H.M. Government Presents

In the House of Commons last week, Prime Minister Churchill wryly noted "the curious fact that the House preferred to give two days to television policy and only one to foreign affairs." In thus apportioning their debating time, the M.P.s were only echoing their constituents, who, ever since the glowing specter of TV first materialized in British drawing rooms, have debated the wisdom of entrusting its future to the governmental control of the lofty British Broadcasting Corp. Some are motivated by simple boredom at their present TV fare, others by the fear that all sponsored television will promptly descend to the level of J. Fred Muggs, the U.S. chimpanzee who was used to interrupt a New York showing of the BBC's coronation telecast.

By & large, the Conservative Party (led, for a change, by its young backbenchers) is in favor of permitting commercial TV. The Socialists are strongly opposed. But many a staunch Tory is also for control by BBC, on the principle that too much television in any form is bad for the people. A recent convert to BBC control is Tory Lord Salisbury, who used to boast that he had never seen a TV show and never intended to.

Tyrannical Spoilsports. Last week, as the debate reached the floor of the Commons, the Conservatives aimed their appeal squarely at Britain's 3,000,000 set owners by painting Labor as a party of tyrannical spoilsports determined to keep their screens permanently free of anything more lively than the BBC's science surveys and ballet lessons.

"Is any honorable Member in this House prepared to put this issue fairly and squarely to his constituents?" demanded Assistant Postmaster-General David Gammans. "Is he prepared to say, 'You have for centuries had the right to sit on a jury and judge your fellow citizens; you have a completely free press; your cinema and your stage are not government-controlled, and you have the ballot box by which you can decide your fate and that of millions of your fellow citizens; but you are not fit to be trusted with freedom of television.' "

"Labor," said one observer, "could never hold out against such an attack. It could be the deciding point of a close election."

After two days, by a vote of 302 to 280, the House gave its approval to the Torys' still vague "general policy" of permitting some form of sponsored TV.

Awkward Personalities. Their passions thus spent on television, most of the members were as docile as a BBC audience when the Prime Minister, who cares little about TV one way or the other, arose to report on the Bermuda Conference. He was in fine form as he told the House of his government's hopes for settlements in Trieste and Iran, of his plans to "redeploy" the British fighting force in the Middle East, of his many chats with President Eisenhower, about "our Russian fellow mortals--for that is what they are," about atomic energy, about EDC (see INTERNATIONAL), about such "awkward personalities as Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kaishek" and other matters.

Except for the mutterings of some Tory rebels who fear that he is about to surrender Suez, the speech went relatively unchallenged. Clement Attlee could find nothing more severe to say than that Churchill had returned from Bermuda "a Father Christmas without presents." All was quiet, except for the area around Nye Bevan. Churchill's favorite target on the left. During his speech, Churchill remarked that "it would be a great pity if . . . relations between Britain and the United States . . . were to be increasingly expressed in what I might call Bevanite-McCarthy terms."

Linking Bevan with McCarthy was the surest way to infuriate him, and Churchill succeeded. Besides, Nye has been embarrassed of late by a Tory paper's discovery that an Egyptian paper had printed approvingly one of his articles on evacuating British troops from Suez. Bevan got to his feet full of facts and figures about anti-government articles Churchill had written for foreign papers during the '30s. He went on to quote a blustery article Sir Winston had written 40 years ago in defense of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill. "This right honorable gentleman," interrupted Sir Winston, "has hitherto been trying to hide behind me. Now I gather he is endeavoring to hide behind my father." The duel came to a sudden end when Sir Winston had to leave the floor, apparently for a room which in Britain always bears his initials. "As I see the right honorable gentleman about to leave," said Bevan, "I think of Shakespeare: 'What private anxieties we have ye know not.' " The House chuckled at this misquote from Julius Caesar, and Churchill grinned broadly as he made his exit.

Somehow, the fact that emerged from Parliament's week is that the government's best shows are still originated at Westminster and not at Broadcasting House.

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