Debate on the Address

Part of Orders of the Day — Queen's Speech – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 29 October 1959.

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Photo of Mr Philip Noel-Baker Mr Philip Noel-Baker , Derby South 12:00, 29 October 1959

I am very much obliged to my hon. Friend. Someone spoke to me at that moment and I missed a phrase or two of what he said.

I believe that that was right, but is there not something to be said for bringing together at the conference table, Russia and China, America, India and France, and other smaller nations of the East? We found this year over Berlin that it was useful just to sit down and talk. Who knows whether this conference might not lower tension between India and China? As the Foreign Secretary said, we have a special responsibility in the matter since, with Russia, we are co-chairmen of the conference. I believe that both India and China earlier agreed that the conference ought to meet. In any case, I hope that the Government will consider the matter very carefully before they turn it down.

I come now to what I think is bound to be the greatest issue that this Parliament will discuss—disarmament. Perhaps I may first say a word about procedure. Procedure may be important, as the late and unlamented Disarmament Sub-Committee of the United Nations often showed. That Sub-Committee is dead, and, instead, we are to have the new 10-Power committee outside the framework of the United Nations. I hope that the Government will use this change to bring about some improvements in the way in which the work is done.

I know that the Foreign Secretary has agreed with me in criticising the procedure in the past. I hope that this new Committee will have proper rules of order. It is a larger body than the Sub-Committee, and without rules of order it can easily fall into chaos. I hope that it will have a proper agenda of work—as the Sub-Committee never had. I hope that it will not change its chairman every day. Above all, I hope that there will be an improvement in the way in which the records of its proceedings reach the light of day.

There will be ten delegations in the room—is there really any hope that what they say will be kept secret? There is a great danger that angled and distorted versions will reach the public, and may do much harm. The only safeguard against that is to ensure that the true record is published at short intervals—every day, every week, or whatever may be agreed. That, and that alone, will make it possible for hon. Members, the Press, the commentators and the public to know what is going on, and I am sure that the Government will agree that in so vital a matter it is essential that they should.

I come to the substance of the matter. I shall not talk at all about the record of the Government since 1955. The Foreign Secretary knows what I think about it. It is over. I hope that a new and better chapter may have begun. But I think that not many hon. Members realise the fantastic pace, the immense and deadly momentum that the arms race has acquired in these last four years. It is four years since the Governments represented in the Sub-Committee stopped talking of comprehensive disarmament and turned, instead, to what they called partial measures.

In those four years there have been fantastic changes in armaments of every kind. These changes have, of course, been brought about by long years of research and experiment, but in those four years there have been the following operational results. The atomic fission bomb has been adapted, in explosive power varying from four kilotons to 500—from one-fifth to twenty-five times the power of the Hiroshima bomb—to the use of every unit of armed force on land, on sea and in the air. When the American troops went into the Lebanon last year there was not one unit that did not have atomic weapons for its use.

Secondly, the first unliftable thermonuclear device has been transformed, by the process technically known as "miniaturisation," into warheads for inter-continental missiles, and into weapons that can be delivered by fighter bombers. Supersonic bombers have come into service, and bombers with twice, and even three times, the speed of sound are being designed. Missiles of all kinds and ranges have been perfected, and many are operational now. The nuclear-powered submarine is at sea. It may have rendered obsolete, as my hon. Friend said, all other naval vessels of every kind. Biological and chemical weapons have been officially and publicly added to the armoury of the United States and great sums of money are being spent upon them. Many other States, with less publicity, are doing the same. I wish that Ministers would read a grim report about them prepared by leading scientists from eight countries at Pugwash, in August last.

These developments have resulted from work which lasted many years, but they have come into the range of practical armaments since 1955; and every competent expert is agreed that, if the arms race continues, the rate of progress will certainly not grow less. We used to talk about the Nazis' policy of frightfulness. It is against this background of world-wide frightfulness, mounting and unlimited, that we must consider Mr. Khrushchev's speech in the United Nations. I say at once that I cannot understand how anyone in his senses could hesitate for a moment about accepting the objective which Mr. Khrushchev then proposed—total disarmament, with total control, in the shortest period of years in which it can be done, leaving only the strictly limited national forces needed for internal order, forces which will carry small arms and nothing more.

I should have thought that there were only three major questions which really mattered. Is he sincere? Does he understand what we mean by total control? Will he be elastic about time and stages if, in discussion, it appears, as I think it would, that four years is too short to make so vast a change?

Is he sincere? His present proposal is not new. He told the foreign editor of The Times in January, 1958, that he was urging a Summit Conference "in order to achieve a major solution of the disarmament problem", and he gave Mr. Iverach McDonald a sketch, with a lot of details, of the proposals which he put to the Assembly the other day. I wish that Ministers would read again the report of that remarkable interview. Several good judges have warned us that it would be foolish to dismiss Mr. Khrushchev's plan as impractical or insincere—Sir William Hayter, Mr. George Kennan, Mr. Adlai Stevenson, and others. Mr. Stevenson, after a conversation with Mr. Khrushchev a month ago, said that he had never felt so hopeful and that Mr. Khrushchev was only proposing what we had all preached, that is, a disarmed world.

Does Mr. Khrushchev understand what we mean by total control? Would he be elastic about time and stages? In Moscow, last December, my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon (Mr. F. Noel-Baker) and I had most exhaustive discussions with him and with many of his leading colleagues about inspection and control. They convinced us that they do understand our point of view and that, for real disarmament, they will accept real control in the fullest possible degree. The Foreign Secretary spoke this afternoon about the divergence of the Soviet view that disarmament should come before control and our view that control should come before disarmament. Unless I am much mistaken, the Kremlin will adhere to what it put into its plan for conventional disarmament in March, 1956. I will read the words: The international control organ shall be established within the two months following the entry into force of the agreement. It shall establish its local branches, set up the control posts, and position its inspectors in good time to ensure that they are able to begin carrying out their functions at the moment when States begin the execution of the measures provided for in the agreement. The words are: … at the moment when States begin the execution of the measures provided for in the agreement". I do not think that we can ask for more than that.

This being so, and in the light of the forthright words used in the Assembly by Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. Kuznetsov about control, I confess that I was disappointed by the reception which the Government gave to Mr. Khrushchev's speech. I say that in no party spirit. I have supported the Government in the past when I thought that they were right, but I hoped for something better than the tepid generalities which they used.

I appeal to the Government in all sincerity: do not let the British proposals, the outline which was put forward in the Foreign Secretary's speech to the Assembly, become a rival to Mr. Khrushchev's plans; do not begin the new commission with a lengthy wrangle about objectives and how to start; accept his broad objectives and put in practical and concrete plans where he is vague. The Government may say that that is precisely what the Foreign Secretary did in his speech to the United Nations. As we are to have so little legislation in the coming months, I hope that we shall very soon have a chance to debate his proposals more fully.

I must say at once, however, that there were three points about his speech which filled me with apprehension. His first stage was most ominously like the Western package plan of 1957, which led to total deadlock. I am afraid that in its present form, if that is to be our start, it might mean more years of barren talk. I suggest that the Government should drop all the arid formulas of the past and should instruct our British experts between now and Christmas to prepare, as I am sure they could, some detailed concrete plans. They could prepare a draft scheme for the consideration of the commission of ten for the control of the "cut-off" in the nuclear plants. They could prepare a definite proposal for how much conventional armament and equipment should be allowed per 10,000 men for the national troops which the governments will retain after the first stage of reduction. That might be a major contribution to success. It might cut out months of general talk. In any case, I find it hard to think that the Foreign Secretary's first stage proposals, as he made them in New York, will lead to any practical result.

Secondly, I am disturbed by what he said in the Assembly about outer space. He used some words this afternoon about the means of delivery for nuclear weapons, which, if I understood him aright, were rather different and much more encouraging to me. However, I should now like to deal with what he said in the Assembly. No doubt the Minister of State will clear up any misunderstanding.

I think that it is common ground that the most dangerous developments in the arms race, the developments which it is most urgently necessary to stop, are in supersonic aircraft and in guided and ballistic missiles. The Russians are not behind in aircraft. An American general told Congress the other day that in missiles the Russians are five full years ahead. Missiles are a mortal danger to the British people. Mr. Khrushchev now proposes that all military aircraft and all missiles shall be totally abolished without delay.

Surely it is the overwhelming interest of the British people to snatch at any chance of getting that done. But I find no reference to missiles in the Foreign Secretary's speech until his third stage; and who knows how many years that will be from now? He says that at the third stage there would be a ban on the use of outer space for military purposes. What does that mean? Supersonic bombers do not use outer space. There are many missiles that do not use it either, such as the Corporal, the Honest John, the Matador and the Snark. Why not try to stop this deadly race, not at the third stage, but as soon as it can possibly be done? There is no problem of control with missiles. Even the smallest anti-aircraft missile weighs a ton. Its manufacture in the workshop could not possibly be concealed from United Nations' inspectors, nor its testing, nor the training of troops in its use.

My third point is vital. I believe that we shall get no disarmament unless the present nuclear Powers agree, and agree quickly, to the total abolition of all atomic and hydrogen bombs and of all their present stocks. It was on this, above all else, that the United Nations Sub-Committee reached deadlock in 1957. Unless the nuclear Powers can so agree, there may within five or ten years from now, as my hon. Friend so eloquently said, be a dozen nuclear Powers with atomic stockpiles of their own.

Did the Government read what M. Joxe said the other day, on behalf of the French Prime Minister? He repeated precisely what our Prime Minister said about our H-bomb in 1957, "If others have it, we must have it, too". So it will be with China and then, no doubt, with Japan, India, Germany and Pakistan, and many more.

What did the Foreign Secretary say in the General Assembly about this vital question of nuclear stocks? At the second stage of his plan, there would be some transfers of fissile material from weapon stocks to peaceful use. Of course, that has got to happen, but we know what difficulties it led to in 1957, when the abolition of stocks was not the accepted aim.

Then, under the right hon. and learned Gentleman's plan, at the third stage "there should be a re-examination of the possibility of controlling, and then eliminating, the remaining stocks of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction." Why, in heaven's name, at the third stage? If abolition needs a re-examination, why not start it now? But I am afraid that this whole approach is misconceived. If the Government will not agree on abolition until they have a geiger counter which will detect a secret nuclear stock that is screened with lead and concrete, they may wait for decades, as Mr. Stassen said, or they may wait for ever. Is there nothing we can do but keep our nuclear stocks and watch the numbers of the nuclear Powers increase from year to year? Of course there is. We could abolish the means of delivery, the military aircraft and the missiles without which the nuclear weapons cannot be used. We could abolish the sea, land and air forces without which no Government could embark upon aggressive war. These are the real safeguards, far better and far more certain than any geiger counter. They would remove the whole temptation to keep a secret nuclear stock. The risk involved would be incomparably less than the risk of allowing the nuclear arms race to go on. It is precisely these measures that Mr. Khrushchev has proposed.

Modern armaments represent a mortal danger for all the peoples. As the Political Committee of the Assembly said in its resolution yesterday, the question of general and complete disarmament is the most important one, as it is the most urgent, facing the world today. As the new commission of ten assembles in Geneva, the nations will be watching and waiting, as they watched and waited while the Disarmament Conference laboured in Geneva, thirty years ago. The greatest opportunity in history was wasted then. After six years of devastating war and fifteen years of agonising peace, another chance has come. We beg the Government, in fervent supplication, not to let it fail.