250,000 Words Later

At 2:30 one afternoon last week, Britain's House of Commons met for debate. For the next 36 hours and 20 minutes--with but one 63-minute break--Tories and Socialists battled one another across the dividing aisle. When it was all over and the last sleepy M.P. had dragged himself home to bed, Hansard, the official House of Commons record, was thicker by 250,000 words.

Lancashire Is Alarmed. First on the House agenda was the alarming and growing slump in Britain's textile industry (see below). In the soot-stained towns of Lancashire, cotton mills by the score had shut down their looms. Said Labor M.P. Harry Hynd: "The people see the specter ... of the dole queues forming again, and the return of the soup kitchens and pawnshops."

On both sides of the House, most M.P.s forgot their differences, grunted with approval when Peter Thorneycroft, Tory President of the Board of Trade, quoted from the Manchester Guardian: "There is no easy Socialist remedy; there is no easy Capitalist one." But not the Bevanites. Led by fiery little Barbara Castle, as the debate passed midnight, they tried to blame everything on the Tories. She recited the familiar Bevanite bogeys: U.S. tariffs, U.S. "restrictions" on British trade with Russia. Everything would be fine, say the Bevanites, if Britain would reopen trade with Red China.

Left-Wing Forward. It was 9:30 a.m. and scores of M.P.s were nodding, when the biggest of all the Bevanites demanded to be heard. The Honorable Bessie Braddock, whom Winston Churchill once dubbed "that constipated Britannia," plays left-wing forward on Nye Bevan's team. Outside the House of Commons, she works as a model for ladies' outsize garments (bust 50 in., waist 40 in., hips 50 in.).

It was no mean feat, but the Deputy Speaker of the House managed not to see Bessie. So she promptly interrupted: "I have been deliberately ignored in this debate. I have been sitting here since 1150 a.m. . . . and I could not be missed. I will not sit down." It took Mr. Speaker himself, and a vote by the whole House, to dispose of battling Bessie. By 125 votes to 67, she was suspended for five days for her impertinence.

At noon that day, the House was still at it. Adjournment came mercifully at 1:27 p.m.--barely an hour before that day's regular session was to begin.

Second-Day Fight. "Don't suppose there'll be many there today, after last night," said a Briton queuing for a seat in the gallery. "You'll be surprised," replied a bobby. "They won't miss today's fight." The fight involved Tory plans to levy small charges for medicines and appliances, under Labor's pet socialized health plan. "Unless we restore our precarious [economic] situation," warned Health Minister Harry Crookshank, "it is not the National Health Service which will be destroyed but the very foundations of our economy . . ." The Tories planned to save $56 million by charging a shilling (14-c-) for prescriptions, $7 for wigs, a maximum of $11.90 for a set of false teeth.

"Maneuvering." A shilling for each prescription was not a new proposal: the Labor government itself once approved health charges. But to Rebel Nye Bevan, who had bolted Attlee's cabinet in protest, the chance was irresistible. He got to his feet with disarming bashfulness. He was suffering from a bad cold ("The medical profession has not assisted me very greatly in the last week"). M.P.s settled back, expecting Bevanite fireworks. But it wasn't Nye's day. His voice wheezed, he stammered, he was handicapped by his own admission, while Minister of Health, that a shilling a prescription was fair to everyone.*Only in his peroration did Bevan's class consciousness inflame Tory tempers. Tories have decreed, he said, "Let the poor die first . . . Keep only the well-to-do alive."

The Backroom Boy. It was Bevan at his crudest--but this time he got an answer. From an unnoticed back bench on the Tory side of the House came the clear, ringing challenge of a bright-eyed newcomer. He was studious Iain Macleod, 38, a Tory "backroom boy." Macleod startled the House with his opening remarks: "I want to deal closely and with relish with the vulgar, crude and intemperate speech to which the House of Commons has just listened." Then slowly, piece by piece, quoting Labor's own statements, he demolished Bevan's rhetoric. When Bevan, cut to the quick, jumped to his feet in protest, Macleod softly answered: "The right honorable gentleman has been a long time in this House, and I do not think he objects to this form of debating at all." Tories cheered.

At 10:10 p.m., as the House entered its second all-night sitting, Macleod was still on his feet, but Nye Bevan had fled.

Four hours later, at 2:29 a.m., the House approved the Tories' health bill (304-279). Tories and Socialists alike dragged themselves home to bed.

*Bevan's cynical explanation of his change in attitude: "When I accepted the shilling prescription charge, I was maneuvering . . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.