Westminster Commentary

The Power and the Passage

By LESLIE HALE, MP IN France, under the Third Republic, a Bonapartist who had taken to the moguls was indicted before a Corsican jury for fomenting civil strife. The selection of this jury was a long contested process and every challenge was used. When the (TAPER is on twelve good men were at last in holiday) the box the Avocat-general turned to defending counsel.

'Maitre, your man is acquitted by ten votes to two.'

Defending counsel carefully scrutinised his own list and then, 'You're right' he said.

They proceeded with the trial, each made an impassioned speech, and the judge summed up at length before the jury were permitted to return their long-anticipated verdict. Decency demanded that the forms be observed with all'the punctilious care needed to plan the publicity for a clandestine elopement.

This is the method on which the House of Commons conducts its main business, and one to which Taper takes exception. Members are selected by party committees, a majority are re- turned for completely safe constituencies, they acquire a life tenure of their seats and they vote on the lines of a prearranged political formula. All this is true; but it is not the whole truth.

Fifty-four Labour Members were elected for Lancashire in 1945, thirty-eight for the first time. Seventeen only now survive as Lancashire Mem- bers. About twenty have died—some, like my Oldham colleague, after a long illness endured in poverty. One committed suicide, one died from an overdose of sleeping tablets, one was expelled from the Party, two at least have left it and one was refused re-endorsement. I am glad David Price said last week what he did about Members. The House has, and always has had, few men of genius but it possesses a remarkably high percentage of Members of character and ability and contains, on both sides, many selflessly devoted to the ideal of service. What is more important, it is the only parliament of a great nation which is almost com- pletely free from personal corruption.

Less impressive is the quotation from Mr.

Butler . . outside it may seem very bad, and inside it may seem ridiculous, that we should hang about these passages, but if we were to relax we might losetthe very point of the struggle, that is the preservation of power.'

Try—try—try—try to think o' somethin' different Oh—my—God—keep me from goin' lunatic! (Boots—boots—boots—boots movin' up an' down again!)

There's no discharge in the [political] war.

The individual politician, apart from the office he currently holds, has rarely been of great significance. He inspires no fan clubs nor arouses interest like Able and Baker. Who recalls the Ministers of yesteryear? Everyone now has, like Lord Randolph, forgotten Goschen. The history of France in the years following the Bourbon restoration underlines the point. What do we remember of the Ministers who struggled with 'the legacy of political problems bequeathed by the First Empire? They strutted and fretted their hour upon the stage and were swept away. All of us have been influenced by Balzac, Hugo, de Musset, and Delacroix. The effective social history of the period derived from Watt and Stephenson. The delayed industrial revolution made France prosperous and old politics kept the people poor. Yet Richelieu and Decazes were men of talent, and Casimir Perier the elder has claim to be considered one of the outstanding statesmen of the century. He was certainly one of the strongest, treating the Citizen King like a defec- tive PPS and when one of his Ministers was speak- ing with some irrelevance beckoned him back to the bench with the gesture of a sportsman recalling a retriever.

To be understood, the British backbencher should be studied and observed, not in the Cham- ber listening to Sir Hugh Lucas-Tooth, a liking for whose oratory is, after all, an acquired taste, but working in the committee rooms, writing long letters in the claustrophobic cells beneath the Chamber or struggling to study in the over- crowded library. Glance over the shoulder of one of the very many who cannot afford a secretary (or feed in the dining-room) and you will see letters from the ports of the seven seas, containing prob- lems of infinite diversity, many involving long research.

It is true that this Parliament is dead. When alive it had little élan and now has only esprit de corpse; the stench of decomposition can be noticed in the passages. The fact is neither surprising nor, of itself, disturbing. How far is Parliament, as an institution, in danger? The political seers are con- sulting the entrails and the portents are not favourable. Policy is now made in Washington as well as at Westminster. The new technocracy and the new science may be sapping the founda tions of the citadel. Automation and atomic power can force a reshaping of economic, foreign and colonial policies, and dominating everything is the H-bomb, the ultimate symbol of futility and frustration.

Parliament must survive. It is not merel■ a part of the democratic tradition, it is democracy itself. The World family of free Parliaments one of the last hopes for individual and national freedom. If the House is failing to function effec- tively and to maintain public esteem it must be made to do so. This House displayed its latent vitality at the time of Suez and demonstrated the need for a critical and deliberative assembly. Few Members would deny the need for recon- sideration of procedure. Taper has thrown his beams into dark corners with great effect. The recent Select Committee was compelled to haste by the imminence of an election, but its report contains useful recommendations which ■% ere carried and some, more useful, which were de- feated.

The essence of democracy is light. If there he a public demand for broadcasting of proceedings it should be met. Party meetings should be open to the press, a step which might have had memor- able results on conscription and on the Korean war. There is no reason why Mr. Hunter should have a monopoly of information. I can think of few reasons in favour of two-line Whips and none for votes on second reading. There is no duplicity involved in a frank expression of view on second reading and an acceptance of a majority party decision on third. We are not juggling fiends . . that 'keep the word of promise to our ear and break it to our hope.' We are ordinary people, not always sure we are right. with a choice, not between right and wrong, but of the greater good or of the lesser evil. Finally. tradition is no justification for the preservation of archaic procedures.

As I pondered the division bell clanged noisily. As I rose to tired feet there came a realisation of my last three thousand divisions and of their implications. In the last resort, in the Barber the guilty man was a dumpy, ill-dressed man in the fifties passing under the alias of the Hon. Member for Oldham W. From late trains to national disaster, we must bear all. Oh hard con- dition! Responsibility without power, the sign of the slave. I sat down in the lobby and mopped a fevered brow. A kindly Whip came up. 'You are not looking yourself.' Thank heaven,' I mur- mured hysterically.

'Can you manage three divisions more?' 'Of course. What are they?'

'Well, the first question is that the words pro- posed to be left out stand part.'

'Naturally,' I said.

'Then that those words be there inserted.' 'What words?'

'Those words. The ones on the order paper. I say, are you feeling all right?'

'Perfectly. You said there were three.'

Yes. The third is that the clause as amended stand part.'

'How silly I am getting. I forget the most ordinary things.'

I walked through the lobby, placed a podgy thumb on the list, bowed to the tellers and looked back in anger as one called 'Thirteen.' There was nothing untoward. History was still being made.