“I was delighted,” said my boss back in 1982, “to have dinner yesterday evening with Mr. Speaker.” I wasn’t surprised. He was very high, an Edinburgh consultant general physician, a breed now all but extinct. The unit had four consultants, the other three being respectively a neurologist, a cardiologist, and a liver specialist, all of some renown. I was a Senior House Officer (now known as Foundation Year 2), attached to the unit for six months, and I remember early on my boss asking me where I was from, and what my father did. I told him I was from Glasgow, and my father a retired policeman.
“Oh.”
I thought he was just making small talk. I had no idea he was trying to place me, socially. I have an idea that my bosses at the various Edinburgh hospital units in which I worked thought I came from a higher social caste than I actually did. I peppered my conversation quite unconsciously with Scots words like “scunnered” or “wabbit” or “glaikit”, and they thought I was being ironic and highly amusing, whereas I was just, like, talking normal. I must say they all treated me with great kindness, much as I would guess Robert Burns was received by the Edinburgh literati, 200 years before I paced the wards in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. I expect the manners of the New Town have barely changed in the interim. “You must come and meet Rabbie! He has a beguiling turn of phrase! A little uncouth, of course…”
One morning I arrived on the ward to hear from the Ward Clerk that the consultant neurologist, a heavy smoker, had dropped dead, as smokers do. I had the unenviable task of breaking the news to my boss. I knew they were very close. I remember his immediate reaction was to take out a tiny diary, study it closely, and muse, “That’s going to complicate the on-call roster.” Then I informed the consultant cardiologist, who turned as white as a sheet and said, “S*** a brick.”
But I digress. I really wanted to talk about Mr Speaker, various Messrs Speaker, and a Madame Speaker. Speakers are elected by consensus, and there’s a bit of ritualistic dumb-crambo when the elected figure is hauled with faux-reluctance by a cross party posse out of the back benches and manhandled into the Speaker’s chair. The Speaker takes up residence in a rather opulent grace-and-favour apartment within the Palace of Westminster, Speaker’s House, and until recently was expected to wear anachronistic apparel with wigs, breeches and the like. My consultant’s Mr Speaker was George Thomas (1976 – 83), subsequently Lord Tonypandy, who had succeeded Selwyn Lloyd, and was in turn succeeded by Bernard Weatherill (1983 – 92), and then Betty Boothroyd (1992 – 2000). If I remember little about them it was because I was completely swallowed up in the world of Medicine, and in any case I spent most of the last fifteen years of the twentieth century abroad. But in addition, these Speakers, while being colourful characters, avoided publicity and made themselves invisible, essentially by chairing a prolonged committee meeting for the most part with dispassion and even-handedness.
But as we moved into the twenty-first century the Speakers began to encounter difficulties. Michael Martin (2000 – 2009) became associated with the MPs expenses scandal. Essentially he was a scapegoat, as he had presided over MPs’ outlandish claims for the upkeep of moats, duck ponds and the like, and eventually he had to resign. He was referred to disparagingly as “Gorbals Mick”, a misnomer as his constituency was actually north of the Clyde, in Springburn. But in any case “Mick” is a highly offensive term for a Roman Catholic. MPs can be remarkably tin-eared.
John Bercow (2009 – 19) eventually succumbed to accusations of bullying. His last days resembled the fall of the Roman Empire. Brexit was the issue of the day, and for about two years the BBC news was interrupted by the chants of hecklers on College Green. Interactions across the House became increasingly fractious. “This Parliament,” bellowed the Attorney-General, “is a dead Parliament!” It was like the Monty Python dead parrot sketch.
The appointment of Sir Lindsay Hoyle as Speaker was an attempt to give the role back to a safe pair of hands. But there were remarkable scenes in the House of Commons last week. There is something deeply ironic in the idea that a debate supposedly seeking, temporarily or otherwise, a sensation of hostilities in the Middle-East, should have descended into chaos in an atmosphere of bitter acrimony. Blessed are the peacemakers. Ha! Over the years we have watched, with smug disdain, schadenfreude, and even hilarity, footage of Parliaments in various corners of the world descending into anarchy. The representatives have a fist fight. Or the military Junta of a Latin-American country suddenly bursts in on the scene firing pistols into the air and, as the parliamentarians take cover under the desks, declares martial law. The military are dressed garishly in outlandish uniforms, often with ridiculous headwear. We say they belong to a “banana republic”, an expression which I forecast will shortly become taboo. It is, after all, an affront to bananas. George Orwell parodied the stereotypical English notion of Johnnie Foreigner, across the water, “jabbering and gesticulating”, while within these islands our leaders calmly and serenely epitomised the great triad of Britishness: parliamentary democracy, fair play, and the rule of law.
No longer. Our parliamentarians have become the jabberers and gesticulators. It’s a grave matter when we can no longer take our representatives seriously. Parliament needs to be placed in Special Measures.
jamescalumcampbell 