Political Commentary
The Troubles of Mr. Speaker
By ALAN WATKINS
A YOUNG Conservative MP recently put to me .n„the view that the summer recess was wrongly placed in the parliamentary calendar. It was, he said, much too late in the year. Even in normal times the recess begins in late July and ends in late October; and this year Parliament will sit into the second week of August. The result is that Members become more irritable than they would otherwise be. (The Conservative's remedy was a recess more comparable 'to a university long vacation.) I believe there is something in this. At least, in the past few weeks MPs have appeared to be more dissatisfied with their con- dition than at any time in recent years.
This dissatisfaction has taken several forms. We have seen the beginning of a parliamentary reform movement which may at last lead some- where. We have seen Mr. Michael Foot take the bulk of the parliamentary Labour party with him into the division lobby on the Callaghan privilege case. (And Mr. Foot would certainly have obtained more votes from Ministers if Mr. George Brown had not—mistakenly—laid down to those of his colleagues who were within earshot that- the line was for members of the Government to abstain.) We have also seen a restiveness on the floor of the House which has occasionally put the Speaker in a difficult situation.
In a Parliament which contains a Government majority of three the position of the Sneaker is crucial, and is worth more attention than it has hitherto received. 'There is much exaggeration,' said Lord Rosebery to Queen Victoria, `about the attainments requisite for a Speaker., All Speakers are highly successful, all Speakers are deeply regretted, and are generally announced to be irreplaceable. But a Speaker is soon found, and found, almost invariably, among the mediocrities of the House.' Lord Rosebery's words are less than fair when applied to the present Speaker, Sir Harry Hylton-Foster. He was a successful barrister who became Solicitor- General; and there he might have stayed, pro- gressing perhaps to AttomeY-General or to a judgeship, had not the Labour Party in 1959 turned down Mr. Harold Macmillan's offer to make Sir Frank Soskice Speaker. ('We Balliol men must stick together,' observed Mr. Mac- millan,of this projected appointment.) The convention that no Speaker should have been a Minister was on the whole a good one. The reason for its existence was not so much that a former minister would be biased as that someone from the back-benches would be better able to represent the House as a body. But this convention was broken in the case both of Sir Harry and of his predecessor, W. S. Morrison. Moreover, Sir Harry had not been an ordinary minister, but a law officer.
This is part of the present trouble. A lawyer, one might imagine, would have the advantage in dealing with that personified point of order, Mr. Sydney Silverman. But not a bit of it. Mr. Silverman is playing his own game on his home ground. The Speaker emerges, not as the repre- sentative of and spokesman for the House as a
whole, but as a kind of umpire between co peting proceduralists. (The chief procedural' on the Conservative side are probably Sir R Dudley-Williams, Sir Charles Taylor and M. Bernard Braine, though they are less knoo ledgeable, and cruder in their methods, than M Silverman. Indeed, the lack of an adequate bac bench proceduralist is something which shot) worry the Conservatives more than it does.) L me give some examples.
Last week Mr. Harold Wilson said that if eve he wanted aJay lessons in appeasement he woul know whece to go. Whereupon Mr. Nigel Birc called him a 'swine'---or so Mr. Archie Mann complained to the Speaker. At this stage 0 Speaker said that he had 'been in trouble aboll this before in trying to rule on something whid I did not myself hear, and versions vary. , suggest that we get on.' However, he allowe° himself to be deflected from this laudable Put pose by Mr. William Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton persuaded him to ask Mr. Birch whether he ha in fact called Mr. Wilson a swine. Mr. Bir said that he did not think he had actually used the word. Then followed an argy-bargy, parili caused by a confusion on the Speaker's pa° between Westmorland and West Flint, and Mt Birch was asked a second time. He repeated what he had said on the first occasion, but added that. if he had used the word `swine,' he withdre. 'Let us, with that assistance, proceed,' said tll Speaker. There was a Similar illustration a few week5 • ago, when Mr. Foot, in an interjection at questioo time, accused Mr. Peter Griffiths of havi14 conducted 'racialist propaganda.' The Speaker demanded that Mr. Foot should withdraw. MI Foot refused. All he was doing, he claimed, wa' saying something that everyone knew was true. The Speaker then drew a distinction betweca 'the words themselves and the occasion on which they were uttered: the occasion, he said, wai not apt. It might be thought that an expression either is unparliamentary or is not, irrespective of when it is used : but let that pass. Mr. Fool was able to make a grudging withdrav, al hY acknowledging that his timing was inappropriate.
Whatever the merits of these two cases, whal they have in common is that they were trivial incidents. From he best motives in the world, the Speaker found himself unable to laugh then; off. Grave, courteous, quiet- and light-voice° (the voice is uncannily similar to Mr. AnthurlY Greenwood's). he talked as if he were A to Justice of Appeal putting a troublesome juni01; counsel in his place. A Speaker is in the nature of things above the House, but he must not he separate from it. It is this identification vvitti ordinary members which Sir Harry, for all his qualities, finds difficult. The reason is not exactV that he lacks a sense of humour. He undoubtedlY has one, but it is a legal sense of humour do' and brittle and possibly rather heartless. It i5, not a sense of fun.
The contrast with the Deputy Speaker, 1)1' Horace King, could hardly be greater. Dr. 'K iog is firm when he has to be, but he possesses IV gift of being able to dissolve tensions by using almost homespun turns of phrase. He is certain one of the most successful of the Prirne Ministert appointments. Before the last election, 1■.11. Wilson decided against making any change in 111°, Speakership. Such a change, he thought, wool give too much offence to too many people. Thor° is no reason to believe that he has altered hii views. But, if Sir Harry does decide to take his Viscountcy, there need be no worries about a replacement. Dr. King is available, and would he as acceptable to the Conservatives as to Laboar,i
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