Orders of the Day — Ukrainians, Great Britain

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 16 February 1960.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr David Renton Mr David Renton , Huntingdonshire 12:00, 16 February 1960

I am grateful, as I am sure is the whole House, to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux) for giving us this opportunity to consider the question of the registration of the Ukrainians in this country. I am particularly grateful because, as I hope the House will find, it gives me an opportunity to remove the misconceptions and fears which, as has been shown by some of the moving speeches which we have heard tonight, have undoubtedly arisen as a result of some instructions in a regulation issued by the Aliens Department of the Home Office on 10th September last year.

I should like to join with my hon. and gallant Friend in paying tribute to the qualities of the Ukrainian people who came here during and after the war. We in the Home Office know what good and, mostly, hard-working people they are. We record with great satisfaction the way that they have settled down in this country and the contribution that they have made to our efforts at postwar reconstruction. I personally have come across some of these people and therefore have reason to share the admiration that has been expressed.

My hon. and gallant Friend alleged that the Nottingham police requested people who were registered as Ukrainians to change that registration to Russian or Polish. We in the Home Office do not know exactly what the Nottingham police have said to individual Ukrainians. As Mr. Deputy-Speaker correctly pointed out, that is not a matter which can engage the responsibility of the House except in so far as it was the result of a Circular issued on behalf of a Minister of the Crown.

I stress that—as under the Circular of ten years ago so under the Circular of last September—people who claim to be Ukrainians and are registered as Ukrainians or have expressed a wish to register as Ukrainians are asked by the police to register either as being of a specific nationality or as being of uncertain nationality and the letter "U" is added afterwards as indicating "Ukrainian". I shall have more to say about this procedure in the course of my remarks, but I felt that it was right at the beginning to restate what I think is the main cause of contention in the debate so that the House may feel, as I hope it does, that I at least understand what I have to reply to.

There was a fear—it was the principal fear expressed by the Ukrainians, and certainly by the community association on their behalf—that as the result of the action taken by at least one police force on the Home Office Circular some change was intended, or would be made, in their status as refugees in this country. It was even suggested, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mr. Maurice Macmillan), that some pressure had been exerted from the other side of the Iron Curtain. I am very glad indeed that he stressed that there has been nothing whatever so sinister and, as I hope to show, the police circular was not in any way prompted by any such pressure or consideration.

I wish to give the categorical assurance that no change in status has occurred or was intended. I wish to make it clear that Ukrainians who came here as refugees and have made their homes among us are as welcome now as they were when they came and as welcome as they have ever been. Further, there is no question of any action against them. They have no cause whatever to feel disturbed, insecure or in any way alarmed by the corrections which have had to be made in a comparatively few individual cases to the registration particulars under the Aliens Order.

In saying this I am repeating and reaffirming the unqualified assurances given to the Nottingham branch of the Anglo-Ukrainian Society and the Answer I gave in this House at Question Time on 28th January. I want to make this assurance as emphatic as I can because my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is most anxious that these worthy, honest and hard-working people should continue to live contentedly among us in the way hoped for by the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton).

Their position as residents here has not been altered in any way as a result of the Circular of 10th September, but I should explain the procedure which has given rise to their apparent uneasiness. I do not dispute that there has been uneasiness. My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax referred to the possibility of my being a captive of other people. The truth is that those other people and I are captives of the law of the land which, at the moment, is the Aliens Order, 1953, which in this respect is a continuation of aliens legislation of many years' standing.

Under Article 13 of that Aliens Order—this answers the specific question asked by the hon. Member for Sowerby—particulars of aliens have to be registered with the police. We have to go to the Second Schedule to the Order to find out what those particulars are. One particular required is: Present nationality. How and when acquired. Previous nationality, if any. I will explain how, as a matter of administration, that is interpreted and applied.

Nationality is something derived from citizenship of an independent political state recognised as such by our Foreign Office. It cannot be acquired from membership of an ethnic, geographical or linguistic group which has no recognized political status. In modern history, certainly during the last few centuries, whatever the greatness of its past as the earliest eastern Christian kingdom, the Ukraine has had no independent political status. It follows from that general proposition that we cannot in practice allow—