If the miners undertook any policy that they could adopt, we should have a situation created which would face the Government with a national Crisis of the First Magnitude.
I can only say that this is the first time it has come up in the House of Commons, that the issue of that Paper has caused perturbation to the European population of every colony affected, that that perturbation has been shared by the people of Southern Rhodesia and by the people of the Union, and that unless the situation is handled more tactfully by the Colonial Office in the future than it has been in the past, it is likely to lead to an Imperial Crisis of the First Magnitude, as hon. Members who read the speech of General Hertzog, the Prime Minister of South Africa, will readily realise.
It then became evident that a Crisis of the First Magnitude was approaching, and the Government resolved that the time had come when they must seek the approval of Parliament for further measures of Defence.
If we do it now, we shall not only burke much political and social grumbling, but perhaps avert a political Crisis of the First Magnitude.
The country is not drifting but hurtling to an economic Crisis of First Magnitude, the greatest crisis in time of peace.
We are in the throes of an economic Crisis of the First Magnitude, and we are all agreed that one of the ways to get out of it is to get a tremendous increase in home food production.
It is no exaggeration to say that local government is facing a Crisis of the First Magnitude.
In the light of what I have said, it is not surprising that the fishing industry is faced with a Crisis of the First Magnitude, and that all around our coasts, in the herring ports, in the inshore fishing ports, the near water ports and the distant water ports, there are thousands of fishermen, and many thousands of others dependent upon them, who are looking to the future with fear and apprehension, very largely, as we on this side of the Committee believe, as a result of the lack of policy of His Majesty's Government.
The slightest economic deviation in America immediately produces over here a financial Crisis of the First Magnitude.
In view of the great achievements to which the hon. Member has referred, can he explain why we are facing a Crisis of the First Magnitude if not as a result of the mismanagement of the Socialist Government?
A year ago we were certainly in a Crisis of the First Magnitude.
There would be a national Crisis of the First Magnitude.
Here was a Crisis of the First Magnitude, when prestige became involved - our prestige, the prestige of France, Nasser's prestige, everyone's prestige - and the peace of the world came to be offered on the altar of prestige.
If it were suggested that there was to be any incitement for another place to act in this matter, it would be the duty of the Government to move immediately to the introduction of a short, sharp Bill stripping them of their powers, and if that were to be proposed it would raise a constitutional Crisis of the First Magnitude.