STORM IN COMMONS Chief Whip taxed with drunkenness

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32565, 26 March 1971, Page 9

STORM IN COMMONS Chief Whip taxed with drunkenness

(N^.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, March 25. The British Government’s controversial Industrial Relations Bill was passed by the House of Commons early today after another stormy session which culminated in the Government Chief Whip’s being accused of drunkenness.

Tired after a 30-hour marathon of almost continuous thirdreading debate, Opposition Labour Party members eagerly seized their chance when Mr Francis Pym began shouting in the Chamber.

As the Speaker (Mr Selwyn Lloyd) called the House to vote on the measure, Mr Pym, standing in evening dress at the front of the Chamber, cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled “Aye!”

Then, still chanting “Aye! Aye!”, he walked through the House amid Opposition cries of “He’s drunk, he’s drunk,” “Bring out the breathalyser” and “Pym’s No. U’

Unperturbed, Mr Pym stood in front of the Conservative benches and called his supporters to their feet with the gesture of an orchestral conductor asking his players to take a bow.

A Labour M.P., Mr William Molloy, donned the silk hat with which Commons members announce their intention of raising a point of order, and told Mr Lloyd: "He seems to be in a disgraceful drunken condition, and I must ask you if you would be good enough to defend the decorum of J»is House from this disgraceful and abominable behaviour.”

Mr Lloyd, recalling that many members had lost another night’s sleep, said: “I think that at the end of a very long, hard day’s night, a lot of things happen. The less attention paid to them, the better.”

Shakespeare quoted At one stage in the debate the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Harold Wilson) to urge on his followers, quoted Shakespeare’s Henry V before Agincourt: “Gentlemen of England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here.” The outburst involving Mr Pym came just after midnight, when many members were showing strain through shortage of sleep. They had spent all the previous night and morning trudging through the division lobbies.

One mathematician calculated that the M.P.s had each covered 3J miles as they tramped 63 times through the corridors. ‘March of zombies’ One Conservative woman M.P., Mrs Sally Oppenheim, wore a pale blue dressing gown and salmon pink slippers in the House during the last night’s session, and two Labour members played chess in one of the lobbies.

The Liberal Whip (Mr David Steel, who sent his members home at midnight, said: “We were not elected to join this march of the zombies. We are getting on with our work as normal human beings.” When the last of 63 divisions was called, the Labour benches were only three-

quarters filled, but there was not a seat empty on the Govemment’s side of the House. The bill, advanced by the Government as a means of restoring discipline to Britain’s labour relations. Won its final Commons approval by 307 votes to 269, a Government majority of 38. The measure now goes to the House of Lords, where detailed discussion of it may take some weeks; it could become law by June. The legislation is intended to outlaw wildcat strikes, and to enforce secret ballots and “cooling-off” periods in official strikes of national importance. It seeks also to give union-management agreements the force of legal contracts, and establishes Labour courts to rule in disputes. The Trades Union Congress, representing more than nine million organised workers, has already adopted a policy of resisting the proposed law by non-co-operation.

Union protest Last night, more than 600 militant trade unionists converged on Westminster to demonstrate their hostility to the bill, and to lobby- individual members of Parliament. When a new sitting began in the afternoon, nearly three hours after the end of the allnight session, the Labour Party presented to the Commons a massive petition protesting against the legislation. As 12 bundles of paper containing the petition were carried into the debating chamber, the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party (Mr Douglas Hougton) told the House it had been signed by more than half a million British workers and all members of the T.U.C. council.