I
seem to remember a poem by Ogden Nash that goes something like this:
Let us pause to consider the English
Who, when they pause to consider
themselves,
Come all over reticent and tinglish.
Very
amusing, but based on the prevailing myth of British stiff-upper-lip rectitude.
My conclusion, after living among them for eleven years, was that such myths by
no means apply to all the English; rather, my experience was that if one sat
down in a bus next to a working-class English person, more often than not within
five or ten minutes he or she would have told you all the main facts about his
or her life, including what was wrong with the husband or wife, as such, what
were their own main physical ailments, and the trouble they were having with
their drug-addicted 25-year-old son.
I remember an occasion on which
trans-Atlantic seamen went on strike. Since Montreal was their usual first North
American port of call, at the height of the strike I went to Liverpool in search
of their union headquarters. Eventually I
discovered it upstairs from a smallish café down near the waterfront. I
stood at the bottom of the stairs, and could hear a tremendous racket from above
wafting down the stairs that sounded like a contentious strike meeting in a
full hall was under way. Taking my courage in both hands, I crept up the stairs, hoping it wouldn’t
turn out to be one of these unions that hate the press, in which case I might
expect a rough reception. But I needn’t have worried. All I found upstairs were
three or four people engaged in a
passionate discussion about their local football team. So much for English
reserve.
Yet, as I pause to consider the English
in this epoch-making Brexit year, a good place to start would be with the
Speaker of their House of Commons, John Bercow, a Conservative Member of
Parliament who has held the Speaker’s chair since 2009, and who has made it known
he will resign from that position midway through this year.
I think Bercow could be described, if
I may use a vernacular phrase (and one that he would no doubt rule
unParliamentary), as a mischievous little buggar. It is said that when he first got into
politics he was an extreme right-winger, and when he first stood for the job
of Speaker he won it without the support
of many members of his own party, but he has since become the first Speaker
since the Second World War to have been re-elected three times.
Speakers of the British House during
my eight years as a reporter covering
the House, tended to be of the stuffy, ultra-conservative mould, always, unless
my memory betrays me, wearing the long white wig. Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, MP for the rock
solid Tory constituency of London and Westminster, affected an advanced
upper-class persona as he called the house sternly to order. And he was
followed by the first Labour Party man elected to the office, Dr Horace King. I
don’t remember anything especially interesting about either of them, except the
way Hylton-Foster had of saying after holding the result of a vote in his hands, “I think the ayes have it, the
ayes have it,” the use of the “I think…”
being a slight affectation.
Anybody who likes a good show should
Google John Bercow, who really puts on a performance, making longish statements
to any member he is wanting to call to order for some reason, his statements
peppered with all sorts of friendly advice, or admissions that he has known the
member for years and has a great affection for him, but he is getting out of
control and really must learn to behave himself. He is obviously a man of
considerable wit, but also one who takes seriously his job of representing the
interests of the House of Commons, and its members. On one of the brief sequances
of him in action that can be found on the Internet, he leapt to his feet when a speech by the
Prime Minister was being interrupted by shouts from seated members, and said in
an ascending tone, “Order! Order!! The honourable member for X knows what high regard I have for him, and he usually behaves well within the standing orders
of the House, but I must call him to order because he has been interrupting
from a seated position. The Prime Minister must be and will be heard.” Then, catching out of the corner of his eye a
Member who is standing in the hope of catching his eye, he says, “When I am
standing, you are not. So sit down,” revealing a tradition that I did not know
existed. It is a lot of fun, and he thoroughly
enjoys it, it seems. On the other hand, not all Members take warmly to his lectures
and to his rigorous judgements as to what qualifies and does not qualify as a
Point of Order.
Just last week, against the wishes of
the government, he allowed a Conservative party member, Dominic Grieve, a
former Attorney-general, and one of the rare British politicians who, thanks to
having a French mother, speaks French, an interest that has caused him to cast
a carefully critical eye over his party’s handling of the Brexit negotiations,
to move a motion which requires the Prime
Minister, in the event of her losing the vote on her withdrawal deal (which she
indeed lost yesterday) to return to the House within three working days with a
Plan B. Bercow’s allowing this motion to be debated at all was treated by most
Conservative commentators as tantamount to an arrogant takeover of the process
by a Speaker who does not know his place, and with threatening the government’s
control of the House. Bercow’s
response, which I quoted a couple of days ago was to the effect that he was not
there to ease the life of the Executive, but to defend the interests of the
House of Commons, which I thought was a remarkable statement of a Parliamentary
function based on the many generations of British political history.
Arrogance from Mr. Speaker, cried his
critics, putting the Prime Minister into an unacceptable strait-jacket, giving
her only three days to act when she had no doubt been looking forward to using
all the time between now and March 29 --- the date of the implementation of the
Brexit, to stitch up some sort of acceptable deal.
Mrs. May is not a woman given to
compromise; in fact, as Bercow apparently has realized, the insoluble problem
Britain now finds itself trapped in has arisen entirely from the manner in
which she has approached the deal-making with Europe, laying down first her
so-called “red lines” that were non-negotiable, and then arrogating to herself
a sort of mystical connection to “the will of the British people” as expressed
in the 2016 referendum.
Bercow’s allowance of Grieve’s motion
has, within days, proven to have been a master-stroke, providing at least an
apparent route forward in a process that
appeared to have run into a brick wall.
I can still remember Bercow yesterday
on receiving the vote. “The ayes to the right 202, noes to the left 432. .So
the noes have it the noes have it,” he intoned.
Then he shouted “Unlock.” This arises
from the fact that when a vote is called, Members have eight minutes to get
into the right lobby for the vote. A bell sounds across the Parliamentary estate.
Party whips stand at the entrance to each lobby, attempting to direct their
flock through the correct door and intercept and dissuade members going the
wrong way. After eight minutes the
Speaker cries, “Lock the doors,” and thereafter any Member who has somehow
strayed into the wrong lobby is irrevocably caught.
Meanwhile at the exit to each voting lobby,
tall wooden desks are slid into place at which clerks sit, ticking off the
names of members as they file past. One teller from
each side now heads to the exit of each lobby. The job of the tellers is to
count members leaving the lobby. They do this out loud, without the aid of
technology. The results are first
announced by a teller for the winning side, as the four tellers line up before
the /speaker. They then hand the paper to Mr. Speaker who, repeats the result and
then shouts, “Unlock!”
These are the arcane, but somehow reassuring
rules of Parliamentary voting procedure, which twice within two days have produced
remarkable votes in the mother of Parliaments.
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