Page:MALAYSIA BILL RHODESIA AND NYASALAND BILL (2) (Hansard, 11 Juli 1963).djvu/24

 The right hon. Member's favourite word since he took over Central African affairs has been the word"constructive". It is a very good word, although I think that he has overworked it a little. He is inclined, when he does not wish to go into details of any particular idea he has in mind, simply to say that he is in favour of a constructive solution. But what he has secured agreement on in this case—and it is a very considerable achievement to get this far—is not something constructive. He has got agreement on the destruction of the Federation.

I thought that the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) was very much to the point when he remarked that the First Secretary's speech characteristically would never have given the idea that what he was engaged in doing was strangling the Government's own child. What the First Secretary achieved at Victoria Falls last week was that instead of an unseemly squabble by the relatives over the corpse and perhaps an actual attempt to tear it limb from limb, there should be an orderly and civilised burial ceremony. Some of the speeches which we have heard today have been particularly gloomy graveside orations. I understand from his hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley), the beginning of whose speech the right hon. Gentleman unfortunately missed, that by his performance the First Secretary has greatly improved his chances of becoming the next Leader of the Conservative Party. It is perhaps rather lugubrious luck that his principal triumph should be as a superbly skilful funeral undertaker. I can only say that perhaps this is an extremely good qualification for one about to lead the Conservative Party into election defeat.

There is a heartbreaking contrast between the dismal dissolution of the Central African Federation upon which we are engaged tonight and the hopeful announcement of the creation of the great new Federation of Tanganyika, Uganda and Kenya in East Africa. During the debate there have been the usual critical comments from hon. Members opposite alleging that the Labour Party changed its mind about Central African Federation in the 1951–53 period after it left office. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) has made clear—and he had the support of an independent witness, the Liberal Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe)—we did not change our minds.

Mr. Thorpe I concede that the hon. Member is independent, but the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M.Thomson) could not have been a witness when I was making my speech. I drew totally different conclusions.

Mr. Thomson The hon. Member is being a little ungracious towards me. I was about to come to a point with which I thought he would agree, but he provokes me to say that I was somewhat astonished when he said that the Liberals were always 100 per cent. and at all times against the idea of federation, because one of my hon. Friends who was unable to make his speech has drawn my attention to the fact that the then Leader of the Liberal Party, the late Clem Davies, in one of our debates for the proposal for Federation, in March, 1952, supported it wholeheartedly and wished it every possible success.

We in the Labour Party have always believed in economic benefits to be obtained from federation in Central Africa or the West Indies or East Africa or other parts of the world so long as—and this was the condition which we always laid down—the Federation was able to gain the consent of those for whom it was proposed. This was why we explored the Federation originally, and we were right to do so. It was because it was clear beyond doubt by 1953 that that consent was not to be forthcoming that we opposed it.

If only our advice had been taken in 1953—to be patient and to go ahead in Central Africa, to try to get better racial policies and to win consent for these forms of association—today we might easily have been engaged in building up, certainly over a large part of Central 1539 Africa, the same kind of hopeful federation which we hope to see in the East African territories.

There cannot have been many cases in the House of Commons when over a whole decade the Government have so consistently had to concede that the Opposition were right. Step by step, particularly over recent years, the Government have been compelled by events to do what the Opposition have urged them to do sometimes weeks and