Orders of the Day — Defence

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 8 March 1966.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr Emanuel Shinwell Mr Emanuel Shinwell , Easington 12:00, 8 March 1966

Before I give way to the right hon. Gentleman, because he is anxious to intervene, I would remind him of another occasion when action was taken against President Nasser during the Suez crisis when our forces were much weightier and much better equipped than they are now. We had vast manpower at our disposal. Nevertheless, we failed. On that occasion, I ventured on a line of policy which differed from that of the rest of my colleagues because, quite rightly, in my judgment—I would not withdraw a single word of what I said then—I appreciated the possibility of an attack by President Nasser and some of the other countries available to him. Under our tripartite treaty, which remains in being, I called on the then British Government—not a Labour Government but a Tory Government—to use all their efforts to prevent President Nasser from committing an act of aggression against the newly formed State of Israel.

What happened? In the military sphere, why have we never published General Keighley's dispatches? Why not disclose the fact, available to some of us at the time and since, that it took six weeks after a decision was reached by Sir Anthony Aden, now Lord Avon, to dispatch forces because, before they arrived at the scene of operations, no landing craft were available and we were not in a position to undertake an operation of that kind? That was the situation then. And yet the right hon. Gentleman has been arguing, forcibly and apparently logically, that we should now remain in Aden and take precautions in Bahrain and in the Persian Gulf with such forces as are now available to us to deal with that possible menace.

I want to say to the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues and to the House in general that if the intention is to contain President Nasser, we have quite a variety of containments in our programme.