MATRIMONIAL CAUSES BILL. (Hansard, 5 May 1933)

§ Mr. HOLFORD KNIGHT
I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
It has been my unhappy lot to receive a large number of letters from all sections of the country which show that this Bill deals with a very acute social evil. It seeks to give effect to a recommendation 20 years ago of a, Royal Commission which successive Governments have disregarded, with the result that there is an accumulation of terrible cases which must be unknown in the House, and which in intensity and seriousness is incredible unless the circumstances are brought directly to one's attention. This 1195 is a moment for which many people outside the House have been waiting. The Bill has been supported for the last 20 years by countless branches of the Labour women's organisation again and again—it is not open to any Labour representative to question such facts—and this reform has also been adopted by many associations of Liberal women and by their own national organisation. I want to make only two comments on the Bill. It does not impose any pressure on any person who does not desire to amend his unhappy condition of having an insane spouse. Secondly, the court has to be satisfied beyond a peradventure that the particular person involved in the petition has been incurably and continuously insane for a period of five years.
I understand that the only opposition to the Bill is based upon religious grounds, and I suggest that that should be left for discussion in Committee, where it can be more conveniently canvassed that it can be here. I make that suggestion for two reasons. I cannot on my conscience see how the cause of religion is to be advanced by suggestions here that any form of religion requires a continuance of this unhappy condition. I want, finally, to make the following appeal to my hon. Friends. Out of their mercy and humanity, I ask them to allow the Bill to go upstairs where all their objections can be canvassed and everything done to safeguard, as far as it is necessary, the great interests which they represent, and for which I have the greatest possible respect. I do not share their objections, but I appreciate them. I have had the advantage of talking to Prelates of the Church, and I say that this is a matter which ought to be carefully canvassed, and I ask my hon. Friends to-day to assist me by allowing a Second Reading of the Bill so that it can go upstairs where that process can be carried out in better circumstances than on the Floor of the House.

§ Mr. DENMAN
I beg to second the Motion.

§ Dr. O'DONOVAN
I beg to move, to leave out the word "now", and, at the end of the Question, to add the words "upon this day six months."
1196 Hon. Members, young and old, must be convinced of the sincerity arid humanity of the Mover of the Bill. We have listened to his pitiable plea that we should withdraw opposition to the Bill on the Floor of the House, but it is based on an assumption, I think, that he and those acting with him have a monopoly of the feelings of pity or of compassion. Nor is my opposition to the Bill confined within the ambit of his suggestion. My objection is social and is part of my British citizenship, and it is also religious. The suggestion that the religious objection to the Bill should be conveyed to the colder and remote area of a Committee room may indeed be the measure of the importance which my hon. and learned Friend attaches to the religious objection, but to me, for that objection is sincerely held, it should be faced in the House of. Commons and not behind the closed doors of one of its Committee rooms. It is a Private Members' Bill, and one must note the courage if not the audacity of a Private Member who would alter the matrimonial law of the British people. That he should ventilate his wishes is wholly right and proper, but that he should think that the objection should not be discussed and dealt with here seems to be, not out of order, but an improper suggestion. The Bill is the very first paragraph says: Be it enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual, The "Lords Spiritual" gives us an atmosphere in which one might approach the consideration of the Bile. for the Lords Spiritual of England call up to mind such names as that very ill-tempered prelate St. Thomas of Canterbury—what that Lord Spiritual might have thought of the learned Recorder I hesitate to say—St. Wilfred of York, St. Hugh of Lincoln, Prior Houghton of the Charterhouse and St. Anselm, the Benedictine Abbot, whose monastery is just across the Square: what he would have said would have been kind and merciful but, I think, disheartening. The atmosphere from the preamble of this Bill is not an atmosphere which should be relegated to the remote fastnesses of the Committee Room. It is a divorce Bill, and it is open to Members of the House to suggest that we have had quite enough divorce in this country already. The 1197 proposition, to my mind, is a most Bolshevist one. Members on the Opposition benches are often accused of Bolshevist proclivities, but never in their most exalted moments have they been thought guilty of suggesting that one of the greatest boons you can give to working class women and working class men is a. greater escape from the bonds of marriage, which they honour in a most distinguished and eminent way. The bond of marriage is not purely a legal one, unless we have gone far from the very old Roman and traditional conception of status. A marriage is far more than a contract; it implies a status as inescapable as fatherhood or sonship. I question very much whether a Motion or a Bill moved in this House necessarily abolishes the status in those who have acquired it.
It is distasteful to me that an hon. Member so full of human pity and so generally sympathetic to suffering should move a Bill, which, in my very humble and personal opinion, may add to the quantum of human misery. I suggest that all those who are insane are by no means insensitive. We know that in the asylums there are many persons who are properly certified as unfit for release, and yet they are conscious of what is going on in the world around them, and if the fact that they are certified as incurably insane may lead to the husband or wife, whom they still love, taking to themselves another partner, it adds a very grievous hurt to their present sufferings. Those who are insane are not insane as a rule through any fault of their own. It is an infliction which comes like other diseases. I understand the arguments which are often put for dissolving contracts through breaches of contract, but a husband or wife afflicted with incurable insanity has broken no contract. They are sufferers from misfortune. Traditionally in this country one takes one's partner, for better or worse, richer or poorer, till death do us part. Those who practice in the Divorce Court may have lowered the ideals of the marriage contract, and, although, if they were entering into the marriage contract, they could properly say to their partner, "Let us enter into this contract with our eyes open; it is a contract under the old traditional name of marriage but shows you and me that it may 1198 be terminated on such and such conditions whether you are responsible or not. "Nevertheless, the majority of our young people who enter marriage enter it with the old traditional concept of a life bond. And such is the fervour with which they approach the marriage state that I do not think that even a warning by the learned Recorder that certain events may dissolve the bond would remove from their young minds the idea that they were entering into an ancient and a life-honoured bond. One has to think of the many effects of the Bill. Its alleviation of immediate disttess may give rise to much lasting unhappiness. The children have a right to be considered in this matter. They have not chosen to come into the world, and, although their father may desire another partner to share his sorrows or his joys, it seems to me that for a court to be given the power to dissolve the union and the children not to have a right to say that they wish the union to be maintained, for they are an essential part of the union, is to shut one's eyes to the fundamental cause of the stability of this English State. For all our laws and all our customs in this country are based upon the assumption that the family is a unit. We have not yet reached the Russian state in which every person is considered as an isolated economic unit. We look upon the family as one, and he who hurts one in a family hurts the whole family. The children will receive lifelong harm if they go through life deprived of their rightful parentage through the act of this House.
Much of the efficient practice of the Bill will depend upon medical certification. It is distressful to me that my profession should be called in to add to those who, being unhappily married once, wish to enter upon that state afresh. Our work will, I hope, be divorced from this responsibility. We are told by the hon. and learned Gentleman who introduced this Bill that the law courts will function with their traditional carefulness. But it is common knowledge, and no reproach to the many eminent and learned lawyers in this House, that practice in the Divorce Court is not above suspicion. I look with some distress on the possibility that the weaker members.of our profession may be tempted to give certificates in the same way as those who keep hotels and boarding-houses are asked to 1199 furnish evidence for a divorce court. There is an atmosphere about the Divorce Courts which in itself condemns the process. Unpleasant as is a doctor's life, there will be an added unpleasantness if we may be tempted—I do not say that we shall fall, but we may be tempted—by managing clerks "just to consider this case a little more carefully," and perhaps to weigh down the scales against the suffering person unable to speak well for himself.
There is another aspect which I should like to bring to the attention of the House, and that is that one of the most beneficent advances in our care of lunatics in this country has been the ease with which, in remission of their illness, they are allowed to return to their own homes. That provision will, however, come to a dead end if this Bill goes through. We know the weakness of human nature, and we know that divorce is often not contemplated until a new partner is already upon the horizon. If a wife has been in an asylum and the husband has already an inkling to turn elsewhere to comfort himself, then that wife will not be invited to his home in the periods when she might properly go there. In other words, our asylum population, already too large, will be permanently increased, because by not withdrawing patients they may be kept in for the five years. That will hinder their recovery and make the probability of their certification even stronger.
Moreover, not all asylums are public asylums; many are private asylums where, at very high fees, lunatics are detained under certification under the best and most comfortable conditions. If, then you be the proprietor of a private asylum, depending upon your clients for your livelihood, you will be tempted to retain your patients beyond the allotted span if, by so doing, the five years can be completed. By being kept there in that atmosphere of insanity, those who were curable may slip further down the slope into the group of the incurables. Although the Law Courts function with singular 1200 skill, I would remind the House that the language of specialists in mental disease is indeed an esoteric language. I will not inflict the terms of the alienist upon the House, but it seems to me that even experienced lawyers and experienced judges will have the utmost difficulty in coming to right decisions—they can always come to some decision—if they are to be weighed down by the heavy and almost incomprehensible nomenclature of the alienist. A man needs an immersion in the special work of mental disease before he can be at home with its ever-changing terminology. The certificate which in black and white looks most formidable may, when analysed by an expert, prove to deal with very simple subjects. One knows that in the Divorce Courts opposition is often weak, and I conceive that under this Bill this evil will not be mitigated but great and grievous injustice will be done to the very weakest of our citizens, whose undefended state should make a strong appeal to the pity and compassion of this House. In Clause I we are told that: The Supreme Court of Judicature (Consolidation) Act, 1925, is hereby amended as follows:— That is no doubt most proper drafting, but to me as a layman it is chloroform. I am anaesthetised by having to concentrate my remarks within that title. I am not trained in the law; I am neither a lawyer nor a canonist, and what that means is Greek to me. It doubtless represents an Act, and a tradition—

§ Mr. KNIGHT
If the hon. Member will allow me to explain: The Section quoted [...]ets out the grounds on which a petition for divorce can be put in. What this Bill does is to add an additional ground as recommended by the Commission.