POLITICAL COMMENTARY
Mr Speaker's forthcoming role • Hugh Macpherson 1\10w, when the government is prepared to Put the entire form of our supposedly revered democratic parliamentary system at risk in entering the EEC with little clear Idea of how it will be replaced, there is no adequate language left to describe the constitutional outrage which is to take place. From the very beginning the Government has used the almost wholly symPathetic press and broadcasting media to obscU re and confuse the issues involved. The techniques used by the Government ,has been consistent. Difficult stages in the '„ong journey, in which it has, like Cardinal 'Newman, pitched its tents a day's march hearer Rome, have been passed by deceiving those making the decision about the ,ravity of the step. This was true, as was !llustrated in this column a few weeks ago, In the way that Mr Rippon postponed the fiShing agreements and gave the House a (fifferent account of Britain's veto position niter the Government had obtained its Inalority in the House on the principle. It was supremely true of Mr Heath's ?broken pledge at the election to consult arnament and peoples. Of late, Govern tit spokesmen have taken to pointing to 1:131e. Majority in the House in October as berig substantial (which is true) and as ,.e.ing smaller than would have been obtained if there had been a free vote in the 9PP0sit10n. This is misleading. In the first Ihstance it was clearly Mr Heath's intention to use the Government's majority to PaSs the legislation through the House. He said on July 12 last year, " the leaders to Irif the Community expect the Government Use its majority in the Commons to `arrY this through." The most extreme Ptressures were then applied to Tory MPs t(,), whiP them into line through their constiC„ennY parties, and these pressures conn.e with the new proposal to make every sittinc, b "aF submit himself for re-adoption eL ore the next election. t Just before the vote one of the Tory heibels went into Mr Francis Pym and told than that, despite all the pressures, more a , thirty backbenchers would vote the the Government. It was then, after er,e PM had made every available Tory MP Ojrnniit himself, that a free vote was dehred to provide pro-Market rebels on the aa`'.15111' side with greater freedom of tnot!en. The Government did not use "its Ghal°ritY in the House" for it did not have It is also now questionable if so many or,,?tir MPs would have crossed the floor we he House if they had known that they re in effect giving Mr Heath a carte „fiche to dispense with so much of the litIvvers of the British Parliament in a tPle of lines of a short Bill. :Ist politicians and journalists had been tial In believe that there would be substaneQ legislation to follow the vote on printr`e, Perhaps extending to two or three Many pro-Marketeers on the Labour benches, torn between genuinely held convictions on the one hand and the evidence of an instinctively unwilling country, as well as the prospect of tearing their party in two, on the other, thought that the October vote was simply a gesture. There is of course, nothing dishonourable in making party unity a priority over an economic treaty.
What Parliament is now confronted with in Clause Two of the Bill is the language of dictators. If it simply said that anything devised by Sir Geoffrey Howe and promulgated by Mr Heath became the unamendable law of the land it would only be marginally more outrageous. Any attempt to question Government ministers about the effect of the Bill on the powers of Parliament meets with the same kind of dissimulation which has characterised every stage of the campaign to enter Europe. Mr Rippon asserts that Parliament will have more to say in framing European legislation than it does at the moment in controlling what comes out of Whitehall. But if he is asked if Parliament can take an early look at directives which come out of Europe and then mandate the government of the day to use a veto against them he blandly replies that this is not the way things are done. (At any rate many orders are issued as unamendable regulations by the Commission.) In other words, the only way that Parliament could assert its authority on something as trivial as hairdressing regulations would be to bring the Government down It is the politics of Armageddon and could lead Britain into the unstable absurdities and coalitions which have disfigured the politics of Germany, France and Italy since the war. There is also evidence that the Government is prepared to use the same discreditable tactics to conceal the grave constitutional consequences of entry as it did over the effects of the fishing regula tions. At present a joint committee of both Houses is studying the question of Par liamentary scrutiny of statutory instru ments such as Orders in Council. It was not appointed by accident and will no doubt be a convenient limbo to which to consign vital constitutional questions while the freedom of Parliament is destroyed in a short Bill.
In this unique situation, for Parliament has not been similarly threatened since the assault on its rights by Charles I in 1642, the question arises as to where the House may turn for protection, indeed for sur vival, with the kind of powers it now pos sesses. Traditionally the Leader of the House is regarded as being more than a party man but the servant of the whole House. But anyone who imagines that a Leader is not primarily loyal to his party is being unrealistic. No PM would retain as Leader of the House a man who would bring the entire edifice of legislation, and the government itself, tumbling down. This is no reflection on Mr Whitelaw who, within the limits imposed by the realities of politics, is both courteous and helpful.
Indeed it is well known that he has never been any kind of Eurofanatic. (The Law Officers also have a responsibility beyond political parties but it is hard to see Sir Geoffrey Howe, who used his renowned intellectual abilities to devise the Bill, now committing political suicide by stopping it going through the House.) There is only one man who can ensure that the House is given adequate opportun ity to consider the magnitude of what is before it — and that is the Sp.eaker. It is the holders of this office who have traditionally protected the House against undemocratic assaults. Nine Speakers have died violent deaths. Speaker Lenthall stood against Charles I when he came to seize five members. The greatest of all Speakers, Onslow, by discarding sinecures, raised the Chair above the influence of the govern ment of the day. As recently as the end of the last century Speaker Brand, in taking it upon himself to apply the closure, resisted the disruption of the House by Irish Nationalists.
Speakers have resisted the Crown, the government and rebels. It is for Mr Speaker Lloyd now to show his quality in resisting a threat which is as great as that faced by any of his predecessors. This he can do by refusing to acquiesce in the Government tactics of putting thousands of modifications to the law of the land, and the destruction of the effective powers of Parliament, in one short clause. He must allow as many amendments as the Opposi tion choose to put down to Clause Two, even if it means in effect writing into the present Bill the massive legislation the Government intended producing before it became obvious that they could not push it through the House. If he fails to do this he will be remembered in history as the Speaker who presided over the reduction of the House of Commons to an inferior kind of Scottish Grand Committee.
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