It is this very state of things we wish to avoid, This Very Crisis we would avert, by granting to the people those claims which they have a right to make, and by refusing which, we must inevitably leave the power in the hands of those who would plunge us into all the evils of a civil war.

He averred, that the shipping interest, contrary to the statements which had been so confidently set forth as to its prosperity, was in a very depressed and declining state, partly owing to the effects of the reciprocity system, and partly, as he acknowledged, owing to other circumstances, by which our navigation must have suffered to a certain extent, but which in themselves rendered it the more important that the hand of encouragement and protection should be held out instead of being withdrawn at the Very Crisis when it was most needed.

That, of course, pressed on the whole finances of the community, and often led to the Very Crisis which they dreaded, and which, but for them, would not have existed.

When application was made to the right hon. Gentleman, before the Act of 1887, in reference to the Very Crisis they were dealing with in the speeches that night the right hon. Gentleman made inquiry into the circumstances of these evictions, and asked questions as to the rent, the valuation, the capability of the tenant to pay the rent, and he should like to have the valuable testimony of the right hon. Gentleman as to whether the people whom he endeavoured to keep in their farms were all bad characters.

If the Powers had wished to bring about the Very Crisis which they and all of us have been deploring and dreading the prospect of, this perverse quarrel with Greece is the very means to kindle the flames.

When negotiations are very critical, when peace and war are hanging in the balance, you cannot order a general mobilisation without precipitating the Very Crisis you wish to avoid.

Yet, just at This Very Crisis, when they have placed a leading American at the head of their finances and have invited the British Attaché to take charge of their gendarmerie, this ex-Shah is let loose on the country to stir up civil war.

could have prevented the Very Crisis it is now proposed to end.

There is a lesson in This Very Crisis.

I was fortunate enough to be able to speak in the Debate on the Marshall Plan, when I said it could not be any cure for our economic problems, that it would exacerbate them and produce the Very Crisis we are examining today.

What interests me about this matter is that, during the General Election, when hon. Members opposite fought their campaign almost exclusively on the cost-of-living issue, the speeches which I made in my constituency were to the effect that what had caused us our cost-of-living headache was primarily the pressure on world supplies of raw materials that had been forcing up prices and creating the Very Crisis which is here now.

When they speak of regaining the initiative, more often than not they mean that the Government should make a concession in order to persuade the Soviet Union to stop provoking the Very Crisis which they started.

Indeed, the Very Crisis that the First Secretary was complaining about as being upon us was produced.

One difficulty is that This Very Crisis is having an adverse effect already on tourism.

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept, as any fair-minded person would, that his announcement is a recipe for chaos and that he is deliberately creating confrontation while at the same time parading around Scotland lamenting and complaining about the Very Crisis for which he is largely responsible?

They are long-term reforms, but we face a Very Immediate Crisis.

I am pleased to see that the responses are beginning to come forward and that we are seeing much greater prioritisation of, and focus on, This Very Immediate Crisis that we all face.