Overalls & Ermine

For a moment last week the drab machinery of British government was once again clothed in fancy dress. Against a misty background that might have been borrowed from Gilbert & Sullivan's lolanthe, the towers of Westminster stood pale and blue. Before them, brightly uniformed guardsmen strutted to the music of proud tarantaras. Royal Artillerymen in bearskins and tunics heavy with gold fired salutes from the park, while cavalrymen with gleaming, upraised sabers marched jet black steeds. From Buckingham Palace in gilded coaches came Their Majesties, King George, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Elizabeth, to open the third session of Parliament under the Labor Government.

Crowds lined the streets to watch the royal procession, and in the ornate House of Lords befurred peeresses, morning-coated peers and Members of Parliament bowed as the King took his place in. front of a row of bewigged law lords in scarlet and ermine. But when the King stood up to deliver his official speech, beneath the royal panoply the overalls of Labor were plainly visible.

In the speech (ghosted, according to hardened precedent, by his Government ministers), King George outlined parliamentary plans for the coming year. They included routine hopes for increased production and exports, plans to cut the armed forces, to grant independence to Burma, to nationalize the gas industry, and to revamp the criminal code. Tucked in among the expected announcements was one bombshell sentence which hit Tory, peer and commoner alike. "Legislation," said the King in his slightly halting voice, "will be introduced to amend the Parliament Act, 1911."

Wing Clipping. It was the opening shot in Labor's campaign to clip the wings of the House of Lords. As Prime Minister Attlee explained to the House of Commons later, the 1911 act prevented the Lords from holding up "money bills" introduced in the House of Commons, but the Lords could still block any other legislation for a period of two years. Labor wanted the delaying power cut to one year. Attlee's main interest in the matter was to insure clear passage of Labor's forthcoming bill to nationalize iron and steel. From the Tory benches came a growl of fury. "A deliberate act of Socialist aggression," muttered Winston Churchill. (But he grinned when Attlee began quoting what Churchill, as a member of the Liberal Government in 1911, had said against the "formidable and even menacing" powers the Lords retained even after the 1911 act.)

The press was equally unsympathetic. "It is wholly out of accord with the decencies of constitutional usage," thundered the Times, "that suddenly, without cause or provocation ... a single party should . . . seek to diminish the remaining powers of the upper house for the purely cynical purpose of easing the passage of a single controversial measure." Other papers denounced Attlee for raising an issue certain to divide the nation at a time of crisis. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury (who, along with the Archbishop of York and 24 of the 41 Church of England Bishops, sits in the House of Lords) stepped into the fray. "Round this bone of contention," he said, "there will be a dogfight. The Government must have known . . . that the raising of this question . . . must divert the ... energy of the nation from its overwhelming task."

Outworn Methods. But despite the growling and snarling in press and Parliament, Britain's man-in-the-street seemed apathetic to the dogfight. He was more concerned with a speech by Economic Dictator Sir Stafford Cripps announcing yet another reduction in the living standard. Sugar was to go from ten to eight ounces a week. There would be no more U.S. tobacco. "If we allow our resources to be rapidly deflated, we will face the possibility of wholesale hunger and unemployment."

"We must not," Sir Stafford told the people of Britain, "let outworn methods of democracy, suitable perhaps for easier times, impose upon us delays that may well be fatal. It is easy enough, perhaps fatally too easy, to call for compulsions of every kind to cut short the methods of democratic consultation--but not in that way shall we save our fundamental freedoms enshrined in our democracy. . . . The question . . . is whether we as individuals can discipline ourselves to the task that lies before us or whether we are going to invite the harsh discipline of events to impose such dreaded solutions upon us."

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