POLITICAL COMMENTARY
Inevitably if you linger for more than five minutes in any of the communal rooms of the House of Commons, the Smoking Room, the Cafeteria or the Dining Room, some senior person will confide in you a great truth and prove it with examples. It is that every Parliament has a character of its own and each is different from another. Now the remarkable thing about this hoarsely whispered confidence, unlike so many others, is that it is both true and significant. Significant especially for those who, in their various ways, have to influence or control this heterogeneous collection of men and women. The Speaker and his two deputies, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, Ministers and Shadows and those enigmatic sheepdogs the Whips.
Immediately after the election in the brief summer session nothing could be discerned of this collective persona. Tories were cock- a-hoop, but defiant. Harold Wilson still twitched convulsively whenever the Speaker called 'Prime Minister' and up popped Ted Heath. Now and then a Tory would inad- vertently still refer to him as the Prime Minister and the Labour benches would rock as at some good, tasteless joke. Outside the Chamber former Members now returned for new seats would be greeted by their long lost friends; often by the wrong Christian names. Entirely new entrants wandered around as if poorly poleaxed, seeking committee rooms, the Table Office or a lavatory. The over- hasty tried to pair with Members on their own side,. the ill-informed approached Parliamentary Private Secretaries to sign Early Day Motions directed against their own Ministers.
Now however, things have settled down a bit. Some Tories who expected office have thrown their pent-up energies and their disappointment into party committees, ex- Labour Ministers have almost convinced themselves that they enjoy their new-found freedom to address the Fabians or the Ox- ford Labour Club any night of the week. Backbenchers have been applied to the grindstone of standing committees and a few late nights. Nearly all the maiden speeches, with their dutiful verbal package tours of local occupations and even flora and fauna, are over. Most Ministers are now identifiable. Even the short-sighted also know that Harold Soref, the darling of the Monday Club, is not the Tory victor at Stockport, Idris Owen, nor is either of them the Labour Member for Eccles, Lewis Carter-Jones. The really ex- pert, it is said, can distinguish between the three Tory members for Chertsey, Hendon North and Clapham, who in a bad light would pass for triplets. South Coast Tories have accustomed themselves to the plaintive pibroch note of the Opposition Scots at question time. Enoch Powell has stopped prowling the corridors like an Old Testament prophet, looking for someone or something to denounce.
Now at last when all MPS know where the lifts go to, and it is difficult to remember always that the small grey man on the Op- position front bench was once Prime Minister, it is permissible to ask, what sort of a Parliament is this?
As there are more of them, perhaps the Tories can be looked at first. The bare statistics are misleading. Of 330 of them 166 were educated at public schools, sixty at Eton, over a score were originally destined for Service careers. 107 are company direc- tors although the departure of Sir Cyril Black has presumably all but halved the number of actual directorships held. At first sight it looks as if the New Guard has merely replaced the Old. Yet there are more changes than those brought about by mere effluxion of time. The sons have not replaced the fathers. The Bow Group has more members in Parliament and Government than perhaps it ever thought likely, but so has the Monday Club. The Member for the Cities of London and Westminster sports light grey suits and matching shirts and ties, and Julian Critchley is so obviously not Sir Eric Errington's natural successor at Aldershot. The new in- take may include a major-general and a lieutenant-colonel who talks of the 'Jock's eye view', plus the usual crop of barristers, but there are also housewives and journalists and many others who pursued occupations not previously regarded as 'suitable' for successful Tory candidates. They have been described as 'capitalists without capital' and by Labour MPS in private as 'the unit trust boys'. Both descriptions are somewhat wide of the mark, but both are attempts to em- phasise the change. The knights of the shires have all but disappeared, the majority of the Tory party could now only identify a grouse in a restaurant and with the aid of a menu.
It is not entirely a consummation devoutly to be wished. The Tory gents were not an unkindly lot. They served and were loyal and had a tremendous collective common sense. Both their enthusiasms and their prejudices were predictable and they were not over-anx-
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ious for office or publicity. It is at least arguable that experience gained in the Western Desert is as valuable in public life as that acquired in the PR jungle.
Perhaps it was natural enough that this change in a party was bound to be discerned first of all by those forced by the geography of the Commons to stare at the new men face to face, day by day. For though the Tories may not yet have fully appreciated the transformation of their own ranks, it is very obvious from the Labour benches.
Accents, hair styles, ties and shoes, these are but the surface; far more important-is the change in attitude. A new independence, less respect for authority and something akin to contempt for the old slow-moving parliamentary procedures have all been marked by those who cannot but reflect on the nature of the ruling party opposite.
Not, however, let it be clear, that there is any consolation for the Opposition in all this. For the Labour party has not remained unchanged itself. Much of its traditional ele- ment has also been eroded by age. Twenty former mineworkers remain and a con- siderable body of trade–union officials, but by far the largest element in the new parliamentary party consists of teachers, lec- turers and the ubiquitous barrister. They too have their own brand of impatience, they too are more clever by half than their predecessors. They too would be unamused by a former Chief Whip's remark to a pushing young colleague, 'It is far better for people to wonder why you don't speak than wonder why you do.' The old tolerance which used to exist across the floor of the House between men poles apart in educa- tion, upbringing and occupation seems to have disappeared. Perhaps as both sides live together and get to know each other better over the years, more tolerance will be engendered. Somehow however I have my doubts, for the differences are those of belief and not social origin. Members of Parlia- ment today are where they are because they want to be politicians, not incidentally, because they happen to be the secretary of the local NUM or be the nearby MFH.
The day of the professionals has been heralded for years, now it seems it is upon us for good or ill. Paradoxically, however, they are professionals who seem quite content at times kicking into their own goal.
Sometimes I think I discern a flash of sym- pathy from one Front Bench to another as, no doubt, both wonder what precisely they have behind them. Sometimes it seems almost possible to detect a momentary lapse in the impressive occupational unconcern shown by Bob Mellish and Francis Pym, the two Chief Whips. If so I can well understand it. Ted Heath has advocated a quiet revolu- tion: some of his supporters might be quite happy without the adjective. For Harold Wilson it is a different problem. He has always been an adept jumper on to horses, but he will have to be very quick indeed to mount all those that his party trots out in the next few years.
Some months ago I watched the pro- gramme about the Macmillan era on the box. I found myself afflicted by two emo- tions, surprise to remember that I had ac- tually been in the House at the time, and a bit of nostalgia for the good old days. So far I have resisted the temptation to buttonhole some new MP and tell him about that particular Parliament—and its giants—but no doubt one day, perhaps in the Smoking Room ...
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