Rt. Hons. and Rebels

POLITICAL COMMENTARY

By ALAN WATKINS

smoke signals emanating from No. 10 earlier in the week should have put us all on our guard. Mr Harold Wilson, it was re- liably reported, was upset—nay, displeased—that there should be 'speculation,' as he or his spokes- men termed it, about changes in the Cabinet. Nothing could be further from the Prime min- ister's mind, it was said, than to carry out his re-shuffle in the autumii. No indeed: the re- shuffle was to take place much sooner than that. And what is the upshot of it all? Two weeks ago I predicted that a major re-shuifie would take place, though I got the timing wrong. In that 'piece I said that the present relationship between Mr James Callaghan and Mr George Brown could not be allowed to subsist indefinitely; that one or the other would have to leave his then post. In the event it is Mr Brown who has gone, and there can be very little doubt that he is highly gratified at the change. The Foreign Secretaryship has for a long time been near the apex—not quite the apex, but very near it—of Mr Brown's political ambitions, and his pleasure is no doubt increased by the fact that some of his Cabinet colleagues used to express the view that he was temperamentally unsuited to the ;POreign Office.

' • Mr Callaghan, on the other hand, cannot be quite so happy, though he also has achieved his main objective, which was to get rid of the eco- nomic presence of Mr Brown. Nevertheless, there is no concealing the fact that the Foreign Secre- thryship *AS the immediate ainbiticin Of Mr Cal- laghan. He perhaps made the mistake of allow- ing his ambition to become known too soon. (Similarly, it is significant that Mr Roy Jenkins, who, like Mr Callaghan, suffered large claims to be made on his behalf, also, like Mr Callaghan, stays at his old post.) Whether, from Mr Callaghan's (or for that matter Mr .Wilson's) point of view Mr Michael Stewart proves to be more tractable than Mr Brown is pot certain. There is about Mr Stewart an air of Tawney-like principle, in domestic matters at least, which in the past few years has ieceived insufficient recognition. On the face of it, however, the economic ministries are now manned by two sterling-first characters who are unlikely seriously to challenge Mr Wilson's views. Whether they impress the continental banker's as much as they evidently impress Mr Wilson remains to be seen. Perhaps the best way of summing it ail up is to say that everyone has won and everyone must have prizes.

And yet there is one encouraging appoint- mq$: that of Mr Richard Crossman to the Leadership of the House. Mr Crossman, like Mr Callaghan, made no secret of his wish to leave his former post: unlike Mr Callaghan, he had his wish fulfilled. It is said that he was highly critical to his friends of Mr Herbert Bowden's conservatism and lack of sympathy for parlia- mentary reform. Indeed, Mr Crossman possesses highly idiosyncratic views which may alarm the more hidebound back-benchers as Much as they will doubtless alarm his colleagues. 'Certainly there remains a great deal to be done in this field. For instance, there could have been no clearer demonstration of the need for parlia- mentary reform (though not necessarily the kind of reform that it is currently the fashion to recommend) than Wednesday's debate on the Prices and Incomes Bill. Not that it was a bad debate; on the contrary, many shrewd points were made, many persuasive speeches delivered. But what was lacking was any real sense of occasion. After all, the measure the House was discussing was, according to Sir Keith Joseph, 'an evil and unnecessary Bill'—though in that case it is legitimate to question why Mr Edward Heath took the view that the Bill should not be obstructed by the Opposition. Again, accord- ing to Sir Keith, who delivered one of his more impressive speeches, the Bill followed a fortnight in which 'the political map of England has changed befose our eyes.' And yet the House was not nearly full; though, to be fair, most of the members who were there were intent on speaking.

Part of the explanation lies in the procedural fact that this was a debate on third and not on second reading; and on third reading only the Bill itself, not its underlying principles, may be dis- cussed. This point was brought home sharply to Mr William Rodgers, who opened for the Govesnment. All was going well for Mr Rodgers until he arallenged the Opposition, whether official or unofficial, 'to produce its alternative proposals to Part IV of the Bill. Whereupon left and right united in a howl of mortification and rage; and if the lion did not exactly lie* down with the lamb, at least Mr John Mendelson stood up with Sir Harry Legge-Bourke. The produc- tion of alternative proposals, said the enraged MPs, was precisely what' the Government had prevented the House from doing when it had refused to give the wage-freeze proposals a sep- arate second reading. Mr Rodgers extricated himself with more aplomb than it was in the circumstances reasonable to expect.

Yet though Wednesday's debate was some- thing of a disappointment, there was in the past week plenty of material for the earnest inquirer, particularly in relation to the abstainers. All the present indications are that they will be allowed to go off on their hole unpunished and even pos- sibly unreproved. Ministers talk about the tact- lessness of creating martyrs, particularly when those martyrs will shortly have the opportunity to display themselves before an admiring party conference. In addition, Mr John Silkin, is by any standards (and not merely those of the Whips' Office), a tolerant, civilised man.

In the underworld of the parliamentall, Labour party, however, the reaction has been quite otherwise. Terrible were the cries for blood. The cat-o'-nine-tails was only one Of the milder punishments demanded, and the con- sensus seemed to be in favour of something in.. volving boiling oil. There were even those who called for the imposition of the Labour party's dreaded field punishment No. 1—which consists in Miss Alice Bacon and Miss Sara Barker taking it in turns to read to the hapless captive long extracts from the collected speeches of Mr James MacColl. Leading the pack of what one of the abstainers christened 'the head- hunters' were Mr James Johnson, Mr Gordon Bagier, Mr Kenneth Lomas, Mr Ron Ledger, Mr Albert Murray and Mr Tom Urwin; a group who, if they do not exactly frighten the abstainers, certainly frighten me.

However, there remain some serious points to be made about the rebellion and the reaction it evoked. Why, in certain sections of the party, was this reaction so ferocious? After all, in the parliamentary Labour party rebellions of one sort or another have for long been. accepted as a normal hazard,.to be classified with riot, fire, shipwreck, civil commotion and Acts of Goa. Why should the abstentions on the Piices. and Incomes be treated by some Members as go very different from the famous abstentions .:0 the past?

The answer, I believe, lies in the obvious fact that only a few members of the party whole- heartedly approve of the Bill. The majority look forward gloomily to having to defend it before sceptical general management committees jn draughty Co-operative halls. Why, they ask thew- selves, should they—who, they think, are just as strong on conscience as Mr Michael Foot and his friends—have to go through these tedious motions, while Mr Foot consolidates his position as the darling of the party conference?

It is easy to see why some of the more sub- merged members of the party, who suspect that loyalty rarely receives its due reward, feel in this way; less easy to see that, constitutionally speak- ing, they are on good ground. So far I have seen no detailed examination of the constitutional position (in Labour party terms) in which the abstainers find themselves; and it may be in- structive and even amusing to look into .the matter a little more closely.

Every Labour candidate, after his adoption by his constituency party and before his endorse- ment by the national executive committee, signs a declaration that he will obey the standing orders of the parliamentary Labour party. And the next logical step, it might be thought, would be to look at the standing orders and see pre- cisely what it is that they provide. But in the Labour party things are rarely as simple as this. The party has a confusing habit of suspending and re-imposing standing orders rather as the mood takes it. From 1945 to 1952 they were suspended; they were then re-imposed; after the 1959 election a 'code of conduct' was sub- stituted; but in December 1961 a revised set was agreed upon. These orders, with some minor modifications, were adopted at the first party meeting of the 1964 Parliament, and they re- mained in force for the session of 1964-66. At the--first party meeting of this present Par- liament, however, standing orders were not re-

introduced. The parliamentary liaison commit- tee (consisting of Mr Emanuel Shinwell, Mr William Hamilton, Mr Malcolm MacPherson, Lord Henderson, Mr Herbert Bowden and the Chief Whip) promised to go away and contem- plate the matter and in due course report back to the meeting. It must be presumed that they are still hard at it, contemplatiag away: certainly they have not reported back to the meeting. The assumption must be, then, that standing orders are not in force. The precedent which should guide us is that of Mr Desmond Donnelly and Mr Woodrow Wyatt, who recently abstained on the Steel Bill. The ruling of the Chief Whip in that case was that no Member was, entitled to abstain on conscientious grounds on a measure which, like steel nationalisation, had been in- cluded in the party's election manifesto. This carries the clear implication that a Member is, however, entitled to abstain on a measure which has not been included in •the programme. The wage freeze certainly did not figure among Mr Wilson's proposals at the last election.

But, to add to the confusion, some leading party members maintain that standing orders are indeed still in force; that the liaison committee was considering, not whether to re-impose, but whether to suspend them. Accepting for the moment this somewhat questionable interpre- tation, let us see what standing orders have to say. (My own impression, by the way, is that very few Labour MPs have actually bothered to • read them.) 'The party:' goes order No. 2, `recog- nises the right of Members to abstain from voting in the House on matters of deeply-held personal conscientious conviction, but this does not entitle Members to cast votes contrary to a decision of the party meeting.'

This is certainly a most curious provision, as it begins by talking about abstention and. ends by talking about casting votes. Be this as it may, there is nothing here or indeed in the orders as a whole about voting in accordance with govern- ment policy or the party manifesto or the in- structions of the Chief Whip. It is true that order No. 3 goes on to state that It is the duty of the . liaison committee to bring before the party meeting cases of serious or persistent failure by Members to act in harmony with the par- liamentary Labour party.' And, to confuse mat- ters still further, order No. 4 lays down that `the Parliamentary party has the right to withdraw the whip on account of things said or done by members of the party in the House. One almost expects the next order to say that any breach of common sense is a breach of the school rules.

However, on even the most authoritarian reading of standing orders—on the assumption, that is to say, that they apply, to abstentions as well as to votes against—it would seem that, for the disciplinary provisions to apply, there should at some stage have been a decision by the party .meeting to support a particular measure. There was no such support at the party meeting for the wage freeze. How could there have been, since the party meeting was not asked its opinion about the matter?

I have spent some time on the rebels' con- stitutional position not only because it is rele- vant to the past week but also because it will, we may be fairly sure, arise again, possibly in some slightly different guise, after Parliament has re-assembled in the autumn. It is in these months that Mr Wilson's troubles, both with his ministers and with his back-benchers, will really begin to Press upon him.