Parliament's Week

GREAT BRITAIN

Parliament's Week

The Lords--

P: Were threatened by Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald with the creation of enough Labor peers to give his Cabinet working control of their House.

"Like every other anachronistic institution in Britain," Scot MacDonald told a Labor audience at Worksop, "the House of Lords must be subject to the will, desire and mandate of the electors. We shall appoint new peers when they are necessary to do our work. The House of Lords has acted not as a national body but as a subordinate or subcommittee of Tory headquarters. The time has arrived when that has got to be stopped!" (Cheers).

The Commons--

P: In a tensely quiet session saw frail Laborite Philip Snowden cow the entire phalanx of Conservative M. P.'s. The Chancellor demanded that his radical proposal for a levy of nearly % on the capital value of land (TIME, May 4) be included in the Finance Bill this year, although the levy will not be made for two years at least. By this technical maneuver Mr. Snowden sought to make his project a "money bill" and thus not subject to veto by the House of Lords, sure to veto it otherwise.

An entire day's session had been set aside for Conservative attacks on the Chancellor's motion. Unexpectedly it passed unopposed. Conservatives, in a panic, had suddenly realized that if the House of Lords were permitted to veto the levy, Scot MacDonald could dissolve Parliament and campaign with an ideal Laborite platform: "Abolish the Lords! Levy on the landlords!"

P: Guffawed at the sallies of former Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill against Chancellor Snowden. In office Mr. Churchill was famed for "raiding" every fund he could lay his hands on. Mr. Snowden has just raided the British "dollar fund" in Manhattan for $165,000,000 to balance his budget. "I could hardly believe my ears," drawled Mr. Churchill, "when I heard the Chancellor . . . unfold a long series of ... expedients I had devised and practiced. . . .

"As one by one those familiar shades arose, and as I recalled to memory all the criticisms and scathing censures he lavished upon each of them, I wondered whether I had not perhaps left behind some of my old budget notes and that one of his able secretaries had by mistake put them into Mr. Snowden's red despatch box."

P:Gleeful Labor M. P.'s called Alfonso XIII "Mr. Bourbon, late of Madrid" in a lively debate on the ex-King's status last week. Although Great Britain has recognized the Spanish Republic, George V insists that Alfonso XIII be called "King Alfonso" and thus far the British Government has done so.

David Kirkwood, a prominent Scottish Laborite, denounced the ex-King thus: "He's mur-r-rder-r-red men o' my class!''

Aghast, Speaker Edward Algernon Fitzroy, himself of Royal blood (i. e. of illegitimate Stuart descent as implied by his name Fitzroy or Son-of-a-King), warned Mr. Kirkwood that he would be severely dealt with.

"Ye can deal wi' me as severely as ye like," retorted the Scot, "put that in yer pipe and smoke it!"

Fitzroy gulped, subsided.

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