Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 12 Rhagfyr 1973.
Rear-Admiral Morgan Morgan-Giles
, Winchester
12:00,
12 Rhagfyr 1973
Defence debates always seem overshadowed by events of much greater immediate urgency. Without criticising Mr. Speaker's decision. I have a great deal of sympathy with the application by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Dr. David Owen) earlier today for the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9.
The origins of the present economic crisis, brought on by the oil shortage, can be traced to the Labour Government's decision in 1967 to withdraw from the Gulf. Before anyone accuses me of "gunboat" ideas, I hasten to add that I am talking merely about a military presence as visible evidence of our political will to continue to influence events in that part of the world. Without such influence, the Arab rulers despaired of us and reinsured with the Soviets, whose political will was so apparent in arming and then rearming the Egyptian and Syrian armies.
We should pay tribute to the policy of the Government of Iran and of the Shah, who seems to have a very far-sighted policy in regard to security in that neck of the woods.
The Russians must now be laughing all the way to the Kremlin. They have deprived the capitalist world of its oil without shedding a drop of Russian soldiers' blood. They have found vast markets for their armaments. It is, to say the least, a curious coincidence that their sympathisers among the industrial militants in the United Kingdom simultaneously produce trouble in the mines and the railways just when we are desperately short of oil. The timing is significant. I am not seeing a Red under every bed, but I am seeing enough Reds under beds to stop the sophisticated machinery of modern civilised society—as my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew) pointed out yesterday.
In the face of all these facts, and in the face of weakness and confusion in NATO, it is fantastic for the Labour Party to suggest, as they did at their party conference, cutting defence expenditure. The European members of NATO must pull themselves together and give evidence urgently to America of their political will to survive. It is as simple as that. This means greater and not smaller defence expenditure.
The right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. John Morris) wants, apparently, to equate downwards towards other members of NATO in Europe. I wonder why he thinks it correct for us to level down to Holland and Denmark, for example, rather than that they should perhaps be encouraged, to level up to us.
My right hon. Friend will not expect the debate to go by without mention of the Harrier. I saw Operation "Sally Forth", the NATO operation in the Firth of Forth, this summer. It was without question the most impressive demonstration of naval power I have ever seen. The belle of the ball was undoubtedly HMS "Ark Royal". I had the pleasure of standing on the deck of one of the guided missile cruisers with my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy. I saw the Harrier landing and taking off from the deck of HMS "Albion", and had the pleasure of whispering in his ear, "Project definition studies, my foot". The thing works perfectly well, as the Government well know, and it has worked perfectly well for years. My right lion. Friend said that he thought the House would understand his announcement today of further postponement of a decision, but I assure him that this side of the House does not understand it at all.
I hope that my hon. Friend, in replying to the debate, will say something more about recruitment at age 15. The argument seems so simple and straightforward. Many boys do not want to do their additional year at school brought about by the raising of the school leaving age. My right hon. and fair Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science has overfilled classrooms and not enough teachers. It seems sensible that we should let these boys go sideways into the forces, where they could continue their education while developing the military virtues. If they did not like it after all, they could leave at 18—and if the Services do not put their thumbprint on boys' minds in these formative years, they never will.
Another point raised in the debate is forces' pay. We must allow forces' pay and allowances to catch up with the phase 3 level now, and not wait until April. It is not sufficient to say to the forces, "Your regular review comes up soon and maybe you will get something in April."
If my right hon. Friend needs a pretext, there is one in the "unsocial hours" provision of phase 3. Does my right hon. Friend think that the hours spent on the bridge of a coastal minesweeper in a channel gale in mid-winter are unsocial or not? Does he think that patrolling the streets of Bogside on Saturday at midnight constitutes unsocial hours?
It is not good enough to offer the miners and others payments for unsocial hours while delaying the long-overdue increase in forces' pay. The men in the forces do not go on strike or go slow or operate overtime bans. They do their duty 24 hours a day so that the rest of us can sleep quietly in our beds. They deserve better than they have been getting, and repeated tributes from both sides of the House are not enough.
The right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon started by saying, correctly, that NATO was the cornerstone of our defence policy, but very soon proceeded to wallow in his ideological obsessions. He criticised Greece for its internal policy, and then accused President Nixon and Dr. Kissinger of "arrogance and petulance". What a way to bolster the cornerstone of our defence! He also referred to the American nuclear umbrella, on which our entire security depends, in terms of, "All power corrupts…".
Finally, he pays fulsome tribute to our troops in Ulster and asks for additional expenditure on housing for them. These words sound hollow when it is borne in mind that at the Labour Party Conference there was a resolution to cut defence expenditure by £1,000 million.
Andrew Alexander, who used to report debates for the Daily Telegraph, once wrote,
The Tory defence experts, though an amiable lot, cannot be described as the light cavalry of the debate.
It is not so easy to summarise in such felicitous phrases the few defence Members on the Opposition benches. They comprise hand Standers; round-earthers; pacifists; nuclear disarmers; tight-rope walkers with dockyard constituencies; and one or two honest men such as the right hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) who, as Shadow Secretary of State, is distinguished by having been absent from the debate from after the first speech.
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By the mid 1700s, the words Tory and Whig were commonly used to describe two political groupings. Tories supported the Church of England, the Crown, and the country gentry, while Whigs supported the rights of religious dissent and the rising industrial bourgeoisie. In the 19th century, Whigs became Liberals; Tories became Conservatives.
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