Orders of the Day — Nationalisation

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 2 November 1948.

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Mr. Michael Asto:

Although I, personally, am not an advocate of Moral Rearmament as a motive force or religion, I would say that the hon. Member for Walton (Mr. Haworth) raised a very interesting point on the matter of incentives and moral values, particularly in considering the extent to which the State is assuming control in the affairs of the individual. He also raised an extremely interesting point which no hon. Member on either side of the House has been able to solve, and that is how Parliament, which was devised to legislate, can possibly run the detailed business of our industries. Neither the Government side nor its critics have been able to find an answer to that. I can only say that if the hon. Member continues intellectually and politically in the same vein he will soon, of necessity, find himself a critic and an opponent of the present Government. The hon. Member rather took the wind out of my sails in that I had certain criticism to make of some of the things he said, when he stated that he knew very little about anything at all. That is an attitude of modesty which I rather applaud, and I am not trying to score a personal or party point in that connection at all.

At the beginning of his speech he concentrated on the point whether the Tory Party would have put through the social services to which they were pledged. I think it is a waste of time to discuss that matter. I would say that they would have done so while hon. Members opposite say they would not, from which we would get no further. The hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. Foot) asked us why we opposed certain social services sponsored by the present Government, and the hon. Member for Walton answered that when he talked about certain criticism from this side of the House about the school-leaving age. There are certain critics in this party on the question of the opportuneness of raising the school-leaving age at the moment, but that does not mean we as a party are opposed to the Butler Education Act. One could apply the same argument to the various social services which were drawn up by the Coalition Government and were tampered with, altered, and, in our opinion, largely ruined by the present Administration.

The hon. Member made a point which I had heard before when he said that this Debate was largely redundant because it had all taken place at the General Election. We know what the Labour Party thinks. The whole thing is theoretical. It was theoretical in 1945 apparently, and it has still to be judged upon a theoretical basis. I rather thought that this Debate was to discuss the merits of nationalisation and to see whether the evidence was there for a continuation in that process. The hon. Member made a further point. He said that he and his friends would be able to go to the country and say that they had carried out their pledges. His cry was to be "We've done it" and I suggest he adds the words "and you've had it." On this matter of consistency I have something to say later in my speech.

What a very different Debate this is from the earlier Debates. I remember the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster saying to this House: "We must get ahead and nationalise our industries because of the great benefits which will accrue to the public, because things will be cheaper while overheads will be reduced. It is the only sensible thing to do." Now the Chancellor, with his back to the wall, has been defending nationalisation because "it has not cost the public so very much." That is quite a different story. Merely because it will not cost the taxpayer or the consumer much more is no reason, as I have understood the matter, for nationalising an industry. As a party, we have always said that nationalisation must be treated on its merits.

The Chancellor of the Duchy used, as I expected him to do, certain completely dishonest arguments in this matter. He was talking about the coal industry and the reason why it showed a deficit in its balance sheet in the early stages of nationalisation. He said it was caused by the need for capital re-equipment of various kinds. He went on to the next industry—Cable and Wireless—and said that we could still use certain services much more cheaply than could the Americans. He said that the Americans had had, under private enterprise a deficit in the balance sheet for the past year in respect of the Western Union Telephone Service. That was an unfair argument, because it contained a half-truth. The Western Union Telephone Service in the United States has had to go in for a great deal of capital re-equipment for exactly the same reason as the Chancellor gave in the case of the coal industry. With Western Union it was largely due to wear and tear during the war. I suggest to the Chancellor of the Duchy that in turning these corners a bit fast and trying to wriggle out of his position he ought at least to apply a modicum of intellectual integrity to the relative arguments in hand.

I have noticed that the Labour Party are consistent in many ways. There is no intrinsic merit in consistency itself and in politics consistency is not necessarily a merit. When I look at the history of the Labour Party and then at the present Gracious Speech I remember what the Labour Party has done since it first formed a government in this country, in the first Ramsay MacDonald administration. I see three tendencies in the Labour Party and if we consider those tendencies we can but adopt certain conclusions as to where Socialism will ultimately carry us. The first tendency we see, then as now, is the old myth that the Labour Party can get on quite well with the Soviet Union, the workers' paradise, etc., etc. This argument is not one which may suit the Foreign Secretary at this moment. I will only say in passing that the rest of his Party are in this respect rather slow off the mark. My conclusion is that the Labour Party will inevitably come to an agreement with Russia if they continue on their present lines, but it will be upon the Soviet Union's own terms.

The second inclination which I saw in the first Labour Party was for the tail to wag the dog, that is to say for the extremist elements in the Party to exercise an influence in undue proportion to their numbers, over their own Front Bench. I see that tendency again today. It may not be a very large or fierce dog and it may not have a very large bark but the same thing is happening: and it will be bad if it goes unchecked. The extremist Left Wing element will eventually become the authentic and official voice of the Party. That has been the trend the whole time, and that is the conclusion we must draw.

The third trend, which we saw in Philip Snowden's first Socialist Budget, was the Labour Party's disinclination to facilitate for working men the ownership of their own houses. Now I see the trend carried a stage further. Very soon the question whether anybody should own his own house or business will be merely a matter of the past. Discussion will be concerned with the degree of criticism the individual will be allowed to voice as regards the public ownership of goods which were formerly held in private hands.

I did hope to criticise the speech made yesterday by the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith) and I have given him notice of this. I was going to take up certain points which he made. Unfortunately, however, I find that I cannot do that within the Rules of Order, except on two rather minor points. I have nothing personal against the hon. Member. I believe he meant what he said in the Debate yesterday. I do not believe that he is a fellow traveller but I think that he is the dupe of the sort of propaganda which the Communists are putting out at the moment.

The Chancellor of the Duchy said—and this relates to something which the hon. Member for Stoke said—in one of his remarks today that there was an alternative solution to the problem of unemployment in between the two wars. If he said anything at all, it was that we live and learn. I believe he was implying that it was not merely Marshall Aid which was keeping down our unemployment figures, but that it was the result of Socialist theory applied. If he says that, he is, not for the first time in his life, talking against the Lord President of the Council and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who frankly admit that were it not for Marshall Aid there would be one million and a half more unemployed in this country.

When considering the merits or demerits of nationalised industries we must remember the subsidy to employment and indeed to consumer goods which Marshall Aid is providing at the moment. I suggest to the hon. Member for Stoke that it is not helpful to refer to Marshall Aid in ungenerous terms as being a self-centred and mean act on the part of America. The right hon. Member the senior Burgess for Oxford University (Sir A. Salter) has answered that point adequately. I have been in Washington while those negotiations were going on. I am certain that Congress over there would never have passed Marshall Aid merely in the interests of their domestic budget. I am not saying that that would have been right or wrong. I personally think they would have been wrong in their own self interest, but the fact remains that they would not have passed Marshall Aid for solely internal reasons. It was largely an altruistic act in order to preserve what they regard as the British way of life, in the free countries of Europe.

That is why I am so distressed when I hear what I regard as utterly irresponsible talk going out. I would only suggest to the hon. Member—I cannot refer to his points one by one, much as I should like to—that he makes a comparison of behaviour between the United States and the Soviet Union from the first day of Lend-Lease, when Russia, having attacked Finland, was negotiating a treaty with Hitler, and that he carries that comparison through to the final stages of the war, when he will find in the United States there was pro-Russian propaganda and in Moscow anti-British and anti-American propaganda. I would like to see him take that comparison right through the whole course of the war and see whether he would not revise the conclusions he expressed last night.

Lastly the hon. Member for Stoke raised a point of extreme importance; indeed, it is of almost constitutional importance. I will try to recall the remarks which led up to it. The hon. Member was saying something which I thought was outrageous, to the effect that my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) was more a cause of international friction than anything else, and that the Labour Party believed in the brotherhood of mankind—who does not? —that we should revive the Peace Pledge Union, and that although the League of Nations Union has gone there was the United Nations Association, that in fact we should bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best. That is the sort of story the hon. Member told, based on the fact that the Labour Party want to be friends with everybody. At that point I could not stand his argument any longer, and I shouted out either "Drivel" or "Nonsense." The hon. Member replied," I will debate this outside in public, and we will see who is right." That is most interesting because it represents to my mind an entirely wrong conception of democracy.

The hon. Member was in fact saying that in this particular case matters of policy, whether they be foreign policy or domestic policy, should be decided by, in this case, the approval of 50 per cent. of the general public. That is legislation by Gallup Poll. which I would point out makes no allowance for leadership. In a democracy the mean level of intelligence in the general public is very average; it must be, or the word "average" would be quite meaningless. I suggest that the only proper system under which democracy can work at all is that once a party has been returned to power by a free and secret vote it should select from its members its brightest and most experienced people to set about defining its policy. That is the idea of leadership, choosing people who are a little better than the average.

I believe that what the hon. Member said illustrates a feeling which pervades the other side of the House. One sees it in the passing by the T.U.C. of resolutions against the Foreign Secretary. That is the way to make democracy a complete shambles, and if democracy becomes a shambles it will soon be replaced by a system of totalitarian government of the Left, which would make this whole discussion this evening one of entirely academic interest.