MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 123, 31 October 1941, Page 10

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT

The Strange Case of Captain Ramsay

Ramsay, M.P., was detained under Regulation 18B made under e Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, and since that time he has been held in Brixton Gaol. In commenting on the episode, the New York Times-one of Britain’s best friends in America-said that Captain Ramsay had by a circuitous route sent information to the enemy, and Captain Ramsay, arguing rightly that this was a charge of treason, brought an action for libel against the paper and won his case. The charge of communicating information was not proved and the Honourable and Gallant Member was awarded one farthing damages. ~ During the trial, facts of the greatest political interests were exposed, and the public had for the first time learned something of the activities which lead men to internment without trial-and a very remarkable record it is. It came out in tke cross-examination of Captain Ramsay that he was the founder of a club known as the Right Club which had a most distinguished membership. ‘The prince of traitors, William Joyce, was a member, Tyler Kent, then clerk at the Ametican Embassy, who is now serving seven years for stealing official papers, was not only a member but a close associate of Ramsay’s. Anna Wolkoff, now in penal servitude for ten years, was a member and on Christianmame terms with Ramsay. The register of members was kept, not at the club ig the summer of last year, Captain

headquarters or at Ramsay’s house, but in Tyler Kent’s room, because (so Ramsay very reasonably explained) the Jews were less likely to get at it there. Among the literature of the club was a poem published by Ramsay himself and distributed by him to casual fellowpassengers in buses, It was a parody of "Land of Hope and Glory" addressed to England, and it contained these lines:Poorer still and poorer grow thy trueborn sons; Faster still and faster they’re sent to feed the gunsverse which was never meant-there is Captain Ramsay’s sworn word for thisto impair anybody’s fighting spirit, A child’s guide to patriotism ran:A is for Army conscripted for France, But even when it got there it couldn't advance, G is for Germans, H is for Hitler, their saviour and guide. Who broke down Versailles and restored them their pride. And no one could have been more greatly surprised than was Captain Ramsay when it was suggested to him by counsel that these pamphlets indicated a leaning towards the enemies of Great

Britain and a certain wistful hope for the defeat of Captain Ramsay’s native land, " A Complete Fool " Whatever he be-whether disloyal or patriotic, fifth columnist or honest independent politician-there is one thing that Captain Ramsay undoubtedly and undeniably is. He is a complete fool. He was a fool when he mixed himself up with Anna Wolkoff and intrigued with a man whom he knew for a dishonest rogue. He was a fool when he published his poem and accepted the other pamphlets. He was a fool when he hid the club’s papers from the police under the Stars and Stripes. Above all, he was a a fool when he launched his action against the New York Times. Anyone but a fool would have seen that, so long as he kept his mouth shut, internment without trial was the best thing that could happen to him. While he kept silent, the public and his de-cent-minded friends could know nothing of what he had done; he had in his favour the deep dislike of every Englishman for imprisonment without trial; and there was a chance of his surviving the war with a reputation speckled but not wholly blackened. But coming into Court, he threw away every shred of hope that he might be reinstated and shut himself permanently from the company of decent men and women, There was no need for the gods to make a fool of Captain Ramsay before ruining him. He saved them the trouble. .

How Does It Happen? But if the man is such a fool how comes he, to be a Member of Parliament? That is the question which must be burning into the minds of every Englishman who has been watching this astonishing scene and believes in the health and power of free institutions. How did Captain Ramsay persuade the Peebles Conservative Association to adopt him and a majority of the Peebles electors to vote for him? Who’s Who supplies the answer:Captain Ramsay, M.P. tor Peebles since 1931, o.s. of late Lieut.-Col. H. L. Ramsay, elder son of Gen. the Hon. Sir Henry Ramsay, K.C.O.E., C.B., m. Ismay Lucretia Mary, o.d. of 14th Viscount Gormanston and widow of late Lord Ninian Crichton-Stuart, M.P., Educ. Eton, R.M.C. Sandhurst, joined 2nd _ Battalion Coldstream Guards. He is M.P. for Peebles because he comes of the right sort of family, because he married a daughter of the peerage and the widow of a very rich man, because he went to the right school and joined the right regiment. If his father had been a bank clerk and his wife the daughter of an insurance agent, if he had been educated at Oxford and made his way by his own brains to a moderate competence in. a respectable trade or profession, then he might have bombarded every political association on the books of the Central Office for a constituency, and every time the odds against his getting into the House would have been 1,000 to 1.

The fact that one unworthy person made his way into the House by virtue of his wealth and social position might not in itself be of much importance, and there is no evidence that Captain Ramsay, as a fifth columnist, is not the one black sheep in a clean flock. But, unfortunately, in his capacity as a silly ass. he does not sit in the House alone, It is common knowledge-and many people can check it from their personal acquaint-ance-that the intellectual level of the House of Commons has been, since 1931, deplorably low; and when the historian of the future comes to write the story of the pre-war years one of the things he will need to bear in mind (if he is to read aright the disastrous record) is this intellectual poverty of the men chosen as the people’s representatives, this profusion of men who at the very best can only be described, in the words of Jane Austen, as " persons of strong, natural, sterling insignificance." These tenth-rate nonentities who have been jobbed into the House of Commons because they were men of the "right type" provided just the background that the Front Bench required for its calamitous foreign policy and for its blindness to the danger in which the country stood. The Government needed behind it a solid block of M.P.’s stupid enough to jeer at Mr. Churchill, to admire the moral grandeur of Stanley Baldwin, and to applaud the foresight of Mr. Chamberlain; and the political bosses saw to it that the right men were provided in Captain Ramsay and others of the same intellectual and social build. And if the historian gets to the heart of the matter he will put high on the list of those responsible for the present troubles the wire-pullers who chose a House of Commons with infinitely less sense of duty than a selection committee would feel in choosing an English fifteen for Twickenham. It will not be the shadow of an answer to say that the selection of trade unionists by seniority also filled the scanty benches opposite with mediocritics. Power lay on the Right, and there is a long score to settle with the men who put Captain Ramsay and the like into Parliament.

(From the "Economist," London, August 9)