Evening Post. TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 1931. A RUDE AWAKENING

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 76, 31 March 1931, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 1931. A RUDE AWAKENING

« The profuse flow of cxiravagant and irrelevant talk by which, at the direct cost of over £15,000 to the country, the Labour Party prevented Parliament from making any progress with its supremely difficult and urgent task during the whole of last week was relieved by occasional gleams of humour. But all the jokes of that wasted week amount to nothing in comparison with the colossal joke which they have perpetrated in: their collapse. The devil quoting i Scripture, or, if that comparison be considered unparliamentary, the Gracchi complaining of sedition, would not have been a less edifying or a more comical spectacle than the sudden transformation of the ruthless and successful obstructionists of last week into the champions of free speech, fairplay, and majority rule. Never was there a more egregious misfit than the halo of martyrdom which, as soon as the majority began to assert itself, the Labour Parly were compelled to assume as the champions, of the freedom which last week they had trampled under foot. If, now that passion has had time to cool and they have had time to sleep, they would have a look in the glass, they ought to be able to see this for themselves. A halo that does not fit. is a handicap that the most powerful of tragic actors could not overcome.' It might provide a clown with an effective turn, but the clowning, of the Labour Party belongs to the far-distant past of last week, when they were able to enjoy themselves in deriding and defying the impotence of the majority and in blocking the business of the House. Alast'rogardlcss of their doom, The little victims play; No sense have they of ills to come,. 1 Nor care beyond to-day. Black care has now enforced a rude awakening, and if under the shock the little ' victims are stretching out their little hands for haloes that ■ are several sizes too big we must not judge them 100 harshly. But it is very, very funny. One interesting epithet in Labour's vocabulary of abuse yesterday was "un-British." As we do not remember to have heard the term "British" used by way of a compliment on that side of the' House, this implied concession to national and historical— we dare not say "Imperial"—sentiment and tradition as deserving of respect is all the more welcome. Historically the whole process of the closure is unquestionably un-British. The House of Commons, which has been the pioneer and model of representative assemblies all . over the world, gave them no lead in this respect, but had on the contrary an abundance of European and American precedents before it when one of, the greatest of British Ministers, and perhaps the greatest "House of Commons man" of them all, was compelled to depart from British tradition and introduce the closure. The foreign origin of the procedure was indicated by the term "cloture," which Gladstone himself seems to have used in his opening speech, but which the Oxford Dictionary notes as - shortly afterwards in use only among the opponents of the procedure. It was the obstruction of die Irish organised with wonderful ingenuity and stubbornness by Biggar, Parnell, and Healy, which had forced upon the great Liberal Minister a task so uncongenial to his principles and prejudices. 1 ; •We see the House exhausted with its labours, he said, failing in the performance of them, beginning to lose the esteem of the country, lapsing by degrees into a slavery to its own system. ] This House has conquered its external! foes, and now il, runs tha risk of being] vanquished by those who, perhaps, are, not the noblest "of its own. children. The Irishmen did not regard them-j selves as Britain's children but as aliens,' and their attempt to paralyse1 tho Parliament of the United King-1 dom in order that it might be induced I to give their country a Parliament1 of its own was inspired by a logic in which the foolish tactics of a Labour Party, not aiming at or devolution, but hoping some day to have charge, of the machine themselves, are entirely lacking. Bui from the standpoint of the two Governments and Parliaments concerned, the two cases are substantially similar. The Parliamentary deadlock which a gross abuse of the Standing Orders enabled a minority to establish last week threatened Mr. Forbes's legislative proposals with exactly the same "utter ruin and discomfiture" which had overtaken Gladstone's'in the first session of 1882. And by an interesting coincidence the protection against the tyranny of a minority which he secured for the House of Commons by the resolutions introduced on the 30th March of that year has been established by our own House of Representatives exactly 49 years later. There is, however, one important difference between the two cases. Having suffered the ruin and discomfiture to which we have suffered during the ordinary session of 1882, Gladstone called a special session in the autumn to deal with his procedure resolutions. In dealing with a matter of such importance ample notice and full deliberation are, of course, highly desirable, but in the present case it was a sheer impossibility. The patient would have died on Mr. Forbes's hands i£ he had waited for three monlhs before prescribing a remedy, or had allowed

malicious obstruction masquerading as deliberation lo prolong ihe application of it "sine die." Il was therefore a mailer of life and death to rush the new rules of procedure through, and that is the only excuse, but il is a quite sufficient excuse, for performing in hasle a task of which il may be necessary lo repent at leisure. Il was presumably on this ground that the Prime Minister accepted ihe amendment moved by an Opposition member for limiting the operation of the new Standing Order to the term of the present Parliament. Mr. 11. E. Holland had pointed out last week that the closure was a Iwo-edgcd weapon which might cut the fingers of its manufacturers, but he is naturally furious when an amendment is carried which removes that objection. Seeing that some permanent change in the Standing ! Orders is needed to protect Parliament from a repetition of the tactics by which it was baffled and discredited last week, it would have been better to leave the matter open, and thus lo deprive Labour of the shadow of a grievance. It, deserved to be hit hard, but the appearance of injustice has weakened the blow.