LABOUR ATTITUDE.

Wairarapa Age, 7 April 1933, Page 5

LABOUR ATTITUDE.

REJECTION OF THE BILL MOVED. TALK OF LEGAL REDRESS. LONDON, April 5. Continuing the debate in the House of Commons on the Moscow arrests, Sir Stafford Cripps (Lab.), following Sir John Simon, moved the rejection of the Bill on the ground that the White Paper disclosed no adequate grounds for demanding the liberation of the British subjects arrested without a trial or for granting the Government exceptional powers for the purpose of reprisals against the Soviet Government. He said that before such extraordinary powers were sought the citizens concerned should have exercised all available means of legal redress. A denial of the justice of the tribunal must have been clearly established. The Foreign Office on March 16 really demanded the liberation of the British engineers without trial, while Sir Robert Vansittart informed the Russian Ambassador that the allegations against the arrested men were regarded in London as I ‘grotesque and hysterical staged as part of a hunt for scapegoats owing to the ill-success of certain industrial undertakings in Russia.” This was about as offensive a statement as could be made to any Foreign Ambassador. It would be to the interest of the arrested men themselves to treat the matter on a friendly basis instead of working both nations into a state of excitement and hysteria. THE LIBERAL VIEW, Sir Herbert Samuel (L.) said that the Liberals approved of energetic representations being made to the Soviet concerning the arrested men, but hoped that the extraordinary powers which were now being sought would be used solely to secure them a full measure of justice. Though there was room for negotiations to secure a better balance of trade with Russia, there was no need to denounce the existing trade agreement.

Mr. Locker-Lampson (C.): Why diet not Labour protest against the execution of thirty-five Russians without trial? He had always protested, he said, against lending money to Russia. It would have been far better to lend it to the Dominions who stood by us in war, than to Russians who stabbed us in the back. Apart from public funds, British citizens had sent £250 - 000,000 to Russia.