Spirited Defence Debate In Commons

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28257, 20 April 1957, Page 11

Spirited Defence Debate In Commons

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, April 17.

Mr Duncan Sandys, Britain’s young Defence Minister, enhanced his Parliamentary reputation by the way he presented his White Paper to a critical Opposition and a crowded House, but he might have prepared himself more adequately to deal with a controversial question he must have known would be asked —Could tactical atomic weapons be used without causing all out nuclear war.

This seems a general summing up of the performance Mr Sandys gave in opening the defence debate. The Minister had the advantage of knowing that the Opposition was at loggerheads on the attitude to be adopted to hydrogen bomb tests, as well as knowing that his chief critic on the opposite side, Mr George Brown, Labour’s “shadow” Defence Minister. disagreed with his own party on the same question. In the House of Commons and television Mr Brown has sup--ted the Government’s decision | r”smplete the tests of the bomb L‘ ■"’igh he was forced by a ■re&r vote of the party to 3 a different point of view ****' the same time standing fl * opinion. •» II • a situation, however,

« handled very Mr Sandys for his **rt_did net allow the Opposition to forget its predicament. In view of the dissension among

Labour members, Mr Sandys was obviously determined to annoy them from the start and he opened by quoting the Labour Party Conference declaration in favour of possessing the bomb—only to prove, he said, that the House was united on the White Paper policy. Again, aiming at the Opposition, he said that some people had regarded the White Paper as revolutionary. Others felt there was nothing new about it. Both, he said, were correct. Government policy was founded on two facts which could not be questioned. It was impossible to defend Britain effectively against attack by hydrogen bomb and Britain could not go on devoting such a large part of her resources and manpower to defence. Mr Sandys got into troubled waters, however; when he suggested that local aggression could be resisted with conventional arms or, at worst, with tactical atomic weapons, the use of which could be confined to battle areas. The Opposition immediately took him up and he was asked point blank whether he really thought the tactical atomic weapon could be used without causing an all out nuclear war. It was the only time Mr Sandys seemed thrown off balance. After further prodding he finally said that the possibility “could not be excluded that a tactical atomic weapon could be used without producing an ultimate cataclysm” which left the House not much wiser than before. Once over this hurdle Mr Sandys returned to his baiting of the Opposition and ivith a slight

smile expressed anxiety to establish the greatest measure of agreement between himself and the other side.

Growling interjections by way of response, however, seemed only to underline the Opposition disagreements and to please the Conservatives.

Labour’s attitude was if anything hardened when Mr Sandys ventured to jest. It was rather fascinating to watch the.fission, fusion, fission of the members opposite, he said. “We are only waiting to see which way the fall out will be,” he said.

Mr Brown, although aggressive, kept strictly to party lines and said nothing Which might have been unwelcome to the pacifist back-benchers. He made no attempt to cloak the differences between himself and certain of his colleagues, but implied that he regarded the situation as a natural outcome of the miasmd in which the whole of Britain, no less than the politicians who guided the nation, found it self on nuclear matters.

Generally it can be said that the Parliamentary Labour Party faced a severe test on the matter of internal controversy well, and came out of it practically unscarred in spite of taunts from such skilled adversaries as Mr Sandys and Mr Macmillan.