Foreign Affairs

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 27 April 1959.

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Photo of Mr William Ormsby-Gore Mr William Ormsby-Gore , Oswestry 12:00, 27 April 1959

At the beginning of his speech, the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) asked me certain questions about the conference on nuclear tests. I shall try to deal with those as best I can during the course of my remarks. He addressed himself, first, to questions relating to Germany and disengagement and the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) also spent a great part of his speech on those two topics.

I am glad to say that at least all parties subscribe to the idea of German reunification. This—I hope that the hon. Member will take it as this—is a direct reply to his suggestion that it is the policy of Her Majesty's Government to try to establish the existing status quo in Europe. We wish to see the reunification of Germany, but I am bound to say that I was rather surprised by the right hon. Member saying that whatever happened no one would dare to suggest that a united Germany should add her strength to the West. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Sir K. Pickthorn) dealt with that in his customary robust way.

This suggestion could only mean that if Germany was united—which is the policy of all parties in the House—and if a united Germany wanted to go with the West, we would seek to prevent her from doing so. That is a suggestion that we should tie a united Germany down in advance of the existence of such a Germany to a course of action with which the German people themselves might totally disagree.