The Week in Parliament Our 'Parliamentary Correspondent writes: There was
a full house on Monday to hear Mr. Chamberlain make his statement on the recognition of General Franco. It was to be expected that the Opposition would protest, but the form of their.protestation took Members by surprise. Mr. Attlee ignored both the how and the why of recognition and, primed with M. Daladier's speech in the French Chamber, launched his attack on the when. Mr. Chamberlain was clearly unprepared for a charge of misleading the House. In so many words, Mr. Attlee called his truthfulness in question. The Prime Minister, looking very strained, was slow to rise from his place, and his answers gave the impres- sion of being more evasive than, in fact, they were. His " I am not here to be cross-examined wrung a howl from the Labour benches, and was unfortunate; but the consensus of opinion was that Mr. Attlee's violence had been misspent. It surprised Members, none the less, that the Cabinet as a whole never took a decision on General Franco's recognition. Mr. Arthur Henderson, who put in a supplementary about troops in Spain, voiced the real anxieties of the situation: as Mr. Eden said the next day, there will 'be anxiety for some time to come. The Opposition, disheartened by the Spanish Government's collapse, found nothing new to say, and con- centrated on Mr. Chamberlain as the villain of the peace.
Previous page
