Unparliamentary papers and other diversions

by Reginald Berkeley

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.

FRONT BENCHES AND BACK BENCHES

The Front Bench, which faces the Treasury Box, and is located on the right of the Speaker’s Chair, is reserved for Ministers of the Crown. The Front Opposition Bench, which is on the left of the Speaker’s Chair and faces a similar box, is reserved for ex-Ministers and Privy Councillors in opposition. What secrets of State these massive brass-bound boxes contain, must be a source of anxious wonder to everyone who attends a Debate and looks down upon them from one of the Galleries. They look as though they are the very Holy of Holies of the Constitution, the arcana in which repose the mystic foundations of our greatness. You feel that, at least, they ought to contain Doomsday Book, the original manuscript of Magna Carta, and the Declaration of Rights. So massive and monumental is their appearance, so hallowed their associations, that you would not be surprised to discover that the special form of oath in the House of Commons was to swear “By the Treasury Box!” as kings of old did swear par le splendeur Dex.

Lovers of Stevenson will recall how, during his stay on the Island of Apemama, having been afflicted by influenza, and when all Western medicines had failed, he put himself in the hands of Tembinok’s Chief Magician, who, by invoking the deity Chench, effected a miraculous cure—so shaking the scepticism of Stevenson that he pursued investigations with the magician, which culminated in the discovery that Chench occupied a small wooden box in the Warlock’s house. Insatiable in his desire to extend his theological knowledge, he succeeded, after protracted bargaining, in acquiring the tenement of the god, bore it home in triumph, found himself, like one of his own characters in the story of the Bottle Imp, unable to resist the pangs of curiosity, and, with who can guess what delicious anticipations of the unknown, removed the lid—only to discover three cowrie shells and a little piece of matting. Such are the disappointments of the seeker after truth who should bring himself to open the Treasury boxes, for one is empty and the other contains a cheaply bound and quite unremarkable copy of the Bible and a couple of pieces of cardboard bearing a certain family resemblance to that part of the paraphernalia of the optician that he hangs on the wall to test your sight by—which are, in fact, copies in large letters of the oath, the Scotch oath and the Affirmation, required by law to be taken on signing the roll of Parliament, and embodied in this form for the convenience of the Clerk who administers them.

But this is a digression from the Front and Back Benches. The two members for the City of London, by some curious old survival, are entitled to sit on the Front Bench of their party; but in practice, since both Front Benches are notoriously insufficient to accommodate all claimants to seats, this traditional right of the City members is only exercised on the first day of a new Session, as who should put a barrier once a year across a private road, to prevent the right from lapsing. Nowadays with three large parties in the House, the third headed by two ex-Prime Ministers and a number of distinguished ex-Ministers and Privy Councillors, the front bench below the gangway, on the right of the Speaker’s Chair, has, by the Speaker’s ruling, become a Front Bench. Its opposite number on the left of the Chair has no special status. By virtue of their office, the Whips sit on the front benches of their respective parties. All the remainder of the House constitutes the back benches, with the exception of the Cross-benches—which, however, though actually within the Chamber, are, by a fiction, outside the House, being behind the Bar. It follows that a member may not address the House from the Cross-benches; but since, by way of compensation, the Members’ Galleries on either side of the House, though outside the Chamber, are, in fact, by a similar fiction, inside the House, a member may, and in Mr. Pemberton Billing’s time did, address the House from these lofty altitudes above it (if he is so fortunate as to catch the Speaker’s eye), giving himself, in the exercise of this privilege, the appearance of a contemplative passenger leaning over the side of a ship.

So much for the physical difference between the Front and Back Benches. What of the Front and Back Benchers? The Front Bencher is the finished product of the Parliamentary machine. He is, to the humble majority of his fellows, what the members of those august and mystic societies, like “Pop” at Eton, are reputed to be, to their less distinguished brethren. A Front Bencher is, by tradition of the House, entitled to catch the Speaker’s eye in preference to any Back Bencher. He need not attend prayers: indeed, if he values the privileges of his order, he will be careful never to attend prayers, but will saunter in to take his place whilst the Speaker’s Chaplain is bowing his way backwards down the floor of the House. He has the privilege of putting his feet on the Table, a practice which he not infrequently carries into his own home—to the mingled pride of his family and astonishment of his friends. But if the position has these privileges to give, it has also its responsibilities. Front Benchers must behave with decorum, and that is more than is expected of anyone else. They are the Sixth Form boys, and must set an example.