"Sausage Machine"

It was an evening session. The big clock over the Speaker's chair in the House of Commons was a few ticks short of 9:30. The Government's most extensive socialist measure yet--nationalization of almost all of Britain's privately owned inland transport--was in the bag, and everybody knew it.

But the Loyal Opposition had a few gasps of protest left in it before Labor's guillotine (TIME, March 17) chopped off the usual procedure of full discussion in the Mother of Parliaments. Tory Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe used the last few seconds before the deadline to tick off a scathing objection to "a sorry parody of legislative efforts." Then the chopper fell. Grey-wigged Speaker Colonel Clifton Brown cut in; there would be no further debate. The Government's 92 amendments would never even be discussed.

The Speaker began his swift reading of the Government measures. Shouts of "No . . . No ... I say No, sir!" broke into his drone. Sir Alan Patrick Herbert, the humorist who finds parliamentary didos far from funny, was angrily shouting and waving his arms to rally the Opposition benches. From Labor's benches came a howl of "Miaow . . . miaow." In a moment the chamber was in uproar. But the Speaker droned on. Many Conservative and Liberal M.P.s stalked out in disgust at this unprecedented scene of legislation being pushed through to the accompaniment of undignified howling.

Quixotic A. P. Herbert kept at it, a small voice in a roaring hurricane. Finally the Speaker recognized him. Said Herbert: "I can't hear a word of the amendments. . . . The whole proceeding seems to be an absolute farce." With strained patience, the Speaker replied: "This is what the House has decided. I am carrying out a decision. ... I must carry on and I cannot have the proceedings interrupted. . . ."

May Day Dance. Herbert persisted. Finally he forced a vote on one amendment. He mustered only 31 of the Opposition (against the Government's 346). But he stuck to his popgun and in the next three hours forced 15 more voting divisions, kept the members trudging to & from the voting lobbies. (It was a trying night for one-legged Transport Minister Alfred Barnes, but he made all 16 round trips on his cork leg.)

In the Government lobby, members chorused Scotland's Loch Lomond, Yorkshire's On Ilkley Moor and the Welsh Cwm Rhondda. But when jubilant Laborites swung their voices into Socialism's anthem, The Red Flag, Tory Sir Gifford Fox rose in angry protest. Laborites shouted, "It's May Day," and pointed to the clock; it had ticked past midnight. The Speaker announced that he had no jurisdiction over what the honorable members might sing in the lobbies.

Herbert and his handful of Oppositionists could have kept the House voting all night. But at i a.m. they gave up the hopeless fight and did not return to the floor. Laborites, who had been yawning and sprawling on their benches, came to life. Mrs. Bessie Braddock, a Liverpool Laborite, did a victory dance across the green carpet, triumphantly plumped her plumpness on the Tory bench where Winston Churchill usually sits.

"Not a Mere Talking Shop." Britons who prize the dignity of Parliament were far from amused by the guillotining and the cavorting. The London News Chronicle's James Cummings, usually sympathetic to Labor, dourly commented: "It was of the utmost importance that such a measure should be thoroughly debated, clause by clause, and that it should be made to stand the test of every sort of criticism. . . . Instead of that, the Government, by the wholesale use of the guillotine apparatus, turned Parliament into a gigantic sausage machine. ... It made nonsense of the vital and historic functions of the House of Commons. . . . One can see that it has given the Tories a stronger argument for their case that Labor means to reduce the status of the House to that of a rubber-stamp assembly."

The London Daily Herald, Labor's champion, found an excuse for its behavior: "Any Government which regards Parliament as a working machine and not as a mere talking shop must clearly insure . . . thai, the necessary business must go through. Otherwise it would be possible for any disgruntled minority in Parliament to obstruct indefinitely the will of the majority. And that would be the negation of democratic government." Perhaps the Daily Herald had forgotten that Labor's parliamentary majority was elected by less than 50% of Britain's voters.

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