Debate on the Address.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 3 November 1936.

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Photo of Sir Archibald Sinclair Sir Archibald Sinclair , Caithness and Sutherland

I am grateful to the hon. Member for the correction, and I hope he will understand that the last thing I wanted to do was to misrepresent what he said. It is a pity then that the sympathy and friendliness of the German people find so little expression in the policy of the German Government, that they refuse to answer the Government's Notes on the arrangements to be made for the Locarno Conference. Even now the Government are able to say only that they will persist in their efforts to bring about a meeting—it is not even certain that they can bring about a meeting of the five Powers. Nor do I find any evidence of sympathy in the speech of General Goering. Fifty nations were following the lead of this Government a year ago in united resistance to aggression, and now the Government are unable even to bring five Nations into conference on the preservation of peace in Western Europe, and we are exposed to the flouts and gibes and threats of Italian and German statesmen. A year ago we were launched on a policy of steady and collective resistance to aggression and we had the support of 50 great nations in that policy. The Secretary of State for War, after a year of the Government's conduct of foreign policy and, as I believe, as the result of it, said, speaking only four weeks ago, that the prospect of Europe was enough to terrify the stoutest heart. A year ago the Government's election manifesto spoke of British influence which was so conspicuous, but there is very little sign of the strength of British influence in international affairs to-day. It is true that Ministers have lost the initiative which they seized at Geneva in September of last year—and the fact that they did seize that initiative and assumed the responsibility of taking the lead among the nations of the world does justify the Leader of the Opposition and the rest of us who condemn their policy in holding them in large measure responsible for the deterioration in the foreign situation since then. If they have lost that initiative, let them at any rate support the hopeful initiatives which are now being taken by the French Government in international affairs.

On the initiative of M. Blum measures are being taken to revive the work of the Disarmament Conference, yet I do not see in the King's Speech any mention of that work. Again, a vitally important initiative has been taken in economic disarmament by M. Blum. The Prime Minister spoke of the need of "more general trade" if we were to revive the trade of this country, if we were to do anything really effective for the unemployed. As he truly said, export trade is not the only trade of this country but world trade. M. Blum has taken promising steps to lower the barriers to export trade. He has expanded French quotas—he has removed 100 of them altogether—and has lowered French tariffs. His lead has been followed by Italy, by Switzerland, by Latvia and by Holland. Why has it not been followed by this country; and why is there no mention in the King's Speech of definite measures which will be taken to support and to follow up the lead which M. Blum has given?

There is another important omission from the King's Speech. There is no reference to the very important report, published a day or two ago, of the Royal Commission on the Manufacture of and Trade in Arms. I think the House will be indulgent to me if I remind it that it was on the initiative of the Liberal party that this matter was raised in the House last Session and on our initiative that the Government set up this Commission. Certainly it was so. It is no use the Lord President of the Council denying it, because I can quote from a speech by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, who was then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in which he acknowledged it across the Floor of the House. It was on our initiative that the Commission was set up, and, indeed, we were greatly criticised at the time, both in the House and in the public Press, for having allowed ourselves to be "led up the garden path." It was said that we had given the Government the opportunity of setting up a whitewashing Commission which would result in a report of no real value, and we were criticised in the public Press of the Left and in this House on those grounds.

But we took the responsibility then, and I am going to take the credit now, whatever the Lord President of the Council says. Now the report has been published and it has been everywhere well received. I pay a tribute to the Government for their choice of the members of the Commission, who represented widely different schools of thought, and it is very remarkable that those men and women, representing so many different schools of thought, should have reached a unanimous conclusion. The conclusions of the Commission are of very great importance from all aspects of this very complicated problem. I notice that, on the one hand, the supporters of the Government have acclaimed the report and that Dr. Addison, who speaks for the Socialist party on this matter with very great authority, because he was for some time Minister of Munitions during the War, says: After a first reading of the report I am favourably impressed. Indeed, the Commission has gone considerably further than I expected. This report contains a massive and persuasive statement of the case for important reforms. First, for the effective organisation of the armament industry by a controlling body, with executive powers, acting tinder the authority of a Minister responsible to Parliament. Second, for the strict limitation of profits in armaments manufacture. Third, for the international control of the trade in arms, in accordance with the proposals of the United States Government. Fourth, for the conscription of industry in war-time—a proposal which, it will be recognised, raises very grave problems. I do not for one moment suggest that the Government have had time to consider or to bring before us at once definite proposals under that head, but the proposals under the other three heads are all of great importance and) deal with a matter which is greatly exercising the minds of people and especially of young people in this country. I am inclined to think that this report will provide firm and sound ground upon which public opinion can be rallied and focussed on the urgent need of suppressing the evils, so far as it can be done in advance of general disarmament, of the private manufacture of and trade in arms. The report has been in the hands of the Government for more than a month, and I do not think it is premature for me now to ask the Government what they propose to do about it, and whether we shall have the opportunity, during the present Session, of passing legislation about any of the matters with which the report deals.

I turn next to home affairs; and there are two paragraphs on which I would meantime venture to offer a few observations. First of all there is the paragraph which relates to Scotland. The Welsh Members may be inclined to envy the Scottish Members in having a paragraph to themselves. At the same time, I am afraid that a number of matters upon which Scottish opinion is most exercised at the present time find no mention in this paragraph. For example, there is the growing demand in Scotland, which has been voiced by the Convention of Royal Burghs and by leaders of public opinion, for an inquiry into the working of the Rating Act of 1929. That subject is arousing great feeling, especially in the small burghs of Scotland, and I would ask the Government to set up that inquiry.

Then there is the question of farm servants' wages. That is a matter which has exercised us for the last year or two, and has been the subject of debates in this House. Eventually the Government set up a committee, presided over by Lord Caithness, to go into this question. They presented a report last summer, in which they recommended the establishment of Wages Boards, and I would ask whether the Government intend to ask the House to give effect to their recommendations. Then there was the promise made by the Government in their Election Manifesto that the provision of water supply and drainage in sparsely-populated areas would be dealt with. It is a matter of immense importance in the rural districts, and especially in the Highlands of Scotland, and I would press the Government to say whether we shall have proposals to deal with water supply and drainage in sparsely-populated areas in Scotland laid before us this Session. Lastly, there is the five-year road plan. A whole year has passed, and still it has not been begun in a number of counties in Scotland. I hope we shall get some assurance that the five-year road plan will be put promptly into operation.

The other subject in connection with home affairs with which I want to deal is the Special Areas. I share the astonishment of the Leader of the Opposition that there is in the Gracious Speech no reference to unemployment. The only reference to Special Areas is the statement that the Special Areas Act is to be continued. That Measure has not fulfilled the hopes of those who introduced it into this House, and it will need amendment, but I gather from what the Prime Minister said that it will be introduced under the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, a procedure which will preclude its amendment, and I think that in that case it will prove to be useless in the future. The figures for unemployment in November, 1934, as shown in the "Economist" last week, when compared with the figures for last September, show that the improvement in unemployment in the Special Areas, in spite of this special legislation, is actually less than the improvement in employment in the country as a whole. But, indeed, the case is really worse than those figures, taken at their face value, would suggest, because even such improvement as has taken place in the Special Areas is due not so much to increased employment as to transfers. It was hoped that the effect of the legislation would be not to facilitate the transfer of people from the Special Areas, but to revive the economic life of those areas and to give men a chance of employment in their own localities. I suggest, therefore, that it will be useless to continue this legislation unless we have an opportunity of amending it and making it a better Act, and, I would add, once we have done that, an opportunity of bringing in other areas which are just outside the Special Areas but which need help just as much as the Special Areas themselves.

The one policy which would really help the Special Areas most of all, which would cut at the very root of their problems, is economic disarmament. In the interests both of the revival of the depressed areas and of peace, economic disarmament is the most urgent problem of the day. As regards peace, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs said so two or three weeks ago in his speech at Sheffield, but his colleagues will not listen to him. Tariffs and quotas breed battleships and aeroplanes, and not until our Government respond to the French initiative and use the League of Nations for economic as well as for military disarmament can the evil spirit of nationalism be exorcised. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his speech at the bankers' dinner a few weeks ago, said: Adjustment of currencies must be followed by a relaxation of trade restrictions. But he added that the Government had not in contemplation any change in the system of moderate protection which they have established. There is no hope for the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs there—no hope for peace; and yet, unless we can open the international markets to trade, the capitalist system will jam and war will be the only way out. Of course there is a difficulty in breaking down the glass houses which have been erected round these new vested interests by the protective system, but we must make a beginning if we are to revive international trade and if this phrase in the Gracious Speech is to be anything more than a phrase and is to be translated into action. We must make a beginning, and I suggest to the Government that a very sensible beginning would be for them to announce their willingness to reduce tariffs and expand quotas by one-twentieth. That would be a, good start. It would not satisfy me, it would not be the whole policy, but it would be a good start to make, and would begin to thaw the ice of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke in one of his speeches. It is only if we do that that we can hope to restore prosperity to the depressed areas, for the economic factor which is common to the depressed areas is that they all depend upon exporting and maritime industries, and unless we can revive those industries there is no hope of reviving the economic life of the depressed areas. For their sakes, therefore, and in the interests of peace, I appeal to the Government not merely to give verbal assurances to the House, such as are given in the King's Speech, that they will maintain their efforts to secure a freer exchange of goods throughout the world, but that they will tell us what definite measures they are going to take to follow up M. Blum's initiative.