Westminster Commentary
That apart, it was a remarkable affair. The three major debates of Mr. Macmillan's premier- ship—on the social services, Bermuda, and the Budget—had all been won hands down by the Government. In the first the Labour case was weak and made to appear weaker by their choice of main speakers. In the second the Prime Minis- ter artfully drew the lines of battle so vaguely that the Opposition rushed blindly hither and thither in the fog looking for someone to hit, and not infrequently landed a haymaker on members of their own forces. In the third, only Mr. Wilson landed a punch at all, and even he was hard put to it to pretend that he had heard someone cry 'Ouch' as he did so. What with the dispiriting effect of three such defeats, the cruel publicity given to Labour's dissensions over the H-bomb, the feeble showing made by Mr. Gaitskell in the internal discussions on the subject, the television broadcast by Mr. Brown, which had had on sonic members of the party the same effect as an intra- venous injection of valerian has on a cat (see any standard textbook of veterinary science), one would have expected the Opposition, having come down like a wolf on the fold (you should have seen their amendment, full of stuff about vacilla- tion•and waste and incompetence and wickedness and heresy and blasphemy and murder and burg- lary and goodness knows what-all), to end up pretty quickly looking like so many Assyrians on the morning after, with Mr. Hugh Sennacherib stretched stark and cold on the front bench and Mr. Fenner Brockway, as the only sur- vivor, dispatching a telegram post-haste to India saying, 'Come home at once, all is forgiven.'
Not a bit of it. Until the last three-quarters of an hour, when the Prime Minister scythed his way through the Opposition and danced on the pieces, the Labour Party was so far ahead that its rear light was scarcely visible. To begin with, Mr. Sandys, that beaming boy, had a very hard time of it indeed. The mountains have been in labour for a very long time, and while it would be unfair to the Minister of Defence to suggest that in his speech they brought forth a mouse, nevertheless I suspect that when the nurse brought Mrs. Mountain her offspring she turned her face to the wall and groaned. Mr. Sandys began so cockily it might have been the President of the Board of Trade speaking, but a running fire of needle-sharp interruptions from Mr. Crossman, Mr. Stokes and Mr. Paget soon had the Minister red in the face (Mr. Sandys goes redder than almost any other front-bencher in the House) and stammering things like 'It is very difficult to give a clear answer,' or 'I do not think I can pursue that,' or 'That is not what I am talking about.' Now this was a gloomy spectacle. The whole point of Mr. Sandys, as I understand it, was that he was not supposed to be this sort of fellow; why else was he equipped with a chin like a tomahawk and powers scarcely less sweeping than those wielded by the Committee of Public Safety? Cool, leisured, a Sapperish smile playing over his features, every fact and every argument mar- shalled and ready for use—this is Sandys as we were hoping to see him and as, I wouldn't wonder, he sees himself. Only think if we are all wrong, and it is really Mr. Hare and Mr. Ward who are the backbone of the Government's defence policy, with Mr. Sandys there to draw the Opposition's fire!
It does not, I agree, bear thinking of, but another performance like that and I will not be the only one thinking of it. As it was, I soon had other things to think about. The trouble with the presentation of the Government case during the debate can be laid, oddly enough, at the door of the Speaker. This was a defence debate, and the Speaker, with what on the face of it would seem impeccable logic, called to a large extent upon Tories with military handles to their names. Un- fortunately there is a fallacy in this reasoning. Commander Maitland, Lieutenant-Commander Maydon, Major Anstruther-Gray and Major Tufton Beamish are all admirable and worthy men, and all of them have distinguished military careers behind them. But as contributors to a debate on defence in the nuclear age they are simply not in the same weight-range as men like Mr. Stokes, Mr. Crossman and Mr. Shinwell. The contrast was seen at its most cruel at the end of the first day, when Mr. Wilfred Fienburgh wound up for the Opposition, and the Government, having waived the opportunity to put another front-bencher up, left the field to Major Sir Wil- liam Anstruther-Gray. Mr. Feinburgh talked sense for half an hour, and I sat attentive throughout. After ten minutes of the barely co- herent bumbling of Sir William I was counting the bobbles on the Speaker's canopy, and after fifteen (minutes, not bobbles) I was over the hills and far away.
Two days of this, and it was no wonder that the Opposition were beginning to breathe more easily. It was left to Mr. Macmillan to put a spoke in their respiratory channels. Confident, gay, serene, he had a House packed to the rafters (well, Sir Edward Boyle was sitting next to me, which just shows you) cheering their heads off or shaking them in reluctant admiration. The Prime Minister had the choice of being a middle-sized statesman or an extra-special giant-size party leader; he chose the latter course, and I, who judge perform- ances in the House of Commons with the same standards that I use for performers at Covent Garden, was not sorry.
So they broke up for the hols, and a moderate amount of attention could be directed to Hammer- smith Town Hall, where the Communist Party was debating, amongst other things, what would be its attitude to the colonies when it was elected to power in this country. I do not think I am risk- ing my reputation too recklessly if I venture to prophesy that no Communist Party candidate in this country will ever again, in any Parliamentary election, general or bye, poll sufficient votes to save his deposit; what it will do when returned to power is therefore more or less on a par with a discussion of what name Ulysses took among the women. But the speech of Professor Hyman Levy (widely acclaimed in some quarters as a splendid piece of plain speaking) is another matter. For decades Professor Levy has been trotting about the globe approving of the Soviet Union's policy. Here a purge, there an atrocity; today a rigged trial, tomorrow a massacre; the Professor has looked upon these things, and seen that they were good. Now the evening and the morning are the seventh day, and Professor Levy is in a great tizzy with poor, silly, little Harry Pollitt (described by Harold Laski, in a phrase that deserves to be more widely known, as 'a nonconformist divine who missed his vocation'), because Harry knew what was going on in the Soviet Union and wouldn't tell. As another, and very different, Harry of Monmouth said : 'Good God, why should they mock poor fellows thus?' The fact is that, how- ever sincere the conversion of Professor Levy, he is not worth the cardboard he is made out of. The 'revisionists,' it is to be presumed, will now leave the party and seek fresh, and greener, pastures to graze. And where will they go? Why, where else but to the Labour Party, to advance what they call 'the cause of Socialism' there? And the thought of such pinheads as Professor Levy and Miss Doris Lessing and Mr. Peter Fryer grubbing about in the Labour Party for what mischief they can work (and Transport House is fool enough to let them in, too) is enough to make my blood run
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