Westminster Commentary IT is not a political commentator that is
needed at the moment to chronicle the activities of the House of Commons, but a profes- sor of zoology assisted by a hyp- notist. The professor of zoology would have come in handy when Mr. Brockway asked Commander Noble to make a statement on the situation in Kuwait. He said it was calm, and before Mr. Brockway could ask his supplementary a Mr. Cooper was bawling, 'Stir it up! See what you can do with it!' Never backward when there is any ululating to be done, Mr. Ellis Smith joined in at this point with a stirring cry of 'Your friends Woodrow Wyatt and Dimbleby have done that!' the precise relevance of which was not entirely clear, at any rate to me. Mr. Brockway plodded on he asked for an undertaking that the Govern- ment would not oppose the introduction of demo- cracy into Kuwait. 'Wot abart Russia?' bellowed some rapier-wit on the Tory side. 'And in Russia,' Mr. Brockway obediently added. 'Wot abart _Hun- gary?' came the renewed cry. Mr. Brockway gave up, Commander Noble replied that it would be unwise to speculate about such hypothetical ques- tions, tonsils stopped quivering, and the House went on to discuss pigs—pigs in general and the Pig Industry Development Authority in particular.
The hypnotist would have found fascinating material for study in the defence debate, or at any rate the speech of the Minister, for if Mr. Sandys was not in a trance state throughout it would be interesting to know precisely how his speech came to be quite so bad, and badly delivered, as it was. Not even the Foreign Secretary has ever displayed greater terror of departing, even momentarily, from his script (oh ! for a Speaker who will rigidly enforce the rule about the reading of speeches!) than did Ginger-nut on this occasion. I have be- fore now mentioned Mr. Sandys's inability to deal with heckling, but the far-famed slowness of his mind was more cruelly demonstrated on this occa- sion than I have seen it. First, he wouldn't give way to Mr. Shinwell at all. Then, with a bad grace, he did, and when Mr. Shinwell had asked his question he simply muttered, Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to develop my argument,' and carried on without any reply. Next it was Mr. Brown and Mr. Shinwell together, ask- ing about the Defence Board. Mr. Sandys at this point became entirely incoherent, and nothing but broken phrases ('If the right hon. Gentleman will think. . . . Of course. . . . Well, I would like to make it clear') emerged for some time. Then Mr. Crossman had an interjection; it was ignored. Mr. Wigg tried his hand, and Ginger-nut made the fatal mistake of trying to answer him off the cuff. Now in order to answer somebody off the cuff it is necessary to have something written on the thing, and Mr. Sandys's was smooth and bare and whiter than white. 'I have not got it all in my mind' is an uncommonly frank thing for a Cabinet Minister to say, and on the score of frankness Mr. Sandys must score heavily for it. He was not, however, being asked to recite the whole of Queen's Regulations, but to answer a perfectly straightforward point about the manner in which the Minister, of Defence's powers may be exer- cised,• and if .Mr. Sandys has not got it all in his mind' he wilt just have to stay in his office even later than 'lie dins 'already until he has got it all in his mind.
Having tried once to depart from his brief, with disastrous results, the Minister was not to be caught again. When Mr. Fernyhough asked a question, it was 'I do not want to pursue detailed points.' When Mr. Crossman tried, we heard 'I should be glad on another occasion to pursue that rather different topic. . . .' And when Mr. Mason, as Ginger-nut sat down, had a go, he simply stain" mered, '1 hope that hon. Memembers will forgive me if 1 do not try to deal with every conceivable aspect of defence today.' Now from some mem• bers of the Government this sort of exhibition is only to be expected, and it has long since ceased to alarm me. But Mr. Sandys is the great ginger hope of the Tories, or so we are always being told, and the speed with which his stock falls every time he makes a speech is alarming indeed, for it there is one Ministry at which we cannot afford a sounding brass it is his, which has quite enough sounding brass-hats already. One ominous sign is the reception of his speech on Monday. Some Ministers are listened to quietly and attentively, some are heckled and shouted at. A few, however (Mr. Ward, for instance, or Commander Noble), are simply not listened to at all; when they are speaking the House breaks up into little knots in which Members chat of this and that, taking no notice whatever of the speaker. It would be untrue to say that this was the treatment meted out to Mr. Sandys throughout his speech, but it was cer- tainly true at times, and no wonder.
The House listened to Mr. George Brown, all right. With a voice like Mr. Woodrow Wyatt, only about five times as piercing, Mr. Brown would make a man with no ears listen. But with or with- out ears, Mr. Brown's listeners on this occasion got a speech not much shorter than the Minister's, and with very little more in it. Bits like this, for instance, on ballistic missiles : We arc now stuck with Thors, which do not go off in America. We are nearly in August now'• I saw the Thor which was supposed to go oil in August. It was going to be the very first one. R was shown to me. It was No. 139. 1 know which, one it was. As I say, this was to be the very first one which was to go off in August. We arc committed by the present Minister to having Thors deployed in this country in December. We are now at the end of July and none as yet has. been launched. We have been holding up our own Blue Streak.
The back benches—and it would not have been a very difficult task, in any case—showed the front a collectively clean pair of heels. There is more than one view of Brigadier Head's achievements, but surely somebody is sooner or later going to have to answer—or try to answer—his questions about the size of the armed forces this country needs. Of course, in a sense this depends on what particular acts of international lunacy the Govern- ment may be committing at any given moment, but it is no use hoping that you can get 165,000 men without conscription (even if you can. and my office is still open for bets on the subject; and then decide that by an astonishing coincisicricc 165,000 men is what you need. It may be, for all I know, but there is no convincing evidence extant that anybody in or around the Ministry of De- fence has any idea why that is the magic number or how they are to be employed, and Mr. Head did at any rate ask a few questions, So did Mr. Crossman. So did Mr. Wigg. So, of course, did Mr. Shinwell. So did Sir Fitzroy Maclean. But in vain; they asked for bread and were given a Ward. And now they are about to adjourn until October; hitherto they had only the prospect of not know- ing, throughout all that time, where we were going next. Now there is an added uncertainty; whether there is anybody to send there. The question bounces back off the emptying chamber, un-
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