Vote on Account.

Part of Orders of the Day — Supply. — [5TH March]. – in the House of Commons at on 10 March 1919.

Alert me about debates like this

I want to pass now to the conduct of the Home Office in connection with conscientious objectors. I wish the House to realise that it is no pleasure for anyone to have to talk against the ideas of nine-tenths of the House of Commons. I do it because I believe the honour of this country demands that someone should stand up for the under-dog. It has always been our tradition that we should have people to support unpopular causes, and however unpopular the cause it is our duty, if we feel that injustice is being done, to advocate that cause. I remember talking to an Indian agitator when I was in the States a year ago. After he had been lecturing me on all the crimes that England had committed towards India for the past 200 or 300 years he turned round to me and in an engaging way said, "That is all right. America is infinitely worse than England. There is no liberty here. In England you have always got the 'Daily News,' the 'Manchester Guardian,' and the 'Nation,' but there is no independent Press in America. There is no one who stands up for the under-dog. There is no one who supports an unpopular cause in Congress." We have always had someone who stands up for an unpopular cause. Therefore I ask hon. Members to bear with me if I deal with this very unpopular subject. The Home Secretary agreed the other night that these people in the first place could come out of prison if they wanted because they can accept alternative civil employment. That is not quite true. I want to press upon the Home Secretary that he should make clear to those people, if indeed it is his intention, that anyone who wants can come out of prison, if he is prepared to accept alternative civil employment. I do not think many will come out on that plea, because fortunately there is a good deal of solidarity among these men and they say, quite rightly, "All or none." That is a spirit which I cannot criticize. There is another point on which we were more or less agreed. That is that these men, having proved that they are conscientious by haying been in many cases five times court-martialled and by having been imprisoned for two and a-half years for conscience' sake, ought to have been exempted from military service altogether. Of course almost every other conscientious objector in the country has been, I should say, although there are l,500 still in prison, there are at least 1,500 exactly similar people who were exempted by tribunals on grounds differing in no respect from those on which the other 1,500 were sent to prison. These 1,500 men, having proved that they are conscientious objectors, and being therefore according to the Act exempt from imprisonment and from the Army, ought now to be let out. I think the Home Secretary accepts that, but if he let them out, he says, we should have complaints from all over the country, from soldiers serving and from their parents and relations. It has always been a principle dinned into my ears, that it was our duty to do justice though the heavens may fall. If a thing is right the Government has got to do it. If it is just the Government ought to carry out the dictates of justice instead of being swayed by fears of what the consequences of doing justice may be. Really, if we are going to swallow popular whim or public opinion, justice in this country becomes an absolute farce. I have no doubt if the public as a whole could vote on the subject they would all send Mr. Ramsay Macdonald and possibly myself to prison. They would say, "These are undesirable people," and on exactly the same argument people who have committed no crime whatever would be put in prison because it was the popular thing to do. Is not that exactly the same as the Home Secretary's argument, that, although it is unjust that these men should be put in prison, yet because of popular clamour they are to be kept in prison? A country which carries on its ideas of administration on these lines is going downhill, and is putting a blot upon our history which it will take centuries to remove. It will be thrown in our teeth by subsequent generations, that knowing these people to be innocent we have kept them in prison year after year, although we know they had committed no crime, although they had obviously proved themselves to be conscientious objectors, because the Government was afraid. That is a situation which ought to be faced by the Home Secretary. It is very well for him to smile. He is there to administer justice and not to carry on administration by favour of public opinion.