MUCH INTERRUPTION

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 148, 25 June 1938, Page 9

MUCH INTERRUPTION

PREMIER'S SPEECH

DISTURBERS EJECTED

(British Official Wlreleu.)

■ . RUGBY, June 23. The Prime Minister was subjected to considerable interruption from the Opposition benches when replying in the House of Commons to the debate on attacks on British ships in Spain, and at one point in his speech interrupters had to be ejected from the public gallery. . •

The Leader of the Opposition, Mr. C R. Attlee, claimed that it was a really extraordinary position if the powerful British Navy could not assure protection or exact immunity for British shipping from General Franco, whose naval forces were relatively negligible.

He recalled that Mr. Chamberlain had insisted that the attacks must be regarded as made by planes and pilot* under the control of General Franco, and argued that in that case the position was simplified, for if the Government took action no complications, he inferred, could arise with any other Power—least of all, he suggested, with any other Power represented on the Non-intervention Committee, which must share British feelings regarding these attacks on merchant ship» operating within the provisions of the non-intervention system and -under the surveillance of the Non-intervention Board's officers.

In replug, Mr. Chamberlain twitted the Opposition with a new-found enthusiasm for the. defence of British rights and property, and expressed doubt if their motives were entirely unmixed. He charged them with really desiring to see intervention on the side of the Spanish Government, and when the Leader of the Opposition intervened and -asserted that the Labour movement had accepted the non-intervention policy until it had been shown to be absolutely one-sided, he said that if any of the Opposition were still for non-intervention it behoved them not to be diverted from tt by any provocation.