Orders of the Day — Armaments.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 30 July 1934.

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Photo of Mr Winston Churchill Mr Winston Churchill , Epping

I gather from statements made in the public Press that this is not only a Vote of Censure but the first Vote of Censure which we have been favoured with during the lifetime of the present House of Commons. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Whether that be so or not, it is, at any rate, a most remarkable Vote of Censure. I do not remember in my experience one quite like it. I have never seen a Vote of Censure on a question of this grave importance brought forward with so little evidence of conviction or indignation on the part of those who invite the House of Commons to censure the Government of the day. The tameness of the speech of the right hon. Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) was hardly counteracted by his imaginative excursion upon the four horses of the Apocalypse. The reins having been thrown upon the necks of these grim and sinister animals the right hon. Gentleman feels himself dragged along at the chariot wheels, but, nevertheless, he has maintained considerable composure under all the circumstances, and if he is about to participate in a Vote of Censure on His Majesty's Government it can at least be said that he must express his opinion by his vote rather than by any argument he has adduced.

The position which has been unfolded to us to-day and the state of the world leave us in no doubt that the situation is most serious and grave. Europe is moving ever more rapidly into a tightly drawn condition. Hatreds are rampant, disorder is rife, almost all the nations are arming, and everyone feels, as the Lord President of the Council has admitted, that the danger which we dread most of all and which we seek most of all to avert is drawing nearer to us. If this be the state of Europe, what is our position in relation to Europe? We are deeply involved in Europe. We are more deeply involved, much more precisely and formally involved, in Europe than we were 20 years ago. I think that is indisputable. We have signed the Treaty of Locarno. It is quite true that that Treaty has a double action, which is largely theory at any given time, but there is no doubt that we are at the present moment under obligations in regard to acts of aggression by Germany which are far more precise than any which bound us 20 years ago.

Ministers with the full assent of Parliament have repeatedly affirmed the sanctity, reality and modernity of these obligations. There is the Eastern Pact, which the House approved of so generally and warmly, which does not add to our obligations but which certainly increases the contingencies in which existing obligations might become effective. Only last week we had a declaration from the Foreign Secretary, a very important speech, reaffirming our interest in maintaining the neutrality of Belgium, even stronger, I think, it was than before the Great War. Then there have been declarations, made as far as I can gather with the assent of Parliament, both sides as far as there are two sides, which have associated us with other great and friendly Powers in earnestly desiring to maintain the independence of Austria. We are to hear more about that to-morrow. Lord Halifax, last Saturday, in a public speech which no doubt will be studied with great care abroad, made it clear that we were not to be excluded as a factor in a possible European conflict, and now, finally, the Lord President of the Council uses a phrase which I am sure by now has travelled from one end of the world to the other, when he said, with his customary directness, that our frontiers are the Rhine. If the Labour Opposition, if the Socialist Opposition, had their way I gather that we should now have added the cold, unforgetting, unforgiving hostility of Japan to all these other serious preoccupations, and that the acting Leader of the Opposition would be reminding us that our frontiers were the Yangtse. These are the world conditions, a state of alarm and disorder, and uncertainty, our own country intermingled with them, and it is in the light of this situation that we are invited to pass a Vote of Censure on the Government because they come forward and make some proposals for strengthening our defensive forces.

What are the measures which the Government propose, for which they fire to be punished by a Vote of Censure? As I understand, no White Paper has been produced, we do not know how the money is to be distributed or in what form; no details are provided; we have a general scheme to spend £20,000,000 in five years upon increasing our Air Force. Within the period with which this House will be concerned, which is what immediately concerns us in the discharge of our responsibilities, the proposal is to spend £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 on the Air Force by the end of the financial year ending on the 31st of March, 1936. Shortly after that, as hon. Members no doubt are aware, there will probably be a General Election and a new situation may occur. At any rate, dealing as I am with the responsibility of Members of the present House of Commons, that is the sum and total of the proposals which the Government make; that we should spend £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 before the end of this Parliament.

I gather—I speak under correction in this matter—that probably means an addition to our fighting aeroplanes of perhaps 50 machines in the lifetime of the present Parliament. Instead of 550, which is our present home defence air strength, we shall have about 600 by the end of the financial year. I hope that we shall have some figures, because it is important, not merely to deal with this matter in broad and general terms, but to produce figures which can be comprehended. We shall have about 600. At the present time we are the sixth air Power in the world. But every State is rapidly expanding its air force. They are all expanding, but much more rapidly than we are doing. It is certain, therefore, that when the Government, this National Government and this National House of Commons, go in 1936 to the country and give an account of their stewardship, we shall have fallen further behind other countries than we are now in air defence.

I take it that that is the position. And we shall be relatively weaker than we are now if we imagine that what is being done in this and other countries is all carried out, even if we execute that portion of the programme now proposed, for which the Government is to be censured. If you extend your view over the five-years' programme I believe it is also true to state that, having regard to the increases which are being made by other countries and which are projected, even if the whole programme is carried out, at the end of the period, if there is continuity of policy between the two Parliaments, we shall be worse off in 1939 relatively—it is relativity that counts in these matters—than we are now. By that time France, Soviet Russia, Japan, the United States and Italy, if they carry out their present intentions, will be further ahead of us than they are now. I believe there is no dispute about this, just in the same way as there is no dispute about the gravity of the European situation or the extremely deep manner in which we are involved in it. Yet even for this tiny, timid, tentative, tardy increase of the Air Force, to which the Government have at length made up their mind, they are to be censured by the whole united forces of the Socialist and Liberal parties here and throughout the country.