Orders of the Day — Refugees.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 10 July 1940.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Miss Eleanor Rathbone Miss Eleanor Rathbone , Combined English Universities

Many of us have wanted for a long time to raise this question in debate, but we have been restrained by two considerations, first, our sense of the terrific pressure and strain on all Government Departments and reluctance to add to it, and, secondly, by a reluctance to give publicity to a matter which reflects unfavourably on our country's reputation for humanity, liberality and efficiency. We are compelled to do it now by the mass of evidence pouring in upon all of us of the widespread misery and fear suffered by refugees, many of them anxious to serve our country's cause, and also of the waste of labour and talent and the clogging of the machine, which arises from the present system. The hon. and gallant Gentleman who has just spoken paid a tribute to my small efforts in this matter. He has efficiently served the cause himself for a long time. I agree with everything that he said about the liberal, humane, generous attitude of the Home Office, the Home Secretary himself, the Under-Secretaries and the principal permanent officials towards the refugee problem. I believe also that the military officers who are actually carrying out that part of the arrangements for refugees are, individually, not less humane and are carrying out a task which is deeply distasteful to them. Both Departments are doing it at the bidding of the military authorities, who, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman delicately hinted, may know a great deal about the needs of national security, but to whom one refugee is as good or as bad as another and who make no distinctions.

What are the results produced by carrying out this policy? Let us consider first the general policy, which apparently is that of the internment of all enemy aliens, with few exceptions, including those who have been pronounced by the tribunals to be victims of Nazi oppression. The theory seems to be that, if you throw your net round all the fish and draw them in, though only a very small minority of the fish are dangerous and suspicious people, you will at any rate get hold of those you want. But you do not get hold of all the dangerous people. Very many escape, some because they are not, admittedly, of enemy origin—the Quislings, those of Nazi and Fascist sympathies who are natives of countries with which we are nominally at peace and who, willingly or unwillingly, are really obeying the bidding of the Nazis. Secondly, we draw into the net not merely thousands who are reliable, but hundreds who are far more than reliable, who have undergone tests in their devotion to the cause of freedom and humanity for which we are fighting, such as not one of us has had to bear. In the struggle that they have made in their own countries against Nazi tyranny in Germany or Fascist tyranny in Italy, hundreds of those men and women have looked death in the face and have not been afraid. That is a small thing. There are thousands of men, God knows, doing that to-day in this country. But they have looked death by torture in the face, and endured torture, and have not been afraid. Hardest of all, they have deliberately risked bringing upon their husbands or wives, sons and daughters, the bestialities of Nazi cruelty. Then, at long last, somehow or other, many of them have escaped to this land, believing that they were coming to a land of freedom. They found that land of freedom plunged into a struggle which they recognised at once as their struggle and they longed to take part in it as members of the armed forces or to operate services for which their trained brains or skilled hands suited them.

They believed, too, that just because they knew their own countrymen and had watched the growth of Nazi and Fascist tyranny, they perhaps had something that they could teach us about how to master those evils, and how to keep up the morale of our own countrymen. Instead of that, not merely are their services rejected, but they find themselves treated as dangerous people and interned, under present conditions, along with their lifelong enemies—Jews and political refugees with Nazis—and treated as so dangerous that they may not even receive newspapers or listen to the wireless and they live in conditions very similar to those of a convict prison. Is all that really necessary? Is there no better way? I acknowledge that at this stage of the war and at this tremendous period of emergency it is probably too late to ask the Government to change its whole system and to reverse the engine. We shall be told that national security must come first. Of course it must, but the question we ask the Government to consider seriously is: Cannot the method and machinery be improved, not only in the interests of humanity and of the refugees, but in the interests of security itself?

Let us consider the main problem. First of all, how far is the policy of general internment going? Is it to be extended to all women of enemy alien countries? At present it is mainly extended to men, whether they are the victims of Nazi oppression or whatever they are. Is it to be extended to those of other than enemy nationalities—Poles, Rumanians and natives of Scandinavian countries? There may be dangerous people among those. There were dangerous Belgians, Dutch and Norwegians. Is the principle of internment to be extended to all those? It is amusing to know that all men are regarded as dangerous and all women are regarded, presumably, as too stupid to be dangerous. At any rate, it would be merciful to let the classes of refugees and aliens who have not yet been interned, the women and the people of other nationalities, know where the sword of Damocles is about to fall. No one can suppose that there are advantages in keeping these people "in the dark" until the last moment in order that the dangerous ones among them shall not escape, because all of them are expecting internment from day to day and from hour to hour.

The result is that it is becoming more and more impossible for any alien, and certainly for any woman of German nationality, to get any employment. To give an example, between boo and 700 nurses were turned out of hospitals all over England because they were of enemy alien nationality; British nurses were brought in; and when later the decision was reversed, the matrons and those responsible for the nurses did not dare to take them back, because it was expected that these women were going to be seized and interned any day. Cannot we be told what the policy of internment is to be? Could it not be limited in such a way as to exclude those against whom there is no shadow of suspicion that they are dangerous people? Very large numbers of them have gone through the tribunals already, and if the tribunals have pronounced them to be safe and the police know nothing against them, why intern them?

I should like now to deal with the conditions of exemption. Certain conditions have been laid down, and I believe it is the intention of the Home Office somewhat to extend those conditions. I want to know who are to be exempted. Is it to be only the very young, the very old, the very sick, students and boys and girls at school, and those engaged in work of national importance? Those are the principal categories that are supposed to be exempted at present. Let me take the most important of those categories—the people engaged in work of national importance. I ask that particular attention should be given to this issue, because I believe that it is one of the most important issues. If these men and women are engaged, as thousands of them are, not in work pronounced by the War Office or the Ministry of Supply to be national work in the sense of being directly for the war, but in useful work, in science and learning, in production for export or in agriculture, will they be considered as being engaged in work of national importance? If men or women are unreliable, they are more likely to be dangerous persons if they are set free to work in munitions factories and other war factories than if they are working in an ordinary factory or in an agricultural colony, producing food or other articles not directly used as part of the war machine. Why not exempt all those against whom there is no shadow of suspicion—make the test as strict as you like—and who are engaged in some form of useful work?

Having settled the categories, there then arises the very important point, of who is to be responsible for interpreting the categories. At present, as far as I can make out, it is the ordinary policeman or his immediate superior, and it is quite amazing what results this leads to. For example, with regard to work of national importance, I handed to the Under-Secretary of State yesterday a batch of cases which included a man who is managing director of a company which at this very moment is carrying out contracts for four different Ministries of a total value of nearly £500,000. That man has been interned. There have been handed to the Under-Secretary particulars of several scores of factories, workshops, and agricultural settlements which have been stripped of their directors or key workers, because these people have been interned or driven out of particular areas. That is not intended, of course, but results largely from the way in which individual policemen or their superiors interpret what is meant by work of national importance.

Again, take the question of sick people, who are supposed to be released. I handed to the Under-Secretary yesterday a batch of cases of men who are suffering in the advanced stages of heart disease, diabetes, glaucoma; and one case of a man who was due to have an operation for a cataract that very day, who told that to the policeman, but was not allowed to have his internment put off for one day so that he might have the operation, although the doctor had said that it was essential that it should take place quickly. I should like to quote one case where the exercise by the police of their responsibility led to a particularly tragic result. It is the case of a man who was a professor of chemistry for 23 years at a German university. He is 62 years old. He is an international authority on dyestuffs, and at this very moment his book on that subject is being translated by Harvard University. He was kept in Germany so that other countries could not profit by his knowledge; he was thrown into the most brutal concentration camp, suffered tortures for 17 days, and finally, when he was released, came to this country. He was permitted to do research work with a research grant, and for the last year has been employed by a company where he has been developing a process for utilising, sisal waste particularly for use in submarines. Is that work of national importance?

His firm applied to the Home Office for an exemption. A week ago the police called at his flat, he showed them his application to the Home Office, he asked them to wait until that application had been investigated; they refused, and told him that they would come back shortly. He warned them that he could not endure another internment. They came back in two hours, but he had escaped from the stupidity and the malice of others—he had taken a quick poison. When the inquest was held, one of the two police officers asked the widow whether her husband was a Jew, and she said, "No, he was of Jewish origin, but baptised a Christian"; whereupon, the police officer turned to the other, and said, "What a pity. If we had only known before." The policeman thought that the man's Jewish origin was a reason for not exempting him from internment. I have not investigated that story, but it was told to me from what I believe to be a reliable source. I can hand all the particulars to the Under-Secretary. I believe that the police are not suitable people to administer and interpret these extremely complicated regulations. There should be more careful classification beforehand. I ask that use should be made of the numerous heads of the refugee organisations who have known these people for months or for years.

I want to ask what are the conditions of release from internment. At present it is about as easy to get a man out of an interment camp as it is to pull a camel through the eye of a needle. I want to know whether, if a man has been wrongly interned, either because the regulations were wrongly interpreted or because there were later modifications and changes, he ought not to be entitled to be disinterned. If there has been a mistake by the authorities, why should a man suffer for it? May we be told whether a man interned under conditions which do not apply is entitled to disinternment? May we also be told what is the machinery for getting a man out of an internment camp? Either there should be a new tribunal, or perhaps a group of civil servants who could decide quickly on these matters, without waiting for weeks and weeks because they have other work to do. Do not put the work on to the overburdened commandants.

There is, then, the question of the conditions in the camps. I do not want to say too much about this matter, because I know that what is unsatisfactory in the conditions in the camps—and there is much that is unsatisfactory—is not due to any intention of inhumanity, but to the fact that the commandants have been simply swamped by a continual and irregular flow of new internees, who have come on them like an avalanche before it was possible for them to dig out the victims of the previous avalanche. Is it right, for example, that at such a camp as the Huyton camp, which has been going for weeks, they should still be almost entirely devoid of chairs, tables and beds, so that elderly people have to sleep on the floor on mattresses, or, as I have been told, on heaps of straw? Is it impossible to get these simple and obvious articles of furniture without indenting for them from military supplies? Is nobody authorised to cut the red tape and drive to Liverpool, which is about four miles away, and order immediately a few things of that sort?

Is it necessary to deprive these internees of newspapers and wireless, to forbid them to take their own books and violins? I do not say this is true of all the internment camps, for the conditions vary, and in many camps the conditions regarding newspapers and wireless have been relaxed. That should be done in the case of all the camps. Could not trained workers, who know the languages of the internees, be appointed by the refugee organisations to work under the commandants, and to help them in their overwhelming task of controlling and sorting out the internees, arranging pastimes and recreation, and so on? With regard to the policy of deportation, how far is this policy to be carried? Is the Under-Secretary for War aware of the real panic that exists at present among internees and their families as to whether they are going to be whisked off overseas, without previous notice to their families? It has happened in a very large number of cases.