Count y Hall Commentary
Love and Lady Lewisham
IN Martinique, when the whistle blew for the I:tourists to get back on the ship, 1 had a quick, Wild and lovely moment when I decided I wouldn't get back on the ship.' Thus, Mr. James Thurber. Well, the other day I went to Parliament on a bus Other than my usual one—a 76, to be precise. And When the conductor intoned 'Westminster,' I had a quick, wild and lovely moment when 1 decided I wouldn't get off the bus. And I didn't. I went on across Westminster Bridge, with a delicious feeling that I was playing truant, and ended up in County Hall. And there the London County Council was In session, and I saw many strange sights and heard many strange sounds, and spent a very interesting afternoon indeed, as you shall hear. To begin with, it will be generally agreed that County Hall, though its architectural style is by fin means the most exciting in London, is a fine and gracious building, which is a good deal more than you can say for that neo-Gothic scaffolding- holder on the other side of the river. I had a mad Impulse to slide down those marvellous polished corridors, but managed to keep a rein on it. But the corridors are wide, and of the right propor- tions, and dignified, and so is the whole building. Take the Council Chamber, for instance. It has red leather where the House of Commons has green, and is round instead of oblong. But the seats come up behind your head, and are padded all the way up; everybody has a desk, not just the Press; there is a dais, and symmetry, and a glass dome; and while all members sit high, some sit higher than others.
What is more, they are summoned to their labours by a bell. As I entered the building it was clanging—a silver, head-piercing peal. It went on and on, beating through the corridors, for a full ten minutes, until the Council was in session. I half expected to see a chapter of Benedictine monks swish past me every time I turned a corner, but I had to be satisfied with Dr. Donald Soper, and he wasn't wearing his cassock.
That was another thing that struck me. They have all sorts of interesting people on the LCC. There was Dr. Soper, for instance; they tell me he IS Alderman Soper. There was a man with a beard Who only needed an eye-patch to be indistinguish- able from the Hathaway shirt advertisement. There was Mr. David Tutaev, whom I always thought was an expatriate Red Army colonel living in America. There was Mr. Sebag-Monte- fiore, who has even figured in my relatives' con- Versation at times. There was Mr. Christopher Chataway. There was Mr. Ike Hayward, who is the Leader of the LCC, and a very powerful man, whom I once heard refer in a speech to `Mr. Malcolm Sargent' while Sir Glossy Carnation was actually standing at his elbow. There was a chap who runs a carpet shop in Westbourne Grove, where I fear I do not buy my carpets. There was Mr. Logan Gourlay (though only in the press seats), wearing quite the frightfullest camel-hair coat I ever set eyes on.
And there, very much there, wearing a quiet but tasteful black dress (semi-empire line, my un- trained guess would be), with a black velvet bun- bag hat and four modest strands of pearls, was the one, the only, the ineffable, the Lady of the Manner, the walking tabula rasa, the unparodiable parody, the scourge of London Airport, the even lovable, the (since even 1 must make an end) Viscountess Lewisham. There, the member for Lewisham, she sat, as if Lord Euston should sit for Euston, or Viscount Portman for Portman Square, or the Marquess of Bute for Bute Street, and she looked upon the world, and it was her oyster, and had a whacking great pearl in it. And then she made a speech. It was about old people who live in Institutions and are sometimes not treated with the kindness that Lady Bountiful would wish, and must thank Heaven they are not, if the condescension is an inevitable concomitant. She has no idea, this beautiful, delicate, fragile, vacant lady, of what the world is like or the people in it, and long may she be protected from the knowledge, for she might never recover from the shock.
But still, I didn't go to County Hall just to hear Lady Lewisham, in a pig's eye I didn't. I went there to see, as the handbooks have it, How London is Governed. London is Governed, I should say, in a rather odd manner. They have a question-time, for instance, but only the press have a cbpy of the questions, and supplementaries are practically unknown. And .absolutely nobody listens. This is perhaps the most striking single fact about the London County Council; the House of Commons can do a fair job of ignoring what is going on, but they are mere novices compared to these people. Of course, if you haven't got a copy of a question, and it's in nine parts, and the answer (of which you also haven't got a copy) is 'No, Yes, Yes, No, 31st of March, 64.4 per cent., No, Yes, No,' it is not easy to display an interest, still less take one. But still, the complete absence of any attention being paid by anybody to anythinp being said gave a reluctant democrat like myself a momentary frisson of Fifth-Republicanism.
Because this state of affairs is a good deal more symbolic than many people realise. I and others are often to be heard complaining about the tyranny of the party machines at Westminster; but at Waterloo there is a tyranny so absolute, and so unquestionable, that it would have appalled Cali- gula. Questions from Labour members have to be submitted for party approval before being put, and if the party disallows them the member simply dare not ask them, on pain of withdrawal of the Whip. Decisions are reached in private caucus, and frequently after the most cursory and undocu- mented discussion; thereafter, any word in public (let alone a vote) questioning the Mosaic nature of the decision brings the immediate threat of anathema and outer darkness. There is even an almighty row (there is one going on at this moment, it appears) if a member writes a letter to the press, should it contain a word that is not on the party line. There is never any cross-voting at all (by the Labour members, that is), and nobody in the place, as far as I can see, would know what you were talking about if you breathed the words `free vote.'
What makes this state of affairs even more grisly is that it, is not the reflection of a precarious majority, obliged to dragoon its members with Whips and scorpions. When I lost count of the Labour majority it was in the nineties (in a house of 150-odd), and petrifaction had long set in. The caucus leaders apparently counter such murmur- ings of democracy as may occasionally be heard from the Young Turks with talk about 'embarrass- ing the Party' and 'unity.' They argue, I learnt, that the Labour Party has suffered national set- backs because it paraded its disunity in Parlia- ment, and that it therefore follows that a parade of disunity at County Hall could—nay, would— cost London its Labour government. Apart from- the fact that this is obviously untrue—London is permanently Labour for the simple arithmetical reason that there are now a majority of safe Labour boroughs—it shows an extraordinary, Lady Lewisham-like remoteness from reality. How many Londoners have the faintest idea of what goes on in that handsome, red-leathered chamber? And of those, how many care deeply? How many votes are won or lost, every three years, by what London County Councillors have said and done in their party capacities? Apart from anything else, how would any citizen who wanted to know what they said find out, seeing that no record is published of speeches? No, we must face the fact that the government of London is the only genuine example of oligarchy left in the world today, and should be preserved for that reason if no other. Beside this smooth-running Tammany machine the Other Place, where they have government by faction, seems an ungainly and creaking business, and I don't mind admitting that I wandered back across Westminster Bridge with a new respect for it. Which reminds me; I didn't quite finish that quotation from Mr. Thurber : In Martinique, when the whistle blew for the tourists to get back on the ship. I had a quick. wild and lovely moment when 1 decided 1 wouldn't get back on the ship. I did, though. And I found that somebody had stolen the pants to my dinner-jacket.
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