Orders of the Day — Political Parties (Accounts)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 15 December 1949.

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Photo of Mr Quintin Hogg Mr Quintin Hogg , Oxford 12:00, 15 December 1949

It really is not practicable, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to give way to interruptions on the scale on which I am receiving them without completely occupying the whole of the rest of the time of the House, which I do not propose to do despite frequent interruptions.

The question of associated bodies, in my judgment at any rate, provides insuperable difficulties to the person who demands accurate or fair financial accounts of political movements. The hon. Gentleman dealt with a body called the Aims of Industry. I shall make a further reference to it in a moment or two in answer to his Question, so far as I am informed at all. He did not take an obvious, from his point of view, and far stronger case. Take the case of the Primrose League, for instance, I am not pretending in any political sense that the Primrose League is not a Conservative body, but I am speaking in a legal sense. After all, in the end we are discussing legislation. It is a wholly separate body controlled by different people and with different ascertained legal ends, although I am happy to think that it is still possible to believe in God, King and country and not be a Socialist. Still, the Primrose League would be quite outside the Conservative Party for any definite legal account. What sort of significance could accounts have if it is so easy to create separate bodies like these.

The hon. Gentleman asked about two bodies, the Economic League and the Aims of Industry, with neither of which, I hope be will believe, am I in any way associated at all. The fact about these two bodies is that it would be very much preferable from the Conservative point of view in many ways if they could be induced to come under the Conservative wing. There was a fund organised by my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Sir W. Smithers) called "The Fighting Fund for Freedom." In collecting money that was a direct rival to the Conservative Party. Money which would otherwise have come into our funds was diverted into it, but no doubt from the point of view of the hon. Member it would have to be treated as a purely Conservative organisation. Supposing I take, on the other side of the fence, something like the Socialist Fellowship, presided over, I think, by the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith), who occupies the same sort of position in the Labour Party now, as my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington does in the Conservative Party. How is that to be shown in the political accounts of the party? I do not think it would be possible to do it.

The Aims of Industry and the Economic League, which, so far as I know, although it is no doubt honoured by the presence of my hon. Friend the Member for Moseley (Sir P. Hannon), does not directly reflect the political or economic views of my hon. Friends, are, so far as I can see, bodies with very largely parallel political aims to those professed by most Conservatives and no doubt in close alliance in a practical way with many individual Conservatives. They are still entirely independent and completely unbound by party decisions and policy sometimes directly hostile to them. They are not to be included in the Conservative Party funds, as I gathered was suggested by the hon. Member. What about the Left Book Club?