Defence

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 16 April 1957.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr George Brown Mr George Brown , Belper 12:00, 16 April 1957

If the Conservative Party swears that it has none of these worries within itself, it is more out of touch with the people of the country than any Government has a right to be. I will stand by, as I must, what I have said in the past on this, but I am bound to take account of the fact that there has been a great movement of opinion in two years and that those of us who hold our view about it are bound to try to argue that case, recognising the differences of opinion that exist and not behaving as though they ought not to exist. I forecast that there will not only be the British Council of Churches differing in opinion. Hon. and right hon. Members opposite will find that there will be one of these public opinion polls which will have a considerable impact on those on the other side of the House when it shows how much division there is among the British people on this issue.

What is the basis of the division and what is the problem? First of all, it is that people are uncertain about the thing that we are discussing, and nobody was more uncertain—honourably uncertain—than the Minister of Defence this afternoon. The same may be said of me by the time I have sat down, but I thought that the right hon. Gentleman was very uncertain in his attempt to deal with the problem of the ultimate deterrent, the weapon of mass destruction, the nuclear deterrent, and, against the megaton range, the kiloton range, which we shall try to use to make up for the relative lack on our side of the conventional forces of which other people have so many. When we have the problem of using that weapon without producing mass suicide and the problem of dealing with a limited war and getting the sort of limited aims that might result from limited wars, the Minister of Defence is as uncertain as anybody. We must expect people to be worried and divided. The only certainty is the uncertainty of life.

The uncertainty is the uncertainty of what happens to the future generation. I do not think I have ever spoken in this House as a Christian in name, but we are in Holy Week, and religion has something to do with politics on occasions. My approach to this is of somebody who is prepared to defend my view that Britain should still have a nuclear deterrent. My view on this issue is that of the most agonising call ever made: Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. We do not know what we do. We do not know the consequences. We do not know that we may not be using the devil's means to interfere with the Creator's purpose. And it is no use any of us pretending that we do. The answer is that we do not, and we have to take all this into account.

None of this is new or special to me. I say all this because in the last fortnight or so, since I took occasion to make clear where I stood on this issue, and took occasion to make clear what the Minister has repeated today, and what the policy of my party has been on this—since then I have experienced the impact of the degree of public opinion thereon. I do not mean attacks on myself calling upon me to resign, abusing me. I am used to those as a trade union official for many years. I mean the kind of thing that is coming now from ordinary people, good people. One gets the impression of a vast impact, a vast amount of feeling, and a great change of feeling.

Remember that we know a lot more about this weapon, or at any rate we have a lot more evidence on the slate in 1957 than we had in 1955, and it is no use just shrugging all that off. Of course there will be anxious re-examination, anxious reconsideration of this matter, I hope throughout the nation. I hope also that whilst those of us who take the view that it is essential for our national position to have in our own hands the possibilities of using the deterrent, take into account the real emotions and feelings that motivate those who disagree with us, we shall find that those who disagree with us, in turn, will take account of the fact that we are moved by all those carne emotions, too, even if we may have come down in another way. Incidentally, when I refer to our national position, I do not mean pride and power, but our geographical position.

Of course, it is easier for some of us to follow a logical course of action right through, coldly. Some of us are made that way. Some of us can argue from the decision to make the atomic bomb, through the decision to make the hydrogen bomb, the Christmas Island as a logical consequence, very coldly, but that does not mean that everybody is made as coldly as that. For some people the thing is complicated right through. I go back on nothing I have said. The policy of my party as it is now—and of course it may change at any time by due processes, because we are a democratic party—is as it has been published. But those of us who make the case for this deterrent, and who hope to hold it at that position in a democratic society, have to make a case that can be held.

I am shocked, I say it quite frankly, starting from that point of view, which I hope will commend itself to the Minister. I am shocked, both in the White Paper and in his speech, at the loose way in which the phrase "the ultimate deterrent" is employed. Today the Minister called it the H-bomb, but in the White Paper will be found the phrase "ultimate deterrent", which I assume means the same thing, namely, the means of mass destruction. It gives me the impression that some scientific gentleman in the Ministry of Defence, who has been propaganding this idea for some time, has at last found a Minister who will take an idea that has not been worked out, and will run off and present it in all its awfulness.

If I may weary the House with my own personal thinking on this subject, it seems to me that there is, and must be, more than one degree of deterrent in this business of the ultimate deterrent. I say that because the ultimate deterrent, the H-bomb, the weapon of mass destruction, is only a weapon right up to the day on which it is used. On the day in which it is used, and thereafter, it is no longer a weapon for Britain. It may be a weapon for somebody else with a bigger area, but for Britain it ceases to be a weapon because we are very small and we will have experienced all the consequences.

So that it is a weapon only so long as it remains a deterrent. Therefore, we have to maintain it as a deterrent. I offer this to the Minister as a basis for further thinking, that there are degrees of deterrence available, practically, and that unless we can offer some hope rather more firmly than merely not ruling out the possibility—unless we think this out further and offer some hope that we can employ a deterrent without the certainty of being blown up, we may find that we have all the weapons, all the means of delivering the deterrent, and that it will be no deterrent at all because nobody will believe that we would have the will to employ it when the day came. If we let this backlog of public opinion build up, based on fear and emotion, and we cannot show a logical case for the deterrent which falls short of actually using the mass retaliation principle, then we may find that we, the Ministers, we, the politicians, have the mechanics but that the people will control the will to make use of them.

So I say to the Prime Minister that there are two distinct bases for this part of our Amendment which I beg him to consider deeply. I ask him—though it is entirely up to him not to go round making what seemed the rather pathetic, and if humiliating at all, self-humiliating remark that he was recorded as making at Ayr, that this is one of the responsibilities that the Socialists will never face. We in the British Labour movement have played our part in Britain's defence as well as in any other respect, and a short reconstruction of recent national history will show the right hon. Gentleman on what uncertain party grounds he was there.

The two distinct grounds are these: First, as I see it, there is the absolutely urgent and vital task of trying to revitalise the discussions about some real measure of international control, limitation and abolition of continuing peacetime explosions. For unless we do that, we run the risk of claiming more victims for these wretched weapons in peace time than might ever be claimed in a war in which they dare not be used. In doing that, get the whole impasse, the whole log-jam of international disarmament discussions moving again. I will come back to that in a moment. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] If anybody on the benches opposite thinks that this is an argument which can be stated without a lot of difficulty and a lot of complication, he is entitled to try. I will do my best.

The second ground I ask the Prime Minister to consider for that part of our Amendment is this. There are circumstances in which some limited nuclear force is the only available redressor of an otherwise impossible situation, in which the Soviets possess all the cards, in their own overwhelming strength in the so-called conventional forces, and in their different attitude to human life and values. Since this is so, we must seek to discover and to maintain some line between what is essential for our purpose and what is not; what we retain as the ultimate deterrent and what we may have to use.

To talk grandly about nuclear deterrents, and to be prepared to use—as we seem in this White Paper to be doing, and as I thought the Minister seemed to be doing today—both the so-called tactical atomic weapons and the strategic deterrent, without having thought out any balance that we could hope to hold between those things, seems to me to be almost an act of criminal folly. We We dare not do that. It is not easy. We have to work this out. Therefore, we say in this part of our Amendment, not that we go back on past decisions, but that there is such a feeling, so much uncertainty, so many aspects which we have not yet worked out for ourselves; that we are unable—the Government or us—to put the full case; that, therefore, we should now decide to make one great effort to dislodge the whole log-jam and to try to get talks about two things, about the future of this matter and proposals on control and limitation and banning, which might be acceptable, and also about the sharing of know-how, sharing the knowledge of these matters, because that as much as anything else will affect our need to poison the atmosphere.

We certainly do not want to poison the atmosphere to collect samples of fallout to see how the thing works if we can get it from paper work which has already been done, or from samples which have already been taken. That would affect our decision to go on. I invite the Government to say to the other nations concerned that we will not post the notice of our explosions at Christmas Island at the same time as we post them our letter suggesting that we should try to get agreement on the heads to which I have referred, and also that we will not send it in the next post, but that we will give them some time to think over the matter to see whether there is room to do something.

At the very least, even supposing that the grand design did not work—and not all grand designs do work—we would have removed a great deal of the load of unhappiness from many of our people who feel that we should not blindly and desperately go on with our plans without trying something else. If we get something out of it, we might be relieved from going on with the test. I would not be a party, and we would not be parties, to this proposal if we felt that in any way it put an intolerable burden upon us, or was an insurmountable hazard in our way if, unhappily, we had to go on later. We are convinced that it does neither. We are convinced that what burden it would put upon us would be well worth while being in the scales against the enormous stakes which are on the other side.

I ask the Prime Minister, if we were not so committed, would anybody say that Sir William Penney really advised the Government that the only period in history when he could have his tests and do his work was in the period April to August, 1957; that he said it could not be the period August to April, 1957–58, or April to August, 1958, or some other time. Is there any magic in this present period? If, by suspension of tests there is no insuperable barrier to future tests the Government are well protected, and if by doing it we can give a great lead to our people and the world, would it not be worth setting against the irritations, discomforts and difficulties?

I am bound to say in my amateur way—and, of course, I am an amateur strategist—that I regard the outline of future defence policy as commended to us as being open to this valid criticism. For a long time, the Government have refused—we think obstinately—to face the nuclear realities. Now they have become so bemused by the word, and, perhaps, by the desire to use it for economy purposes, that they have rushed into an uncharted field and committed themselves to an enormous concept without having shown in their planning whether they have anything with which to back it. We need to make a most careful appraisal of the kind of forces and the kind of weapons which we need to be maintained if we are to have this deterrent approach to affairs.

That we have not yet done. It is no use for the Government to say that they have given us an outline of defence policy for the next three, five or seven years ahead. That policy will become apparent when they have done this work and thought out the answers to all these questions. Of course, it can be argued that this can lead us to conclusions which would limit the financial economies which could be immediately made. I have never disputed that. I have always said that in the kind of change-over in defence policy now needed, we would not get at once the money savings, but that they would accrue after a time rather than at the beginning. I am sure that those savings can be made, but just how soon and just how much would be deeply affected by the answers not only to the questions I have raised, but by integration with our allies, how much the Americans and other people would be willing to share with us, and so on.

In conclusion, if I have to commit myself, out of office, with none of the advice available to the Government, I think that I would prefer forces which were reached in this way, balanced forces which took these considerations into account and which would serve our needs and widen our prospects, rather than take the line of the Government. They have rushed many fences to get £79 million economies into this year. As a result, they have left us gravely unprepared for the risks that we can face, gravely overprepared for the one thing we never want to face and, meantime, have left us vastly dependent on other people for policy decisions of the gravest import to us. That is how the White Paper looks to us. That is why we shall invite the House to approve instead the Amendment.

I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof: declines to approve the Outline of Future Defence Policy, Command Paper No. 124, which, despite the waste of money and resources in the past five years due to repeated Government vacillation, still lacks the firm decisions essential to an effective defence policy; further regrets the undue dependence on the ultimate deterrent on which the policy set out in the White Paper appears to be based; and recognising that international disarmament is the only real solution to the problem of defence, and conscious of the dangers to humanity of the continuance of nuclear explosions, calls upon Her Majesty's Government to take an immediate initiative in putting forward effective proposals for the abolition of hydrogen-bomb tests through international agreement, meanwhile postponing the United Kingdom tests for a limited period so that the response to this initiative of the other Governments concerned may first be considered".