Plays Political

by Dan Laurence

  NICOBAR. No I cant. I press my question. You said he must sign, OR. I ask, or what?

  PROTEUS. Or we resign and tell the country that we cant carry on the King’s Government under conditions which destroy our responsibility.

  BALBUS. Thatll do it. He couldnt face that.

  CRASSUS. Yes: thatll bunker him.

  PROTEUS. Is that agreed?

  PLINY.

  Yes, yes, yes, ’greed ’greed ’greed.

  CRASSUS.

  BALBUS.

  BOANERGES. I retain an open mind. Let us hear the ultimatum.

  NICOBAR. Yes: lets hear it.

  PROTEUS. Memorandum of understanding arrived at—

  The King enters, with Amanda, Postmistress General, a merry lady in uniform like the men, on his left, and Lysistrata, Powermistress General, a grave lady in academic robes, on his right. All rise. The Prime Minister’s face darkens.

  MAGNUS. Welcome, gentlemen. I hope I am not too early. [Noting the Prime Minister’s scowl] Am I intruding?

  PROTEUS. I protest. It is intolerable. I call a conference of my Cabinet to consider our position in regard to the prerogative; and I find the two lady members, the Postmistress General and the Powermistress General, closeted with your Majesty instead of being in their places to confer with me.

  LYSISTRATA. You mind your own business, Joe.

  MAGNUS. Oh no: really, really, my dear Lysistrata, you must not take that line. Our business is to meddle in everybody’s business. A Prime Minister is a busybody by profession. So is a monarch. So are we all.

  LYSISTRATA. Well, they say everybody’s business is nobody’s business, which is just what Joe is fit for. [She takes a chair from the wall with a powerful hand, and swings it forward to the inside corner of Sempronius’s table, where she stands waiting for the King to sit down.]

  PROTEUS. This is what I have to put up with when I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown [he sits down distractedly, and buries his face in his hands].

  AMANDA [going to him and petting him] Come, Joe! dont make a scene. You asked for it, you know.

  NICOBAR. What do you go provoking Lizzie for like that? You know she has a temper.

  LYSISTRATA. There is nothing whatever wrong with my temper. But I am not going to stand any of Joe’s nonsense; and the sooner he makes up his mind to that the smoother our proceedings are likely to be.

  BOANERGES. I protest. I say, let us be dignified. I say, let us respect ourselves and respect the throne. All this Joe and Bill and Nick and Lizzie: we might as well be hobnobbing in a fried fish shop. The Prime Minister is the prime minister: he isnt Joe. The Powermistress isnt Lizzie: she’s Lysis Traitor.

  LYSISTRATA [who has evidently been a schoolmistress] Certainly not, Bill. She is Ly Siśtrata. You had better say Lizzie : it is easier to pronounce.

  BOANERGES [scornfully] Ly Siśtrata! A more foolish affectation I never heard: you might as well call me Bo Annerjeeze [he flings himself into his chair].

  MAGNUS [sweetly] Shall we sit, ladies and gentlemen!

  Boanerges hastily rises and sits down again. The King sits in Pliny’s chair. Lysistrata and the rest of the men resume their seats, leaving Pliny and Amanda standing. Amanda takes an empty chair in each hand and plants them side by side between the King and the table of Pamphilius.

  AMANDA. There you are, Plin. [She sits next the table].

  PLINY. Ta ta, Mandy. Pardon me: I should have said Amanda. [He sits next the King].

  AMANDA. Don’t mention it, darling.

  BOANERGES. Order, order!

  AMANDA [waves him a kiss]!!

  MAGNUS. Prime Minister: the word is with you. Why have you all simultaneously given me the great pleasure of exercising your constitutional right of access to the sovereign?

  LYSISTRATA. Have I that right, sir; or havnt I?

  MAGNUS. Most undoubtedly you have.

  LYSISTRATA. You hear that, Joe?

  PROTEUS. I—

  BALBUS. Oh for Heaven’s sake dont contradict her, Joe. We shall never get anywhere at this rate. Come to the crisis.

  NICOBAR.

  [together]

  Yes yes: the crisis!

  CRASSUS.

  Yes yes: come along!

  PLINY.

  The crisis: out with it!

  BALBUS. The ultimatum. Lets have the ultimatum.

  MAGNUS. Oh, there is an ultimatum! I gathered from yesterday’s evening papers that there is a crisis—another crisis. But the ultimatum is new to me. [To Proteus] Have you an ultimatum?

  PROTEUS. Your Majesty’s allusion to the royal veto in a speech yesterday has brought matters to a head.

  MAGNUS. It was perhaps indelicate. But you all allude so freely to your own powers—to the supremacy of Parliament and the voice of the people and so forth—that I fear I have lost any little delicacy I ever possessed. If you may flourish your thunderbolts why may I not shoulder my little popgun of a veto and strut up and down with it for a moment?

  NICOBAR. This is not a subject for jesting—

  MAGNUS [interrupting him quickly] I am not jesting, Mr Nicobar. But I am certainly trying to discuss our differences in a goodhumored manner. Do you wish me to lose my temper and make scenes?

  AMANDA. Oh please no, your Majesty. We get enough of that from Joe.

  PROTEUS. I pro—

  MAGNUS [his hand persuasively on the Prime Minister’s arm] Take care, Prime Minister: take care: do not let your wily Postmistress General provoke you to supply the evidence against yourself.

  All the rest laugh.

  PROTEUS [coolly] I thank your Majesty for the caution. The Postmistress General has never forgiven me for not making her First Lady of the Admiralty. She has three nephews in the navy.

  AMANDA. Oh you—[She swallows the epithet, and contents herself with shaking her fist at the Premier].

  MAGNUS. Tch-tch-tch! Gently, Amanda, gently. Three very promising lads: they do you credit.

  AMANDA. I never wanted them to go to sea. I could have found them better jobs in the Post Office.

  MAGNUS. Apart from Amanda’s family relations, am I face to face with a united Cabinet.

  PLINY. No, sir. You are face to face with a squabbling Cabinet; but, on the constitutional question, united we stand: divided we fall.

  BALBUS. That is so.

  NICOBAR. Hear hear!

  MAGNUS. What is the constitutional question? Do you deny the royal veto? or do you object only to my reminding my subjects of its existence?

  NICOBAR. What we say is that the king has no right to remind his subjects of anything constitutional except by the advice of the Prime Minister, and in words which he has read and approved.

  MAGNUS. Which Prime Minister? There are so many of them in the Cabinet.

  BOANERGES. There! Serves you all right! Arnt you ashamed of yourselves? But I am not surprised, Joseph Proteus. I own I like a Prime Minister that knows how to be a Prime Minister. Why do you let them take the word out of your mouth every time?

  PROTEUS. If His Majesty wants a Cabinet of dumb dogs he will not get it from my party.

  BALBUS. Hear, hear, Joe!

  MAGNUS. Heaven forbid! The variety of opinion in the Cabinet is always most instructive and interesting. Who is to be its spokesman today? PROTEUS. I know your Majesty’s opinion of me; but let—

  MAGNUS [before he can proceed] Let me state it quite frankly. My opinion of you is that no man knows better than you when to speak and when to let others speak for you; when to make scenes and threaten resignation; and when to be as cool as a cucumber.

  PROTEUS [not altogether displeased] Well, sir, I hope I am not such a fool as some fools think me. I may not always keep my temper. You would not be surprised at that if you knew how much temper I have to keep. [He straightens up and becomes impressively eloquent]. At this moment my cue is to shew you, not my own temper, but the temper of my Cabinet. What the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Home Secretary have told you is true. If we are to carry on y
our government we cannot have you making speeches that express your own opinions and not ours. We cannot have you implying that everything that is of any value in our legislation is your doing and not ours. We cannot have you telling people that their only safeguard against the political encroachments of big business whilst we are doing nothing but bungling and squabbling is your power of veto. It has got to stop, once for all.

  BALBUS.

  Hear hear!

  NICOBAR.

  PROTEUS. Is that clear?

  MAGNUS. Far clearer than I have ever dared to make it, Mr Proteus. Except, by the way, on one point. When you say that all this of which you complain must cease once for all, do you mean that henceforth I am to agree with you or you with me?

  PROTEUS. I mean that when you disagree with us you are to keep your disagreement to yourself.

  MAGNUS. That would be a very heavy responsibility for me. If I see you leading the nation over the edge of a precipice may I not warn it?

  BALBUS. It is our business to warn it, not yours.

  MAGNUS. Suppose you dont do your business! Suppose you dont see the danger! That has happened. It may happen again..

  CRASSUS [insinuating] As democrats, I think we are bound to proceed on the assumption that such a thing cannot happen.

  BOANERGES. Rot! It’s happening all the time until somebody has the gumption to put his foot down and stop it.

  CRASSUS. Yes: I know. But that is not democracy. BOANERGES. Democracy be—[he leaves the word unspoken] ! I have thirty years experience of democracy. So have most of you. I say no more.

  BALBUS. Wages are too high, if you ask me. Anybody can earn from five to twenty pounds a week now, and a big dole when there is no job for him. And what Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

  NICOBAR. How many voted at the last election? Not seven per cent of the register.

  BALBUS. Yes; and the seven per cent were only a parcel of sillies playing at ins and outs. To make democracy work in Crassus’s way we need poverty and hardship.

  PROTEUS [emphatically] And we have abolished poverty and hardship. That is why the people trust us. [To the King] And that is why you will have to give way to us. We have the people of England in comfort—solid middle class comfort—at our backs.

  MAGNUS. No: we have not abolished poverty and hardship. Our big business men have abolished them. But how? By sending our capital abroad to places where poverty and hardship still exist: in other words, where labor is cheap. We live in comfort on the imported profits of that capital. We are all ladies and gentlemen now.

  NICOBAR. Well, what more do you want?

  PLINY. You surely dont grudge us our wonderful prosperity, sir.

  MAGNUS. I want it to last.

  NICOBAR. Why shouldnt it last? [Rising] Own the truth. You had rather have the people poor, and pose as their champion and savior, than have to admit that the people are better off under our government—under our squabbling and bungling, as you call it.

  MAGNUS. No: it was the Prime Minister who used those expressions.

  NICOBAR. Dont quibble: he was quoting them from your reptile press. What I say is that we stand for high wages, and you are always belittling and opposing the men that pay them. Well, the voters like high wages. They know when they are well off; and they dont know what you are grumbling about; and thats what will beat you every time you try to stir them against us [he resumes his seat].

  PLINY. There is no need to rub it in like that, Nick. We’re all good friends. Nobody objects to prosperity.

  MAGNUS. You think this prosperity is safe?

  NICOBAR. Safe!

  PLINY. Oh come, sir! Really!

  BALBUS. Safe! Look at my constituency: Northeast-by-north Birmingham, with its four square miles of confectionery works! Do you know that in the Christmas cracker trade Birmingham is the workshop of the world?

  CRASSUS. Take Gateshead and Middlesbrough alone! Do you know that there has not been a day’s unemployment there for five years past, and that their daily output of chocolate creams totals up to twenty thousand tons?

  MAGNUS. It is certainly a consoling thought that if we were peacefully blockaded by the League of Nations we could live for at least three weeks on our chocolate creams.

  NICOBAR. You neednt sneer at the sweets: we turn out plenty of solid stuff. Where will you find the equal of the English golf club?

  BALBUS. Look at the potteries: the new crown Derby! the new Chelsea! Look at the tapestries! Why, Greenwich Goblin has chased the French stuff out of the market.

  CRASSUS. Dont forget our racing motor boats and cars, sir: the finest on earth, and all individually designed. No cheap mass production stuff there.

  PLINY. And our live stock! Can you beat the English polo pony?

  AMANDA. Or the English parlormaid ? She wins in all the international beauty shows.

  PLINY. Now Mandy, Mandy! None of your triviality.

  MAGNUS. I am not sure that the British parlormaid is not the only real asset in your balance sheet.

  AMANDA [triumphant] Aha! [To Pliny] You go home to bed and reflect on that, old man.

  PROTEUS. Well, sir? Are you satisfied that we have the best paid proletariat in the world on our side?

  MAGNUS [gravely] I dread revolution.

  All except the two women laugh uproariously at this.

  BOANERGES. I must join them there, sir. I am as much against chocolate creams as you are: they never agree with me. But a revolution in England!!! Put that out of your head, sir. Not if you were to tear up Magna Carta in Trafalgar Square, and light the fires of Smithfield to burn every member of the House of Commons.

  MAGNUS. I was not thinking of a revolution in England. I was thinking of the countries on whose tribute we are living. Suppose it occurs to them to stop paying it! That has happened before.

  PLINY. Oh no, sir: no, no, no. What would become of their foreign trade with us?

  MAGNUS. At a pinch, I think they could do without the Christmas crackers.

  CRASSUS. Oh, thats childish.

  MAGNUS. Children in their innocence are sometimes very practical, Mr Colonial Secretary. The more I see of the sort of prosperity that comes of your leaving our vital industries to big business men as long as they keep your constituents quiet with high wages, the more I feel as if I were sitting on a volcano.

  LYSISTRATA [who has been listening with implacable contempt to the discussion, suddenly breaks in in a sepulchral contralto] Hear hear! My department was perfectly able and ready to deal with the supply of power from the tides in the north of Scotland, and you gave it away, like the boobs you are, to the Pentland Firth Syndicate: a gang of foreign capitalists who will make billions out of it at the people’s expense while we are bungling and squabbling. Crassus worked that. His uncle is chairman.

  CRASSUS. A lie. A flat lie. He is not related to me. He is only my stepson’s father-in-law.

  BALBUS. I demand an explanation of the words bungling and squabbling. We have had quite enough of them here today. Who are you getting at ? It was not I who bungled the Factory Bill. I found it on my desk when I took office, with all His Majesty’s suggestions in the margin; and you know it.

  PROTEUS. Have you all done playing straight into His Majesty’s hand, and making my situation here impossible?

  Guilty silence.

  PROTEUS [proceeding deliberately and authoritatively] The question before us is not one of our manners and our abilities. His Majesty will not press that question, because if he did he would oblige us to raise the question of his own morals.

  MAGNUS [starts] What!

  BALBUS. Good, Joe!

  CRASSUS [aside to Amanda] Thats got him.

  MAGNUS. Am I to take that threat seriously, Mr Proteus?

  PROTEUS. If you try to prejudice what is a purely constitutional question by personal scandal, it will be easy enough for us to throw your mud back. In this conflict we are the challengers. You have the choice of weapons. If you choose scand
al, we’ll take you on at that. Personally I shall deplore it if you do. No good will come of washing our dirty linen in public. But dont make any mistake as to what will happen. I will be plain with you: I will dot the Is and cross the Ts. You will say that Crassus is a jobber.

  CRASSUS [springing up] I—

  PROTEUS [fiercely crushing him] Sit down. Leave this to me.

  CRASSUS [sits] I a jobber! Well!

  PROTEUS [continuing] You will say that I should never have given the Home Office to a bully like Balbus—