Christmas Chimes from Big Ben

THE atmosphere in the Chamber was heated. The Government of the day—known, from its brilliant power to forestall events which never happened, as the Government of the Morrow—faced an angry Opposition. Nor was this surprising. For the Prime Minister was that Palmerstonian figure, Mr. Aneurin Bevan. And beside him sat the formidable Lord Privy Portfolio, Captain Waterhouse.

Mr. Gaitskell, leading the Opposition in uneasy alliance with Mr. Butler, found it difficult at times to realise what had hit them. But where they had been hit there was no doubt : it was in seats that they had suffered. Mr. Gaitskell shifted uneasily—a habit of his.

Behind the Government the recently augmented ranks of the Bevanites and Suez Group cheered in excited unison. Mr. Nabarro, Secretary of State for Culture, was a special favourite, as was his able Parliamentary Secretary for Over- seas Truth, Mr. Silverman. Mr. Crossman and Lord Hinching- brooke were a powerful team at the Ministry of Unamerican Activities. Mrs. Castle as Schoolmistress-General and Mr. Julian Amery as First Lord of the Back Stairs (with Mr. Mikardo as his Civil Lord) had, it was generally conceded, been peculiarly successful in their offices. Only Mr. Harold Wilson, Minister of State at the Post Office, occasionally wondered whether his loyalty had been properly rewarded.

The Opposition could hardly be expected to like what had happened. It seemed a personal affront that their late offices should be so usurped. A firm faith in democracy alone pre- vented their resorting to unconstitutional activity in the country—that, and doubt whether it would be successful. So they contented themselves with bringing parliamentary pro- ceedings to a standstill by scenes of disorder.

It will therefore be understood why the atmosphere in the Chamber was heated.

If temperatures rose in the Chamber, outside it was very different. It was not merely that snow was falling : that would have been felicitous at such a time of the year. But a bitter wind was blowing from Siberia. It whistled through camps where Fascists from coal-mine and steel mill had been incar- cerated only just in time to forestall their subversion of People's Democracy by holding elections. It hissed round cattle trucks bearing workers towards their paradise. It howled past recently-dug graves. No centre of low pressure drew the icy blasts southwards. Burma had suddenly repudiated her inter- national obligations on the ground that they were incurred by a Minister educated at Harrow. India, proclaiming the Seven Principles of Confraternity and Non-Aggression, had reinforced her troops in Kashmir, and granted leading Ministers there leave to join Sheik Abdullah in his retirement lest he should feel unseasonably alone.

The British Government itself had just completed a brilliant feat of arms and diplomacy in vindication of the Freedom of the Seas. In the result the Kiel Canal, the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Bosphorous and the Straits of Dover were temporarily closed to inter- national shipping.

It will therefore be understood why it was a chilly Christmas.

*

But inside the Chamber there was no lack of warmth. The House had just resumed after its third suspension. It was almost midnight. A member of the Opposition was at his peroration. `The Government,' he shouted, 'has lit a fire which will drown the whole world. It will swallow the foundations of the network of international relations. It will cut down the tender plant of universal understanding in the very prime of its manhood. . . . Honourable members may laugh,' he screamed in fury, tut their constituents won't think it funny when they can't get an orange for their Christmas dinner.'

The Prime Minister stood up to reply. A roar of rage arose from the Opposition. 'Resign,' they shouted. 'Get out,' they howled. 'Call yourself a statesman,' they jeered. 'Murderer! Assassin! Butcher! Thug! Slaughterer!' they yelled. The Prime Minister opened his mouth; but he could not be heard. `Liar,' screamed the Opposition, by now quite beside themselves.

The Speaker rose. Big Ben struck midnight.

*

The Speaker is a majestic figure. But he is a Scotsman; he wears a black silk gown and a full-bottomed wig; and he is clean-shaven. Nobody would mistake him for a Lap- lander, wearing a red surcoat and hood, with a long white beard. Yet, by some queer trick of the light, that was the figure which now seemed to be standing on the Speaker's dais.

'Order, order,' said the Speaker—although it sounded more like 'Till ordningen.' In their effort to make it out. Members fell silent. Was it the sound of Mr. Stokes jingling money in his trouser pocket that now fell on their ears—or could it be the tinkle of sleigh bells? A strange peace came on the House.

The Prime Minister rose to tender his felicitations to the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition offered his congratulations to the Prime Minister. A Privy Councillor, exercising (for once, it seemed, almost with diffi- dence) his right to be called, spoke of the need for national unity. A Right Honourable Gentleman opposite, intervening with (for him) unwonted trepidation, suggested the desirability of a coalition. On all sides the suggestion was taken up. New offices were readily devised. Suitable occupants for them were immediately put forward. Each contribution was warmly cheered. The sounds combined into a harmony faintly remini- scent of some carol—the cheering, the not unpleasant noise of backs being scratched, logs being rolled and axes being ground, the tinkle of the sleigh bells (or was it Mr. Stokes again?).

The House adjourned in high good humour. Outside, it was noticeable, the cold wind had dropped.

It was not until Boxing Day that the first new groups began to form. A few senior Right-wingers, strangely omitted in the reshuffle, met at the Carlton Club and found a departure from sound tradition. A number of newly elected Members, acutely conscious that there had been no time for their remarkable talents to have made proper impact on the House, met in a committee room and found failure to appreciate the realities of the contemporary world. A few extreme Left-wingers met, moved by nostalgia for their revolutionary youth, at a teashop in Hampstead and merely found fault. These groups dis- covered, almost at once, that they had more in common than they thought. An Opposition formed.

A New Year was about to begin. The wind seemed to be getting up again.