Lesueur
Mr. Hartley, what do you actually do about communism in countries where you're actively engaged in combat, in, like, Malaya, for instance?
Shawcross
Yes, I think, if I may say so, that's a very useful question because it illustrates that our approach in Britain is entirely empirical, it depends on the circumstances. In Malaya, our measures are totally different. We've made the Communist Party illegal, and anyone who belongs to it commits a criminal offense and can be dealt with as a criminal, and is dealt with, if he is caught and is tried. And there's no doubt that because of these and other very drastic measures that we've taken in Malaya the situation now is very much better, but I'd like to add that in England there is no doubt at all as far as one can judge that communism is on the decline. At the last election, the total votes polled in the whole country for the Communists was about 20,000, well, I got about that figure in my own majority, in my own constituency, and there's 650 constituencies in Britain.