"One Should Not Peel an Orange"

Outside the House of Commons another big blizzard snarled transport and set back recovery from The Crisis. But inside the chill Victorian-Gothic chamber, tempers were short and hot. The Mother of Parliaments, majestic but not stuffy, had one of her stormiest, most boisterous weeks in recent history. It went along like this:

Voodoo. There was the white-hot matter of the five ebony-black men who were to go to the gallows next day at Accra, in Africa's Gold Coast Colony, for a voodoo murder--the sacrificial killing of a friend to provide companionship in the spirit world for the late Sir Ofori Atta, high chief of the state of Akim Abuakwa (TIME, Aug. 26). Beefy Leslie Hale, a Laborite, related that four times in the last two years the five men had missed the gibbet by last-minute postponements of execution; that itself was a terrible punishment. Winston Churchill growled that the five Africans had been "subjected to torture" by "cat-and-mousing them up to the scaffold." This, he stormed, was "an affront to every decent tradition . . . a matter affecting the life and honor and the decent administration of British Government."*

Amid shouts, plump Arthur Creech-Jones, Colonial Secretary, tried to placate the members. He had no authority to grant a reprieve; but he would ask the King's representative, the Gold Coast's Governor. "Tell him!" boomed several M.P.s. Red-faced, Creech-Jones promised to send the Governor a telegram, advising him of the House's "very strong feeling in all quarters."

Plainly flustered, he stood for a moment as if expecting more debate. Instead came a sharp thunderclap from Churchill: "This is a matter of life and death; will the Colonial Secretary not get off and send his telegram now?" Creech-Jones retreated, a few minutes later slipped out and sent his telegram. (Result: the execution was postponed and Gold Coast Governor Sir Alan Burns huffily threatened to resign over this kibitzing by the House.)

"Low-Class Fascist." By then the House was deep in invective over another sort of execution--the Government's "guillotine" to speed two of its key measures (nationalization of inland transport, and town-&-country planning). Churchill stormed that the Government motion to cut off committee discussion was "strangulation of parliamentary debate . . . legislation by Government decree." Stung by ironic cheers from the Labor side, he lashed at the "idea of the government of the people, by the officials, for the party bosses," cried that "the liberties and the free life of Britain are in great danger" from Socialism.**

Amiable Arthur Greenwood, Labor's deputy leader, rose to defend the guillotine as "a new experiment resting on the authority of this House." Pink-cheeked Tory Quintin Hogg, looking like a bad-tempered baby, cried out: "Call it the Reichstag and be done with it." Greenwood thrust back: "I think all the potential Fuehrers are on the other side."

From a Tory back bench Brigadier Harold Ripley rose to bite on a bitter note: "Is it in order for the right honorable gentleman to call those of us who have done a little bit for our country Nazis? If so, the right honorable gentleman may as well understand quite clearly that I regard him as a low-class fascist." That set off a verbal Donnybrook. Cries of "tyrants . . . gag . . . come on, Hitler" crackled across the gilded chamber.

Paper Hat. The bell saved Greenwood. As Big Ben boomed midnight he moved an end to debate and a call to vote. Bedlam broke again. It was almost a minute before he could be heard. Then Tory Sir Gifford Fox raised a parliamentary pinpoint, contended that Greenwood was out of order because his motion was made after, not exactly at, 12 o'clock as procedure stipulates. Sir Gifford himself was hoisted on a point of procedure. He did not have on a hat--and regulations call for a member to be "sitting and covered" when raising a point of order during a voting period. Sir Gifford desperately tried to balance a paper on his head. The Speaker would have none of such hat tricks, ruled him out of order. Someone passed Sir Gifford a black Homburg, but in vain. Down went his objection. The guillotine motion was passed by a 289-to-150 margin.

Next day tempers flared again. Winston Churchill took a lacing when he interrupted a backbencher. Said the Speaker: "You cannot gate-crash." Churchill, white with anger, protested that gate-crashing was a nasty word and its application to him was "wholly unwarranted." The Speaker said he was "very sorry."

"The Smell of the Things." Later Churchill's hoarse voice, as he conferred with his front-bench colleagues, crashed into Sir Stafford Cripps's defense of Britain's quitting India. Cripps turned on Churchill, icily asked him to "cease talking so loudly." Sir Stafford suffered another interruption. Tory Robert Boothby broke in: "Is it in order for an honorable member to peel and eat an orange during the debate?" Solemnly the Chair ruled: "In this chamber one does not smoke, one does not chew gum, one does not eat chocolate and sweets, and one should not peel and eat an orange in this chamber, either."

The offender, Laborite James Dixon Murray, an ex-miner, hastily crammed orange and peelings into his pocket. But Boothby's motive was not to shame a Laborite. He is allergic to oranges: "I simply can't stand the smell of the things."

There was no laughter in either Prime Minister Clement Attlee or Winston Churchill as they resumed the India debate next day. Clem Attlee had to admit that administration in India had broken down to the point where Britain was no longer effective. Gloomily he warned that India was "a volcano of hidden fires," and "even as we are speaking tonight there are serious communal disturbances" (see below). But he argued against any "plea for delay . . . and inaction."

"Sneer of Shame." Churchill was in his best apocalyptic form: "It is with deep grief that I watch the clattering down of the British Empire, with all its glories and all the services it has rendered to mankind. . . . Many have defended Britain against her foes. None can defend her against herself. We must face the evils that are coming upon us and that we are powerless to avert. We must not . . . exclude any expedient that may help to mitigate the ruin and disaster that will follow the disappearance of Britain from the East. But at least let us not add--by shameful flight, by a premature, hurried scuttle--at least let us not add to the pangs of sorrow so many of us feel, the taint and sneer of shame."

He turned to India's communal troubles, said that the Government had adopted one of Mohandas Gandhi's "most scatterbrained observations--'Leave India in God's hands.' " To Churchill that meant "leave her to anarchy." Vividly, and with heavy sarcasm, he summed it up: "Here are these people, in many cases of the same race, charming people, lightly clad, crowded together . . . and yet there is no intermarriage. . . . Religion has raised a bar which not even the strongest impulses of nature can overleap. It is an astounding thing. Yet the Government expects in 14 months that there will be an agreement on these subjects between these races."

It was masterful oratory. "Perhaps," said Defense Minister A. V. Alexander, who followed him, "it was one of the best-phrased speeches of his lifetime." But Alexander added a dark and sour critique: "It may well be that history will decide that perhaps his speech has been the principal factor in preventing the classes in India from coming together." Approval of the India decision was voted in a hurry.

As Churchill served notice that he intended to propose a vote of censure this week, the Mother of Parliaments was not exactly furnishing to younger democracies an example of deliberative calm.

* There was a good precedent for mercy. In British annal's there was the case of a man the hangman could not hang. He was John Lee, a Devon murderer. On Feb. 23, 1885, he was thrice led, bound and black-hooded, to the gallows. In 30 minutes of trying, the hangman thrice released the trap and thrice it failed to open (rain had caused the wood to swell). Lee's death sentence was commuted to life in prison.

** Back in print after two weeks of Government-decreed suspension during The Crisis, British weeklies of all political shades seriously accused the Government of endangering freedom of the press by a "state of compulsion" (the Catholic Herald) and a "remarkable indifference to principle" (the socialist New Statesman and Nation).

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