Anti-Submarine Defence

Part of Orders of the Day — Navy Estimates, 1950–51; Navy Supplementary Estimate, 1949–50 – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 22 March 1950.

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Photo of Mr Kenneth Robinson Mr Kenneth Robinson , St Pancras North 12:00, 22 March 1950

I am glad of the opportunity of taking part in the Debate upon the Navy Estimates. It is an opportunity difficult to resist, as past experience shows, for those who spent their wartime service in the Navy. I am also glad to take part in a Naval Estimates Debate which has been opened so ably by another ex-R.N.V.R. officer. I wish to raise one or two points concerning personnel, and I do not wish to detain the House for very long. I strongly support the plea which has just been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) for a reform it boys' service. I always thought during my time in the Navy that it was most unreasonable that boys should be tied down by a contract made when they were children, and which only became operative when they became men.

It is gratifying to know that, alone of the three Services, the Navy can substantially fulfil its personnel requirements by voluntary recruitment. I hope that that fact will not make my noble Friend the First Lord or the Board of Admiralty relax in any way the reforms which they have put into effect in the last few years, or fail to extend very much further the process of democratisation of the Navy on which the last Labour Government made so excellent a start. Perhaps I might now touch upon one or two points concerning the amenities of the Navy. In doing so I may tread upon ground already covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield, East (Mr. J. P. W.

Mallalieu) earlier in the Debate. If I do so it is because my experience in the Navy and his are roughly parallel, and because our reactions to those experiences were not entirely dissimilar.

The question of overcrowding in mess-decks of ships is a very serious one. I realise that I saw it at its worst during the war when ships were piled high with gadgets for which they were never designed, gadgets which not only took up space but required even more men to man them. The situation was so appalling then that I cannot believe that it has been completely solved now. I read some two years ago, in the Debate on the Navy Estimates at that time, that in new construction the Admiralty would re-arrange the proportion of space given to officers and men. This is a very desirable and very belated reform and one which can hardly be carried too far. I was glad to hear from the Parliamentary Secretary that a committee on ship design policy has been set up. I hope it will give priority to seeing that we get a very much more equitable distribution of space as between men and officers.

A problem rather allied to that is the necessity for providing some space for quiet and privacy for naval ratings. This may be thought to be catering for a minority, but it is at any rate catering for a minority which will become ever larger. There are people who find that the turmoil and hurly-burly of mess-deck life at times becomes intolerable. It is proper that they should have somewhere to go to write their letters, to read or even just to think. I know that it is extremely difficult in small ships, but it can be done in big ships. We had it under war-time conditions in the battleship in which I served, and the experiment was most successful. I hope that it will be carried further and that it will certainly be developed in barracks.

Another question to which I wish to draw attention may appear trivial to some hon. Members, particularly if they have not had the advantage of serving on the lower deck. It is the method of paying the men. If this has been reformed since I was in the Navy I should be glad to be corrected by the Civil Lord, but so far as I know that old system still obtains. This business of queuing up long before payment begins, of taking off one's cap and putting it on the paymaster's table is very irksome indeed to naval ratings. To the best of my recollection the other occasions on which one was ordered "Off caps" in the Navy were at divine service, sometimes at inspections, where the purpose, as far as I can see, was to make sure that the sailors had their hair cut short enough, and, of course, when one was hauled on to the quarter deck or in front of the captain as a defaulter.

It is this last association which sticks in the sailor's mind, and the result is that the payment of the men takes place in an atmosphere very far removed from that which should accompany a straightforward payment for services rendered. There is a feeling of humiliation about it, whatever the rights and wrongs of it may be and whatever traditional explanation may be given. I see no need whatever for this procedure, and I hope that a change will be made very soon. While on the subject of pay, I should like to add that in my experience the business of computing pay from week to week was unnecessarily complicated. One never knew how little or how much one would get, and on occasions when one got a "north-easter" there never seemed to be an adequate explanation for it. There is a lot of room for simplification here.

I want to say a word about democratisation. That is not a word I like, but it is a word which at least conveys to all hon. Members what I mean. Very much has already been done by my noble Friend and his predecessor in this direction, and also as a result of pressure from this side of the House, but the process needs to go still further. As hon. Members know, during the war the Royal Navy eventually had to come to the R.N.V.R. for over 80 per cent. of its officers. I remember well the Admiralty Fleet Order under which, as a very green sub-lieutenant, I was appointed to the flagship of the Home Fleet. To the best of my recollection, the A.F.O. indicated that in future capital ships and cruisers were to be manned primarily by R.N.V.R. officers "with a leavening of R.N. officers." We did not agree with the phraseology, but we got the idea. On the technical side, of course, we could not begin to compete with the professional officers. There was some pleasant fiction that an R.N.V.R. officer was somehow the equivalent of an R.N. officer of the same rank and seniority, but no one really believed that

and least of all the R.N.V.Rs. Some were extremely efficient and the rest of us got by as best we could, always, of course, with greatest assistance and encouragement from the straight stripes.

There was, however, one respect in which I always felt we had the advantage. Nearly all of us had been on the lower deck and we knew what the men on the lower deck felt and thought. We knew their worries and we knew what they thought of officers in general. We knew these things while the Regular officers could only guess at them, and they were apt sometimes to guess wrong. It was this first-hand experience which made us better officers than we would otherwise have been. So I express my opinion that every naval officer during his training should have the maximum opportunity of serving on the lower deck as a rating. Put a white band round his cap if you must, but let him share the discomforts, the entertainment and the boredom and the community life of the mess-deck. I am sure that he, too, will be a far better officer for that experience.

I also welcome the decision, which is now being implemented, to take 25 per cent. of all naval officers from the lower deck. I would like to see this percentage stepped up until the whole system of class selection for officers is a dead letter. It is only through the knowledge of every man on the lower deck that, if he has the ability and the desire to work for a commission, it is available it is only through the first-hand experience which officers gain from having served on the lower deck, that the serious and undesirable gulf which still separates officers from men in the Royal Navy will be bridged.