruislip—Northwood)

    Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)

    Lindsay, Martin (Solihull)

    Cunningham, Knox

    Harvie-Watt, Sir George

    Linstead, Sir H. N.

    406

    407

    Llewellyn, D. T.

    Nugent, G. R. H.

    Spearman, Sir Alexander

    Lloyd, Rt. Hon. G. (Sutton Coldfield)

    Oakshott, H. D.

    Speir, R. M.

    Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)

    O'Neill, Hn. Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)

    Spence, H. R. (Aberdeen, W.)

    Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)

    Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.

    Spens, Rt. Hn. Sir P. (Kens'gt'n, S.)

    Lloyd-George, Maj. Rt. Hon. G.

    Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

    Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard

    Longden, Gilbert

    Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)

    Stevens, Geoffrey

    Low, Rt. Hon. A. R. W.

    Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian (Weston-S-Mare)

    Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)

    Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)

    Osborne, C.

    Steward, Sir William (Woolwich, W.)

    Lucas, P. B. (Brentford & Chiswick)

    Page, R. G.

    Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)

    Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

    Panned, N. A. (Kirkdale)

    Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)

    McAdden, S. J.

    Partridge, E.

    Studholme, Sir Henry

    McCallum, Major Sir Duncan

    Peyton, J. W. W.

    Summers, Sir Spencer

    Macdonald, Sir Peter

    Pickthorn, K. W. M.

    Sumner, W. D. M. (Orpington)

    Mackeson, Brig. Sir Harry

    Pilkington, Capt. R. A.

    Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)

    McKibbin, A. J.

    Pitman, I. J.

    Teeling, W.

    Mackie, J. H. (Galloway)

    Pitt, Miss E. M.

    Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)

    McLaughlin, Mrs. P.

    Pott, H. P.

    Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)

    Maclay, Rt. Hon. John

    Powell, J. Enoch

    Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)

    Maclean, Fitzroy (Lancaster)

    Price, David (Eastleigh)

    Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, S.)

    McLean, Neil (Inverness)

    Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)

    Thorneycroft, Rt. Hon. P.

    Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain (Enfield, W.)

    Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.

    Thornton-Kemsley, C. N.

    MacLeod, John (Ross & Cromarty)

    Profumo, J. D.

    Tiley, A. (Bradford, W.)

    Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold (Bromley)

    Raikes, Sir Victor

    Tilney, John (Wavertree)

    Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)

    Ramsden, J. E.

    Touche, Sir Gordon

    Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)

    Rawlinson, Peter

    Turner, H. F. L.

    Maddan, Martin

    Redmayne, M.

    Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.

    Maitland, Cdr. J. F. W.(Horncastle)

    Rees-Davies, W. R.

    Vane, W. M. F.

    Maitland, Hon. Patrick (Lanark)

    Remnant, Hon. P.

    Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.

    Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.

    Renton, D. L. M.

    Vickers, Miss J. H.

    Markham, Major sir Frank

    Ridsdale, J. E.

    Vosper, D. F.

    Marlowe, A. A. H.

    Rippon, A. G. F.

    Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)

    Marples, A. E.

    Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)

    Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. M'lebone)

    Marshall, Douglas

    Robertson, Sir David

    Walker-Smith, D. C.

    Maude, Angus

    Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)

    Wall, Major Patrick

    Maudling, Rt. Hon. R.

    Robson-Brown, W.

    Ward, Hon. George (Worcester)

    Maydon, Lt.-Comdr, S. L. C.

    Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)

    Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)

    Milligan, Rt. Hon. W. R.

    Roper, Sir Harold

    Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.

    Molson, Rt. Hon. Hugh

    Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard

    Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold

    Monckton, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter

    Russell, R. S.

    Webbe, Sir H.

    Moore, Sir Thomas

    Sandys, Rt. Hon. D.

    Whitelaw, W. S. I.(Penrith & Border)

    Morrison, John (Salisbury)

    Schofield, Lt.-Col. W.

    Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)

    Mott-Radclyffe, C. E.

    Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.

    Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)

    Nabarro, C. D. N.

    Sharples, R. C.

    Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

    Nairn, D. L. S.

    Shepherd, William

    Wood, Hon. R.

    Neave, Airey

    Simon, J. E. S. (Middlesbrough, W.)

    Woollam, John Victor

    Nicholls, Harmar

    Smithers, Peter (Winchester)

    Nicholson, Godfrey (Farnham)

    Smyth, Brig. Sir John (Norwood)

    Noble, Comdr. A. H. P.

    Soames, Capt, C.

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

    Mr. Heath and Mr. Wills.

    Main Question again proposed.
    It being after Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
    Debate to be resumed Tomorrow.

    PRIVILEGES
    Committee of Privileges to consist of Ten Members:—
    The Attorney-General, Mr. R. A. Butler, Mr. Clement Davies, Mr. Ede, Mr. Elliot, Mr. Gaitskell, Mr. Mitchison, Sir Patrick Spens, Mr. Viant, and Captain Waterhouse:—
    Power to send for persons, papers and records:—
    Five to be the Quorum.—[Mr. E. Wakefield]

    KITCHEN AND REFRESHMENT ROOMS (HOUSE OF COMMONS)
    Select Committee appointed to control the arrangements for the Kitchen and Refreshment Rooms in the department of the Serjeant at Arms attending this House:
    Mr. Stan Awbery, Mr. Burden, Sir Herbert Butcher, Mr. George Craddock, Mrs. Cullen, Mrs. Hill, Sir Thomas Moore, Mr. Partridge, Mr. Kenneth Robinson, Mrs. Harriet Slater, Sir William Steward, Mr. Gerald Wills, and Mr. Richard Winterbottom:
    Four to be the Quorum:
    Power to send for persons, papers and records; and to sit notwithstanding any Adjournment of the House:
    Power to appoint Sub-Committees and to delegate to such Sub-Committees any of the powers upon them conferred for controlling the arrangements for the Kitchen and Refreshment Rooms in the department of the Serjeant at Arms attending this House:
    Three to be the Quorum of every such Sub-Committee:
    Every such Sub-Committee to have power to send for persons, papers and records: and to sit notwithstanding any Adjournment of the House.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]

  HONG KONG (CONDITIONS)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]
  10.14 p.m.
  Mr. John Rankin: I desire to draw the attention of the House to conditions in Hong Kong. During the late autumn I had the opportunity of spending some time there and found it far too short. Nevertheless. I saw a great deal and heard a great deal more. One could not but succumb to the beauty of the mainland and the islands, which yet failed to veil the abounding misery and poverty. There was one consolation; that beauty is not a monopoly, like so many necessities in the Colony. Hong Kong has everything. A lovely situation and squalid, overcrowded homes; riches and poverty that perpetuate a mocking disharmony; monopoly wherever one goes; virtue and vice that rub shoulders at every corner; good-hearted men and women seeking to abolish these evils, others thriving on them. On that unstable infrastructure the October riots developed.
  It is necessary to draw a clear distinction between the rioting which occurred in the industrial area of Tsun Wan and the rioting in Kowloon itself. In the former place it was almost entirely political. Hong Kong suffers badly from the fact that its local trade unions are dominated by alien influence. On the one hand, we have officials appointed directly or indirectly from Formosa; on the other hand, officials similarly appointed from Peking. Both sides are fairly strong in Tsun Wan, and, taking their cue from the earlier disturbance in Kowloon, they had a serious battle. It is generally believed that many more deaths occurred than have been admitted by the Government. Among those who were killed were young factory girls.
  There are, however, two points to be noted arising from the Tsun Wan riots. The Labour Department of the Hong Kong Administration is completely ineffective. As an example of this, I am told that since the riots a certain factory has issued an ultimatum to its workers informing them that they must accept a twelve-hour day at existing wages or

  411
  be dismissed. This is an increase of four hours on the present working day. Is not that laying the ground-work of industrial discontent and strife in the future? The Labour Department is powerless to deal with the matter. I should like to explain why.
  In 1948, the Labour Government appointed Mr. Ken Baker to organise the trade unions in Hong Kong. The intention was to pursue the pattern which had been adopted in this country so that they would concern themselves chiefly with conditions in industry. But the Hong Kong Government did not like the appointment, and when the Tory Party returned to power in this country, Mr. Baker was robbed of his status and functions and became an ordinary official of the Labour Office. This action was approved by the Secretary of State for the Colonies. The chance to build up the unions after our pattern was lost and the road made clear for the political unions which went to war in Tsun Wan three weeks ago.
  For that happening this Government must certainly be held responsible. If they had any doubts about Mr. Baker's capacity for his very onerous job, they should have appointed someone else. They did not do so. Clearly it was the appointment which was disliked. Now in Hong Kong we are paying the penalty for the bad advice which was tendered by the Governor and accepted by the Tory Government.
  The riots in Kowloon generally are in a different category from those in the area of Tsun Wan. On 24lh October I asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he was not aware that "poverty, low wages and evil housing conditions were the root causes of the trouble now taking place there." The Minister replied, "No, Sir." He went on to point out that the trouble arose among those who had actually been resettled, not among those who were awaiting resettlement. I can say that when that reply was published in the Press in Hong Kong it created amazement—I heard to that effect on Tuesday this week.
  Surely, the act of resettlement, in itself, does little to alleviate the impact of social and economic factors. Indeed, it may actually aggravate them. If resettled
  412
  persons who were formerly living rent-free in squatters' shacks on Crown land, as most of these people were, are required to pay 14 Hong Kong dollars—which in our money is 17s. 6d.—per month per room in a resettlement block, nobody would expect them to be perfectly contented.
  In addition, tenants are continually irritated by having their rent refused if it is not exactly 14 dollars per room, because no change is given, and the exact amount must be tendered. I suggest that this practice is quite intolerable and should be stopped immediately.
  Resettlement, necessary as it, does not cure unemployment, which is rife in Hong Kong. As a matter of fact, the Government of Hong Kong have no machinery for assessing how much unemployment there is. No attempt has been made to find out, but everyone admits that it is widespread. Nor does resettlement increase wage rates; or improve industrial conditions. Grievances about these matters were the big contributing factors to the disturbances that have recently agitated the island and the mainland.
  The immediate cause, however, of the Kowloon riots was an incident in the resettlement area of Li Cheng-Uk. Paper flags and other decorations were stuck on the walls of buildings. A resettlement supervisor ordered them to be taken down. The people resented this. They asked senior officers, who had arrived on the scene, for permission to set off fire crackers to obliterate what they regarded as an insult from the resettlement officer. That, I believe, is an old Chinese custom.
  Permission was granted, and police actually assisted in getting the fire crackers. Unexpectedly, however, as often happens with a crowd, they turned ugly. The resettlement office was sacked and looted. Europeans were assaulted. So, too, were Chinese. We must remember that the many varied feelings that existed in the crowd could easily be played upon, for in Hong Kong there are people who are anti-European, there are those who are anti-Red, or pro-Red, and those who are anti-police. There are people who are anti-rich.
  All those emotions could be compounded, for the time being at least, into a common purpose which would express itself in the most violent terms, because

  413
  the instruments of that purpose have nothing to lose. They have no significance in the constitutional set-up. The Government of Hong Kong is authoritarian. It is composed entirely of officials and appointed members who are either yes-men or big business representatives. The Governor's advisers on Chinese affairs have not the confidence or the respect of the Chinese community.
  The Minister of State for Colonial Affairs (Mr. John Maclay)The Minister of State for Colonial Affairs (Mr. John Maclay) indicated dissent.
  Mr. Rankin: The Minister of State shakes his head, but I spent a great deal of my time in the company of Chinese who were persons of standing in the Colony, and the view that they expressed to me was that the Chinese advisers of the Government had not the respect or the confidence of their community.
  I hope that I am not revealing anything that I ought not to say, but one evening I sat between one of the advisers of the Governor and the Deputy-Governor and heard the most inaccurate description of what was happening in Peking, which I and the hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. J. E. B. Hill) know to be completely inaccurate. The Deputy-Governor was informed, in proof of the destruction which was being caused in Peking by the Republican Government, that the city wall was being destroyed. Every member of the group who visited Peking knows that all that was happening was that the wall was being taken down at those places where it was interfering with necessary road development.
  The view that I have expressed about these Chinese advisers is no secret in Hong Kong. I do not advance constitutional reform as being the cure-all for the difficulties and dangers that crowd upon Hong Kong, but an elected element in the Executive and the Legislature would at least help to focus grievances on a specific locus and compel the Government to consider measures which must be taken if peace and tranquillity are to be preserved in the Colony.
  The part played by the Triad societies during the riots is to be noted. These societies are numerous and powerful. I heard a great deal about them during my visit. Their influence, however, resides basically on the gross inequalities inherent in the social structure of the Colony. Why does the Hong Kong Administration
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  do nothing about them? Are these organisations maintained purposely as listening posts among the criminal strata of the population? Are some of the members paid informers and deliberately left there for that purpose?
  In my view, it is imperative that a representative Board of Inquiry should be appointed by the Government to inquire into the cause of the riots in Kowloon and to suggest means for preventing their recurrence. This is too serious a matter to leave to a departmental officer. The social, political and economic structure of Hong Kong Colony is now under challenge, and events there are being closely followed across the border. The Chinese disposition at the moment is friendly, as was made clear at a meeting which we had with the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs. Should we fail in the execution of our trust, it may not remain so. I warn the Minister tonight that if we intend to remain in Hong Kong Colony, we must justify our position there. So far, we have not done so.
  10.30 p.m.
  Mr. J. E. B. Hill: I very much regret that in the shortness of this debate one cannot deal adequately with conditions in Hong Kong, which were seen both by the hon. Member for Govan (Mr. Rankin) and myself. I passed through shortly after him and I expected to hear entirely an eye-witness account tonight; but we were both out of the Colony long before the riots took place.
  People often see the same thing but go away with different impressions, and I must say that I did not take such a gloomy view of Hong Kong as did the hon. Member, possibly because the Chinese contacts that I had were different from his. All I would say in these few minutes is that Hong Kong is no new problem. I do not think it can be equated with conditions anywhere else in the world. It has an unknown population to the tune of something like 500,000, with 75,000 additional births every year and an unknown flood of refugees from the mainland coming in. Consequently, without any documentation it is extraordinarily difficult to evolve the kind of settled housing policy which we have in this country. None the less, in my judgment the resettlement has been a really

  415
  remarkable achievement, of which I have photographic evidence as well as a good many statistics.
  The Government of Hong Kong and the people there, both Chinese and British, have produced a transformation since the war. I first was there 21 years ago, when it was a large port with a vast trade. This summer I came back from the mainland of China and it was an astonishing contrast to the rigid uniformity and orthodoxy of the mainland to come down and see the varied profusion of life in Hong Kong and to see that, with the trade limited, none the less this vast population had gathered under conditions of admittedly great difficulty and had built up new industries. In my judgment the textile mill I saw was first-class and the conditions very good. It was typical of the modern factories which are providing fierce, but fair, competition to some of our own industries.
  I would merely ask my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary to provide such help as Hong Kong may need. Hong Kong is providing a great deal of self-help. I do not believe that the majority of people want political independence or sovereignty. That, I think, would be potential suicide They have economic independence, and that is what, I believe, they really want. It is, however, a most challenging result in very difficult circumstances and I must say that I was very favourably impressed.
  10.33 p.m.
  The Minister of State for Colonial Affairs (Mr. John Maclay): The hon. Member for Govan (Mr. Rankin) started his speech with an interesting appreciation of what he found in Hong Kong, and I hoped that he would continue along the lines on which he started. I confess that his knowledge of Hong Kong in detail is inevitably rather more than mine on this first occasion when I have answered at the Box as Minister of State for Colonial Affairs.
  As the hon. Member's speech went on, however, I became truly distressed, because from even the short time that I have been in my present office I can say categorically to the hon. Member that tomorrow, I believe, he will regret some of the remarks he made in the later part of his speech. He cast grave reflections on the Government of Hong Kong and he
  416
  used phrases such as "yes-men," but I am sure he would be one of those who would agree that the Governor and the Government of Hong Kong have, in quite exceptionally difficult conditions, done a quite superb job.
  The hon. Member went on to deal with the question of certain constitutional reforms. I would try to give the hon. Member, with all humility, because he has been there and I have not, some facts which he must bear in mind. He made those reflections on the Government of Hong Kong as at present constituted. Will he remember that what has to be dealt with is quite astonishing? I will give the figures for population alone. They are estimated figures after 1931, when the last census took place. In 1931 the population was 849,000; in 1945 it was estimated at 600,000; in 1956 at 2½ million. That is a fabulous increase in population, and it really reflects the greatest credit on the Government of Hong Kong and on Hong Kong itself that things are as good as they are.
  Mr. Rankin: With both the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. J. E B. Hill) I agree that we have very little time for this debate, and I am loth to interrupt, but I did not deal with the population question because it raises many other questions. The Hong Kong Government at any moment they chose could have fixed the size of population at whatever limit they wanted, as they have now been forced to do.
  Mr. Maclay: The hon. Member is making a very firm assumption there. I am not going to argue that with him now. He has given me many things with which to deal, I am glad the hon. Member has admitted that some very valuable work has been done.
  Mr. Rankin: Oh, yes.
  Mr. Maclay: I would refer him to a remark that he himself made some time ago. If he did not, it was the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) who made it clear that for the way in which it had got on with housing its huge population Hong Kong deserved the greatest credit. I am glad to see the hon. Member nodding agreement with that. Perhaps he will be a little worried when he reads tomorrow morning some parts of his speech tonight.

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  To put the matter in perspective I am going to give figures of refugees. At present it is estimated that there are about 700,000 refugees in Hong Kong. They form about one-quarter of the population.
  The hon. Member said that in housing, in low wages, in poverty was the real explanation of the rioting. No one would disagree that in such a situation as that which I have described, with an immense population flooding in, there are conditions which must cause the greatest possible concern to everybody and which do make rioting more probable. It would be folly to deny that. I cannot imagine any more difficult situation for any Government to control, with that degree of inflowing of population of refugees, homeless people, people who, from sheer necessity, are bound to go to live anywhere they can. The number of squatters is still horrifying. The fact remains that immense efforts are being made to overcome the difficulties.
  Mr. Rankin: The right hon. Gentleman must watch his language.
  Mr. Maclay: I do not think there is anything wrong in saying that. I watch my language. Tremendous and fabulous efforts have been made to overcome this difficulty, which reflect the greatest credit on those responsible.
  I revert to the rioting. A fairly full Oral Answer was given by my right hon. Friend some time ago, and it was amplified in the OFFICIAL REPORT. At that time my right hon. Friend said that in due course, when more information came in from Hong Kong, that information would be given to the House. Some more has come in, but the full investigation is not yet completed. I think I can condense what has come in by saying that what was said in the original report seems to be pretty well borne out.
  The hon. Member described in some detail the starting of the riot, but there was a curious conflict in his speech, because he seemed to know what actually caused this trouble to break out, and that was completely different from what he had been implying earlier.
  Mr. Rankin: The immediate cause.
  Mr. Maclay: Let us look at what it was. It was the fact that there were strong political passions engaged.
  Mr. Rankin: In Tsun Wan.
  Mr. Maclay: This was in Kowloon. People objected to flags being put up. We have seen in our own constituencies certain minor incidents of that kind, but where they occur in these conditions and with strong political feelings running there is bound to be trouble.
  But when we come to the other trouble, we must look for another complete reason, and this is where the Triad Society comes in. There was no doubt that there were people here in this conglomeration of population who were out purely for mischief. There were the criminal types, and there is this secret society which deals in destruction and in plunder if it can. There could not be a better opportunity for such elements. They see some riots starting in one part of the area and they suddenly have a chance of causing trouble.
  The hon. Member must realise that even on the second day there were signs that the Triad gangs were using the putting up of flags on houses and the going round with flags to provoke disorder, but that was not political disorder. On all available information it seems to have been deliberate trouble-making. The hon. Member appears to be indicating assent. He did not give quite the same gloss on his speech as he is giving in his nodded agreement with what I am saying.
  As to the reform of the constitution. I think that the hon. Member knows already—but I repeat it in the light of his speech—that serious consideration was given to constitutional reform after the war. But very little has been done, except in the urban council, for the simple reason that there seems to be no clear evidence of a desire for constitutional reform. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies has been out there fairly recently. He consulted everybody who was available but there was no substantial evidence of a demand for constitutional reform of the kind that is going on in other parts of the world.
  Certain changes have been made in the urban council. The number of nominated members has been increased from six to eight and of elected members from four to eight. That change was in accordance with the desires of the people there.

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  I am sorry that the hon. Member made an attack on the Labour Department of the Hong Kong Government. I had no warning of that part of his speech. There is no reason why I should have been given warning, but had I been given it I would have known more about the circumstances of Mr. Baker. I will look into the matter and see whether there is anything useful about which I can write to the hon. Member. I regret that the hon. Member should have felt dis-
  420
  posed to make that attack. I am not sure when I should sit down, but I think that it is about now—
  Mr. Rankin Mr. Rankin rose—
  The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at sixteen minutes to Eleven o'clock.

Preamble
The House met at twelve noon, The EARL OF DROGHEDA on the Woolsack.
Prayers

CONSOLIDATION BILLS
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, on behalf of the noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack, I beg to move the Motion standing in his name.
Moved to resolve, That it is desirable that all Consolidation Bills (including Bills for consolidating Private Acts), Statute Law Revision Bills and Bills presented under the Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act, 1949, in the present Session be referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament.—(Earl Fortescue.)
On Question, Motion agreed to: Ordered that a Message be sent to the Commons to communicate this Resolution and to desire their concurrence.

ADDRESS IN REPLY TO HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH
12.6 p.m.
Debate resumed (according to Order) on the Motion moved on Tuesday last by Lord Birdwood, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as followeth:
"Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."
LORD HENDERSON LORD HENDERSON rose to move, as an Amendment to the Motion for an humble Address, to add the following words:
"but, in view of the grave international situation, and of the divisions of opinion in the Commonwealth regarding Your Majesty's Government's policy in Egypt, call upon Your
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Majesty's Government to convene immediately a conference of the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth, in order to arrive at an agreed policy in support of the authority of the United Nations."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to move the Amendment to the humble Address. It is, of course, very unusual in your Lordships' House to have an Amendment moved to the humble Address, but we are dealing with exceptional circumstances. We had a discussion last week on the Middle East situation. We made our position of strong opposition to the Government's policy of armed intervention in the Middle East unmistakably clear. I do not want to restate our case in detail today. I can put our position in a summary form, without repeating the arguments. We have been opposed to the action of the Government from the beginning, because, in our judgment, it was illegal, contrary to the principles of the United Nations Charter, politically disastrous, and also because it involved this country in a rejection of the authority of the United Nations.
The noble Marquess the Leader of the House, in his speech on September 12, said that we must support respect for international engagements. I fully agree with those words, but we do not support and strengthen respect in this sphere of international life by violating our own engagements. No nation has the right to take the law into its own hands and to constitute itself, by independent decision, an international policeman. The situation has become more hopeful in recent days. Hostilities have ceased and a general cease-fire is in operation. From now on, the responsibility for handling matters will be exclusively in the hands of the United Nations.
These important developments are welcomed with profound relief and satisfaction. But what next? There must be a speedy introduction into Egypt of an International Police Force competent to take charge of the situation by securing and supervising the cessation of hostilities. That International Force is now being organised. Many of the Member States have offered to contribute to it. It will be composed of national contingents, under the command of Major-General Burns, acting under the authority

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and control of the United Nations. But none of the permanent members of the Security Council is to have a contingent in the International Police Force. We regard that as a correct decision. I hope that this country is not insisting on contributions from the permanent members.
It seemed, from a statement made this week by the Foreign Secretary in another place, that our acceptance of the plan would be conditional on our making a contribution. There should be now no question of our continuing to press for that. Were we to do so, we may be sure that Russia would make a similar demand. A British contingent is not essential; neither is a Russian contingent, which would, moreover, be particularly undesirable, not only on broad political grounds but also in the light of the murderous repression conducted by Soviet armed forces in Hungary. What is vitally important is that there should be no delay in getting the International Police Force actually on the ground in Egypt. There will be uneasiness and 'uncertainty until it gets there, and everything should be done by 'Her Majesty's Government to assist in making that possible.
The General Assembly has again called upon Britain, France and Israel to withdraw their armed forces from Egyptian territory without delay. We should like to know from the Government—this is a matter of importance, and I hope the noble Marquess will take note of it that they intend to act as requested by the United Nations. There does not seem to be any practical reason to justify our staying on, since it would take some time to complete the evacuation, and before then the International Police Force, or at any rate an important part of it, should have taken up position. There is a further reason why we should accept. If the British Government refuse, it may encourage Mr. Ben-Gurion to persist in his refusal to withdraw from the Sinai peninsula. Mr. Ben-Gurion's stiff attitude could endanger the whole position, and we ought not to provide him with any excuse foil- refusing to obey the call of the United Nations. What the British and French Governments should do is to bring very strong pressure to bear upon Mr. Ben-Gurion to persuade him not to defy the authority of the General Assembly's latest resolution.
My Lords, our basic position is that we want finally closed the unhappy chapter of forcible action by Britain in disregard of t le demands of the United Nations. W want to open a new chapter in whist our country will be found resuming her old rôle as a vital force for peace in the councils and agencies of the United Nations. That is what the nation wants and expects, and will insist on having, from whatever Government may be in power. This we regard as essential to the recovery my of our national unity. I do not know whether that is the Government's intention. The gracious Speech makes no specific reference to the United Nations. This is the first occasion since the end of the war that that is so. One wonders whether the Government, in the light of what has been happening, found it embarrassing to reaffirm, as they did last year, their belief that the United Nations is essential to the furtherance of international concord and their declaration that thee would give it their "wholehearted support."
We on these Benches believe that the sooner a start is made in restoring the shattered confidence in Britain's loyalty to the principles of the United Nations and in our support of the authority of the United nations, the better it will be for us and for world peace. The Amendment calls: Mention to the divisions of opinion which the Government's action has product and calls upon the Government to convene immediately a conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers, in order to arrive at an agreed policy in support of the authority of the United Nations. That is a constructive proposal and it needs to be treated as a matter of urgency.
Every noble Lord must be aware of the grave divisions that have been caused. A great deal of evidence was given in the course our debate last week, and I do not intend to repeat it today. I need mention only one new statement which was made by the Canadian Prime Minister, in a televised broadcast to the Canadian people on Sunday evening. He said that the present crisis in the Middle East had
"strained bosh the Western alliance and the bonds of the Commonwealth more than any event since the Second World War."
Though Canada recognised the vital importance of the Suez Canal to the

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economic life and international responsibilities of the United Kingdom and France
"we could not but regret also that at a time when the Security Council was seized of the matter the United Kingdom and France felt it necessary to intervene with force on their own responsibility."
Noble Lords will also have read statements from Asian members of the Commonwealth—and these have been far more outspoken.
While the Governments of Australia and New Zealand have ranged themselves with Her Majesty's Government in this country, there is, as here, a strong Parliamentary and public opposition to their stand. My Lords, immense damage has been done to Commonwealth unity and we must all deplore it. It will take time, perhaps a long time, to mend this damage and to heal the divisions, but we consider that immediate efforts should be made to restore unity, mutual confidence and effective co-operation; and in our opinion the best basis for it is an agreed policy in support of the authority of the United Nations. The means to try to achieve that agreement lies, we suggest, through a Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference. That is the proposal in our Amendment. As I have said, it is a constructive Amendment and one which Her Majesty's Government and the whole House should welcome and find themselves able to support.
Clearly, there are lessons to be learned from the Middle East dangers which have confronted us, just as there were lessons to be learned from the Korean war. Those lessons have to be turned to practical account. I believe I am right in saying that the question of revision of the Charter in the light of experience could be considered after ten years. That period ended last year. but the Revision Conference has yet to be held. When it does take place, an opportunity will be provided to face up to the lessons of experience. As noble Lords know, there has long been talk about the need to put some "teeth" into the Charter and to provide the United Nations with a permanent International Police Force. There is a growing acceptance of this idea. The ad hoc formation of the proposed body of national contingents to deal with the present situation emphasises the importance of facing up to the need for Charter
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revision, so that the United Nations may be equipped to deal with such sudden emergencies in the future. That is a matter to which Her Majesty's Government and Parliament should address themselves as soon as the present crisis is over.
I want to finish with a word about Hungary. The rest of the world has been compelled virtually to stand impotent while Soviet Russia has been engaged in its most brutal repression of Hungarian freedom and her heroic defenders. There has taken place behind what has been an almost impenetrable iron curtain of secrecy one of the world's epic struggles for national independence and personal freedom. It was a nationwide movement by practically all sections of the Hungarian people, including the Army, to escape from under the iron heel of Soviet Russia and to live their own life according to their own choice, just as we ourselves do. This national revolution was sparked into a white-hot flame of national patriotism by the successful bid of Poland to achieve greater freedom and independence from Moscow. The Polish struggle was more in the nature of a Tito secession, without any break from the Soviet military alliance, but in Hungary the patriotic movement was not only seeking independence from Moscow and the withdrawal of all Soviet armed forces; it was struggling for internal freedom, with free elections on a multiparty basis and neutrality on the lines of Austrian neutrality. It wanted to be outside all military alliances.
Under Prime Minister Nagy the movement made dramatic progress, and an important step was taken when an all-Party Government was formed. Noble Lords are aware that negotiations were opened with the Russians. It is obvious that the opening of discussions was designed by the Russians as a time-wasting manœuvre while they massed their armed forces for an all-out attack. That attack has been proceeding since Sunday and has been carried on with a weight of modern military strength beyond anything ever used to crush the struggle for freedom in a small country. The Soviet Union has defied the United Nations' call to withdraw, and instead has plunged Hungary into a blood bath. It is a monstrous event which has horrified the rest of the world. It is not yet ended,

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and the slaughter and damage inflicted by the Russians must be immense. The United Nations has again called upon Russia to desist from further armed interference and to withdraw from Hungary.
It is when one realises the full extent of the iniquity of Soviet action in Hungary that one feels revolted at Russia's pretence to be playing the role of peace and of a defender of small nations in the Middle East. Russia's satellite empire is cracking, and while it may be held together by sheer brute force nothing can hide the fact that neither Communist control nor Communist armed might can extinguish the spirit of freedom among the captive nations. The tragedy is that there does not appear to be any effective action that the United Nations can take, because the Soviet Union will either veto its recommendations or defy its authority. Nevertheless, the General Assembly should press on with the proposal to have observers sent to Hungary to investigate the situation.
It would seem that the world is to face another season of bitter cold war. We welcome the action taken by Her Majesty's Government in sending speedy relief through the International Red Cross. We are also very gratified at the decision to give a haven to 2,500 of the unfortunate refugees from Hungary. But much non, is needed. This is a matter which calk; for the special attention, at once, of the General Assembly, in order that they may mobilise and canalise the practical assistance in a variety of forms for the relief of Hungary and its refugees. In particular, financial and other resources should he made available without delay to Austria. which is carrying a very heavy burden and over-taxing its capacity in performing its good-neighbourly and humanitarian duty.
I return to the Amendment which I rose to move at the beginning of my speech. I now beg to move.
Amendment moved, al: the end of the proposed Address, to add:
"but, in view of the grave international situation, and of the divisions of opinion in the Commonwealth regarding Your Majesty's Government's policy in Egypt, call upon Your Majesty's Government to convene immediately a conference of the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth, in
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order to arive at an agreed policy in support of the authority of the United Nations."—(Lord Henderson.)
12.29 p.m.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY): My Lords, as your Lordships know. contrary to our usual custom in this House we have decided this year no to have a general debate throughout the whole of our discussions on the gracious Speech, but to devote one a day entirely to international affairs. I hope your Lordships w ill agree that that is wise; for though I do not agree with everything noble Lord, Lord Henderson. I do agree that events in this particular sphere are at the present time of exceptional gravity and urgency. That, of course, is important to all of us, for it is only if the situation in the outside world stable and secure that our own situation here in this country can be stable and secure, too.
The Amendment which the noble Lord has moved s, as I am sure he would agree, of a fairly limited character. But I understand that noble Lords opposite would like the debate to range over the whole sphere of international affairs, or at any rate those parts of the world which are at preset t of the greatest importance to us all, and I shall proceed, if I may, on that basis. I should like to begin straight away, with the Middle East. My Lords, when I was first thinking of what I should say to your Lordships on the present occasion, the situation was different in some respects from what it is this morning. At that time Her Majesty's Government were still engaged in active operations—operations of which I know the Party of noble Lords opposite did not approve—and the Opposition, as they were perfect y entitled to do, gave strong indications at that time that on the main course of action of the Government they were in powerful disagreement with us.
Now, my Lords, the purposes for which the Franco-British police action were instituted—that is, to bring to an end the war between Israel and Egypt and to prevent that war from spreading into wider areas—has been completed: and, as the House knows Her, Majesty's Government have made a communication to the Secretary-General of the United Nations saying that they are prepared to agree to a ceasefire, and that cease-fire, as your Lordships

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know, is, in fact, already in force. I take it, therefore, that even if we are not at one about the past, there may at any rate be a measure of general harmony about some, at least, of the latest actions of Her Majesty's Government.
At the same time, new events have occurred of very considerable importance, and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, was evidently quite right in thinking that this new turn of events does not make it less desirable that we should have some discussion of the Middle East in this House. For one thing, we must not assume that we are through all our troubles in that troubled area yet. Apart from difficulties which are still being experienced with both Israel and Egypt over the immediate situation, and apart altogether from the new and menacing attitude of Soviet Russia, it is not in any case going to be easy, either for the United Nations or for anybody else, to work out a basis of enduring peace in that area.
And I believe that the reason is that this trouble between Egypt and Israel. which has been simmering so long and has now burst out into flame, arises from no mere local territorial dispute between neighbouring states, such as history has often recorded in the past. It springs, I believe, from causes both far more fundamental and far more sinister. It is, indeed, just one manifestation of a cancer which is at present poisoning a large part of the world. It is of this, my Lords, that I propose to talk to the House to-day, and I hope as non-contentiously as I can manage, because I do not want to be contentious. And I am the more anxious to do so because, having been laid up for several weeks. I have had time to indulge in that rather rare luxury for a Minister: time to think about broad policy.
One of the things I have been trying to discover in my mind is what is the real cause of the present unrest which is so grievously affecting the world and, in particular, this part of the world. For, unless we can find out the cause we shall never find out the cure. As I lay in bed, I was driven to two conclusions, which I wrote down and of which I now make bold to speak to your Lordships. What has happened since, and especially in the last few days, has not made me in any way modify them.
First of all, I believe that what the Middle East is suffering from is an un-
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healthy stimulated spirit of nationalism—in the case of Egypt, a nationalism which has been inflated into imperialism; and secondly, I believe, we must face the fact that this spirit is not a natural growth, but has been deliberately inculcated as an instrument of policy by the present rulers of Russia. Ever since the war, as we all know, the Russian Government—not because it believed particularly in freedom or independence, but because it had formed the view that to stimulate national movements in countries they did not control would be in the interests of Russia—has conducted a deliberate propaganda designed to make the peoples outside the Russian sphere more and more impatient of what are described by their propagandists as "foreign exploiters" and, in particular, "Western exploiters." We all know the jargon—we have heard it a hundred times—" Imperialism," "anti-colonialism." "exploiting nations" and so on.
They have preached this doctrine with assiduity and ingenuity throughout Asia and North Africa; and not without considerable success in some quarters. We had one good example in the speeches made during Marshal Bulganin's and Mr. Khrushchev's tour in India and Burma. And what they said openly has been whispered incessantly by Russian diplomats and agents in the ears of rulers and peoples from the Levant to Morocco. Everywhere, the fires of nationalism have been stoked up, and now we see the results. It is undoubtedly this propaganda, I think, which has been mainly responsible for inflaming Colonel Nasser's own ambitions and engendering in him the dream of an Arab-Egyptian Empire to stretch from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf, a new imperialism covering a portion of Asia and the whole of North Africa; and it is that dream which is mainly the source of our present troubles, for it was that dream which first threw him into violent opposition to us and all we stood for in the Middle East. These are, I think, matters which perhaps the British people have not even yet realized enough. I do not think it is always recognised in this country how violent. how virulent and how continuous Egyptian hostility to us has been in all these parts of the world. Day after day. week after week, the radio in Cairo and the Egyptian newspapers have poured

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out a steady stream of poison designed to undermine our position in Aden, in the Persian Gulf and throughout all those oil-bearing areas which are so vital to our existence. That is the message which, incessant and malignant, has been blared out clay after day, night after night, wherever Arabs meet, interlarded with pictures of this great Arab Empire and adulatory praise of its leader. Crude propaganda you may say, my Lords; I have read a great deal of it. It is extremely crude, and I do not think it would appeal to many of your Lordships; but how effective with simple and untutored folk! That was the first phase.
With the taking over of the Suez Canal we came to a second phase. That action was, no doubt, intended partly as a spectacular gesture of strength on the part of Egypt. But it also gave to Egypt a status, as we all know, which would enable her to cut our lifeline from East to West whenever she wished, and I believe it to have been a definite part of what one may call the Russo-Egyptian plan. The third phase—and they have made no secret about this—was to be the obliteration of Israel. It is all part of the same great, grandiose scheme.
I do not think that this picture is a mere figment of my brain. It will be borne out. I am certain, by many with far greater knowledge of the Middle East than I have. That was one of the reasons why we and France a short time ago thought it so vital to try to arrange for the continuance of the international control of the Suez Canal: that, no doubt, is what above all goaded the Israeli Government to strike at Egypt before the dice were. too heavily loaded against them. They had tried again and again, as your Lordships know, to get justice from the United Nations, and they had failed. So they took the law into their own hands. You may say that they were wrong. Perhaps they were very wrong. But I cannot honestly say that I think they were entirely to blame. I thought that in his speech the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, was less than just to Israel in this particular matter.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, if the noble Marquess will allow me to intervene, may I say that I deliberately did not go over the ground which I
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covered in the last debate. I think that if the noble Marquess will look at the report of the speech I made in the last debate he will find that I was careful to explain the position of Israel. I would not call the Israeli action unprovoked aggression. I think there never was a nation more provoked.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I am very sorry. I certainly diet not mean to misrepresent the noble Lord. who is always scrupulously fair. I was not present on the occasion of the previous debate when he spoke. But, at any rate, whether the Israelis were right of wrong there is no doubt that their action faced the world with a situation of extreme and urgent peril. Russian and Egyptian propaganda had done its work, and the whole Middle East was in a dangerously inflammable state. Once the conflagration started, no one could tell how far and how fast it would spread. If the Israeli invasion of Egypt continued, the whole Arab world was likely rapidly to be sucked in it. If police action had to be taken, it had to be taken immediately. There was no time for a debate at the United Nations or anywhere else. And we and France had every reason to take action, for, as we had explained during our earlier dispute with Egypt over the free passage of the Suez Canal, which is still unhappily unresolved, that Canal was a vital national and imperial interest for us.
Throughout that earlier debate, I think I can fairly maintain—even, perhaps, almost to the satisfaction of noble Lords opposite—that we had acted with strict propriety. Indeed, When I had a rather sharp passage with the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, in the last debate in this House—if I was too hot I greatly regret it—his charge, as I understood him, was that we "had not gone fast enough." We had, he suggested, hung about too long over Article 33 of the Charter. We had been too slow in bringing the mater to the Security Council, under Article 37. I am not going to make any apology about this. If the framers of the Charter had meant member States always to go straight to the Security Council under Article 37, why was Article 33 included at all? It was included just because the Security Council was intended to be the last resort and not the first.

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Moreover, I think it only fair to point out that when we did get to the Security Council, this panacea, which was so confidently recommended to us, did not turn out to be such a panacea at all. We went to the Security Council; we got an almost unanimous vote in our favour: and then we had any action vetoed by Russia. So I should like to put to the Opposition a question—I do not ask them to reply immediately, but I should like them to turn it over in their minds—is it their policy (I have never been certain about this myself) that all disputes should be referred to the Security Council?—with which I agree. though I do not rule out, as your Lordships know, certain prior action where immediate steps are vital. Or is it their policy that we should only take action approved by the Security Council? It is not the same thing. There is a very important difference. If, as I suspect, it is the latter—and I was confirmed in that view by what was said yesterday by the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, who, I think, talked about the "permission" of the Security Council—then I think we must all, if we are honest, face the fact that in the present circumstances that means that the Western Powers can never take any action at all. For any resolution that proposes any positive action which is likely to be of any advantage to the free countries of the West is bound to be vetoed by Russia. That is the hard fact. and. if I may say so. I thought that the only weak point in the admirable speech which the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, made this morning was that he seemed entirely to ignore that fact, so far as the present is concerned. He did say—and I was glad to hear it—that he was in favour (at least that is what I understood him to say) of a revision of the Charter in the future. But that can be only in a very uncertain future for, as he knows, an agreed revision of the Charter is going to be an extremely slow and difficult business. At present, I repeat. the United Nations are in no position to take action in circumstances such as I have described. That, to my mind. and I am sure to the minds of many other noble Lords, is much the most formidable fact in the present position. The only exception to the rule I have stated was the case of Korea, and in that case, as the House knows, positive action was approved by the United
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Nations only because Russia had incautiously walked out of the Security Council. That is an error which she has never repeated. and I shrewdly suspect that she never will.
However, that dispute over Suez, important though it undoubtedly is, has been temporarily overlaid by another and a quite different dispute. as the noble and learned Earl. Lord Jowitt, rightly stressed yesterday—a far more urgent matter. I refer, of course, to the Israeli-Egyptian conflict and the action which we and France have felt compelled to take. And, as I see it. a solution of the earlier problem of the Suez Canal will have to wait upon the clarification of the present confused situation, though I trust that a solution of the Canal problem may be achieved along with the achievement of a general settlement in the Middle East, for which we all hope. Indeed, my main reason for mentioning this earlier dispute at all is that it has already been referred to—I think it was referred to in passing by the noble and learned Earl. Lord Jowitt, yesterday. Moreover, it has this relevance to the action which Her Majesty's Government and France have felt obliged to take with regard to the conflict between Egypt and Israel. As the House knows. the Government, rightly or wrongly, were driven to the conclusion that, as things are at present, there was absolutely no chance of such rapid or effective action by the United Nations as this particular occasion rendered necessary.
The Opposition have stressed on many occasions—I have no doubt that they did in the last debate at which I was unhappily unable to be present—that there should have been prior consultation with the United States. But one must recognise that on this particular problem there have been very different angles of approach between the two countries, and to a certain extent I am afraid that there are still differences of that kind. That, I think, is clear from a letter from an American which some of your Lordships may have read in The Times this morning. If we had consulted the United States, had time permitted of it, and lengthy exchanges had resulted. not only would vital time have been lost but very likely there would have been no Western policy at all in this emergency where immediate action was needed, or, at best, a policy of drift. And in my

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view, it is just because the Western Powers have allowed things to drift so long in the Middle East that we have come to the present pass. Things could not be allowed to drift any longer without complete disaster.
In any case, I hardly think it is for noble Lords opposite to chide us so severely as they have done for "putting a strain on Anglo-American relations". I am not going back into the past, but I can call to mind a few years ago another issue on which the Government of the day took strong action against what they knew to be the convinced American view, and I remember that at that time I made the strongest appeals to the Government to alter their attitude, and got very little change out of them. If I may say so, I think it is very gratifying that they should have changed their view on this matter so much as they have done.
Then I am told that we have divided the Commonwealth. That was said by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, just now. But I am afraid that if we had to wait for unanimous agreement between the members of the Commonwealth on every occasion and on every issue, we should be very unlikely ever to take any action at all. It is indeed a virtue of the extremely elastic relationship which exists between members of the Commonwealth that, though broadly speaking—and this is vital, of course—we do represent a common point of view, we can afford to disagree on this or that issue. I should like to remind the House, for instance, that India, at the time of the earlier Suez problem of a few weeks ago, did not find itself even in agreement with the Eighteen Power proposals, which were approved by the vast majority of the Security Council. I am not complaining of that. India is entitled to her view just as much as we are; I only point to it as an instance of how difficult unanimity is in practice, though it may appear so easy in theory. Actually, I should be ready to wager that if our action should lead, as I believe it now will lead, to the stationing of a United Nations force on the Canal—and nothing else would have brought it about—most of the members of the Commonwealth would be profoundly glad. The specific proposal made in the Opposition Amendment for an immediate meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers I am
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going to leave to my noble friend the Commonwealth Secretary, who is to intervene later. He will, he tells me, come in for a few minutes at the end of the debate.
Finally, we are always being told that the steps we have taken are a great gamble. I have heard that phrase used again and again. But, my Lords, all foreign policy is to some extent a gamble—I am stile that the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, would agree with that statement—yet I believe that it was much less of a gamble for us to take a bold line now than to let the situation slide right away, as was the alternative. That would have been contrary to all our national and imperial interests. Indeed, if the result has been to stimulate the United Nations to take positive action to bring about peace in this part of the world, I believe that we shall have performed a police action of inestimable value, from which the whole world will benefit.
We all welcome, I know, the news that a cease-fire has been finally agreed (and signed) on both sides. But, clearly, a truce by itself, and that is what a ceasefire really is, is not enough. After all. there was a truce in existence over the whole period before this last Israeli-Egyptian war; yet, as we all know, that did not prevent incessant attacks by Egyptians en Israelis and by Israelis on Egyptians, which led up to the recent conflict. What is needed, clearly, until a solid peace is signed, is some international force interposed between the conflicting parties. That is the purpose and function for which British and French troops were landed. I am very glad to see—and here we shall all be at one—that the United Nations have come to the same conclusion and now have voted firmly in favour of an International Force. On behalf of the Government, may I say that the sooner that Force arrives the better we shall be pleased. I would add that it does not seem to me to matter very much whether the Great Powers form part of that Force or not; tilt important thing is not the composition of the Force but the functions of the Force. In the meantime, we must continue to stay where we are. Nothing that has happened since will alter our decision about that. As soon as the United Nations Force is ready to arrive, and as soon as it moves in, we shall be ready to give place to it. But to leave the country before that would only lead,

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I am afraid, to renewed troubles and difficulties.
Now, my Lords, I should like to turn to another not so distant area of the world, where the smouldering embers of nationalism have equally flared into flame. On this matter, at any rate. I am happy to find myself in absolutely complete agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Henderson. Of course, I refer to Eastern Europe and especially to Poland and Hungary. There the spirit of nationalism has taken the form of a struggle of free peoples against a despotic imperialism. In Poland, I gather, where apparently a pre-arranged plan was in existence and alternative leaders seem to have been ready to take over, the change towards greater independence seems to have proceeded quietly and smoothly, and success has, we may hope, been achieved without bloodshed. In Hungary, where unhappily all the alternative leaders (at least according to my own information) had already been ruthlessly liquidated during the Russian occupation, the revolt was without direction and for that reason the transition was far more violent and was marked, as we know, by shocking barbarities on the part of the Russian occupying troops. There can be none of us in any part of your Lordships' House who has not viewed this heroic struggle of the freedom-loving Hungarian people against oppression without a mingled sense of horror and profound admiration.
Sometimes we complain, even in this country. of the increasing intrusions of the State in the life of the individual citizen: and of course, it is quite right that we should ail be vigilant about this. But, broadly speaking, the air we breathe is still very much the air of freedom, and I am sure that it is the firm resolve of all of us that that shall long continue to be the case. Therefore, for us to see a nation, which merely asks for the restoration of those free institutions which for so many centuries we have enjoyed, bludgeoned and tortured by a great Power that has lately posed, and indeed is still posing, as the main champion of anti-imperialism, is a shocking and revealing spectacle, which I am sure will have a profound effect everywhere.
What influence these events will have on the future of Europe I am afraid it
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is far too soon yet to say. But two comments I think I may fairly already make. I should like to think that what has happened in Poland, at any rate, will go some way to dissipate the rigid barrier between East and West which was set up by Russia after the Great War. That would be an immeasurable step forward towards more normal times. Secondly—and this is a more general but, I believe, an equally important reflection—I believe we may now accept as an established fact how indestructible is the instinct of freedom in the minds of men. I think the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, said that, too.
That had always been accepted in the past; but, lately, my Lords, in the minds of many people, doubts had arisen. The efficiency of the Communist machine, the complete obliteration not only of all political Parties but of all personal opinions but Communist, had led to a fear that the instinct for freedom had been entirely stamped out in Eastern Europe and that human men and women had been turned into mere robots. Some of your Lordships will have read a terrible book on that theme by George Orwell. But now I think it is clear, and, I hope. clear for ever, that the pure flame of freedom may be trampled on, but it cannot be stamped out; and, given the necessary conditions, it will always burn again as brightly as ever. That I believe to be a fundamental fact which is deeply encouraging, and it may well prove of far greater importance even than those transient events that I have been discussing earlier, however important they may seem to us at present, and however much they may fill our minds.
Now, in conclusion—and I am sorry to have kept your Lordships so long—I should like to return for a moment to the fundamentals of foreign policy, and to recall to your Lordships some words spoken in this House 140 years ago by Lord Liverpool and, I believe, relevant to our present situation. We do not hear much about Lord Liverpool nowadays, but he was Prime Minister of this country over a long and difficult period of our history. He was a statesman of ripe experience, and this is what he said:
"The greatest principle of all government, in its domestic or foreign relations, is self-defence, either against direct attack, or against probable or premeditated danger. … Certainly it is to be allowed that in common places the internal concerns of a particular nation ought

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not to be meddled with by another nation; but if these concerns affect the very existence of other nations, then it becomes a duty to interfere, for the same reasons which justify the interference of a third power between the quarrels of two contending countries. If a house is in flames, does either morality or law require that a man shall wait till his own house catches the conflagration, instead of rushing forward at once to extinguish the danger?"
That is what Lord Liverpool said in this House. I believe that those are wise words, and that, whatever other changes there have been in our international machinery, they are as relevant now as they were then. They enshrine a profound truth: a truth which has had to be faced on this particular occasion by body Her Majesty's Government and by the Government of France. That, is precisely the reason why we have done what we have done in these last few weeks. I am deeply convinced. if I may say so with all deference, that our actions will be justified—and amply justified—when the history of these times comes to be written; and I can only pray that our American friends and Allies, who; Are as vital to our existence, as I believe we are to theirs, will be found standing at our side, as so often before in times of extreme peril, if not now, at any rate before it is too late.
House adjourned during pleasure, and resumed by The LORD CHANCELLOR.
1.5 p.m.
THE EARL OF HALIFAX: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, has placed the House under a considerable debt of gratitude to himself, not only by reason of the way in which he introduced this Amendment but also for the part his speech played in eliciting from my noble friend the Leader of the House the speech to which we have just listened. On such an occasion as this the Houses of Parliament always have a double function to discharge. In part, they can use the opportunity for a review of the past, And for an expression of their judgment upon the manner in which Her Majesty's Government may have conducted their policy; and it is also the privilege of Parliament to offer such advice as it may deem appropriate to Her Majesty's Government about what should be their conduct in the future. With your Lordships' permission, I should like to offer a few observations on both of those
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lines, the second being, obviously, much more difficult than the first.,
I have no doubt that it is true, as my noble friend Lord Salisbury said, that many of your Lordships will feel more free to discuss the affairs of the past to-day, when we are in the presence of conditions of somewhat greater outward calm. Many of us in these past days have certainly felt difficulty in forming what we could assure ourselves was a sound judgment, having regard to the limited knowledge available to the ordinary Member of your Lordships' House of the background against which Her Majesty's Government had been obliged to act. I think that not the least valuable part of the speech to which we have just listened from the noble Marquess has been the indication that he gave, not perhaps even yet complete, of the background of thought against which all the decisions and judgments and policy of Her Majesty's Government were, perforce, constructed.
That difficulty, with its sense of frustration, as we ordinary Members of both Houses felt it, was, of course, in no way confined to this country. The noble Lord, Lord Henderson, referred to the fact to-day, or on an earlier occasion. that one of the greatest misfortunes about all this business has been the misunderstanding that has arisen, not only for our own people, hut also for the sister peoples throughout the Commonwealth, as well as for our friends in the United States. I must frankly admit that, having, with the noble Marquess, been one of the last to remain on behalf of the United Kingdom at San Francisco, and having signed there with him t le Charter of the United Nations, when Her Majesty's Government first took the action they deal, I shared many of the doubts and anxieties that were felt in other quarters; and I was acutely conscious of how much harm, in the twilight of knowledge that then prevailed, was being done every minute to our good name and to our influence in many quarters. I was particularly sensible, with many others of your Lordships' House, of the tragic coincidence in time between these events and those of Eastern Europe, to which my noble friend Lord Salisbury referred, which have brought to every one of us who had imagination that tormenting cross-examination of conscience as to whether our action was avoidable or not;

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whether it had, or could have had, any influence, however unwittingly, in making more easy that continuing programme of barbarity in Hungary.
Those anxieties were, in my own case, largely counterbalanced and dissipated by my knowledge of, and my confidence in, Her Majesty's Prime Minister and the members of Her Majesty's Government, with whom I had for many years worked in terms of closest intimacy and confidence. It is utterly impossible for me to visualise them as cruel and unscrupulous buccaneers, as in many quarters they were represented to be—not by noble Lords opposite, but in many other quarters. For that reason, it was impossible for me not to feel that there was much more behind their decision than had yet come to light, and the conclusion of that on my mind was to make rue feel that, if I had known all they knew, my judgment would probably not have been greatly different from theirs. Another effect was to leave on my mind the conclusion that one of the principal seedbeds from which has sprung such vehemence and violence as we have felt around us has been not so much the action that has been taken but the way in which the decisions were taken and the way they were represented to a public that was only partially informed.
In spite of what the noble Marquess has said to-day. I still do not feel wholly convinced that time could have been so pressing as to make it possible for countries of the Commonwealth to say that they had no effective consultation; for President Eisenhower to say that he had read it first in the Press reports, or for anyone to say that we had flouted and ignored the United Nations Organisation. The Government have plainly suffered—I offer this thought only in passing—from that which is apt to be one of the most cruel incidents of politics and of political responsibility—that is, that the decision is so often a hard and bitter choice between evils. The evils that you incur by decision are, to the general public, inevitably more obvious, more immediate and more objectionable than the evils that you avoid by your decision, which are not so close and not so clearly observed. I think the Government have suffered from that to the full. I would add that, whether we agree or not with the action that Her Majesty's
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Government have taken, I do not believe that any Member of your Lordships' House would grudge payment of a tribute to them for the courage with which they have chosen, and adhered to, a course which, however unpopular it might be, they themselves judged to be dictated to them by the facts of the case and to be right.
That is the end of a phase, and the predominant problem with which we are concerned now is the future. When one touches the future, I am conscious that one can do little more than indicate to Her Majesty's Government what may be the general lines on which we should wish them to endeavour to proceed, because the future is obscure; it changes from day to day, and we hardly know at any moment what the definite position may be in six hours' time. I was glad to hear what the noble Marquess said in regard to the latest United Nations Assembly resolution. There may be some persons who would say that he had again failed to conform completely to it. If that is so, I am glad that he has, because to leave a vacuum at this moment would seem to me to be an act of political folly and suicide.
I can express in a sentence my own thought in regard to what we ought to do. We should do everything we can to facilitate the earliest possible arrival of the Force and when the Force does come, I hope that we shall not find it necessary to insist upon our membership of it. I rather gathered that the noble Marquess did not see any great difficulty about that matter. When that Force does come, I hope that it may be instrumental in doing two things: first of all, it will serve, I hope, as a physical reminder to all concerned of the commitments that all parties, on paper, have accepted, and will therefore so operate as a check upon any resumption of hostilities from any quarter. But, more than that, I hope that it will lead the Organisation of the United Nations, and all its members, to appreciate that, in this world of power politics in which it is our lot to live. words alone are never going to be enough to ensure an orderly and peaceful society. Therefore, something more than words is required to make collective security more than an idle label and hope.
I confess, however, that I begin to wonder what I can substitute, and how

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I can, as the phrase goes, "put 'teeth' into the Charter." I fall back, I am afraid, upon what has been my own simple thought from the time we first began to talk about these things ten years ago. It is that if the great Powers are in agreement, there is no trouble; if the great Powers are not in agreement and are not always scrupulous, no words that we could use in any Charter will protect us from possible evil cones-quences. It is a chill and depressing thought, but I believe it to be bleakly true. If that is so, let us not delude ourselves into supposing that all our anxieties are over.
As the noble Marquess reminded us, we have still to achieve a Canal settlement; we have to see the position between Israel and Egypt adjusted; and, a have all we have to create, if we can, stability and confidence in all that Middle Eastern Area. Therefore, there are very testing days ahead of us, and the principal burden of them must fall, as I see it, upon the United Nations, which we shall do our utmost, I hope, to support and strengthen. For that reason, I cherish my other principal hope—and this is the last word that I shall say—that we may all, while appreciating the difficulties of honourable and right honourable Members of the Opposition. feel the necessity, as the noble Lord, Lord Henderson stressed, of doing our utmost to re-create that essential unity which ought to prevail in Parliament and in the country. without which no nation car prosper. and without which this nation certainly cannot play the part in the difficulties of the future that its history and its character and its qualities all combine to call it to offer to the world.
1.20 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I am sure that every noble Lord who has listened to the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Halifax, will wish to re-echo his concluding sentences in which he pleaded for unity at this time of crisis. I can assure him that. so far as we are concerned, our opposition is not in the slightest degree factious. We have felt very strongly indeed, even if we have not expressed it in this House as strongly as elsewhere. that the action the Government were taking was wrong and contrary to the
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best interests of our own country; and we felt it our duty to say so. But this opposition will not be merely for the purpose of opposition: we stand united, so far as we possibly can. The changes that are taking place are so rapid that any speech, even that one had prepared yesterday, might well be out of date by to-day. For instance, we did not know yesterday what was to be the attitude of the United Nations on the various resolutions that were before it.
I do not propose to revive at this moment the dispute as to whether we were right or wrong in taking the action that we took. Obviously, one has not heard the last of it, and some time there will have to be a stock-taking; but to-day I do not think one can profitably say very much more I should like to say to the noble Marquess that, while we fully appreciate everything he said to-day, he was merely making the speech that he would have made last week if, happily, he had been able to be with us. I am sure he would have made it with equal vigour and we should then have had an opportunity of dealing with it. I do not think that it would he profitable to reopen the arguments which he put forward, because they were, after all, the arguments which confronted us at that time. I will merely make one or two comments on what he sail
First, there, was the question of urgency. Of course, nobody would accuse the noble Marquess of talking nonsense—of course not; there is a strong basis of reason in everything he says, and it is so often a case, as it was here, of a balance of evils. The noble Marquess referred to the question of urgency. I should like him to consider, not immediately, whether, on reflection, the advantages from his point of view of the Government's acting promptly ware not over-balanced by the disadvantages of acting without consultation. My own view is that, granted that there was an element of urgency—though I do not entirely accept it as so—were not the disadvantages of having acted without consultation with our friends, with the United States and with the Dominions a far greater evil? The noble Marquess sad that he was aware that the United States were not in agreement with us, or would not be likely to be. I should have thought that that was all the more reason for letting them know what we

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were doing and not exacerbating the difference of opinion or the possible frictions that existed. That is one thing I want to say and I hope the noble Marquess will agree that that is a fair reflection. One cannot always be wise at the time. One can always be wise after the event, and I would suggest that this was one of those things that, on reflection, the Government might very well have done.
The other matter I want to refer to is this. The noble Marquess asked us certain questions about the United Nations, whether we would have gone immediately, and so on, or waited, though I do not think he would expect a reply now.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: That was not exactly my question. I do not expect a reply now. My question was whether the Labour Party thought that action should be taken to refer all matters to the United Nations or whether action should depend on the approval of the United Nations. That was the question I asked the noble Lord.
LORD SILKIN: Yes.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: It is a slightly different one.
LORD SILKIN: Yes. I do not think I should be asked to give an answer to that at this moment, but of course we realise that that is a question which must be answered, and about which we all have to make up our minds, in relation to our attitude to the United Nations.
LORD SALTER: May I ask the noble Marquess whether he does not recognise that there is, after all, an intermediate position between that which he suggested was his and that which he ascribed to the Opposition? In a number of cases it is, I suggest, incumbent, in the absence of such an emergency as makes it impossible, to refer to the United Nations: but if. through the Veto, for example, the United Nations is unable to reach a valid decision, then I suggest that signatory members have a freedom which they have not in the first instance.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: That was, of course, the position over the first Suez dispute.
LORD SILKIN: That is a possible answer, but I would rather not commit myself even to that. The other matter I should like to put to the noble Marquess is this. He referred to certain vital interests of ours, oil-bearing areas. Is not the principle he put forward rather a dangerous one as a justification for the kind of action we have taken? He quoted Lord Liverpool 140 years ago. It was no doubt a most estimable precept in those days, but those days have gone. We have a United Nations to-day, and our business should he to try to make it work and not to try to act on the precept of Lord Liverpool.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: The noble Lord says there are differences between these days and Lord Liverpool's days. Lord Liverpool's system did work. What I am unhappy about is that our present system does not work, and the noble Lords opposite will not recognise that.
LORD SILKIN: Of course Lord Liverpool's system could work in the days when our power was supreme in the world, and when we had the authority and the forces to impose it; but those days are gone. and we are, perhaps unhappily, no longer in that position. Nor do I accept the analogy—analogies are always dangerous—of a house on fire. There was no house on fire. There was an outbreak of war; there was an attack by Israel. But I can see no desperate urgency for acting without any consultation at all. In fact, we did go to the United Nations, but we did not wait for the decision. I should like to ask the noble Marquess this question: supposing that our interests in the Suez Canal had not been involved at all and this had been merely an attack by Israel upon Egypt, should we have thought it necessary to intervene?
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I would answer that by saying this. I think we thought—and the noble Lord may not agree with me—that a flare-up and a continued warfare between Egypt and Israel raised immense dangers to the whole world, partly because of the supply of oil and partly because of the uncertain position in the Middle East; and that therefore, if it was to be stamped out, or anyhow isolated, it should be done immediately. I think that is the answer.

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It is not purely a national thing; I think we were performing an international duty.
LORD SILKIN: Well. I accept the noble Marquess's answer. Once more, one is faced with the difficulty that the noble Marquess can make a perfectly strong case on this, and nobody can do it better than he can. I am not surprised, therefore, that he came this morning to put that case to-day which, in other circumstances, he would have put a week ago. On the other hand, in my view there is a much stronger case against the action that was taken, and we all have to judge.
I would just say this to the noble Earl, who decides this thing on the basis of his personal knowledge of the character of the members of the Government concerned. Certainly in this House there has never been any imputation made against the honesty or sincerity of the people who had to make a very difficult decision; therefore, I hope that the House can eliminate that altogether from its consideration. But if the noble Earl looks at the people from all Parties who have taken a contrary view, people of most impressive character, I think he cannot but be influenced also by the fact that there is a great weight of opinion against the action that has been taken. That, I agree, still makes it very difficult to make up one's mind
As I have said, I do not think we can profitably pursue this matter further to-day, and certainly I do not propose to do so. But the question of the future does arise and perhaps we can spare a few moments in considering that matter. There are a number of issues. One is the immediate question of how this particular issue is going to be resolved. It is easy for us to say that we want the dispute between Israel and the Arab States to be settled once and for all and this running sore in the world to be healed for all time. The noble Marquess will know that this dispute between Israel and Egypt goes back a very long time—it goes back to the days of the Bible and the destruction of Pharaoh, and it is going to be a difficult matter to eradicate all that history. I do not know whether the Egyptians are still suffering from resentment at the treatment of Pharaoh in those days, but if there is anything of that kind it will need a great deal of tact, to put it
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no higher, to solve the problem. But it must be solved, and I think it can be solved only if the two parties come face to face and come to an agreement. In my view, no imposed settlement will really be of lasting value, and our efforts and those of tie United Nations should be directed to getting the parties concerned together
There is also the question of the Suez Canal itself There, I must confess, my sympathies are with Her Majesty's Government in desiring some form of international control. After all, the very thing which we feared has taken place: that if and when it suited Egypt to block the Canal from traffic, even against her own interests, she was in a position to do it, and she has done it. It is true that she has done it on this occasion as a result of action which we have taken, but, equally, she could well have done it as a result of any action that displeased her. Therefore, I think that there is a strong case for some kind of international control. That, again, is a matter which we ourselves cannot impose, but I imagine it will he a matter which the United Nations will have to take very seriously
These are short-term questions which will have to be settled. But there is the long-term question to which the noble Earl devotee some part of his speech—namely, how these matters are to he dealt with the future. We all realise the dilemma to which he refers, of the case where the powerful nations disagree. What is to happen then? How are disputes to be dealt with'? Some of us tried to face this problem before the war. A Member of this House formed an organisation called The New Commonwealth; Sir Winston Churchill was the President and a number of Members of this House were actively associated with it. I was on the Council of that organisation and it had as its object two very simple propositions—namely, an International Equity Tribunal and an International Police Force. We Lave come back to the International Police Force as the immediately practical step for solving the present problem, and without some such force we shall never be able to deal with any dispute that may arise. What is essential in addition to an International Police Force, is some speedy means of coming to a determination on questions at issue between the nations. It may be that the Security Council, deprived of its Veto

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would be a satisfactory agency; but some such agency is essential
That brings me to the question of the revision of the United Nations Charter. I am convinced that without revisions which experience has shown are essential, both for the settlement of disputes and for an International Police Force where such decisions are defied, then the United Nations might just as well become merely a pleasant debating society. It may be that some nations would oppose such a revision—possibly the Soviet Union. I would throw out the thought—I say it entirely on my own responsibility and without committing anybody—that the United Nations would be stronger without, if necessary, the element of the Soviet Union or anybody else who was not prepared to abide by decisions, and with the Veto abolished, than with them inside and the acceptance of the Veto. As we all know, this Veto has been exercised on several hundred occasions—in fact, every time that the Soviet Union disagreed with the decision, even though such decisions have been virtually unanimous. No international organisation can function adequately in that way. Though, obviously, this is not a matter on which I am expecting a reply, it is a matter which I think it is essential should he considered urgently: how can the United Nations possibly be made effective in future and how can this kind of difficulty—not merely the invasion of Egypt by Israel but the difficulty over Suez itself—be resolved? It can, I believe, be resolved speedily and without resort to force.
Coming now to the Amendment itself, I believe everybody in this House would regret the fact that we acted without consultation with the Commonwealth and, I would add. with the United States, whether we take the view that we were forced to act or not, or whether or not there was ample time for consultation. It seems to me, therefore, that one way of making good that omission to-day would be to convene a meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers at the earliest possible moment and put this difficulty before them. It is gratifying that none of them has taken this badly. Even where they do not agree with us they have shown an understanding of our difficulty, and I believe that the breach which has resulted is not irremediable if we try to put it right at once: but if we
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wait, feelings may well become accentuated. Whenever there is a difficulty in the family the best solution, I am sure, is to get together and talk it over. I hope therefore that Her Majesty's Government will see their way to accepting this Amendment and to acting on it without any delay at all.
1.43 p.m.
LORD KILLEARN: My Lords, I have only two substantive points to put to your Lordships, but before I do so may I say how entirely I subscribe to the speech of the noble Leader of this House and the views which he expressed about the action of Her Majesty's Government? I believe that the Government acted reasonably. rightly and well. My only regret was that in the first instance they did not act more quickly on the first seizure of the Canal Company's property and the threat to put foreign subjects under restraint. I believe we missed an opportunity there. Probably there are reasons why we could not act, but we did get tied up, as many foresaw that we should, in a series of conferences and delays. The wrongdoer in the meantime "got away with it," which I thought was a great pity. So much for that.
As regards the second crisis, when the Israeli-Egyptian conflict broke out we acted at once and I believe that we acted properly and rightly, like a householder who sees a fire in his backyard, seizes a bucket of water and pours it straight over the fire, puttting it out. He does not worry about his insurance company or getting authority before acting, but reports the matter later and obviously earns approval by having avoided something much worse. I believe that in this particular case something said by the Prime Minister in another place the other day has not so far been sufficiently developed; at least, I have not seen it referred to. I believe that our prompt action undoubtedly prevented the conflict from spreading, because it is a curious fact that beforehand we had heard a lot about common action by the Arab countries, and so on, but that has not happened. I do not believe that that is entirely accidental. What many feared, a general conflagration. Arab-Israeli, has not happened, and I believe that is a direct consequence of the prompt action we took.

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There are many ideas that one would like to develop, but I do not propose to do so now; for instance, there is the need to overhaul the machinery of the United Nations, a need which stands out at arm's length. One hopes that in the fullness of time that will be tackled, though it is a terribly difficult problem, for it involves such things as the definition of an "aggressor". The noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, yesterday gave us various definitions out of Oppenheim but I never knew before that there was any really good or accepted definition of an "aggressor". It is a very difficult thing to establish, just as it is difficult to know how to define a "defensive weapon". That has always puzzled me. Those are big questions which I hope will come up for proper debate in the fullness of time. I also feel strongly that our handling of relations with the Israelis has not been particularly skilful in the past. I have had strong views about that for a long time. There was, for exam, our abstention from letting them have arms, and talk about an arms-race, when in fact any arms-race was all over long before, because the Russians had given arms to the Egyptians. I thought that cur altitude was futile.
My Lords, I said I had only two substantive points, but in fact both have already been put by the noble Earl, Lord Halifax, who took the words out of my mouth but put them very much better than I could have done. The first was the resolution which apparently was before the United Nations last night, with the idea of summoning us to get out of Egypt at once. I do not know whether I have this quite right, for things have been happening so fast, but as the noble Earl, Lord Halifax, so truly asked, can one imagine anything more unwise than to leave a vacuum on the Canal at the present moment? That is the only word to use, and I think there must be general surprise that it should seriously have been suggested, if indeed it was. By all means let the United Nations get on with the immediate constitution of their Police Force, and the quicker the better; but I believe it is a quite impossible and very unwise suggestion that we should get out before that Police Force is ready to come in and is installed.
My second point has also been made by the noble Earl. Speaking from these Benches, I could not help remembering
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the debate we had in September when the noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, who unfortunately is not here to-day, made what I thought was a very strong and moving appeal. With your Lordships' permission I propose to read it to the House because I so) profoundly agree with what he said. These were his words, in the special Sitting [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 199, col. 755]:
"I am profoundly grieved to see great national and international issues like this taking on the shape of a Party struggle. I have worked hard and faithfully for all your three Parties: I did my utmost for you all. Perhaps you will allow me very humbly to give one more warning and that is that if we persist in disunity we may lay up for our people another terrible price such as we have paid in the past. I hope to God we shall avoid that!"
I felt just fled in repeating that appeal because, it the light of the most sinister and disturbing news of to-day from Eastern Europe, I stand very much in the same position as the noble Lord. Lord Vansittart. I have served various British Governments for roughly forty-five years and I feel very strongly that this is a time of national peril, for there are about ominous and insistent sinister signs which cannot safely be ignored. If ever there was a time when we ought to have national unity and solidity in the face of a most sit inter threat, surely it is now. My Lords, anything I can say has very little effect; indeed, why should it have? But I feel most strongly that if somehow we could get back to more Party unity and close the ranks in view of something—a threat—which is quite new, after all, surely now is the time when we should try to do so.
1.51 p.m.
VISCOUNI SAMUEL: My Lords, I had the honour of addressing your Lordships' House in the previous debate last Thursday, and I shall only supplement to-day what I was endeavouring to say then. The situation changes so rapidly front day to day that some observations that I made then with regard to the defence of the Canal in present circumstances have already been thrown out of date. I asked then why we should be eager to remain in our present military position because there was no one who was likely to attack the Canal. Certainly the Israelis would have no reason to do so. and I could not conceive that the

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Egyptians would wish to sabotage their own Canal. But I had not allowed sufficiently for the irrationality, and indeed extreme incompetence, both in political and military matters, of Colonel Nasser. For they have now again and again blocked the Canal, and if they were left free to wreak their will upon it no doubt great and possibly prolonged irreparable damage might be done. Therefore I agree with what has been said by the noble Lord. Lord Killearn, that it is not possible for Her Majesty's Government and the French to withdraw their forces immediately, as desired by the latest resolution of the United Nations.
I will come later to my lines of criticism of Her Majesty's Government, but let me say at once that I not only agree with their attitude at this moment on that subject. but I also was not one of those who condemned them for their military preparations when Colonel Nasser stole the Canal. I think he is the only depredator known in history who has ever stolen a Canal. If the Government had not taken steps at that time, and if he had shown the qualities which he has since displayed, of unreasonable anarchic destructiveness, and if the lives of our fellow-citizens had in fact been jeopardised, and indeed sacrificed; as they were in Cairo and in Egypt generally some years ago when the forces of anarchy were let loose, then Her Majesty's Government would have been unanimously blamed by the whole country. And no doubt the present Opposition would not have been backward in complaining and asserting that the Government must have known what was possible from a Government such as that of Egypt to-day and that they were highly remiss in having taken no military precautions to have a force in readiness to preserve our rights and the lives and property of our fellow-subjects.
At the same time, I disagree with those, mostly amongst the supporters of the Government, who thought they would have done better to be more prompt and more energetic even than they were, and that the right moment to intervene was the very moment when the Canal was seized. That, I think, would have been quite wrong. It would have alienated the world at large and a large part of
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our own people, even more than has in fact been done. They were right, I think, not to use force at once, but at the same time I cannot refrain from criticising, as I have done previously, their reluctance to proceed straight away to the United Nations for their intervention in the matter.
The Government were at fault again. in my judgment, in issuing the ultimatum in the way that they did and at the moment when they did. There I agree entirely with the noble Earl, Lord Halifax, with whose speech in general I found myself in large agreement: that their proceeding so rapidly to a state of war and what has been called the brutal ultimatum, which they must have known for certain would not be accepted by Egypt, has aroused against this country a maximum of opposition in the public opinion of the world, and also here in our own electorate, and has enlisted the minimum support. Their purposes were excellent: they wished to keep the combatants separate. But they have put a strain on our relations with the Government and people of the United States and with a very large part of our Commonwealth which is most lamentable. Moreover, they have brought upon themselves condemnation by an enormous majority in the United Nations Assembly. All this was the outcome of that ultimatum and the action that followed upon it. I would say—and I am using the mildest word in my vocabulary to stigmatise it, because I have no desire to become rhetorical or to engage in vehement opposition to the Government—that their diplomacy was inept. In fact I think seldom could a more unwise course have been followed than that pursued by the Government from the time of the military action of the Israeli Government and Army.
But taking the military situation as it is, the suggestion that there should be an immediate withdrawal—the word "immediate" having been used; that means to-day or to-morrow—seems to me misconceived. It would leave, as the noble Earl, Lord Halifax, said, using a word that I had intended to use myself. a vacuum of authority. If the British and French forces were to be withdrawn to-day or to-morrow, what would then be the situation on the Canal? The United Nations Force would not be there, and

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even if it were there it would be little more than a token Force. What is left of the Egyptian Army is now apparently massed on the West Bank of the Canal, and unless there are strong forces there, an anarchy of destructive sabotage might be begun and continued by the Egyptian Government, which has already blocked the Canal. Saboteurs might wreak havoc.
In the case of Port Said itself we remember that the military commander had assented to the cease-lire, but he was for the time being overruled by Colonel Nasser. As for the Israelis, if they were left to themselves they might be able to overcome the remnants of the Egyptian Army, but that is not certain. It would be a very arduous task. It would be a war of position which for them would be much harder than a war of movement I therefore agree with what was written by my friend Dr. Gilbert Murray, with the Master of Balliol and others at Oxford; that it is not possible for this country reasonably to agree with the word "immediate" if the word "immediate" is used with regard to the withdrawal of forces. If we were to withdraw. we should have overthrown Egyptian rule, and pretty nearly paralysed it. but done nothing to replace it.
If the International Police Force were even there in token—a small token skeleton force—immediately, they could arrive at no decision which could be effectively applied if resistance was offered to them. We should have overthrown the de jure Government of Egypt arid established no de facto power along the Canal in its place. This resolution of the United Nations appears to me to have been adopted hurriedly. On reflection. one would believe it would be found by the United Nations itself not to be practicable. On the other hand, and as the Government have themselves already declared, we do not wish to establish ourselves in enduring occupation on the banks of the Canal. We do not regard it Os the duty of one Power, or of two, to attempt to perform such a duty; we feel that the matter should rest with the United Nations.
That brings me to my second point. The noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor, speaking last Thursday, did me the honour, in connection with my speech that day, to ask what course
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I. myself would have adopted if I had been in the position of the Government. Would I have allowed the situation to develop, doing nothing when, as I say. Colonel Nasser stole the Canal? To my mind, you cannot begin to answer that question accepting the situation as it then was. The fault arose through the failure of the present Government and many other Governments—and the present Government in this country have been in power for a number of years—to move the United Nations to take effective cog-nisance of the whole situation as regards Israel and her neighbours, and deal with it in an effective fashion. One hears voices of speakers at the United Nations recognising that the Western Powers and other Powers have been at fault for years past in allowing matters to drift, as the noble Marquess the Leader of the House has said today, and that they cannot be exempted from blame on that score.
The point at issue has really been whether Israel has any right to exist or whether it is an interloper, thrusting into the Arab world and thereby committing an injustice through its very existence. The noble Marquess the Leader of the House said that, on reflection, during his illness (which we all so much deplore, and which we are all so glad to know is now over), he came to the conclusion that there were certain world forces which had teen at work, and particularly the intrigues and ambitions of Communist Russia, which had bedevilled the situation in the Middle East. That is perfectly true, but I do not think that, fundamentally, it applies to this case of Israel and Egypt, where Egypt denies that Israel has the right to exist and claims that it should, in justice, be wiped out.
Governments of all Parties in this country were concerned in the measures, beginning with the Balfour Declaration, of which the outcome was the Jewish National Home that developed afterwards into the Jewish State. In this country, the general movement aiming at that consummation was supported with enthusiasm by three British Prime Ministers, Mr. Lloyd George (as he then was). Lord Balfour and Sir Winston Churchill. And a fourth Prime Minister from the Commonwealth held the same view and actively promoted the same movernent—General Smuts, whose statue was unveiled yesterday in the immediate

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neighbourhood of this building. General Smuts, that fact recalls to my mind, was an enthusiastic supporter of the recreation of a Jewish Home in Palestine, and I well remember how, in November, 1949, he paid his last visit to this country. He was here only a few days, and he came specially to assist a Zionist movement for the planting of a forest in Palestine in memory of Dr. Weitzmann I had the honour of being his chairman. His enthusiasm was symptomatic of that which prevailed among a number of British and other statesmen.
The Jewish National Home was established under Mandate of the League of Nations. Then, after that Mandate had been abandoned by this country, the Israel State was set up, and a war immediately started. It was not because the Jews attacked the Arabs but because the Arab States attacked the Jews. There was a bitter war, in the course of which the Jewish side suffered the loss of no fewer than 4,000 killed, which was a large number out of so small a population. But it ended in their complete victory. So when the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor asks me what I would have done, I think the answer is that when the Egyptian policy developed, the Israeli Government should have formally indicted the Egyptian policy before the United Nations, and, subject to any defence that might have been offered, that action should have been supported by the Western Powers. Britain might legitimately have said that three Powers, Britain, France and the United States, had guaranteed the boundaries of Pales-time (Israel as it then was) and forbade any infringement of them.
The course of events was such as would have been likely to involve the exercise of that guarantee, and for that reason these countries would have had a right to call Egypt to task for the course of her policy. Egypt, as your Lordships are well aware, has never made peace with Israel since the war took place. She has denied the right of Israel to exist; she has refused to negotiate on any subject whatever: the resettlement of refugees or any other matter, including the use of the waters of the rivers of those areas—a vital matter. And Egypt has insisted on declaring that she is at war, and therefore entitled to blockade the trade of Israel through the Suez Canal and
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through the Gulf of Aqaba, and by every means that she can.
My view is that the United Nations at that time ought to have declared that this notion of unilateral war is a mockery of International Law. One cannot conceive international jurists recognising a state of war between two parties which is only claimed and practised by one of them. When Israel engaged in reprisals against the attacks that had been made continually against her, it would have been perfectly legitimate for the United Nations to have said to Egypt, "Are you at war or are you not? If you are at war, you cannot complain of being attacked. If you are not at war, you must conform your policy accordingly and cease your blockade." And when they secured that an Egyptian general should have command of the army of Jordan and the army of Syria. and when they sent fedayeen as marauders to commit outrages and sabotage upon Israel, then was the time for the United Nations to have acted.
I think it is unfair to say that Israel is an aggressor because she has mobilised her armies and sent them across the boundary; whereas, it is an act of aggression to organise saboteurs and marauders to go into another country, it is a deliberate threat of aggression to organise combined armies with the intention of attacking whenever the moment is propitious and it is an aggression to organise a blockade. The noble and learned Earl. Lord Jowitt, yesterday, in a very important and interesting speech. pointed out that under International Law an act of war is committed by a blockade against the trade of a country or by organising gangs of marauders to enter the territory of another State. These things have been done by Egypt. Therefore, the United Nations was very careful not to stigmatise Israel as an aggressor because her armies had crossed the boundary. The North Koreans were stigmatised as aggressors in the Korean war, and China as an accessory, but the United Nations has not now designated Israel as an aggressor. Unfortunately, Mr. Gaitskell used that word and I think that it was unjustified in the circumstances.
If, after the last world war, when hostilities had stopped, there had been some State in Europe across the North Sea which had persisted in continuing,

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not to conduct military hostilities but to declare that it was in a state of war, and if that State had used every means to blockade the trade of this country and had sent across the Channel saboteurs and marauders to murder the farmers working in their fields in Kent and to blow up installations in Sussex, this country would instantly have said that all these things are a casus belli. We should have said, "We cannot tolerate this. What can we do but to take action?" And if the United Nations, or any third party, had not intervened. unquestionably it would have been regarded as an act of war and reprisals at least would have been engaged in. But the Israelis are forbidden to exercise any reprisals by destroying the military posts from which these marauders set out to commit their crimes. As I asked a week ago, what, in the opinion of noble Lords, were the people of Israel to do in the face of these provocations, month after month and year after year, continuing to this very clay, scores of people being killed by these fedayeen, carefully organised by the Egyptian Government who have appealed publicly for volunteers to carry out these outrages?
When the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor asks what I would have done in the situation as it presented itself when the Canal was seized, I would say that I do riot accept that situation as the starting point of the present controversy. The starting point was much earlier, as the noble Marquess said in effect this afternoon. if 1 may introduce a lighter touch into a very serious and grave debate, it reminds me of the well-worn story of the tourist who had lost his way in the hills in the neighbourhood of Cork and asked a local man by the roadside what was his best way to get to Cork. The answer he was given was most elaborate—-instructions to turn left and turn right and do this or that at the crossroads, until at last the man said, "Well, sor, as a matter of fact if I wanted to go to Cork, I wouldn't have started from here at all." That is precisely the answer one would give here. This is not the right starting point to deal with this matter. It ought to have been dealt with long before.
Yesterday I said that Colonel Nasser had made every possible fault of policy except one, and that was in connection with the Aswan Dam. There he touched
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upon a matter of vital importance to his people—namely, the exceeding poverty of the Egyptian peasantry and the terrible pressure of over-population in the narrow ribbon of fertile soil along the banks of: he Nile. His efforts to help the peasants, although very little effective has yet been done, are most praiseworthy, and the centre point of the whole scheme was the great high dam to be built at Aswan, which would have enabled a vast area to be brought into cultivation and provide homes for this rapid increase of population. That scheme is admirable in itself and to assist it should be part of the whole policy of the Western nations, on the same lines as our Colombo Plan, or of President Truman's Point 4, and of the welfare agencies of the United Nations which are doing so much admirable work in so many countries of the world, and also of the World Bank. All that help was to be given. Then. very abruptly, the definite promise, of financial support were cancelled, on the initiative of the United States. I think that, both in manner and matter. that was a mistake. It increase greatly the animosity of the Egyptians. And I would venture to suggest that in any general settlement the restoration of the scheme of the Aswan Dam should have a leading part and that the economic assistances that had been suggested by the Western Powers should certainly be implemented.
But with regard to these more permanent measures I would emphasise, lastly but strongly, that Her Majesty's Government would be well advised not to attempt to settle great political issues at this moment. We cannot now lay down conditions with regard to future boundaries or forms of government or any of the ether matters which should be part of a settlement after the present wars are over. When the time for calm contemplation has come, in the United Nations and elsewhere, great issues ought to be settled. The future administration of the Canal could, perhaps, be settled on the lines approved by the eighteen Powers; and the rescue of the Arab refugees, which is a vital matter, should certainly not be lost sight of.
But all these things ought not to be tied up with the creation of a police force to act in p ace of the armies that are at present in that part of the world. The people of Israel cannot be expected at

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this moment to undertake to agree to a permanent settlement which would be to their detriment. They have suffered two wars. The first was not of their provoking; and the second was not primarily, but only secondarily, of their provoking, because the Egyptians claim that it is still the original war. In both wars they have been victorious. In the first war, as I think I mentioned, they suffered 4,000 casualties. Therefore, they arc not likely to agree voluntarily to any readjustment of boundaries, or other changes, that are seriously to their detriment. This is not a moment when these questions could be settled. I think Her Majesty's Government and the United Nations would be mistaken if they were to lump these together as matters for decision at this moment, November, 1956, or to attempt to deal with them at the same time as and as part of the creation of the International Police Force. For we want to arrive at a settlement, when it is arrived at, which is likely to endure.
2.23 p.m.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I have not taken part in any of these debates which have gone on since September, and I should have been content to support the Government at this time without speaking, but I think perhaps it would be wrong if those of us who have for many years in the past been concerned with these problems and have had some responsibility in dealing with them were not to offer to the House such counsel as lies within our power. As to the Amendment. which the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, has moved in such a pleasant speech, I must say that I think it rather an odd one. I hope that I shall not be accused of imputing motives if I say that it occurred to me—and after all, I have sat in a good many "Shadow Cabinets" as well as a good many Cabinets—that in finding some difficulty in knowing what sort of Amendment to put down, the Opposition had agreed upon this rather odd, if somewhat anodyne, Amendment.
I do not think the suggestion put forward is really a very useful one at this moment. I certainly—as I am sure the House will agree—should be the last person to depreciate the value of Commonwealth Conferences. Ever since 1922, until a year or so ago, I continually had the privilege of sitting in a great many Commonwealth Conferences, and I agree
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that they are enormously valuable. But it really is not for this country—we enjoy what used to be called Dominion status, too—to give order to the other Commonwealth countries, who have exactly the same rights as we have. It has always been the practice that it should be a matter of agreement between all the Commonwealth Governments whether there should be a conference, and where and when it should take place. If the Commonwealth Governments thought that a conference would be of value. I am quite certain that Her Majesty's Government would be only too glad to welcome such a conference here, or to attend such a conference in some other place—in Ottawa. for example—if that were more convenient
Frankly, and speaking from long experience of both conferences and consultations, I think it is doubtful whether any Commonwealth country would welcome a conference at the present moment. Apart from the fact that Foreign Ministers will. I understand, be meeting soon in the United States. I should have thought the last thing that any Commonwealth Prime Minister would want at this moment would be to leave his own capital, where he probably has, as Her Majesty's Government have here, daily meetings of the Cabinet, and where, after all, the decisions must be taken.
I am not going into whether there could or could not have been more consultation. But I am sure there is the fullest consultation now. So far as conference, consultation and information go, it is perfectly possible for the Government—and I am sure they are doing—to give every Commonwealth Government, hour by hour, the fullest information, and to be, by telegraph and telephone, in the closest consultation with them. Therefore, I do not think this is a particularly fertile suggestion. I would only add this—and I pick up something my noble friend the Leader of the House said. We all agree on the importance of consultation; and we all agree on the value of agreement within the Commonwealth when we do consult. But I must add this—and I think I echo my noble friend's thoughts and observation. We must not be precluded from action unless there is complete unanimity among every country in the Commonwealth. If we were to try to insist upon any such unanimity rule. it would be disagreeable to every

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Commonwealth country—and after all, it would be most embarrassing, because we have suffered, to some extent, in another organisation under a unanimity rule, and I do not think we want to establish in the British Commonwealth of Nations a power of veto.
I am sure we are all grateful to my noble friend the Leader of the House for his full and frank speech. He has given us a great deal of information and a great deal of background, both of which are essential to a full understanding. Bearing that in mind, and bearing in mind, too, all that has happened—and the situation, as Lord Samuel said, does move and change from day to day—is it not our duty in this House, at this moment, to face the position as it is to-day, and to consider how best we can help our own country and the United Nations? After all, what are the facts of to-day?—that is what we are concerned with. The United Kingdom have accepted the cease-fire, provided, of course, that our own forces are not attacked. Here, may I say something with which I feel, whatever differences there may be in this House, we can all agree: we should wish to pay a tribute to the gallantry, the brilliance and the restraint of all three Services of the Crown in these operations.
The United Kindom Government have accepted Mr. Lester Pearson's proposal for a United Nations Police Force. This is not the first time Mr. Pearson has well served the United Nations and N.A.T.O. It will be in all our minds—certainly those of us who were in it at the time—how Mr. Pearson, when it looked as if N.A.T.O. might easily break up and the whole of free Europe come to grief, ranged himself with our own Foreign Secretary and did much to save the Organisation and the free world. These things have happened, but the basic facts of the situation are still the same. The fundamental problems have still to be solved, and I think it is important, indeed essential, that we should see those problems in their true perspective. That is where my noble friend the Leader of the House has helped us a good deal to-day.
On the last occasion, the most reverend Primate said that we ought to try to see ourselves as others see us; that that was wisdom and common sense. Even before the cease-fire was accepted. I think there
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was a clearer understanding of these facts in some quarters of the United States than in some quarters here. I do not know whether your Lordships read the New York Times and the New York Herald-Tribune. Both of them are worth reading. I do not wish to delay the House, but I think it is important that we should see at any rate what a good deal of considered and informed opinion in America is feeling. I should like first to quote from a leading article in the New York Times of November 3. It says:
"But even that step"—
that is, the creation of the United Nations Police Force—
"would he only a temporary remedy and a preliminary to more enduring measures. Such measures demand, first of all, that the Arab States finally recognise the existence of Israel, stop their constant threat of force to destroy it and agree to negotiate a permanent peace settlement, long demanded by Israel. Indeed, as long as they continue to flout both the United Nations Charter and the United Nations decisions which created Israel, even their right to seek the protection of the United Nations is subject to challenge. This is equally true of Colonel Nasser's high-handed seizure of the Suez Canal in violation of an international treaty and the established international order, not to speak of his whole programme of Arab imperialism. The test of Egypt's good faith in this matter must be Egyptian agreement to international control of the Canal which will guarantee it against overt or covert misuse in the interests of Colonel Nasser's imperial plans."
That does not stand alone. In the New York Herald Tribune, Mr. Walter Lippmann, one of the most distinguished publicists in that Continent, or indeed in the world, wrote two articles, one on November 5, and the other on November 7. En the first, Mr. Lippmann says:
"Had Nasser been reasonable, moderate, and statesmanlike after his victory in the Suez affair"—
by that Mr. Lippmann meant after he had seized the Canal—
"this explosion would probably not have occurred. But he is the typical aggressor dictator who will not stop until he is stopped. That is why once again a policy of appeasement has failed to preserve the peace."
Only yesterday, Mr. Lippmann wrote:
"Therefore, in the interests of the United Nations, which is also a vital interest of the United States, let us insist that it"—
that is, the United Nations——
"be an organ for the solution of the problems, of Suez and Palestine and not a tribunal of judgment."

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I thought those comments were worth quoting to the House as showing what a great many people in America are thinking, and were thinking, even before we had accepted the cease-fire and the suggestion of a Police Force. Is it not true what those writers say? The need for the solution remains. If the Government were to let the situation slip back, it would be absolutely impossible for the United Nations to do its double task—the task of policing and peace-making.
There has been a great deal of legal argument, and I do not want to pose as a great legal authority, or to go very closely into that aspect to-day. But I suggest that it is possible even for lawyers to take too narrow a view. If those are right who have asserted—as, indeed, I thought the late Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, asserted yesterday—that no action is permissible unless U.N.O. acts and acts promptly, then I am driven to the conclusion that there is really no effective way in which a wrongdoer can be restrained. Et ego in Arcadia vixi. I did make my living at the Bar, and had a few cases to advise on International Law, but I am not claiming to speak on that ground.
I was, however, a Member of the Government concerned in accepting the Kellogg Pact, and, with many of your Lordships, of the Government which was concerned in the framing of the United Nations Charter. As a member of those Governments, I think I am entitled to say that the suggestion that there could be no action unless U.N.O. or some other body had authorised it was never contemplated, or intended, by the authors or signatories either of the Kellogg Pact or of U.N.O.
Let us take the Kellogg Pact. It was Mr. Kellogg himself who said, or wrote, that he thought it unnecessary to mention self-defence in framing the Pact. because it was so obvious. His words were:
"The right to use force in self-defence is so inherent and universal that it was not deemed necessary even to insert it expressly in the text."
One cannot have much better authority than the author. What was more, every country which signed the Kellogg Pact made, not reservations, but declarations of what they intended to do and, after all, it is the intention of a Treaty which counts. You do not have to construe
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these things like a will taken into the Court of Chancery, where the judge can look only at the written words. In International Law you have to consider what was the intention as evidenced by the surrounding circumstances. At that time, in accepting the Kellogg Declaration (I remember it well; Sir Austen Chamberlain was Foreign Secretary at the time), we made a pretty long statement. including these words:
"There are certain regions of the world the welfare and integrity of which constitute a special and vital interest of the peace and safety of Great Britain."
Everybody who was in the Government at the time knows that Egypt and Palestine—for which at the time we were still responsible under the Mandate (I succeeded to that particular responsibility a year or two later)—were regions which were particularly in our mind when we made that declaration.
We do not have to pray in aid only our action, but I think it is worth remembering what was drawn attention to by the Master of University College. Professor Goodhart, formerly a Professor of International Jurisprudence and one of the greatest international jurists in the world incidentally, he is still, I think. an American citizen. He drew attention to the fact that the United States Government and Congress, the authors of the Kellogg Pact. though they did not have to take it. fully approved, with the Kellogg Pact and the United Nations Charter well in their minds, of independent action in Quemoy in advance of anything the United Nations could do.
Let me bring the point a little nearer home, and a little nearer home to the Opposition Front Bench. Very rightly, in 1950 the Labour Government signed with France and the United States the well known Tripartite Declaration to give security to the States of the Middle East. Nobody who reads that can doubt that that Declaration, made, of course, well after the United Nations Charter was in force, contemplated immediate and separate action. Let me quote one very important sentence from it:
"The three Governments, should they find that any of these States was preparing to violate frontiers or armistice lines, would, consistently with their obligations as members of the United Nations, immediately"—
not waiting, but immediately—
"take action"—

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now observe these words—
"both within and outside the United Nations to prevent such violation."
They were perfectly right to sign that Declaration; and when they signed it they meant what they said. They meant that, if need arose, they would take immediate action, and that was wholly consistent with the Charter of the United Nations.
LORD HENDERSON: I understand the noble Earl's interpretation of the Tripartite Declaration, but he will realise that it was the three who would take action, and that the three have not taken action under the Tripartite Declaration in this connection.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I am not saying that this action was taken under the Tripartite Declaration. The noble Lord is not following rile. The contention which was put forward, and which certainly was put forward by the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, yesterday, was that the Government were not justified, because of the United Nations Charter, in taking independent action in advance of action by the United Nations. I am not saving that this action was taken under the Tripartite Declaration—it was not. I am citing the Tripartite Declaration which the noble Lord's Government made—and he was a member of the Government at the time. It was made with the express declaration that, if aced arose—and they were the judges of whether need arose—action would be taken inside or outside the United Nations; and immediate action at that. Therefore—I am not arguing whether the action of the Government was right or wrong—what 1 am arguing is that I do not believe any lawyer ought to contend that the Government, in doing what they did, were acting illegally under the Charter.
LORD HENDERSON: If I may again interrupt the noble Earl, the Declaration surely referred to taking action against aggression. The trouble about the Tripartite Declaration hitherto in my discussions with leaders in Israel has been that, when we said "But here is a guarantee that you will not be aggressed," they said that no action would be taken.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I hope the noble Lord will forgive me if I say that I think that is splitting hairs.
LORD HENDERSON: No.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: Of course there was a danger. There was the danger of aggression, the danger of a flare-up. I am not apportioning praise or blame. What was it? Will the noble Lord listen to this quotation?
LORD HENDERSON: Yes,
THE EARL OF SWINTON:
"The three Governments, should they find that any of these states was preparing to violate frontiers or armistice lines …"
Those were the conditions in which they claimed the right to take action. Whatever you may say about the Government, can anybody for one moment say to-day that for years past now President Nasser has not beet not only preparing to violate frontiers but has been violating them? I do not want to keep the House too long, but I am citing this Declaration in order to justify the contention that whet the Governs rent have done, be it right or be it wrong, wise or unwise, was certainly not illegal, illegitimate or improper action under the Charter. I think, therefore, the legal justification is there.
But I world put the case on a higher and broader plane. Surely n these great international instruments we must look at the spirit as well as the letter of the law. There is certainly high warrant for saying that you should look at the spirit. What it the overriding spirit and purpose of the United Nations Oganisation, just as it is of N.A.T.O.? Surely it is to preserve peace. It is to create conditions fair, equitable and secure in which just and lasting peace may be established among all nations t and surely. to this end, to prevent a major conflagration which would make all this impossible. I feel sure that it was the sincere desire and purpose of the Government to act in that spirit. Criticise them, if you will, on timing or on some particular aspect of Government action, but in criticising ought two not to try to put ourselves in the Government's place, with their duty. their responsibility and their knowledge? That is as important as seeing ourselves as others see us.
Surely to-day we should all do well to accept the wise advice of Professor Gilbert Murray and his co-signatories—the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, referred to them—for nobody speaks on matters of U.N.O. with a greater authority than

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Professor Gilbert Murray, when he wrote this:
"We feel the Government deserve patient but, if necessary, critical support in order to ensure that British and French Forces provide an impartial police force between Israeli and Egyptian armies until the United Nations assumes this task itself."
I am glad that in what has been said in the House to-day there is so much agreement on that matter. In the situation to-day, the Government cannot quit—they cannot leave that trench until they are relieved. If they stand firm and we stand united, as a nation, we shall be giving to the Organisation of the United Nations the best support and encouragement in our power in discharging the task that the United Nations has accepted—that of preventing further conflict and establishing a just and lasting peace.
2.51 p.m.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I know that we have all listened to the noble Earl with great interest, because he speaks with the authority given him by an enormous experience in a wide range of governmental activities. I should like to reply to one of his comments on our Amendment. We are not suggesting, as I think the noble Earl indicated, that Her Majesty's Government should give orders to other Commonwealth Governments to attend a conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers. We know that these things are done by mutual agreement. We know that, just as well as the noble Earl. That is the way these things should be done. All we are suggesting is that Her Majesty's Government should take the view that such a conference would be worth while. If they take that view, then they should invite other Commonwealth Governments to subscribe to the same view and to ask their Prime Ministers to attend a conference wherever it may be convenient.
I shall address my few remarks—and they will be few because we have a long list of speakers—to the Amendment on the Order Paper. I think we are somewhat at a disadvantage in dealing with the Amendment, although I do not blame the Government for this I am sure it is an accident and not the intention of the Government. The disadvantage is that we shall not hear the views of Her Majesty's Government until the end of the debate, whereas if we had had them it the beginning it would perhaps have
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been easier for us and the rest of the House to deal with the arguments that Her Majesty's Government will put forward.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS (THE EARL OF HOME): My Lords, if it is a question relating to the Commonwealth which the noble Earl has in mind, may I say that I put myself down to intervene at the end of the debate because I thought that that might meet the convenience of the House. If it is your Lordships' desire that I should intervene earlier for five minutes or so, merely to deal with that point, I will certainly do so.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: Speaking at any rate for noble Lords on these Benches, I think that it would be an advantage. For example, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will wind up for our side, and I think it would be of advantage to him if he could hear the Government's views (if that meets with the convenience of other speakers in the debate) before he rises; but that is entirely a matter for the noble Earl opposite and for the convenience of the House.
I should like to make one further comment on the Amendment before I deal with its terms. This Amendment has not been put down in a Party spirit. We consider that such a conference would be in the best interests of this country and of the Commonwealth; that is the reason why we have put down the Amendment. I hope your Lordships will consider the Amendment on its merits and will form your judgment of its value simply as a contribution to Commonwealth understanding at the present time. The purpose of our Amendment is to restore, if that is, as we all hope, still possible, the broken unity of the Commonwealth. I think that all your Lordships will sympathise with this purpose and wish to see it carried out. Indeed, the Prime Minister said in another place the other day something which suggested that the purpose we have in mind must be shared by those noble Lords opposite who belong to the Government. The Prime Minister's words are these:
"As we emerge from this crisis and our motives arc more understood, both the Commonwealth and our American friends will understand the reasons which motivated us in taking the course we did."

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I infer from this statement of the Prime Minister that he takes the view that we shall be able to persuade the Commonwealth that our policy has been the right policy, whatever view may be taken at the moment in parts of the Commonwealth, and thus to remove all differences and misunderstandings between us and other Commonwealth Governments. Therefore, if I am correct, we should all agree on the purpose of the Amendment, and the only difference would arise about the method whereby it is to be carried out.
We shall listen with great interest to the views of the Government when they express them, about the particular suggestion which we on this side of the House have put forward in the hope that it may be helpful. Whether or not: the Prime Minister is right in his estimate of Commonwealth opinion—I am sure that we all hope he is, much as some of us may fear that he is unduly optimistic— there can be little doubt that no time should he lost in trying to bring about the understanding to which he referred and in trying to remove differences that have arisen. The need for an immediate effort to restore Commonwealth unity is shown most clearly if we consider the deep cleavages that have in fact—and these are matters of fact and cannot, I fear, be disputed—taken place in the last few days. Your Lordships will remember—my noble friend Lord Henderson referred to it—that Mr. St. Laurent, the Prime Minister of Canada, said that our action in Egypt had placed a greater strain on the bonds of Commonwealth—and he went on to refer to the Atlantic Alliance—than any event since the war. I suppose this was the first time in history that a Canadian Prime Minister had publicly criticised Her Majesty's Government in such grave terms, and the fact that this criticism comes from our oldest Commonwealth partner makes it all the more necessary for all of us. on both sides of the House, to examine the differences that have arisen and to consider without delay how they can be most speedily and effectively removed.
I think the facts show that Commonwealth relationship has been strained—indeed, strained almost to breaking point. How do we stand in relation to the Commonwealth about the war in Egypt? We have the open and declared support of only three out of the eight Commonwealth countries whose Prime Ministers
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attend the conferences of Commonwealth Prime Ministers. Australia, New Zealand and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland have been consistently on our side in this matter, although, of course—as again my noble friend Lord Henderson pointed out—public opinion in Australia and New Zealand is divided, as it is here. Canada and the Union of South Africa have not voted at the United Nations against resolutions that we lave had to oppose. They also have criticised our original intervention. But we hope now—and I trust that we may hope with a great deal of confidence—to have their full support in substituting the action of the United Nations for that of France and the United Kingdom in restoring peace in Egypt.
Far more serious than Oleic differences has been the attitude of our three Asian partners, India, Pakistan and Ceylon. Not only have they not supported us in the divided and neutral position between us and our critics in the outside world; they have gone much further, in that they have openly condemned our policy and shown every sympathy with the country with which Nye are in hostilities. Old friends of ours in India are even saying that India should leave the Commonwealth. I fear that nothing illustrates the seriousness of the rift in the Commonwealth. more I, vehemently than the attitude of these three Asian countries. We have never before teen engaged in what at any rate unsophisticated people regard as a war with another country and found our motives questioned by those who speak for and represent the vast majority of the Commonwealth's inhabitants. I will say nothing more about the Asian attitude or the reasons for it, because my noble friend, Earl Attlee, who has just returned from that part of the world, will be able to speak to your Lordships from his own recent and first-hand experience. I would only add that, however much we may regret or even sometimes resent the strictures of our Asian partners, f hope we shall try to understand their point of view and recover the respect and good will we have lost in so short a time.
I hope we shall not lose sight of the great importance of Indian good will to the future of our own territories in Africa and South East Asia. The emergence of a free Asian bloc at the United Nations shows that African and Asian countries

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in the free world will look increasingly to Asia and not to Europe or to the United States for leadership. We have three important territories in this area, West Africa, the Gold Coast and Nigeria. and, in South East Asia. the Federation of Malaya, and they will soon have self-government. They will then be entirely free to choose between independence inside and outside the Commonwealth. I think there can be no doubt that Indian statesmen will have far more influence when advice is sought in this crucial area than any political leaders in this country or any other part of the Commonwealth.
Now we want to be as constructive as we possibly can, although without the knowledge and information of Her Majesty's Government it is much harder for us to put forward constructive proposals. In our view, two things are required to restore Commonwealth unity. The first is to re-establish the old confidence in the machinery of Commonwealth consultation. The second is to bring their policy in Egypt fully and continuously into line with the decisions of the United Nations. The practice of consultation and exchange of views with other Commonwealth Governments before important decisions are taken has really become the essence of the Commonwealth relationship. It distinguishes the Commonwealth relations more sharply than anything else from relations between foreign countries. We have lessened confidence in this practice by failing to consult the Commonwealth before we decided about our ultimatum to Egypt. The fact that we had time to consult a foreign country, France—a close friend, of course, and an ally of ours, but still foreign—while we had no time to consult our Commonwealth partners must have aggravated for them the sense of grievance caused by our oversight.
Surely the best way of showing that we still believe (as I am sure we do in all parts of the House) in the principle of Commonwealth consultation would be to convene a Conference where the political leaders of the whole Commonwealth could meet face to face. There could he little doubt that such a meeting would do much more to remove misunderstandings and to promote agreement than telegraphic bombardment between Whitehall and the other Commonwealth capitals
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which, so far as one can see (unless the noble Earl suggests anything different). is the only alternative to the proposal that we are making.
The Canadian Government, by proposing at the United Nations that an International Police Force should be set up to go to Egypt, have initiated a policy which has at last brought the Commonwealth into line and has also placed the Commonwealth in accord with the moral judgment of the outside world. But this Canadian initiative is surely not enough. It does not and it cannot absolve us in the United Kingdom from our special responsibility for removing differences which have arisen as a direct result of our policy. Now, whether that policy was right or wrong—and in your Lordships' House and elsewhere there are bound to be differences of opinion about that—I do not think anyone can differ from the view that it has resulted in grave differences of opinion in various parts of the Commonwealth. Surely it is for Her Majesty's Government to do their utmost to make sure that these differences do not impair our relations with other Commonwealth countries in the future or prevent the concerted action we now need for restoring peace and order in the Middle East.
My Lords, if the Government reject our Amendment, if they say that this is not the right method for securing an objective that we all share, then I think we ought at least to hear what better alternative Her Majesty's Government are asking the House to accept. I hope that, as the noble Earl himself suggested. we shall be able to hear his views at the earliest possible moment in this debate.
3.6 p.m.
THF EARL OF HOME: My Lords, it might be to the convenience of the House if I were to say a few words now on this subject, although I had wished to wait until the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. had made his speech. as I know he has so recently returned from India. But the impact of the events of the Egypt-Israel situation has, perfectly properly, been a matter of concern to a number of speakers in this House and, of course, to a great many people outside. That is a right and natural thing because the wellbeing and the cohesion of the Commonwealth must be our constant care, as its oldest member and founder.

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The Commonwealth, of course, consists of a number of free and independent countries, and while there is a broad and basic and firm unity (and I believe that it still holds on broad political and economic questions), it is only to be expected that there will at times be differences between the different members. The noble Earl, Lord Swinton, was quite right when he reminded your Lordships that, there could not be in the Commonwealth society. from its very nature, a unanimity rule. That is the -difference between a free association of nations and a dragooned association of nations. It is, in fact, if I may put it bluntly and fairly, the difference between the Russian Empire and the British Commonwealth.
There have been differences of opinion. I remember that at the very beginning, when the question of the organisation of the Security Council and the question of the Veto were being discussed at San Francisco, there were differences in the Commonwealth approach; and recently when we were discussing the future of the Suez Canal, India took a very different view from the beginning. We have always been in close touch with Mr. Krishna Menon, however, and let me say at once that, throughout all the difficulties which faced us in the Suez Canal dispute, I can say with a clear conscience that we have consulted and given information to the Commonwealth almost every day, either here in London or in their capitals overseas; and as to the views which we have had from the different Commonwealth countries, ranging from the personal help of Mr. Menzies, in London, and of Mr. Macdonald, of New Zealand, to that of other Commonwealth representatives in London, whether we have agreed or dithered, the proposals which they have put forward have always been constructive and always of great assistance to Her Majesty's Government in trying to solve these difficulties. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will no doubt tell us, from first-hand experience, that the differences between India and ourselves over the Suez Canal have been intensified since Israel, after accusing Egypt of aggression, marched into Egyptian territory. Nevertheless, though we have difficulties, it must be our purpose to seek a broad identity of view and, above all, to know each other's minds and to
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be able to speak our minds frankly, as between Governments.
Our consultation and our information is continuous and intimate. Noble Lords are aware of the machinery. In each country there is a High Commissioner who is in the closest touch with the Government and has direct access to Ministers. For instance, I, as Commonwealth Secretary, always meet. the High Commissioner of another country whenever he asks to see me, which is very frequently. That is reproduced overseas. Your Lordships may have some idea of the volume of exchanges between the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth Governments when I tell the House that last year there were over 20,000 different outgoing. telegrams from this country to the different Commonwealth countries; and that is altogether apart from the personal contacts which are made between High Commissioners and the Governments concerned. During the Suez Canal dispute contact has never been closer. When we come to the actual day or which Israel attacked Egypt, as I have already told your Lordships, it was, literally, physically impossible for me or any other of Her Majesty's Ministers to let Commonwealth Governments know or to consult them in advance. Your Lordships will remember that the noble Earl reminded us that the French had to come here that morning, and the conversations with the French Government took a considerable time to finalise. I actually had Mr. Casey with me that day, and I brought him into the Chamber so that he should have the earliest possible information. Earlier consultation really was not possible at that particular time.
I want to emphasise, however, with all the emphasis and authority I can give, that although there have been these difficulties, and once or twice lately, during this crisis with Israel, it has literally been physically impossible to consult Commonwealth Governments, there is no (flange in the British Government's policy of pursuing the most intimate consultation; and if any other Commonwealth Government can suggest to me any way in which we can improve the machine: y and make better use of it, no one will be better pleased than myself. because although during this last year and a half I personally have done everything I possibly can do, I. am always willing

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to do more to strengthen the personnel in our High Commissions overseas and keep the closest contact; for that is the essence of Commonwealth unity.
The Amendment makes the particular proposal that a Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference should be called, with a view to finding a common approach towards matters concerning the United Nations and collective security. Her Majesty's Government are, of course, most ready to propose such a meeting if the Commonwealth Prime Ministers desire it, and they fully appreciate and deeply value these meetings and the exchange of views which they represent. But, let us face it, there are considerable practical difficulties in the proposal in the immediate future. The Commonwealth Prime Ministers have only lately been in London and, as the noble Earl has suggested, may well feel in these critical days that they cannot leave their own countries at such short notice. Next week, however, the Foreign Ministers of all the Commonwealth countries, the Ministers responsible for the foreign relations of those countries, will be gathered together in New York. I suggest to your Lordships' House that that will be an appropriate occasion and opportunity for an exchange of views on this and other topics of Commonwealth co-operation. and I should like to make the proposal that the Foreign Ministers should be allowed to meet and discuss all these problems next week.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, would the noble Earl allow me to interrupt him to ask whether the Foreign Ministers of the Commonwealth countries have now been definitely invited to meet at New York?
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, the Foreign Ministers are all going to meet in New York. They were going to New York anyway and they will all have this opportunity to meet.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, have they been asked for this special purpose?
THE EARL OF HOME: No. They were all going there in any event, but the practical thing is that they should meet in New York: and, quite clearly, they will discuss this situation. They could not do anything else. I do not wish to detain
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your Lordships, so I will not analyse the feelings of the different Commonwealth countries about this Egypt-Israel dispute. I think the noble Earl has fairly analysed the situation as to who has been in continuous support and whose attitude may have varied. I just want to tell your Lordships where we are now.
I believe that the objectives and motives of Her Majesty's Government are being understood much more widely now in Commonwealth countries, particularly since it became clear that our object from the start has been to get the United Nations to put a competent force into the Canal Zone in order to keep the combatants apart; and as the Prime Minister said yesterday, we shall not insist on this country being a member of that force. Her Majesty's Government then accepted a proposal which really originated with ourselves, although it was brought before the United Nations by Canada—I refer to the proposal for an International Police Force. Yesterday we voted for an Argentine resolution which contained that conception. Every country of the Commonwealth. with the exception of South Africa, which I think has not yet had time to make up its mind whether it has anything available, has offered to send a contingent to that International Police Force if it is needed. I think I can say to-day that, although there have been these differences of opinion among free and independent peoples. the Commonwealth countries are beginning to understand the motives of Her Majesty's Government and that we may be all together in supporting the United Nations in taking effective action to end the Israel-Egypt dispute and to bring peace to that sorely tried area.
3.18 p.m.
LORD BRAND: My Lords, I have only one or two remarks to make to your Lordships. One is in connection with the particular point that has been under discussion between the two noble Earls for the last half hour or so. I was going to express my regret, as an ardent supporter for many years of the British Commonwealth, that it had not been found possible to inform and consult, not only the United States but the different Commonwealth countries, before the recent military expedition was actually determined upon. I am not quite sure whether or not the noble Earl, Lord Home, has

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explained that the Commonwealth countries had been asked about this particular expedition before it was made. I daresay that there were considerations of secrecy and so on that made it difficult; nevertheless, I think it was a very great shock to a good many of the constituent parts of the Empire, and in particular Canada, and I feel sure that it ought not to be repeated. 'This country is not in a position to go along by itself or even to go along alone with France. The days are past when we were rulers of the sea and when we could send expeditions wherever we liked. Now we are not among the greatest Powers and our chief strength must consist in tile alliance of N.A.T.O., in the support of the United States and in the support of the different Commonwealth countries.
I perfectly agree that we cannot expect to have unanimity always in the Commonwealth. It is quite clear that Mr. Nehru, for instance, does not always speak the same language as we do, and does not expect us always to agree with him when he certainly does not always agree with us. Nevertheless, while there cannot always be unanimity, it is absolutely necessary, to my mind, to pursue a policy of keeping them informed, not only on the twenty thousand subjects discussed in the twenty thousand cables to which the noble Earl referred, but on such a vital decision as that which was, for instance, recently taken to send a military expedition to Egypt. I am not competent to judge on all the enormously difficult problems that have arisen out of this action. I only wish to make a plea that, so far as the Commonwealth is concerned and so far as the United States is concerned, it is worth any delay in almost any circumstances to obtain their concurrence before we take such action as we have taken.
The only other question on which I should like to add a few words is on our relationship with, U.N.O. I think the Opposition in another place have taken an extreme view of the value of U.N.O. and of the protection that U.N.O. gives to us. I remember, as your Lordships do very well, the years of the League of Nations and "collective security," when the British nation was not prepared to arm itself or to meet trouble because it was, it thought, protected by something called "collective security." During those days I spent six weeks every year
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from 1931 to 1938 in the Reichsbank in Berlin, negotiating with German bankers. During those years I saw the whole Hitler development, the lunatic condition of Germany and the extreme danger, almost the certainty, that war would result. Hitler was, I believe, very much helped by the fact that he knew that the British public were bemused about "collective security" and were not making preparations to meet him. Indeed the League of Nations, I think, actually helped to create Hitler's power. It would be a great mistake now for us to rely on U.N.O. as a source of power. We must support it as far as we can. We should support it in every possible way. But we must not depend on it for our defence or think we can get along without allies, without N.A.T.O.; our only salvation, indeed, is to keep in the closest touch with the United States and our Commonwealth, while as far as we can supporting U.N.O.
That brings me to my last point, which is to express my opinion on the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, as I understood it, that U.N.O. should have a permanent Police Force. That idea has always: Teen mooted ever since the League of Nations started, and certainly during the period of U.N.O. I have never believed in it. Certainly on occasions like this, to bring together from the forces of other countries sufficient troops and armaments, paid for by those other countries and put under U.N.O. for the time being, is possible and very desirable. I am all in favour of. this Police Force going to Port Said. But can one imagine in any difficulties, say, with the Soviet Government, that U.N.O. will be in a position to send to Petrograd a police force which would be of any value whatever? It is quite impossible to turn U.N.O. into a Government which has armies, navies and air forces; quite impossible that U.N.O. should ever compete with the military forces of the United States, of Russia, ourselves, France or any other large country. I think the noble Earl, Lord Halifax, made this same point this morning: that we must not lock on the United Nations as a means of providing large military forces. You cannot turn U.N.O. into a Government. A Government, to my mind, depends in the main on two supports. One is that it must possess the unquestioned prior loyalty of its

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citizens. But their first loyalty is to their own Government. The first loyalty of no citizen in the world is going to be to U.N.O.—at least so far as we can see ahead—rather than to their own country.
The second vital point in the case of U.N.O., if U.N.O. were to be a Government, is that it would have to have complete power of taxation over the whole world. Can one imagine such a thing? People talk glibly about a World Government. Has one ever imagined what a world general election would be like, what would be the political parties concerned or what would be the questions asked or the political problems before the different communities? We must make the best of U.N.O., and in certain circumstances, like the present, a police force is admirable; but we must not think it can take the place of Governments, or that—and here I am repeating what my noble friend Lord Halifax said this morning—U.N.O. can give us peace as long as the great nations of the world are deeply divided.
3.29 p.m.
LORD COLERAINE: My Lords, I must first of all ask your Lordships' indulgence and pardon for not being here at the beginning of the debate and for not, indeed, being in my place when my name was on the Paper. Unfortunately, when the hour of the debate was changed it was impossible for me to get out of a business engagement which I had, and I came along here as quickly as I could. The fact that I was absent was my great loss because I unhappily missed the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, my noble friend the Leader of the House and my noble friend Lord Halifax, which is a great loss to me.
In the past ten days there have been running through my mind some lines that were written by a great English writer a generation ago. They were written during the first World War at a time when the youth of Britain was being cut down in its hundreds of thousands in France and Flanders. The fins are these:
"If any question why we died.
Tell them—because our fathers lied."
Now the poet did not mean, I think, that the politicians of the day deliberately
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spoke untruths, and, through those untruths, led the nations of the world into the First World War. What I think he meant was that, by having illusions themselves, by deceiving themselves, they deceived the peoples, and the war was the result. I do not know whether that was true of the First World War. I have no vivid memory of that. I do know from my own experience and my own recollection that it was definitely true of the Second World War.
My noble friend Lord Brand just now referred to the incantations we all used to make about collective security, and spoke of the effect that that had, in his view, and certainly in mine, upon Hitler and the Government of the Reich in those days. I am quite sure that the politicians told lies to the people—well-intended lies, well-meant lies—in the years between the wars. And I am sure, for my own part. that if we have a third and, no doubt, a last world war, it will be for the same reason.
Every public man in this country, with hardly an exception—every public man. not excepting myself—has declared for the past ten years that the United Nations is equivalent to the rule of law, and that the creation of the United Nations Organisation meant that in international affairs the rule of law had taken the place of the international anarchy which had prevailed hitherto. For ten years past we have declared that there is an abstraction called "world opinion" which is capable of seriously influencing international relationships. For ten years past we have declared that there is an abstraction called "moral force", which, by itself, can guard us and preserve us and avert the dangers by which we are surrounded. Not one of those propositions is true. In politics you cannot separate moral force from physical force. Indeed, the only way by which you can express moral force is through physical force.
Take, for example, the agonising tragedy, that we have witnessed in the last few days, of Hungary. I have heard people say—and I have seen letters in The Times to the same effect—that the action of Her Majesty's Government over Egypt forfeited our right to bring moral pressure upon Russia to withdraw from Hungary. That may be so I do not know. What I do know is that you cannot get Russia to withdraw from

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Hungary or from anywhere else by moral pressure. To pass resolutions in the General Assembly condemning Russia over Hungary is not an exercise in moral force; it is an exercise in futility. if you want to deploy moral force to save Hungary there is only one way to do it—that is, by physical force. If you are willing to expel Russia from Hungary by force of arms, with all that that would entail of death and destruction—not in Hungary but here, in New York, all over the world—then, and only then, would you be bringing moral force to bear. I am not recommending that we should take that course; I am only saying that to talk, as so many foolish people do, as if there could be moral force without physical force, if it is not hypocrisy is the extreme of confused thinking and muddle-headedness. We are told that we must bow before world opinion. For what purpose? And what reason have we to suppose that world opinion is any less confused, any less divided, any less ill-informed than public opinion here at home? Surely you cannot leave these great issues to an abstraction which you call world public opinion.
Then there is the question of the rule of law. Some weeks ago I listened with the greatest admiration to what the noble Lord, Lord McNair, told the House about the legal position, what our legal rights were, and where we had overstepped them. It was an argument that—without being a lawyer—seemed to me to be formidable and impressive, and, indeed, as I heard him, it seemed to me to be unanswerable. But it seemed also to me—if I may say so to the noble Lord with the greatest respect—to be entirely irrelevant to our situation. Because what is the position as a great jurist like Lord McNair outlines it? We have a complete system of International Law. It is logical, it is consistent. it is ascertainable—in fact, it is quite watertight. There is only one thing that is wrong with it: the wicked will not obey it, and the righteous will not enforce it. That is not international law; that is a sham, covering up international anarchy. And under that system of International Law all you are doing is giving an open general licence to the criminal.
My noble friend Lord Swinton said something with which I very much agreed—he said many things with which I agreed but one with which I agreed in
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particular—and that related to the spirit of the United Nations Charter. Everyone is telling the Government that they are acting. contrary to the spirit of the United Nations Charter. I wonder whether what they really mean is that the Government are acting contrary to the letter of the United Nations Charter. The other night I refreshed my memory by reading the United Nations Charter. It was clear to me, after reading it, that the spirit of the United. Nations Charter was this: that under the United Nations the nations would obey the law, and the Organisation would enforce it. At the time the Charter was written that, in the mind of nearly all of us, was what gave the United Nations Organisation its great superiority, as we hoped. over the League of Nations.
One superiority—and a great blessing it has been—was that the United States was a member of the United. Nations, as they were no: of the League. and the other superiority was that the United Nations had what the League never had—that is, power to exercise force swiftly and decisively to put down breaches of the law. The use of that power has not happened. It did not happen in Poland, in Czechoslovakia and. as the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, reminded us this afternoon, in Israel. long 'before the present crisis when Colonel Nasser seized the Canal, and it did not happen even with the seizure of Kashmir. In the light of that record, is it possible seriously to maintain that either the rule of law exists Lt-day in any effective form, or that Her Majesty's Government, by their action in Egypt, have weakened it'? For my own part, I am absolutely convinced that throughout the action of Her Majesty's Government has been designed not to 'weaken the rule of law but to uphold it.
Let us look, for a moment, at the facts of the situation, at the reality. The United Nations does not and cannot enforce its writ over the whole world. if it sought to do so, it would mean the third world war. But the United Nations could have enforced its writ in the Middle East. It never did so in any effective way, and this sore has gone on festering for the best part of a decade. Since that is the fact, were Her Majesty's Government to sit by and watch ever-increasing anarchy developing in that part of the world? Of course not. If they had taken that supine and helpless 'attitude, I have no

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doubt that those loudest in criticism of the Government to-day would have been equally loud then.
There is one fact that is clear to-day, and it is a shocking fact: it is that the United Nations Organisation, as a political entity, is dead. It was not the action of Her Majesty's Government that killed it. What Her Majesty's Government did was to pull down the sheet of pretence and illusion and reveal the corpse beneath. I have no doubt whatever that in its present form the United Nations is dead. But the need for it is there. I believe that the need has never been greater. I believe that unless we can revive the United Nations or substitute for it some effective form of international organisation, no power, human or divine, can ensure the future of this planet. It has got to be done somehow. some time, soon. We have got to establish on earth the effective rule of law or, at any rate, establish it in those parts of the world where we can make our will effective. It seems to me that it is towards that question, rather than towards recriminations and accusations, that our minds ought to be directed now.
I think that there are one or two questions that we must ask ourselves. First, is it possible to have an effective international organisation of which the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics is a member? I think that that is a question which we have to face. We have never really faced it. In my judgment, another question we have to face is this: can we, in this country, as tile leading nation of the Commonwealth, in fact bring to bear in an international organisation the influence which is needed unless, as well as being head of the Commonwealth, we are also head of a united Europe? It seems to me that we should be wise to consider these questions in the days and months ahead, because I feel, and no doubt your Lordships feel, too, that there is not very much time.
3.48 p.m.
VISCOUNT ASTOR: My Lords, listening to the gracious Speech I rather regretted that it contained no reference to our sympathy with the people of Hungary in the terrible ordeal they are going through, but I am sure that what has been said on all sides of the House expresses the deep
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and profound sympathy which the country feels. the atrocities which are being committed in Hungary are worse than those reported in the newspapers. The rebellion was apparently entirely of young working class people between the ages of 20 and 25, who have no memory of or connection with pre-war Hungary, and who found that life under a Communist régime was utterly intolerable. That makes nonsense of some of the glowing reports we have read in the last few weeks of how happy Hungary was under Communism. The great danger is of wholesale massacre. and possibly the wholesale deportation of the male population to the Soviet Union. Therefore it is necessary, if the Russians have any interest at all in the opinion of the rest of the world, that we should keep our eyes on Hungary and give what aid we can.
We are most grateful to the Government for their contribution to the International Red Cross and for promising to take 2,500 refugees in this country, but 1 hope that the Government will consider further the suggestion I made, which I thought was brushed off rather cavalierly by the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, if I may be permitted to say so—that we should make an immediate substantial financial contribution to the Austrian Government on whom the main immediate burden falls.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE MARQUESS OF R EADING): I am sorry to intervene, but I think the accusation that I brushed it off cavalierly is a little unfair. What I said was that, having had no notice that the question was going to be put, I could not answer immediately. But I did point to the fact that we were taking a number of refugees to relieve Austria.
VISCOUNT ASTOR: All I am interested in is that the whole question is still open. and that the Government will give it their serious consideration. I should like to congratulate the Government, also, on their action in stopping these visits of the Ballet, and so forth. It would have been wholly out of accord with the opinion of this country had they been proceeded with.
On the question of Egypt, whatever any of us may have thought about the action taken last week, there is a completely new situation this week, and it is no use

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wasting our time talking of what happened in the past. I propose to devote the few words I have to say entirely to what I hope will be constructive proposals for the immediate future. In saying that, I think that, whatever opinion we may have had of the wisdom or timeliness of the action of Her Majesty's Government, nobody imputes any improper motives to them for what they did. I think we should express our admiration, also, for the brilliant staff work of our Forces and for the way in which the armed action was carried out by all three Services. Then from all sides we should support the British Government in maintaining their troops in their position until the United Nations Force is ready to lake over—and all we hope is that the interval will he short.
Our first duty must be to re-establish the unity of the Commonwealth. Whether the method proposed in the Amendment is the right one or not, that is the main task, because one of the wisest and most pro-British of Asian leaders told me the other day that there was a real danger that Pakistan, India and Ceylon might have left the Commonwealth if action had not been taken. Secondly, there is the re-establishment of Anglo-American unity, in which we have been powerfully aided by the actions and words of Comrade Bulganin. I know how everybody has been somewhat exasperated by the actions of Mr. Dulles over the last few weeks: but perhaps the fact that he was a very sick man may be an explanation for what occurred. However, I would remind the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, that one cannot entirely take the New York Times and Mr. Lippmann as typical representatives of American opinion in this present crisis. It is a grave danger that there should he a breach that needs to he repaired.
The third thing is the re-establishment of our friendship with the Arab world, which is vital to us. We owe Israel support on humanitarian and on historical grounds, so that they may live undisturbed within their frontiers. But even if every Israelite should be 100 per cent. pro-British, our economic and strategic problems would not thereby he relieved. Over the next twenty-five or thirty years we shall have a steadily increasing demand for power in this country, a demand which must be met; and even on the most optimistic estimates of the
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Coal Board, or the most optimistic predictions of the Atomic Energy Authority, it will be impossible to meet that demand without oil. We must have the oil, and under our present system, to can come only from the Arab countries of the Middle East. At the moment the Canal is blocked, the pipelines art blown up, and Syria and Saudi Arabia have severed diplomatic relations with us. The re-establishment of good relations and economic co-operation between us and the Arab world is the primary British economic interest ahead of us.
There are three possible courses open to us. First, there is the re-establishment of such good relations; secondly, there is a drastic decline in our standard of living; and thirdly, we could give up our independence and go into the dollar area as a forty-ninth United State, depending on dollar oil and losing what independence we have. Therefore, it is essential that, in the political settlements which lie ahead of us, we should show the most scrupulous fairness and impartiality between the two sides. Otherwise, the Arabs will be confirmed in their suspicions that Israel is a pawn of the West which we can pity when we feel like moving the piece forward, and in their suspicions that Israel is an expanding imperialistic country which is for ever looking for an opportunity and a pretext to increase her territory. That is the deep suspicion of every Arab country neighbouring Israel. It is essential, if we are to recreate the proper climate, that the Israeli forces should return to within the frontiers from where they started. It is also necessary that, when Egypt is a conquered and defeated nation, Israel should not be allowed to have the type of direct negotiations with Egypt which Mr. Ben-Gurion mentioned yesterday, and that any settlement between the two should be a settlement made under the auspices of the United Nations, with both Powers present, and the troops having gone back to their own starting points.
When that is done, it will be necessary and proper to have a local readjustment of the frontiers of Israel. There are many small points on the frontiers which are wholly anachronistic—they depend on where troops happened to be at the moment when the cease-fire came. It

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needs rational, objective and sane readjustment, with no major changes in population or area to the detriment of either side. That, I think, is the proper thing to have. If the United Nations can sponsor so objective and fair a settlement of the Israeli and Egyptian borders, I do not think we need fear that Israel would stand out against it, because they, more than any other country, depend on economic and financial support from the important members of the United Nations.
Then we have to re-establish the moral authority of this country which has been diminished by an action which so profoundly divided neutral opinion. I do not entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Coleraine, that moral authority is nothing. Surely, it is moral authority and not physical force which maintains us in our position as the leader of the British Commonwealth of Nations. If they were looking for money, or if they were looking for arms, they would turn to the United States or to Russia. If they stand by us, it is because they believe in our wisdom, our justness, our mercy and our fairness. It is that moral force which gives us leadership and which reflects itself in the physical force of having those nations as part of the Commonwealth.
I suggest that one of the first steps we should take to re-establish our moral force, to show the vast difference between ourselves and other people accused of aggression, is that we should say that we will accept neutral arbitration on a settlement of the dispute over the Suez Canal within the six points of agreement which were reached at the United Nations, and that within the framework of those agreed six points we are prepared to accept mediation and arbitration if Egypt is prepared to do the same. To do that would put us at once in a highly strong position and re-establish our moral superiority.
LORD DERWENT: May I ask the noble Lord what he means by "neutral arbitration"?
VISCOUNT ASTOR: I mean if the United Nations set up a committee of nations not primarily interested in the dispute.
LORD DERWENT: Not in the Canal— in the dispute?
VISCOUNT ASTOR: In the dispute. Then I should hope that this would do a lot to re-establish national unity in this country, because, from a purely Party point of view, we have lost the support of those organs of opinion which one might say represent the "egg-heads," but it is the "waffling" voters who are the people who put this Government in, and who will put us out unless we get them on our side again. That is a basic fact of politics.
Finally, is not the last lesson this?—here I would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Coleraine. We cannot get immediately a World Government which the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, regards as an ideal. The United Nations, with Russia in it, cannot be a fully effective force. Is not the lesson that we should do more to activate and make real N.A.T.O.. the British Commonwealth and the western European Nations? Those are practical steps that we may take, and which, if we carry them further, will prevent us from ever being caught in a position of moral isolation. Meanwhile. I wish the Government all success in the steps they have now taken.
4.4 p.m.
LORD HORE-BELISHA: My Lords. I disagree profoundly with the central theme and tenor of the noble Viscount's speech. I do not admit that in any way this country is in need of the reestablishment of its moral authority. On the contrary, I think that when the smoke has cleared away the moral authority of this country will be found to stand as high as it has ever done in her glorious history.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, rendered a service to the House, not so much in supporting the Amendment which the Opposition have put upon the Paper, as in drawing the noble Earl. Lord Home, to his feet. I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and those who sit with him (who have been very restrained in their observations this afternoon) will agree that the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Home, completely disposes of this Amendment. The Amendment calls for a conference of the Commonwealth to discuss policy, or to arrive at an agreed policy in support of the authority of the United Nations. We are told that the Ministers for

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External Affairs of all the Commonwealth countries are to meet in a week or two and will have an opportunity of devising, if they can agree, precisely the plan which is suggested.
In any event, I think this Amendment—which I assume will now be withdrawn—begs all the questions which we have to answer. It does not tell us what the agreed policy should be, but calls in an airy way for an agreed policy about the United Nations. The Commonwealth, as we have already been told, is not a unitary State, and it is little to be expected that there would ever be a complete concordance of view. The remarkable fact is that the Commonwealth does survive in spite of these differences of opinion, and all members of it stand broadly for the same ideal, however much they may differ in method.
This debate has been the most constructive to which it has ever been my privilege, since I have been a Member, to listen in this House. It has helped to explode many misconceptions which have been indoctrinated in the public mind, one of them being the misconception enunciated again by the noble Viscount to which I have just referred. But, standing luminously above all controversy, is the military aspect of these events. We have, indeed, reason to be proud of the efficiency and chivalry of the Services. The landing of the tanks and troops, the precision bombing, which had to be prepared to meet a risk which did not in fact eventuate—namely, interception by the MIG fighters—are all deserving of the highest eulogy. The operation, indeed, has opened a new chapter in tactical history. The bringing into action of a whole Commando by helicopters is quite a novel undertaking, even in modern war.
But there is another aspect of the military events which I think we should recall, and that is the morale of our forces. They were subjected to adverse influences. For some time past, the Reservists have been told by people who ought to have known better that it was unlikely that there would be any need for their services, and, indeed, that their whole call-up was a wicked mistake. They resisted, I am glad to say, that influence; but I hope that Her Majesty's Government. now that their policy in being ready has been proved to have been justified, will remove for the future any
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possible leg timate grievance that the Reservists may have on financial grounds, so that they will be properly compensated for the dislocation of their private lives.
The second adverse influence under which our troops were operating was the violent propaganda, ranging from Trafalgar Square to the Albert Hall and not confined alone to another House, suggesting that they were engaged upon an immoral enterprise. That influence, too, they wire, happily, able to resist. They were told that they were going into an action the cause of which was not supported by any of our friends throughout the world. I am glad to see that there is no foundation for that suggestion in so extreme a form.
Dr. Adenauer, in a meeting with M. Mollet, after a discussion on these Middle Eastern events, has just said that they call for a reaffirmation of the solidarity of the West. The Italian Foreign Minister. I am glad to see. has just stated in the Italian Parliament that he rejects accusations against Britain and France that these countries were oppressors of freedom and justice, and he upholds the motive of our two countries in serving the cause or justice in difficult and obscure situations. He has also said that he reaffirms the Italian Government's belief that the Suez Canal should be internationalised and safeguarded as an international waterway outside the power of individuals, nations or power groups. If that policy comes to be established. it will be due to the action of -Britain and France.
LORD PAKENHAM: The noble Lord surely is not denying that the action of Her Majesty's Government has been condemned by world opinion. He is not trying to disguise that fact surely.
LORD HORE-BELISHA: I am certainly denying it, and I have cited the speech of the Italian Foreign Minister, who repudiates and rejects and thinks completely out of place the sort of charge with which the noble Lord evidently wishes to associate himself. He says he does not admit that in this matter we have acted as oppressors of justice or liberty. On the contrary, he sustains the motives of our action and he says that he hopes that our policy of achieving

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the internationalisation or the re-internationalisation of the Suez Canal will be successful. My observation on his speech was that, if that is brought about, it will be due to the action of Britain and France and not to any action taken by the United Nations.
It is next said that, whether we be right or wrong in our motives, we have in some way flaunted the United Nations. I want to ask the noble Lords opposite to be precise about this, more precise than the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, this afternoon, who wanted the best of both worlds. He accused the Government of defying the United Nations and then went on to argue that the United Nations proposals were completely futile. He cannot have it both ways, but I think that before this debate is over—
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: I did not say anything of the kind with regard to the United Nations proposals. I said that the one proposal that the troops should be withdrawn immediately was misconceived.
LORD HORS-BEL1SHA: Yes, exactly; that is my point. That is a criticism of the wisdom of the United Nations. Surely the noble Viscount is not disputing that he is making a criticism of the United Nations?
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: It is one thing to make a criticism: it is another thing to accuse me of saying that the United Nations are entirely futile.
LORD FIORE-BELISHA: But they made futile proposals! Perhaps I should have put it in the singular: that this proposal is completely futile, because it would leave a void in which all kinds of disasters which the noble Viscount examined would accrue. I think that the country is entitled to a very clear explanation from noble Lords opposite because their colleagues have stirred up public feeling to a degree unparalleled since the South African war. Her Majesty's Government have been accused of all kinds of misfeasance, and I want to press—and I do it with good will because the object of the debate is that we should clarify our minds and purposes—first of all for replies to the two questions put by the noble Marquess, the Leader of the House. They were very fair questions; they were certainly pertinent questions. Is it the case
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that all disputes should be referred to the United Nations? Or is it the case that no action should be taken upon disputes unless in accordance with a United Nations decision? I think that fairly summarises the two questions put.
I want to ask the noble Lords in addition: At what point do they consider it proper that action should be taken? Has a country to consent to the complete undermining of its economy while it is waiting for the United Nations to take action that it can never take? In 1951, the United Nations pronounced upon the Suez Canal and upon Egypt's interference with the freedom of passage through that Canal. That is five years ago. No solution of that problem has been found. Nothing was done to implement the resolution. When Egypt seized the Suez Canal entirely, what contribution of a constructive nature was made by the United Nations? Were we to see our interests jeopardised and our future as a Power in the world compromised by a series of arbitrary actions of a dictator? If not, at what point should we intervene, or should we not intervene at all? These are pertinent questions. When we come to this dispute, I want to know whether the noble Lords opposite consider that the contribution of the United Nations has been helpful or not.
When the lid of the kettle blew off, the United Nations passed a solemn resolution that it should be put back again. That was their first action. There was no other proposal for getting the kettle off the boil. They simply said, "Everything should be as if it had not happened", that the Forces should withdraw and presumably apologise to one another and call it off. That is all the United Nations did. It really does not, and cannot, evoke the respect of statesmen throughout the world. Now what is the United Nations proposing to do? Its action has been completely negative. If I may depart from the kettle, it has here in this matter, as it seems to me, put the cart completely before the horse. It solemnly states that there shall be a United Nations force. For years, this question has been argued without any clear-cut conclusion about the status of such a force or the principles upon which it should be assembled. It is now decided that there is to be such a force.

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But, if you send in the police, you must send them in with a very clear policy. How is this force to be assembled? We may get some late information on that matter this afternoon. How long is it to stay? Is the United Nations intervention to he confined to the despatch of a force, which may remain for an indefinite period in what was a theatre of operations, or has it some constructive proposals to remove the causes? All the United Nations has said so far upon this matter is that the forces should be withdrawn whence they started. But Egypt was in Gaza in defiance of a United Nations resolution. Gaza is not part of Egyptian territory. Is the United Nations now to go back upon its earlier decision in respect of Gaza and say that it has suddenly become Egyptian territory, just because the Egyptians have been extruded?
My Lords, the problem has to be thought out. Is the United Nations going to insist upon the internationalisation of the Canal as a sine qua non, or not? I think Her Majesty's Government have been right to be circumspect before they accept this force unconditionally. Otherwise, if we withdraw with no agreement about the future of the Suez Canal signed, sealed and delivered, all our ardent efforts will have been in vain. We shall be back again in a morass of futility. I sustain, and I think the House and Parliament and the country should sustain, Her Majesty's Government in insisting that that policy of internationalisation of the Canal shall be a sine qua non of any withdrawal of our forces. We did not send them in lightheartedly and for nothing incur these risks on behalf of civilised mankind, and I think that is the least we are entitled to expect.
While I am on the subject of the internationalisation of the Suez Canal, what about the other international waterways? What about the Gulf of Aqaba? You have not solved the problem by internationalising or re-internationalising the Suez Canal. The right of unimpeded passage through the Gulf of Aqaba has always existed, but it has not. been implemented because Egypt has stationed herself in a military posture upon the Island of Tiran. Before we abandon this whole matter to the good offices of the United Nations, I think we should know quite precisely what the constructive aspects of their policy may be.
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My Lords, that is the real purpose of my intervention in this debate: first, to support any measures of a constructive kind that may be proposed, whether by the Opposition or from any other quarter, for making the United Nations an effective force and keeping our powder dry until these proposals can be made operative; and secondly, to know upon what conditions we will give up the positions that we occupied with so much courage and so much difficulty. For the rest, before I leave the question of international waterways, if it be suggested that it would be logical to include the Panama Canal within the principle of internationalisation, I think there is less ground for resisting thin proposal than: here has been hitherto. I think that even when we have dealt with international waterways which are means of communication for all of us, we shall not have solved this problem. I think the action taken has simplified the difficulties which have extended over months, if not years. But we must look further. The perils to which our oil supplies have been exposed have stimulated scientists and technicians everywhere. We must press on, of course, with our atomic development so that the centre of our industrial power does not remain so largely in the Middle East. We must build more capacious tankers, and we must enlarge our ports we must find alternative means of supply and communication while there is yet time, for it may well be, as was said by my noble friend beside me in his admirable speech, that we have other and greater difficulties to face. If we have, then they would have occurred in any event. If we do not have to face those greater difficulties, I firmly believe it will be largely because of the demonstration of strength and of spirit in the cause of justice shown in these events by Her Majesty's Government.
4.24 p.m.
LORD WINSTER: My Lords, with your Lordships' indulgence I should like to say a few words about those broad principles of defence upon which the successful conduct of foreign affairs must depend. Lord Coleraine, in his very interesting speech, spoke of the link which must always exist between moral force and physical force, and I am sure that my noble friend Lord Henderson, who moved this Amendment, would agree that

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where the Commonwealth is concerned consultation and co-operation in defence matters is of the most vital importance in maintaining good relations. May I say that I greatly admired the noble Lord's skill in adapting his speech to a situation which is changing with almost kaleidoscopic rapidity?
Before moving to this question of defence I should like to say just three things, very briefly, about the course which the debate has taken so far. First of all, I should like to endorse as strongly as I can the hope expressed last night by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, that unity might little by little be restored in this situation in which we find ourselves. I myself feel most strongly about that. I respect the views which are held sincerely and from conscience. but we must all hope that little by little unity will be restored. For myself, I hope that I may never be constrained to feel that I must vote against the Government of the day when our forces are actually deployed in the field.
The second thing I should like to say is this. I feel that there is one good thing coming out of this troubled time—that the United Nations is being forced to look itself in the face and to realise that it cannot continue as it has been doing in the past, salving its conscience by eternal talk. I remember, it must be ten years ago, when we were debating in this House the actual formation of the United Nations, that I ventured to express some doubts about it, and the noble Marquess the Leader of the House—I will not say rebuked me, but chided me gently, and said that I was a Jeremiah. As I have always understood it, the great point about Jeremiah was that he was so often right, and I think the fears I then expressed about the future of the United Nations in its present form have largely been justified.
The third thing I want to say is that I feel that at this particular moment we should all bend what powers and energies we possess to the restoration of good Anglo-American relations. We should act upon those noble words spoken by President Eisenhower, when he said that he felt those relations can be restored and can, in fact, become stronger than ever. I feel that all of us with any power or influence at all should devote
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our efforts to that end. In that connection, the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, who is no longer here. in a speech, I thought. full of robust common sense and based upon a wide experience, quoted some words of Burns about "seeing ourselves as others see us." I think that is one of those hackneyed quotations which we are apt to repeat without analysing it. I myself have no wish to see my country as Mr. Nixon sees it, or in fact as Mr. Nehru sees it; nor have I any wish to see it in the distorting mirror in which Mr. Dulles (whom we all wish a happy and speedy recovery) so often appears to see us. I think we must think a little before we say that it is such a good thing and so helpful to see ourselves as others see us.
To get back to the main topic about which I want to speak. there has been yet another change at the Ministry of Defence. Sir Walter Monckton, after serving for what, for a Minister of Defence, is the unusually long period of nine months, has resigned and has been succeeded by Mr. Head. We have had six Ministers of Defence since Labour went out in 1951, and we have had four while Sir Anthony Eden has been Prime Minister. I do not think the word "scandal" is one which should be lightly used, but I think that these bewilderingly rapid changes at such an important Ministry as the Ministry of Defence have something almost scandalous about them, when one thinks of the responsibility which falls upon that Ministry.
I noticed that Sir Walter Monckton, in resigning, said he had been feeling his responsibilities too much for him, and that in acknowledging his letter the Prime Minister said he had known that for some time. In my view, with that particular office, the moment the fact becomes evident that the Minister is not equal to his responsibilities a change should be made, practically forthwith and not some time later. Sir Walter Monckton's health seems to suffer great vicissitudes, and it is perhaps regrettable that he undertook an office requiring great stamina and great continuity. As regards his successor, Mr. Head, I had the impression that at one time people were looking for his resignation rather than his promotion, but he has apparently found that the path of failure leads to glory and not to the grave.

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It seems to me that these rapid changes at the Ministry of Defence show how little grasp the Prime Minister has of some affairs which are outside the sphere of foreign affairs. Otherwise. I cannot believe that he would have changed his Minister of Defence four times in eighteen months. But I do not think at any time, either under the Labour Government or under the Conservative Government, we have been very fortunate in our Ministers of Defence. it is an extremely difficult office to fill and I do not feel that. since the departure of Sir Winston Churchill, we have hit on the right man for the office. I remember one who was known to members of his staff as "the gem-shy bulldog" and generally, as I say, I do not think we have been very fortunate in appointments to that office.
What I want to put forward now is in no way a criticism of our men in the Forces. who have in Egypt, as has been said in the course of this debate. earned our admiration. They have done their job with their usual courage and efficiency—in fact it is so usual that we are in some danger of taking it always for granted. But my criticisms go rather higher up. I have already mentioned Mr. Head, who was formerly Secretary of State for War. With an army of 360,000 men the War Office. under his direction. had to call up 20.000 Reservists in support of the Government's policy in the Eastern Mediterranean. Mr. Head charged us £470 million for our Army this year. but when a job of work came along for the Army to do he had to get in extra help. which is a very expensive proceeding indeed. I see that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has already been—perhaps I ought not to say complaining, but murmuring, about the strain which it inflicts upon our finances. The War Office have been getting the majority of the men who have been called up for National Service and have been getting the greater part of the money, yet still they have not been able to meet the emergency from those resources alone. I hope that Mr. Head will prove more successful as a Minister of Defence than perhaps he did as Secretary of State for War. The fact remains that he was not in a position to produce complete self-contained fighting units, ready for a call, without having to rely upon the Reservists.
LORD STRATHEDEN AND CAMPBELL: I do not want to interrupt the noble Lord, but in my speech yesterday I did go into that subject. There are, as the noble lord I am sure is aware, certain units which do not exist in peace time but which, when an emergency or operations are imminent, have to be produced.
LORD WINSTER: I greatly regret that I had to be out of the House for an engagement at the time when the noble Lord was speaking—I recognise the authority with which he speaks upon this subject. However, without going into detail I think there is force in the broad lines of what I have said.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: May I say one word? I must not be taken, if I do not reply immediately, as accepting the strictures that have been levelled at my right honourable friend. The criticisms of the noble Lord are really more appropriate to a defence debate than to this debate. but I am sure there will be an answer— and there is a very good answer—in due course.
LORD WINSTER: I entirely agree with the noble Marquess that the details of these matters are appropriate to a debate on Service Estimates. That is why I am confining my remarks, as I said at the beginning to certain broad issues which emerge. My Lords, for two years we have been hearing about building up a mobile Army Reserve. When the call did come, we found that the Air Force had not got a Transport Command fully able to lift that Reserve. What good is a mobile Reserve if it does not possess the very highest degree of mobility? This question of a Transport Command has been raised repeatedly in your Lordships' House, bat unfortunately what has been said about it has fallen on deaf ears. It has always seemed to me that Transport Command should be peculiarly the province of the Minister of Defence, since a Transport Command must exist to serve all three of the Fighting Services.
Then again, we have recently had very depressing news about the Air Force from Air Commodore Banks. I thought he was rather sweeping in some of his statements. He said that we are now fourth, coming after Sweden, though I should not like to go so far as that. I think he was on more secure ground in saying that, unless we devise a system whereby we

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get more of the things that we really want, we run the risk of having only a token Air Force. The Air Commodore would not accept that we have either the quality or the quantity of what we require. But this, I think, is the important point: he said that we have dropped into the habit of regarding seven to ten years as the period required to design, develop, and bring a bomber to the production stage. He asked for improved research, improved experimental facilities, larger specialist, technical and engineering staffs in the firms and an improved ordering process. In this connection, I would remind your Lordships of some recent remarks made by the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, who, speaking out of his great experience in this matter, expressed a deep discontent with our present system of ordering.
All those are matters which have been bought to the attention of Her Majesty's Government over and over again, yet we find little, if any, improvement in the situation. It is still the case that in this country a requirement must first be considered by the Defence Research Policy Committee, then by the Air Defence Committee and after that by the Cabinet Defence Committee. And according to the Air Commodore, the chance of any decision at all being made was small, and the chance of its being the right decision "almost zero". He said that
"something has to be done quickly to get us out of our pre-war state of mind, feebly grappling with problems transcending anything. even of the war period."
These criticisms have been made over and over again, and yet to-day, in the situation in which we find ourselves, we are forced to recognise how little has been done to meet those criticisms.
The last words I wish to say are about the Navy, and here I warmly endorse the tribute which the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, paid yesterday, especially to the Royal Marines. The noble Lord, Lord Hankey, has just left the Chamber, but it must have warmed his heart to hear what the First Lord said yesterday about the Royal Marines, led as they were by a General who holds no fewer than three D.S.Os. I think your Lordships might be interested, and possibly amused, to hear something that came to my ears only last Monday. A retired Royal Marines officer heard a ring at his doorbell at half past ten at night, and when
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he answered it he found two old Royal Marines on his doorstep who said, "Cannot you get us out there, sir?" That is the spirit which animates that Corps. But in his Trafalgar Day speech the noble Viscount the First Lord had not very good news to give us about the Navy. He said that we must put up with a smaller Navy than we would like, and seemed to admit that the little we have is either obsolete or obsolescent. He said that our ships
"have hulls which will be worn out by 1965 or 1970."
I have heard of weapons and equipment wearing out, but it is a rather new one to me to hear of ships' hulls wearing out.
The noble Viscount pointed out that the strength of our Navy is less than a quarter of that of the United States and that we have a much smaller Navy than Russia; and although he called our attention to these depressing facts I did not feel that he put before us any very encouraging proposals for remedying them. It seems to me that over a period of ten years Ministers of Defence and Service Ministers have really been fumbling with the new conceptions and doctrines of strategy, tactics, weapons and equipment. Nothing clear-cut has emerged. It would puzzle anybody to know what is to-day the doctrine of any of the Ministries that I have mentioned.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, this is a rather odd occasion on which to attack the efficiency of our Fighting Services. I should think they had never been shown to be so great as in this last operation.
LORD WINSTER: My Lords, I have already paid my tribute to the men concerned, who never do fail.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, the men concerned were doing what they did because they were properly led and because the operation was properly conceived.
LORD WINSTER: My Lords, it may be possible that they did what they did in spite of certain deficiencies. I repeat, I feel that we are still without a clear statement of doctrine from the Ministries which I have mentioned. We are still gazing in the crystal ball and consulting mediums. I never wish to quote the

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United States of America against my own country, but I follow pretty closely defence affairs in the United States, and it is undoubtedly the case that there they have arrived at certain doctrines and certain new conceptions. In the gracious Speech Her Majesty's Government have used these words:
"My Government will pursue their policy of adjusting the structure of My Forces … to changes in the world situation in the light of scientific and technical advances."
My Lords, so far, that pursuit has been rather in the nature of a stern chase, and I am not sure that we have not been falling behind, rather than closing the gap. I hope that the deficiencies to which I have called attention will now be considered in the light of Mr. Bulganin's threat to launch a rocket attack upon us, and I hope that Her Majesty's Government will now pursue with increased speed the overhaul of the structure of our defence.
4.47 p.m.
LORD TEVIOT: My Lords, I am afraid that in what I am going to say I am going to adopt quite a different spirit from that of the noble Lord who has just sat down. I am immensely proud of my country. I ant immensely proud of all the things that he seems to describe as being perfectly hopeless. I entirely agree with what the noble Marquess the Leader of the House has just said in regard to the efficiency of our Services and the speed with which, when the decision was made, this most effective operation took place. Before 1 go any further, I should like to ask the noble Lord. Lord Pakenham, what he meant when he got up and interrupted the noble Lord, Lord Hore-Belisha. I was not quite sure whether he was fundamentally supporting Her Majesty's Government. or whether he rather felt that he could not bring himself to praise or help us in any way. I do not want to misjudge the noble Lord and I may be rather stupid, but I am somewhat disturbed about his attitude.
LORD PAKENHAM: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, is aware that there was a Division last week. I spoke at some length in winding up for this side of the House, and, so far as the past is concerned, I do not think I need add anything to my speech or my vote. As to my attitude this week, that has
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been explained by at least four speeches from this Front Bench, so I do not think I need add to what has been said by my colleagues. The particular point which I raised this afternoon was whether tae noble Lord, Lord Hare-Belisha, did not agree that: we had been condemned by world opinion. I was not at the moment passing comment on world opinion bat asking whether he believed we had been condemned. Surely, the noble Lord does not deny, as a statement of fact, that the great majority of world opinion has condemned our action.
LORD TEVIOT: My Lords, I am afraid I do not at all agree with that attitude. I think that noble Lords on those Benches, and, incidentally, my erstwhile colleagues who appear not to he on their Benches at the moment, have very much exaggerated the feeling in this country a id in the world that WC have not done the right thing. I entirely agree with what was intimated by the noble Marquess the Leader of the House, that we have not done so badly. I believe that the world is coming gradually to that view. Indeed, Mr. Gaitskell, who leads the Party opposite, took a very strong view that we were right in the beginning and now has altered his mind. I feel that all, or a great many in this country, who criticise the Government, will be doing the same thing, every day more so.
LORD PAKENHAM: I must dissent from what the noble Lord has said about Mr. Gaitskell. I am not scheduled to speak in the debate and I must not delay the House. But what the noble Lord has said about Mr. Gaitskell is, in my view, utterly remote from the facts.
LORD TEVIOT: The noble Lord has evidently forgotten what he said in the beginning when the Prime Minister made his statement. He has quite forgotten that.
LORD PAKENHAM: Not at all.
LORD TEVIOT: He and I differ on that point, which does not matter very much. Noble Lords sitting on the Liberal Benches (I see Lord Samuel has returned) and noble Lords Opposite will not agree with what I am going to say now. Quite definitely, I am sure that we have saved the world from an appalling disaster. The House is so small at the moment that I de not hear the

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applause that I hoped would arise from that statement. But that is my opinion. As time goes on I feel that that will be more evident in many parts of this country and the world. I must say that amongst the people I associate with—I suppose they are very curious people but they are the sort of people one comes in contact with every day—I do not find this feeling that the Government have done badly. I feel that an immense number of them—I should not like to say what percentage—are gratified to see the attitude the Government has taken. I believe that that will gradually come out, and I am full of hope that noble Lords opposite, and I hope my erstwhile colleagues also, will in due course, say. "By Jove! they really have done a very big thing." I am quite certain that that is going to happen.
I am sorry that Lord Coleraine is not here. I am sure noble Lords who heard him will be of opinion that he made a most splendid speech. full of very high sentiments with a grand spirit in them. and I should like to put it on record that I congratulate him. Coming towards the end of a long debate. it was a very fine oration on his part.
My Lords. I want to say one or two things that I do not think have been said to-day. Can anybody dispute that the important things in regard to the present situation are. first. that our quick and successful action was designed entirely to ensure pacification between the various nations in the Middle East? That was what we went out to accomplish and we have gone quite a long way towards doing it. Then we wished to protect the economic rights and interests of others besides ourselves in that area. because we are not alone in this. We are not going all out to help ourselves; we are going all out to help not only ourselves but all those nations in this terribly dangerous area. We ask no privileges at all. We do not want oil at a cheaper price than anybody else. We do not want any privileges in regard to the Canal.
It has never been our intention in any way to institute or use any force to ensure that the nations living in that area should be governed in certain ways or should conduct their own internal affairs in any other way than they thought fit
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and best for themselves. Let it be a matter entirely for their own choice. All we insist upon is that peace should be kept and world economic interests should not be jeopardised. Perhaps that sounds very bombastic, but it is a fact if one gets down to brass tacks on this subject. The noble Lord opposite always laughs. because he thinks "Poor old chap!" At ally rate. there is one thing I am very proud of and it is this. It has been mentioned, but I do not think quite in the way I am going to put it now: that, for the first time, the United Nations have come into the picture and are really an entity of great importance in world affairs, and that is entirely due to the action of the present Government.
I am not going to refer to Hungary. Noble Lords have referred to that appalling situation, and I am glad that from all sides it has been agreed that we have done the right thing, and we hope we shall be able to do more to help those poor people. Then there is this suggestion that we have lost our prestige. I do not see it. I think that our prestige stands higher to-day than it did a year or two ago. I think that the world's populations say, "Well, here is the old British lion. When he thinks a thing is right and proper and for the general welfare of the people of the world, he is going all out to do something to benefit them."
Now the question of the rule of law has been mentioned again to-day. Can you apply the law in every eventuality of the life of an individual or the lives of the people? Suppose one of your Lordships finds himself in a corner and being attacked. Is he going to say to himself, "No, I must not punch this fellow on the nose; it is against the law"? What nonsense! The law is all right up to a point, but if we are going to sit down and do nothing when the law is unable to function properly in the world, where will civilisation go to then? I am asking noble Lords opposite, what would you have done if you had been in office at the particular psychological moment when this trouble began? I thought my noble friend on the Woolsack put the question very well the other day when he asked: "At what moment would you have washed your hands of the whole thing?" Would you have done that? I do not believe you would. I believe you would have done very much

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what we are doing now and stood up to the situation. I believe you would have made certain that that condition was not going to continue because it was going to wreck the whole world.
I know there are many others of your Lordships who wish to speak, but those are matters that are particularly in my mind. I spoke the other day, and I do not believe in repeating oneself if one can help it. Nor do I believe in repeating what has already been said by noble Lords who have made admirable contributions to this debate. I am not shaken by anything that has been said by the Opposition. I am fully in accord with what the Government have done, and I believe that where now people are criticising the Government. in the end they will he praising them.
5.0 p.m.
VISCOUNT CALDECOTE: My Lords, I had intended to make a few remarks on general matters raised in the gracious Speech, but having listened to the debate to-day I do not feel that it would be the wish of your Lordships to be deflected from consideration of the all-important subject to which most of the debate has been devoted. I will therefore confine my remarks—they will he very few and will touch on only one or two points—to the Middle East situation.
I think it has been recognised for years—indeed, almost ever since the United Nations came into existence—that one of the greatest dangers, one of the greatest threats, to the United Nations was that it would be given impossible tasks to carry out. I remember that that was clearly recognised when I went to the United Nations headquarters four years ago, at The time when the Korea battle was raging. It seems to me that the situation that has now, arisen was bound to come sooner or later. As the United Nations went on, repeatedly passing resolutions, good in themselves but quite ineffective to deal with the situations which arose from time to time, it became clear that a time would finally come when it would be felt that some action was necessary and that we could no longer rely on ineffective resolutions. And it was, I am sure, to the eternal credit of this country, and to its Government, that we had the courage to take action at a time when, clearly, the United Nations was again getting out of
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its depth. It was surely best that that should happen, rather than that once more the United Nations should he restricted to passing resolutions as to what should happen but be quite incapable of putting those resolutions into force.
I still cannot see, in spice of all the Opposition have said, what we have to be ashamed of. What is the immoral action we are supposed to have taken? Is it that we ought to have been afraid of what world opinion thought of us? Because you are doing what is right in the eyes of other people you are not necessarily doing right. Because others may criticise you, you are not necessarily doing wrong. It seems to me that that is entirely irrelevant. What you have to do is to size up the situation that arises and then do what you think is best. That, surely, is what leadership is. It is the essence of leadership to lead from in front, rather than to do what I submit the Opposition have been suggesting we should do—that is, see what public opinion wanted us to do and then do it. As a result of our energetic action, we have changed the whole situation for the better. The problem now what is the next move?
I strongly support the action that has already been taken in agreeing to the cease-fire. There has been criticism that we ought to have carried on further. I do not believe that that is right. I only hope that this cease-fire is not a ruse to deflect us from our purpose while others are re-equipping and recovering. I have no doubt that Her Majesty's Government are keeping a close watch on that possibility. It was clearly wrong, in my view. for the United Nations to demand that we should move out of this zone before they had an effective force to put in. That would be giving every opportunity for "seven devils" more evil than the first. to move in, and the last situation would be far worse than the first. I hope that we shall stand fast to these principles which the Prime Minister has already enunciated: that we shall riot move until an effective United Nations Force is ready to move in and take over from us.
Finally. I cannot agree with what the Leader of the Opposition aid the other day, to the effect that the only bright spot in the last few difficult weeks had been the opposition put forward by his Party and his friends. A bright spot, a

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flaming torch, has been the courage and resolution of the Prime Minister—which, to my mind, has been beyond all praise—in what must have been one of the most difficult situations that has ever faced a man. The black side of it has been the faint hearts of the Opposition and their friends, who have given such encouragement to the enemies of this country. Surely it is time to close our ranks behind the Prime Minister who is bearing such a very heavy load of responsibility. Our action has already achieved most valuable results, but we have a very long and hard road to travel before we can be sure of a lasting peace. I am quite certain that that road has been considerably shortened by the action which Her Majesty's Government have taken, though I have no doubt that, for the time being, it is going to make that road a good deal rougher.
5.8 p.m.
LORD HANKEY: My Lords, yesterday we were listening to some remarks on the reorganisation of the House of Lords. To my mind, this debate supplies a very good answer to those who decry it. This debate has certainly been, in my view—and other speakers have said the same thing—most enlightening. It was introduced or introduced so far as the Government's case was concerned—in a most brilliant speech by the noble Marquess the Leader of the House, whom I, with others, very much welcome back to this scene. After hearing that speech I felt that the case for the Government's policy, in its recent phases, was so strong that I would not try to-day to "paint the lily." Neither shall I.
I am not going to be tempted away from what I consider the main issue of this debate by the many attractive bypaths that have been opened up. The Royal Marines, defence, organisation of defence, international organisation—these are all the epitome of my professional life. I am going to confine myself to a matter with which, as I have mentioned before, I am connected as a director of the Suez Canal Company—namely, the Suez Canal. Now what we want to get on this question. if we can. is unity, or something much nearer unity than we have got as yet. If your Lordships will permit me, I am going to recall a historical precedent which I think might
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be, to some degree. helpful to those who feel very strongly on this subject. It means taking your Lordships back to the year 1882, when a great pacifist, Mr. Gladstone, was Prime Minister. Not only was he a great pacifist, but his greatest friend in the Cabinet, John Bright, was an even greater pacifist. Yet, with that strong persuasion behind him, Mr. Gladstone, in the case of Egypt, found himself absolutely compelled to resort to force.
The two cases are not so very dissimilar, because in Egypt at that time there was a gentleman called Arabi Pasha, who was making a great deal of trouble. After the bombardment of Alexandria, when John Bright resigned. Mr. Gladstone wrote him a letter. With your Lordships' permission, I will quote a short extract from it, although the whole letter is extraordinarily pertinent. After addressing Bright
"as one who detests war in general and believes most wars to have been errors (in which I greatly agree with you)",
Mr. Gladstone continued:
"The general situation in Egypt had latterly become one in which everything was governed by sheer military violence. Every legitimate authority—the Khedive, the Sultan, the notables, and the best men in the country…had been put down, and a situation of force had been created which could only be met by force."
Before using force, Mr. Gladstone's Government made desperate efforts to achieve a settlement by the international method. They tried to get other nations to join with them. At the beginning, France was in with us in a kind of condominium, exercised through the Khedive, but France ran out at Alexandria and we had to see it through alone. That was in July, 1882. Ten days after that, the Government of the day decided that more must be done and it would be necessary to go to Cairo. Once more they tried the international method. They tried France, who was willing to defend the Canal but not to go further. They tried Italy. They discussed the whole question with Germany and Austria, and made an effort to bring in Turkey, who nearly came in, but ran out in an exasperating way at the last moment. Once more we had to "go it alone". One other point, which hears on a different aspect of the question but which I think is worth mentioning, is that Mr. Gladstone insisted strongly, before the Battle

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of Tel-el-Kebir and in Cairo after the battle, that we must withdraw as soon as possible. In fact, we stayed in Egypt for seventy-six years. Absit omen.
After that venture into history, which I checked up carefully from several hooks, including Morley's Life of Gladstone, I will come to the immediate future. The question of the immediate future is to get the Canal cleared as soon as possible. It is badly blocked. How wise the Government were in making the declaration that they could not tolerate a situation in which the Suez Canal fell under the control of one Power, particularly an unreliable Power like Egypt—I am paraphrasing. Because it was a lighthearted action by Colonel Nasser, even in his own interests, to do all this damage to the Canal. It is no good concealing that this damage is very great. I am informed that twelve ships—they call them block-ships, but I suspect that only some of them are blockships and many are ordinary ships—have been sunk, and the Ferdan Bridge is down. The Ferdan Bridge and the two most important block-ships, and some other ships at the Suez end, are all beyond Kantara, which is the limiting point which our Forces have reached, or nearly reached, so that means that clearance will he slow starting.
I do rot think that it would be wise for me to go much further into the details of unblocking, because I do not really know enough about the position of the ships. But I would remind the Government that there is no responsible organisation in the world which possesses the same experience of clearing the Canal that the Suez Canal Company does. I say that because, while I read in the Press of all sorts of people who are going to deal with this question, I never see the Suez Canal Company mentioned. They are "de-blocking" all the time. I was on board the "Pasteur", the biggest ship to use the Canal—she was carrying troops to Indo-China—when she blocked the Canal. It looked very serious at first, but the Canal people knew how to deal with it. The soldiers had all rushed over to the side on which the ship had gone aground, and all that was done was to switch all the men over to the other side and the ship was brought off by the tugs.
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But every job is different, and all this work is a technical business. Ships are constantly going aground, and nobody hears anything about them—I have a list of them put in front of me every month. Not only that, but the hardest job in this new damage is the removal of the Ferdan Bridge. The job is more formidable than it has been before—for this reason: the bridge was reconstructed and was a much heavier and stronger one. The Canal Company has twice, within my knowledge and experience, had to remove a broken Ferdan Bridge. They have every sort of experience of that sort of thing, and unless it has been destroyed, they have remarkable material resources, into which I shall not enter now.
That brings me to another point. In a previous speech I urged that when the time came for a final settlement the Suez Canal Company's claims should he considered. I pointed out that up to that time—and it is true still—they (lid not seem to have been considered. But this is only one example where the Govern-merit will find themselves getting great help from the old Suez Canal Company. Directly it is desired to start traffic up again it becomes a ticklish business. It is necessary to consider, exactly how large a ship can be allowed through file first gaps made. All that is a technical business, and -requires that the transit department is brought in.
A company like the Suez Canal Company does not depend only on individuals who are especially clever. It happens that we have an engineer-in-chief who had the unique experience in France of clearing Bordeaux, where the Germans had made the most frightful mess, arid he is a very able man. But we work in teams; and they are not only teams of experts. There are teams of experts who do the planning, but there are also the people who have to do the work on the ground. There are 5,000 Egyptians, and we. know who they are. Naturally, they have had to work for Nasser, but I am certain they would come back, if the old Company were restored. with the same loyalty and good teamwork that has existed in the past. I do not profess to know the reasons why the Company has been rather cold-shouldered, but I do ask that it may be carefully considered. I think it is going to be an important factor in the final settlement—and there must

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be a final settlement about the Suez Canal. Several noble Lords have spoken about the need for considering it, on broad lines, and I myself ventured to send a letter to The Times not long ago which gave an outline of a plan that I had worked out from long experience and consideration, and which I commend to your Lordships.
5.25 p.m.
LORD REA: My Lords, at this stage. in the debate it would be inappropriate indeed, and unwelcome, if I said more than a few words, and the shorter the better. I do not propose to go through the general questions of policy and principle which have been threshed out so interestingly in all quarters of your Lordships' House: I do not think we can go much further into them. However, I have taken great heart on hearing from all quarters of your Lordships' House a real support for the principle of the United Nations, even though the United Nations have apparently in some measure failed to satisfy many of the ideas of a number of your Lordships and Members in another place. I am glad that even the noble Lord, Lord Hore-Belisha, who thinks that our position in the world never stood so high and we never had so many admirers before, and seems to insinuate that the sixty-five members of United Nations all voted in the wrong Lobby by mistake, supports that body.
There is only one point that has not been raised, and as it is rather a hobby horse of mine, perhaps your Lordships will forgive me for raising it. I feel that in the cold war that has been going on for so long between ourselves and our chief antagonists in that cold war, Russia and Egypt, they have employed a means which we have, I think much to our detriment, neglected, and that is the means of propaganda or overseas information. Those of your Lordships who have been out in the Middle East—I have not been out there recently, but I have spoken to many who have—and those of you who have listened to General Glubb on his return from there, will know that in every little village throughout the Middle East there is a receiver on the ground, the people are crouched around it and they hear the most vituperative and misleading statements, hour after hour. day after day. and day and night
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about the British Empire and its wicked ideas and intentions.
This is, an old issue between the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, and myself, because I say that he should persuade the Treasury to spend ten times as much as they do on our overseas information services. I press it still. There was a Motion down for your Lordships' consideration in the last Session—I think it was the noble Lord. Lord Tweedsmuir, who was going to initiate it—and I hope it will come up again. I press strongly that we could have an immense effect by a far greater range of overseas propaganda, which might, I venture to suggest, make it unnecessary for us in the future to spend as much as we are proposing to spend on defence and armaments.
The point of view from these Benches has been described by my noble friend Lord Samuel, with whom I agree entirely. I agree with him that the demand for our immediate withdrawal from the Canal is probably hasty and ill-conceived. It would leave a vacuum. But if it left a vacuum, it would leave it at the north end of the Canal. These Anglo-French Forces, as we understand, have not penetrated the whole length of the Canal. is there not now a vacuum at the south end of the Canal? I should be grateful if Her Majesty's Government could explain what is the function of the Anglo-French Forces now in Egypt. Is it purely a police function? if the Government could give us an assurance that the Forces now there represent in shadow or in advance the International Force that is coming, and that they arc no longer a task force, an attacking force or an invasion force, we shall all find it much easier to support the Government on that point.
5.28 p.m.
EARL ATTLEE: My Lords, I have been away from this country in India for nearly four weeks, so I have been rather outside the range of these controversies, and I do not intend to try to cover the ground that has been so well covered by others. However, I should like to give a few impressions of how this affair looks from outside this country. I cannot help recalling that on the last occasion I spoke I was rebuked by the most reverend Primate the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury because I did not accept, and my colleagues did not accept, a formula put

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forward by the Government which was supposed to say that they would act only under the United Nations. The most Primate is satisfied with that. However I think it shows that on this Occasion, as on others the children of this world are wiser than the children of light, because we were perfectly correct in not accepting this formula, which had an obvious gap.
As I say. I have been away in India and. receiving this news from various newspapers, one had to form a general impression. What struck one was this. When I was going round India I was frequently asked about the Suez Canal position. At that time there were discussions going on, and I said, "Well, I hope that the gap is not really great." I thought that, as it was going on so long. there would not be a recourse to force. and that I might expect the trouble to be settled. Therefore, when we had this sudden action it came as a shock to me and to everybody that I met
We had what I can describe only as a series of disingenuous statements. There was the excuse of protecting the Canal. Out there, it seemed to us—and I think I can speak for many—an odd way of proceeding, because it appeared that the danger to the Canal was from the Israelis. Yet we sent in our forces and proceeded to strafe Egypt. It is understandable now, when I hear quite a different tone given to the whole of this argument. Apparently, what we were really doing was to stop the war between Egypt and Israel. and for that purpose it seemed that the danger was from Egypt's air force, and in effect we "Pearl Harboured" it. This was a profound shock to opinion in India and Pakistan
There is in India I am glad to recog— recognise it—a profound respect for this country; a belief that this country does act on moral principles. We have heard a lot about moral force this afternoon, and whether there should he moral force alone or physical force alone. I agree that you have to have physical force to back up moral force, but physical force without moral force puts you in a very weak position, particularly in this country, where action taken by a Government that does not commend itself to the moral sense of the community is bound to be disastrous. The same effect occurs elsewhere in the Commonwealth.
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There is an id what Britain stands for. One sometimes hears it said: "What about Kashmir?" But in India Britain is not judged on any ideas of other people; we are always judged on what are believed to be our own moral ideas
There is also in India a strong support for the United Nations. I was asked to speak at a meeting in Jaipur, where one did not expect to get much of an attendance. but I found a gathering of about 6,000 people whom I addressed on the United Nations. The shock was all the greater from the fact that the present Prime Minister has always been regarded as a strong supporter of the United Nations and the rule of law. A question seriously asked me was: "What has happened to the Prime Minister? How can he be acting so contrary to all the principles that he has professed?" They were very difficult questions to answer
Then I went to Pakistan, and there, of course. the feeling was still worse. There was the feeling that this was an attack on Islam. You may say that it is quite wrong, and it is a mere accident that Nasser is a Moslem. But one has to face the fact that the whole of this trouble is filled with bitter hatred for the Jews by the Moslems, and the feeling which exists that we have turned round and attacked Islam. That is a very dangerous position. because Russia has been courting the Moslems. It is a Power friendly to Moslems, and the fact is that our action, so far from stopping the influence of Russia in Moslem countries, has helped her. So far from checking Nasser—he was not overpopular—he has been exalted into the hero of Islam. Of course. there was great feeling there. In every community in India and Pakistan this action came as a bitter shock to the members of the British community. I met a number of them, and the feeling was so great that people said they were quite ashamed to go round because of this falling away from what Britain stands for. The danger is that there is growing, as a result of these events, strongly Pakistan and quite observable in India,. I an agitation to leave the Commonwealth
I listened to the defence of the noble Marquess this afternoon with a considerable feeling of regret. It seemed to me that in his quotation from Lord

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Liverpool, and from the whole tone of his speech, he was putting up the same excuses for action as have been put up by every aggressor—by Austria in relation to the Yugoslavs in 1914; by Germany in respect of Belgium, and by Hitler in respect of Czechoslovakia. Once you accept that action of this kind can be taken because think your national interests are at stake then away with U.N.O. and away with the conception on which our British Commonwealth has been based
It is true that we have differences in the Commonwealth. but the thing that keeps it together are common ideals and common moral principles. I thought that the noble Marquess, despite his decorous language, was really giving a cynical exposition of real politics. Actually, I think the action taken was wrong, and also I think it was extra-ordinarily stupid. Again. I may not have the full information, not having been at home, but this seemed to me an extra ordinary occasion to take action. There have been many occasions in the past when action might have been taken against Egypt, and I gather that the thought in the Government's mind was that the danger from Egypt, hacked perhaps by Russia, was getting greater and greater, and as someone has said, that it was necessary to lance the boil
There were occasions when our ships were fired upon by Egypt in the Gulf of Aqaba. No action was taken then. The same thing occurred to Israeli ships: and again no action was taken. There has been a continuing "tit for tat" in the raids, first from one side and then from the other, during the past few years. One of those might have been an occasion to take action. The curious thing is that the Government take action when the Israelis are the aggressors. They also chose to take action at a time which, in my experience of international affairs, is always a hazardous time—in the middle of an American Presidential Election. The result was that they managed to line up against us in the United Nations, not only the Arab world, not only Soviet Russia. but the United States of America and a large proportion of the Common wealth. It seems to me that that cannot he called clever. I think it was extra-
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ordinarily stupid an extraordinarily bad timing
Moreover, the was said, to preventation was take it blocked. A hypot Canal from being Nasser has resulted blocking by our own action. The actual blocking by of oil to Britain threat to supplies was put forward as an excuse—and now, apparently, we have stopped the oil because the pipelines have been cut! But much more serious than that is the damage to the United Nations and the damage to the Commonwealth and Britain. We played into the hands of our Communist enemies. The horrible events of Budapest have actually mitigated the damage done to ourselves. If Russia had not taken action against Budapest, she would have been in a position to represent herself, with considerable success, as the friend of the Arab people; but, after the events of Budapest, I think there is enough knowledge in the East to prevent that
Now we come to the question of what is to be done in the future. I am not going into that, but I would say one thing: that the damage to the Commonwealth is serious. It will take time to repair and I am very doubtful whether the present Government can repair it, Wherever I went, people were saying, "When are you going to have a General Election?" I have heard noble Lords in this House deploring the disunity in the country, but I would assure them that it is the disunity in the country that is saving the Commonwealth, because the people in India, Ceylon, Pakistan and elsewhere know that this is the action of the Government but not the action of the whole nation. They have pretty strong grounds for believing that the Government's action does not represent the majority of the nation; that the action of the Labour Party, the Liberal Party and the reports in the Press may have done sufficient to maintain the Commonwealth which the rash and wrong action of the Government has done so much to damage.
LORD TEVIOT: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, with great respect I should like to ask him this one question. Would he and his supporters, at the time the Government acted, have done nothing at all in those circumstances?
EARL ATTLEE: It is easy to ask question of that sort: "What would you

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have done?", when there has been a whole series of actions before. We should not have been put into that position to begin with. It is a silly question.
5.43 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: My Lords, we approach now the end of a debate which sprang from two extremely interesting and able speeches when the Address was first considered by your Lordships. We have devoted to-day to the particular aspect of foreign affairs. As my noble friend Lord Swinton said at an earlier stage this afternoon, it seems peculiar, looking at the Order Paper, to observe this curiously misshapen Amendment standing in the name of the Opposition. It looks very much like an operation which is sometimes carried out by addicts of jig-saw puzzles when they get a number of pieces strewn before them and the moment comes when they have to try to make up their minds which is the next piece to fit in and, having tried a number of pieces and failed to fit them in, they finally loose their tempers and rap with their fist a piece which is not meant to go into place at all because they cannot find the right place for it. I must say that this Amendment bears a curious resemblance to that situation. The actual terms of the Amendment have been dealt with by my noble friend the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, and I do not propose to go into those aspects of it.
This is the second debate within a week or so that we have had primarily on the subject of the situation in Egypt. The subject has indeed been discussed almost continuously in another place during that time, and it has not lacked ventilation in the Press both here and abroad. Reference was made at an earlier stage this afternoon to a letter which bore, amongst others, the signature of Professor Gilbert Murray, and to the particular phrase—again, I think, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Swinton—which said that, in the view of the signatories of that letter, the Government
"deserve patient but, if necessary, critical support."
That is what I imagine any Government is entitled to regard as perhaps the maximum that it gets from its opponents, but Perhaps it is also entitled in some degree to claim that that is the minimum which it deserves. Though I am not in any way
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pointing to noble Lords opposite, I think it is true to say that in the course of these past weeks we have received a great deal of impatient and uncritical opposition. I believe also that the action that Her Majesty's Government took is now being more calmly approached and more widely approved as events or arguments clear some of the major irrelevances and inaccuracies out of the way.
When the happenings of the past fortnight are looked at objectively—and we must try to look at affairs of so much moment to the future of this country as dispassionately as we can—it is surely apparent that Her Majesty's Government's policy has been concentrated upon two interconnected purposes: the first, to separate Egypt and Israel and bring the fighting between them to an end; the second, to continue to hold them apart until a settlement has been reached which has at least a reasonable chance of establishing sanity, security and stability in the long-tortured and turbulent region of the Middle East. That was our predominant aim in launching ourselves upon this task, and to that everything else has been subordinate.
I do not propose to go backwards into past history which we have already discussed at length, except in so far as it is relevant to comments which have been made in the course of to-day's debate. There are two questions which have been raised by noble Lords in discussing and criticising the Government's action, two questions which I think we must briefly consider. The first is: was there a situation when these events started which required immediate and drastic handling? If there was, were we justified in intervening? The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, in the speech which he has just delivered—and we are glad that he is back with us, although we regret that he has had to tear himself away from elephants and other delights of that kind—said that our timing had been all wrong. He pointed to various things which had happened in the past: that a British ship was shelled in the Gulf of Aqaba, that there had been an Israeli ship stopped in the Canal, and so forth, and he said "Why not then?" In comparison with the danger which was hovering above us when we launched this operation, each of those previous occasions is of minute importance in the whole scale of danger, because what we were facing here was the urgent and

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imminent risk of an outbreak of hostilities throughout the whole of the Middle East. That was the situation that we had to face and it was against that that we took our preparations.
When we came to announce our decision, it was asked, why did we do it in such a hurry? The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, said in reference to the phrase which has been used about a Fire Brigade operation that there was no house burning. Was there not? Was there no danger threatening? It was not only that there was the gravest risk of a spreading conflict but, by the time that we acted and announced our decision, Israeli forces were already on their way to the Canal. After all, distances in modern warfare are as nothing. Leaving out air operations, leaving out airborne operations, as we all know, armoured vehicles can cover areas of ground in which 100 miles is a matter of practically no concern at all. There were these Israeli Forces moving forward; and as far as paratroops are concerned—this was our information and we have no reason to think that it was inaccurate—they were almost on the Canal.
What were we to do? The Canal is what one might, I think, not unfairly call the solar plexus of the whole of that area, and if that is struck, it is likely to prove a knockout blow. Could anything be a more serious blow than the outbreak of general hostilities in that area? The Israelis were already within striking distance. What we asked for was that there should be a cease-fire, first, by both parties—it is important to remember that—and only then, after both parties had agreed to the cease-fire, should they he required to withdraw to a distance of ten miles on either side of the Canal.
EARL ATTLEE: May I ask the noble Marquess, as I am rather new to this matter, why, if it was the Israelis who were advancing on the Canal, they were not attacked? Why was the attack on Egypt?
THE MARQUESS OF READING: I can perhaps answer that. If the noble Earl had been here, perhaps he would have read that the Israelis agreed to accept and the Egyptians refused to accept. The Israelis agreed to accept the terms conditionally upon the Egyptians also accepting. We were left then with a situation
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in which, as we considered, the Canal was the vital point, and we thought it was our duty to safeguard that Canal, so far as we could, not only in our interests—the selfish interests, if you like to call them selfish interests, but anyway, the essential interests of this country—but also in the interests of all other countries who use the Canal by their ships and who get their means of livelihood borne on the ships which pass through the Canal. That was the purpose of taking action. It was necessary to keep the Canal open as far as we could.
A NOBLE LORD: You blocked it.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: We did not block it; the Egyptians blocked it. It has been said by my right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State that it is, and has been, the policy of Her Majesty's Government to ensure that Israeli forces withdraw from Egyptian territory. The situation on the spot is, we hope, passing in the near future—and the nearer the better—into the hands of a United Nations Force. When noble Lords on the other side criticise, one is always told if one asks, "What would you have done?", that it is an unfair question; but perhaps this is not an unfair question. I sometimes wonder whether they think we ought just to have sat still and watched these events, in regard to the seriousness of which we were deeply impressed, unfolding, in a mood of contemplative indifference. If we and the French had not moved, nobody else was in a position to move. No one else had any troops within reach, and time was of the essence of the situation.
The Security Council, were, it is true, sitting at that time. We had, in following up a pledge which was given in both Houses of Parliament during the emergency Sitting that we had in September, gone to the United Nations; and it is perfectly true that when the announcement of our intention was made plain the Security Council was still sitting. But the long history of Middle East affairs has, alas! shown conclusively that no combined will and no concerted force to handle effectively and immediately a perilous situation was vested in the United Nations, and that there was, unhappily, at that moment little to be expected except discussion and delay. If we had in our minds the imminent

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threat of an unlimited spread of that conflict throughout the Middle East, whatever noble Lords opposite may think, we were not prepared to sit impotent and watch that conflict spread.
I observe that Mr. Bulganin in his letter to the Prime Minister wrote:
"An aggressive predatory war is now unfolding against the Arab peoples with the object of destroying the national independence of the States of the Near and Middle East and of re-establishing the régime of colonial slavery rejected by the peoples."
If that amiable statement is true, how is it that we have hastened to express our willingness to hand over the task that we had undertaken so thanklessly to the United Nations Force—and not only undertaken to do it. but been the first to propose that that action should be taken?
My Lords, it is said that by doing what we did we have in some way made it easier for the Russians to carry out the appalling work upon which they have been concentrating in Hungary. We surely have enough experience by now to know that the Russians do not look around for excuses for their policy. They did not look before East Berlin; they did not look before Poznan, and they are not concerned to look before Hungary. They do what they conceive to be in their own interests without the slightest concern for the interests or the opinions of others. They have no more regard for justification than they have for justice itself. If they seemed at one moment to be withdrawing their Forces from Hungary, and then later returned, it was not because of anything that we and France had done. It was either because at first they misjudged the character and extent of the Hungarian uprising, or because they wanted to give the Hungarians the opportunity to proclaim their faith and purpose openly and to think that they had succeeded in their endeavour in order that they, the Russians, might then more effectively turn upon them when they had been taken off their guard.
So far from drawing any parallel with our action or suggesting that by what we had done we had set the Russians free to follow some example, let us remember that they represent their own actions in wholly different terms. I happen to have seen a report of a recent speech by
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Marshal Voroshilov which is perhaps worth quoting briefly. This was while proceedings in Hungary were going forward, within the last few days, and he said:
"The Soviet Union. true to the Leninist principles of respect for the rights and national independence of all peoples great and small, has always been and is guided in its relations with other countries by the principles of mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-intervention in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefits, peaceful co-existence, and economic co-operation."
The appalling cynicism of those glib phrases rings hideously enough in British ears. What must it sound like in Hungarian ears?
It will be claimed by some people that we have stopped now under the compulsion of Russian menaces and confined our operations to an earlier stage. We have stopped short because we are now firmly established in control of the position that we think necessary. In answer to the question which the noble Lord, Lord Rea, asked me, may I say that he will not forget that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has declared that our Forces will not move forward from the situation in which they are, and that in those circumstances it can be taken that they are there for the purpose of exercising the functions of control and not for the purpose of carrying an invasion further into the heart of Egypt.
We have always desired in this matter to cause as little destruction as possible, and in that respect we have been mercifully successful. In the same letter to which I referred just now, Marshal Bulganin referred to the barbaric action of the British Government. Perhaps he will remember that, even at some risk to the success of the operation itself, even at some hazard to the lives of our troops, we took every possible precaution to reduce the number of casualties involved and to give the people of Egypt the fullest possible warning of any danger that might be threatening any particular zone. If the Russian Government want to follow our example. there is an example that they might more fruitfully follow than any other. And yet we cannot rid our memories of the events in Hungary of which I have from time to time during recent days tried to give

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your Lordships some very moderate and restrained account.
It is very much to be hoped—and I think the expression of that hope has been general among your Lordships today—that the United Nations Force will arrive swiftly, and that, however it is composed, it will remain in position until a real and lasting settlement in the Middle East has been reached. The noble Lord, Lord Henderson, in opening this debate, seemed to think that there was much to be said for the idea that our troops could withdraw from that area before the United Nations Force had been introduced. So far as I could make out—and for once he was not quite so lucid as he generally is—he seemed to envisage a situation in which there was a son: of two-way traffic of our troops going out and the United Nations Force going in. I should have thought that was an extremely hazardous and quite unnecessary operation.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Marquess? He will realise that the position as laid down by the United Nations is that the British troops should come out now, and not wait until the United Nations International Police Force arrives. I tried to suggest that perhaps if the evacuation took place now it would coincide with the arrival of the International Police Force. There are important political considerations involved in the early withdrawal of British and French forces.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: My Lords, I suppose it depends to some extent on whet we mean when we use the expression "now," but if the noble Lord is advocating that we should withdraw our forces immediately, and before there are any United Nations forces to take their place, then I must say that that is a situation which we cannot accept. We have not made all that effort with what we consider—whatever noble Lords opposite may feel—good justification and good purpose behind it to pull out and leave these two contending Powers, with nobody between them, to resume their conflict, with all the immense potentialities of further casualties, of further destruction, of greater embitterment that that situation could well create. That is rot a situation we are prepared to contemplate. But at the same time, when
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the United Nations Force does come in—and let it be soon—the United Nations will have, I hope, a supreme opportunity to consider and to arrive at a settlement of the numberless causes of strife which have bedevilled that area of the world for the past years.
I do not propose to turn aside to dwell on what can be the possible moves towards peace either in the short term or the long term, but I am sure that this is a moment which the United Nations cannot afford to miss if they are going to rid themselves of what has been for many years (and unless they deal with it now will continue to be for many years in the future) one of their gravest preoccupations. By studying in retrospect the events which halve led up to the r resent situation the United Nations may well come to realise the defects in their existing machinery and take steps to remedy them so that such a situation as the present may not he likely to arise again. We have had quotations from leading United States papers. May I add ore from an influential Canadian paper, the Toronto Globe and Mail, which, a few days ago, said in a leading article summing up the situation:
"So Britain intervened—and rightly so. She has gone into Egypt not to make war but to make peace…to do the job that the United Nations ought to have done."
The rule of law is not one to he lightly set aside. I am not going to plunge into the vexed area of International Law. I have never been an international lawyer, and I have long ceased to profess even to he a national one. But that we do attach great importance to the rule of law remains our firm conviction. It is a little difficult to represent President Nasser as the arch-upholder of the rule of law. The course that Her Majesty's Government have folk wed does not for one moment imply that we no longer uphold the basic principles set out in the Charter of the United Nations. It means only this; that a situation, a desperately dangerous situation, had arisen which the United Nations had not the power to resolve and which, unchecked, might have done far more enduring harm to the future existence of the United Nations than anything that we have done or could do. It means only this more: that since the necessary: preventive machinery has not yet beer!' devised to meet a crisis so heavily

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charged with explosive as that which confronted w; in the Middle East, there may still he a moment when resolutions count for less than resolution in the final judgment of history.
6.10 p.m.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, the debate has now come to an end and the House is no doubt waiting to know what we propose to do about our Amendment. Our decision has to be taken in the light of the reply by Her Majesty's Government to our case, which we submitted, in favour of special efforts to restore the unity and cohesion of the Commonwealth. If we were to judge by the gibes about the Amendment made by the noble Marquess at the beginning of his speech we might be tempted to take a decision without reference to the speech made by the noble Earl, Lord Home. Fortunately it was the noble Earl who dealt with the substance of our Amendment. He made it clear that he recognises the importance of restoring Commonwealth unity and the fact that divisions have been caused.
We had proposed an immediate meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers. The noble Earl, Lord Home, informed the House that the Foreign Ministers and Ministers for External Affairs of the Commonwealth countries will be meeting in New York next week, and will be dis-
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cussing, or attempting to get, an agreed policy within the United Nations.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, I do not want to put it too highly or to mislead the noble Lord. The Ministers are meeting in New York next week, and it seems to me inconceivable that they should all be there in New York without discussing the situation in which we find ourselves.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, I recognise that, and I also recognise that no doubt the noble Earl will inform his colleague, the Foreign Secretary, of the views expressed here this afternoon. I understand that the Foreign Secretary will be going to New York, and I cannot imagine that he will miss such an early opportunity to proceed in the direction of again getting Commonwealth unity within the United Nations. In these circumstances, we do not intend to press our Amendment, but will was t to see what results emerge from the New York consultation. I therefore beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Motion agreed to, nemine dissentiente: the said Address to be presented to Her Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.
House adjourned at thirteen minutes past six o'clock.