Page 2504 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 14 November 1989
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MR HUMPHRIES: The totalitarian power has changed, and I think we are all pleased to see that it has changed, but it was it that built the wall, not Nazis.
Mrs Grassby: What caused it?
MR HUMPHRIES: This is a very important topic, Minister. I think you should listen a little bit; I think you might learn something.
Mrs Grassby: I have learnt a lot.
MR HUMPHRIES: That wall has been a symbol of division in our world; it has been a symbol above all else of the failure of socialism. It showed us a society which needed so badly to keep its people from voting with their feet against the system of government imposed in Eastern Europe that a wall was necessary to achieve the imprisonment of its citizens. In my view, it has long been an abomination against humanity, against free will, against the freedom of expression which we enjoy in this country, and I applaud the decision to tear it down. I think it reflects on the acknowledgment by countries in Eastern Europe - particularly, in this case, East Germany - that the system of government that necessitated that wall has failed.
It is a stark, total, abject admission that it has failed and I, for one, am pleased to have seen the wall while it was standing and am pleased that the governments of West Germany and East Germany will attempt to preserve part of that wall as an indication of what people can do to each other. I saw the wall as a young child. I was 11 or 12 when I saw it. That above anything else, I think, confirmed my belief that I should be a liberal and that I should oppose communism and socialism.
Mrs Grassby: Yes, what went wrong?
MR HUMPHRIES: I am quite astonished that these sorts of petty little interjections should come from the Minister opposite me. Minister, this is a major event in world history, a quite significant event and you - - -
Mrs Grassby: Yes, but it was also a major event that six million people were gassed.
MR HUMPHRIES: Minister, no-one objects to that.
Mrs Grassby: That is what I am talking about.
MR HUMPHRIES: I am very sorry that you have this sort of pent-up problem about the Nazis. Nobody is going to get up in this place and defend Nazis, but nor should anybody be coming into this place and defending the kinds of excesses that have occurred in our lifetimes - not in the lifetimes of people now dead, but in our lifetime - by communist regimes in Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world.
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