of us—not to take any step against the wishes of the Africans themselves and force upon them something which they think is politically or socially wrong or which they do not desire."—[Official Report, 4th March, 1952; Vol. 497, c. 250–1.]" It might be thought from what the hon. Member said that during the course of that debate the late Mr. Clement Davies was in favour of federation being imposed.
Mr. Thomson I do not wish to stand between the Attorney-General and the House, but I do not wish to withdraw what I said. I did not put the words of the late Mr. Clement Davies in the way the hon. Member for Devon, North has suggested. All that the late Mr. Clement Davies said was exactly what the Labour Party was saying at the same time, and on that I rest.
9.43 p.m.
The Attorney-General (Sir John Hobson) I should like to begin by dealing with the debate today rather than debates of yesteryear.
This has been an extremely weighty and impressive debate, conducted at a high level of eloquence and principle, and it is a privilege to wind up a debate of this nature. As the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) said, divisions between hon. Members who have spoken have not always been on party lines. In the course of the debate, we had the advantage of hearing speeches from two former Secretaries of State who have held responsibilities in these matters, and they themselves lent additional power to our discussions.
I think I ought to mention that we are engaged upon the Second Reading of a Bill. I do not think the Bill has been much discussed during the whole course of the day. I had hoped that I might be able to assist the House on some of the intricacies of a rather complicated piece of draftsmanship, but it does not appear that much of what has been said in the course of the debate has much relevance to the Bill to which we are considering whether we should give a Second Reading. I shall endeavour as best I may to deal with some of the numerous other interesting points which have been raised.
The hon. Member for Dundee, East tried to make it appear as though all we were engaged upon at the moment was a burial service, but, of course, that is very far indeed from the truth. Life in Central Africa has still to go on, and will go on. It has been with an eye on the future and an eye to the problems of how to pass from the position of a federation through the transition to a new constitution and build up that new constitution that my right hon. Friend the First Secretary has been principally concerned. While it is true that a great part of the problem is the destruction of the Federation, there is equally—and much more importantly—the other side of the medal; what shall be done for the immediate and the more remote future.
There is one matter I should like to raise before I come to those problems. I last spoke on this topic in the debate we had on 28th February, and I regret to have to tell the House that on that occasion I made two misstatements of fact. Neither was material to the argument I was then addressing to the House, but they were misstatements and it is right that I should correct the record. The first was in describing a view 1547 expressed by a Southern Rhodesian delegate to the 1952 Conference. I wrongly attributed it to the Government of Southern Rhodesia instead of to one of the Southern Rhodesian delegates. The other was that I said that between January 1953 and December 1962 not a word was heard in public or private about the existence of the pledges. The fact is that there had been a reference to them in June 1962. As I have said, neither slip was material to the argument which I was then advancing. They have, in fact, been publicly corrected in the Press since, but I gave the Minister of Law of the Federation, who drew my attention to them, an undertaking that I would at the first opportunity correct them, and I am glad to do so on this occasion.
I welcome, speaking generally on this debate, the position taken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) in his thoughtful speech and the plea which he made for toleration amongst all the people who are facing the immediate problems of the future of Central Africa and the need for all, both those in this House and those
