AT WESTMINSTER
THE strain, on one side of the House, of striving to kill the Government and, on the other, of fighting to keep it alive is producing a morbid condition. Suppressed fever grips the House, and there is not the least likelihood of its being cured without the blood-letting of a general election. Indeed. the condition must get worse the longer the election is put off. (Already members quail at the thought of what floods of bad temper and recrimination will break loose on. the Budget and the Finance Bill.) Any graph of the patient's condition would register violent ups and downs of temperature. Usually the symptoms are worst at the end of " questions." To enter the chamber at this hour in the last few days has been to step right into a raging gale. Oh, yes ! It would not be easy to 'exaggerate the turbulence or the tension of some recent scenes.
* * * * The vehement controversy over the privilege issue raised by the vicar's letter sent the patient's temperature rocketing to its highest point, but there have been other hardly' less passionate episodes. The storm over the addition of a Labour member to the Standing Committee had its electrical discharges. The high- wrought state the House got into, over the vicar's letter is perhaps best illustrated by the case of Mr. Eden. He has been in the House twenty-seven years and during that time he may occasionally have been impatient, even cross. But wrathful? No. However, last Thursday, on this privilege affair, he toppled into a great rage. The colour left his cheeks and he writhed with anger as he exclaimed that to force Mr. Rodgers, the member for Sevenoaks, to withdraw while his case was discussed would be worse than anything that has happened since Charles the First. Some reports may have conveyed the impression that Mr. Eden was ironical. Nothing of the kind. He passionately believed what he was saying—at least, at that moment. * * * * The Speaker's ruling on Tuesday that there was no prima facie case of a breach of privilege instantly inflamed the Labour members. How long is it since a Speaker's ruling merged in shouts of " Sltame " ? The cry was pretty universal along their benches. When before did a member declare, like Mr. Silverman, his flat disagreement with the Speaker's ruling and, not only that, but announce that he was contemplating a motion directly challenging his decision ? When this sort of thing happens the House is getting into strange waters. If memory does not betray the last time a Speaker's ruling was. impugned was in the early 'twenties and the Speaker was Mr. Whitley. It was thought (at least by members of Parliament) to be the end of the world.
* * * * This was a pretty situation for a Leader of the House who was only two days old. It was even a perilous one. Mr. Herbert Morrison himself might have quaked a bit. Far from quaking, Mr. Chuter Ede acted with courage, decision and a clear grasp of the needs of the moment. He firmly but sinuously steered matters toward the compromise by which the Labour Party, irreconcilable to the Speaker's ruling, let it pass on the con- dition that Mr. Silverman was enabled to raise the question in debate on a motion of his own. When it is debated Mr. Ede will once again have to exert all his powers of accommodation.
He was just as much up to his job in the affair of " Any Questions." Some of the men behind him did not like this going to the Committee of Privileges, but Mr. Ede enlarged on the new problems of comment on Parliamentary affairs created by the development of radio controversy. What a good thing it would be, suggested the new Leader of the House, if the Committee could give guidance to its practitioners. Who could resist so reasonable a suggestion ? * * * * The service debates have reminded us that whatever may be thought of one or two of their principals the three service under- secretaries, Mr. Callaghan, Mr. Michael Stewart and Mr. Aidan Crawley, are a bright, intelligent trinity. Mr. Callaghan shone again in presenting the Navy estimates. H. B.
Previous page
