The Office, Not The Man

I am not convinced that defying one tradition is the best way to protest against the loss of another. But Nadine Dories is right. There are many things about George Thomas that we need back. We need back his uncompromising support for national sovereignty and the Union, both safeguarded by the monarchy, as the means to a social democracy which was itself the bulwark against Communism, and which was founded on the traditional Christianity also embodied by the monarchical institution.

And we need back the whole tradition of the trade unionists and activists who dismissed an attempt to make the nascent Labour Party anti-monarchist. Of the delivery of the Welfare State, workers’ rights, progressive taxation and full employment by a political movement replete with MBEs, OBEs, CBEs, mayoral chains, aldermen’s gowns, and civic services; a movement which proudly provided a high proportion of Peers of the Realm, Knights of the Garter, members of the Order of Merit, and Companions of Honour, who had rejoiced in their middle periods to be Lords Privy Seal, or Comptrollers of Her Majesty’s Household, or so many other such things, in order to deliver those goods within the parliamentary process in all its ceremony.

The tradition of Peter Shore’s denunciation of the Major Government’s decision to scrap the Royal Yacht, and his support for Canadian against Spanish fishermen not least because Canada and the United Kingdom shared a Head of State. And of the Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party, founded out of the trade union movement specifically in order to secure for the British workers of Gibraltar the same pay and conditions enjoyed by other British workers.

That tradition is the great bulwark, not least against "Conservative" Governments past or future (and especially against any Blairite "Conservative" Government such as David Cameron would inflict on us) of concern that power should not be transferred from elected parliamentarians to unelected judges. Of concern that any elected second chamber should not subvert the authority of the House of Commons.

The great bulwark of concern that electoral reform should not mean voting for parties rather than people, should not destroy direct local representation, should not give power to anti-constitutional or anti-democratic forces, and should not prevent necessary radical action on behalf of the poor or otherwise disadvantaged. Of total opposition to the constraint of any future Parliament by any written Constitution. And of total opposition to any State funding of political parties that detaches them even further from wider civil society.

That tradition, that bulwark demands a restored voice in the House of Commons at the earliest opportunity. And to the Speakers’ Chair at the earliest opportunity after that. In full fig, including wig. As with a bishop’s mitre or a mayor’s chain, and as with the Queen’s Crown, it is about the office signified by the wearing, not about the individual who happens to be the wearer.