Foreign Affairs

Part of Bill Presented – in the House of Commons at 3:55 pm on 20 February 1946.

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Photo of Mr Robert Boothby Mr Robert Boothby , Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire Eastern 3:55, 20 February 1946

I think the House has listened with great appreciation to the very remarkable speech which has just been delivered. I do not want to follow my hon. Friend into a discussion of the Polish question, because he knows more about it than I do. I content myself with expressing the hope to His Majesty's Government that they will accord decent treatment to these Poles in Italy, and in my native country of Scotland, who feel unable in existing circumstances to return to their native land. Time was in the past when we were not afraid or ashamed to offer asylum to foreigners who were willing to work and earn their way and their keep in this country; and I think that in view, especially, of our desperate shortage of labour at the present time, we could do much worse than offer generous treatment to any people who fought hard for the Allied cause during the war, and who would prefer to make their homes in the future in this country. I only say, in the light of the speech of my hon. Friend, that I hope the Government will give sympathetic consideration to this.

It has been generally acknowledged that we made a pretty fair mess of things after the last war; and that there were two main causes for this. First of all, our failure to achieve a stable political situation, or a stable economy, in Western Europe; and, secondly, our failure to make the League of Nations an effective instrument of international policy for the maintenance of peace. Our failure in Western Europe was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley (Mr. H. Macmillan) in his opening speech this afternoon. It was due, fundamentally, to our refusal to underwrite French security; and that was the cause of most of the subsequent troubles. But it was also due to our refusal to abandon the obsolete economic doctrines of laissez faire and multi - lateral free trade, and our refusal to accept the modern economic concept of regional planning and organisation, both for defence and for economic purposes. There was at the end of the last war a Supreme Economic Council, which was precipitately abolished. There was also a proposal, shortly after the last war, for an economic anschluss between Germany and Austria. It was specifically prohibited. Nor were regional agreements, political or economic, permitted by the Western democracies and victorious Allies after the last war

I vividly remember a dinner in Dusseldorf in 1928 when Fritz Thyssen, of all people, made what was probably the last concrete proposal for an economic union in Western Europe. He suggested to me that the coal and iron and steel industries of France, Germany and Great Britain should get together; and he said that the whole future of Western Europe depended on an economic union of this kind. I came back here and made two speeches on the subject in this House; and I remember that, while the idea aroused some interest, it was allowed to fade. I think Thyssen had the guts of the problem there. If we had been able to get together in an economic federation in Western Europe, with all our heavy industries, this war might never have broken out. But what happened? Instead, we poured money indiscriminately into Germany. So did the United States of America, with no plan or purpose, other than that of making quick dividends; and then we suddenly withdrew it all, in the crisis of 1930. The result was economic chaos; and 7,000,000 unemployed in Germany, on whose backs Hitler climbed into power. The absence of any effective economic co-operation on a regional basis between the many newly created political States after the last war reduced central and eastern Europe to complete anarchy

Meanwhile, the League of Nations, composed of independent, disputing Sovereign States, careless of economic realities, entirely pre-occupied with the political chess board, had completely failed to produce any kind of authority capable of imposing order upon a rapidly disintegrating world.

What is the position today? How are we doing, by comparison? It would be a brave and optimistic man who said that we were doing very much better. There are some of us who would say that we are doing even worse. We have not, I admit, abolished the Supreme Economic Council, for the very simple reasons that there is not one to abolish, and never has been. But, so far as the settlement of Western Europe is concerned, and particularly the future of Germany, we appear to have no views of any kind at all. The Russians discovered this at Yalta, at Potsdam, and at San Francisco. They discovered that we. had no views about the settlement of Europe; no views at all about the future of Germany; so they went ahead and imposed their own terms in Eastern Europe. Mr. Molotov—I watched him with great interest and considerable admiration at San Francisco—found the Western democracies of Europe divided, undecided, disunited and impotent. It was easy for him, in these circumstances, to run through their broken ranks; and the ball is still at his feet.

I am sorry, but not altogether surprised, that our relations with the Soviet Union should have become so bad. Hon. Members opposite must, I think, confess that many of them at the last Election proclaimed—my opponent did—that the return of a Socialist Government was absolutely essential to put relations between this country and Russia upon a firm, sound, good and solid basis. Yet today our relations with Russia are infinitely worse than they were when the right hon. Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) was Prime Minister. Why? Perhaps it is because the Russians have never had any great respect for indecision, for impotence, or for words as such. I am not afraid of war in the near or even in the middle future. Wars break out only because one side thinks it is strong enough to achieve a quick victory; and the only certain thing about a third world war is that both sides would be destroyed completely, and probably the rest of humanity would be annihilated at the same time. I am, however, very much" afraid of a kind of "frozen peace," based on suspicion and fear, which can do no good to this country and the rest of the world. The danger of this has not been diminished by the public slanging matches which we have recently witnessed between the Foreign Secretary and Mr. Vyshinsky. I agree with the right hon. Member for Bromley and the hon. and gallant Member for Carshalton (Brigadier Head), who, if I may say so, made a most remarkable maiden speech, that there is real hope for our future relationship with Soviet Russia. The motives of the Soviet Union are not yet quite clear to some of us on both sides of the House. But, as one who has fought for 20 years for Anglo-Soviet friendship, and who was not long ago described by a Member of the Opposition as a "hack Communist speaker," my impression is that the Russians are mainly occupied, and preoccupied, with the question of their own security; and that we can do a deal with them provided—not that we "stand up" to them as I think one hon. Member said—but provided we are perfectly frank with them, and put all our cards on the table.

I do not blame the Soviet Government for being suspicious of us, after our lamentable policy towards them between the two world wars. At the same time, I think that they underestimate, because they do not clearly understand, the importance to us of sea power, and therefore of the Eastern Mediterranean. Like many other great land powers, including Germany—and I think that was one of the main reasons why Germany lost the war—they have never quite understood the vital importance of the sea to a great maritime Power like us. I think that we can talk to them about that; and, perhaps, ultimately persuade them of it. But of one thing I am quite certain. Russia is essentially an Oriental country, and I do not think it is altogether wise to conduct negotiations with an oriental country in the teeth of the radio, and under the arc lamps of modem publicity. I do not think that, in the long run, will get you anywhere. I think that it is much better to conduct delicate negotiations in private, in spite of the clap trap that is talked about secret negotiations. Then, when you have completed your talks and arrived at some general understanding, that is the moment to bring the whole thing into the full blaze of publicity.

Let us consider for a moment this business of the United Nations, which has been referred to at intervals in the Debate today, but skated over rather quickly. I think that the term "United Nations" is, at present, something of a misnomer and, in the light of recent events, something of a farce. This Assembly of over 50 independent Sovereign States is merely an international talking shop. That is so far as it has got as yet; and so long as the veto power remains in its present form, that is as far as it will ever get. There is a good deal to be said for a talking shop—it clears the air from time to time—but a genuine union of nations must involve some surrender of national sovereignty, and that has not yet been achieved. We can all agree that our ultimate aim must be the establishment of the rule of law among the nations; and it is no use kidding ourselves that we have got it, or that we are yet within sight of it. I never thought that I should quote the "New Yorker" to this House—that remarkably vivid, gay, pungent, American newspaper with which many hon. Members are familiar. It recently contained the following remarkable passage, commenting on a statement of President Roosevelt that the United Nations had agreed upon everything up to 90 per cent, at Dumbarton Oaks: A league of sovereign independent nations faces a problem of police control which is insoluble. It may define aggression, draw rules, and agree on a means of enforcing the rules, but it must founder on the ledge of sovereignty and on the test of whether, in a pinch, a nation shall control its own destiny and act as it pleases. If you like you may call this only 10 per cent., but at a place like Munich— which is where it lands you eventually—it looks bigger than that, and tougher. I think that there is a great deal of truth in that. We can all agree that it would be better if we now had a little more action, and a little less public debate. We may perhaps be galvanised into this by the spectre of famine that hangs today over Europe and many other parts of the world. In such a situation, I submit that discussion should surely centre round food and raw materials, rather than politics and gold. I have said many times in this House that if His Majesty's Government had devoted a tenth part of the time they have wasted talking about currency stabilisation in a world that does not yet exist, to talking about goods, we should be living in a very much easier world today. The same thing goes for U.N.O. If that organisation had concentrated on the urgent and desperate tasks of rescue and reconstruction that face it, instead of allowing itself to be diverted by untimely and fruitless political controversy, the outlook today would be far more hopeful than it is.

I conclude with two constructive proposals. The first is that His Majesty's Government should impress on the United Nations organisation the desirability of setting up now a Supreme Economic Council to deal with the present emergency, charged with the responsibility for initiating a world economic policy conceived in terms of essential raw materials and food, and directed to the immediate relief of urgent human needs. I venture to suggest that had the United Nations organisation addressed itself to this most urgent and most desperate task in recent weeks, instead of wasting its time in the barren sands of fruitless political controversy, it would have made a greater contribution to human welfare, and a better impression upon the world at large.

My second suggestion is that His Majesty's Government should take the lead, for which many countries are now looking, to build up a regional economic bloc in Western Europe. It is the first time that has been mentioned in this Debate. By this I mean quite simply the regional grouping or federation of countries which have economic interests in common; similar, if not identical, economic objectives; complementary trade requirements; and, last but not least, a common political and cultural heritage, which otherwise might easily be lost. It is manifestly absurd to suggest that such a federation would be directed or organised against anyone, and no one knows that better than the Kremlin, which has done precisely and exactly the same thing in Eastern Europe already. On the contrary, a united Western Europe would provide a far more substantial and stable market for primary producing countries; and prosperity breeds prosperity. Provision for such regional organisations— and I want to press this upon the Minister of State—is specifically made in the Charter of the United Nations; and two are already in existence, one in the Western sphere embracing the United States and the South American countries, and the other in Soviet Russia and the satellite Powers which are firmly within her orbit. I submit that three such organisations are better for the United Nations, and for the world, than two. I do not want to see the world divided into great Power organisations, one of which is based on iron Communism, and the other on what my hon. Friend the Member for Chippen-ham (Mr. D. Eccles) and myself have described as free knock-about capitalism. I fear an ultimate clash between two such organisations.

I feel that in Western Europe we have a separate, different contribution to make, based upon our long history, our traditions, and our culture, which might combine the best elements both of Soviet Russia and the United States. Anyway, we had better face the realities of the situation, which are that between these two great federations of Soviet Russia, on the one hand, and the United States, on the other, fortified by their satellite Powers—because that is all you can call them either in South America or in Eastern Europe—the smaller nations of Western Europe, of whom we are one, cannot hope to survive, politically or economically, in isolation. Unless we get together in pursuit of a common political and economic policy, we shall inevitably, sooner or later, be absorbed into one or other of these two great economic and political blocs which surround us, one in the East and the other in the West. Much lip-service has been paid in this country to the principle of federation; but when it comes to action it is a rather different matter. Recently I made in the country some severely practical suggestions with regard, first of all, to the future of the Western zone of Germany; secondly, to the international control of the industries of the Ruhr; and thirdly to a reciprocal agreement on trade between like-minded countries in the Western European zone. They were dismissed, except in another place, as largely impracticable. Nevertheless, the fact remains—and this is my last sentence—that there is only one alternative to the regional planning of Europe by mutual agreement, and that is yet another attempt at unification of the European economy by force, or by the threat of force. For my part I am in favour of a serious attempt at the first; and I am therefore most strongly in favour of a clear European policy on the part of His Majesty's Government. It is the first time we shall have had it; and it is long overdue.