◆ SpookStack

rake ~ extracted: : ’ t i attend | a soe, . ho a ae Q Pr a re . oo 1581 = Forsner Povcign Office . comments on the White Paper have been i ha | isingenuows reticence -. _ thuckets of eaecate af tefor mal on whi! ewash eo paucity of information . . « ! gover-up to protect men guilty of supplying successive Ministries with speomplete informa- Gon... admission of failure... an insult to any. reasonabl: man’s intelligence... 7" Those ure quotations from comments made by naners representing almost every shade of political opinion and thought in this country. I quote them because they bear out what 1 believe every speaker in the debate has tried to adopt as the tone of his speech—the non-party political approach that we have been trying to make towards the very serious problem which has been exposed by the events in the Burgess aod Maclean case. Wery many Governments are involved, perhaps ever since the time when Maclean entered the Foreign Service. it is idje and un- | profitable now 2 apportion blame, and am glad we have not wasted our time trying 10 do £0. Met aes There is one quotation which 1 should fike framed and hung in every deparl- ment of the Forcign Office. It is from “Gulliver's Travels": - “Providence never intended fo make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comp; chended by as few Persons: of sublime genius” I should like that quotation hung i in every Government Department, but particularly: in the Foreign Office, because there. over’ the years, has been created a kind of order which I can only describe by saying that they have tended to regard themselves as 8 new Samurai of twentieth century Eng- land. It is an attitude of mind which has been stressed by previous speakers. What is wrong with the Foreign Office is not only the inefficiency of its Security Services—that is one of the issues—but the attitude of mind and spirit of the place. which makes it an extremely awk- ward problem for any Government to deal with satisfactorily." * Y ae The point that i “want very sériously * to make fs that there is a reluctance, from. which many Governments have suffered—- the present Government suffer from it—-" to tell the people the truth and the whole. truth. The people will know how to judge all right if they are told what the truth is. Never was there a more intelli- ee or fair-minded public than is now to found in this country. What have we to be afraid of? Why not On every pos-; - Sidle occasion give the benefit of the doub1. 41D +e Th. ape ae coe ee 4 . Stee eee ee ~ Monin 7 NOVEMBER 1955 « -Cntraciea asybnag ti nal TiZ hi Uc. ta. value; Fever. te I . > = he F. eet drain avers nee , salemuedtlee Shee ble a. : ee ae ee ve | gE sie, wer a catia . * Officials *Sisappearance to the principle that, as far as ssible, * the people of this country should be told. waynes the truth and the whole truth? .»2 sii... - One of the difficuitics about the Matier™ ty over the past few years has been the! ’-.-" reluctance to tell the people the truth. * That is responsible for all the omissions’ “+ from the White Paper, the evasions in’. ansvers to Questions in this House and’ “7 7" ~ in another place, and the stupid situations ae in which successive Governments havé!--- found themselves involved as a result of.---—— following the Foreign Office tradition’... : °. that the world will come to as end if. ordinary people are told a fittle to0 much.’ = I will not go through the White Paper; ia detail. That would be a waste of time 7+ ~ at the present stage. I merely want to. -;...:: draw altention to two or three points, and’ .”.->- I will do so very briefly. On the tae aes before Maclean had his Saturday morning” =:--.: off, just at the time when qverything was! approaching a climax, and after it had been decided that there should be ques tions incidentally, it was not even knowa’ ~ coal ahns BA nnd eee tect zee? nat) omiacical Was missing until the Monday, as has been pointed out’ by: previous speakers—the senior security: - officer, who knew that Maclean was under. -" observation, saw him go off in a taxi-cabl ~~” but had no instructions to stop him,?..- What sort of security arrangement is)“: °* that? Sgt) Tt ane B. #3 Pree aed iere ee on ae We now learn from the White Papert that the Foreign Office was aware for two’ °°” years and three months before the dict - aoe appearance of the two men that secret. ..... information had Jeaked out. Theo Suse! am: = picions narrowed down to two or three, ron people, and somewhere about that period, so careful were those concerned not tod er give Maclean any warning that he was) =: -. under observation that it was decided we eee deny him access to secret papers’ which ~ would normally have gone to him in the --* -— course of his duties. Of course, anyone: .7..-- as intelligent and as competent as’ Maclean had been certified to be by Sir? Roger Makins and others, who had had~ . him ‘under observatioun,” would have’ a easily smelled a rat, to put it no higher* 422 Mungteh as soon as secret documents were being - |” withdrawn from his observation.” #-7..': # “A Fven when Maclean has disappeared: - and investigators rushed to his home ‘at™ Tatsfield, they did not trouble to examine, = aor! the mass of papers which he had feft be>: hind: It may well be that Maclean had. at netthann thet mst t.'-F - “pnt az i | wee: Pee + e . Gap. + Fy sere Ba eee aS! sae A ee