by John Buchan
For the democracies, which then included Germany, it was a dull world. The grandiose experiment in Russia had taken away all interest from the socialism which was merely academic. Except in America, which seemed to be in a fair way to rake in the wealth of the globe, the ordinary man was struggling with private problems so difficult that he had no time for public affairs. The high post-War visions had gone, and the prevalent mood was, at the best, a stoical resolution.
“Life still
Leaves human efforts scope.
But, since life teems with ill,
Nurse no extravagant hope;
Because thou must not dream, thou need’st not then despair.”
I
In those six years I did not quite rid myself of political interests. I had some office or other in many of the Oxford undergraduate clubs, and on Sunday afternoons a multitude of young men used to come to tea. There was a legend in the family that wherever one went on the globe one would meet somebody who had been to Elsfield. These guests were of every type — Blues, hunting men, scholars, Union orators, economists, poets — and of every creed from Jacobitism to communism. We discussed politics, and I was often asked to advise about careers, so perforce I had to keep in touch with the political world. More than once I was offered a constituency, and when it was proposed that I should follow Mr. Bonar Law in Central Glasgow I had to give the matter serious thought. Early in 1927 Sir Henry Craik, the senior Member for the Scottish Universities, died, and I was invited to succeed him. It was the kind of constituency which suited me, for I was warned that my health would not stand the ordinary business of electioneering. In the election which ensued I was opposed by a socialist who forfeited his deposit. In the eight years of my membership I had only to face one other contested election, when I was returned by a very large majority.
It would be hard to imagine a more perfect seat. The electors were the graduates of the four Universities, St. Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. The method was proportional representation, the voting was by post, and the constituents were scattered all over the world. I was never asked for a favour — rarely even to procure a seat in the Members’ Gallery. Except on the Prayer Book question no constituent ever cavilled at my doings. They gave me perfect confidence and the amplest freedom. I was elected as a Conservative, for, believing in party government, I disliked the name of Independent. But I held that a university member should sit a little loose to parties, and I was independent in fact if not in name.
I had often listened to parliamentary debates, but it is one thing to be in the gallery and quite another to be on the floor of the House. My historical reading had given me a reverence for parliamentary tradition, and I was not disillusioned. On paper the whole lay-out is absurd. There are seats for only about three-fourths of the members, and these seats are uncomfortable the ventilation leaves the head hot and the feet cold; half the time is spent in dragging wearily into and out of lobbies, voting on matters about which few members know anything; advertising mountebanks can waste a deal of time; debates can be as dull as a social science congress in the provinces, which, according to Matthew Arnold, filled the soul with “an unutterable sense of lamentation and mourning and woe.” But speeches are shorter and of a far higher quality than in any other legislative assembly with which I am acquainted, and, while many members recite pieces for the benefit of their local papers, there are hours of close debating, and now and then a high emotional scene.
But I was puzzled at first to account for its repute. The practical business of law-making and administration would have been better and more speedily done by a committee of civil servants or industrialists, or, for that matter, by the notable experts to be found in the House of Lords. On the side of general policy and principles a group of professors would have provided more illuminating discussions. There are few real experts, and these few were not regarded too respectfully, except now and then on service questions. The debates were confessedly and intentionally the work of amateurs. What made it all so impressive and, in its way, so effective Partly the long tradition behind it. As one looked round the members one reflected that men just like them, no better informed or abler, had preserved our liberties and helped to build our Empire. The House wrought under the august canopy of its past. Partly the tremendous practical importance of those often limp debates. A decision set a huge machine in motion and influenced the lives of millions. But chiefly, I think, the fact that the House was truly representative. It was the people of Britain who were governing, not a batch of supermen. Those halting dogmas, those shy heroics, those sudden outbursts of hard sense were precisely the thoughts and emotions of the ordinary man, whom Burke believed to be in the long run wiser than his leaders. Beyond doubt the House was a microcosm of the people.
Nevertheless I have seldom disliked anything so much as speaking in it. It was like addressing a gathering of shades, who might at any moment disappear into limbo unless they were clutched by the hair. I felt that nobody wanted to listen to me, that I was only tolerated out of courtesy, and that each of my hearers was longing for me to sit down that he might himself be called. Only on rare occasions did I have an audience with which I felt at ease. On public platforms I was fairly happy, but not often in Parliament.
Yet I was fortunate, and was always well treated. My maiden speech, delivered two months after my election, was something of an occasion. The Lord Chancellor had introduced in the Lords a bill to amend the Parliament Act, which proposed a reformed Second Chamber and the restoration of certain powers lost in 1911. To me and to many of the younger Conservatives this seemed to be a policy which would rouse endless controversy in the country. The Parliament Act was working well enough, and we did not believe in the cry about the need for barriers against revolution; if the people really wanted revolution no paper safeguards could stop them. I arranged to make my début in the Commons on Lord Cave’s proposal, and to my consternation my purpose was advertised beforehand in the Press, so that I had a double reason for nervousness. I lunched that day, I remember, with Mr. Neville Chamberlain, who said that he thanked heaven that no such fate had befallen him.
When the moment came it was worse even than I had feared. I spoke fourth, in the tea hour, and rose in an almost empty House. I had prepared a careful speech, but my first sentences sounded duller than human nature could bear, and my voice a hideous croak. Then my nervousness departed and boredom succeeded. I feared that I might have to stop and yawn. But suddenly I realised, from the surprised look of the only occupant of the Treasury bench, that I was speaking against the Government and my own party, and that gave me a slight fillip. Then I perceived that the House was filling up, and presently that it was packed, with a crowd below the Bar. After that I began to enjoy myself and, greatly daring, I ventured to conclude with a solemn rhetorical appeal to respect the spirit of the constitution. Mr. Lloyd George, who followed, did me the honour to repeat my arguments in his own words. No more was heard of the Lord Chancellor’s scheme, for the Whips knew that if it had been pressed several hundred Conservatives would have joined me in the Opposition lobby.
That was an occasion to me of great personal interest, but a far more dramatic one was the first Prayer Book debate in December 1927. The revised book had been accepted by the House of Lords, where it was believed to be most in danger, and it was generally assumed that it would have an easy passage in the Commons. On the contrary it was rejected by a large majority, after a debate which showed the House at its best; it was defeated by Irish and Scottish votes, just as the proposal whose failure caused the Disruption of 1843 in the Scottish Church was defeated by English votes. The chief Government spokesman made the mistake of treating the subject in a jocose man-of-the-world style, and he was met by earnest evangelical appeals which stirred up the latent protestantism of the most careless members. I knew a good deal about the subject and I laboured to expound what seemed to me the true Reformation spirit of freedom. My effort was futile, for argument had no chance against the e
motional power of a very old tradition. But I enjoyed speaking in the tense atmosphere, with many friends regarding me with white faces and angry eyes.
When I entered the House I decided that I had no desire for the ordinary cursus honorum. A minor post would only have complicated my life, and I was too senior to begin to try for Cabinet office. So I had no reason to put myself forward, and I spoke only on subjects where I had special knowledge or a special interest. These were most Scottish questions; anything to do with education; certain problems of Empire; and the Zionist experiment, for which Arthur Balfour had aroused my enthusiasm. I attempted two private bills, one to regulate greyhound racing, which failed, and another to prevent the sale of British song-birds, which succeeded. I rarely spoke more than half a dozen times in a session, for I had no wish to make set speeches, while to intervene effectively in a debate meant a long wait for an opportunity for which I had simply not the time. Outside the House my most successful effort was the movement to raise the limit of the school age.
Though I was an undistinguished Member of Parliament, I was a contented one, and I enjoyed every moment of my eight years there. The customary platitudes about the House of Commons happen to be true. Individual members may be ill-bred; the House itself has a fine taste and breeding, and a sure instinct in matters of conduct. It will always include people who are foolish, hasty, humourless; but collectively it is rarely other than patient, urbane and wise. It is nicely discriminating, for while it will tolerate an agreeable buffoon and an honest donkey, it will not give its confidence except to sterling character and talent. Securus judicat. The flashy platform demagogue has to change his methods if he is to win its favour. It demands specific qualities — a certain decency in debate and a certain respect for itself and its ancient ritual. The sansculotte who refuses its demands is speedily silenced, for the House has immense powers of neglect and disapproval. The man who has won fame in some other walk of life, like the public service, business, science or literature, is given a respectful hearing, but he has to show the specific House of Commons gifts before he is accepted. It is a friendly body, but as a judge of what it likes it is unbending; it will never forsake him whom it once accepts, or accept one who has been weighed and found wanting.
In my time, as I have said, there were no great political storms blowing. We had the eternal problems of unemployment and poverty, the business of adjusting the relations of master and man, polishing up the educational apparatus, and giving sops to distressed agriculture. Some reforms were effected, occasional squalls ruffled the political calm, stolid aspirants climbed the ladder of office, and the world jogged along not very comfortably but without any great to-do. In 1931 came the depression which jostled Britain off the gold standard and brought a National Government into being. After that politics were duller than ever. The ordinary citizen was behaving heroically, but the drama was outside the Palace of Westminster. I remember being puzzled by the flatness of everything and wondering uneasily if it were not the calm before the storm. Something monstrous seemed about to emerge from the economic pit into which the world was slipping. I longed for someone of prophetic strain, someone like Mr. Gladstone, to trouble the waters even at the expense of our peace of mind. I would have been happier if I could have found a leader, whose creed I fully shared and whom I could devoutly follow.
But if political life was stagnant, I found a perpetual interest in the House itself, and I acquired that respect for it as a body which Oliver Cromwell learned during the Short Parliament. My own party was full of young or youngish men who might have led a life of amusement, but who, instead, sat till all hours through dull debates and gave laborious days to their constituencies. Such members were for the most part liberal, often radical, in their political views, and they seemed to me to be the most valuable element in public life — holding to what was worth holding to in the legacy of the past, but always prepared to jettison lumber. There were a few genuine reactionaries, not country gentlemen but business magnates, who were not much liked, and who woke to life only in the Budget season. The most futile type were the Labour intellectuals, a batch of whom came in at the election of 1929. They were not quite able enough to be impressive, they were drearily dogmatic, and they were regarded with suspicion by the ordinary Labour member, with whom they had simply no points of contact. That seemed to me a pity, for they had something to give the trade unionists, and much to get from them. As for the latter, I found them the most interesting section of the House. They might be clumsy in handling dogmas, but all their lives they had been in contact with realities, and each of them was a master of a special knowledge. They were the most genuinely English thing in public life, with all the English foibles and virtues. Also they spoke racily and idiomatically. It was a delight to me, after the ordinary clipped talk of the public schools and universities, to hear speech which had a relish of country nooks and long-descended provincial ways.
Their Scottish colleagues were different — more speculative and impulsive, better educated and better read. All of them were my friends, but especially the Glasgow contingent, who, deeply suspect at first, soon won a distinguished place in the House’s esteem, and greatly enlivened its debates. No members more fully represented their constituencies, for they knew every man, woman and child in them, and gave up laborious weekends to the study on the spot of the problems of poverty. Woe to him who spoke loosely on the subject and was pounced upon by those experts! James Maxton, too, with his beautiful husky voice, seemed more able than any other member to capture at will the attention and the affection of the House. When I resigned my seat in April 1935 I had many regrets, but the chief, I think, was that, while I was likely to meet most of my colleagues elsewhere, I would find it less easy to see my Glasgow friends.
My years in Parliament left me a more convinced believer than ever in democracy, but convinced, too, that the democratic technique wanted overhauling. I remembered Burke’s words: “There ever is within Parliament itself a power of renovating its principles and effecting a self-reformation which no other place of government has ever contained...Public troubles have often called upon this country to look into its constitution. It has ever been bettered by such a revision.” I was not an advocate of stronger checks on hasty legislation; these seemed to me strong enough already, for we had not one Second Chamber, but many — the House of Lords, the Civil Service, the City, the great local Government machine. I accepted adult suffrage, but I felt that votes should be weighted — that of the married man as against the bachelor, of the man with a family as against the childless; I thought that the voting power of inexperienced youth if left unbalanced might compel undue oscillations in the body-politic. Again, I thought that the rigid territorial basis for elections was out of date. It might continue in part as a framework, but the Universities’ precedent should be followed, and there should be additional representation for great economic, cultural and professional interests; as it was, a trade unionist had virtually a double vote. But my strongest conviction was that the area of public service should be extended, and that the ordinary citizen should be given the chance of an active share in the work of administration. I believed that the policy represented by organisations like the B.B.C., the Port of London Authority, and the Central Electricity Board, was our natural line of development — public utilities privately administered but authorised and ultimately controlled by Government.
Happily we do not idolise our public men. They are St. Sebastians stuck up aloft for critical arrows; even when we admire them we treat them irreverently; we show our gratitude by a friendly ribaldry, and in moments of annoyance they are our first cock-shies. Owen Seaman once told me that he had to come back to London early on a Monday morning, and was compelled to take a workman’s train. It was the year when Crippen, the murderer, had been arrested in Canada, and that and the Ulster troubles filled the columns of the Press. He found himself in a compartment full of honest men smoking their pipes and reading their halfpenny papers. At last one of them flu
ng down his journal in disgust. “Wot I says,” he exclaimed, “is to ‘e11 with the lot of ‘em — Asquith and Lloyd George and Carson and Crippen — the ‘ole bleedin’ lot!” Upon which there was a general protest. “‘Ere, wot ‘arm’s old Crippen done?” You will find in France, in the United States, and even in parts of the Dominions, a real cynicism about the value of their type of government, a distrust of all engaged in it, and a general boredom with the whole business. It is different in Britain. Here our surface ribaldry covers a sincere respect, and in recent years, when parliamentary government has been overthrown elsewhere, I think we have come to cherish ours more than ever. Public life is regarded as the crown of a career, and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics is still the greatest and the most honourable adventure.
II
During my years in Parliament I had one curious interlude. In 1933 and 1934 I was Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in succession to Sir Iain Colquhoun. The King’s Commissioner opens and closes the Assembly, appears daily at its meetings, and fulfils a multitude of other engagements; for a fortnight he lives in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, where he entertains the Church and the World according to his means and his inclination.
I gladly accepted the office, for the Scottish Church had always been a principal part of my background. I was born and brought up in a manse. I was an elder of the Kirk, my historical studies had lain to some extent in Scottish church history, and I had had a small part in bringing about the union of the United Free Church (of which my father had been a minister) with the Church of Scotland It was an office thickly encrusted with history. In the seventeenth century the Lord High Commissioner presided over the Scottish Parliament as well as the General Assembly, and a stormy time he had of it. (I remembered Hamilton at the epoch-making Glasgow Assembly of 1639.) Since the Union of 1707 he presides at the Assembly alone. But memories of early sturt and strife still cling to him. On the night of his arrival, when the Scots nobility are invited to a state dinner, he receives from the Lord Provost the keys of the city of Edinburgh; he himself chooses the password for the Palace guards; the Lord Provost and the Sheriff of the Lothians are given the highest precedence; — all relics of the past when the King’s Commissioner took his life in his hands and had at any cost to mollify the local dignitaries. The same atmosphere hangs over the Assembly itself. The proceedings are opened with an historic ritual, and the close has in it the whole history of the Scottish Kirk, which has always claimed, and is now admitted by statute, to be completely self-governing. The High Commissioner formally declares the sederunt closed and promises to report to the King that everything has been done decently and in order. The Moderator then rises and has the last word, appointing the date of the next Assembly, “in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Head of this Church.”
