If the hon. Member thinks that the Vietnamese people, whether in the North or the South, welcome and enjoy political tyranny, he has an astonishing and very low view of human nature in any part of the world. Of course, they abhor political tyranny, the political tyranny which is exercised by Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam to everybody's knowledge, and which is accompanied by the grossest forms of economic exploitation.

The hon. Member talked about making Hong Kong a show-piece of the Western world. I have not been to Hong Kong, but I have been to Saigon. I have seen there one aspect of what might be called a show-piece of the Western world in its very worst features—peasants and townspeople living jam-packed together on mud flats in conditions of the direst poverty and misery, While on the other side of the river there were other Vietnamese flaunting themselves in flashy American cars which they had bought out of their speculative deals in American aid to Vietnam. That is the situation and, while that goes on and involves this gross exploitation of the Vietnamese people, especially the peasants, we shall not get any fight from them against Communism.

Nor can we pretend that the Americans are defending freedom against tyranny. They are, in fact, defending tyranny in order to defend capitalism. That is what they are doing and what they have done in Vietnam, in Cuba, in Guatemala and in every other part of the world in which they have intervened with aggression or with subversion, or with some other form of the exercise of force against the free will of the people within that country.

In other words, the Americans have behaved in this world power struggle at least as badly as the Russians and the Chinese. Let us be frank about this. They have used precisely the same methods, including the selling or the exchange of secrets, the keeping of power activity secret until they are found out, and bad faith against one's friends and allies. All these methods have been used in this power struggle by both slides, and are still being used. Let us face that frankly if we want to have a proper analysis of the world situation and what we ought to do about it; and What we ought to do to protect the British people in this situation.

During the last war the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) sold to the Americans British atomic energy secrets and withheld them from the other of our major allies, the Soviet Union. By that act of transference of military secrets to one side and not to the other he put the United States in a position to be the top power against the Soviet Union after the war had ended. He did so quite deliberately. This country got nothing for it at all, nothing in return for the military secrets that were handed over. In fact, we were placed in a rather inferior position in the commercial use and development of atomic energy which followed.

But some things followed from that. One was that the Americans, having gained an overwhelming military superiority over the Soviet Union, made up their minds to maintain it and throughout all the negotiations, the discussions about disarmament and in every move in the power struggle since 1945, have been bent on maintaining their vast superiority, at all costs, right up to the latest act of President Kennedy over Cuba.

On the other hand, Stalin drew the conclusion that Russia must seek on her own to catch up with, and if possible surpass, American superiority, that there could be no agreement between the two sides and no settlement of the points of dispute between them except on the basis of negotiations conducted with power behind them, and that, because of Russia's inferior position in the power struggle, she must make use of all the weapons of secrecy, subversion, and lying, if necessary, to (try to catch up with the Americans. So both sides have done it.

What Mr. Khrushchev has done during the last week or two in secretly and clandestinely putting offensive nuclear weapons into Cuba is, in the light of international morality and international law, an act on the same level as the American action in lying about the U.2 flights, until they were found out, or of overthrowing the Left-wing Government in Guatemala and seeking to overthrow the Left-wing Government in Cuba. So when we come to apportion blame about what has happened in the Cuban crisis all that we can do, I think, at the moment, is to say that great blame attaches to both sides, that Khrushchev flouted the spirit of the Charter and made what was a dangerous move in the power game and that President Kennedy has certainly flouted the Charter and acted unilaterally in defiance of the United Nations and without consulting his allies. Indeed, he is still continuing to do so.

I would have thought that one of the questions that we ought to be putting to President Kennedy now is why he has not brought before the Security Council, for its endorsement, approval and backing, the agreement which he has reached with Mr. Khrushchev over what should happen about Cuba. One of the reasons why U Thant is not able to act effectively in Cuba at the moment and why the Americans are still taking unilateral action with the blockade and aerial reconnaissance is that U Thant has no instructions from the Security Council as to what he should do to carry out the agreement and the settlement arrived at between President Kennedy and Mr. Khrushchev.

I hope that the British Government will immediately urge that the Security Council be called in order to ratify the agreement between the two Powers and give U Thant the necessary instructions to ensure that the agreement is carried out in all its terms—that is to say, the removal of the American bases from Cuba and the implementation for the future as well as for the present of President Kennedy's promise to keep Amerioan hands off Cuba.

There is one word more to be said, not about the actions of the American or Russian Governments in this crisis, but about those of the British Government. There is almost a conspiracy of amnesia in the House to try to make us all forget that during a few days last week the people of this country—all of them—were threatened with annihilation in nuclear war and that while that threat was on the British Government were not only powerless to do anything to ward off the threat, but took an active step to make it certain that if nuclear war came the whole of the 50 million British men, women and children would perish. What did the Prime Minister say in his speech on Tuesday?