Corridors . . .
PUZZLE HAVING survived many a monetary crisis of his own was impressed by the various reactions around the House as it gathered to consider the price of beef, and the shape of Piccadilly, on Monday.
Mr Neil Marten was smarting with indignation because the Speaker had refused him a private notice question on the plight of the pound . . . a liberal young Tory was agreeing with the views of Mr Aubrey Jones that some form of price control was just around the corner . . . . another was recalling that the late lain Macleod predicted in 1969 that the first two years of a Tory government would be hell for liberal conservatives and then things would turn. The young man saw recent events as proving him correct almost to a day . . .a Powellite MP said darkly that Mr Davies was the nicest chap in the Cabinet but really should, be put in charge of the RSPCA . . . the Red Baron was writing poetry because that way he meets a better class of person . . . Labour ministers were smiling sweetly and preparing suitably grave speeches about the national interest.
WITH ALL THE talk of a Prices and Incomes Board in the air Mr Norman Buchan, an under-secretary in the last government, recalled that the most useful effect of Mr Aubrey Jones's organisation for him, personally, was to demonstrate the dangers of the use of irony in politics. When the local Conservative Club doubled its membership fee he thought it would be waggish to report it to the PIB. To his horror everyone took it quite seriously and he was upbraided both by the Club members for interfering in their affairs and by his own constituents who demanded why was he wasting his time protecting the interests of Tory businessmen. He promises a reverential attitude to any organisation Mr Heath might devise.
PUZZLE'S ATTENTION has been drawn to the fact that the leading voices against anti-Market rebels in the constituencies have been military men. There is Colonel Lapraik in Bucks, Colonel van Straubenzee in Sir Robert Turton's stronghold, another Colonel in Hertfordshire, and a LieutGeneral and an odd Naval Commander who will receive no publicity from Puzzle until they are publicly revealed elsewhere. But no military brasshats tried to discipline Colonel Colin Mitchell when he was on the side of righteousness as a Market rebel. They never were any good at that anyway.
AFTER ALL the huffing and puffing over prices, attendance at Monday's debate at times dropped below fifty. But the House is such an eccentric place that some 250 people were in the Chamber at 11 pm last Wednesday to discuss the problems of the union of two churches. Curious priorities.
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