Westminster Commentary
As the London bus strike moves peacefully (more or less) towards its close, it had better be recorded that when I checked the cars of Members of Parliament in New Palace Yard the other day only one, out of something like 140, had a 'Free Lifts' invitation on the windscreen. Of course, the other 139 might all have belonged to good Labour men with an aversion to blacklegging, but then again they might not. And anyone who has seen the undignified lift-cadging that goes on among Mem- bers at 10,30 p.m. even when the buses are not on strike will, I am sure, join me in a toast to the owner of one very smart Hillman Minx (TYL657) that radiated its lonely meed of good will. (Can you radiate a meed? Oh, well.) And now, here we are at Whitsun, and the boys' are off for a fortnight's rest from the Finance Bill and other such weighty matters. Mr. Butler, as he announced the dates of the recess, had exactly the air of the headmaster telling the school on Speech Day that the distinguished Old Boy beside him on the platform has asked him to give the school an extra half-holiday and that he has complied with the request. (Nor is the analogy as fanciful as you might think; for almost as Mr. Butler donned his pedagogical air, the most distinguished Old Boy of them all, looking none the worse for his encounter with a lift door, entered to the invariable rustle of pleasure from the public gallery.) Unconcern is being worn prominently this season; the Govern- ment is apparently in no fear that Air Marshal Sir Dermot Boyle will set up a Committee of Public Safety in Nicosia. As far as this danger is con- cerned they have at any rate bought themselves a few weeks' grace; the promised statement on Cyprus, owing to technical diplomatic snags (genuine this time, I gather, and not merely a euphemism for 'the Turkish Prime Minister has forbidden Mr. Selwyn Lloyd to put the British plan for the future of Cyprus into effect,' as it was on the last occasion when peace threatened to break out in the island), is now to be deferred until after the recess, and in any case not later than June 17. That, at any rate, is what Mr. Lennox- Boyd told the House, and I can only conclude that it was a gremlin even more cynical than I who transformed the statement, when it got to the BBC news, into 'not much later than June 17.'
And it 'must be admitted that the wetter this Government's Plimsoll Line gets the more care- free is, the demeanour of the band on the boat- deck, which is giving the impression that it couldn't play 'Nearer, my God, to Thee' if some- body shoved the music under its very nose. By- election writs have been falling thick and fast these last few days, and we may shortly find our- selves having a miniature General Election, with five contests on or about the same day. (It has not yet, apparently, penetrated to the Liberal Party— which is fighting all three of the Tory seats at stake —that one of the reasons for the Government's unusual anxiety to hold its by-elections is that this procedure will obviously force a diffusion of the Liberal effort and cruelly strain their resources.) And no great skill is needed to deduce that in all five by-elections the Government candidates are going to be walloped good and hard, and that in one of them at least it will be touch, go, and Lady Violet Bonham Carter as to whether they hold the seat at all. In the circumstances a little gloom might be forgiven; but there has been none visible.
And it is true that there are other straws in the ill wind. MI the rubbish about the Defence Ministry (it was even being said at one point that Mr. Ward and Mr. 'Soames might resign; considering with what pain and effort, and to what astonishment of the bystanders, they manage to hang on to posi- tions which they do not, to put it mildly, adorn, the possibility of their voluntarily relinquishing office is about the remotest prospect in politics today) has blown away; the railway strike has been averted and the Minister of Labour can hardly now fail, barring some frightful slip, to come with credit out of the bus strike; above all, the decline in the Parliamentary effectiveness of the Opposition, which began as long ago as the 1 eginning of the session, continues unabated. The performances of Mr. Griffiths and Mr. Bevan, Mr. Jay and Dr. Summerskill, Mr. Callaghan and Mr. Wilson, have been increasingly tired, slack, un- imaginative and silly. The fact is, party politics today is almost as exhausting for the Opposition as it is for the Government, until at this stage in a government's life the deadbeats on one side of the Table are practically indistinguishable from the deadbeats on the other. Government for the sake, of governing is matched by opposition for the sake of opposing, and the heart has gone out of both sides of the argument. (Be it known, there- fore, that I am retiring to my country seat at Wamble-on-the-Usk, but that I will hold myself in readiness to take over the direction of the State if I should be called upon. Nor need there be any fear that I will do anything but abide loyally by the constitution.) Anyway, as the pre-Whitsun dog-days barked themselves into silence, a good deal of pleasure could be obtained by a connoisseur who knew where to seek it. On Monday, for instance, from Mr. Selwyn Lloyd. His trick of seizing upon a phrase that has struck him (erroneously, as a rule) as a happy one, and doggedly sticking to it there- after, is one typical of a speaker who lacks all con- fidence. On Monday it was 'not unpromising'; three times he declared that various aspects of the Summit preparations were 'not unpromising,' and I was moved in the end to conclude that Mr. Lloyd is a not unpoor Foreign Secretary, and that if he should not unshortly leave that office the not un- better it would be for all of us, not unhim in- cluded. Actually, Foreign Office questions were less terrible than usual, because Mr. Ormsby-Gore was in support. Mr. Ormsby-Gore is as sharp as Mr. Lloyd is feeble, and while he was performing one got the impression that at any rate somebody at the Foreign Oflice knows where the Lebanon is, and what States are members of NATO, and how many beans make five.
How many they make elsewhere is open to dis- cussion. Commend me, in any such discussion, to whatever faceless fellow In the Board of Trade provided Sir David Eccles with his statement on the Government's intentions with regard to the imports of subsidised butter from Poland, Ireland, Finland and Sweden. After the usual claptrap about our 'ties' with New Zealand, whose butter trade with Britain has suffered from the competi- tion of these countries, Sir David announced that the Government would take steps to protect butter from New Zealand. Of course, he explained, this would mean that the price to the consumer would be 'strengthened.' There were a few murmurs at this word, and Sir David then had the impudence to sound testy as he explained that `a stronger price• means a higher price' (only in the vocabu- lary of illiterates, as a matter of fact, but let that pass). And this solution is, according to the Board of Trade, 'in the national interest.' Now let me, as spokesman for a national interest that Sir David Smartyboots has never heard of, explain a few of the facts of life to him. Most of the people in this country who buy butter, which means most of the people in this country, wouldn't care if the New Zealand butter industry went bankrupt tomor- row, The interest of practically all butter-buyers is limited to the questions of quality and price. Lately they have been able to buy good-quality butter more and more cheaply, under the 'healthy influence of competition' (see any Conservative manifesto). Now, the price of butter is going to be raised.
And was there, gentle and butter-eating reader, an outcry from these guardians of our purses? Did they spring to the attack, saying that whatever New Zealand might think, millions of people who were not New Zealand butter-producers would regard this decision as a sorry day's work, to say the least? The Liberals, those champions of Free Trade (well, aren't they?), were they to the fore? Alas, there was not a Liberal to be seen, let alone heard from. Thus, dear, gentle, butter-eating and, by Heaven, besuffraged reader, do our legislators protect our interests.
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