Westminster Commentary

MUCH ribald comment was ex- cited among my colleagues by the sight of your correspondent entering the Press Gallery at eleven o'clock on a Friday morn- ing, but I really can't see why. It is true that I had not shaved, but I had certainly brushed my hair, and was wearing at least one shoe. And down below, after all, there were things that really were worthy of note. There was Mr. Butler, for instance, clearly wondering where he was, and why. There was Mr. Gaitskell, and Mr. Griffiths, and Mr. Callaghan,' and Mr. Lennox-Boyd, and Mr. Alport, and a hundred Members more, back-bench and front. And there, on the third bench back below the gangway, was the reason why so many of us had risen from warm beds at so ghastly an hour : the honourable Member for Wednesbury, Mr. John Stonehouse, looking very fit and tanned, had come to make a personal statement to the House about his recent travels (and lack of travels) in Africa. Well, he made it; very dispassionately (personal statements may not, by the rules of order, be controversial), very clearly, and in great detail. The House heard it in silence, and twelve minutes later shuffled out and got on with their interrupted weekend. But the pencillers, who go ever on the principle of 'in for a penny, in for a pound,' went across to Transport House for the next chapter in this thrilling tale. There, Mr. Stonehouse was answer- ing questions, and what with his statement, and his answers, and one or two other channels of information that are strictly speaking no business of yours, a good deal of light has been shed not on the Central African situation but on the behaviour of Mr. Cuthbert Alport, Under-Secre-\ tar}, of State at the Commonwealth Relations Office. Examined in this light, Mr. Alport cuts a very curious figure indeed, and it is in this light that I now propose to examine him.

I described Mr. Alport's speech in the censure debate the week before last as a 'prolonged smear.' I chose the words with care, but had I known what I know now, I would have chosen even stronger ones. For Mr. Alport's detailed per- sonal clenigration of Mr. Stonehouse (made, as I pointed out, quite contrary to the custom of the House in being delivered without the Member under. attack being present or even warned tha.t it was coming) included a number of charges, and contained a number of statements, that now appear to be quite untrue. Let us take these in turn, beginning with Mr. Alport's claim that 'When the . . . flight to Blantyre . . . was cancelled, on accouOt of the state of emergency, Central African Airways offered to provide an Apache aircraft to take him [Mr. Stonehouse] to Salis- bury to catch the connection.' Mr. Stonehouse flatly denies the truth of this assertion; he says that Central African Airways never offered him any alternative flight at all, and that the Federal Immigration Officer, who did (though it was not clear on whose authority), offered him an Apache aeroplane to take him not to Salisbury, but to Dar-es-Salaam, whence, of course, it was impos- sible to get to London in time for the debate. 'In addition,' said Mr. Alport, 'the Government of Northern Rhodesia offered him [Mr. Stone- house] two motor-cars, one of them a spare • in case the one he was travelling in broke down, to drive him to Salisbury.' In this, Mr. Stone- house declares there is not a word of truth. No other offers of transport of any ,kind, anywhere, were made to him by anybody. Further, Mr. Alport said : 'He apparently chose to leave Northern Rhodesia for Dar-es-Salaam rather than return to Salisbury so as to be available. . . .' Mr. Stonehouse points out that there was no question of his choosing anything; he was forcibly put aboard the aeroplane for Dar-es- Salaam.

On we go. 'On learning that the hon. Member proposed to address a -meeting of the African National Congress, at Harare, near Salisbury, the High Commissioner attempted to dissuade him on the ground that in the existing situation of Southern Rhodesia it would be a most imprudent thing to do.' Thus, again, Mr. Alport. But Mr. Stonehouse claims that the only reference the High Commissioner made to the subject of Mr. Stonehouse's proposed speech was a remark to the effect that he wondered whether it would be wise to make it. And, incidentally, the speech was not at Harare, nor ever planned to be; it was at High- fields, which is a different place entirely.

Next, Mr. Alport denied that Mr. Stonehouse's tour was 'officially sponsored,' and indeed it was not. But Mr. Alport, 'while I am not for one moment suggesting' (that's his phrase, too) that he was guilty of suggestio falsi, implied that Mr. Stonehouse had claimed it was. Mr. Stonehouse had said in Reynolds News, 'I am continuing my tour—which I emphasise is officially arranged-- until I receive advice from London,' and this statement Mr. Alport categorised as unjustified. Mr. Stonehouse, however, has a copy of a docu- ment headed 'The Secretariat, Lusaka,' which gives details of all the engagements arranged for him by the Northern Rhodesian Government for his stay; there is at least one every day for a week. It is signed 'for the Administrative Secre- tary to the Government,' and if it does not con- stitute an 'officially-arranged' tour then I don't know what does—though doubtless Mr. Alport could tell us.

But the worst is to come. During his smear, Mr. Alport quoted, or purported to quote, from - a letter, or what purported to be a letter, written by Mr. Stonehouse, or what purported to be Mr. Stonehouse, to Sir Eldred Hitchcock, or what purported to be Sir Eldred Hitchcock. This is what he said of it.

As a result of a reply, a reply made by Sir Eldred to a Times advertisement, he received a letter signed 'John Stonehouse. M.P.' which out- lined his wide range of business interests and invited him, that is, Sir Eldred, if he wished to make use of his services, to reply to the House of Commons.

In actual fact, the letter from Mr. Stonchouse to Sir Eldred Hitchcock does not outline Mr. Stonehouse's wide range of business interests. It contains fourteen words, of the vaguest and most general kind, saying what Independent Commer- cial Surveys Limited does, but does not outline 'When you've finished with that impacted wisdom, sir, the White House wants you to

stand by.' . any 'wide range of business interests' of that com- pany. So far from inviting Sir Eldred 'if he wished to make use of his services, to reply to the House of Commons,' it informs Sir Eldred Hitchcock that Mr. Stonehouse is unable to undertake any work for Sir Eldred on his forthcoming tour, and specifically invites him to reply to him in Nairobi.

Now this really will not do. That there has been a general decline in Ministerial accuracy and scrupulousness over the last few years is, regret- tably, undeniable. It is high time a halt was cried to this decline. Mr. Stonehouse has directly challenged a number of Mr. Alport's statements, and I have challenged some more. Mr. Alport made a number of serious charges against Mr. Stonehouse, in a direct personal attack, based on statements the truth of which is not only open to question but has actually been questioned. Mr. Alport owes Mr. Stonehouse, and all of us, a reply (with some evidence) or a withdrawal.

And so we came—across no great distance, now I come to think of it, when the accuracy and integrity of our leaders are the subject of discus- sion—to the latest, but not the last, of the debates on what Mr. Macmillan nowadays calls 'the Suez crisis,' but what you and I know as the bombing and invasion of Egypt by Israeli, British and French troops. The debate took place on the motion to approve the terms of the finantial settlement between Egypt and Britain, and was consequently opened by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was quite pathetic; and in view of what he must' know now (even if he didn't at the time) about the fraudulence, incompetence and criminal recklessness of the Suez invasion, 1 cannot honestly say I am surprised.

The Chancellor was followed by Mr. Gaitskell, who made the best speech I have ever heard from him. It is not 'often, in the House of Commons, that one side is completely in the right and the other completely in the wrong: indeed, apart from discussions of Suez and its concomitant issues, I can't think of any occasions at all on which this is true. But Mr. Gaitskell's case was massive, deadly and quite unanswerable. His analysis of the true losses against which the sum of £271 million figures so poorly (his very con- servative estimate was £250 million) was a model of merciless lucidity.

Point by point, Mr. Gaitskell went through the deficiencies of the agreement; the refusal of com- pensation to the expropriated British residents; the abandoned installations and stores, upon the value of which the Government were so insistent in 1954, but which had now astonishingly become valueless; the depreciation and deterioration of the returned property, in respect of which all claims have been waived by the Government; the shabby way in which the Chancellor, in his original state- ment, had implied that the British residents were telling lies about the Value of their property. All these points and more Mr. Gaitskell made, and he rounded off his speech with a brilliant and brief analysis of the whole of the Suez fiasco. From the Dance of the Seven Excuses to the Exit of the Gladiators he ranged, knocking off every head that showed itself above the ground, and when he finished, with a call for the trial of the guilty men, Mr. Macmillan was very hard put to it indeed to pretend that he was laughing.

After this, much of the debate was anticlimax. Poor, pathetic Major Legge-Bourke, earnest as

one of Mr. Wheatley's zombies, and scarcely more intelligent, found Mr. Ciaitskell's speech 'utterly nauseating' (twice), 'totally nauseating' and 'utterly disgusting,' and kept appealing to Mr. Gaitskell to come back into the Chamber to hear him say so. Mr. Leather said of Suez that 'The impression that there was any support abroad for the ideas of the party' opposite is completely and utterly fallacious,' which makes one wonder where he spends his holidays, and went on to make some very .nasty remarks about the 'odd names' possessed by some of the British residents in Egypt, thus leading Mr. Bonham C'arter to inquire whether Mr. Leather was suggesting two classes of British national --those who are British because their names are British, and those who are not really British because .their parents' names weren't really British. Mr. Bonham Carter might have asked where this would leave Sir Roy Welensky; but personally 1 have always suspected that Mr. Leather's real name is Lederhosen, any- way. Lord Lambton explained that he still had a deep personal affection for the Foreign Secretary, but rather spoilt this touching announcement by adding, 'I have, however, found that my position has varied from his because my point of view has always appeared to me to be so crystal clear.'

Mr. Bevan, back in his gayest form, wound up for the Opposition, and then it was up to the Prime Minister to get the Tory tail up once more. Mr. Macmillan is always at his best (what ordi- nary people would call 'worst') in situations of this kind; after all, if you are willing to behave in a manner irresistibly reminiscent of Shaw's remark about the n. .1 with whom 'no ordinarily self-respecting mudlark would care to be seen grubbing for pennies' you can get creatures like Bromley-Davenport cheering immediately, and the rest of the Tory party well inside the half- hour. And so Mr. Macmillan did, though some of the cheers sounded a little hysterical to me.

But Mr. Macmillan was not concerned with logic or accuracy, or even with rather more fundamental things. To anyone tolerably familiar with the inner history of the last, desperate hours before Sir Anthony Eden announced his departure for Jamaica, not to mention the hours before he returned, there is something almost admirable in the breath-taking impudence of Mr. Macmillan's claim that 'From the beginning

to the end . All that time he had . the consistent and loyal support of all his colleagues in the Cabinet.' In the delighted roar of Opposi- tion laughter that followed this marvellous piece of—what is the superlative of ben frovaio? bel camo?--I thought I detected a familiar note. Nor was I mistaken, as a glance over the edge con- firmed; for there, to his eternal glory, was Mr. Butler, lying back in his seat, laughing until I thought he would dislocate his jaw.

And later that night, in the (unintentionally) funniest adjournment speech ever Made. Mr. Edelman (very handsome in dinner-jacket and boiled shirt) complained about the fake news- broadcast on 'Tv which convinced many viewers that the Martians had arrived, and read one letter which said ' \\ hen he mentioned the Prime Minister we thought it was true.' Sancta simplicims!

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