AT WESTMINSTER
MONDAY in Parliament was a day to make the conscientious Parliamentary reporter of the four-page daily paper bite in ineffective despair on the chains that fetter him. It was a day deserving Mr. Squeal's immortal claim " here's riches." Indeed the parallel is dose, for the Parliamentary diet on Monday, like that given to the unfortunate pupils of Dotheboys Hall, was sadly lacking in stable vitamin content. There was noise, recrimination, anger and high feeling. But these are the hot curries, rather than the solid fare, of Parliament. The occasions that evoked these displays of feeling were sad occasions also,—Palestine outrages, the guillotine procedure, the strange affair of the ju-ju murder.
* * * * There is no doubt that, had Mr. Creech-Jones been a gladiator in the Roman Arena, the assembled Members would have turned their thumbs up and left him to his fate. The situation so clearly called for a strong man, and Mr. Creech-Jones looked so unmistakably a weak one, desperately seeking refuge in departmental platitudes. Mr. Churchill cut through these with robust direct- ness. "How long," he demanded, "does the Colonial Secretary expect this squalid warfare to go on? How long? " The reiteration of the "how long" exploded with such ferocity of tone and aspect as to achieve what had previously appeared impossible—an increase in the misery so plainly stamped on the Minister's unhappy features. From Palestine he was swept to the Gold Coast. Mr. Hale, of Oldham, rose to argue, rapidly but cogently, that the Colonial Secre- tary had both right and duty to prevent the execution of men already several times respited in the condemned cell. Reinforcements hurried forward, Mr. Churchill, Mr. Hogg, Mr. Hopkin Morris, Mr. Silverman. Again Mr. Creech-Jones fumbled in the face of attack. He could at least have pointed out the obviously doubtful wisdom of the House constituting itself judge in a cause of which most of its Members knew next to nothing. Instead he gave the impression of a man with no mind of his own, hesitating between fear of the House and fear of his own officials, and left the real exposition of the Government case till Wednesday.
* * * * After this unpromising start Mr. Greenwood rose to commend to the House the motion prescribing the guillotine (or fixed time- table) procedure to the Transport Bill and the Town and Country Planning Bill. His drastic demand was not helped by some incon- sistencies, on which the Opposition triumphantly swooped, between his view on Monday and that of last week. There followed the noisiest hour in the present Parliament, with Mr. Greenwood com- peting for the attention of the House with numerous and varied points of order and disorder volunteered by other honourable members. He did not succeed in presenting a very coherent case; but, in the main, he did succeed in keeping his temper. It looked for a few minutes as if Mr. Eden's answering speech was to be the victim of reprisals in kind. But he stood his ground and delivered himself to a comparatively quiet House of a debating speech of the first quality. As regards reception, Mr. Churchill had the converse experience. He was heard quietly at first, but with a swelling volume of cheer and counter-cheer 'which reached Parliamentary frenzy when he followed up his definition of modern government "of the people by the officials for the party bosses" by throwing• once more the word Gestapo into the ring.
* * * * Thereafter the debate was quieter, with Mrs. Braddock nodding
eager assent to the fanciful description of herself as a tricoteuse at the foot of a Tory-executing guillotine. Tuesday, becomingly, saw the calm after the storm, emotion recollected in the tranquillity of the Daylight Saving Bill. But proceedings were long, though orderly, and it was not till the snow-driven small hours that Members took themselves wearily home, to return for the Cripps- Churchill clash on India. But when Wednesday came the pro- gramme was changed and it was • Sir John Anderson who, in measured terms, replied to Sir Stafford's clear and competent presentation of the Government case. The debate proceeds.
D. C. W.--S.
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