Westminster Commentary
THE news of Harry Boardman's shockingly sudden death last week caught this column in the press, but the memories that men like Board- man leave behind them are not so fragile that a week's delay will chip them. For over two years (from March, 1950, to August, 1952) he used to write the Parliamentary column in the Spectator, but it was of course his daily sketch of Parliament in the Manchester Guardian, which he had done for ten years, that noised his fame abroad. His gift for conveying the character of a speech—indeed of a debate—in a single phrase was no more remarkable than his unerring instinct for being in his place, in the front row of the Press Gallery, at all the right moments. 1 could always be sure that if 1 had missed a speech that I afterwards learnt had been a good one (or even a spectacularly bid one) next morning's Guardian would have it hit off exactly in Board- man's delicate yet steely prose. I shall miss the white pow on the bench beneath me, particularly since I can no longer slip down beside him to ask him the name of the Demosthenes currently hold- ing the House's attention, or to explain a knotty point of procedure. Only two days before his death he was entertaining me at tea with an up- roarious account of his experiences as a reporter in the Liverpool police strike, when the special police drafted in from other towns had suddenly decided to baton a crowd of spectators. 'It was no use shouting "Press" at those fellows,' he said. 'We just turned round and hopped it.' 1 remember talk- ing to Boardman after a particularly idiotic per- formance by one of the feebler intellects in the present Government. 'Shocking,' Harry kept say- ing, 'shocking, shocking.' It was truly shocking to him that a man of such calibre should attain high political office. For all its faults, he loved the place whose proceedings he chronicled, though he had no illusions about the stature of the pygmies who fill it today.
I salute the memory of a master of our guild and a good friend.
He should have died hereafter; foi Tuesday's debate on the Report of the Committee of Privi- leges in the case of Mr. G. R. Strauss's complaint about the London Electricity Board was the sort of thing he lived for. He once, as he left the Gallery during the speech of some particularly oily rogue, hissed Pecksniff's 'Oh, be moral, Mr. Chuzzlewit, oh, be moral,' at me, and the place was so stiff with Pecksniffs on this occasion you could hardly see across the chamber. As all the land knows by now, Pecksniff was put to rout, but the manner of his routing is perhaps worth the telling. 'The motion to approve the Committee's report (that the letter written by Mr. Stra was a 'proceeding in Parliament' and therefore pro- tected by privilege) was moved by our Mr. L:nler, without whom no occasion of this sort wou!cl be complete. Mr. Butler was at his most delightful; 'That . . . issue . . . has been cleared up,' he said, 'and I am sure that nobody is more gratified than my right honourable friend the Attorney- General.' Since the issue in question was one on which the Attorney-General had been in a minority of one, and on which the Judicial Com- mittee of the Privy Council had ruled against him, M'Bulla can be excused for not joining in the laughter which followed, particularly since the dagger was rammed home with an unlovely leer.
Mr. Butler was by no means as lucid as usual. and started a fashion, scrupulously followed by all those who spoke later in support of his motion, of talking what I can only describe as horsehair- stuffed claptrap. 'I do not hesitate to say,' he declared, 'that without the privilege of freedom of speech the social and industrial legislation of this country could never have been achieved.' `Hear, hear,' they rhubarb-rhubarbed; though what they thought Mr. Butler was talking about do not know, and neither, I suspect, did he. Nor was this all; Mr. Butler started, in the Course of his speech, a hare which ran merrily to the end of the debate. The privilege of Parliament, he in- sisted, was not for the protection of the Members, but for the protection of the public. Again he was cheered, and Mr. Gaitskell's head wagged up and down as if he wanted to punch a hole in the Table with his nose. And, indeed, this proposition re- ceived general assent even from those who opposed the Committee of Privileges in the debate. It is, of course, untrue; how was the public pro- tected, pray, in the case of Mr. John Junor, who Was summoned to the Bar of the House for sug- gesting that MPs might give themselves too large a petrol ration? What protection was afforded to the public when a somewhat eccentric lady who proposed during the Labour Administration to display posters naming all those who voted for bread rationing as 'public enemies and traitors' was warned that she would be in contempt of the House if she did so? And to tread on a corn or two, how was the public protected when Mr. Garry Allighan was actually expelled from the House after being horrid about his fellow- members? Further; when Mr. Thomas Driberg called Mr. Frank Buchman a 'soapy racketeer,' or Mr. Marcus Lipton in effect called Mr. Harold Philby a traitor, or Mr. Harold Wilson hinted that Mr. Oliver Poole's 'vast City interests' might have had some bearing on whether an inquiry should be set up to decide whether there had been a Bank rate leak—when these at any rate arguably action- able statements were made in the House of Com- mons, and their makers sheltered behind the skirts of their absolute privilege of debate, how exactly was the public interest served? Come to think of it, can anybody recall a case in which the privilege of Parliament was actually used to protect the public rather than the members? And while I am warming to the subject, may I ask why, if the right to make actionable statements about members of the public is so precious and necessary, the right is not extended to statements they make about them- selves? Let one of these great public-protectors call another member a soapy racketeer and see if he has time to finish his sentence before the Speaker is ordering him to withdraw upon pain of immediate suspension.
Anyway, the debate continued. I know that many members of the Labour Party are unable to forgive Mr. Herbert Morrison for being more Widely respected and liked than they are; but the behaviour of Mr. Bowles and Mr. Glenvil Hall during his speech sorely tried even Mr. Morrison's infinite patience with their expression of the feel- ing. Eventually he had had enough; Mr. Hall, having been yapping and squeaking away across the gangway throughout Mr. Morrison's speech. rose to his feet with a 'I wonder whether I might interrupt my right honourable friend?' You've been doing your best, haven't you?' snapped Lewisham's Pride, and Mr. Hall had made his last interjection for some time.
But Mr. Morrison's case against the Committee of Privileges was too diffidently argued to be a strong one, though he built up a massive indict- ment of Mr. Strauss (who, by the time Mr. Morri- son and one or two others had finished with him, was cutting a very poor figure indeed); for a really good statement of the sensible point of view one had to wait for the Attorney-General. You would like me to repeat that sentence? With pleasure; for a really good statement of the sen- sible point of view one had to wait for the Attorney-General. I do not think I will be accused of being so blinded by admiration of Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller that I am unable fairly to weigh his contribution. But it was left to Sir Reginald to point out that what the House of Commons thinks should be one of its privileges is not necessarily the same as what is. This point he made with some vigour, and more than once; but he might as well have spent his time singing 'I'm the man who waters the workers' beer' for all the heads he knocked the point into. One after the other they got up after him to insist that members would be 'failing in their. duty' if they didn't have extra privileges, or that they 'ought' to have them, or even that they 'must' have them. Sir Reginald turned his eyes towards Heaven, and I thought I saw his lips moving; I never thought I would live to see the day when I would offer him both my sympathy and my admiration, but I have, and do.
To the Liberal Party I can only offer the advice to go out and give a cock to Aesculapius as quickly as they can; quite apart from the positive advan- tages enshrined in Mr. Grimond, the speech of Mr. Clement Davies was an indication of what a liability he would be to the Liberals if he were still their leader. Most of his time was spent talk- ing (or rather shouting) second-rate Lloyd- georgeries about the opinions of posterity and the Bill of Rights, both of them subjects on which I fear he seriously overestimates the extent of his knowledge. 'Then we . . . would be like the ordinary man in the street,' he yelled, at one point, indicating the dreadful consequences of accepting Mr. Herbert Morrison's amendment, and then capped this piece of impertinence by another few cubic feet of hot air flavoured with 'the protection of the public.' After a bit, Mr. Davies turned round and began to make his speech entirely to Mr. Mor- rison, who sits immediately behind him; waving his arms about; shouting and throbbing, he made such a nuisance of himself that Herbert eventually tired of having Mr. Davies bellowing nonsense in his face and went out for a cuppa, whereat I fol- lowed suit, though not. before I had heard Mr. Davies , finish with a great shriek of 'If this House votes that this privilege . . . does not extend to us today it will be . . . doing the greatest disservice to the people of this country that has been done for 350 years.' Chuck it, Smith.
And still they. came. Mr. Bellenger, who does not know the 'difference between the legal term ,qualified privilege' and the Parliamentary variety, wanted to know why he should . be denied 'by some legal quibble' the right to bandy allegations about (presumably for the same reason as I am denied 'by some legal quibble'—the Homicide Act —from shooting Mr. Bellenger .dead), and also rather charmingly assumed that Mr. Strauss's original allegations.against the London Electricity Board were true. Mr. Ede waved his hoary head about like a one-eyed bull looking for the mata- dor, but never succeeded in finding him. As. for Mr. Gaitskell, his was pretty well the worst speech of the day, which is saying a good deal. Pursing his mouth, and emitting from it prim little phrases ('if I may say so,' a good deal of misunderstand- ing,"I know he will not accuse me of any dis- courtesy'), he behaved like a pettifogging lawyer rather than the leader of a great party.
On this occasion, though half the House of Commons (roughly speaking the reactionary or Labour half) behaved even worse than usual, the other half behaved far better. Sir. Godfrey Nicholson's quiet good sense (Sir Godfrey, illustrating the type of reckless attack that might be made under cover of privilege, men- tioned an attack on a woman's virtue; whereat Sir Leslie Plummer was hugely amused: I suppose to some clodpoles a woman's virtue is funny); Mr. Kenneth Pickthorn's swingeing attack on what he described, with admirable precision and economy, as 'ludicrous humbug'; the crisp, businesslike sum- mary of Mr. Douglas Houghton; the moving and memorable words of Mr. William Deedes, who spoke of the public's trust in their governors, and begged that that trust be cherished; these were the healing draughts that will take all the bad tastes from my mouth. These—and the divisions, the first of which showed good sense and good con- duct victorious by five votes. The minute I got home I took down Macaulay on the Reform Bill. The crowd overflowed the House in every part . . . The Ayes and Noes were like two volleys of cannon. . . . When the doors were shut we began to speculate on our numbers. Everybody was desponding . . . we did not know yet what the hostile force might be. . . The doors were thrown open, and in they came. Each of them; as he entered, brought some different re- port of their numbers. . . • The tellers scarcely got through the crowd : for the House was thronged up to the Table. . . But you might have heard a pin drop as Nicholson read the numbers. Then again the shouts broke out, and many of us shed tears. I could scarcely refrain. And the jaw of Gaitskell fell; and the face of Paget was as the face of a damned soul; and Butler looked like Judas taking his necktie off for the last operation. We shook hands, and clapped each other on the back, and went out laughing, crying, and huzzaing into the lobby.
Save that I have altered Duncannon, Peel, Twiss and Herries to their current equivalents, Macau- lay's description needs not a comma's amending to fit the scene on Tuesday. But, alas, he came unstuck, as a prophet, in his next paragraph, and I cannot say that I am surprised.
I called a cabriolet, and the first thing the driver asked was 'Is the Bill carried?'
I, too, called a cabriolet. But the only thing the driver asked was: 'Where to, sir?' TAPER
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