Bernard Weatherill, the best Commons speaker I have seen

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The speakership of the Commons tends to be appointed on the basis of Buggins' Turn. Which is fine until there is a crisis, when a second-rate speaker will be exposed.

Michael Martin was not up to dealing with the scandal over MPs expenses: now Lindsay Hoyle has been exposed by his failure to deal with Boris Johnson's contempt for parliament.

The best speaker I can recall is Bernard Weatherill, who combined wisdom with old-fashioned courtesy and had no wish to be a "character". He served from 1983 to 1992.

There was a story about him that I have long known, and now I have a source for it I can post it here.

Peter Viggers, then the Conservative MP for Gosport, told it when the Commons was paying its tribute to Weatherill after his death in 2007:

For a while after the election of every Speaker, there is a period when the House wonders what kind of stamp or mark they will put on the House, so for a few weeks after the election of Mr. Speaker Weatherill the House was wondering how he would be as Speaker. 

During that period, there was a vigorous debate - it was a noisy event - and a very much loved, popular Member on the Labour Benches, Eric Heffer, was in full flow. 

If Eric Heffer had a fault, it was that he had a bit of a temper. He was being baited mercilessly by one of our younger whippersnappers on the opposite side of the House. Eventually, Heffer completely lost his cool, spun round and shouted, “Shut up, you stupid git!” 

From the Chair, Mr. Speaker Weatherill said, "Order, order. I think I’m meant to say that."

28 February in Liberal England history

So what has this blog been concerned with on what is usually the last day of February?

2021

Rosalind Franklin, the neglected pioneer of our understanding of DNA, turned out to be the great niece of the Liberal Party leader Herbert Samuel. 

2020

This was, I had worked out, the 51st anniversary of my only West End appearance in the Danny La Rue show Queen Passionella and the Sleeping Beauty - I was one of the children asked up on to the stage halfway through::

My strongest memory of the evening, apart from my own performance, is of Danny La Rue coming out in front of the curtain, as himself, and announcing that someone had died and singing his own signature tune "On Mother Kelly's Doorstep" as a tribute to him. 

I have tried to make sense of this memory in recent years, assuming that the person who had died was the writer of the song. But on investigation he turned out to be George Stevens, and he died in 1954. 

Then a few days ago I heard Barry Humphries on Desert Island Discs. One of the records he chose was "On Mother Kelly's Doorstep, as sung by Randolph Sutton. 

Sure enough, Wikipedia tells us that Sutton made a famous recording of the song and died on 28 February 1969. Which dates my first and last West End performance to within a day or two.

In fact, as I say at the end of this post, it dates it exactly to 28 February 1969, when I would have been eight years old.

2019

Francis Young wrote a guest post on the undiscovered treasure trove that is the work of forgotten Victorian folklore collectors:

The digitisation of local newspapers and Victorian pamphlets, making them searchable, is bringing much lost folklore recording to light, and we are currently living through a golden age of folklore research – not because there is still traditional folklore to be collected (in most cases there is not), but because folklore collected over a hundred years ago is finally emerging from the shadows.

2018

I did not post on 28 February, but the day before I had posted a picture of the wonderful Musical Ruth in sharing the news that there would be no Arts Fresco street theatre festival in Market Harborough in the summer.

2017

Good news! I had found another video about the disused railway from Oswestry to Welshpool.

2016

I compared The Boy in Striped Pyjamas with I Am David - a book that I read as a child in the 1960s:

The Boy in Striped Pyjamas reflects the modern belief that moral education involves the young being taught about the Holocaust and being able to recite the correct lessons from it. It also reflects the high status we give to victimhood. ...

I am David was written in a different era. It is not about death, but about escape, moral growth and the finding of happiness.

2015

Dangerous Minds had posted a new documentary on Nick Drake and his music. In posting it on here I quoted them:

Other than a few childhood home movies, no film footage of Nick Drake exists. So director Berkven had to create a sense of Drake through other means. That he succeeds is quite remarkable. 

He is enormously helped by Nick’s mother Molly. Her own music uncannily evokes her son’s and creates a deeply emotional dimension to A Skin Too Few.

2014

Cat of the Day came from here in Little Bowden.

2013

Richard Ingrams believed Ian Hislop  had been editing Private Eye for too long and I agreed with him:

Perhaps part of the Eye's appeal is precisely that it is the same every time. But while I still value its reporting and gossip, its humour pages do seem stale. Perhaps it needs some new contributors, if not a new editor?

But he ignored both of us.

2012

I remembered a ghost story from Much Wenlock in Shropshire:

This photograph shows Raynalds Mansion in Much Wenlock, where I went several times in the 1990s for the Festival at the Edge. The half-timbered front dates from the 17th century, but the building behind it is much older.

One year I joined a guided walk around the town. Outside Raynalds Mansion we were told the story of some children who were evacuated to the town and housed here during World War II.

On the first morning they came downstairs and demanded to know who the children in funny clothes they had been playing with were.

2011

These were the days when blogging still seemed important and Liberal Democrat Voice ran interviews with party bloggers. Today was my turn:

I realised that I was not a Socialist ... when Boxmoor County Primary School demanded a letter from your parents before you were allowed not to have custard with your pudding.

2010

28 February fell on a Sunday this year, so I posted a music video. And a rather good one too.

2009

This was the era of blog carnivals, including the Carnival of Modern Liberty, which I once hosted here.

This time it was the turn of Liberal Conspiracy and James Graham.

2008

And this was the era when the Liberal Democrats had their only weekly newspaper and I wrote a column for it.

This week it was about Michael Martin, the Commons speaker who was undone by the scandal over MPs' expenses:

Labour backbenchers broke the modern convention that the position should alternate between the Labour and Conservative parties to install him. In 2000 there was a strong feeling amongst them that a house with a large Labour majority should have a Labour Speaker. Such a partisan launch to his career was never going to make things easy for him when the time came to rule on contentious questions.:

2007

I had gone all intellectual, contributing the entry on Karl Popper to the newly published Dictionary of Liberal Thought.

2006

It was time for an anecdote about Sir Alan Ayckbourn, who is famous for living in Scarborough and opening all his plays there:

Ayckbourn was walking along the front there one day, when he was accosted by a stranger.

Mr Ayckbourn, isn't it?

It is.

I was looking at the paper the other day and I noticed that you have two plays running in the West End.

Yes, that's right.

I hope you don't mind me saying so, but you must be doing quite well out of that.

Yes, I suppose I am.

Mr Ayckbourn, there's one thing that's always puzzled me. If you got all this money, why don't you live in Bridlington?

2005

I had been to the Commons press gallery:

On the way I passed the Fathers 4 Justice demonstrators (Batman, Robin and Captain America) who had found a perch on the Foreign Office building in Whitehall.

My taxi driver said he supported their cause but not their tactics. He said that if everyone just ignored them they would have to stop this sort of stunt.

He also pointed out that Robin was wearing a coat over his costume, so he was not as heroic as all that.

Keith Vaz eyes the speaker's chair

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"Keith Vaz has two ambitions. He is hoping that he will get a knighthood, and he would like to be the next speaker. 

"You can tell this by the way he is slavishly applauding the new Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, at Parliamentary Labour party meetings. He also seems to be tempering his criticism of the Tories."

So says an unnamed Labour MP in a new story on Exaro.

A similarly unnamed Conservative MP adds there:

"There is no question that Keith Vaz fancies the job of speaker as he is very ambitious. He is very well connected and very friendly with the current speaker."

The idea of Vaz as speaker comes straight from a Trollope novel, but this is not the first time it has been floated.

In December 2013 the Telegraph told us:

Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Home Affairs select committee, has emerged as a surprise contender to be the next Speaker of the House of Commons. MPs confirmed that the Labour MP's name has been doing the rounds as a possible replacement for John Bercow, who is due to stand down in the middle of the next Parliament.

We can only pray for the preservation of Lindsay Hoyle.

But be warned. The Commons can do strange things when it comes to choosing a speaker,

In 2000 the two front benches wanted Sir George Young to succeed Betty Boothroyd, but the swollen ranks of Labour backbenchers decided that a Labour house required a Labour speaker.

So Michael Martin was hoisted into the chair and sat there, red faced and scowling, until the expenses scandal meant his inadequacies could no longer be tolerated.

The problem with John Bercow

#88495982 / gettyimages.com

Back in March 2010, when John Bercow had been in the Speaker's chair for less than a year, I wrote in Liberal Democrat News:

With his gown and boyish smile, John Bercow resembles a progressive young master in an old-fashioned school. And like a lot of masters who want to be popular with their pupils, he has trouble keeping order. 

You can trace his problems back to the undistinguished reign of Michael Martin. Often Buggins’ turn will get you through, but when the expenses storm broke over Westminster Martin proved to have none of the qualities needed to restore its standing in the eyes of the public. 

Trouble was, there was no way of getting rid him other than public ridicule. And in that process the authority, the mystique, of the Speakership took a battering too. 

Then there was the way Bercow got the job. When the election of the new Speaker took place David Cameron was riding high in the polls and many Labour MPs assumed they would soon lose their seats. What better way of getting back at an incoming Conservative House, those Labour MPs reasoned, than landing it with someone it would detest? 

And Bercow, though he started out as secretary of the Monday Club's immigration and repatriation committee, had been long been courting Labour backbenchers with an eye to the Speakership. He did it so blatantly that he became widely disliked on his own side. 

So we again have a Speaker who is not respected by many MPs, which has done nothing to rebuild the standing of the role.

Michael Martin had been elected as Speaker when the bookies' favourite had been Sir George Young, largely because Labour backbenchers believed a House dominated by their party should have a Labour speaker.

As I pointed out in another Lib Dem News column:

There is, incidentally, another reason why Sir George Young lost, and it tells you a lot about Labour backbenchers. They could forgive Bercow for being the former secretary of the Monday club's immigration and repatriation committee, but they could not forgive Young for being an Old Etonian.

To return to the first column, I was right to say he reminds you of a schoolmaster. But what he really reminds me of is the sort of teacher you find immensely impressive when you are 17, but are disappointed by if you meet them in later life. (It was David Grace who made this observation about teachers to me.)

That is the real problem with John Bercow, though many liberals will support his attempts to modernise the Commons. He comes across as a permanent undergraduate.

Eight years in eight posts

Memes were all the rage in the early days of blogging, but they seem to have died out. Which is a shame, as they were one way new bloggers could tell us something about themselves and feel they were joining the club.

So well done to Caron's Musings for starting a new meme - Five Years in Five Posts - looking at what she was writing at roughly this time of year over the last five years. Already Jennie Rigg, a certain fluffy elephant and Nicholas Whyte have taken up the challenge.

As I have been blogging for far too long, my version will be Eight Years in Eight Posts. Wherever possible I have chosen a post from 15 May itself...

15 May 2011. I celebrated 12-year-old Chris Whitehead's actions in going to school in a skirt to protest against not being allowed to wear shorts and took the opportunity to reproduce a few paragraphs from an essay on children's rights I wrote in 2006.

15 May 2010. I took readers to see the Clegg family pyramid in the Ukraine.

15 May 2009. In a House Points column for Liberal Democrat news I argued that Michael Martin was the worst Speaker in modern times.

15 May 2008. The leader of the Labour group on Sefton District Council won my Overblown Claim of the Week award.

15 May 2007. A short post sent you to information about the 11 people known to have been killed by earthquakes in Britain.

15 May 2006. In a post entitled "A lion has eaten our Oaten" I documented another stage in the decline of the then Lib Dem MP for Winchester.

15 May 2005. I pointed out how little Labour's banning of fox hunting had been raised on the doorstep during the recent general election campaign - even in Market Harborough.

16 May 2004. A news story about a Thameslink train driver who caused two terror alerts when he mistook a didgeridoo for a grenade launcher caught my attention.

Thanks to Caron for the idea. I think it has caught this blog's concerns and eccentricities rather well.

Chris Bryant reminds us that our liberties are not safe with Labour

One of the least creditable episodes of the last parliament was the arrest of the shadow minister Damian Green and the subsequent search of his office in the Palace of Westminster.

I discussed it in rather eccentric terms in a House Points column at the time:

Settle down, class. Open Calder’s History of England and we shall read about Charles I and the Five Members. Tompkins, you start: 

Parliament then passed a law that gave members control over the King's ministers. Charles I was furious and decided it was time to take action. On 4 January 1642, he arrived at Westminster with a great company of armed men to arrest Arthur Huggl… Hig... 

"Haselrig," you ignorant boy. 

Arthur Haselrig, John Pym, John Hampden, Denzil Holles and William Strode who were all MPs whom he regarded as troublemakers. The five men managed to escape before the soldiers arrived. 

When the king demanded to know where the Five Members were the Speaker, Michael Martin replied: "Help yourself, laddie. They are hiding in yon stationery cupboard." He then rolled on his back, waved his paws and asked: "Is there any chance of a peerage just now?" 

That will do, Tompkins. Sometimes I wonder about the Headmaster’s choice of textbooks. 

Because, of course, Charles encountered not Speaker Martin but Speaker Lenthall. And Lenthall famously replied: "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your Majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me."

Green's arrest was mentioned on Twitter today by the Labour MP Chris Bryant. He is still indignant about it, but not in the way you might expect...

A reminder that our liberties are not safe with Labour. There are plenty of countries where opposition politicians do fear arrest, but we do not want Britain to be one of them.

Why don't the Tories come clean on Lord Ashcroft's tax status?

Sir George Young has always seemed one of the more decent Conservatives. I felt sorry for him when Michael Martin was hoisted into the Speaker's chair ahead of him because of unthinking backbench determination that a Labour House should have a Labour Speaker.

But his performance on the Today programme this morning, where he twisted and turned every way to avoid giving a straight answer on Lord Ashcroft's tax status, was embarrassing. It will be hard to regard him in the same light after that.

The Guardian website has a transcript of this interview, together with excerpts from several others in which senior Tories have been similarly evasive on the subject.

If he is paying tax, they would surely say so. But these clumsy attempts to avoid the question are only making journalists more intrigued. So if an admission that Lord Ashcroft is not paying UK tax does eventually come, the Conservatives have ensured that it will receive maximum publicity.

I am genuinely puzzled by their approach.

Daily Telegraph: Officials colluded over MPs' mortgage claims

Doing the best to speed the Speaker on his way, tomorrow's Daily Telegraph reports:

Parliamentary authorities, overseen by Michael Martin, the Speaker, gave secret permission for some MPs to over-claim for thousands of pounds in home loan interest in deals that led to the systematic abuse of the taxpayer-funded expenses system.

Mr Speaker Martin replies to Nick Clegg

Here.

Guardian says Speaker Martin to go before next election

From the Guardian website this evening:

Michael Martin will stand down as Speaker by the next gener al election after senior Labour figures warned his position was becoming "not tenable".

As MPs prepare to table a no confidence motion against him next week, friends of Martin say he is making plans for his resignation and wants to go on his own terms.

Lord Foulkes, who has been a friend of Martin's since they were elected in 1979, said it was "logical" for him to stand down in the next year. Martin, 63, will have been Speaker for 10 years next year.

It sounds like an attempt to buy off the current moves to get rid of him at once.

Later. The Daily Mail says the men in grey suits will go to see him next week:

One senior MP said Mr Martin had the "hide of a rhino", but lacked "political antennae".

House Points: The worst Speaker of modern times

My House Points column from Liberal Democrat News.

Speaker cornered

The 19th century journalist Walter Bagehot famously divided the British constitution into its dignified and efficient parts. At its best, the role of Commons Speaker fulfils both these roles. But with Michael Martin in the chair it is neither dignified nor efficient.

It was not just that, in Nick Clegg’s words, “the Speaker got it wrong, very wrong” on Monday. His performance was the most embarrassing thing seen at Westminster in living memory. He spectacularly misjudged the public mood over MPs´ expenses, positioning himself as a shop steward defending his members’ perks rather than a wise elder who could lead them out of the current crisis.

He was appallingly rude to both Kate Hoey and Norman Baker, not even allowing them to finish their points of order before he attacked them.

And it was particularly crass of Martin to tell Hoey that “some of us in this House have other responsibilities". When the storm over the police search of Damian Green’s office broke, he ducked his responsibilities and sought to blame everything on the Serjeant-at-Arms.

He is lucky she didn’t clock him one with the mace.

I have written before that the West of Scotland Labour Party seldom represents the intellectual flower of the Scottish nation. Michael Martin is a particularly instructive example of this truth. He is uncertain when reading the words the clerks have put in front of him and almost incoherent when forced to think on his feet.

Our fashion expert writes: If your head goes a lurid shade of puce when you get angry, it is not a good idea to be the first male Speaker to dispense with a wig.

Now the Tory backbencher Douglas Carswell is threatening to put down a motion of no confidence in Michael Martin. He has not yet tabled it, but has been told by Commons clerks that his proposed wording is in order.

This is a startling development – unthinkable under any recent speaker. Yet on Tuesday Carswell told the Guardian that he hopes to have collected half a dozen signatures by the end of next week.

Martin may yet limp on until the general election, but whatever happens he is doomed to go down as the worst Speaker of modern times.

Speaker Martin on the brink

The Daily Mail says that Michael Martin will face a no confidence next week.

And the Guardian says that his attempts to prevent information about the work of MPs becoming known go even further that we realised.

Note the class card being played at the end of that report by an unnamed Labour MP.

Commons Table Office approves text of motion calling on Speaker to quit

Following today's embarrassing performance by Michael Martin, the Tory MP Douglas Carswell has put down a Commons motion calling on him to go.

On his blog Carswell says that the Table Office has approved the text of a suitable motion.

The police and Daniel Kawczynski

Michael Crick has more on the police visit to Daniel Kawczynski office. He writes:

The reaction to the story has been pretty unanimous - that Mr Kawczynski is a rather eccentric though amiable figure, and grossly over-reacted. (Some have used stronger and more abusive language).

I now wonder, however, whether the media, the Speaker and The Conservative Party have been unfair to him, and whether there were indeed quite important principles at stake. Worse than that, did the police abuse their position?

Crick reproduces in full statements by two youthful members of Kawczynski's staff who were present when the police arrived. Read them and judge for yourself whether the lofty defender of Otis Ferry has been traduced.

Iain Dale reports that Michael Martin has refused to meet Kawczynski. But surely that is precisely what the Speaker is paid to do, if only to put a fatherly arm around Kawczynski's shoulders and tell him to stop being such a fool.

Should the Speaker be popular with ministers?

I think not. A good Speaker will stand up for backbench rights and thus make himself or herself unpopular with the government.

So a Guardian headline like

Ministers rush to defend Speaker after MPs' public rebuke

just confirms the view that Michael Martin was appointed as a Labour Speaker for a Labour house.

House Points: Speaker Martin and the Five Members

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News. In the event, Mr Speaker did not surprise us.

Open House

Settle down, class. Open Calder’s History of England and we shall read about Charles I and the Five Members. Tompkins, you start:

Parliament then passed a law that gave members control over the King's ministers. Charles I was furious and decided it was time to take action. On 4 January 1642, he arrived at Westminster with a great company of armed men to arrest Arthur Huggl… Hig...

"Haselrig," you ignorant boy.

Arthur Haselrig, John Pym, John Hampden, Denzil Holles and William Strode who were all MPs whom he regarded as troublemakers. The five men managed to escape before the soldiers arrived.

When the king demanded to know where the Five Members were the Speaker, Michael Martin replied: "Help yourself, laddie. They are hiding in yon stationery cupboard." He then rolled on his back, waved his paws and asked: "Is there any chance of a peerage just now?"

That will do, Tompkins. Sometimes I wonder about the headmaster’s choice of textbooks.

Because, of course, Charles encountered not Speaker Martin but Speaker Lenthall. And Lenthall famously replied: "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your Majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me."

If the current Speaker had shown a thousandth of that courage and independence when the police asked to search Damian Green’s office last week he would have redeemed his reputation overnight. He would have gone from being seen as an undignified and faintly partisan figures to being greeted as a hero of British liberty.

Now that reputation may be beyond salvage. By the time you read this he will have made a statement to the Commons explaining his part in the affair. But another leak suggests the line he will take has been thrashed out at a meeting to which only Labour politicians were invited.

Mr Speaker may yet surprise us. I hope he does. But I fear that, for the rest of his time in the chair, he will not be sitting comfortably.

And nor will Tompkins if I see him poke Ellsworth-Beast Minor again.

Michael Martin blames the Serjeant At Arms

Not a very edifying performance, was it?

Fraser Nelson at the Spectator Coffee House blog asks some searching questions.

Speaker Martin: "He's Spartacus"

Speaker Lenthall, 1642

"May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your Majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me".

Speaker Martin, 2008

"Help yourself, his office is down the corridor."

People used to behave that, true to his earlier working life, Michael Martin used to behave more like a shop steward for MPs than a Speaker. They won't be saying that any more.

Incidentally, one of the five members Lenthall was protecting was Arthur Haselrig. At the height of the Lib Dem hegemony in Market Harborough, the Tories had to bring in two members of the Hazelrigg (as it is now spelt) family from distant Noseley Hall to fight and lose town seats.

It is sad to see a good radical family fallen so low.

Shropshire MP barred from taking cow to Palace of Westminster

I don't make these stories up, you know. This one is in the Shropshire Star:

Shropshire MP Daniel Kawczynski had a beef with the Commons authorities because they have refused to let him take a cow into the parliamentary precincts.

The Shrewsbury & Atcham MP sought permission to take one of his constituent’s cattle to Westminster as part of a demonstration by farmers later this month.

The animal was to have been used to illustrate the threat from bovine tuberculosis to Britain’s dairy industry, but the Tory MP has been told cows are not among the few animals allowed on to the premises.

Mr Kawczynski’s request went right to the top - to Commons Speaker Michael Martin, who confirmed that the Palace of Westminster is a no-go area for cattle.

But it may not be quite as Ealing Comedy as it sounds. In Conservative circles a demand for something to be done about bovine TB usually translates as "Gas All Badgers Now".

House Points: Mr Speaker Martin

My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News.

Mr Speaker Martin

It’s true. Much of the whispering campaign against the Speaker is based on nothing more than snobbery. ‘Gorbals Mick’ is a silly and insulting nickname, not least because Michael Martin comes from a quite different part of Glasgow.

But then you suspect that Britain north of Potters Bar is a foreign country to the sketchwriter of the Daily Mail. And if you had been forced to go through life called Quentin, you would have a deep bitterness about class too.

More than that, no civilised person thinks less of a man because he comes from a humble background. Quite the reverse. Someone from a poor family who gets on in Britain has probably had to be twice as good as the competition. Sad to say, that is more certain today than it was 40 years ago.

But hold on. Martin is not the first Speaker from such a background. And it was never an issue with George Thomas or Betty Boothroyd. Bernard Wetherall was positively loved for his humble beginnings in his father’s tailoring business. So Martin's problems go deeper than his origins.

The first of them is that Labour backbenchers broke the modern convention that the position should alternate between the Labour and Conservative parties to install him. In 2000 there was a strong feeling amongst them that a house with a large Labour majority should have a Labour Speaker. Such a partisan launch to his career was never going to make things easy for him when the time came to rule on contentious questions.

Then there is his background – not his class background but his political background. It is fair to say that the West of Scotland Labour Party rarely represents the intellectual flower of the Scottish nation. The skills that enable you to fight your way to the top of that particularly greasy pole may not have much wider appeal.

And Martin’s background as a shop steward, which did so much to endear him to his Labour colleagues, may not be helpful when MPs privileges and ingenuity with expense claims are coming under question.

Still, Michael Martin did show one deft touch this week. He managed to avoid being in the chair when Dangerous Ed Davey had himself thrown out of the chamber.