Bournemouth's Best Friend
People and Parliament. By Nigel Nicolson. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 18s.)
KNOW Bournemouth is a pretty repulsive place. Still, there are limits, and the behaviour towards Mr. Nigel Nicolson, Conservative Member of Parliament for Bournemouth East and Christ-
church, of 298 out, of his 60,000 electors seems to me to pass those limits.
Mr. Nicolson's story, which he tells most lucidly, ,is briefly as follows. When the Suez enter- prise was launched by Sir Anthony's Eden's Government, Mr. Nicolson found that he could not, in good conscience, support it. Now Mr. Nicolson, it is important to realise, never left his constituents, the officers of his local Con- servative association, the Government, and even the Sunday Times in any doubt as to his position. From the nationalisation of the Canal to the Franco-British ultimatum he continually spoke and wrote against the use of force, insisting that the problem which the Egyptian action had pre- sented could be solved in other ways. When the shooting started, he immediately notified his asso- ciation's chairman and his branch chairmen that he could not support the Government in the House of Commons; though, with remarkable scruple, he refrained from any word of criticism while British forces were in action. (It may be said in passing that Mr. Nicolson has throughout behaved with an almost superhuman regard to what is expected of a gentleman, which is a very great deal more than can be said of some of his opponents.) When the shooting was over, he made a speech in Bournemouth explaining precisely why he could not go into the Government Lobby when the vote of confidence was taken the fol- lowing day. And the following day he abstained.
His local executive council promptly repudiated his action and called a special meeting of the association. At this, coachloads of 'loyal' party workers were brought in early, the doors were shut as soon as the hall was full and large numbers were excluded. (Mr. Nicolson had not been per- mitted to attend the executive council at which his conduct was discussed, nor to address any of the branches before their members made up their 'minds.) One speaker at the meeting asked, `Which do you want, Nicolson or Eden?' Another referred to his 'Socialistic utterances' (a reference to a speech Mr. Nicolson had made to the Prim- rose League, saying that it was unwise to treat Mr. Bevan as a monster). Another referred to a book .about Guy Burgess that Mr. Nicolson's publishing firm had brought out. At the end of the meeting a vote of no confidence in their Member was carried by 298 to 92, and the executive Council was instructed to find another prospective Conservative candidate. They chose a certain Major James Friend.
Major Friend is straight out of the Neanderthal period of Conservatism ('I believe my increased poll was chiefly due to local leadership which I learned as regimental officer in the hills of Palestine and in the desert'—'I greatly regret that we did not occupy all the Canal, though I am humble enough to understand that living as a farmer in Staffordshire, I have not access to Foreign Office information or Cabinet secrets') and his manners, to judge from his reply to a long, gentlemanly, friendly and frank letter Mr. Nicol- son wrote to him after his adoption, are none of the nicest. He replied (in full): I have read the letter which you sent to .ne from the House of Commons on April Fool's Day. Major Friend has already made it quite clear that if the Tory Party wants him to go and, jump off the. localeliffs.he, will do so; if he has any mind . of his own he has renounced all use of it. Mean- while, the local association has disbanded Young Conservatives branch which invited Mr, Nicolson (still their MP) to address them, attempted to force new members to sign a declaration that they would abide by all the executive's decisions, refused Mr. Nicolson the use of any Conservative premises in the con- stituency, even to see his constituents about their problems (I wish someone would fly a privilege kite on this one), returned Mr. Nicolson's annual subscription and excluded him from all meetings. Mr. Nicolson has borne all this and more in patience and forbearance; he has refused to cam- paign against the Tammany gang that control his constituency, refused to utter publicly one word of criticism of them or of their docile new candi- date, and through his book goes to almost in- credible lengths to bring out everything favour- able to his opponents.
Yet he refuses to resign his seat, because he thinks that an important principle is involved. think he is right. You do not have to be a reader of Taper to be aware that Members of Parlia- ment are today not, on the whole, very highly esteemed. One of the principal reasons for the low repute they have is their lack of independence, their too great willingness to accept without question the behests of their party. And it does not seem to me to matter whether it is his party or his constituency that demands the suppression of an MP's individuality and conscience; when the demand becomes unacceptable it must be re' sisted. Obviously, a Member cannot cleave to principles fundamentally different from those of his party or continually flout the expressed wishes of his constituents on vital matters and claim to continue to represent the latter in the councils of the former. But to surrender his right to act according to his conscience—which is what Major Friend has done and what the Bournemouth Ass°' ciation rejected Mr. Nicolson for refusing to do —this is something that no Member of Paha' ment can do without robbing his function of all meaning and, indeed, seriously weakening the Parliamentary system as a whole.
What is gnawing at the Bournemouth Conser- vative Association, of course, is the fact that the Suez action was both wrong and disastrous, and Mr. Nicolson said so. We can forgive a man for being wrong, but how much more difficult it ;8 to forgive him for being right! Yet they have built around this sense of their own failure a wall of authoritarianism that sorts ill with the kind of party Lord Hailsham, for instance, imagines the Conservatives to be. (Mr, Nicolson has had no support from his party's chairman, nor from its leader.) It is easy to say that in Major Friend the Tory voters of Bournemouth East and Christchurch will have the Member they deserve, and that they do not deserve a man like Mr. Nicolson. Too easy; for in the first pig it has yet to be established that they want Mai'''. Friend, and in the second the principle at stake concerns all of us. Indeed, it is not too much to say that Mr. Nicolson has written the most hi' portant book on politics that has appeared for years; for he stands not only for his right to his I own principles, and not only for the independence of the legislature, but for the right of every Mae to heed his own conscience when it speaks, and speak his, own mind when he has made it nix In short, he has done the State some service. But do they know it?
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