PARLIAMENTARY ORATORS: THE OLDER GENERATION.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 643, 22 December 1932, Page 10

PARLIAMENTARY ORATORS: THE OLDER GENERATION.

To-days Special Article

Lord Snowden Reviews the Stylists: Mr MacDonald Shouts and Thumps. (Special to the “ Star.”) LONDON, November 10. ” Lloyd George at his best could almost talk a bird out of a tree!” Thus Mr Winston Churchill in his new book, ” Thoughts and Adventures.” Lord Snowden thinks a little less of “ Ll.-G.” as an oratorical charmer. He is always better on the attack and defence than in exposition, Lord Snowden thinks, though as a phrase - maker he has no rival. “He has the finest voice of any speaker of to-day. He uses it more effectively than did Lord Rosebery, because he never gives the impression of unnaturalness. Nothing in oratory can be finer or more impressive than the sinking of his voice in pathos and appeal.”

T ORD SNOWDEN has been writing in the “ Evening Standard ” on “ Orators I Have Known,” and he has known a good many in his long career in Parliament. But he hardly reckons Mr Churchill among them. “ Winston,” who is a superb writer, “ cannot claim to be an orator, if ‘ oratory is the power to carry conviction by the obvious sincerity of the

speaker.’ He strains too much after effect. No speaker more evidently enjoys himself when he has a responsive audience. One alwa}*s knows when a scintillating sentence is coming. His face beams with anticipatory joy. He prepares his speeches and rehearses them with great care. That is all right; but he overdoes it. His purple patches give one the impression of artificiality. There is an absence of simplicity, which is one of the chief attributes of real oratory.” When Churchill is “ Up.” Mr Churchill may not always or often carry conviction, but the House of Commons invariably fills when he is “ up.” His wit and force delight the most critical audience in the world. If this is not oratory, it is an excellent substitute for it. Lord Snowden does not think so very highly of Mr MacDonald either. The Prime Minister “ has great natural gifts as a speaker. He has a fine presence and a voice of wonderful range and power. He has never learnt to use it to the best advantage. When he speaks quietly he has great charm and effectiveness. But he will shout and thump. That is always a sign that he is not at ease with himself. This accounts for the fact that he is seldom at his best in the House of Commons. At a Labour Conference, where he was conscious of domination, he was a different man, and always spoke with great directness, force and eloquence.” Unfortunately, Mr MacDonald’s habit of shouting and thumping is growing on him with the strained health which obliged him to forego attendance at the Lord Mayor's banquet. He is nervy and inclined to rant, and the House of Commons hates to be addressed as if it were a public meeting. Baldwin—A Socialist at Heart. The Radicals have always had a sneaking affection for Mr Baldwin. Perhaps they feel that, despite his leadership of the Conservative Party, he is more of a Socialist at heart than Mr MacDonald, who is developing strong Conservative leanings. Lord Snowden clearly admires Mr Baldwin, even more as a man than as a speaker. “ Indeed,” says the Viscount, “he is not an orator, but just a plain talker, speaking as man to man. He gets his influence from his obvious honesty and his evident desire to be fair. He seldom arouses great enthusiasm, and never provokes violent opposition. Mr Baldwin carries great weight in the House of Commons, and this is due to personal character, which, after all, is something greater than Parliamentary eloquence.”

Looking back, Lord Snowden places Joseph Chamberlain in the very front rank of the outstanding Parliamentary figures of the past forty years. “On the platform, in his prime, he was wonderfully effective. He had an impressive appearance and a good voice, which he kept under firm control and used with an artist’s skill. He never raved and shouted, and he always impressed me as a speaker who had enormous reserves on which he could call if the need arose.” Mr Asquith, like Chamberlain, was unemotional and incisive. During the last twenty years of his membership of the Commons ** he was head and shoulders above all his contemporaries. He was by far the most polished speaker in the assembly. His speeches were modelled on classical lines, and his language was more Latin than Anglo-Saxon—an unusual thing for a Yorkshireman.” Balfour Thinks On His Feet. Mr Balfour, who never prepared a speech, had the gift of thinking on his feet, and his speeches, to Lord Snowden, were “ interesting as an exhibition of intellectual gymnastics.” They were not oratory, nor were Mr Bonar Law’s speeches, though the latter was “ one of the ablest debaters of his time. He could speak for an hour without a note, in perfect logical sequence. He made a Budget speech from half a sheet of notepaper.” Lord Snowden supposes it is true that the style of Parliamentary speaking has changed in the last generation. “A great j many more members now take part in the debates. When there is so much talking for talking’s sake the quality cannot be j high.” But surely there are other reasons than a superabundance of debate for the altered style of speaking. One seems to be the change in the character of the representation. The new generation of Labour men does not speak in the cultured accents of Oxford and Cambridge. It is composed of men who have lived rough lives, and who use the speech of the factory and the mine Not for them the hothouse flowers of oratory which bloomed in a more leisured and exclusive age. Their talk is of the lot of the labouring poor, and they speak often with a blunt and passionate eloquence. Topics and Manners. Another reason for the alteration, one would imagine, is the difference in the topics which dominate the debates. Mr Aneurin Bevan, M.P., one of the rising young orators of the Labour Party, from Wales, who has indignantly repudiated Lord Snowden’s assertion that there are no promising orators among the new generation in the Commons, puts it very well when he says that oratorical styles must change with the change in the business which concerns the House. ” Debates now deal with trade returns, statistics, the principles of finance and so on. Cold facts and hard figures are the material of our rhetoric. The lucid and orderly presentation of them is j the purpose of our speeches.” . Anyhow, it is true, as Lord Snowden | says, that the ponderous oratory of Vic- j torian times has disappeared.