HISTORIC DAY IN COMMONS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 89, 30 March 1932, Page 9

HISTORIC DAY IN COMMONS

CHAMBERLAIN’S TRIUMPH A SON S TRIBUTE. VICTORY OF TARIFF REFORM The sitting of the House of Commons on Inursday, February 4, 1932, will assuredly live in history, writes the Parliamentary correspondent ot the “London Observer.” Mr Neville Chamberlain’s speech on the Government’s tariff proposals links the sitting with that memorable sitting of January 19, 1846, when fair Robert Peel disclosed his scheme for the substitution ot tree imports for Protection, thus profoundly changing the trade and agricultural system of the country, but the speech links the two by a reversal of the policy of 85 years ago, and a new departure turning the lace of. the country towards Protection again. As if that was not drama enough the House also witnessed an episode unparalleled in Parliamentary annals—a leading Minister, Sir Herbert Samuel, Home Secretary, following the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and making an unmitigated attack on the Government’s plans. Here again was a new departure—a suspension, if not an abolition, of the settled constitutional principal that if a Cabinet Minister is opposed to the Government’s policy he must go out, or, if he elects to stay in, he must refrain from publicly expressing his dissent. Of course, this novel decision of the Cabinet to “agree to differ’ is justified by the exceptional all-party composition of the Government and the almost unprecedented economic state of the country, but it was an astonishing thing to see it in practice for the first time.

A SENSITIVE HOUSE. Tho House of Commons looked its very best on that memorable sitting, crowded as it was in every part, and lit up by a soft, mellow radiance from its beautiful glass ceiling. On these occasions the House is sensitive and imaginative. Indeed, it is impossible for anyone at all attuned to the spirit of places not to be affected by the thought of the clash between conflicting reason and thought in political and economic controversies with which the oak pannelled walls of the Chamber has so often reverberated. How cool and unflurried Mr Neville Chamberland looked as he rose to the table and waited until the loud cheers which greeted him had subsided. His red dispatch box, from which he took the notes of his speech, had been his fathers when he was Colonial Secretary. It bore signs of time and use. And how like Joseph Chamberlain—as I remember him standing at the table —is the son! The son has the same lithe frame, the shame sharp features and black hair, and when he speaks the same clear incisiveness of voice. There is the same care in dress; but in that respect the likeness of the son to the father is incomplete. The orchid in the button-hole, which Joseph Chamberlain invariably wore on great Parliamentary occasions, is missing, and also the monocle, which I have seen the father retain in his eye without once dropping it during a speech of an hour’s duration.

A LUCID EXPOSITION. It is not necessary for me to give even the briefest summary of Mr Neville Chamberlains tariff proposals. They are now known the world over. The speech lasted an hour and a quarter. As an effort of oratorical exposition it was perfect. So well was it delivered, and so lucid was it in argument, that it was heard with ease in all parts of the Chamber. Not a single impatient cry of “Speak up!” (a familiar Parliamentary expression) was heard from any quarter. For the most part Mr Chamberlain was in manner curiously impersonal and detached, considering the revolutionary change he was proposing in the country’s fiscal policy. The speech was like a judge’s traditionally impartial summing-up of the effect on the country of the world’s financial and 'economic crisis. Be put aside the personal and family triumph implicit in the situation. His filial devotion to his father’s political memory, and his reasoned support of economic views which it may be said he has inherited, were not obtruded until the end of th© speech, when the reference was made in passages of moving eloquence.

There is no doubt that Joseph Chamberlain was very much in the mind of members during his son’s speech. As we know, the father’s fiscal reform movement was overwhelmingly rejected by the country. In his last words, bringing his campaign to an end in 1906, he said: “I look forward to the future with hope and confidence, and Others, 1 doubt not, if not me, The issue of our toil shall see.” How little could Joseph Chamberlain have imagined when he spoke those words that his son Neville was destined, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, to take the first step towards the realisation of fiscal reform, supported by an enoitaous majority in the House of Commons. For it is a thing without record in Parliamentary history for the son of a statesman, as a statesman himself, to have inscribed on the Statute Book a policy for the advocacy of which his father went down in defeat.

A PERSONAL NOTE. Mr Neville Chamberlain’s tribute to his father, delivered in a subdued voice, with a kind of tiemulous humility, gave the House the opportunity for which it had waited of paying homage to the memory of Joseph Chamberlain in an emotional burst of cheering. The passages which will always have a place in records of Parliamentary eloquence are as follows:—

“Now I hope 1 may be excused if I touch one personal note. There can have been few occasions in all our long political history when the sou of a man who counted for something in his day and generation has been vouchsafed the privilege of setting the seal on the work which the father began, but had perforce to leave unfinished. Nearly 29 years have passed since Joseph Chamberlain entered upon his great campaign in favour of Imperial Preference and Tariff Reform. More than 17 years have gone by since ho died without having seen tho fulfilment of his aims, and yet convinced that, if not exactly in his way, in some modified form his vision would eventually take shape. His work was not in vain, for time nnd the misfortunes of the country have brought conviction to many who did not feel that they could agree with him then. I believe lie. would have Ibiiinl . iisululion fur the bitter-

ness of his disappointment if he could have foreseen that these ■ proposals, which are the direct and legitimate descendants of his own conception, would be laid before the House of Commons which he loved in the presence of one and by the lips of the other of his two immediate successors by whom his name is carried on.” Sir Austen Chamberlain, who sat in the corner seat of the third bench below the gangway—the bench from which his father when out of office used to speak —came down to the Treasury Bench and as if too full for words, sill ally shook hands with his brother.