One from Seven Hundred. A Year in the Life of Parliament

134 Pages·7.181 MB·English

by  William Norris (Auth.)

ONE
FROM SEVEN HUNDRED
A YEAR
IN THE LIFE OF PARLIAMENT
by WILLIAM NORRIS
Parliamentary Correspondent of The Times
Illustrations by SALLON
PERGAMON PRESS
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Copyright © 1966
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First edition 1966
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 66-22359
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Preface
THIS is one man's view of Parliament during the first year of the
second Labour Government, seen from the vantage point of the
Press Gallery. It is as objective as any such view can be, which is
to say—not very. Nevertheless, I have striven to be fair. If some
of my strictures appear to be hard and outspoken, I would defend
them as comments on a hard and outspoken profession. If some
seem unduly frivolous they must be put down to a slightly warped
sense of humour, allied to a strong feeling that laughter is an
essential oil to the mechanism of reporting Parliament.
The opinions within these covers are my own; not those of
The Times, which kindly gave permission for them to be pub-
lished, nor those of any political party for I belong to none. It is
perhaps unnecessary to add that the resemblance of any character
in this book to any person, living or dead, is likely to be far from
coincidental.
Vll
. . . await Sir Alec's pleasure
1. Came the Revolution
PARLIAMENT is a talking shop. It is also, or so it most earnestly
believes, the premier forum of the nation. And it is true that unless
it is this it is nothing, for it has no executive powers and the
dominance of the modern party whip has deprived it of any real
control over the Government of the day. The Minister who
claims that any issue will be decided by 'the will of Parliament'
is deluding his audience and perpetuating a fallacy—unless he is
prepared to allow a free vote, and in practice this never happens
except on rare social or internal parliamentary questions.
Then why have a Parliament at all? The answer goes far beyond
the constitutional necessity of having some sort of formal
machinery for the processing and approval of legislation. This
must be done, and it takes up much of members' time both in and
out of the chamber, but more important is the check which
Parliament exercises on the executive by constant observation
and criticism of its actions. In other words, if Parliament is to be
meaningful it must work through public opinion; it must identify
the crucial issues and expose them to the light through the inter-
mediary of the Press Gallery. And to do this it must have a vital
life of its own.
There can be no doubt that in July 1964, when this story opens,
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ONE FROM SEVEN HUNDRED
that essential spark was missing. Parliament was tired. It had
been tired for a long time, but now frustration and boredom
exacerbated the weariness and grated on members' nerves like
a rusty saw. How they prayed for a general election to put them
out of their misery. But the months came and went, and still no
date was named. The one man who could have set the match to
the funeral pyre of the 1963-4 Parliament and brought its suc-
cessor rising Phoenix-like from the ashes was the Prime Minister,
Sir Alec Douglas-Home. And Sir Alec kept his matchbox firmly
in his pocket.
It was a difficult decision to take; the more so since Sir Alec
had only emerged as Prime Minister a few short months before
after the sudden illness of Mr Macmillan. During those months
the tide of public opinion, as reflected in the Gallup and NOP
polls, was running strongly against the Government. For practical
purposes he had four choices on coming to office: he could risk
an immediate election; he could run on into the spring or early
summer of 1964 to give himself a chance to establish his own
leadership; or he could wait until the autumn—the last moment
possible unless he repealed the Parliament Act of 1911 under
which no Parliament can last longer than five years.
It is a matter of history now that Sir Alec chose the last alter-
native, thus keeping his opponents guessing as long as possible.
Whatever the virtues of this policy may have been from a tactical
point of view, its effect on the temper of the House of Commons
was predictable and depressing. Tempers in the chamber grew
fragile as both sides exaggerated minor issues in the hope of
some electoral advantage or even, it sometimes seemed, as a
means of passing the time. All they had to debate, apart from odd
scandals like the Ferranti affair, was a legislative programme which
was uncontentious and capable of easy abandonment at any time.
Whether all this enhanced the image of Parliament in the public
mind was open to question. Certainly the spectacle was unedifying
to watch at close quarters and it was interesting that Sir Alec,
despite his responsibility for the situation, began to show an
increasing distaste at the behaviour of the Commons. As they
grew more childish, more noisy, more rude, so he became the
more patrician in his attitude towards them.
However, it would be unfair to lay all the blame at Sir Alec's
door. He had, as I have said, a difficult decision to take, and given
the same basic situation the same thing could have happened
under any Prime Minister and any political party. The whole
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Came the revolution
malaise really sprang from the fact that when the Conservatives
won the 1959 election with a clear majority of 100 over all other
parties it had been their third successive victory and the fourth
consecutive election at which their strength in the Commons
had been increased. Politicians are only human; was it any
wonder that a certain torpor crept into the Administration, or
that complacency began to take an insidious hold on the back
benches?
The Conservatives themselves were not unaware of this
problem. As the summer months wore on there was many a
Tory M.P. who would admit in private, though never in public,
that a spell in Opposition would do his party good. The need for
some respite from the day-to-day cares of Government, for an
opportunity to recast policies and shape new ideas, was being
increasingly acknowledged.
As for the Labour Party, the election could not come too soon
to suit their growing ambitions under the leadership of Mr Harold
Wilson, who had been elected by the Parliamentary Labour Party
after the death of Mr Gaitskell in January 1963. They were
buoyed up by those public opinion polls and carried along on a
wave of hope. But there was nothing that the dissidents on either
side of the chamber could do to force the issue. They, and we,
had to await Sir Alec's pleasure.
In the meantime, for those who believed the polls, it became
a popular sport to search for future ministerial talent on the
Labour benches. The constant cry from the other side that the
Labour Party was nothing more than a one-man band was never
too convincing—power has a habit of making men out of unlikely
material, and capability is invariably boosted by a Civil Service
brief at the dispatch box. All the same, the task was not easy.
As an Opposition the Labour Party was united, or very nearly
so, but it suffered badly from the lack of anything to oppose with
much conviction in these dying months. The sense of staleness
was as evident on that side of the chamber as the other, and it
showed through in the endless stream of points of order which
wasted so much parliamentary time.
Among the Labour personalities at this stage Mr Wilson, taken
overall, was less impressive than he might have been; Mr
Callaghan rather more so than his critics expected. Mr George
Brown fluctuated through the spectrum of brilliance to mediocrity,
and rather too much was seen of Mr George Wigg. Mr Gunter
and Mr Michael Stewart shone brightly, and prophecies for their
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success were later to be proved well founded. For the rest there
was much hiding of lights under bushels.
This then was the somewhat parlous condition of Parliament
when it adjourned for the last time before the summer recess of
1964. The date of the election was still unknown as the cry of
'Who goes home?' echoed round the lobbies, but at least it was
now certain to be in the autumn. On what issues would it be
fought? We were soon to find out.
The election campaign itself is outside the scope of this book.
It was a battle in which television played a major part, although
the extent to which this influenced the electorate is open to
question. By the time polling day arrived the body politic was
looking badly over-exposed, and many viewers must have been
relieved to get back to Coronation Street et al. Judging the various
broadcasts on their effectiveness as party propaganda, the Con-
servatives (who spent most) were generally agreed to have made
little impression. The Labour Party did somewhat better—Mr
Wilson proving more telegenic than Sir Alec—and the Liberals,
who did the whole thing on the cheap but produced a fresh
approach, beat both the major parties by a clear margin.
But elections are not won by goggle-box alone; otherwise
Mr Grimond would now be at 10 Downing Street. It is arguable
that the voters had made up their minds long before the campaign
ever started. Still, the ritual had to be performed to its bitter end;
the whistle-stop tours and press conferences, the meetings and
pamphlets and door-to-door canvassing; all with the aim of
influencing the odd 5 per cent of floating voters who would
decide the election.
As for policies, the Conservatives were relying on a modified
version of the 'never had it so good' theme, coupled with the
dread warning 'don't let Labour ruin it' and ominous noises
about the independent deterrent. For Labour, Mr Wilson was
promising '100 days of dynamic action' with an overall campaign
based on modernization and social reform. It was a tolerably
clean fight.
And then came polling day and the cold, wet night of October
15. The nation huddled round its television sets, and I stood
waiting for the result in the Town Hall at Battersea South—the
one constituency in Britain which for thirty-five years, through
eight general elections, had never failed to return a candidate
on the winning side. Nor did it fail this time. Shortly after
11 o'clock Mr Ernest Perry (who plays no further part in this
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Came the revolution
story) was declared the new member for Battersea South with a
majority of 1638 over Mr Eric Partridge, who had held the seat
for the Tories since 1951. It was one of the first results to be
announced, but it soon became clear that the story was being
repeated, to a greater or lesser extent, all over the country.
When the final results were known Mr Wilson and the Labour
Party had won 317 seats, Sir Alec and the Conservatives 303,
with the Liberals increasing their strength from 6 to 9. With the
Speaker standing as a non-party candidate the Labour Party's
overall majority was 5. It was close, fearfully close, but it was
enough.
The revolution had arrived.
5
He had worked a miracle and he wanted the world to know
about it
2. The Hard Facts of Life
THE new Parliament that got down to work on November 3, 1964,
was vastly different in constitution and temper from the one
which had gone before. Lethargy had given way to impatience,
and cartloads of dreams had been dragged in from the hustings
to be turned into reality with the flick of a Socialist wand. Oh
brave new world that had such people in it! Alas, there was
many a pumpkin destined to remain a vegetable, and many a
white mouse that never drew a silver coach. The witching hour
of midnight came before the ball had even started. The name of
the wicked fairy? The Sterling Crisis.
During the election campaign this had been a cloud no bigger
than a man's hand. Now, suddenly, it dominated the whole
horizon. Money, or rather the lack of it, was destined to be the
underlying theme for the whole year, and the phrase * balance of
payments' assumed a new and deadly importance.
At the Treasury, Mr Callaghan had hardly arranged the papers
on his desk before, on October 27, he announced the first of the
measures to deal with this crisis which seemed to have sprung
from nowhere. A surcharge of 15 per cent was slapped onto a
wide range of imports, and amid the cries of pain which rose
immediately from the City and the Conservative Party a still small
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The hard facts of life
voice of encouragement was heard from the Chancellor's pre-
decessor, Mr Reginald Maudling. The Government, he said
bravely, had not only inherited his problems; they had also
adopted his solutions. It was a significant statement. In all the
heated parliamentary argument that followed Mr Callaghan's
action Mr Maudling was never to be allowed to forget it; even
though his subsequent arguments in the House were very different.
But the import surcharges were only the first of the traumatic
blows that were to fall within the next few weeks. On November
11, with the debate on the Queen's Speech safely out of the way,
Mr Callaghan produced his first Budget. A month earlier Mr
Maudling had forecast that a Labour Government would raise
income tax by 9d. in the £, put 6d. a gallon on petrol, Id. on beer,
\d. on cigarettes and 6s. on the insurance stamp. His crystal ball
must have been in a fine state of tune. The Chancellor did not do
all these things at once (there were two more Budgets to come
within nine months) but he did announce an immediate increase
of 6d. on the petrol duty, a rise of 6d. on the standard rate of tax
to take effect in April, and put National Insurance contributions
up by 5s. 3d. To sweeten the pill the retirement pension was to be
raised by 12s. 6d. for a single person and 21 s. for a married couple,
the '10s. widow' was to have her pension trebled, and the earnings
rule for widows—which had been a cause of complaint for years—
was to be abolished.
Mr Callaghan's Budget was introduced without the usual frills
and flummery. It hit the Commons like a cold douche. No sooner
had they emerged, shocked and shivering, from the impact of
the petrol impost, than the Chancellor shoved them under the
shower again with the news of his income tax proposals. His
speech was shorter than the average for such occasions, and much
easier to understand. Not that the House showed any particular
gratitude for this relief: the noises from the Opposition side were
loud and angry, though they can hardly have been motivated by
surprise. Mr Callaghan had devoted the first part of his speech to
a denunciation of the economic legacy left to the Government,
and to the announcement of increased pensions—it was pretty
clear that he would be looking for some money before he sat
down. And so it proved.
From the start, when he took the text of his statement from
a plain manilla envelope instead of the traditional red dispatch
box, the Chancellor made the angry sorrow of his task abundantly
plain. He spoke with indignation of his barren inheritance at
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