Fifty years ago
THE LABOUR Party in Parliament is suffering from a convulsion. The Party meeting on Wednesday was the scene of shots that may echo round the world. It is over the Map Room in the Commons Library that the controversy rages. In the last Parliament, when Labour was a relatively inconsiderable element in the House, the Map Room — theoretically, of course, open to every Member — was annexed and converted into a kind of Labour club. To-day things are differ- ent. Labour overflows every barrier and crowds every corner of the Library and the rest of the Palace of Westminster. As a result, and for general conve- nience, the Map Room has been con- verted into a magazine and general reference room, to which Members all and sundry must necessarily resort. The change leaves Labour furious, and the Labour members of the Library Com- mittee had almost to defend their per- sons at the Party meeting, when a deputation was appointed to appeal tot he Speaker to reverse the revolution. All of which explains why Mr Gallacher brought the House down on Wednesday afternoon when, after a Minister had mentioned casually that he would put certain papers in the Library, the Mem- ber for West Fife interjected in emphat- ic Caledonian: 'If he puts them in the Library I hope he'll take the Library out of the Map Room.
The Spectator 21 June 1946
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