Foreign News: New Parliament, Throne Speech

First work of the new House of Commons last week was to obey a Royal command to elect their Speaker. George V’s command was given by proxy in the neighboring House of Lords. Until the Speaker is elected, the Commons cannot sit as the House (with the Mace on the table) but only in committee (with the Mace under the table). In symbolic dumb show Clerk of the House Sir Horace Christian Dawkins began the time-honored mummery by taking his stand (not seat) in front of the empty Speaker’s chair. The Clerk asked nomination of a Speaker by pointing silently to a Conservative on a Government bench, Sir George Courthorpe.

Sir George, having no choice, nominated for re-election the previous Speaker (who is always renominated) aristocratic Captain Rt. Hon. Edward Algernon Fitzroy. He, by another custom, sat in compulsory “modesty” on an obscure Government back bench last week. Next the Clerk, still silent, swung his extended arm from Government to Opposition, pointed to Laborite Will Thome who promptly seconded the stereotyped nomination. It then became the duty of Nominator Sir George and Seconder Mr. Thorne to advance upon the modest Speaker designate and “drag him to the Chair.”

Some Speakers have put up a good fight, have actually been dragged scuffling and kicking to the exalted Chair. But Captain Fitzroy is of the blood royal, proud of his bastard descent from a Stuart King. When Sir George and Mr. Thorne made as though to lay hands on him, Speaker Fitzroy waved them back once, then walked between them while the whole House cheered to his presiding seat. From under the Speaker’s Table, Sergeant-at-Arms Admiral Sir Colin Keppel produced the mighty, gleaming Mace and laid it thereon. Right glad was Sir Colin, who failed to prevent a dastard Laborite from laying hands on the sacred Mace last year (TIME, July 28, 1930), that in the General Election this naughty varlet (Laborite John Beckett) lost his seat.

New Cabinet. At Speaker Fitzroy’s bidding the Lord President of the Council, Stanley Baldwin, led the House in orderly procession to sign the Roll (equivalent to swearing in). By the time 615 autographs had been affixed, the House was ready to adjourn. Parliament came to an abrupt standstill for several days while Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald put finishing touches to his revised National Government and wrote the Speech from the Throne later delivered by George V.

Because of the unprecedented Government majority of 493 in a House of 615, Government M. P.’s overflowed from their side of the House onto back benches opposite, held ordinarily by His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

In state on the Opposition front bench last week sat old George Lansbury, former First Commissioner of Works, the sole Laborite of Cabinet rank not to lose his Parliamentary seat in the election landslide. No Laborite looks to bumbling “Old George” as the Party’s real leader, but there was no one else who could be made its floor leader in the House last week. Meeting in caucus outside the House, Laborites re-elected as Party Leader “Uncle Arthur” Henderson who has lost his seat. For the time being Uncle Arthur is in the same boat as “Handsome Adolf” Hitler, leader of the German Opposition who cannot enter the Reichstag because he is an Austrian.

The new Cabinet, admirably “National” since it contains eleven Conservative, five National Liberal and four National Labor members:

Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, Ramsay MacDonald, National Laborite.

Lord President of the Council, Stanley Baldwin, Conservative.

Lord High Chancellor, Lord Sankey, National Laborite.

Lord Privy Seal, Philip Snowden, National Laborite.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, Conservative.

Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Sir Herbert Samuel. National Liberal.

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Sir John Simon, National Liberal.

Secretary of State for the Dominions, J. H. Thomas, National Laborite.

Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, Conservative.

Secretary of State for War, Viscount Hailsham, Conservative.

Secretary of State for India, Sir Samuel Hoare, Conservative.

Secretary of State for Scotland, Sir Archibald Sinclair, National Liberal.

Secretary of State for Air, Marquess of Londonderry, Conservative.

First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Bolton Eyres Monsell, Conservative.

President of the Board of Trade, Walter Runciman, National Liberal.

Minister of Health, Sir Hilton Young, Conservative.

President Board of Education, Sir Don ald Maclean, National Liberal.

Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Sir John Gilmour, Conservative.

Minister of Labor, Sir Henry Betterton, Conservative.

First Commissioner of Works, Rt. Hon. William Ormsby-Gore, Conservative.

Throne Speech, In his gilded coach & six George V clattered to Parliament, wrapped himself in regal robes, clapped on the Empire’s sparkling crown, grasped his sceptre and seated himself on Brit ain’s Throne in the House of Lords. Standing in a subway crush behind the bar of the House of Lords, eager M. P.’s squashed each other in their efforts to hear His Majesty read a speech written by Scot MacDonald: “My Lords, Mem bers of the House of Commons. . . . My Government is giving particularly close attention to . . . the approaching Disarmament Conference. . . .

“At the General Election . . . my ministers received a clear and emphatic mandate … to pursue a policy designed to re-establish . . . confidence in our financial stability and to frame plans for ensuring a favorable balance of trade.” Carefully the speech avoided saying that these “plans” would include tariff. His Majesty also announced that last year’s abortive economic conference of all British Dominion delegates at London will be resumed next year at Ottawa, added a pious allusion to the deadlocked Indian Round Table Conference: “It is my earnest prayer that the deliberations . . . may be crowned with success. . . .

“My Lords, and Members of the House of Commons … I pray the blessing of Almighty God may rest on your deliberations.”

Tariffs & Stickling. Neville Chamberlain, with his dark and feverish eyes, his husky voice and his cold, consuming passion for Empire, loomed last week as a Chancellor of the Exchequer not much less striking than crippled Philip Snowden, who as Lord Privy Seal now holds a mere sincere. Mr. Chamberlain affects neither the icy monocle of his Peace-Prizing halfbrother, Sir Austen, nor the blatant orchid boutonniere of their late, great father “Old Joe.” Neville used to be Lord Mayor of Birmingham, the Chamberlain family bailiwick. Once before he was Chancellor of the Exchequer but so briefly that he never brought in a budget (TIME, April 13). Recently, as Conservative campaign strategist, he rolled up the greatest party ma- jority in British history, won his right to demand the Exchequer as his Cabinet plum. Prime Minister MacDonald, a life-long free trader, knows that Chancellor Chamberlain will buckle a tariff belt of some sort around Mother Britain, cannot stop this unwelcome belting.

News that legally brilliant Sir John Simon had been made Foreign Secretary struck even his Liberal friends last week with some surprise. Sir John, in his great role as Chairman of the Indian Statutory Commission two years ago, made a hairsplitting, legalistic report on India which deliberately ignored St. Gandhi and the whole Indian National Congress. This report “missed the boat,” as Britons say, became obsolete before it was published. Last week the Liberal Manchester Guardian said of Liberal Sir John: “Foreign affairs require no less insight than Indian affairs. Qualities which make a great Foreign Secretary are not purely, perhaps not even chiefly, intellectual.”

Sir John’s appointment was widely considered “too high pay” for his feat in leading some 30 Liberals away from Lloyd George and into the National Government (TIME, Oct. 19).

Sir Herbert Samuel, who led an equally large bloc of Liberals to Scot MacDonald, was rewarded last week with the Home Office. His Liberal bloc met in caucus during the week, elected him leader of what hereafter will be the Liberal Party. David Lloyd George, from whom all but four Liberal M. P.’s— have bolted, sourly announced on the eve of Leader Sir Herbert’s election that he, Mr. Lloyd George, was “not a candidate.”

Studying the entire Cabinet, observers noted that every key post is held by an experienced, middle-of-the-road politician. Right and Left extremists have been excluded. In finance the new National Gov-ernment’s line is clearly Protection in foreign affairs. In Indian affairs Scot Mac-Donald maintained the status quo (an Anglo-Indian deadlock) by appointing as Secretary of State for India, Sir Samuel Hoare, already British representative at the deadlocked Indian Round Table Conference.

*Himself, his daughter, his son and his son’s brother-in-law.