Unparliamentary papers and other diversions

by Reginald Berkeley

YOUNG MEN AND “MAIDENS”

Defer it as you may, upon one pretext or another, the fatal moment will come at last when you must make your maiden speech. There have, it is to be supposed, been members of Parliament of such agonising modesty or such iron self-restraint, that they would have been willing to pass their entire Parliamentary lives in silence. But sooner or later, and probably sooner than later, an aggregation of pressures—duty to the constituency, the spur of amour propre, green jealousy of the triumph of X., who so impressed the House by his speech on the Protection of Insects Bill, the subtle encouragement of some fair flatterer who, when X.’s speech was discussed, eyed you archly and murmured, “Of course you ...” leaving your vanity to fill in the blanks—these, and other compelling reasons, combine to persuade you to the irrevocable step of giving in your name to the Whips, after which, feeling like a man who has made an appointment with his dentist, you slink away and prepare for the worst.

With becoming modesty, you select some insignificant, and relatively trivial, subject—such as World Federation, the Solar system, or the relations of the Almighty and the Universe, as affording you scope for the pronouncement you feel it in you to make. You collect a whole pantechnicon-load of authorities, which, when you have read them through, are allowed to lie piled in the darkest passages of your house for the servants to fall over; you take a ticket for the British Museum Library; you apply yourself to study with all the fervour of a Bengalee competing for an examination. And then, one or at the most two days before the great oration is scheduled to be delivered, your Whip says casually, “Oh, we’ve had to change the arrangements. We’re getting you in on the Committee stage of the Impurities in Milk (Abolition) Bill”; and all your labour is shown to be wasted and vain. There are only three days left. You rush to the Dairy Produce Association, the Institute of Milkmaids, and the Society for the Preservation of Cattle and Kine, from each of which you receive an undigested mass of propaganda, disguised in the form of scientific tracts. There is no time to push your investigations beyond these, so you set yourself to learn them word by word. You come down to the House on the fatal day primed with knowledge, with lactialities on your lips and the milk of human kindness bubbling from your heart—and you discover that, before your arrival, a member of your own party, interested in the welfare of subject populations of the Empire, has moved the Adjournment of the House to draw attention to a matter of urgent and definite public importance, namely, the refusal of the Government to issue practising licences and a charter of incorporation to the witch-doctors in the U-Ba-Be district of Abeokeuta.

You seek out your Whip, demanding information. He tells you that the Government has changed its mind about the Bill on which you were to speak, and intends, in its place, to introduce an Amending Act in connection with the Acquisition of Mineral Royalties in Zanzibar, Proclamation of 1872. Having no knowledge whatever of Zanzibar or minerals, other than those in bottles, and only a nodding acquaintance with the lesser grades of royalty, you feel bound to demur, when he suggests that you should “give tongue” at such short notice on this subject. Whereupon he offers you your choice between the Protection of Herrings (Scotland) Bill, Second Reading; the Civil Service and Revenue Departments (grants in respect of medical referees, destitute aliens, and port and riparian sanitary authorities) Vote on Account; and the Army and Air Force Annual Bill. Smitten with despair at the prospect of the vigils, prayer and fasting entailed in the mastery of any one of these three subjects, and fortified by a hazy recollection of “King Solomon’s Mines,” you quaveringly ask whether it would not be possible for you to speak on the Witch Doctors Adjournment. As your Whip has been searching high and low for someone to do this very thing, he almost invites you to dinner in his relief; and hurries away with your name to the Speaker. In due course he seeks you out in the Library, where you are sitting, in a cold perspiration at your own temerity, and struggling to master a report on “Witchcraft and the Black Arts as practised in the Continent of Africa,” furnished through the medium of the Aborigines Suppression Society in 1850—apparently the only standard work on the subject. He informs you that you will be called immediately after the Government has replied. Your heart sinks into your boots; a clammy sweat breaks out upon your forehead; and you apply yourself assiduously to the report.

Just before 8.15 p.m. you stagger into the Chamber. To your excited fancy it seems to have grown very large. The seat on which you are accustomed to sit, seems an immense distance from the Speaker’s Chair. But, as the House is practically empty, you sneak into somebody’s corner seat, and hope for the best. The one encouraging factor in the whole proceedings is that, in spite of the ghastly hash that the mover of the resolution seems to be making, the patient House is attentively listening in silence. After all, you think, remembering your own triumphant speeches during the election, the swing of the words, the thrill of the audience, the storm of applause—after all, it can’t be as difficult as all that.... An Under-Secretary begins a half-hearted defence of the Government. He says he is quite certain that in this case the House will consider that the House ought to be extremely careful before responding to the suggestion made by his hon. and gallant friend that the House is at liberty to vary a former decision of that House, as hon. members below the gangway seem to imagine. He goes on to say, er—that the Government—er—will, of course, be ruled—er—or perhaps he ought to say guided—er—by the view of the House towards—er—or with regard to the matter—assuming that in that matter or—er—as he would rather put it, in such questions—er—the opinion of the House must be the governing consideration. Furthermore, he would remind the House, with the permission of the House, that the House is always reluctant to set aside a privilege won by the House in former times and upheld on the floor of the House by statesmen like Drigg and Bulgman with the full approval of the House—an approval, Mr. Speaker, which, as the House is aware, is recorded in the journals of the House, and which he is satisfied—nay, assured—that all members of the House would pause before challenging.

With this adjuration he resumes his place. You climb tremulously to your feet. The Speaker calls: “Mr. Wutherspoon.” And immediately most of the people in the Chamber rise, and hurry out, with looks of disgust and loathing. The bustle of their exit rather takes away from the effect of your carefully prepared opening sentences; and your biting gibe at the expense of the Minister seems in some mysterious way to have lost the greater part of its sting. Those to whom it is audible ejaculate a mirthless “Ha, ha,” to encourage a maiden speaker, and vanish in the wake of those members who have already left. You wonder to yourself, in dismay, whatever induced you to embark upon a Parliamentary career; and at the same moment, stumbling, quite by accident, upon some happy phrase, you are greeted, to your astonishment, with modified cheering. This is what you were waiting for. You feel that Parliament is not so insensible to your merits, as you had at first supposed. You seize the lapel of your coat with your left hand, and, throwing out your right in a generous half-circle, you venture boldly upon the great passage in your speech, beginning, “The witch-doctors of U-Ba-Be, a humble section of our fellow-subjects, organised, as who shall say they have no right to be organised, in a society, union or corporation, turn their eyes and lift up their voices to this House of Commons imploring....” Somehow, by the malignant intervention of unhappy chance, before you have said half a dozen words of this moving passage, a deathly silence has fallen upon the Chamber; all eyes are fixed upon you; you stumble and falter; and murmured conversation at once begins. Again you blunder on a telling phrase. Once more you find you are being listened to. This is a pity, because it betrays you into a touch of self-confidence. Immediately, all around you, faces, like flowers in the morning sun, expand into smiling bloom. But you are getting into your stride: you correct that mistake with a modest remark and a deprecating movement of the hand. Whereupon, you are cheered. You turn with graceful assurance towards the Chair. “Why, Mr. Speaker, the witch-doctors of U-Ba-Be,” you begin; and you find that the Speaker, who has a legion of duties beyond listening to the speeches, is in earnest conversation over the arm of the Chair with one of the Whips, or perhaps is writing, or—and this is so disconcerting as almost to petrify one with astonishment—he has vacated the Chair to the Deputy-Speaker, who wearing neither wig nor gown, is well-nigh invisible under the mighty canopy. In the dismay of this paralysing discovery, your legs endeavour to collapse under you. You nerve yourself for a prodigious effort, jettison the witch-doctors into space, and endeavour to sweep into the peroration, so carefully prepared on the subject of World Peace, adapted later to the Milk Bill, and now, with suitable alterations, doing service on behalf of the subject populations of the Empire. You get along very nicely for about two minutes; you feel that you are taking the House into your arms; you carefully avoid a second glance at the Chair, and look along the benches, warming to your work. Alas! at that moment somebody laughs. In all human probability his laughter had nothing to do with anything you said. In a feverish effort to recall your words, for purposes of correction, you lose the sequence of ideas, and the peroration follows the witch-doctors into the limbo of forgotten things. You lamely thank the House for its indulgence; and sit down covered with ignominy and shame.

Then, to your astonishment, other members turn round, and nod to you—nods of approval. Somebody says “Well done.” Somebody else leans forward, and pats you on the back. One of the leaders on the Front Bench actually turns round and looks at you. The Whip who arranged for your call offers words of congratulation.

You congratulate yourself—on having got it over.