Mission of the Duke and Duchess of York to Australia and New Zealand.

Part of Civil Services Supplementary Estimates, 1926–27. – in the House of Commons at on 17 February 1927.

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Mr. BECKETT:

I cannot subscribe to the argument put forward that very young, inexperienced members of the Royal Family can adequately represent this nation, merely because they are in a position to which fate has seen fit to call them. The Duke of York may be the most intelligent and the cleverest young man in the country, or he may be the most foolish; I do not know, but I do know that there is no certain rule that because a man has been born into a distinguished family that he will be an adequate representative, or that the young lady he chooses to marry will be an adequate representative of the nation in other parts. We really try squarely to face the attraction and the fascination which, undoubtedly, members of the Royal Family exercise, not only over the superior social classes, but over very large sections of what are termed the working classes. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] I am not denying that. You cannot argue by denying everything your opponent says—but I would say from what I have seen that this great spell or hold over a rapidly diminishing section of the working classes—[Interruption]—is because people, are living the kind of lives which the luxury and the greed of a large number of the supporters of the present system make necessary, and the lives of the working people are so prosaic and poverty-stricken and sordid that when they see these people in the centre of considerable pomp and luxury for a short time, it is a case of the Prince Charming and the Fairy Princess. Well, of course, that is all very nice, and if the Australian Government want it, they are entitled to have it, provided they pay for it. I not only doubt the wisdom of bringing up your working classes by attempting to encourage a foolish theory of that sort, but that your superior classes should encourage the snobbishness which is undoubtedly an outcome of this sort of thing.

Hon. Members who have spoken from this side were right in the economic argument against the drawing of money from the worse-off section of our population in order to pay for this sort of thing. It is no good coming here and telling us pathetic tales about mothers having to leave their children, when we know how you have treated our women and children during the last dispute, and when we remember how the Minister of Health has treated English women.