Parliament's Week

The Commons--

P: Adopted by a vote of 227 to 38 the fiscal clauses of the deal whereby Newfoundland is reverting from self-government to the status of a Crown colony ruled from London (TIME, Dec. 11).

For the next three years, announced beak-nosed British Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain, the British taxpayer will make good Newfoundland's budgetary deficit as a "free gift"--expected to total -L-2,000,000 ($10,300,000 at current exchange). Later the great island's debt will be amortized through a sinking fund.

P: Cheered an announcement by Home Secretary Sir John Gilmour that His Majesty's Government will not tolerate the showing in Great Britain of such newsreels as that recently produced by Paramount in which the Brooke Hart kidnapping-murder in California was realistically newsacted.

The offending scene, said Sir John, has been voluntarily withdrawn from British cinema houses, but "if further experience shows action to be necessary, steps will be taken by His Majesty's Government."

P: Passed 101-to-67 through second reading, with every chance of its swift enactment on third reading, the bill standardizing "pub" hours throughout Great Britain.

Sponsoring the bill, Conservative J. C. Lockwood recalled that not only do different cities have different opening and closing hours for "pubs," but that there are variations in different parts of all the large cities and even on opposite sides of the same street in London.

"If I could induce any member to walk with me down to Oxford Street," said Mr. Lockwood slyly, "he and I would find as we went along that the public houses on one side of the street are open until 10 at night while on the other they are open until 11. I do not believe the removal of these anomalies will increase anomalies."

Under the Lockwood bill the closing hour will be 11 o'clock.

"Shame!" cried aggressive teetotaling M. P. Dr. Alfred Sailter as the bill passed its second reading. "I have always said that many members of this House are guilty of repeated drunkenness" (laughter).

P: Learned with dismay that doctors feared for the life of the Leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, 74-year-old Laborite "Old George" Lansbury who fell down the steps of Gainsborough Town Hall last week and broke his thigh.

With Old George in hospital his Leadership of the Labor Party passed automatically to fiery, Radical Sir Stafford Cripps who advocates a Rooseveltian dictatorship in Great Britain to be brought about by passing an "Emergency Powers Bill" (TIME, Nov. 13). With Labor in a hopeless Parliamentary minority, Sir Stafford stands no chance of becoming Britain's Roosevelt, short of a general election which was nowhere in sight last week.

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