FAMOUS PARLIAMENTARIANS (MEMORIALS) (Hansard, 21 April 1953)

§ Dr. Horace King (Southampton, Test)

I desire to apologise to the Minister and the servants of the House because the action of the Leader of the House has made this debate so late. In July, 1950, I urged that Keir Hardie, whose contribution to Parliamentary democracy is of historical significance, should be honoured by some memorial in Parliament. No one spoke against my Motion; it was supported from both sides, but it has yet to be carried out. I think it would be regrettable that a tribute to the first Socialist figure in this House should have to wait for its implementation by a Socialist majority. I believe Hardie belongs to history, and a tribute to him in this House is overdue.

This morning I wish to raise a similar topic. We are inclined to take British freedom too much for granted. The Prime Minister and the Queen go about the country without a bodyguard. The Leader of the Opposition exists outside a State prison, and is part of the machinery of State. An hon. Member casually announces in a debate on the Civil List that he is a Republican. A back bencher cheekily interrogates or denounces a Minister of State without penalty. Parliament's own prison is always empty. There are no Russian purge trials, no American witchhunts.

Even in Britain political democracy is not perfect. Civil servants have only limited political rights, and the recent White Paper on the political rights of civil servants is a travesty of democracy. Local government employees may not stand for election to the bodies which employ them. The full panoply of freedom is denied to policemen. In Middlesex teachers are still submitted to political inquisitions by a "McCarthy" county council. Some day I hope all such limitations will go, and every citizen will enjoy the same political rights as any other citizen.

1132 We ought not to take our liberties lightly, and we should honour, whenever we can, those who endured suffering in this place to win us this great Parliamentary democracy. Yet, as we show visitors round the Palace, we are aware of great omissions of what ought to be the "Pantheon of Democracy," a "Palace of Freedom." In Westminster Hall, when we turn from its austere beauty to its historical mementoes, we are faced with plaques to Charles I, Strafford and Warren Hastings, whose contributions to democracy were, to speak kindly, negligible, and we turn with relief to show our visitors William Wallace, the only freedom-lover honoured there. The statues round St. Stephen's are almost a bowdlerised version of the fight for freedom. Worthy as were the men there celebrated, perhaps only Hampden and Selden are of democratic significance.

I am asking for memorials to three or four great Parliament men who suffered for freedom. But there were others whose names might be recorded today. Keighley, gaoled for presenting a Bill in 1301; Haxey, gaoled for wanting to cut down the Civil List of Richard II, and shamefully handed over by the frightened Commons; Thorpe, a Speaker, who was gaoled in 1453 and later executed; Yonge, gaoled in the same year; Strode, whose imprisonment gave us a Parliamentary law on freedom; Sir Thomas More, executed for saying, among other things, that no Parliament could make a law that God should not be God; Wilkes, a bad man who fought for good causes, and won the right of electors to elect whom they like, and of reporters to report what they like; and, of course, Simon de Montfort, the founder of Parliaments. These are true and great Parliament men, yet they have no memorial here, except their great work.

In 1376 the Commons met, as they used to then, across the way in the Chapter House. They sat around on benches, and Members would go to a lectern in the centre to speak. They began and ended their speeches with short Latin prayers—no doubt learnt by heart—possibly always the same one. They had been called to vote King Edward III his taxes, but they were determined not to be taxed until wrongs 1133 were put right. The tunes were evil, like Shelley's— An old mad blind despised and dying King Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know But leechlike to their fainting country cling. They chose Sir Peter de la Mare as their spokesman. He summed up each day's debates, gathered together all the grievances and then led the Commons to the Lords House in the Palace of Westminster. When he had got inside with one or two members, the doors were locked and the rest of the Members were shut out and turned away. He was curtly told to say what he had to say, but he refused until the doors were opened, and the rest of the Commons were found and permitted to come in.

In a number of dramatic interviews with the King's Ministers—all pure history—de la Mare attacked them face to face, and charged them with illegality and corruption. He brought with him a book, or roll, of Parliament laws, and said, "That which was made by Parliament should never be unmade, except by Parliament." He demanded an account of how the ministers had spent the money raised by taxes. Finally the demanded that the King's mistress be dismissed and his worst Ministers be imprisoned.

All this sounds fairly straightforward today. In those days—with 500 years of struggle for democracy ahead—it called for courage almost beyond description, and behind a brave spokesman a resolute House of Commons. They won, but their victory of this Parliament was shortlived. Within a twelvemonth its work was undone and de la Mare was imprisoned. It required the death of Edward III and almost a revolution from the people of London to set him free, and he became Speaker again under Richard II. Although he was the first Speaker we know of, he was no doubt the culmination of a long line of Commons leaders who had the dangerous task of voicing to tyrannical rulers the first upsurgings of a people who were creating even then the rough pattern of the modem Parliament. The courage of such men remains symbolised for all time in the reluctance with which you, Mr. Speaker, assumed the Chair on the day of your election—an office, which, if I may venture to say with profound respect, you are occupying with such distinction.

1134 Peter Wentworth's story is better known, and his worth will be even more appreciated when Professor Neale's great series of books on Elizabeth and her Parliaments is completed. In the reign of the first Elizabeth, Parliament, which had been emasculated by the earlier Tudors, was beginning to reassert itself. Elizabeth was clever enough—by blending cajolery and tyranny and supreme statesmanship—to control the Commons and so defer the real struggle until the heavier-footed Stuarts made civil war inevitable. Wentworth was the most illustrious back bencher of history. Other brave Elizabethan M.P.s spoke fearlessly about policy—about her marriage, about religion, about monopolies, and were sent to prison for short periods. There is a galaxy of great little men—Cope, Pistor, Strickland and others.

Wentworth struck deeper. He was interested in government itself, in Parliament as a democratic instrument. His first great speech in Parliament raised the right of the Commons to speak freely and to discuss all State business, and the need for the Queen to govern with the advice of Parliament and according to the law. I wish I had time to quote from this—one of the noblest ever made in this House. For it—and especially for daring to say that even Elizabeth had faults—he was examined by a Committee of Privy Councillors, whom he lectured on the rights of elected backbenchers and was sent to the Tower. He was released after some weeks. Elizabeth found that a taste of the Tower was enough for most rebels.

But some years later, when Parliament re-assembled, Wentworth immediately resumed his battle for a free Parliament and free debates. He was probably the first to raise a point of order—not an unmixed blessing. He raised about 10—questions on the conduct of debates of the House. They were fundamental, and included an attack on the Speaker, who at that time used to manipulate debates and motions according to instructions from the Queen and her Government. But he was never allowed to put his questions in the House, for he was again sent to the Tower. There he stayed for the Session.

Even this did not finish him. In the next Parliament Wentworth, who had by now organised the rudiments of a party 1135 in Opposition, and who held, or tried to hold, meetings of a shadow cabinet outside of Parliament, tried to promote a petition urging the Government to name Elizabeth's successor. He and his friends were arrested and examined, and Went-worth was again imprisoned in the Tower. There he stayed until he died a few years later. Had he at any time recanted he might have been a free man again. Went-worth was at least half a century ahead of his time, and I know of no M.P. who showed more courage, physical or moral.

I have not the time to tell the whole story of Sir John Eliot, who was leader of the Opposition in Charles I's early Parliaments. He was a Cornishman and Cornwall should be proud of him. Wentworth was a Cornish M.P., but I am proud to think he was a Yorkshire-man. Eliot's great work was a steady and persistent fight to regain the powers which Parliament had won and had then lost for a century—the right to have grievances put right before taxes were levied, and the right to censure and dismiss ministers. He was gaoled for his speeches in the House and in Westminster Hall. But Parliament, getting stronger, went on strike until he was freed. He was then imprisoned on trumped-up charges, but again released and, despite the efforts of powerful enemies, he was re-elected, and proved not only a great statesman, but also the noblest of Parliamentary leaders. He was the architect of the Petition of Right.

When Charles decided to get rid of Parliament—and he thought, for ever—he sent Eliot to the Tower. There he remained until he died, but, like Wentworth, he could have been freed if he had recanted. He chose to die, perhaps in the same dungeon as Wentworth. Before he died, Eliot had a portrait painted of his emaciated self, dying as he was of gaol consumption, and requested that it be hung in his house by the side of a portrait made when he was a free man, so that the world might know what a tyrant could do to the body of a democrat. But tyranny did nothing to his soul, and less than nothing to his work. I have not the time to speak of a fourth hero—John Pym, the greatest statesman of his century, who was buried in Westminster Abbey but cast out of it in the counter-revolution.

1136 These were mighty men. Their sufferings were part of the price paid for a free Parliament. Yet none of them is honoured here by any memorial. I am too young a Parliamentarian to make more than tentative suggestions, but I hope that the committee at work on the history of Parliament will let the country know, some day, of all the men who gave us freedom.

Somewhere in this Palace there ought to be a Hall of Freedom; a place to which visitors might go to see memorials and other tokens of the greatest story in British history—the story of the growth of Parliament; a Parliament Room. We should have here at least copies of Magna Carta, the Petition of Right—another place has it, but only Members' friends may see it—the Habeas Corpus Act, and the Bill of Rights. The great but inadequate series of historical paintings ought to be completed, or some of them replaced. We should commission artists to give us something of Simon de Montfort, of de la Mare leading the Commons in the Chapter House; of Wentworth in the Star Chamber, of Eliot in the Tower. There may be portraits of some of these worthies surviving somewhere in Britain. If so, we should make an effort to get them for the place they helped to create. If not, there should be memorials of some other kind.

To me, it is strange that we should find wall space for a host of insignificants of the corrupt 18th century when Parliament was hardly a Parliament at all, but a gang of mercenaries deserving all that Swift said about them in "Gulliver's Travels." For example, although we have a portrait of Mr. Speaker Trevor, who was expelled for bribery and corruption, we still exclude John Pym, a statesman with most of Cromwell's virtues and none of his faults. Outside, we have a statue to Cromwell, but he was not completely a good Parliamentarian. I could mention a dozen 19th century statues which could be sacrificed to make room for Keir Hardie.

I should be happy to think that the Minister of Works, whom I know to be enthusiastic and capable in his official duties, left behind him an improvement in the Palace by making it more representative of the drama and heroism of the history of the growth of a free Parliament 1137 than it is today. By all means let us have the pageantry, glamour and dignified spectacle that surrounds the Throne and another place, but let us also realise that there is a splendour outshining all pageantry in the story of how simple, courageous folk—burgesses and knights of the shire—built on this island a pattern of free living that is precious, as Went-worth said, "beyond all inestimable treasure."

We are living in a world epoch when all our basic freedoms, so hardly won, are in jeopardy. The images and stories of those who sacrificed to win those freedoms for us can inspire those inside and outside this House to guard them, and warn foolish reactionaries against the danger of tampering with them. For Wentworth also said that though the name of liberty is sweet, the thing itself is infinitely more precious.