House of Commons Hansard Debates for 13 Dec 1991

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and rightly to bring neither prosperity nor happiness to the people on whom it was imposed. The competing ideology-- that the free market can achieve everything and all that one needs to do is to lift off the constraints of the state and everything will be well--has also been demonstrated, where it has been tried, including here and the United States, to have deep fundamental flaws.

The successful economies of the world in the past 10 years have been those which have found the right mix between private enterprise on the one hand and state assistance and regulation on the other.

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Lilley) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way

Mr. Smith : Ah, the great free enterpriser of the Cabinet wishes to intervene.

Mr. Lilley : Out of courtesy, will the hon. Gentleman repeat his repudiation of socialism for the benefit of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner)?

Mr. Smith : My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) has been consistent in his opposition, over decades, to what purported to be socialism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, but which has been no such thing.

The second and fundamental belief to which I referred was the importance of the idea of community. The former Prime Minister was fond of saying that there is no such thing as society.

Mr. Skinner : I did not catch what was said earlier, but as my name has been mentioned I should put it on the record that I have always taken the view, contrary to the opinions of some Tories, that what took place in eastern Europe was not socialism. People who have been here have probably heard me say that before. There is no problem on that score.

I shall take the opportunity to raise another important point about what is happening under the authority of the Government. I have just been in the Tea Room and a young worker there has had £29 deducted from her pay by the authorities of the House, supposedly for not clocking in and out properly. Yet that person had been working an extra hour in the morning-- coming in at 8 o'clock although she was not due to start until 9 o'clock. People who do not clock in at all--

Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman must realise that that does not arise out of the motion.

Mr. Skinner : The authorities of the House have deducted £29 from that woman's wages. That is an important matter and it is time that that money was repaid. It is a scandal to treat a low-paid worker in that way.

Mr. Smith : My hon. Friend has done the House two services. First, he has confirmed exactly what I said about his views and mine--and those of our hon. Friends--on what purported to be socialism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Secondly, he has drawn our attention to one specific consequence of the Government's economic policy over the past 12 years : some people are being badly treated by their employers and frequently receive wages that are far too low.

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I was talking about the second fundamental principle--the importance of the community. The former Prime Minister was fond of saying that there was no such thing as society and the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris) came close to saying much the same earlier in the debate. There is such a thing as society. It is extremely important that the Government realise that and take into account the needs of the community as a whole as well as those of individuals. William Godwin's treatise, "Enquiry Concerning Political Justice"--I realise that political justice is a foreign concept to Conservative Members--was written in 1793. It contains these words, which are still relevant today :

"Democracy restores to man a consciousness of his value, teaches him, by the removal of authority and oppression, to listen only to the suggestions of reason"--

would that that were true of Conservative Members. Godwin said that democracy

"gives him confidence to treat all other men with frankness and simplicity, and induces him to regard them no longer as enemies against whom to be upon his guard, but as brethren whom it becomes him to assist".

That text could stand as a fundamental tenet of the democratic socialism which my party espouses and which will guide a Labour Government.

Mr. Soames rose --

Mr. Smith : I shall not give way now, because time is marching on and I know that the Secretary of State wishes to speak.

The third fundamental principle was the need for opportunity for all. The Government are fond of the idea that one need only look after the people at the top of the tree and somehow the condition of the people at the bottom will thereby be improved. That has not happened ; it does not happen. The trickle-down theory, as it is called, is a fallacy. The deteriorating quality of our public services and deterioration in the standard of living of many people are a testimony to that.

I urge the Government to understand what R. H. Tawney, a great man, who formed much of the thinking of the Labour party in Britain, wrote in his book "Equality" :

"A society is free in so far, and only in so far, as, within the limits set by nature, knowledge and resources, its institutions and policies are such as to enable all its members"--

note "all its members"--

"to grow to their full stature, to do their duty as they see it, and--since liberty should not be too austere--to have their fling when they feel like it. In so far as the opportunity to lead a life worthy of human beings is needlessly confined to a minority, not a few of the conditions applauded as freedom would be more properly denounced as privilege. Action which causes such opportunities to be more widely shared is, therefore, twice blessed. It not only subtracts from inequality, but adds to freedom."

That is the basic belief of democratic socialists. The widening of opportunity to everyone is what we in the Labour party are all about and what we in the Labour Government will be all about. Those are the fundamental beliefs of democratic socialism, which sees society as a whole as well as a disparate collection of proud individuals. It is a philosophy which understands how our economy can grow, how our public services can be improved and how those least able to fend for themselves can, for once, be recognised as the fully fledged citizens that they are. Government's purpose must be to support all the people, not just a few. That is the philosophy that the British people will support at the coming general election.

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1.46 pm

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Peter Lilley) : I commend my hon. Friend for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans) for securing the debate and I congratulate him and my other hon. Friends on their excellent contributions to it. My hon. Friend is well known for his kid-glove approach to debating, but his demolition of the Leader of the Opposition was made all the more effective by the delicacy and gentleness with which he approached it. He certainly made it absolutely clear that, if the Leader of the Opposition were ever Prime Minister, we would not have a credible nuclear deterrent in Britain. I can assure my hon. Friend of one thing, however : the Leader of the Opposition remains the credible ultimate deterrent to voting Labour, and we can continue to rely on that.

A notable feature of the debate has been the conspicuous absence of my shadow, the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown). At his party conference this year, he concluded by urging the Labour party to be

"confident most of all in our enduring socialist values". Today, we have had a debate on socialism and the hon. Gentleman is not confident enough to come and defend his enduring socialist values. I am sure that the whole House will miss the little ray of gloom that he habitually casts on our deliberations and will welcome the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), who is brighter in every respect.

The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey) made a notable contribution to the debate. It is the first time that I have ever heard an hon. Member filibuster his own motion--in this case, due to come on later today. He refused, in his lengthy contribution, to answer two key questions put to him by my hon. Friends : first, how much would he and his Labour party reduce Scottish representation in the House as a result of their plans and are the Scottish people aware that they will be deprived of that representation, and, secondly, by how much would the burden of taxation on the Scottish people increase as a result of an extra body empowered to raise taxes upon them? I have a great affection for Scotland and, like many English hon. Members, I am proud to be able to claim my little portion of Scottish blood. I should certainly hate the Scots to have to face the proposals without the issues being first clarified. My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris) made a fine and witty defence of freedom and enterprise as only he can. He drew on his immense experience in those areas.

The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) excited the debate--I think for the first time in recorded memory. That was when he, an ex-leader of an ex-party, exited with a flounce, only to flounce back a short while later. The hon. Gentleman advanced the memorable argument that anyone who did not propose the complete abolition of taxation could not say that the level of tax was a matter of important political principle. For the Government, it is a matter of great importance. That is why we have striven to cut tax rates and oppose the Labour party, which is determined to raise them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames) made a memorable speech which I shall plagiarise frequently. I shall endeavour to give my hon. Friend credit for his many witticisms, which I shall reuse. The hon. Member for St. Helens (Mr. Bermingham) made an important point when he made the surprising

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complaint that privatisation proceeds had all been used to sustain Government spending. That is a complaint to which we must plead guilty. We ask ourselves how Labour could sustain public expenditure, let alone increase it, if it is to forgo future proceeds from privatisation.

The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury accused us of running a pre-election boom. This will be welcome news to many of my right hon. and hon. Friends. I shall let my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer know of the dangers of overheating in Islington, South and Finsbury.

Mr. Chris Smith : The Secretary of State knows that I accused the Government of no such thing. Instead, I accused them of starting the 1980s with a deep recession and with having an irresponsible boom based on credit expansion in the mid-1980s, which was inevitably followed by a further recession. That is the charge that I made. The right hon. Gentleman should address himself to that rather than conjure up a charge that I did not make.

Mr. Lilley : We can consult the official record. I think that we shall find that the hon. Gentleman said that we always have pre-election booms, and that that was the problem.

Socialism is in retreat throughout the world. Countries everywhere are turning to the policies that we pioneered in the

1980s--privatisation, free markets and lower taxes. They are doing it for the best of reasons. They have seen the market, and it works. I have seen that in every country that I have visited over the past 18 months. In Poland, I addressed the Polish Parliament on privatisation on the very day that the Polish Government were taking powers to privatise about 14,000 companies.

In the Guangdong province of China I could see the spectacular developments where free markets have been allowed. Already 2 million jobs have been created, largely by capital from Hong Kong. Hong Kong provides the most dramatic proof of the success of capitalism and the failure of socialism. Since the Communist revolution, the population of Hong Kong has increased roughly tenfold. Incomes in Hong Kong are now many times higher than those on the mainland. The only difference between China and Hong Kong is that Hong Kong has no natural resources and a free market system. In India, I was again invited to speak on our economic reforms. The Indians were increasingly conscious that the most damaging part of the British imperial legacy was the belief, which was at its apogee in the United Kingdom at the time that we gave India its independence, that the state could develop a modern industrial economy by intervention, protection and state ownership. India, too, is now abandoning that legacy of socialist imperialism ; privatisation, liberalisation and lower taxation are the orders of the day. In Latin America the pattern is the same. In September I visited Venezuela which is leading the way--it is privatising major industries, cutting taxes, reducing tariffs and moving back into the world economy. As a result, it is one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America.

Finally, last month I had the privilege of representing this country in St. Petersburg at the official celebrations of the demise of communism. It was a glorious day for the Russian people and, as Major Sobchak said in a moving speech in front of the Winter palace :

"After 74 years in the darkness Russia is re-emerging into the light of freedom."

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We all welcome that change.

The most painful part of the economic legacy of socialism and of communist control is the fearful cost of transition back to a market economy and bold steps are needed to achieve it. Therefore, it was heartening to hear the mayor of Moscow promising to give flats to tenants absolutely free. Anyone who has seen the quality of Soviet flats would, I think, be bound to observe that the mayor of Moscow probably got the price about right. No doubt some of my hon. Friends think the same may be true of some properties in Labour-run authorities.

Mr. McKelvey : The Secretary of State has taken us through the highways and byways of the world, but he has not commented on housing conditions in Scotland. When there was a Select Committee on Scottish Affairs and when we visited Scotland, we discovered that about 300, 000 houses were almost inhabitable because of dampness but the Government refused to give additional money to deal with that.

Mr. Lilley : In his earlier contribution, the hon. Gentleman acknowledged that the Labour party had been averse to home ownership, and in the words of one of my hon. Friends, had merely allowed its hostility to lapse, just as the Leader of the Opposition's membership card for CND lapsed. It is in Scotland that the hostility to private ownership by socialist local authorities has been most intense and until recently half the population in Scotland had the state as its landlord. Now the hon. Gentleman complains that the conditions under which they suffer are worse than those in other parts of the country where free enterprise was able to make a greater contribution. I am happy to say that in Scotland the desire for home ownership--long repressed by socialist councils--is now becoming manifest and sales of council houses have been increasing rapidly.

Western firms can play a part in restoring the Russian economy. I saw in St. Petersburg a splendid example being set by Littlewoods. It has linked up with a Russian clothing company, introduced British design, management and quality standards and opened a Littlewoods store. It is so popular that queues form well before it opens. People in the queue are given a ticket which is itself a valuable object. Demand is so great that each person is allowed to buy only two items and when the doors open, the store is emptied of goods within minutes. Turnover is rising as rapidly as output can be increased--would that more companies from this country followed Littlewoods' example and contributed to the restoration of the Soviet economy from the devastation wrought by socialism.

The list of countries in which socialism is now in retreat and in which free market policies are on the advance is immense. Countries that are privatising, cutting taxes, reducing state intervention and freeing markets include the whole of eastern Europe, all the republics of the former Soviet Union, all continental Latin America, all North America, most of sub- Saharan Africa, most of Asia and all Australasia.

Those that reject privatisation cling to nationalisation and want to extend state intervention are a more select band. In the entire world they comprise only Cuba, North Korea, Libya and the British Labour party.

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Mr. McKelvey : Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that it is scandalous that the Cuban economy is being strangled by a country the size of the USA? Why does it not lift the blockade?

Mr. Lilley : The hon. Member's sympathy for his socialist friends does him credit. However, I have made it clear that we shall not enforce, or allow the subsidiaries of American companies to enforce, the American blockade, since we retain our independence in that matter.

Mr. Soames : My right hon. Friend has done an enormous amount to promote the interests of British companies in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. Does he agree that the great difficulty in those countries, as they emerge from the socialist hold around their necks, and what matters most, is enabling them to manage businesses in a sensible manner, which is completely alien to anything that they have been taught? To assist eastern European countries, we need to supply more management training. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to try to ensure that they receive such training? Mr. Lilley : My hon. Friend makes a valid and important point. We have estabilished the know-how fund because we recognise that know-how, rather than straight cash, is the important contribution and ingredient that we can offer. Under the fund we have arranged a scheme--especially with St. Petersburg--for about 100 small business men to receive training from Manchester business school, which is very welcome over there. There are probably other schemes which my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary --who is in overall charge of the know-how fund--would be able to expand upon.

The Labour party is one of that small band of people and institutions in the entire world which remain wedded to the extension of state control and state ownership. In its policy documents this year, the Labour party has reaffirmed its commitment to nationalisation, its rejection of privatisation, its plans to extend the powers of the state, to intervene in industry and to control more of the nation's income.

When I say that socialism is alive in the British Labour party, I should explain that I use the word "live" purely in its technical sense. As Robert Harris--a Labour sympathiser--who has already been quoted in this debate has said :

"The truth is that Labour--in terms of intellectual activity ... is perilously close to brain-dead in this country."

I should explain to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that that did not involve any snide reference to the intellectual vitality of the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Harris was talking about the demise of magazines. He went on to say-- this should be added to the fund of quotations which have emerged during the debate :

"It is very odd. Sometimes, in the right light, Labour looks more impressive than it has for a generation : disciplined, talented, responsible, well-presented. And then you stand still for a moment and listen and you can hear nothing. It is eery. It is like walking down a street built on a film set : the technicians have put up wonderful frontages, but behind them--thin air."

We are here to debate this important subject and we see row upon row of thin air.

Mr. Harris was referring to the demise of a series of left-wing magazines, culminating in the closure of Marxism Today. I doubt if many of my hon. Friends read it or regret its passing. "Better dead than read" would be their verdict, I suspect.

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The magazine went out with a splendid drinks party recently. One cynical ex-Marxist suggested that the Communist party might end its search for a new name by calling itself the "Cocktail party." To mark its demise the magazine also produced a final issue which sent a crisp message to all socialists, "The End."

That lack of faith in "our enduring socialist values", as he called them at the party conference, did not stop the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East from writing a moving tribute for the final issue. He wrote :

"Marxism Today never forgot the value of matching imagination and ideas with rigorous analysis, and that will be its lasting contribution."

That tells us a lot about the hon. Member's capacity for imagination and rigorous analysis. An especially penetrating example of it was an article contributed to Marxism Today by the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock). He wrote :

"The market system never has and never will produce the plenty necessary to meet human need."

He has since jerked from that extreme position to another, as is his wont.

Labour's presentation has changed, but its policy proposals remain remarkably similar to those advocated in previous manifestos and implemented by previous Labour Governments. All Labour Governments have nationalised at least one industry. Labour is committed to nationalising the water industry and the national grid as priorities.

Mr. Chris Smith : Will the Secretary of State tell us what the Conservative Government of 1970 to 1974 did to Rolls-Royce?

Mr. Lilley : If the only problem with our record that the hon. Member can find occurred between 1970 and 1974, when I was not a candidate for the Conservative party, he is obviously endorsing our position.

Labour is committed to nationalising the water industry and national grid. Those pledges were spelt out this year in "Opportunity Britain", its manifesto document.

All Labour Governments have set up a Government body to intervene, invest in and takeover private companies : first, there was the industrial reconstruction corporation and then the national enterprise board. We know the history of the latter, and of the 102 companies that it took into partial public ownership, 35 were liquidated or failed, 38 were sold at a loss and only 29 returned the taxpayers' cash when they were disposed of.

Labour now promises a national investment bank--an NIB--presumably to take equity stakes, among other things, in private companies. That is nationalisation by the bank door.

All previous Labour Governments have increased the proportion of the nation's income that is spent by the state. The commitments in Labour's recent documents have been objectively costed at £35 billion a year. That would take public spending back up to about half the national income. Like all their predecessors, a Labour Government would be committed and obliged to raise taxes.

That all appears in the small print of Labour's policy documents. Voting Labour would lead to the political

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equivalent of date rape. A Labour Government would do many things to British people to which they would strenuously object, but Labour would then say, "You were asking for this when you invited us back in." We must make people aware of the pledges in the small print of Labour's policy documents if we are to avoid that fate.

Labour assiduously pretends nowadays that it has abandoned socialism or that socialism is not what we always thought it was. It even claims sometimes to have embraced the market, although that did not come up today. If it has changed, we are entitled to ask what brought about that conversion. There are only two possible explanations : it has been convinced either by the success of our policies in transforming the economy since it was last in power or by the success of our policies in winning three successive elections. There is no doubt that our policies have transformed the economy. In the 1960s and 1970s, Britain was bottom of the growth league in Europe. In the 1980s, we were top of that league and that was the first decade for more than a century when Britain grew faster than France and Germany. The transformation was greatest in areas where we had been weakest, such as industrial relations. In 1979, 29.6 million working days were lost as a result of the disputes and strikes that we inherited from Labour's industrial relations regime. In the past 12 months, fewer than 1 million days were lost through strikes and industrial disputes.

There is no doubt that the transformation is the result of the policies that we have pursued. The transformation of the economy is the result of privatisation, of reducing taxes and of reforming trades union law. Labour consistently denies the facts and the cause. Moreover, had it really been converted to free markets, its policy documents would surely contain some free-market policies. The Labour party's counterparts in Australia and New Zealand have undergone that conversion. They have adopted free market policies and genuinely abandoned socialism. However, the British Labour party does not advocate privatisation, because it has voted against every privatisation that we have carried out. It does not advocate cutting a single tax rate ; it has voted against every tax cut that we have made. The Labour party plan, quite openly, to raise taxes again. It has not supported a single trade union reform. Instead, it is committed to restoring many of the union privileges that we have removed. We may safely conclude that the Labour party's conversion is simply cynical opportunism.

Several hon. Members have reminded the House of the threat posed to pension funds by socialists. I do not want to go into that issue in detail, but they are right. The two previous Labour manifestos threatened to divert pension funds for purposes other than seeking to enhance pensions. The previous Labour Government took the Christmas bonus away from pensioners. All Labour Governments have robbed pensioners by resorting to inflation. Under the previous Labour Government, inflation plucked 27 per cent. from the value of people's savings in a single year. The value of pensioners' fixed incomes were cut by a half during the lifetime of the previous Labour Government. If the Labour party wants to see the unacceptable face of socialism, it should look into the mirror.

The collapse of the Soviet economy has finally discredited socialism. The collapse of the Soviet Union has

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also surely discredited that other fashionable doctrine, federalism. It has shown that artificial federations inevitably collapse. Nations prefer to govern themselves, not to be governed by each other. How extraordinary that the British Labour party has still not managed to break free from socialism yet it has already half fallen for federalism.

The collapse of socialism has left an intellectual vacuum in the minds, or what passes for the minds, of our left-wing intelligentsia. The concept of federalism has rushed in to fill that void. The Labour party, unable to make the state supreme within the nation, wants to submerge the nation within a supreme super-state.

The excellent deal that my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor were able to negotiate at Maastricht would not have been available to a Labour Government. A Labour Government would have signalled their intention to sign any deal on paper. They would have signalled their intention to abandon any power to govern ourselves that might have been requested by our partners. They would have signalled their intention to extend the competence of majority voting into huge areas of our national life. They need not have gone to Maastricht, but could have signed the communique when it was telexed to them at the end of the negotiations.

The great paradox is that the Labour party has always been against Britain intervening in other countries' internal affairs, but now it has carried that to the ultimate extreme, because it is against us interfering even in our internal affairs. The issue of the social charter is not just about whether Labour's policies are better or worse than Conservative ones--the British electorate can decide that. The question is whether other countries of Europe should be able to overrule the decision that the British electorate and Parliament make on such matters.

We believe that the British people, through their representatives in this House, should be able to tailor policies on such crucial matters to fit our needs, experience and traditions. This issue is vital, since we cannot and will not go back on the reforms that we introduced to trade union law, and which have been profoundly successful in the past 12 years.

We could not return power to the trade union bosses and go back to the strikes, chaos and inefficiency that marked the Labour party's trade union laws. However, the Labour party want us to hand over responsibility so that we are governed by trade union laws--often foreign trade union laws at that.

Mr. Chris Smith : Would the right hon. Gentleman care to tell me what it is in the social charter agreement which was signed by the other 11 EC countries that in any way accords with what he just said about new powers for trade union leaders?

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones) : It is article 118B

Mr. Lilley : As my hon. Friend so succinctly puts it, it is article 118B. We believe that the House and the Government should have the right to select and to choose the laws that apply in the British economy. Over the past 12 years, we have amply demonstrated that the laws which we have chosen have done this country a power of good, and we should be reluctant to go back on that.

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The agreement, which we have negotiated successfully and in accord with our partners, will achieve what Mr. Delors said that it would achieve--it will help to make this country a paradise for investment. I have ensured that that message will go out to all our commercial attache s throughout the world.

In recent years, we have been successful in making this country more attractive for investment--whether inward investment, domestic investment or investment from other European countries--than any other European country. We intend to retain and to reinforce that position. That is what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and his colleagues achieved at Maastricht.

The debate has been about socialism--its demise and its end as a credible intellectual force. My hon. Friends' contribution have demonstrated that fact, as have those of the Opposition. The Opposition's paucity--in terms of numbers and of the intellectual content of their speeches--has revealed that the Labour party has indeed, as their friend Robert Harris said, no further intellectual contribution to make to the political debate. The Labour party is certainly not ready to think, let alone to govern. Until the Labour party has re-established its ideas, principles and what it actually stands for, it should not pretend that it will be in a position to take charge of the fate of this nation.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield on his motion and on securing this valuable debate.

2.16 pm

Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham) : I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans) on choosing for debate so timely a subject--the implications of socialism. We have come here not to mourn socialism but to bury it, because socialism has been a pernicious creed which has held much of Europe in its iron grip for 74 years. What has been the cost? It has been economic stagnation, massive pollution and millions of dead. With its stablemate, the national socialists of Germany, it laid waste to much of our continent during the middle of the century.

The peoples of Europe have risen up and we have seen the fall of hundreds of bronze Lenins around eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, but socialism has left in its wake economic devastation, hunger and famine, social disruption and suspicion of one's neighbours. Look at the position in the former East Germany and one finds a country in which the dreaded Stasi kept a file on almost every citizen. There is suspicion between neighbours and between brother and sister in that country. The peoples of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia have fought for their freedom and are now fighting for the success of free enterprise. They have been joined by the peoples of the three Baltic republics who are at last free from that shameful deal between national socialists and communist socialists. The peoples of the Ukraine and Russia are following suit. Is not it funny that, when the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) and many of his hon. Friends see the failure of socialism in eastern Europe, they suddenly say, "No, that is not socialism" ? But that is not what they said when Labour leaders trooped to pay tribute in Moscow, time and again referring to their brothers and comrades.

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Mr. Chris Smith : The hon. Gentleman is totally incorrect. The position is precisely what I have always said. The hon. Gentleman must not tar me with that brush.

Mr. Arnold : The hon. Gentleman has just said, "It was not me, sir." As in the case of its association with Robert Maxwell, when failure beckons, the new high-gloss Labour leadership cannot be seen for dust. But some are seen. John Austin-Walker, Labour's prospective parliamentary candidate for Woolwich and leader of the

Labour-controlled Greenwich council, said that he thought that the overthrow of eastern European regimes was very sad.

The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) has gone even further, explaining that the campaign for socialism will have to be resumed inside the USSR and eastern Europe. Only last month, six Labour Members signed an early-day motion noting that the Bolshevik revolution of 74 years ago represented the aspirations of Russian workers and peasants. Did not that turn out wonderfully for those workers and peasants !

To this very day the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) defends Cuba and its Castro regime. After all, Fidel Castro is an unreformed socialist, the last dictator in Latin America. Like the Bourbons, he has learnt nothing. He blunders on, his people in poverty and want, with five- hour speeches which are another by-product of socialism. The hon. Member for Islington, North never learns either. In the House he glows with praise for socialist Nicaragua, but the people of Nicaragua gave their verdict on socialism and kicked out the Sandinistas. Not to be outdone, Mrs. Kinnock wrote to The Independent wishing the Sandinistas well just days before they were voted out of office.

Only a year ago Labour Members told us to look at Sweden as a marvellous example of socialism in action. We did look at it, but more important, so did the Swedish people and at their first opportunity they chucked the socialists out of office. Around the world socialism is in retreat and collapse, but here it is alive and only too keen to do the kicking--kicking the British people in the pocket and then in the teeth.

Until the general election socialism is being kept carefully under wraps. We know that the Opposition totally rely on opinion polls for policy direction. They know, as we do, that the British people are clearly anti- socialist. Therefore, Labour's publicity machine sees to it that its presentation is definitely anti-socialist. The question that we must ask is whether the Labour party itself is

anti-socialist. Let us take a warning from that great sage the right hon. Member for Chesterfield, who said recently that Labour had changed its mind to win the next general election, but could also change it back again after the election. That is a clear warning to the British people.

With great fanfare, Labour kicked out the hon. Member for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mr. Fields) to prove that the Labour party was safe in the hands of the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock). Now with even greater fanfare Labour has dispatched the hon. Member for Coventry, South- East (Mr. Nellist), who earned the accolade of Back Bencher of the year. He puts the case for socialism today, as the right hon. Member for Islwyn did yesterday, although he does so in a less long-winded way and with more evident intellectual integrity. The socialists are still there in the Labour party. They are official Labour party prospective candidates and

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