Orders of the Day — Defence Loans Bill.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 25 February 1937.

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Photo of Captain William Sanders Captain William Sanders , Battersea North

I rise to say a few words in support of the Amendment, but before doing so I should like to put before the House another view with regard to the attitude of this Government and previous Tory Governments to the League of Nations. We have heard from the hon. Member who has just spoken that when he visited Geneva he always found that the representatives of Great Britain were working for the good of the League, the permanency of the League and the promotion of peace and disarmament. I presume that, like most travellers, one sees what one expects to see, rather than what really happens. It is true that there have been moments at Geneva when the world has been convinced that Tory Governments believed in the League of Nations. There was a moment during the Abyssinian crisis when the Tory Foreign Secretary made a very bold pronouncement, which was backed very enthusiastically by the majority of the delegates of the League, with regard to the attitude the world should take towards the Italian aggression in Abyssinia. That action raised the prestige of England as a world leader in the League in a most remarkable, and apparently in a most solid way. A few months afterwards the whole of that remarkable addition to the credit of England was destroyed by the same Foreign Minister, and we saw a deplorable, regrettable scene in the House of Commons when that Foreign Secretary retired because he could not back up what he said at Geneva by actual action.

The truth about the position of Great Britain in Geneva is that, if we liked to lead the world at Geneva, we could, and, when the countries of the world believe we are sincere, the overwhelming majority of the countries that are affiliated to Geneva will follow our lead. But we have given so many blows to the belief in our sincerity that I am afraid that that leadership is departing farther and farther every year. I had the pleasure and honour of working in Geneva for nine years, and I was proud of the moments when what I believed to be the authentic voice of the people of England on matters of peace and war and general international policy was spoken from the tribune; but I had moments, too, when I felt that we were going back again to pre-War days on account of the attitude which delegates from Tory Governments took on questions that came before the League. If we want to make the world believe that we are sincere in our desire for collective security and for building up a great world organisation, not only to preserve the peace of the world but to preserve civilisation—because that is what the attempt to bring about permanent peace means—we must not send representatives to Geneva to say one thing at one moment and a few months afterwards tell the world that they are not able to carry out what they said they were going to do on behalf of the League.

The first question that I want particularly to raise is the question of prices, which includes the very difficult problem of profiteering. I have a certain sympathy with the hon. Member opposite, who said it was very difficult for manufacturers to prevent a rise in prices because their prices as manufacturers were very largely governed by the cost of their raw materials. That is true, but there is also another form of profiteering, which has nothing to do with manufacturing at all. Hon. Members will probably recollect that, when the great new Air Force programme of 'the Government was brought forward, there was a tremendous amount of profiteering on the Stock Exchange. There was a tremendous amount of profiteering by getting new money from the public for existing companies, which did not go into the production of either new factories or new aeroplanes, but simply into the pockets of the promoters. Nothing was done by the Government to prevent that, and, unless they take wartime measures, I do not see how they can prevent it; but it seems to me that, if you are going to make preparations for war on this scale, then you have to make them together with war-time measures for the prevention of profiteering of that or any other kind, because, as the hon. Member said, it is exceedingly difficult to check profiteering and bring manufacturers even to a sense of their patriotic duty in peace-time with regard to prices and Government control.

I had a very short experience at the War Office during peace-time in trying to control profiteering among manufacturers in connection with armaments, and especially in connection with new inventions. Being a simple-minded Englishman with a love of my country, I thought that anybody engaged in helping to defend his country would put patriotism first. When I came to the manufacturers, I found that they really did adopt, but in a very different sense, that remarkable and moving statement which is carved on a statue in Trafalgar Square. They adopted the statement, "Patriotism is not enough," but in a very different sense from the person who first uttered that statement. Patriotism is not enough, because there must be a considerable amount of profit in addition, or the patriotism will not be there. I have a very vivid recollection of one incident, because it was almost like a discussion going on a cinema film. An apparently very valuable invention was brought to the notice of the War Office by one of the great manufacturing firms, and the able officials who watch these things at the War Office asked the inventor to come and discuss the terms on which we, as a Government Department, should have the right to use that invention. The gentleman came; but was he anxious to pour out the treasures of his inventor's brain at the feet of his country? No; he did not want to agree or submit to the regular terms to which he ought to submit from the War Office, and ultimately he became as temperamental as a film star and declared that he was not in the mood to discuss with the War Office any further conditions with regard to the invention. We could do absolutely nothing with him.

What happened to that very valuable invention, which I am not going to mention, I do not know; probably my successors have been able to deal more drastically with the gentleman concerned; but I got the impression, from the attitude of that gentleman and other arms manufacturers, that they adopted a variation of Tom Paine's declaration of faith—that it was not any single country that was their world; the world was their country, and not Great Britain, and they were quite as willing that any new invention should be used by a foreign Power against British soldiers when war took place as that the invention should be used by British soldiers against foreign soldiers. Therefore, I came to the conclusion that their declaration of faith would not be, "The world is my country, and to do good is my religion," as Tom Paine said, but "The world is our country, and to do any Government is our religion." Unless the Government follow up this Bill with another giving them more drastic powers over private manufacturers, they are not going to prevent profiteering, but are going to promote profiteering and rises in prices such as we have already seen. What those new methods should be, it is not for the Opposition to say or to propose. But I consider that this scheme is so big that it justifies the Government, if they will not completely take control of private factories and workshops, in introducing some such Measure as the Government were compelled to do during the last war to prevent the country being rooked and bled by people who, in matters relating to armaments, consider first of all the question of profit, and only second the question of patriotism. But I do not hear the slightest suggestion of anything of the kind from the other side or from the speeches of Ministers in the country.

The other thing about which I want to speak is the suggested depression of the standard of living which will arise from the policy of raising this loan and the general policy of rearmament. I want to refer first to an influence in the policy of the Government which in this House is always derided but which, when it comes to actual policy, they follow. Whenever anyone mentions Lord Beaverbrook's in the House, the other side tries to suggest that he has nothing whatever to do with the framing of the policy of the Government, that they take no suggestions from him and that, generally speaking, they look upon him as a political enemy of theirs as much as he is of this side of the House. But when we come to examine the policy of the Government we find that on matters of the taxation to food, on matters of Imperial trading and on matters connected with the League, they follow the policy of Lord Beaverbrook. What is Lord Beaverbrook's policy with regard to the loan and how it is to be paid for? The first declaration will be found in the leading Tory evening paper of the Metropolis, which speaks for the Tory and Municipalities Reform party. Early in February in its financial columns, which in these days are almost more important than any other part of the paper, it demanded that the Government should immediately stop all municipal loans, which means the stoppage of all capital municipal expenditure. It means that there is to be no more housing by muni- cipalities, no more pulling down of slums, no more improvements that require capital expenditure to be raised: by borrowing. On 6th February it states that the money required for rearmament should come from savings on the social services, which are far too expensive and ought to be cut down. It says: If people were left to find their own social services out of their own savings, they would not only value them more highly but they would take pride in their own independence. I need not enlarge on that. The agricultural labourer referred to by the hon. Member who spoke last will, no doubt, appreciate the possibility of providing for his own unemployment pay, his old-age pension and the widow's pension of his wife out of his own savings. Then it went on to say that we should go back to the good, sound principle that, owing to the higher cost of education, the Government should enact a 13111 making parents of children who go to elementary schools pay the old school pence that we used to pay when I went to school. That is not all. On 19th February the campaign proceeded and a very definite statement was made. It demanded that the Government, in order to meet their armaments bill, should cut down the expenditure on social services by 50 per cent. That means, among other things, that old age pensions and widows' pensions are to be cut to 5s. a week, and so on throughout the social services, which have been built up under the pressure of the 'needs of the vast majority of our population. The other side may pretend that this has nothing to do with them. That is all very well, but that is the true authentic Tory voice.