Drama from the House

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 774, 21 May 1954, Page 7

Drama from the House

OME of the most dramatic moments in our parliamentary history, with their venomous personal feuds and often brilliant oratory, are recreated in the programme A Hundred Years of Parliament, which will be broadcast in:a link of the YA stations at 8.0 p.m. on Monday, May 24. The programme was written by Basil Clarke, who has drawn upon such material as the private diaries of Henry Sewell (New Zealand’s first

Prime Minister), mewspaper reports and other historical: records of thé times, and above all, the official volumes of Hansard over the past 100 years. The story of Parliament comes sharply to life in the programme, beginning with the notorious first session in Auckland which ended in a wild brawl on the floor of the House. Listeners will be able to hear such incidents as James Edward Fitzgerald’s celebrated speech of loyalty to Britain at the outbreak of the Crimean War, which foreshadowed by nearly a hundred years the struggle for power between Russia and the United States. They will hear George Maurice O’Rorke cross the floor of the House to save himself being "branded as a base _ political traitor," to use his own words, when it became clear to him that Sir Julius Vogel’s policy would inevitably bring

about the abolition of the provincial assemblies. They will hear William Massey’s famous appeal for "deeds, not words," at the outbreak of the First World War, and the equally historic broadcast of M. J. Savage on September 3, 1939. Much of the programme is devoted to the first session of Parliament in 1854, which was probably the stormiest in its history. The New Zealanders’ intense desire for complete freedom and independence brought about almost immediately a bitter wrangle with the ActingGovernor, Lieutenant-Colonel R. H. Wynyard, and led to the smirching of some reputations, notably that of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the colony’s founder. Wakefield, though the elected member for Hutt, was secretly advising the Governor behind the scenes on how to deal with the demands of the House, which Wynyard was opposing. As a res sult of this double-dealing Wakefield was savagely abused in Parliament by both Fitzgerald and Frederick Weld. When Wakefield advised Wynyard to close Parliament, Fitzgerald and Sewell locked the doors to prevent members leaving, and when James Mackay, of Oamaru, declared the closure to be a fact, Sewell attacked him with his umbrella. The resulting melee, with fists flying like a regular donnybrook, was "an inglorious end to a great beginning," and led the newspaper The New Zealander to report gloomily: "It is painful to say the word, but the session has been a failure. More!-it has been suicidal! One Bill, and one Bill only, was passed, and that was a Bill to authorise the sale of spirituous liquors on the premises for the use of honourable members." Yet as the programme points out, this session was by no means wasted. The whole pattern of our future development was foreshadowed in those first few days of struggle.