Fools in Parliament

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 123, 31 October 1941, Page 4

Fools in Parliament

E print on page 10 what the. Economist had to say recently about the case of Captain Ramsay, M.P. We print it deliberately, and with a consciousness of our responsibility. When the Economist calls a man a fool it means that he is a fool, and that his folly is of public importance. For the Economist does not traffic in sensations. It is as dignified as the Spectator and, in a matter of this kind, at least as well informed as The Times. Yet it says plainly, and with biting emphasis, that a fool was elected to the House of Commons " because he came of the right sort of family, married a peer’s daughter and the widow of a very rich man, went to the right school and joined the right regiment." He was elected because he secured the party nomination, and he secured the party nomination because the selection was made "with infinitely less sense of duty than a selection committee would feel in choosing an English fifteen for Twickenham." That is strong language. In a leading article in the Economist it is sensational language. But nothing that could be said about him would be as sensational as Captain Ramsay’s presence in the House of Commonsexcept one thing; and the Economist supplies that, too: the presence in the House of Commons, at a time when the nation is fighting for its existence, of many other "tenth-rate nonentities" who got there precisely as Captain Ramsay did. They were the "right type." The wire-pullers wanted them. They could be trusted to "jeer at Mr. Churchill, to admire the moral grandeur of Stanley Baldwin, and to applaud the foresight of Mr. Chamberlain." All of which they did. : : And the trouble is, they are there still. England is more united than it has ever been before, and is fighting the greatest fight in its history. But its rulers are carrying all those "silly asses" on their backs, and struggling along against all the resentment their presence in Parliament provokes among earnest patriots; resentment and suspicion; and God knows what black thoughts besides. To be silent about such things is almost to justify them.