AT WESTMINSTER
IN the House of Commons this has been Private Members' week. It is true that both Mr. Tom Williams, the Minister of Agricul- ture, and Mr. Manningham-Buller from the Conservative Front Bench intervened in the debate on Mr. Seymour Cocks' Protection of Animals Bill, but they did so in a slack period and to com- paratively empty benches, whereas Mr. Cocks, who moved the Second Reading, and Mr. Anthony Greenwood, who wound up, spoke to a packed House. On Monday, after four non-controversial Government measures had been disposed of, private Members again came into their own, for several Conservatives had tabled objections to certain clauses in private Bills from the Corporations of Bradford and West Bromwich, and after arguing their case it fell to the Labour
Members representing those cities to reply.
* * * * The debates on the Corporation Bills were exceedingly polite. Mr. Boyd-Carpenter assured " the impressive array of Parliamentary representatives for the City of Bradford" that he was not raising objections in any spirit of hostility to a city which his father had represented in Parliament and of which his grandfather had been Bishop, but asked why window-cleaners should have to be licensed in Bradford, whereas in other cities they could carry on their important profession without anyone's permission. Mr. Titterington, Member for Bradford South, loyally resisting the temptation to compare the agglomeration of soot on Bradford's window-panes with those of Kingston-on-Thames, replied reasonably enough that the Corporation only wanted to clean its windows in order that its Members might see through them more clearly. * * * * Mr. Erroll and Col. J. R. H. Hutchinson were less successful In their attempts to prevent West Bromwich from sterilising its meat for animal consumption and registering its masseurs. From a party point of view much of the force of their arguments was destroyed by Mr. Austin, Labour Member for Stratford, who supported the Bill at the request of a Conservative Urban District Council. Mr. Cecil Poole, Labour Member for Lichfield, carried the House by pointing out that it was because sterilisation of meat was successful in Birmingham and was spreading voluntarily but haphazardly in West Bromwich that the clause was necessary. * * * The debate on blood sports which Mr. Cocks initiated was almost as lively as the correspondence which had preceded it. All Members had had a host of letters expressing " horror " both at the sports themselves and at the thought of abolishing them, and when Mr. Vernon Bartlett quoted one from a lady which began by calling him a " spineless yellow rat," Lord Winterton sought to comfort him by saying that tie thought the lady, was a constituent of his and lAms " slightly mentally afflicted." At which Mr. Alpass, a supporter of the Bill, interjected: " Perhaps she is a supporter of the Noble Lord."
* * * * The Bill failed partly because the Government opposed it, but also because its sponsors had plainly not faced the issue which was posed by Lt.-Col. Boles, the Member for Wells, of how to control wild animals by more humane means. The analogy of bear-baiting, which was widely used, was irrelevant, because when not baited bears sur- vived only in zoos, whereas hares and deer, even if not hunted, would remain at large and have to be killed ; and Mr Cocks' reference to Telemachus, the Roman monk who rushed into the arena and separated two gladiators, would have had more force if the human race had since devised more humane means of limiting its numbers. Nevertheless, Mr. Cocks made the best speech of the day, close run by Lord Winterton, who made much fun of the " Blooms- bury Boys " and their patron saint, Oscar Wilde, to whom any " out- door sport requiring courage, endurance and physical fitness is anathema." Mr. Tom Williams was in a difficulty because of the number of speeches he had made in earlier days in support of various measures to prevent cruelty to animals, but he was on firm ground when, as the Minister responsible for finding alternative methods of control should deer, hares and rabbits no longer be hunted, he said he knew of none, and none was proposed in the Bill. A. M. C.
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