OUR OLD FRIEND 'A Student of Politics' of the Sunday
Times last week lamented the retirement at the next election of so many Tory MPs who
represent a concentration of experience and mature political judgment. . . . Among the Tories voluntarily retiring are experienced MPs of the calibre of Sir Alan Gomme-Duncan (Perth); Sir Roger Conant (Rutland and Stam- ford); Mr. Archer Baldwin (Leominster); Sir Charles MacAndrew (Bute and N. Ayrshire); Capt. James Stuart (Moray and Nairn); Sir Ian Hutchison (Edinburgh W.); Sir Harold Roper (Cornwall N.); Mr. Peter Remnant (Wokingham); Sir Duncan McCallum (Argyll); Sir Harry Make- son (Folkestone); Sir Harold Webbe (Cities of London and Westminster); Sir Patrick Spens (Kensington S.); Sir James Hutchison (Glasgow C.); Sir Alfred Bossom (Maidstone); Sir John Crowder (Finchley); Lady Davidson (Hemel Hempstead); and another dozen of equal stature.
Of this sixteen eight have been knighted since 1951; four were hardly eligible for the honour as they already had it; and one is a woman. Although Sir Robert Boothby is an obvious exception, knighthoods and baronetcies for MPs are rewards for good discipline and decent obscurity. You do do not except such people to wander into the wrong lobby. The Student put it rather differently: they are
the cadre of experienced campaigners who have been the custodians of the party's ark and covenant. . . . At the height of the Suez storm, for instance, they provided a sheet anchor when less experienced younger mariners were in danger of being driven off course.
Obviously not the sort of people to rock a
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