A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK T HE statement that Mr. Ivor Thomas, after
holding two minor Ministerial offices in the Labour Government, has now com- pleted his pilgrimage from Labour, through independence, to Con- servatism, but does not propose to resign his seat at Keighley, raises an interesting politico-ethical problem—the same, incidentally, that was raised a year or so ago when Mr. Tom Horabin, who was for a time Liberal Whip, joined the Labour Party but resisted the demands of his constituents in North Cornwall that he should resign and give them the chance of electing another Liberal. This, of course, lies quite outside Burke's decisive dictum about a Member of Parliament being a representative, not a mere delegate, of his constituents, and entitled—even required—to vote on particular occasions as his conscience dictates. What the electors of Keighley wanted primarily in 5945, beyond any doubt, was to be represented in Parliament by a Labour Member ; if he should happen to be Mr. Ivor Thomas, so much the better. Mr. Thomas's explanation is that he declines to resign at the bidding of a party caucus, though it would appear that it was precisely this caucus that secured him his nomination and election. Anyhow, Mr. Thomas is not going to resign. He is going to sit among the Conservatives and stand as a Conservative candidate for Newport, represented since 1945 by Mr. Peter Freeman, a popular Member, once a cigar manufacturer, now a theosophist, a vegetarian and passionately solicitous for animals' welfare. Early in the present session he exposed on the floor of the House the wrongs of a pit pony named Ned—someone suggested that as an encouragement it should be re-christened Nye —and more recently he has tried unavailingly to persuade the Minister of Transport to arrange for the construction of a bridge (suspended, presumably from balloons) across the English Channel.
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