| Previous Section | Home Page |
Column 913
apply to comparatively recent events will not apply to any of these cases. They will be dealing with offences that were committed nearly 50 years ago.The language--it may be Russian, or other languages--will have to be translated. Interpreters will be needed. All the other apparatus of the law that would normally be applied without complaint from anyone to the conduct of trials in this country will not be applied equally and justly in cases of this kind.
The 50-year gap is decisive. Witnesses will be elderly. Generally speaking, the memories of witnesses fade quickly. I have often heard people say, "Ah yes, I remember him," but in practice it does not work out that way. In practice, the passage of nearly 50 years will make it almost impossible to identify a defendant--or a witness, even.
That is part of the difficulty that the Government and any intended prosecution will have to face. The Government are starting a process that will bring with it nothing but misery and humiliation and that will be distorted by the popular press. We shall all be heartily sick of the matter, even before any trial takes place. In the meantime, decisions connected with the case may be taken that will result in it not being brought to court in any event. The millions of pounds that will have been spent on the investigation, that ought much more profitably and properly to be spent on other heads of expenditure, will be wasted. I reiterate that I believe that the Bill legislates for injustice. We ought to reject it.
5.15 pm
Mr. Alex Carlile (Montgomery) : I thank the Home Secretary for the great thought that he and his predecessor have given to the issue. I am sure that the whole House wishes to join me in those thanks, in particular for the careful consultations that have taken place with all those who are concerned with these matters.
I did not seek the opportunity to speak in the December debate on the principles of the Hetherington-Chalmers report, but since then I have detected a weakening in the resolve of certain right hon. and hon. Members, who may feel that the "fine gesture" that the House made in December, as it was described earlier by the Home Secretary, was enough to make the House's view clear. I believe that it was not enough and that we should vote for the Bill tonight and make it part of our law.
May I at this stage do something, Mr. Deputy Speaker, which I believe to be proper, having regard to my position in the debate, and that is to declare what I am sure is an unregisterable interest in the matter? Two of my grandparents, two of my uncles, an aunt and many cousins--some of them extremely close to me in blood--were murdered in Poland during the last war. They were murdered as a result of precisely the war crimes that we have in mind. Just so that hon. Members understand that I am not talking about the ordinary incidents of war on one side or the other, may I say a few words about what those people were?
They were all innocent. One uncle--my mother's brother--was a young doctor who was seized because he was out in the street at night taking messages. An aunt was a teacher of history in a secondary school in a rural area, in a town of about the same significance as Llanfair Caereinion in my Montgomery constituency. My grandfather was the postmaster in a small Polish town. His
Column 914
principal interests in life included such aggressive pursuits as classical Greek and the Latin historians. He was a studious, amiable and harmless man of learning, who never committed an aggressive act in his life. He had political views and opinions, but on the whole he was careful to keep them to himself.Those three people were among those who died, completely innocently, for going about their ordinary business. I have in my possession, in my mother's home, correspondence from some of them. In some cases, it simple peters out. In one case that I have not mentioned, the correspondence consists of an alleged death certificate from Auschwitz which the family knows to be inconsistent with the evidence of when she died. They could not even tell the truth about how and when she died.
We are talking in this debate about criminal cruelty on a scale which, at the time, was so unimaginable that it is my belief that, even now, there are people in this country, perhaps even including hon. Members, who cannot comprehend the scale of what occurred. One word which we have not yet heard in the debate, that we usually hear in other debates on criminal justice policy, is the word "victim". I should like to say something on behalf of the victims of those crimes, not on behalf of those who died, but on behalf of those who are still living. My own mother, who lives in this country, in very good health, I am pleased to say, looks back on those events with objective eye, but with a recollection that would surprise the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) and others.
This year, my mother will go to Poland for the first time in 45 years. She will bring herself to go to Poland following my father's death--he was never willing for her to go there--with me and with my sister who was born in Poland. She wishes to revisit some of the places which she knew as a child ; but she will go with a heavy heart. She wishes to see those places again in her lifetime, but she will go against strains of memory as clear as crystal, and that will make it a difficult experience for her.
She and others can give evidence that would shame in quality some of the evidence given, say, last week in courts of law throughout Britain. She has described to me how, when she was fighting in the Warsaw uprising, on a Warsaw street she was stopped by two soldiers and she heard them discussing, in German, which she understood, but which they did not know she understood, whether she should be killed because she had an attractive leather bag. The Ukranian soldier wished to murder her, but the German soldier thought that it would be wrong to murder her, so she was spared by the German soldier, who told her never to walk alone in a street in that city again. She remembers that event as though it happened yesterday. She remembers what was in the bag, she remembers a description of the people who spoke to her, and the words that were used, even though they were spoken in a language that was not her own. My mother escaped from a ghetto in Lwow, now in the Uklraine. She escaped hidden in a haycart. She remembers the details, and has described them to me, of how she came to escape, who helped her, the circumstances in which they helped her, the details and even the weather on the day she escaped.
I cannot begin to understand how the hon. Member for Orpington can allege that people's memories of such events can be compared with the memory of some minor traffic accident.
Column 915
Mr. Stanbrook : I did not so allege.Mr. Carlile : Well, that was the effect of the hon. Gentleman's allegation.
There are people, some of whom I know, who suffered far worse privations than my mother ever suffered and whose recollections of what happened to them is as clear as it could be. They can give evidence of what happened. Some of them can give that evidence in English, some in other languages, but I do not understand what difference language makes in the modern world with the availability of simultaneous translation systems, which almost all Members of Parliament will have experienced at international conferences. Some of us have experienced such translation systems in central and eastern Europe, and know that they work very well.
Those people are not afraid to be cross-examined. They wish to have their recollection put to the test, and nothing proposed by the Home Secretary seeks to deprive anyone of the right to put their recollection to the test. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has spoken of provisions which would ensure that a fair test of those memories is carried out.
Although it may be difficult for some hon. Members to understand, those people do not have revenge in their hearts. They are not looking for retribution, because revenge and retribution cannot be delivered for crimes, such as those. They are seeking that there should be a small measure of justice for them as the victims. They are not interested in the sentence that will be passed. Contrary to some of the lurid publicity there has been, they do not want to create a new species of geriatric madhouse for those who committed those terrible crimes. The sentence does not matter to them, but, as victims of horrendous crimes, they have the same justifiable interest in seeing justice being done as the victims of any other crime, whether it was committed today, 10 years ago, 20 years ago or 50 years ago.
I can do no better than remind the House of the words of Primo Levi, the great historian of what occurred. He wrote :
"You who live secure
In your warm houses,
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces :
Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.
Consider that this has been :
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children."
If we in the House and in this country are to look the world in the face and to say to our own children, "This must never happen again," surely we must be prepared to do justice to the victims. 5.28 pm
Sir Bernard Braine (Castle Point) : There can be few who have not been moved by the quiet eloquence of the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile)
Column 916
speaking straight from the heart with the added anguish of family loss. He has gone right to the heart of what the Bill is about. Until he spoke, I began to wonder whether those who had contributed to the debate so far really knew what the Bill was about. It was necessary for the hon. and learned Gentleman to speak as he did, not merely for himself and for the victims, but for the House.It is quite true that very few people in Britain, particularly younger people, have any idea whatever of what happened. They may have seen pictures, may have heard stories, may have seen war films, but those of us who went through the war and had contact with the countries in which those atrocities took place can never forget the wickedness of what happened.
I went to war in 1939--this was true of most of my
generation--believing that we were embarking on a crusade against evil forces, but had not the faintest idea just how evil they were until the revelations after the war. What happened still beggars description. I remember heading a parliamentary delegation to Poland. One of the dignitaries whom I sought to meet was Bishop Dombrowski, the Catholic Church's link with the communist Government. We had a frank talk and I recall him telling me that the casualties Poland had suffered fighting two cruel enemies were greater in proportion to population than those of any other belligerent. One third of the Polish clergy were murdered--not in concentration camps, but just murdered, by the Nazis or the Russians. Roughly one third of Poland's professional classes disappeared as a result of what happened. Warsaw was burned down twice in the war. Even now, the sufferings of the people are not fully understood in this country or elsewhere in Europe.
I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State on the speed with which he has produced the Bill and on the clarity with which he explained its provisions. He correctly reflected the overwhelming vote that the House registered on 12 December.
I readily acknowledge, particularly following the speech made by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery, that each hon. Member must take a personal stand on this matter. I shall not legislate for others but shall speak for myself. That said, there is no doubt in my mind that it is right to proceed with the Bill. Let us start with its authors--two highly experienced prosecutors whose careers had been geared to examining the worth of evidence.
They did not lightly apply their minds to the task. They were accustomed to applying a strict test of evidence before recommending it for prosecution-- that there would be a greater than 50 per cent. chance of conviction. On that basis alone, they found sufficient evidence of murder and manslaughter, not against a vast army but certainly against a number of persons.
They reported that the detailed investigations disclosed "horrific instances of mass murder"--
not the occasional killing as result of a bit of looting, but mass murder. Some hon. Members will know precisely what that means. They concluded :
"The crimes are so monstrous that they cannot be condoned ; their prosecution could act as a deterrent in future wars. To take no action would taint the United Kingdom with the slur of being a haven for war criminals."
Some hon. Members who have spoken seem to have forgotten that we are considering not the generality of war
Column 917
criminals who have survived since the war but those who, by one means or another, have been accorded the privilege of British citizenship. I find it unacceptable that persons who committed such crimes should have obtained British citizenship without searching inquiry and should have found a safe haven in this country. British citizenship is a high privilege. It should never have been granted to criminals, and it would not have been had we discovered it at the time.Other democratic countries where Nazi murderers have found a hiding place-- the United States, Canada and Australia--have already acted. We are not pioneers in this, because we are following the examples set by other democratic countries that have just as high a regard for fairness and justice as we have. Indeed, their legal systems stem from ours. It is high time, then, that we followed their example. I have thought long and hard on this issue, and two considerations have weighed on me. First, it was argued in the previous debate and again today that old people forget. I have memories of the war, particularly of one atrocity. I have a vivid memory of every person concerned. When something shocking takes place, one does not forget. I shall give the House an illustration. Kitty Hart, a survivor of Auschwitz, told an international conference on war crimes held in London last October--the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) the former Home Secretary, and some other hon. Members heard her--
"If a person has absolute power of life and death over you--even for an instant--that face will be etched on your mind for ever. You cannot possibly forget it, even if you try."
She gave her evidence last year in the High Court of Wuppertal, West Germany, at the trial of Gottfried Weise.
Weise was an SS officer at Auschwitz. His nickname was William Tell, because he used to shoot tin cans off the heads of prisoners. He was blind in one eye and his actions usually led to the death of his victim, often a child. At the end of the trial, the judge was impressed by the accuracy of the evidence given. In winding up, he remarked that those who had spoken were calm and without emotion and Weise was convicted on their evidence. I place little credence, therefore, in the argument about memories fading when they involve crimes of this enormity.
My second consideration is that we are not dealing with killing in the heat of battle. War veterans--there are still a few of us in the House--know that the battlefield brings out the worst and the best in men--appalling savagery and sublime heroism. This Bill, on the other hand, deals with those who committed the cold-blooded, premeditated and carefully planned murder of unarmed men, women and children. In a previous debate, I described how, in 1942, the senior echelons of the Nazi leadership held a secret, high-level conference at Wannsee. The purpose of their meeting was to improve their methods of getting rid of unwanted people. The use of carbon monoxide gas was not fast enough ; it was too costly and laborious. I gave an account of how it was decided to replace such a method by constructing gas chambers in which vast numbers of men, women and children could be done to death in a few minutes. Once the door was shut and the Zyklon B released, they all died within three or four minutes. One of the witnesses at the Auschwitz trial said :
"We knew when they were dead because the screaming stopped."
Column 918
As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Beaumont-Dark) said earlier, such methods had nothing to do with the heat of battle. Whole village communities from one end of Europe to the other were rounded up at places such as Oradour in France and Lidice in Czechoslovakia and forced into a church or a large building. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) will remember what happened to British soldiers at La Paradis in France. They were doused with petrol and burned to death or simply machine-gunned. It happened all over Europe. The victims had nothing to do with waging war. That was the treatment meted out by the strong and cruel on the defenceless and weak. Those are the sort of crimes that we are dealing with and which the Hetherington and Chalmers team investigated.May I quote one particular case? It is that of Bogdan Kosiy, who was tried in the United States in September 1981. That was quite a long time after the war, as the House will agree. Kosiy was tried for his participation in the murder of unarmed civilians in the Ukraine and of children in particular. Allan Ryan junior, a former director of the Department of Justice office of special investigation created to investigate and prosecute Nazi war criminals in the United States, tells us in his book "Quiet Neighbours":
"Our case was strong but it was particularly poignant because several of the witnesses clearly recalled that Kosiy had made Jewish children his special victims. Maria Ilikovska, a 68 year old Ukrainian housewife, saw Kosiy kill a twelve year old boy who had been hiding in the town after the rest of the Jews had been deported. I watched the scene, how Kosiy took out his gun and shot the boy in the back of his neck,' she testified. Pressed on her identification, she grew indignant. I am absolutely certain,' she said. I am an old woman and I am telling the truth.'
Four witnesses told of watching in fear as Kosiy snatched three year old Monica Singer, daughter of the Jewish towm doctor, from her home and dragged her to the Police station. The child understood too early, what was to happen. She cried out to her mother, who had followed, pleading for her release. Mother, he is going to shoot me I want to live.' Kosiy took out his pistol and her mother turned away, unable to watch. Anton Vatseb, his eyes fixed in horror on the unfolding scene, told what happened next. Kosiy stood the child against the wall. Then he stepped back around ten steps and then he shot.' Vatseb paused, As far as I remember, he shot twice.' " That was just one incident brought before a court in a civilised country. It is but one incident out of tens of thousands reported since the end of the second world war.
Does anyone in his right senses believe that, if such criminals by some trick of circumstance came here after the war, were admitted to this country and obtained British citizenship, we should now say, even if there is incontrovertible evidence, "Oh no, leave him alone. It all happened a long time ago. Let us forgive and forget." I do not make a plea for revenge : I agree with what the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery said a few moments ago. I am thinking of future generations, of our honour and of what should be done in circumstances where such a preson has obtained British citizenship. I am thinking of too many people still living who will never forget. I suggest that we have a duty to generations yet unborn to make it plain that such crimes can never really be forgiven. Certainly, they can never be forgotten, and those who committed them should never have acquired British citizenship or be allowed again to breathe British air.
Column 919
5.43 pmMr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr) : I am grateful to have the opportunity to follow the Father of the House. When we consider the history of the second world war or, indeed, any period in which carnage took place, it should be easy for civilised people to stand back in judgment and say that some things are right and some things are wrong. The Bill is right because of what was wrong during the second world war. I am extremely grateful to the Home Secretary for the way in which he has acted on the matter and brought the Bill to the House at an early stage. In the normal course of events, it would have taken a great deal longer to do so. The Hetherington-Chalmers inquiry recommended that, if legislation were to be enacted, it should be done quickly, for obvious reasons.
The Bill is not on a Jewish issue, and it is wholly wrong for people to put it across that way. We have heard speeches and, indeed, clear evidence that that is not the case. I may have gone a little too far, but nevertheless I stand by it, when I described the Bill as it was published--which is not the way in which I expected it would be published--to one of my constituents as a technical adjustment of nationality law. The kernel of the Bill is to put people who are resident in this country and have rights of abode here--some British citizens and some not--on the same footing as everyone born here. To that extent, it is a technical adjustment of nationality law. I shall not go into the matters raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) but other legislation does not deal exclusively with war crimes. In my view it would have been wrong to put other matters in this Bill. The Bill would have had to be drafted differently and its long title and scope would have had to be different. The matter is being dealt with in the right way.
The House must place firmly and clearly on the record, today of all days, that the Bill is not anti-German by any stretch of the imagination. One reads things in print, but one must be careful not to give credence to the shorthand used in headlines by the popular press. That would be wholly wrong.
I met people when I hitch-hiked round Germany and more recently in the autumn when I met people here on the Terrace, who were amazed that Britain had never enacted any war crimes legislation. It occurred to me as the Father of the House was speaking that we are not pioneers but laggards in such legislation. When one sees the roll call in chapter 7 of the Hetherington report of other democratic countries that have enacted legislation, such as the two Germanies, Poland, Holland, France, Belgium, Israel, the United States, Canada and Australia, one realises that we are laggards in coming to the matter now.
I can speak only from second-hand experience about people's memories--for obvious reasons, given my age. In the past four or five years, I have heard three or four people, all elderly men, describe to me what happened to them on 28 May 1940. The events were as clear to them when they spoke to me as they were on the day on which they occurred. They happened at the village of Wormhoudt near Dunkirk. The men told me exactly what I heard Kitty Hart say at the conference chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) in autumn last year. They said that, if someone virtually orders one to be put to death, one hears
Column 920
and sees the actions. One tends to remember. Their stories are the same and they can tell us who was in what field, in what barn and at what hour on the afternoon of 28 May 1940.I accept without equivocation that the people who might be called as witnesses will have clear memories and, from my experience of talking to survivors, they are more than willing to tell their side of the story to officialdom to get justice for the people who did not come back or for those who were injured. There is no fear among those people about telling their side of the story and being subjected to cross-examination.
From our debate in December it was clear that, after the war, public opinion was moulded to look to the future rather than to the past. It was fairly easy to do that in one respect, because no one envisaged that we would allow alleged war criminals to come to the United Kingdom. That notion never crossed my mind, and I am sure it never crossed anyone else's. The moulding of public opinion was also made easier because of the restrictive secrecy legislation that we operate. Many of the files that relate to the second world war are closed for 75 years, and the normal 30- year rule does not apply. It will be 2021 before most of those files are accessible to historians. I do not understand the reason for that. I am told that it is to save embarrassment, but I do not understand to whom embarrassment would be caused.
The Hetherington-Chalmers report is an astonishingly concise survey of an important part of our history. Members of my generation who were born in 1941, or just after, just missed national service. When we were at school, history was more about ancient Rome and ancient Greece than our civil war or events that had just taken place. The war was not treated as history, nor as a current affairs subject. Our education in the 1950s and the early 1960s was bound to be different from the education received by those who fought in the war or the civilians who were hurt by its atrocities.
Unless specific events had occurred to make people stand back and think about them, it would never have crossed anyone's mind that for 50 years Britain may have become, unwittingly, a safe haven for alleged war criminals. I am grateful that the dust cover on that part of our history has been removed. It is clear that alleged war criminals gained entry into our country and, given that they were freely admitted, it is clear that they must have told lies about their background.
Anyone who reads the Hetherington-Chalmers report will be struck that our procedures did not work in the aftermath of war and bureaucratic nightmare that existed in Britain in the late 1940s. That chaos was mirrored across Europe, East and West. In the late 1940s, millions of people moved round Europe and new identities were assumed. How could we be absolutely certain that everyone to whom we gave haven was bona fide and not caught up the criminality of war, as described in the Hetherington-Chalmers report?
In the December debate the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), for whom I have great respect, thought that the House had been forced into action because of pressures from California. That remark saddened me because, frankly, it does not matter from where that pressure came. If the list of names and allegations had been available in the 1950s, 1960s or the 1970s they should have been acted upon. If someone had held up a list of alleged war
Column 921
criminals to whom we had given safe haven and demanded action, I am convinced that any Home Secretary and any House of Commons would have addressed the matter.Those allegations were never made specific until the mid-1980s. We do not need to apologise for our action. I do not believe that this Bill is retrospective in any way. No one charged as a result of the Bill, which changes the law on nationality, will be charged for any offence that was not a crime on the day it was committed. The Hetherington-Chalmers report also mentions trials conducted in other countries where the defence advanced was that the person had been acting on a superior's orders. Superior orders are not a defence and can never be held as such.
Chapter 7 of the Hetherington-Chalmers report lists what other countries have done in relation to this matter. East Germany and West Germany are, of course, dealt with separately and paragraph 7.18 makes it clear that there are a good many documents held in East Germany to which access has never been available. It is clear, however, as the new country emerges that those documents will be available. The new German nation will be different from the German nation that we have known since the second world war.
The Bill's principal purpose is important, but it is also important that the House should send a signal round the world--not just to those who may have thought that they had a safe haven here. If we enact this legislation it will send a signal to the new German Government, its new authorities and the new bureaucratic system that is bound to emerge from the welding of those two countries. The signal will be clear--we are not prepared to go easy on alleged war criminals once allegations have been made and a prima facie case has been assembled.
If we make it clear that we are not prepared to go easy, I cannot see how the new German Government can continue to follow the example of the West German Government who, appeared to go easy in the case of Wilhelm Mohnke. He is probably the most senior alleged war criminal whose whereabouts are known today. Others may yet be discovered, but he is still in the telephone directory.
Mr. Winnick : I agree with what my hon. Friend said about those Germans whom my hon. Friend had met who did not understand why prosecutions were not undertaken against alleged Nazi war criminals. It is also important to appreciate that the first victims of the Nazis were Germans-- we should never forget that. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be useful if the German Government showed good will by taking action? Much evidence has been produced about that German general to prove undoubtedly my hon. Friend knows far better than anyone else in the House--that he was responsible for the massacre o British soldiers.
Mr. Rooker : I agree with my hon. Friend, but the case against that general is not just a matter for the United Kingdom.
If we are not prepared to bring to justice those who live in the United Kingdom, with the protection of British citizenship, and against whom a prima facie case exists, how can we expect the German authorities to do likewise? Mohnke was clearly responsible for the order that no prisoners be taken at Wormhoudt in 1940. There are
Column 922
eye-witness accounts that he was responsible for the orders that led to the killing--the murder--of unarmed Canadian and American prisoners of war in 1944 and 1945.The United Kingdom Government have already made their files on Mohnke accessible to the German authorities. It is about time that the Canadian and United States Governments did the same. We are talking about an ex- general, who was Hitler's last personal general, and whose last task for Hitler was to be in charge of the bunker in the final days. We are not talking about a low-level Nazi soldier, but a full-blooded diehard and committed Nazi SS general who was with Hitler from the early 1930s. Everywhere he went, the death of unarmed people followed, not in the heat of battle but outside it. It is amazing that the United Kingdom, United States and Canadian Governments have not taken up the matter collectively with the German authorities. The United Kingdom is the last of the allied powers to take action to prevent the United Kingdom from being a shelter for war criminals.
If the new Germany country does not want to be accused of being the only place in which a diehard ex-Nazi can live in peace, it will have to take action. I hope that the Bill will send the people of that country a signal, as it will to those in the rest of the world. The Bill is indeed a signal.
I conclude by wishing the staff and officers of the investigating authorities well. They are not being set an easy task, and it will be expensive, but one cannot argue about pounds, shillings and pence in relation to such an issue. In the normal change of public expenditure, we are talking about the fifth decimal point that would be lost when the final column was added up. We are talking about justice. I reiterate the final sentence in the book on the Mohnke issue, "Hitler's Last General". It quotes the words of Simon Weisenthal : "When history looks back, I want people to know that Nazis were not able to kill 11 million people and get away with it."
6.2 pm
Mr. Edward Heath (Old Bexley and Sidcup) : When we first debated this matter I voted against the proposal that there should be legislation. I have listened carefully to this debate and have heard nothing to make me change my mind. Therefore, I shall vote against the Bill tonight. Almost everything I have heard has reinforced my convictions. One factor to do so is the passion and emotion with which some right hon. and hon Members have spoken. That will be characteristic of the process in this country if the Bill becomes law.
Why were those statements made in 1948 to which my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary referred? Lord Shawcross set out the minutes of the Labour Government. Whether the House decided or not, the Labour Government decided that no more trials would take place.
Mr. Heath : I prefer to accept Lord Shawcross's decision and quotations from papers rather than the hon. and learned Gentleman. Mr. Churchill made the statement from the Opposition Benches. We have been going through the process of war crimes trials, the publicity
Column 923
involved and the effect on the country. I went to the Nuremberg war crimes trials and listened to those conducting them. That is firmly in my mind.The hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) made an interesting remark when he said that we were, at that time, looking to the future, and so we were. That was why the Labour Government, Mr. Churchill and the Opposition agreed to call a stop to it. They were looking to the future. We should look to the future. While listening to hon. Members on both sides of the House, I have been impressed by how many of them, speaking with passion, say, "Of course, we have no experience of the war or the events leading up to it. We were not even born at the end of the war." I know from many people who have written to me since the last debate that there is undoubtedly a difference between those who went through those experiences and those to whom it is something quite new.
During the 1930s, Jewish refugees came to a camp close to my home. We knew all about that. The personal experience of the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) was moving, as was the passionate speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine). We have known about and experienced many of these things.
The sister regiment in my brigade was told to take over a concentration camp. We heard about the experience from them. My regiment's recce party was the first into Antwerp and we went to a concentration camp on the way to Antwerp. Those things can never, and will never, be forgotten. The Jewish experiences will never be forgotten ; they are part of history. There may be one or two maniacs who say that they never occurred, but who takes any notice of them? No one does so for a moment.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary wisely said that we were confronted with a choice. We could say that the past was the past. He took the advice, prematurely, of the hon. Member for Perry Barr that we should look to the future. My right hon. and learned Friend said that the other choice was to put the Bill on the statute book as a sign that we shall not condone such things. In that, I believe that the Government have come to entirely the wrong conclusion. Nobody will believe that Britain will condone such things. Defeat in the war showed that we would not condone them and the Nuremberg war trials, in all their fulness, after the war and for the first time in history, showed that we would never condone them.
Mr. Gorst : Is it not correct that youthful people caught up in terrifying events are quick to look to the future? In the past few days I have talked to a Romanian who was purportedly in front of a firing squad during the troubles in eastern Europe. He wants to look to the future. Do we not have a responsibility as we get older to think also of the lessons which must be learned from the experiences of our youthful years?
| Next Section
| Home Page |