Westminster Commentary
SOME pestilential fellow has sent me a quotation from Mr. Vincent Brome's recent book, Six Studies in Quarrelling. It is a passage from a diatribe by H. G. Wells against Shaw, and it runs like this:
The first thing he does almost invariably in his controversies, if one may give his displays so dignified a name, is to create a serio-comic atmosphere . . . by wild boasting about his mental clarity and facetious abuse of his antagonist.
Does this, goes on my correspondent, remind you of anyone you know? I could, of course, main- tain in chilly silence that it does not, but that would not be the way of the Tapers. Our family motto is Balbus M14171M cedificavit (which may be freely translated 'There's more out than in'); my maternal great-grandfather, Moishe O'Taper, whose portrait (by Winterhalter) hangs above my desk as I write, would curl his lip in scorn if I were to change it now to 'When self safe, pull up ladder.' We may leave aside, I think, the bit about 'wild boasting about his mental clarity and face- tious abuse of his antagonist'; this is just the cloven hoof of envy showing beneath the spats of decorum. But 'the first thing he does . . . is to create a serio-comic atmosphere' is another matter altogether.
It is true that I regard many leading figures in the political life of this country with derision. So, I maintain, does any person of normal intelligence who has seen and heard them in action, or who has read reasonably accurate accounts of their performances. The gravaman of the charge against me is that I shine a serio-comic light upon the art/ science/profession/game (cross out those which do not apply, and don't send the result to me) of politics in general. But in this, too, 1 am but a sounding-board, a heliograph, an insulated copper wire (of extraordinary sensitivity, naturally) con- veying impulses from the public to the public.
As far as I can see, most people in Britain who take an informed interest in politics, and who have no material interest in seeing any one party triumph over any other, do indeed regard the whole business 4s ridiculous. (This, one may say in passing, is a sight healthier than regarding it as disgusting, as they do in many less fortunate lands—though from all the signs such an attitude is dangerously on the increase.) Nor is this sur- prising; people have for so long heard their leaders talking meaningless drivel as though it meant something that they are ceasing, on all sides, to believe that anything any politician says can pos- sibly make sense.
Allied with this, of course, is the fact that people are increasingly weary of being told lies. The gulf that separates us from our political leaders is not one of character; it is simply that we are not fools and they insist on treating us as though we were. In some countries, when this state of affairs has continued long enough, they have a revolution; here we laugh at them. And the whole movement is given impetus by the contrast (to get back to personalities) between the problems which beset us and the people told off to solve them. The hydrogen bomb and its con- comitant dangers are, after all, enough to worry us all to death; to see our present Foreign Secre- tary entrusted with the task of steering us safely along the edge of disaster is to set up that Exaggerated Incongruity which, the psychologists assure us, is the basis of all laughter, and to invite for good measure a feeling that we might as well eat, drink and be merry.
And in what better company, this week of the pre-Budget recess, can one be merry than that of Professor C. Northcote Parkinson, whose learned monograph entitled Parkinson's Law; or the Pursuit of Progress has just appeared from Messrs. John Murray at the price of 12s. 6d., which is practically giving it away? Professor Parkinson's celebrated Law runs thus : 'Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.' The good Professor, like me, dons cap and bells; but his purpose, like mine, is serious. What is more, I am tempted, after reading his thesis, to frame Taper's Law, to the effect that the louder the reader may laugh, the more swiftly and completely will the smile be wiped off his face before he comes to the end of the chapter. For instance, the author paints a delightful fantasy- picture (based on the two corollaries to his Law, viz.: 'An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals,' and 'Officials make work for each other') of a civil servant, called A, who appoints two subordinates, C and D, who in turn appoint E, F, G, and H, all of whom have. a merry time passing minutes back and forth to no great pur- pose. Ha, we are tempted to exclaim (and none more sorely tempted than any civil servant reader), ha! Professor Parkinson yawns, stretches, and delivers a haymaker. He prints a table of official figures, compiled from the Navy Estimates be- tween 1914 and 1928. This shows, coldly and un- arguably, that while, between those years, the number of capital ships in commission decreased by 67.74 per cent., and the number of officers and men in the Navy decreased by 31.5 per cent., the number of officials at the Admiralty increased by no less than 78.45 per cent. The next time some _ rogue gets up in the House of Commons and declares that it would not be in the public interest to reveal how many narks are at present employed full-time in attempting to persuade shopkeepers to break the law by selling them a sausage and a left- handed corkscrew after lighting-up time on a Wednesday, I trust that a copy of this book, suit- ably bound in lead, will whistle down from the Public Gallery and catch him just behind the ear.
Nor is this the only field in which Professor Parkinson reveals a devastatingly meticulous knowledge of reality and dresses it in a deceptively opaque garb of jest. His study of the 'Coefficient of Inefficiency,' applied. to the Cabinet, almost persuades me that he must be a member of it. (But which one, for goodness' sake?) For instance, he maintains that Cabinets are 'subject to a law of growth. Other members come to be admitted, some with a claim to special knowledge, but more because of their nuisance value when excluded.' As the size of the bpdy grows. it becomes less efficient, for obvious reasons. 'Relatively few were chosen from any idea that they are or could be or have ever been useful. A majority perhaps were brought in merely to conciliate some outside group. Their tendency is therefore to report what happens to the group they represent. All secrecy is lost and, worst of all, members begin to prepare their speeches. They address the meeting and tell their friends afterwards about what they imagine they have said.' At length the crisis point is reached and passed; Professor Parkinson places this at around a membership of twenty to twenty- two. At that point—but let the Professor put it in his own words: H is known that with over 20 members present a meeting begins to 'change character. Conversa- tions develop separately at either end of the table. To make himself heard, the member has therefore to rise. Once on his feet, he cunnot help making a speech, if only 'from force of habit. 'Mr. Chairman,' he will begin, 'I think I may assert without fear of contradiction—and I am speaking now from twenty-five (I might almost say twenty-seven) years of experience—that we must view this matter in the gravest light. A heavy responsibility rests upon us, sir, and I for one .
Amid all this drivel the useful men present, if there are any, exchange little notes that read, 'Lunch with me tomorrow—we'll fix it then.'
He has got the wording slightly wrong; but if he has not actually been present when the current Minister of Education has been addressing the Cabinet, then they had better examine'the room in which it meets for hidden microphones.
Anyway, you who accuse me of establishing a serio-comic atmosphere, go to the Professor, con- sider his ways, and be wise. Professor Parkinson, you see, knows. So do I; and we who know must say with Byron :
And if I laugh at any mortal thing 'Tis that I may not weep.
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