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produce justice, but none the less he was forced to vote for it because he might otherwise be labelled anti-Semitic. He would be happy to see a law placed on the statute book, not for the better governance of Britain, but, as I said in my point of order earlier, as a gesture. In one of those characteristic acts of political courage that we have come to associate with the right hon. Gentleman, that exercise in moral gymnastics has been devised purely to get a persistent and effective lobby off his ample back.What is it about the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook? He can argue passionately for a principle and believe passionately in it, but he is forced to vote against lest his motivation is misconstrued. I would rather be a used car salesman. As I said, there is another possible motive--and that is propaganda. The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook has naively allowed himself to become the tool of such an exercise.
I asked my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary why the Bill was restricted to 1939 to 1945, to areas of German influence and to British citizens. He said that there were no cases from Japan, from other periods or other parts of the world. However, the people about whom we are concerned were not British. Their crimes were not committed in Britain and they were not under British jurisdiction. Their victims were not British. If the principle of the Bill holds good, why not extend it to those cases in which British interests and individuals were involved? This is, after all, the British Parliament.
I am afraid that we have allowed ourselves to become involved in a propaganda exercise which happens to be against British interests and British policies in the middle east. We are puppets on a string. My fear is that we are dancing to a tune that is played by the most sophisticated and heavily orchestrated lobby of the post-war world. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) explained more tactfully than I, is it not at least possible that the victims and bereaved of this the most savage, extensive and depraved mass crime of our century are being used cynically in an act of policy by the state of Israel to build up a wall of moral blackmail behind which the excesses and ambitions of that state can shelter without criticism?
We all mourn the holocaust and its victims, both dead and alive. However, we should have nothing to do with this Bill.
6.56 pm
Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) : The hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) mounted once again his favourite hobby horse and it surprised none of us that he saw a conspiracy linked to the same sources to which he often refers. The only surprise was that black people did not get a mention. We know how hostile and antagonistic he is to people who do not have white skins.
I do not dispute for a moment that the Bill is in many ways unsatisfactory. I agreed with much of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) said. He understandably argued the pros and cons and concluded that he would vote in favour of the Bill, but I share some of his reservations about the Bill, although perhaps not to the same degree. The machinery that the Bill provides is, in many ways, unsatisfactory.
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I recognise some of the obvious difficulties in dealing with crimes committed 50 years ago. Neither am I unaware that if the measure become law and charges are brought, there could be what I and others would describe as misplaced sympathy for the defendants. I recognise the limitations and that is why I have reservations about the Bill. However, what is the alternative? If there is sufficient evidence that those who are known to have committed the most monstrous crimes against humanity are living in Britain, and if under the present law no action can be taken, we would be turning a blind eye. We would simply be saying that it was unfortunate and that we wished that we had known of those people's records when they arrived here. However, we would be able to take no action, despite the fact that the Home Secretary told the House that there seems to be substantial evidence at least against three people currently living in this country. I cannot accept that justice should fail to be done because such crimes were committed so many years ago. Of course, it would have been much better had justice been done at the time. The allies could have pursued Nazi criminals at the end of the war. Action after the war was promised when this House first learned of the extermination camps. There were statements about the atrocities. The late Sydney Silverman--to his lasting credit--said that the House should rise in memory of the victims. During the war, there was a very strong feeling that action should be taken. I understand that feeling. Of course, very little was done.To the credit of the allies, justice was undoubtedly done at the Nuremberg proceedings. There were other proceedings too. However, by 1948-49 the cold war had begun, and there was not much enthusiasm for such action. Many of the sentiments that were expressed today by the right hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion (Mr. Amery) could be used to describe feelings in the Federal Republic of Germany during the 1950s and the 1960s. There was no real wish for proceedings against people accused of Nazi war crimes. Only because of international pressure--to some extent, pressure inside Germany, but pressure that was much more international, which the hon. Member for Northampton, North might regard as some kind of conspiracy--did the German authorities agree that such crimes against humanity should not be covered by any statute of limitations.
In the period since we last debated this subject, the Gulf war has taken place. One thinks of the atrocities that were carried out in Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's thugs. I take the view that the people who committed those crimes--not 50 years ago, but within the last few months--should be brought to justice.
Mr. James Couchman (Gillingham) : Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a major difference between the crimes committed recently in Kuwait and Nazi war crimes? Those that were committed in Kuwait are very fresh in the minds of the victims, whereas, in the case of those committed 50 years ago, identification is quite impossible.
Mr. Winnick : The hon. Gentleman has anticipated my point. We know that many Nazi war criminals escaped by fleeing to various countries. If the people who committed atrocities in Kuwait in the last few weeks and months were to escape justice, and if, in years to come, they were to be
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found in Britain or some other country, they ought to be brought to justice. The fact that justice was not done at the time is no reason for its not being done at all.One thinks of the moors murders. Suppose that the people responsible for those crimes had not been brought to justice at the time. Would anyone argue that they should not now be brought to justice because too much time has elapsed? Consider the case of the Birmingham Six, who have now been found innocent. In November 1974, 21 people died in Birmingham as a result of the pub bombings. Many others were injured, and some were paralysed for life. Why should not the people actually responsible for that crime be brought to justice, after however long a period? It will soon be 17 years since that crime. However desirable it is that justice should be done at the earliest possible date, it is better that it should be done late than that it should not be done at all.
I should like to see established an international court, under the auspices of the United Nations, to deal with crimes such as we are debating today. Hon. Members may know that in the early 1950s the United Nations decided in favour of the creation of such a court. In view of the state of international affairs in those days--a situation that continued until recently--it is not surprising that agreement was not reached. I hope that, in the more relaxed international atmosphere of today, the United Nations will find it possible to agree to the creation of a court where such crimes could be tried. Several hon. Members have referred to other crimes committed during, and since the end of, the second world war--for example, those committed under Stalin. An international court such as I have in mind could be used to try such people.
The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) reiterated views with which we are familiar. He has been against this measure from the very beginning. He referred to crimes committed in Kuwait. If we had listened to his advice, those crimes would be going on right now, and would continue into the future. The fact that they have been brought to an end is due to the war and to the way in which the allies liberated Kuwait. As I have said from the very beginning, what happened in Kuwait was a just war, as the second world war was. Everything that has happened vindicates my views and the view of the large majority of hon. Members.
The right hon. Gentleman concluded his speech by talking about vengeance. I am certainly not interested in vengeance. I hope that I never have been, and I hope that no hon. Member is. It is said--whether it is true I do not know--that at one stage during the last war Winston Churchill suggested that a large number of Nazi officers and officials should simply be taken out after the war and shot. I do not think that there is any record of such remarks, but it is said that Churchill made them. Perhaps he changed his mind. Had such action been taken, I would have opposed it. That would have been vengeance. What I am interested in is justice and the rule of law. Summarily shooting people--whether criminals connected with the Nazi regime, or Saddam Hussein's thugs--is not the sort of action that I want to see taken. None the less, this measure, with all its limitations, and despite all the reservations about it, is one means of ensuring that justice will be done, however long the delay. So long as I live, I shall remember not only what I have read and what I have heard from other people, but also the camps that I saw in a cinema newsreel in 1945. I know that several hon. and right hon. Members actually experienced
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the liberation of concentration camps. I was too young to be involved in that. I do remember, however, seeing film of the opening of Belsen and other extermination camps where monstrous crimes had been committed. Then there were the events such as those at Babi Yar, near Kiev, under Nazi occupation. Day by day, men, women and children were systematically slain. Does anyone suggest that because those crimes were committed so many years ago, at a time when the people concerned were not British citizens, the criminals should be allowed to go scot free? I cannot accept that--which is why I support the legislation.7.8 pm
Sir Bernard Braine (Castle Point) : I have been deeply impressed by the speeches of the hon. Members for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) and for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker). I too do not seek vengeance : I seek justice.
I am a veteran of the second world war. During that war, I was conscious that we were fighting against something bestial and evil. The war crimes trials in Nuremberg proved that that was so. Not until 1986, when it was first alleged that Nazi war criminals were living in this country, was the spotlight turned on this aspect of the matter. We have come a long way since then.
In February 1988, the Hetherington-Chalmers inquiry was set up. At that time none of us could have imagined what would emerge--that living here in Britain, having secured the high privilege of British citizenship, were individuals against whom there was powerful evidence of involvement in the wholesale murder and manslaughter of innocent civilians.
There have been many references to what happened in the concentration camps. I have not seen the evidence, but I know what Nazi henchmen did in the occupied territories. They committed appalling and abominable crimes against defenceless citizens who were sometimes pushed into their own churches and burnt alive. I can think of scores of such cases that have been made known to me over the years.
Sir Thomas Hetherington, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, and Mr. William Chalmers, his Scottish equivalent, are very highly respected former prosecutors. They were the most experienced persons who could be found to assess the evidence and to apply the strict criteria that must be met before such evidence could be admitted into a British court. They produced two reports, the second of which, quite rightly, remains unpublished and locked away and contains the evidence available against a certain limited number of individuals. Since the publication of the inquiry's report the Government have been consistently committed to war crimes legislation. I am glad that they are not wilting now. I congratulate them on reintroducing the measure so speedily. Successive Home Secretaries, supported by former Home Secretaries now on the Opposition Benches, have wholeheartedly supported the Bill. They have seen the unpublished report, and are among the Bill's most important proponents.
I fail to understand how, particularly during the Second Reading debate in the other place, some could argue that there was insufficient evidence. Had they, by some chance, seen the unpublished report? Were they unaware of the appalling behaviour of the Nazis and their henchmen during the second world war? Have they forgotten
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Oradour and Lidice and the thousands of other Oradours and Lidices that occurred across occupied Europe and the Soviet Union? Were they oblivious to what happened at Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Dachau and all the other abominable centres of human persecution that were wiped away as a result of Nazi defeat?Far from having any wish for vengeance, I have been the chairman of the British-German parliamentary group for the past 30 years. Why?--because the first victims of the Nazis were the Germans themselves and because one of the greatest happenings in Europe since the war has been the way in which the German nation has purged itself of the Nazi past and governs itself in a democratic and sensible way.
There is no vengeance in my advocacy of the Bill, but--I hope that the Government will not wilt on this point--I demand justice. The matter is simple. Those who have been accorded the high privilege of British citizenship should not be excused the liabilities that go with it. I inform the faint hearts and the doubters that if a British subject allegedly committed murder overseas during that period he would be liable to prosecution. If we had known then what we now know, the persons concerned would never have been granted British citizenship. That is what lies at the heart of the Bill.
Earlier, it was asked why the legislation applies only to world war two. The answer is clear. It is because that is where the loophole exists. People who committed crimes after 1957 are already punishable under the Geneva Conventions Act 1957. Prosecutions for wilful killing and torture may take place in the United Kingdom wherever in the world the offence was committed and whatever the nationality of the alleged offender at the time. That is the answer. We are plugging a gap in our experience.
Some have argued that there would inevitably be show trials. Why should that be? The standards of evidence necessary for conviction would be the same as for other criminal trials in the United Kingdom. Witnesses are cross-examined, documentary evidence is subject to forensic testing, and experts are heard. One does not need to be a lawyer--it is a distinguished profession--to know that judges in this country can exclude any evidence if it appears that the accused has suffered prejudice from the circumstances in which that evidence was obtained. My hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman) asked a perfectly legitimate question, and I can easily understand why he asked it. If an accused is unfit to mount a proper defence, and if the judge is not totally satisfied that the accused had every opportunity to defend himself, the case will not proceed. In short, anyone who believes that there will be show trials does not have a very high regard for the British system of justice.
What is the point of trials so long after the offences were committed? Again I refer to the point I made at the outset justice. Is someone prepared to tell the family of the innocent bystander who was killed by the IRA last month at Victoria station that the perpetrators, if they are fortunate enough to escape capture for a certain period, will not be brought to justice for their crime? We have no time limit in this country for the prosecution of murder, and nor should we.
A 45-year lapse between crimes and their prosecution is in fact a period of borrowed time. It was time borrowed by
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the perpetrators of crime for the enjoyment of freedom, democratic rights, and for living under the rule of law, when all along justice had a prior claim. Indeed, such persons have enjoyed the very rights they denied to others. Borrowed time should count against the evader, not for him.May I say something about the rejection of the Bill in the other place? It is a Government Bill, proceeding through Parliament in exclusively Government time. It was drawn up by the Home Office and presented to the House of Commons by the Home Secretary. The measure was confirmed in the Queen's Speech. Last year the Bill received large majorities in this House- -the elected House. On Second Reading the margin was a substantial 213 votes. Members of this House are responsible to electorates. We must listen to our constituents and consider their interests before making any decision. Free votes are not taken lightly in this House. The other place should be made to understand that.
We must understand also that the crimes that we are considering were not committed in the heat of battle. I emphasise that. They are cases of the premeditated mass murder of men, women and children--often committed hundreds of miles from the war front. During the debate last year in the other House it was said that the crimes that we are considering were committed as acts of state and regarded by the Nazis as part of their war effort. With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall quote--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Harold Walker) : Order.
Sir Bernard Braine : I shall be brief. I wish to quote Kitty Hart, a survivor of the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp and a witness in 1939 at the trial of Gottfried Weise in the High Court of Wuppertal, Germany.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. Even the Father of the House must observe the rules that have been laid down by Mr. Speaker.
Sir Bernard Braine : I wholly agree, Mr. Deputy Speaker. 7.18 pm
Mr. Alex Carlile (Montgomery) : I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make a speech. During the previous Second Reading debate I attempted to argue the case on the merits. I do not propose to repeat everything that I said then. It was not an easy speech to make, and I do not wish to make it again. It is in the Official Report for anyone who wishes to read it.
When we spend much of our time rightly talking about the victims of crime, we should not forget that there are still living victims of the crimes under discussion. They remember what happened. They have as much right to have those crimes dealt with in accordance with justice as has a victim of any other crime.
My hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) spoke of difficulties for the defence in obtaining a fair procedure and fair acess to witnesses. He suggested that there may be what he caricatured as show trials and that justice could not be done to both sides. I say to my hon. Friend and others who share his doubts that justice can sometimes be a slow train comin'. Justice is not a train that runs to any timetable or even on a predictable track. However, it is a train that will
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not be derailed if its destination is true. If it would be unjust for a court to proceed against a defendant--perhaps because the way in which the evidence had been assembled would put the defendant at a disadvantage or because he is so infirm that it would not be fair for him to stand trial--justice will not be derailed, because the judge will rightly say that it would not be fair for the trial to go ahead.If, however, a defendant is fit to stand trial and the evidence has been properly assembled, it will be open to the defence to obtain the necessary evidence. That has been done. In two recent cases--the United States against Artishenko and United States against Kowalchuk--the defence counsel could obtain his evidence. In the first case, the defence counsel secured the evidence of six Soviet witnesses even though he requested it only on the day of travel to the Soviet Union. In the second case, Soviet witnesses provided exculpatory evidence for the defence. On the basis of that testimony, the United States justice department terminated proceedings against him. Those are just two examples of circumstances in which Soviet authorities co-operated with both sides. They are conscious of their position in the world and know that they must meet international standards of justice in these matters.
We discussed earlier the opinion of lawyers. I hope that most other practising lawyers have as high a regard as I have for the opinions expressed by their Lordships in the other place. Like all senior practising lawyers, I have a particular regard for the opinions of the Law Lords. However, they are not necessarily infallible ; and they represent a small, although extremely distinguished, minority of lawyers in this country. Although they provide wise opinions on cases that are referred to them on appeal, by the nature of their position they are judges who have not heard cases at first instance for many years. With the greatest respect, they are perhaps not the best qualified people to judge how jurors, witnesses and lawyers react or how the atmosphere of the court is reactive today.
As I am conscious of varying opinions on the Bill, I have gone out of my way to find out what my legal colleagues think about it. I have spoken to many dozens of young lawyers throughout the country at various times. Some of them share the misgivings expressed by hon. Members, but the great majority of them--especially young lawyers whose strongly burning fire of an ideal of justice has not yet become case-hardened--believe that the Bill should proceed. They believe that, when one talks about show trials of war criminals, one is not talking about a case that is qualitatively different from, say, a celebrated murder trial. We have a free press and if they want to make a show of a case, it is up to them to do so. It is certainly not up to the House to stop them.
Most lawyers believe that the courts can exercise the necessary control, especially now that more safeguards are built into our judicial system than at the time of the Birmingham Six trial. That control can be effective in ensuring that justice is done. I have seen cases in which one would have thought that there would have been tremendous prejudice against the accused because of what they were alleged to have done, because of their colour or where they came from, or because they had allegedly committed a crime that was prevalent in an area to which they were strangers. Yet many of those cases resulted in acquittals. Juries are capable of fearsomely and fearlessly administering justice so that those who are not guilty are
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acquitted and those who are guilty, but against whom guilt cannot be proven beyond all reasonable doubt, are acquitted. I do not think for one moment that we have reason to doubt the ability of British juries to reach such just conclusions in war crimes trials. 7.25 pmMr. Ivan Lawrence (Burton) : It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile), to speak so soon after my right hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine), who leads Back Benchers on human rights issues, and even to follow the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick). The number of times that the hon. Member and I speak on common causes is becoming embarrassing. It is a pleasure to speak because I was getting fed up with hearing hon. Members on both sides of the House say that the crimes in question were the most heinous ever committed in the history of the world but that we should do nothing about bringing to justice those who committed them.
Two weeks ago I went to Majdanek. The fact that so few people remember Majdanek is one reason for introducing the Bill. It was a concentration and extermination camp just outside Lublin, about two hours drive from Warsaw. It is not remembered because fewer people died there than in Auschwitz, a little further down the road. However, 360,000 people perished in Majdanek between 1941 and 1944. One can go into the huts crammed with victims' clothes--one of the huts has children's clothes piled from the ground to the roof. One can see the showers into which they were told they were going to be cleansed five minutes before they were put into the gas chamber next door. One can also see the empty cyclon B containers that killed, in 15 minutes, the women and children, the weak and the old who could not work. There are also containers of carbon monoxide--there was insufficient cyclon B--which took 45 minutes to asphyxiate the innocent. I walked around Majdanek practically alone two Saturdays ago and saw the trenches that had been dug. In one day, someone gave the order to shoot 18,400 Jews as they stepped off the backs of lorries, and they fell into the graves that had been dug for them. In one day, 18,400 people were systematically shot on the orders of a human being. Therefore, when somebody asks whether the perpetrators of such heinous crimes should be excluded from justice because they have taken advantage of a loophole in the legal machinery that we were supposed to provide but did not provide, what am I to say? What would anyone who went round Majdanek, or anywhere else that such crimes were perpetrated, say if they knew that the people who ordered them and were responsible for them were alive today and sheltering in this country because there was a defect in our legal machinery? I shall try to deal with two points raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour). He said that bringing back the Bill was an abuse of the Parliament Acts because it could have been amended ; but if he had listened to the debates in the House of Lords he would realise that it was clear that they did not want an amendment : they did not want the Bill. The Bill could not have been amended as they wanted because that would have destroyed it. This is precisely when the Parliament Acts should be invoked because what was
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being said in the Lords was totally different from the view repeatedly expressed by the overwhelming majority of the elected representatives of this House.My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham said that he wanted to know why the Government knew better than the distinguished lawyers who made the speeches in the House of Lords. Not all distinguished lawyers are opposed to the legislation. If Lord Elwyn-Jones, the former Lord Chancellor, had lived, he would have spoken in favour of the Bill. Unfortunately, he died on the day it was debated.
Their Lordships expressed much emotion because they were closely connected with the events at the end of the war. They were involved for different reasons--perhaps they were in the Government who allowed the war criminals into this country, knowingly or unknowingly ; perhaps they knew of the loophole and did nothing to close it ; perhaps they were responsible for, or were a party to, letting the Cossacks go back to the Soviet Union where they died and so felt guilty ; perhaps they believed that more anti- Semitism would be stirred up if the Bill were enacted ; perhaps they fought valiantly in the war and were sick to death of everything to do with it and so did not want to go through the horror again. Whatever the reason, their Lordships were too closely involved with events immediately following the war. Sometimes people who are too closely involved are not the best ones to make judgments. That is not to say that their Lordships' speeches were not worthwhile, should not be listened to or examined. They are listened to and have to be examined as to the viability of their arguments.
Some of their Lordships said that the Bill was retrospective legislation. It may be, but that is not of itself a reason for not having such legislation. Such legislation is bad, evil and not to be countenanced when it makes something a crime today that was not a crime when it was perpetrated. It is for that reason, and no other, that retrospective legislation is wrong. When the crimes were perpetrated, those who shot the 18,400 people or gave the order or gassed or hanged or burned or flogged to death or drowned the people in Majdanek could not have been in any doubt that what they were doing was a crime against the world order and the law of every civilised country. It might be time to "throw in the sponge" if the crimes had not been so heinous--shoplifting or, perhaps, one murder-- but we are talking about mass murder and genocide. Perhaps the Bill should be extended to other war crimes, but that is no reason not to introduce the Bill in its more limited form.
There are doubts about the procedures and identification, but Sir Thomas Hetherington made it clear publicly that the identification issue will not often arise. In many of the cases that he considered there was no dispute about identification--the dispute involved what was done. There have been objections that there will be no committal proceedings, but they are not held when a voluntary bill of indictment is introduced or in fraud cases, because we changed the law to get rid of committal proceedings. Live television from abroad was introduced in this House under the Criminal Justice Act 1988, and is being extended to Scotland. Statements of the dead are admissible in our courts, provided that the judge thinks that justice is being done. The judge provides the protection and has overall
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responsibility to ensure that justice, not injustice, is done. Whether prosecutions will or will not be possible is not a matter for us. We are talking about the machinery that gives the Director of Public Prosecutions the opportunity to say that there is sufficient evidence for the case to go forward, for a judge to ensure that justice is done and for a jury to decide whether a defendant is innocent or guilty. All we are being asked to do is to fill the gap in the legalIt has been asked why no action has been taken under international law. It was because we are now a party to the Genocide Act 1969, which is as retrospective as anything could be--it is specifically retrospective but it does not cover the war crimes of the second world war. The "violation of the principle of British justice" has been mentioned, but the principle of British justice is that justice be done, the wrongdoer be caught and sentenced, there is no time limit on murder, still less on mass murder and everyone should receive a fair trial.
That is British justice. British justice demands that the perpetrators of these crimes should be brought to justice. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on bringing the Bill again before the House.
7.37 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) : I greatly appreciated the sentiments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) when he said that he would not presume to give advice to any of his colleagues. However, I am conscious of walking on eggshells. I simply say for the benefit of my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) that I have been to the holocaust museum in Jerusalem recently. I did national service in an armoured regiment, and when we fired guns on the Ho"hne ranges, the commander made all national service men go to Belsen ; Colonel Douglas Stewart was right to insist on that.
I should like to talk quietly to the Home Secretary and I hope that he will forgive me if I do so in terms of my constituency. The first Polish armoured division came to West Lothian--to Fife and the west of Edinburgh-- during the war. As the hon. and learned Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) knows, and as was outlined in the Hetherington-Chalmers report, many of the Polish service men said, for self-evident reasons, that they could not return immediately after the war. Those Polish people have, by their vigour and intelligence, greatly enhanced the life of my constituency and its surrounding constituencies.
When I was a teacher I taught many of the first generation. Those children, including the Nawrockas, were bright and vigorous. I was greatly influenced by a man called Stefan Haluch, who was later to be a headmaster in one of the West Lothian schools and whose brother was, like many others, massacred with the Polish officer corps at Katyn. For many years it was said that the Germans were responsible for that massacre in the forest. Now, we know differently ; it was as Mr. Haluch always told me. From that experience I have concluded that we had better be careful about trying to sort out blame, even after 20 years, let alone 50.
The formidable nature of the task is referred to in the report, paragraph 8.26, the issue of the Cyrillic alphabet, and identifying precisely who was whom. The problem of identification to which Hetherington and Chalmers referred is formidable.
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I also wish to put it on record that, as a Scottish Member of Parliament, in one particular case, I had a great deal to do with William Chalmers who was the deputy Crown Agent. In my opinion, he is a man of considerable seriousness and quality of mind whom I greatly respect.I shall continue to be rather anecdotal. When I was a very new Member of Parliament, I was invited to a Latvian wedding in the village of Stoneyburn in my constituency. It was a lovely occasion, but late into the night many things came out into the open which left an indelible impression on me, especially the number of relatives of the families who had been killed not by the Germans--we have to face that--but by the Russians. Subsequently, it has become only too clear that the British agents who landed on the Latvian coast--the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) may know exactly what I am talking about, because Philby and others may have been involved, but I must not pursue that idea--bumped off the Latvian people, often family by family. That caused great suspicion and resentment. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) is right to say that that is covered in the report.
I remember that as a young Member of Parliament I sat late into the night at that wedding in my kilt. I was told that I should be very careful of one Latvian immigrant because his background was terrible. I asked his name--it was Hamish Mackenzie. I do not think that his name in Latvia was Hamish Mackenzie. There is a problem of identification--it is bad enough after 20 years, but after half a century the practical difficulties are formidable.
I admit that I was greatly influenced by the speeches made in another place, especially that by Lord Goodman. I wish to ask the Home Secretary whether he is worried by an element of what I believe Goering called "victor's justice". That is always a problem. We cannot pretend that all the injustices have been on one side, as I have tried to outline with reference to the Germans and the Russians. I ask the Minister to comment on what can be encapsulated as the problem of victor's justice.
Time is short, but I should like to comment on one other matter. It is incredible that the House should spend six hours of prime time discussing this issue when the Government have found no time since the third week in January to discuss the urgent problems of the Gulf.
Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark (Birmingham, Selly Oak) : Thirteen million Jews died.
Mr. Dalyell : I understand that, but the here and now is rather more urgent for today's debate. We should be discussing who decided to bomb the road to Basra, what we are going to do about the continuing crimes of Saddam Hussein in Kerbala and elsewhere in southern Iraq, what our relations should be with the Shi'ites in the south and with the Kurds in the north, who are in the middle of what seems to be a bloody and open war. I am the last to complain because I was lucky in the ballot on Friday, but let us make no mistake--it should not be left to private Members' time to discuss the health hazards of cholera, typhoid and hepatitis, which will become more acute as the cool spring develops into a scorching summer. We should be discussing what on earth to do about the oil slicks and, above all, about the oil fires. Those issues are more urgent for six hours of prime time--
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Mr. Barry Porter (Wirral, South) : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I should like to speak about the immediate problems of Northern Ireland, but I do not see what they have to do with the debate.
Mr. Deputy Speaker : The hon. Gentleman is quite right. Although we have a wide ranging debate on Second Reading, it is not as wide ranging as the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) is trying to make it.
Mr. Dalyell : I bow to the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is arguable whether we should be discussing war crimes committed by all sorts of people rather than events that took place before any of the party leaders were born. We are in danger of being highly selective about this issue. Why go back to Latvia and Lithuania? In answer to the hon. Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Porter), it strikes some of us that, as the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) said, we are dealing with some rather lowly people. No one is suggesting that the major decision-makers are the objects of the present debate.
7.46 pm
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham) : I wish that this problem had never arisen. I wish that our predecessors had not allowed to exist the conditions which permitted these people to slip into this country. I almost wish that these people had never been identified. However, they have been identified and we cannot leave it at that. Britain's reputation for justice and the honour of this country depend on the Bill being passed. The House is being asked simply to allow that jurisdiction be granted over all current British residents to cover crimes that were then and are now breaches of international law. It is not being asked to act as judge or jury or even as prosecutor. It is being asked to allow a legislative loophole that relates solely to jurisdiction to be corrected and to allow British justice to prevail. Prosecution is and will be--quite rightly--a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions. Judgment is and will be a matter for the courts. In an individual case, either or both may conclude that a conviction cannot or should not be achieved, but that is a matter for them, not for the House.
Why should not we sweep the problem under the carpet? Why should not we--as some hon. Members suggested earlier--let bygones be bygones? The answer was given by our erstwhile colleague Lord Waddington who, as Home Secretary, said on Second Reading last year :
"sometimes one is brought face to face with facts that cannot be buried, with deeds so terrible that they cannot be forgotten, and as long as one of those responsible survives, the world will cry out for justice."--[ Official Report, 19 March 1990 ; Vol. 169, c. 896.] What brought him face to face with such facts, especially as he was, as an eminent Queen's counsel, initially sceptical about all this? Unlike us, he has read part two of the Hetherington-Chalmers report which contains the detailed evidence on many of the cases concerned. Is not it ironic that that part remains confidential--so we cannot see it--to safeguard the entitlement of the accused to a fair trial, which their victims never had?
I declare an interest. My father was a Dutch refugee who fled to this country in 1940. When he returned to his native Holland in 1945, he found that 52 of his relatives were missing. They had been torn from their homes and loaded on to trains. Men, women, children and infants in
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arms went eastward to the death camps and never returned. My father believed in many of the great qualities of this nation and he believed especially in British justice. I hope that this House, the representative assembly of the British nation, will pass the Bill and let justice be done.7.50 pm
Mrs. Llin Golding (Newcastle-under-Lyme) : Many arguments have been put in favour of the Bill tonight and I will not detain the House by repeating them. Let me for a moment take the House back to the time when the dark clouds of war were gathering across Europe and to a time when thousands feared a knock on the door, which could mean that they would be dragged out of their homes, that their weeping children would be torn from their arms and that wives would be separated from husbands to be herded like cattle into trucks, to be beaten, starved and humiliated and to end their days in the horrors of the concentration camps.
Are we, who, in those dark days, stood virtually alone against the evils of Adolf Hitler and all that he stood for, to condone by our inaction the crimes committed by those who enacted those murderous deeds? What is our answer to the defenceless, innocent people who suffered so much and who were deserted by so many who did not hear their cries or who turned their faces away from the suffering? Are we, who speak for the British people, to allow those evil men to remain safe in our country in the knowledge that as long as they live within our shores the law can never touch them? Are we to allow this country to continue to remain a haven for those criminals? If those murderers had been born British, they could have been tried under our present law, but because they have become British citizens or have settled in this country since the war, as the law now stands, they cannot be prosecuted. Should not all who live in this country be covered by the same laws? I believe that they should be, and that is one of the many reasons why I will vote for the Bill.
The Bill may not lead to the single prosecution of a war criminal who resides in this country, but at least it will give those criminals the bitter taste of fear that one day someone may knock at their door and take them away to answer for the suffering and misery they inflicted on so many innocent men, women and children. 7.52 pm
Sir John Stokes (Halesowen and Stourbridge) : I am dismayed that the Bill should once again be brought before us. As the noble Lord Hailsham said recently :
"our objections to it are ones of principle. It is retrospective, discriminatory and it will be impossible to guarantee a fair defence. It is a thoroughly bad Bill."
I am rather surprised that the Government brought back the Bill, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister voted against its introduction on our first vote of principle. Such post hoc legislation does Parliament no good. It is wrong to alter the general law for special cases. If the Bill were passed, it would cause enormous legal problems. There would be a change in the way in which the law of evidence is presented and there would be huge difficulties over identification after such a long time.
We all know and understand how appallingly heinous the misdeeds were, but that does not mean that we have to alter the laws of England. The Bill is all about special
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cases. It is narrow in scope and deals only with alleged war crimes in Germany or in German-occupied territory which took place between certain dates. It does not deal, for example, with war crimes committed elsewhere or with crimes committed since 5 June 1945. The Bill has never been adopted as official Conservative party policy in any manifesto that I have seen and it has not been put to the nation in a general election. I have not had a single letter in support of the Bill and no one seems interested in it.I am also dismayed and surprised that a Tory Government--I hope that the Home Secretary will listen to this--should seek to pass such an odd law by resorting to the Parliament Acts, which were passed by a Liberal Administration and then by a Labour Government after the war. I thought that the Tory party believed in a second Chamber and that it supported the House of Lords. The debates in the other place were of a high order and many men of wisdom, experience and knowledge of the law expressed powerful objections to the Bill. This House has neither the expertise nor the experience to challenge the views so powerfully presented in another place. We are not a complete democracy in this country. We have the Crown, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Who are we in this special and difficult moral case to say that we are above everyone else and that what we do must become law?
What would the great Tory leaders of the past have thought of such behaviour by this Conservative Government? If the Bill is eventually passed, thanks to the Parliament Acts, I shall bow my head in shame. Have we in this House become so craven that we are prepared to give way to a well-organised lobby and to special pleading? Have we no sense of honour left? If the Bill is passed, it will be a sad day for the laws of England.
I am one of the few in this debate who served in the forces throughout the second world war. I hope that I have no bitterness against our former enemies. I have often said that I greatly admired--and admire--the German army. Years ago, Lord Randolph Churchill described Mr. Gladstone as
"an old man in a hurry".
Perhaps I may be allowed to say on this occasion, with regard to this extraordinary Bill, that the measure is being pressed on us by young men in a hurry. If the Bill becomes law, they will in time very much regret what they are doing.
7.57 pm
Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South) : It is sometimes sad when people who seek only justice for all are told that they are part of a tradition that has gone and that they are
"young men in a hurry".
I am glad that I am young and I do not think that I am in a hurry.
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