Westminster Corridors

Observing the Midshipman Wilson in his place the Commons, pale with righteous wrath, t'uzzle quickly opened a clean notebook. For evidently something was up. Indeed it was. For the Midshipman had caught that wretched scallywag, the Demon Barber, in the act of poking his tongue out at ,Good Auntie TUC behind her back. My word, II Skipper Heath did not cuff the rascal heartilY, the Midshipman would have the Skipper's trousers off, even though — as he had remarked the day previous — they were nailed to the mast.

There ensued a mighty huffing and puffing, 'with great cheers from the Labour fellows, as if their leader were about to rescue the nation ft.orri grave peril. But Skipper Heath showed ne more concern than a lump of mahogany, Which he grows to resemble more every day. The Good Auntie, he said, was coming to see him that very afternoon at Downingstreet, so she could not be as put out as all that. He was so smug about it that it clearly Pleased him greatly that Auntie had not rpentioned this piece of intelligence to her favourite nephew Harold.

That ought to have been the end of the

atter. But, alas, there is no one quite like the ndshipman for pumping gas into a torn ,u,alloon. Dauntlessly he went on pumping, ',lough the thing positively refused to inflate, 4nd though Speaker Durable Selwyn Lloyd Protested that there were about a thousand 'Ps queuing up to offer the nation their Wisdom in debate. It seems that it was all about something /14hich went on in Neddy, and if you know ,eddy you will know that it must be Impor'ant. So the Skipper and the Midshipman were !)(1n popping in and out of Neddy, saying Boo each other, till Puzzle was sadly bewildered TIN Mr Stately Evelyn King complained about iftgglY questions below the level of events, as ' anything could be below the level of current events.

At last Ulster Willie Whitelaw did get ;aunched on what all presume to be his Peace fa2 our Time, 0 Lord speech. If anyone can nag nation into peace and goodwill, it is Ulster He has now brought his pneumatic siti1 style of oratory to perfection. His voice c'trikes a pitch precisely judged to make the is.sciinmons microphones vibrate with a torturw'T, strident noise which renders most of his °T,rds inaudible. fr,rie has also devised a trick which greatly a:Sters his reputation as a Conciliator. When

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4-7.;‘ed about anything, he says that he cannot "slyer, but that he recognises that the ques

tion is Important. That pleases everybody more or less. Another Whitelaw device is to state at the top of his voice that, in order to save time, he will not give way, and then to waste more time not giving way to Mr Arthur Pint of Order Lewis than most men take to make a speech.

A dose of Ulster Willie has the curious effect on Puzzle of making Mr Honest Reg Prentice sound like an orator. This is a delusion which Mr Prentice worked hard to dispel, by discoursing on such matters as how the question of waiting and winding time had been allowed to run into the sand. When Mr Prentice further observed that it was those who were least able to defend themselves who suffered first, Puzzle felt that here was a man of heart, until it occurred to him that, if they did not suffer first, they could not be the least able to defend themselves.

By the time Honest Reg had reached a series of interlocking crises, a situation which would demand sacrifices from every section of the community, a quotation from one of John F. Kennedy's hammiest speechwriters, and a moral lead to the nation, Puzzle was thoroughly cured of his earlier aberration. He lapsed into deep meditation, scrawling doodles in his new notebook, until aroused by the appearance of the Prophet Powell.

Now the Prophet is beyond doubt an orator. To know that, Puzzle merely had to look at Mrs Jill Bubbles Knight, listening with the rapt expression of a Victorian maiden attending to the discourse of a rich and unmarried curate. Powell even attracted Scotland's latest bequest to Westminster, Bonny Margo Macdonald, back to the Chamber, whence she had sensibly fled at the onset of Ulster Willie.

The Prophet's logic flowed mellifluously onward. Relativities, he observed, were the latest fashion, but let it be noted that they were not static, but dynamic, and no Pay Board could tell how to get from the principle to the practice. The country was tearing itself to pieces in something called an 'ampass,' which later proved to be French for 'impasse.' Puzzle was as deep under the spell as the enchanted Mrs Knight until up popped the Old Glassblower, Mr Frank Tomney, as if out of a trapdoor at the far end of the Chamber.

He asked a question so obvious that Puzzle waited for the Prophet to call down the lightning on him. Briefly, it was: "What about unemployment?" But Mr Powell was unable to summon the lightning. In fact he fluffed about like a wet hen, causing Puzzle to reflect that an orator is not always a debater.

It was time now for Toniben to get a word in. He complained that figures of coal stocks promised by the Government had not appeared and he accused Boom Peter Walker of deliberately cutting off his statistics. It appears that some civil servant shared Puzzle's alarm last week at the prospect of Toniben and Boom Peter slinging millions of tons of statistical coal at each other, and had prudently decided not to let either of them have any. Boom Peter had to send his Parliamentary errand boy, Mr Anthony Berry, scampering off to find some, which was one up to Toniben. The affair ended predictably, with Toniben passionately declaring that the Government had rigged up the whole crisis in order to oppress the workers, and Boom Peter calling Toniben a cad who was trying to suck up even closer to the miners than the Midshipman.

A dull business, but in keeping with the times, which Puzzle suspects to be far more dull than desperate. One thing we can be sure of. It will be some time yet before Toniben, in a torn shirt, will be scaling the barricades, with the Red Flag draped across his manly chest.

Tom Puzzle