Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 15 Rhagfyr 1949.
Oh, it does not. I thought the Motion applied to everyone. There is £236,000 income of Labour Party headquarters, £286,000 from the political funds, £18,000 affiliation fees to the Co-operative Party, £100,000 from the Council of the Co-operative Union and £358,000 Co-operative expenditure on education, making £989,000 in all.
I must say we have had many amusing interjections this evening, and I think the most amusing of all was when the right hon. Member for Wakefield, with these facts in mind, described himself and his colleagues as the poorer party and said he was proud of it. Now I understand why the right hon. Gentleman once called pounds, shillings and pence "meaningless symbols." I say that the accounts are valueless as a picture of the support for the Socialist cause without the figures I have mentioned. Of course I have not started on some of the outside bodies. I do not want to say too much about the "Daily Herald" whose shares are as to 51 pec cent. owned by the Labour Party, 'because on Monday the "Daily Herald" published an article which, in my view, raised its standard considerably and whose only fault was that it also published the face of the author.
Apart from that, I want to put this point to the hon. Gentlemen who have brought this Motion before the House. I say that to ask for the accounts of any organisation which has political action as one of its aims is really, when we come to consider it, quite out of the question. Let me take one matter which hon. Members of all parties will experience in a short time, if, indeed, they have not alreay experienced it. They will be asked by the Roman Catholic community in each division for their views on Catholic schools. That, of course, is a political aim, a political matter on which they come to us to find out our views. It would be quite absurd, I think, to take voluntary organisations of that kind and to ask them to split up their accounts, to say how much it costs and how much of the priest's time was devoted to matters of that kind.
The same applies to the Spinsters' Union and to many political organisations the importance of which hon. Members with a shorter political experience than my own will realise as the years go on. What I say is that, with, regard to organisations of that kind, our electoral law is entirely sufficient because it directs and controls their expenditure to the two vital limits—one, that it must be at the time of the Election, and the other that it must, be directed to securing or promoting the return of a particular candidate.
I want to say one word on the matter which I put as my fourth point, and that is intimidation and oppression. I do not think hon. Members will deny this point—that one test of democracy is whether the free right constitutionally to form an Opposition is given in a country. It is a test which is generally accepted and which was accepted by all the nations of Western Europe at Strasbourg with no dissent from any one at any time. I put this point, and I ask hon. Members who have gone into the matter to consider it. Where you have a State which is already centralised and which is growing more centralised, and when you have 5½ million out of approximately 22 million—one quarter—of the workers in a State working in nationalised bodies closely related to the State, then the opportunity for intimidation becomes infinitely greater.
There is no one in any business who will not be threatened by the chance of losing work or of having his job threatened in one way or another. There are examples of employees of nationalised boards who have already been talked to because they have belonged to Conservative clubs. I say that that is a real danger and I do not agree with the suggestion that everyone who subscribes should, ipso facto, have his name given so that he may be approached, got at and intimidated in that way.