FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27570, 12 December 1950, Page 7

FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN

Commons Decides Against Sunday Opening NZPA Special Correspondent Rec. 9 p.m. LONDON, Dec. 11. The House of Commons ended last week in an amiable mood. Having banned the Sunday opening of the Festival of Britain fun fair, it decided to allow a number of harmless Sunday amusements outside the fair. The House also gave a third reading to the Bill which removes doubts about the legality of the Sunday opening of certain parts of the Festival. The “Lord Festival” himself (Mr Herbert Morrison) thanked the House and said he hoped that next year when the Festival opened the world situation would have improved so. that the people of Britain “can have a real good time.” The House agreed that on Sundays visitors be allowed to see puppet and marionette shows, a model of Captain Bligh’s ship, the Bounty, moored in the Thames, underground grottoes, a pets’ corner, and an elevated tree walk. And on Sundays there will also be Shetland pony rides for children, special illuminations (but no fireworks) and rides for children on a miniature railway and boats on the lake. Mr Walter Elliot (Conservative), however, had doubts about the:grottoes. He thought people might go into them to get away from the rest of the show and this might lead to undesirable congequences. But the Attorney-general, Sir Hartley Shawcross, persuaded him that everything would be all right. “The grottoes will not be the kind of thing one sees in the fair ground with dark corners where odd things may or may not happen,” he said. The only gloomy voice was that of Mr Cyril Osborne (Conservative), who declared that Britons had nothing whatever to be festive about. “It is a shocking thought to me that we •hould be talking about the Sunday opening of the Festival when we are overshadowed by a danger at home end abroad which may destroy everything we have. I wish there was something to cheer us up. What does Mr Morrison think we have to be festive about? Nothing at all. I think the Government is doing the country real harm by diverting attention from the things that matter.”