Westminster Corridors
In the darkest moments of our history the Man has always emerged to match the hour. It was, therefore, wholly appropriate that, when the Metrication (Pasta and Salt) Orders were brought before the Commons last week, Mr Peter Emery should be entrusted with the task of steering this vital piece of legislation through a truculent Commons. For Mr Peter Emery is a bumbler. What is more he is a bumbler supreme because he is unaware that he is bumbling, and the artless bumbler is the best kind of bumbler a government can sport in its ranks.
It is hard to detect how men achieve this rare talent, for some are born bumblers, and others achieve it in early manhood. (It is not a feminine grace.) A clue may lie in the fact that he gives among his recreations, in Who's' Who," sliding down mountains" and perhaps he was fortunate enough to land on his head during his formative years. Be that as it may, his bumbling has served his party well.
Jolly fellow
Mr Emery must not be shy or coy about his political talent. That splendid dragoon, and former President of the Cambridge Conservatives, Labour member Tam Dalyell of the Binns, once told me that the great benefit of having attended Eton, and served with such distinction in the regiment raised by an ancestor, the Royal Scots Greys, and by never rising higher than a trooper, was that he was now incapable of embarrassment. (Actually he mislaid some armoured cars on Salisbury plain.) Mr Emery has this in abundance. What is more he is a jolly fellow, and well meaning with it. Harold Wilson employed some devastating political weapons when in difficulties: the Belper Boor, George Brown, to create general chaos; or worse still that fearsome device, the desiccated calculating machine, Mr Michael Stewart, who would smother any lively opponent in a heap of worthy departmental dust in a crisp hour or two. Mr Emery belongs to a formidable lineage.
Before turning to pasta and salt there were early indications of the Emery talent when he was dispatched to the Scottish Grand Committee, from the DTI, clutching a brief to read at the end of the session about some minor measures the government would introduce relating to North Sea Oil. Since the Scots Secretary, Mr Gordon Campbell, opened the proceedings it was quite apparent that the whole debate would be meaningless, and the gross Caledonians hurled abuse at Mr Emery to get on his feet and tell them why he was there. He sat happily unembarrassed as if sliding down a favourite mountain, and seemed to think the protesters were yodelling guides. Eventually one crusty.clansman said .audibly, "He'll tell us that he has a Scottish grannie." Mr Emery rose to his feet, with but a few minutes to the adjournment, and duly obliged. When shall we see the like again?
But pasta and salt may yet go down as Emery's finest hour — although who knows what perils may befall the nation in future. It was brought forward just after 10 pm last Tuesday as an Order in Council and its intention is to permit (and obviously eventually compel) shopkeepers to sell these commodities in standard packs bearing metric weights.
Mr Emery was soon bouncing merrily down the precipices as some of his own colleagues, principally Dr Stuttaford, were belabouring him with the fact that it was all part of European bureaucracy and just as unpopular with constituents as decimalisation. What is more, Dr Stuttaford and other colleagues clearly took the view that sharp grocers would make just as good a killing out of the metrication process as they have out of decimalisation.
Proudly Mr Emery announced that manufacturers could now prepack in metric or, indeed, imperial units but cheerily added later that he hoped that shopkeepers would not " confuse customers by displaying together articles labelled with imperial and metric weights." Then, in masterly fashion, asked the House, if they avoided metrication, did they want to find themselves aligned with countries such as Brunei, Naura, Tonga or the Yemen, which shows that, even with the best material, one should never ask a rhetorical question for some bounders shouted, "Why not." Perhaps they had grannies from Tonga.
Young scamp
That irreverent young scamp Roger Moate put his finger on it when he announced that as a non-enthusiast for pasta he could not care whether macarono was sold by the metre. (I am bound to say that the aquiline features of this young buck would be much improved by consuming quantities of goodly pasta washed down with some of the excellent vino provided by that vintage saint, Dr ,Reginald Bennett.) What Mr Moate did care Iabout was the fact that the government is trying to introduce metrication by stealth instead of bravely facing a major debate, and vote, on the whole matter.
With such an uncomfortable electoral prospect in view the water was clearly being tested on the unexciting question of pasta and salt, in the handp of the bumbling Emery, after ten o'clock at night, when it is not only well-nigh certain that the parliamentary press will be replete with pasta and not excited by the thought of hearing a discourse upon it, but that the Hansard report will not appear the next day with the debate. And who reads the day before yesterday's news? • Indeed, with the possible exception of drafting in Mr Alex Lyons to oppose the order at length, the GOVernment could not have guaranteed a quieter reception. Such tranquil sessions will not continue for it will soon be necessary to introduce orders bringing tinned fruit from the Commonwealth inside the EEC common external tariff, and impose an 8 per cent import duty on lamb. All this will happen within the next month or two but such lively occasions will not, I fear, be entrusted to Mr Emery who instead will probably be allowed to slide down the butter . mountain with his Scottish grandmother.
Tom Puzzle
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