A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
HERE was one great gain from the censure debate on pensions,' wrote, last week, a young Socialist Member of Parliament, whys describes the goings-on at West- minster in one of our weekly contemporaries. ' It left many on the Labour benches really hating 'Tories.' This betise- for it is surely idiotic to suppose, and worse than idiotic to suggest in public, that, it is a good thing to increase the world's stock of hatred—would not have been worth mentioning had it not been closely followed by Mrs. Braddock's announcement that she will refuse to sign the memorial book which the House of Commons is presenting to Sir Winston Churchill on his 80th birthday. She does not wish her name to be handed down to posterity tacked on to the end of Winston Churchill's.' Apart from' the fact that, if it had not been for Winston Churchill, there might not have been much relevant posterity for Mrs. Braddock's name to be handed down to, I find something peculiarly unbecoming in the' stale rancour of gestures such as these. We laugh at foreign Parliaments, where periodically there is an unseemly uproar and deputies exchange ill-aimed blows and far-fetched insults. We should have more right to do so if our own political life was free from niggling little demonstrations of spleen which do not have the excuse of being made in hot blood.
Previous page
