Westminster Commentary
If they are wise they will speedily forget the scene which preceded it. The present House of Commons has frequently been compared to a school debating society of a particularly low standard; for question-time on Budget Day one can carry the analogy a step further. This was the last day of term with a vengeance, and the lower fourth had turned up bursting with high spirits to rag the prefects, the masters and even the Head. There was Nabarro Minor, for instance; didn't he just look super in his dad's topper and frock coat! And the silly beggar had even drawn a whopping great false moustache on his physog with burnt cork ! (Genuine? Don't talk rot!) And there goes old Dalton Major, sitting in a prefect's desk as bold as brass; let's spifflicate the bounder for all those rotten things he's been saying about Morrison Minimus in the school mag. But I say, you chaps, here's a Governor turned up : Winston himself. Come on, give him a cheer !
Mind you, Sir Winston deserved his cheer, if only for wearing the most gigantic buttonhole that can ever have been seen in the House of Com- mons; for one delirious second I thought it was a rhododendron. When, a couple of minutes later, Mr. Gaitskell entered, also wearing a red button- hole, the school—I mean House—no I don't, I mean school—fairly had hysterics. Sir Winston Churchill and Mr. Gaitskcll both wearing button- holes; oh, it was really too much for a chap to bear, it was really! As a matter of fact, it was; Eve more minutes of the yelling, barracking and guffawing that greeted every remark made from about ten to three onwards and I should have written a very rude word indeed on the black- board. So I popped out to the tuckshop and had wizard great gin-and-tonic. I returned as Mr. Thorneycroft was just settling into his seat, amid laughter and cheers, not to say an approving pat from the Prime Minister. Every place, upstairs and down, carried about one and a quarter seats; suddenly there came to mind the remark hissed into Alexander Woolcott's ear as he stood in the forefront of a Broadway crowd that had collected round an accident : 'From where I stand I can see eight murderers.' Well, from where I sat I could see seven Chancellors; downstairs there were, in addition to Mr. Thorneycroft, Mr. Macmillan, Mr. Butler, Sir Winston, Mr. Gaitskell and Mr. Dalton; upstairs there was the grey, lugubrious Lord Waverley, as usual looking as if he was taking part in a village pageant as the Spirit of Sabbatarianism. (Not far from him was a much more cheerful sight : Uncle Fred himself, beaming down on everybody like a retired Cupid who has decided that the younger generation is not really so bad as people make out.) Mr. Thorneycroft rose. Four-square to the Despatch Box he stood, hands on the corners. Beside him the battered red box with all the secrets. From it there dangled, as he opened it, what looked curiously like a pyjama-cord; per- haps the Chancellor really had been working far into the night on his Budget. He extracted the first neatly stapled packet and began. His tone was firm and even; not for an hour or more was a hoarse tinge to be heard. His accent is unremark- able, unplaceable except for the extraordinary diphthong he makes of words like `pay,' way; `day.' There were no tricks of delivery, no flourishes; in fact, so devoid was the speech of what actors used to call 'points' that at times he almost seemed to be coming to it sight unseen, particularly in his habit of running paragraphs together.
The first sound from the House was characteris- tic. `We earned,' said the Chancellor, 'in the second half of 1956 a surplus of seventy-nine million pounds.' There was a slight, hesitant mur- mur, the sound made by people who were not quite sure, amid all the complicated words, whether a surplus was good or bad. Mr. Thorney- croft hastened to put the matter beyond doubt even in the minds of his less expert followers. `This compares,' he added, with the slightest in- crease in emphasis, 'with a deficit of 102 million pounds in the second half of 1955. . . .' The rank and file, now confident that they were hearing good news, reinforced the murmur until you could almost have called it a cheer.
At 3.50 Mr. Thorneycroft put away the first section of his Budget and dipped into the bran-tub for the second. 'Let me now indicate briefly the exchange figures for the past year.' All over the House the blue folders with the details of income and expenditure rustled as Members prepared to make a brave show of understanding the differ- ence between the things which go above the line and those which go below; it might have been a recital at the Wigniore Hall, with the programmes rustling as the singer finished Erwarlung and got ready to launch himself upon Ungeduld. By this time, too, it had become clear that the 1957, Budget would never be included in any anthology of famous speeches. Mr. Thorneycroft's idea of a fine phrase is 'We have been trying to take out of the economy more than we put into it,' or 'The National Savings Movement has gone on from strength to strength,' or `We must face this problem fairly and squarely.'
At last the Chancellor fished into the box for the last section of his speech : the tax changes.
`Wait for it,' called out a pretty wit, only to have his good thing capped by a still more elegantly turned mot as somebody shouted 'Hold your hat out' to the toppered ones on the Tory benches.
Dazed by all this brilliance, Mr. Thorneycroft Paused for his first sip of water. Then he went on; a genuine cheer greeted his announcement of the reduction in entertainments tax, while Sir David Eccles made a great show of staring intently at his shoe-laces, lest he should catch somebody's eye and blush. The first real dissent came at the pur- chase tax announcement : 'Take it all off' was the theme, and for a minute or so the Chancellor had to pause. Surprisingly, there was less noise at the surtax concessions, except for a great shout of laughter when Mr. Thorneycroft, with perhaps not quite the most felicitously chosen words, de- clared that 'We are determined . . . that there shall always be room at the top.'
At 5.14, or one hour and forty-three minutes after he had begun, Mr. Thorneycroft sat down, to a cheer that was loud and heartfelt, if not long.
Then Mr. Griffiths got up. Short of singing `Lloyd George knew my father' it is difficult to see how he could have made a bigger fool of himself than he actually did. He began by wishing Mr. Gait- skell many happy returns. Then he pointed out that Mr. Thorneycroft had used the same box for his Budget as had Mr. Gladstone. Then he said that he had seen twenty-one Budgets and that he had made his maiden speech in the debate which fol- lowed the first of them. Then he spoke at some length of the late Neville Chamberlain. Then he lilted on about the 1955 Budget. Then he suddenly thought of something to say about the one he had just heard, and said it. Then he sat down. Then Mr. Gaitskcll got a little pink about 'the gills, as well he might; the man is Deputy Leader of the Opposition, after all. Then I suddenly realised, apropos of nothing in particular, that the news from the Old Bailey meant that the Attorney- General would be back in the House shortly, so I popped out to the tuckshop and had another gin- and-tonic.
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