Hats and Political Privilege.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18429, 9 July 1925, Page 10

Hats and Political Privilege.

There 'will not be very mucli sympathy with the request made by Mr P. Eraser, M.P., that the Speaker of the House of Representatives should withdraw his instruction that everyone except a member of Parliament must take off his hat on entering Parliament Buildings and keep it off until he regains the freedom of the outer air. In spite of its members, Parliament really is an institution to which respect is due and may be demanded, and if everyone went bare-headed within its walls its stability as an institution might be assisted. But the point is that everyone does not go bare-headed about the corridors and lobbies, and Mr H. E. Holland was quite right in asking that if there were a rule it ought to apply to everybody. The public will have been a little astonished to hear that this request was met by one member with a cry of "Nonsense!" and by the Speaker with tho statement that " there was a great distinction between " strangers and members of the " House," and that " members of Parliament had privileges that they " should jealously guard." It is quite plain that some members value their, right, and that tho Speaker values it also, to 101 l at ease wearing three or four hats (and, in the ease of the Speaker, a eouplc of wigs as well), while the stranger " conversing "with them stands up with his hat in his hand. One would have supposed that good manners might have suggested to the Speaker (hat this assertion of the superiority of the member to the " stranger " might without loss to Parliament's reputation be abandoned. Xobody wishes to make a clean sweep of the " privileges " of tho member of I axliament, some of which arc verv necessary, and valuable not only to the member but alsd* to the integrity of Parliamentary government. It is a mistake to suppose, however, that the public regards as other than ludicrous the politician's privilege in the matter of hats.and the Speaker's belief that to tamper with the political hat is to bring' the Constitution into peril. The member's right to wear his hat in the House is, we believe, the vestige of what, in the days when unconstitutional force armed with a battleaxe was met with a helmet, Avas a necessary precaution rather than a mere luxury. To-day it is a precaution against nothing except the risk attendant upon leaving a hat where another member may get at it—a risk which some

students of polities may suspect is no sliprM one. We have said that certain real privileges enjoyed by members are sound and necessary, but members ought to be chary of discussing- them. For the public feels very strongly that many other of the privileges of members ought to be abolished, particularly those which amount to nothing more than the wasting' of the money of (he public.