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Mr. Michael Fabricant (Mid-Staffordshire): The hon. Gentleman must accept that circumstances change. Not so many years ago, the Palestine Liberation Organisation allowed a Japanese terrorist organisation to shoot people at Lod airport. Now, however, Yasser Arafat is the leader of an established nation. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that an amendment of some kind is necessary to control terrorism in Britain and someone has to decide who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter?
Mr. Galloway: We are all in favour of controlling terrorism in Britain. Surely not a single hon. Member has any truck with terrorism here, but we are talking about terrorism in other countries and what is defined as terrorism by foreign dictatorships where there is no democratic process. I shall deal with Palestine, with which I am exceedingly familiar, or at least as familiar as any other hon. Member, but for the moment I should like to continue making my point about Mandela.
The amendment would not have protected the activities of Nelson Mandela when he was here in exile because he was calling for and organising activities that were indictable offences in his own country, punishable by imprisonment.
Mr. Michael:
Perhaps it would be helpful if I underlined the fact that two extremes need to be protected:
Mr. Galloway:
Indeed. I am sure that we shall return to that when we discuss the other amendments. Amendment No. 1 was proposed as a safeguard, but it does not go nearly far enough. Nelson Mandela was arguing, organising and raising funds and all the people with whom he worked are now rightly considered heroes by the British state. Just a few yards from here, in Westminster Hall, Madam Speaker made one of the most moving speeches I have ever heard in the presence of President Mandela in which she described how she felt during his early leadership of the African National Congress, including his visit here. At the time, Nelson Mandela was collecting funds for, organising, advocating, inciting and conspiring for the armed wing of the ANC--Umkhonto we Sizwe--to commit violent acts that were indictable here and in South Africa and punishable by imprisonment. Under the Bill and the amendment, which does not go far enough, President Mandela would have been clapped in irons. There is no doubt about that.
Sir Russell Johnston (Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber):
I have been following the hon. Gentleman's speech with great interest as I am not really conversant with the Bill, but he has now said, "The amendment does not go far enough" four times. I get the feeling that no amendment would go far enough.
Mr. Galloway:
That is not the point. In my humble opinion--and I am humble in front of the venerable and distinguished hon. Member--that comment does not behove him. He is a splendid Liberal and a splendid veteran of the anti-apartheid cause. Perhaps he should listen a little more carefully.
Sir Russell Johnston:
I was not intending to make a joke. It simply seemed to me that the hon. Gentleman was advancing arguments that in substance are against the whole idea of having such a Bill at all.
Mr. Galloway:
Clearly, the time has gone when I would have been permitted to do that. I am anxious to ensure that the Bill has real safeguards. I had no time to table amendments. After all, we did not know until yesterday afternoon that the Bill would be coming before the House today--a matter about which my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth complained.
I am anxious to find a means by which Parliament can politically prescribe circumstances in which action under the Bill would be taken. I am anxious to avoid not only a diminution of our civil liberties and the rights of political refugees but the chaos and congestion in the legal system which will result from the Bill, about which I shall argue when I have the opportunity. Some of our hon. Friends will no doubt be gainfully employed in their other tasks as lawyers because the Bill will result in court cases by the hundred every year. The legislation is rushed in response to a specific and, for the Government, highly embarrassing political refugee case--that of Professor al-Masari, who was a thorn in the side of the Government of Saudi Arabia.
I should like to continue my point about Nelson Mandela and how the amendment would not go remotely far enough to protect him. Mandela was here organising armed action against the South African dictatorship. Indeed, not so long ago, it was absolutely routine for Conservative Members--we all know who they are--to denounce President Mandela as a terrorist and the African National Congress as a terrorist organisation.
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover):
I was surprised to find when I arrived half an hour before President Mandela spoke in Westminster Hall that the first four rows of seats were occupied by all the Tory Members of Parliament who had wanted to hang, draw and quarter him.
Mr. Galloway:
That was one of the most extraordinary sights in modern times. The whole world of course rejoices if a sinner repents. None the less, even in my time in the House, which is less than 10 years, it was routine for Conservative Members to denounce President Mandela as a terrorist leader. Indeed, their co-party workers used openly to sell and wear "Hang Nelson Mandela" T-shirts at Conservative party conferences. That was just in the past few years, when the whole world, apart from such dinosaurs, had come to regard Mandela as a world statesman of premier rank and indispensable to the solution of the crisis in southern Africa.
How much more the argument would have applied to Nelson Mandela when he was in this country organising armed action almost 40 years earlier. What would an Attorney-General have done if the proposed power had been available of Mr. Mandela's clandestine trip to London to gain funds for and help organise terrorist action? There is no getting away from that point, although some of my hon. Friends would like to. Under the Bill, Nelson Mandela was involved in commissioning, inciting and conspiring to commit terrorist action; he was organising people to carry guns to shoot members of the security forces of the sovereign Government of South Africa--a recognised Government with whom we had diplomatic relations.
I gave unconditional support to the ANC's armed struggle against apartheid, but not every Member was prepared to. I make no apology for it. It gained me a warm embrace from President Mandela, which is one of the most treasured achievements of my life. The reality, however, is that on many occasions there would have been
a majority in the House of Commons in favour of deploying the Bill to clap him in irons. The South African Government would have been demanding that it be done; the British multinational companies which profited so hugely from the slavery of apartheid would have been pressing that it be done; memos would have gone backwards and forwards between captains of industry, the military industrial complex, and Ministers and other forces, the Bernard Levins and the rest, who would have no doubt taken to the columns, as others would have taken to the airwaves, to create an atmosphere that would have led the Attorney-General to say, "This man's conduct is in breach of this law. The amendment does not stop that being so and we will prosecute him." Where would we have been in those circumstances? How would we have faced President Mandela in Westminster Hall?
I have dealt with the issue of President Mandela because he would not have been protected by the amendment, contrary to what my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth sought to imply.
Mr. Michael:
I should make it clear again that the amendment is intended to ensure that, by providing extra-territorial jurisdiction and the power to prosecute, the Bill does not cover minor offences abroad, such as bicycle offences and the like, as well as prosecutions for offences relating to violence. The amendment is not intended to deal with a set of political and moral judgments that my hon. Friend is addressing, which subsequent amendments seek to address. The amendment specifically deals with the bottom end of offences and a quite different mischief, which, in the interests of everybody, should be excluded from the Bill by some mechanism.
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