STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

Evening Star, Issue 19856, 3 May 1928, Page 9

STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

SMOKING AT WESTMINSTER It is notable that the Speaker has been compelled to call the attention of members of the House of Commons to the fact that smoking and the carrying of lighted pipes, cigars, and cigarettes in the lobbies and corridors, and on the staircases of the House, is strictly forbidden (says • a sub-leader in the * Morning Post ’). The reason advanced for this order is the serious danger of fire and the damage done to floors and carpets. It is a good reason enough, but hardly the strongest. After all, not only safety, hut decorum forbid this habit of smoking all over the precincts of the House. Not so long ago it would have been “unthinkable, to use a favourite parliamentary word, that members should go about the lobbies and corridors smoking. It simply was not clone. The Palace of AA r estminster was properly treated as such; but nowadays it is regarded much more as a club. No one who has watched the proceedings of Parliament can doubt that there has been something more than a mere relaxation of manners—there has been a degeneration. The free-and-easy , style has superseded the formal in diction, in dress, and in deportment; and the loss of dignity is to bo deplored. The days when it was the thing for members to return to the House after dinner in evening dress have long passed—almost as long as the habit of gracing a speech with a Latin quotation. But even in this democratic age, when members habitually wear lounge suits and bowler hats, there should bo a limit, and the habit of smoking in the approaches to the House should clearly be beyond the limit. Unless the line he drawn members will presently be carrying their pines and cigarettes into the House itself a practice which could have only one advantage to commend it; the likelihood that it would moderate some members’ prolixity.