AT WESTMINSTER I T is a poor Scot who cannot threaten
an English Minister with the Goschen formula, and one felt on Tuesday when Parliament reassembled that the flourishing of this famous bludgeon was a symbol of the determination of the House of Commons to start serious work at once after the Coronation festivities. This symbol was the more striking because the threatened Minister was Sir David Eccles, who with a twist of his departmental wrench had built a jousting ground in Parliament Square out of tubes. Sir David was eager to prove that he too had taken off his tabard. He answered his questions demurely. He might even haVe planted the question-about the Goschen formula : it came from his own side of the House.
• Not that it was altogether easy for Members to put away lighter things. The Speaker and Mrs. Morrison were at home on Tuesday at the Speaker's House to Members and their wives, and the wives tended" to be late in arriving at the Palace of Westminster because of the traffic blocks caused by the Queen's fourth and last state drive. Members could be seen pacing up and down restlessly awaiting late arrivals and rehearsing speeches that for once were not intended for the floor of the House.
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Yet the programme for the week was serious enough. The Commons resumed the committee stage of the Finance Bill on Wednesday and Thursday and watched Labour Members develop an attack on the Chancellor for failing to ease, the tax burden on textiles. Last year the Tories joined in the campaign for tax relief with some success. This year they have promised the Chancellor to be good and to treat the Finance Bill as a general boon rather than to fuss about details. The Lords, too, abandoned their coronets for the microscope and had a debato on the purity of food on Wednesday.
On Tuesday the Commons had two great themes before them—the Korean armistice negotiations and.the Bill that will enable the Government to set up the Central African Federation. On Korea Sir Winston Churchill made a statement that commanded the support and approval of the whole House. In the main, he spoke quietly and with moderate optimism, but at one moment he was profoundly moved. Mr. Arthur Henderson had asked him to acknowledge the valuable help given in the Korean negotiations by various Commonwealth countries, and particularly by India. This Sir Winston did, but he also remembered Mr. Eden's influence. " I am sure," added the Prime Minister, " that the House will wish him God's help in the ordeal which he is going to face." In this passage Sir Winston spoke of " Mr. Eden " and not of " my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary," and this inadvertent breach of convention brought home to the House more sharply perhaps than anything else could have done the nature of the Foreign Secretary's long and painful search for health.
* * * The committee stage of the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Federation Bill could not be concluded in one day, on Tuesday, as the Government had hoped, and it would have been imprudent of Ministers to have attempted to rush such a Bill through the House. (Events in Africa demand the generous time of Parliament. Apart from the controversy over federation, the proscription of the Kenya African Union has greatly disturbed the Opposition.) Yet Labour's amendments to the Bill have put Ministers in a rather odd position. The Government will not accept any amendments that would substantially alter the published federal plan—" in the nature of a treaty," Mr. Hopkinson called it on Tuesday; but at the same time the case against the principal amendments must be argued on merits unless the committee stage is to be treated as a formality. This exercise calls for more Parliamentary skill than Mr. Hopkinson has yet acquired.. J. F. B.
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