Chapter I · THE BIG DEBATE AND THE DIVISION

1

The varying aspects of a debate in the House of Commons are surprising. During one speech the benches are crowded. During the next there is but a Member here and there amid the desert of green morocco. All the time Members are restlessly moving in and out of the Chamber. Indeed, the general inattention to ordinary speakers is very marked. The doors of the main entrance under the clock swing open and a Member, hat in hand, enters and stands at the Bar. One sentence of the speech that is being delivered suffices. Out he rushes again. Here and there on the benches a Member sits apart in a half-dreamy state, his arms folded, his hat over his eyes, engrossed in his own thoughts. A good deal of babble is heard in the course of the debate. But it is not the babble of argument and contention. It is the babble of Members chatting and joking with each other, heedless of the honourable gentleman who is wrestling with his arguments, and to whom only Mr. Speaker is attentive. A loud laugh is heard. Nothing could be more serious than the speech which is being addressed to the House. What then is the cause of this misplaced gaiety? A good story is being told in that group of Members yonder making merry among themselves. Still, a few Members listen, but half abstractedly and with expressionless faces. There are some, however, whose attention is eagerly concentrated on the man who is continuing the debate. Yet they, too, seem to hear, but not to heed. Not a gleam of sympathy is to be seen in their looks. Who are they? They are those Members who are all on an edge to join in the debate. Some of them divide their feverish attention between the talker, the clock, and their notes. Others are mumbling to themselves the favourite passages of their own intended speeches. But will the opportunity of delivering these speeches come to them? Time is flying for these Members, impatiently on the pounce.

The hon. gentleman on his legs has long ago said all he really had to say. “Why the blank does he not sit down?” the others ask themselves, and they look at him ferociously. He is in that curious predicament of the unpractised and self-conscious speaker that he does not know how to stop. So he continues his harangue, not that he has anything more to say, but that it seems easier to go on talking to Mr. Speaker than to finish and sit down. Mr. Speaker, certainly, is listening amiably, politely, but scarcely sympathetically. The arguments seem to bring no conviction to Mr. Speaker. Across the face of Mr. Speaker no smile flickers at the jokes. Mr. Speaker follows the remarks of the hon. Member solely to see that he does not offend against the rules. It must be a trying ordeal addressing the House of Commons, that most fastidious or inattentive of audiences, and not the least of its terrors are the sleepless eyes and the vigilant ears of the ever watchful Mr. Speaker. Still, the fate of those to whom was given the chance of taking part in the debate might have been worse. At any rate, they have had the relief and the satisfaction of self-expression. The debate might have closed, and left them, like the unsuccessful competitors for the Speaker’s eye, with carefully prepared unspoken speeches lying oppressively on their minds.

Old as the House of Commons is, there is always a great deal of the unmitigated Boy—with a big B—in its composition. A good joke never fails of a hearty laugh. Humour, especially with an element of a practical joke in it, is highly appreciated. Frivolity often follows fast on an exhibition of emotion. A terrific cry is suddenly raised. “Order, order, order!” Both sides unite in giving vociferous voice to their indignation. Visitors in the gallery stand up with a common impulse, and unheeding the deprecatory hands of the attendants, crane their necks to discover what is taking place on the floor. Surely something affrighting has occurred? Has Black Rod led a hostile excursion of backwoodsmen from the House of Lords? Has some Member seized the Mace and with it shivered the Party system into smithereens? The strangers look at each other questioningly, but in vain. The gallery is an unsatisfactory place for following the incidents of a sitting.

But really all that has happened was that an absent-minded Member, or one new to parliamentary manners, entering the Chamber and walking to his place passed between the Member speaking and the Chair. This breach of etiquette is always resented in the most indignant of exclamations. And the puzzled look of the offender—“What the dickens have I done?”—is not the least delicious part of the sport. Perhaps soon again strangers are startled by another outburst. This time the uproar is hilariously approving, rather than angrily condemning. Was it aroused by some wise and lofty saying of philosophy, or else some passage of exquisite wit? It was neither. The prosy Member who had been addressing the House was incapable of saying a good thing. But he finished by doing a silly one. He sat down upon his hat. Such are the innocent diversions of the House of Commons. Yet it is quickly sensitive to the deepest seriousness and the highest sweeps of emotion.

In its way a debate in the House of Commons is a very odd proceeding. What is its chief aim and end? Ostensibly, it is to persuade and convert. But it rarely ever does so. It usually confirms each side in their views. One hears of the triumphs of parliamentary oratory. Speeches, regarded as intellectual efforts, are often very wonderful. And often they are but vapour and wind. The orator is inspired only to those whose principles his eloquence upholds. The believers on the benches behind him are moved and kindled by his words and more than ever convinced—if he be a leader—that they are following a guide whom they can implicitly trust. But no light of the faith which illumes his periods goes out to the unregenerate who sit opposite in darkness. By the lure of his eloquence not one of his opponents is entrapped. They may see beauty in his passages, but not conviction. In minor matters minds are shaken and votes influenced by discussion; but rarely, if ever, is it so in great affairs about which opinion on both sides has hardened to conviction. In the course of a Parliament a waverer or two may cross the floor, but it is true generally to say that political opinions are so stoutly built on the foundations of conviction or Party allegiance, that whatever they may be—Conservative or Liberal, Collectivist or Individualist, Unionist or Home Rule—they stand four-square to all the winds of argument that blow in the House of Commons. The real purpose of a great speech, therefore, is not so much to persuade the other side, as to justify a certain political faith to those who profess it, and feed their political courage by resounding words of conviction.

It is true that a Government is often deterred from taking a particular course for fear of the Opposition. It is also true that if the Government do take that particular line of action they are often compelled, or induced, to modify it by criticism in the House of Commons. But the chief purpose of oratory as displayed in a big debate is to revivify the faith of supporters and, perhaps, with luck and grace, make a convert or two. Above all, its object is to influence opinion in the country. “Mr. Speaker, sir,” says every Member who rises in the Council of the Nation to give expression to his views. Many of them might more appropriately begin, “Gentlemen of the Press Gallery,” for to reach the country they must first convince the reporters that what they say is worthy of publication.

2

The Speaker has no power to gag a tiresome talker. All he can do is to call a Member to order for irrelevance or repetition, and on the third unheeded warning to direct him to discontinue his speech. The House, however, shows its resentment of the impertinences or inanities of a talker by cries and exclamations. A Member who was once subjected to much interruption appealed to Mr. Speaker Spencer Compton for protection, saying that he had a right to be heard. “No, sir,” replied the Speaker, “you have a right to speak, but the House has a right to judge whether they will hear you.” A far finer thing was said by Mr. Speaker Lowther in 1906 in vindication of the order and decorum of debate. There had been unmannerly interruptions by some new Members who had not time to become acquainted with the traditional courtesies of the House. “One of the great boasts of this House,” said the Speaker, in a dignified reprimand of the disorder, “is that we listen to the speeches and reply afterwards.”

Nevertheless, Members have considerable licence in the expression of dissent from the views that are being laid before them, or of their desire to bring an irritating or superfluous speech to a speedy conclusion, by cries, “No, no!” or “’Vide, ’vide!” without fear of censure from the Chair. But these interruptions are to some men only an incentive to extend their unappreciated remarks. “If you don’t allow me to finish my speech in my own way I’ll not leave off at all,” said one Member who was regarded as a bore. The threat had the desired effect. “I am speaking to posterity,” said another Member grandiloquently, in reply to his interruptors. “Faith, if you go on at this rate,” remarked a voice from the Irish quarter, “you will see your audience before you.” “Sir,” retorted the talker, “I can afford to wait.”

It was not until 1882 that the Government was armed with powers to close a debate which, in their opinion, was being deliberately prolonged for the purpose of embarrassing them by delaying the progress of business. Previously to 1882 discussion was guided and controlled not so much by written regulations as by customs and understandings that for generations had been universally observed. “Obstruction” was brought into use by Joseph Gilles Biggar and Charles Stewart Parnell in the late ’seventies of the nineteenth century, and the extent to which it was employed by the Nationalists in the early ’eighties, with the avowed object of dislocating the parliamentary machine, until their objects were conceded, showed that if the opportunities for its abuse were not restricted the progress of business might be long delayed. Accordingly, Gladstone carried a closure resolution on November 11, 1882, in an autumn session held specially for the purpose of considering it. It gave power to the Speaker, or the Chairman of Committees, when it appeared to him that “the evident sense of the House” was in favour of an immediate division, so to inform the House, or Committee, and, on a motion being made, to put the question under discussion forthwith. Henry Bouverie Brand was Speaker at the time. Early in the preceding year, at nine o’clock on the morning of Wednesday, February 2, 1881—an historic date in the annals of Parliament—he had terminated a sitting which lasted forty-two hours, or from the preceding Monday at four o’clock, debating Forster’s motion for leave to introduce a Bill for the Better Protection of Person and Property in Ireland, by refusing to call upon any more of the Nationalist Members who still desired to speak, and thereupon peremptorily putting the question. This was, admittedly, unprecedented. There was no rule, written or unwritten, to justify it. But that it was in accordance with “the evident sense of the House” was indisputable. The new Standing Order was, therefore, passed to bring to an end such a situation, should it again arise. Mr. Brand, however, never had occasion to apply it. The closure was used for the first time on February 28, 1885, close on two and a half years after it had become a rule of the House, by Mr. Speaker Peel and against the Nationalist Members. In the division on the motion “that the question be now put” the ayes were 207, and the noes 46. The Standing Order provides that the closure must be supported by more than 200 Members, if the minority is over 40, or by 100 Members if the minority is under 40. If the majority had been seven votes less this invocation of the closure by the Speaker would accordingly have been ineffectual. Thus Mr. Peel narrowly escaped a serious rebuff, which would certainly have impaired his authority and might have led to his resignation. It was unlikely that any Speaker would ever again put his position to this hazard. Moreover, the application of the closure, on the sole initiative of the Speaker, must have tended to disturb the good relations between Members and the Chair. A wise move it was, therefore, on the part of the Conservative Administration in 1887 to relieve the Speaker of this invidious responsibility by giving power to any Member—private or official—to try to bring obstructive discussion to an end by moving the closure, leaving, however, to the Speaker the discretion of putting, or refusing to put, the motion to the House. The Speaker is empowered by the Standing Order to refuse the closure should it appear to him to be an abuse of the rules of the House, or an infringement of the rights of the minority.

3

The benches, empty for the most part during the dinner period, fill up again about ten o’clock for the two concluding speeches of the debate—the final attack by the leader of the Opposition, and the defence by the spokesman of the Government. It is then that the Chamber, full of warmth and glow and animation, looks its very best. The ceiling is of glass of the hue of the primrose, divided by carved oaken ribs into panels with delicate floral decorations, through which the electric lights on the outer side send a flood of light that fills the Chamber with radiance, soft and mellow. The lights also bring out the fine carving of the oak wainscot of the Chamber, and the emblazoned panels with the coats-of-arms of the Sovereigns from William the Conqueror to Victoria, which decorate the railings of the side galleries. It is on such an occasion, too, that the debating advantages of a small Chamber are seen and appreciated. The House is crowded. Every Member present may not be comfortably seated, but all can command a complete view of the scene and hear the speeches distinctly. There are no dim distances. This tends to make the debate a more real and earnest thing. The audience can give full play to their feelings. The House occasionally is moved by great excitement. Tempestuous cheers are answered by cries of defiance or mockery. Statements and denials, charges and recriminations are bandied about. Then is also seen the rhetorical aid to invective afforded by the separation of the rival political parties on two sides of the Chamber with only a narrow floor between. The opponents gaze at each other straight in the face. They see each other’s flaming eyes, or curling lips, their merry looks or dour. In moments of passion they add fuel to each other’s wrath. Moreover, with the enemy straight before him, the orator can point at them the finger of scorn. This was a favourite gesture of Gladstone as I remember him during his passionate speeches. Flinging himself almost halfway across the Table, and shooting out his right arm, he would transfix with his extended forefinger the occupants of the Front Bench opposite, his face ablaze with indignation and infinite disdain in his voice, while they—alas, for the splendid futility of parliamentary oratory!—more often than not beamed with satisfaction that they should be thought worthy of the great orator’s rhetorical exasperation. And that reminds me of another characteristic of the House. When a good speech is made all sides are delighted, for it is the common desire of all sides to uphold the debating reputation of the Assembly.

But the last word has been said. The great debate is closed. Then it comes home to you that what consumes the energies of the House of Commons is—talk. At first it seems a startling discovery—talk, and not work. But you quickly remember—or ought to—that you are in a deliberative and debating Chamber which works, and can only work, through talk. There may be much trivial and pointless talk, but the fact remains that the House of Commons can by talk only discharge its functions—to investigate and legislate. The division which follows is sometimes the most dramatic episode of the night. There is no summing-up of the rival cases. The clash of so many conflicting arguments must be most distracting to anyone who desires to come to a calm and unprejudiced conclusion. Would it not be well, then, if the Speaker—the only Member of the House who hears the entire discussion, who is raised above personal likings, above party interests and passions, above class animosities—were to endeavour, at the close of the debate, with the cold neutrality of the impartial judge, to make straight the confusing entanglement of thought, to weigh nicely the many antagonistic opinions, to estimate in its true proportions and according to its proper value the issue at stake for the guidance of the whole House? Fantastic thought! Nothing of the nature of a judicial element can be introduced into the Legislative Chamber of the nation. No representative of the people desires to be helped to a disinterested judgment in the division lobbies. The triumph of Party is the chief consideration. Besides, the art of the Speakership is not concerned with sagacious and logical conclusions. It is not concerned even with the passing of sound legislation. The art of the Speakership lies solely in the preservation of order and the regularity of the proceedings.

4

Therefore, when the debate has concluded, Mr. Speaker rises in his Chair, and simply puts the question, “That this Bill be now read the third time. As many as are of that opinion will say ‘Aye.’” A shout of “Aye” arises from the Government benches. “The contrary, ‘No,’” continues Mr. Speaker, and a volley of “Noes” comes in response from the Opposition. “I think the ‘Ayes’ have it,” says Mr. Speaker. Quite properly, he always decides in favour of the side supported by the Government, unless the motion be of a non-party character, when he is guided by the volume of sound from the “Ayes” and the “Noes.” In most cases, however, the decision of the Speaker is not accepted. The Opposition again roar out, “The ‘Noes’ have it,” but the Speaker does not mind the contradiction apparently flung in his teeth, for it is thus that a division is challenged.

The Speaker then gives the order, “Clear the Lobby,” and at the same moment the electric bells in every corridor and in every room of the Palace of Westminster ring out a summons to Members to hurry to the Chamber for the division. The policemen who are on duty in the lobbies and corridors also shout “division!” with all the strength of their lungs, and so, amid the clanging of the bells, cries of “division” answer other cries of “division” in every part of the Palace. This ringing and shouting continues for two minutes, during which Members come rushing in from dining-rooms, library, and smoking-rooms. Formerly, when the two minutes had passed, the Speaker made a sign to the Serjeant-at-Arms, and the doors of the Chamber were locked, until the division was concluded. Every Member present had to vote. Visitors in the Distinguished Strangers’ Gallery, or peers in the Lords’ Gallery—whose way out lay through the lobbies—could not leave until the division was over, and the doors were again unlocked. Gladstone has an interesting note in his Diary about the visit of the Shah of Persia to the House of Commons, on July 1, 1873, which is worth repeating, as the procedure to which it refers has long since come to an end. “A division on a trifling matter of adjournment took place during his Majesty’s presence, in which he manifested an intelligent interest. The circumstance of his presence at the time is singular in this view (and of this he was informed, rather to his amusement) that until the division is over he could not be released from the walls of the House. It is probably, or possibly, the first time for more than 500 years that a Sovereign has been under personal restraint of any kind in England.” Under the present system of taking divisions, which was invented by Mr. Harcourt (afterwards Lord Harcourt), First Commissioner of Works in 1906, the doors of the Chamber are not locked during the counting of the votes. A Member who does not desire to vote need not leave the Chamber, when the division is challenged, and access to and from the galleries remains open.

At the end of the two minutes’ interval the Speaker puts the question a second time in the same form. The declaration of the Speaker, “I think the ‘Ayes’ have it,” is answered again by a shout from the Opposition benches, “The ‘Noes’ have it.” The die is now cast. The division lobbies must decide the issue. The Speaker accordingly adds, “‘Ayes’ to the right and ‘Noes’ to the left,” and names the two chief Government Whips as the tellers for the former, and the Whips of the Opposition as the tellers for the latter.

This stage sometimes affords an illustration of one of the oddest peculiarities of the House of Commons. A Member speaking must, of course, stand uncovered. Yet there is a time when a Member can only address the Chair wearing a hat and sitting in his place. That is when a division is being taken and there is a point of order to be raised. In such circumstances a Member is condemned to silence, unless he has his own hat to put on, or can borrow another’s for the purpose. Members generally are unacquainted with the origin and purpose of this extraordinary custom. It may interest them to be told that it is very ancient, and that it came into being so as to enable the Member desirous of raising a point of order to attract the attention of the Speaker, or Chairman of Committees, by keeping his seat and wearing his hat, while the general body of Members, on their feet and uncovered, are moving into the division lobbies.

The incident is always provocative of laughter. It almost invariably happens, in the case of a Member who has left his own hat in the cloak-room, that the borrowed hat is either too large, and comes down to his nose, or too small, and covers only the top of his head, with the result that he has to support it with both hands while he makes his point of order. I have witnessed some ludicrous scenes, especially during late sittings in Committee on a Bill that is strongly opposed, when the proceedings in the small hours have a tendency to become quite hilarious. Members, who had neither their own hats at hand, and failed to induce others to lend theirs, sought to comply with the rule that they must be “covered,” while they said what they wanted to say, by putting on cocked hats made out of the “Orders of the Day.” So do the sports of children satisfy, at times, the Fathers of the Nation.

5

The Members then pour into the division lobbies, which are two wide corridors on each side of the Chamber. The supporters of the “Ayes” come up the House and enter their lobby by the door behind the Speaker’s Chair; the “Noes” go down the House and pass into their lobby by the door under the clock. In each lobby clerks sit at a desk, provided with alphabetically arranged lists of Members. At one side of the desk there is a large card marked “A to M,” and on the other side of the desk another card marked “N to Z.” The Members pass this desk in single file—each on the proper side, according to his initial letter—giving their names to the clerks, who tick them off on the printed list. In this way a record of the Members who take part in each division is obtained. As the Members pass out of the division lobbies they are counted by two tellers, one representing the Government and the other the Opposition, and each acting as a check on the other in the reckoning.

Lecky, the historian, says that Edmund Burke was perhaps the first statesman who urged that lists of voters in every important division should be published, in order that the people might be able to judge the conduct of their representatives. But Burke’s proposal met with general disfavour, as an interference with the independence of Members. Thomas Creevey, in his Diary, under date January 29, 1810, writes in reference to the publication in the newspapers of the way certain Members had voted in a particular division:

A damned canting fellow in the House, Mr. Manning, complained of Members’ names being printed as a breach of privilege, and so it would have passed off if I had not showed them that, so far from it being a breach of privilege, it was a vote in King William’s time, “that Members’ names should be printed that the country might know who did, and who did not, their duty.”

It is the fact, however, that not until 1836, four years after the passing of the Reform Act, did the House of Commons adopt the democratic plan of recording the votes of Members and publishing them in the official report of the proceedings of the House. Before that date the votes of Members who joined in the debates—at that time a very small number—might be guessed by the drift of their speeches as reported in the Press, but how the silent majority voted was an absolute secret. All that was publicly known were the numbers on each side. There were then no division lobbies. The usual mode of taking a division was that the “ayes” went out of the House, and the “noes” stayed inside. Those inside were first counted; and the number of the “ayes” was ascertained as they returned to the Chamber. The Press Gallery, as well as the other galleries, was always cleared when, on the challenging of a division, the Speaker said, “Strangers will withdraw.” Old Members resented the new method of taking a division, introduced in 1836. They declined to give their names to the tellers who at first took the record, and used to rush past them with averted faces.

The average time a division occupies is ten minutes. Some big divisions, for which there is a full muster on each side, take a quarter of an hour. But at length all the Members have returned from the lobbies, and the counting is over. The tellers appear in the Chamber, and report to one of the Clerks at the Table their respective numbers. The victors will be known in a moment. The Clerk writes the figures on a slip of paper, which he hands to the principal teller of the side that has won. Immediately a shout of delight arises from the Party that is triumphant. They do not wait for the announcement of the exact numbers. They know they have won—by what majority does not for the moment concern them—and they rejoice accordingly. Sometimes, even when the issue lies between Government and Opposition, the exact result is uncertain or appears to be uncertain judging by the tone of the speeches. I have often heard debates that ran strongly against the Government, so much so that a defeat seemed probable. But behind the Government were those ranks of Members who sit silently on the back benches—who say nothing, but who vote. Now we shall hear the numbers. The four tellers meet in a row in front of the Table; the tellers for the victors to the right facing the Speaker, the tellers for the vanquished to the left, and when they have bowed to the Chair, the principal teller for the majority reads out the numbers in a loud voice: “‘Ayes’ to the right, 398; ‘Noes’ to the left, 190.” The Ministerialists again lift their voices in exultation and the Opposition answer back with mocking laughter. “Order, order!” is heard from Mr. Speaker. The result of the division must be announced from the Chair. As the tellers return to their places the paper containing the figures has been passed on by the Clerk to the Speaker. “The ‘Ayes’ to the right were 398; the ‘Noes’ to the left, 190,” says the Speaker, and he adds: “The ‘Ayes’ have it.” Once more the vociferations, triumphant and defiant, are renewed.

Does a Bill on its third reading, or a motion that has been carried or rejected, really represent the reasoned and deliberate opinion of the majority? Would the majority have come to the same determination if—instead of being Members of an Assembly dominated by Party interests, depending on the uncertain chances of popular election for their seats in it, and anxious, therefore, to conciliate and stand well with the electorate—they could have independently considered the question in the seclusion of their own minds uninfluenced by these considerations? It is a fascinating because somewhat perplexing question. For my part I do not think it would make much, if any, difference. Most men, however situated, will vote politically according to their Party opinions or interests.

But listen! “Who goes home?” This cry echoes through the lobbies and corridors of the House of Commons when the House has concluded its sitting and is about to shut its doors. Surely, a quaint and curious question to ask of our legislators every night. It had its origin in the far-off time when an M.P., wending his way homewards alone at night, was liable to be attacked and robbed, and so the doorkeepers of the House made arrangements for parties living in the same district to go home together for mutual protection. Centuries ago the representatives of the people streamed out of the dim vastness of Westminster Hall, and, separating into groups, followed the link-boys carrying flickering torches, through the dark and intricate streets between Westminster and the residential quarter of Covent Garden, catching fleeting glimpses on the way of footpads skulking in the shadows. Dangers of the kind are things of the very remote past. Yet, such is the reluctance to part with old forms and ceremonies at Westminster, that in these secure and orderly times of open thoroughfares, and electric lights and vigilant police, with underground railways and motor-taxis at command, the question is still nightly asked: “Who goes home?”