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Contumacy on the part of a Member nowadays would hardly be visited by imprisonment. Among the expressions which are considered out of order are treasonable or seditious words, the use of the Sovereign’s name offensively, or, with a view to influence debate, disparaging references to the character and proceedings of Parliament, personal attacks on Members, allusions to matters pending judicial decision in the courts of law, and insulting reflections on Judges or other persons in high authority. The Speaker, or the Chairman of Committees, has also the power, after having called attention three times to the conduct of a Member who persists in irrelevance, or in tedious repetition, to direct him to discontinue his speech. If a Member’s conduct is grossly disorderly, or if he refuses to apologize for an unparliamentary expression, the Speaker or Chairman orders him to withdraw immediately from the House and its precincts for the remainder of the sitting, and should he refuse to leave he may be forcibly removed by the Serjeant-at-Arms and his messengers. If suspension for the remainder of the sitting be deemed by the Speaker an inadequate punishment for the breach of order, the offending member may be named. The Speaker simply says, “I name you, James Thomas Millwright.” The motion of suspension which follows the naming of a Member is moved by the Leader of the House or, in his absence, by another Minister. It is simply and briefly worded, to this effect: “I beg to move that James Thomas Millwright, Member for Little Peddlington, be suspended from the service of the House.” It is put to the House immediately, no amendment or debate, or even an explanation by the offending Member, being allowed. If the offence has been committed in Committee, the proceedings are at once suspended, the Speaker is sent for, the House resumes, and the Chairman reports the circumstances. The motion of suspension is then moved by the Minister and put by the Speaker. The Member thus suspended must forthwith quit the precincts of the House, a term officially interpreted as “the area within the walls of the Palace of Westminster.” It will be noticed that the period of suspension is not mentioned in the motion. Formerly, the Standing Orders provided that for the first offence it was to be one week, for the second a fortnight, and for each further offence one month. But by amendments to the Orders made in February 1902 the suspension continues in force till the end of the session, unless previously rescinded. Suspension involves the forfeiture of the right of entry to the lobby, the smoking-room and dining-room, the library, the terrace, and indeed to any portion of the Palace; but it does not exempt the Member from serving on any committee for the consideration of a Private Bill to which he has been appointed, and that is considered an additional hardship.
If too large a number of Members to be coped with effectively by the force at the command of the Serjeant-at-Arms should disregard the authority of the Chair, the Speaker, by powers vested in him in February 1902, may forthwith adjourn the House. The new Standing Order was designed to cope with such a scene of disorder as that which occurred a short time previously, when a force of police was brought into the Chamber by Mr. Speaker Gully to remove some Irish Members who, as a protest against being closured in debate, refused to take part in the division that was challenged on the question under discussion. “In the case of grave disorder arising in the House,” it runs, “the Speaker may, if he thinks it necessary to do so, adjourn the House without question put, or suspend any sitting for a time to be named by him.” In other words, the Speaker can turn out the lights and the reporters, leaving the disorderly Members to cool their anger in privacy and in darkness.
The House has also the power of expulsion. This punishment is resorted to only in the case of a Member guilty of a gross criminal offence. Strangely enough, it does not disqualify for re-election, if the expelled Member could persuade a constituency to accept him. But to name a Member is the highest coercive authority vested in the Speaker for dealing with disorderly conduct in the House. It should be a very grave breach of the privileges of the House, or very indecorous conduct within its walls, that nowadays would land a Member in the prison of the Clock Tower.
But to see the Serjeant-at-Arms in all his glory one must have the good fortune to be present on one of those rare occasions when some outside violator of the privileges of the House is brought to the Bar for judgment. Parliament can itself redress its wrongs and vindicate its privileges. It acknowledges no higher authority. It has the power summarily to punish disobedience of its orders and mandates, indignities offered to its proceedings, assaults upon the persons or reflections upon the characters of its Members, or interference with its officers in the discharge of their duties. The Serjeant-at-Arms can arrest, under the warrant of the Speaker issued by order of the House, any person anywhere within the limits of the kingdom. In the execution of the warrant he can call on the aid of the civil power. If he thinks it necessary, he can even summon the military to his assistance. He can break into a private residence between sunrise and sunset, if he has reason to suspect that the person he is in search of is inside.
The most famous case of house-breaking in execution of a warrant of the Commons was the forcible entrance into the residence of Sir Francis Burdett, in Piccadilly, by the Serjeant-at-Arms, supported by police and military, and the arrest of the Radical Member for Westminster and his commitment to the Tower. Burdett was pronounced guilty of a breach of privilege in April 1810 by declaring in a letter to his constituents that the Commons had exceeded their powers in sending to prison John Gale Jones, the revolutionary orator, and an order for his commitment to the Tower was carried by a Majority of 38—190 against 152. Burdett barricaded his house against the Serjeant-at-Arms. An entrance was effected by climbing the area railings and breaking open the area door. The Serjeant-at-Arms found Burdett in the drawing-room upstairs. “Sir,” said Burdett, “do you demand me in the name of the King? In that case I am prepared to obey.” “No, sir,” replied the Serjeant-at-Arms, “I demand you in the name and by the authority of the Commons of England.” Burdett protested that the law of the land was being violated, but he was carried off and lodged in the Tower. An action which he afterwards brought against the Speaker for false imprisonment failed on the ground that the Commons are the supreme guardian of its own privileges and upholder of its authority. Neither does any suit lie against the Serjeant-at-Arms. Arising out of proceedings brought in 1884 by Charles Bradlaugh for assault against the Serjeant-at-Arms in having him removed by force from the House of Commons, Lord Chief Justice Coleridge laid it down that the Serjeant-at-Arms was not liable for damages in the execution of his duty, and that the court had no jurisdiction over him.
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The Serjeant-at-Arms brings his prisoner to the House of Commons. A brass rod is pulled out from the receptacle in which it is telescoped at the Bar, and stretched across the line which marks the technical boundary of the Chamber. The fixing of that glittering rod is almost as fearfully thrilling as the putting on of the black cap by the Judge to impose the sentence of death, and I have seen both spectacles. Behind the rod stands the prisoner. To his right is the Serjeant-at-Arms, carrying the glittering Mace on his shoulder. At the other end of the Chamber, standing on the dais of the Chair, is Mr. Speaker in his flowing silk gown, his face sternly set under his huge wig—an awful figure indeed—delivering in the weightiest words he can command, amid the dramatic hush of the crowded Chamber, the sentence or reprimand of the House on the scorner or violator of its ancient privileges. On such occasions, the Mace being off the table, no Member can address the House. It would be out of order for a Member to put a question direct to the prisoner at the Bar. If therefore a Member desires to put such a question he must write it down and submit it to the Speaker, who alone has then the right of speech.
In former times the prisoner at the Bar was compelled to kneel down while the Speaker delivered the sentence or censure of the House. In February 1751 a Scottish gentleman named Alexander Murray (brother of the Master of Elibank), having, in the course of a contested election at Westminster, under the very shadow of the House, spoken disrespectfully of the authority of that august assembly, was brought to the Bar in custody. But so unimpressed was he by the crowded benches, by Mr. Speaker Onslow in wig and gown, by the Serjeant-at-Arms with the Mace on his shoulder, that he flatly declined to kneel, though the Speaker sternly roared at him, “Your obeisance, sir! You forget yourself! On your knees, sir!” “Sir,” said Murray, “I beg to be excused; I never kneel but to God.” “On your knees, sir!” again cried the Speaker. “Your obeisance—you must kneel.” But down on his knees Murray stoutly declined to go. “That,” said he, “is an attitude of humbleness which I adopt only when I confess my sins to the Almighty.” The House declared that this obstinacy aggravated his original offence. “Having in a most insolent, audacious manner, at the Bar of the House, absolutely refused to go upon his knees,” so ran the resolution of the House, “he is guilty of a high and most dangerous contempt of the authority and privileges of this House.” Murray was committed to Newgate, and so close was his confinement that he was denied the visits of friends and the use of pen, ink and paper. Committal to prison by Parliament lapses, as I have said, at the end of the session. That being so, when Parliament was prorogued the doors of Murray’s prison had to be flung open. The House of Commons, however, was not satisfied that three or four months’ incarceration had adequately purged the Scotsman of his impudent offence. It has power to re-arrest when Parliament meets again. Accordingly, in the new session a fresh warrant for Murray’s committal was made out, and the Serjeant-at-Arms went to his house to arrest him; but he had fled, and though a reward of £500 was offered for his discovery, he was never captured.
Twenty years afterwards the custom requiring prisoners to kneel at the Bar was abolished. The last prisoner to suffer this indignity was a journalist—Mr. Baldwin, the publisher of The St. James’s Chronicle. On March 14, 1771, he was arrested for publishing a report of the proceedings of the House, and was compelled to prostrate himself abjectly at the Bar while the Speaker scolded him for having dared to inform the electors of the doings of their representatives in Parliament. In 1772 a Standing Order was passed—inspired, as John Hatsell, the Clerk of the House, ingenuously suggests, by “the humanity of the House”—by which it was ordered that in future delinquents should receive the Speaker’s judgment standing. Perhaps the House was moved to take this action by the cutting irony of a remark made by Baldwin. On rising from his knees, after being censured, he said, as he brushed the dust from his clothes, “What a damned dirty House!” Perhaps the House preferred to allow culprits to stand at the Bar rather than run the risk, by making them kneel, of exposing its majestic self any longer to such ridicule.