Orders of the Day — European Communities

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 27 October 1971.

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Photo of Mr Hugh Jenkins Mr Hugh Jenkins , Wandsworth Putney 12:00, 27 October 1971

I shall try to take note of what you have said, Mr. Speaker, and set an example which I hope will be followed by other speakers.

Although we have just heard two rather long speeches, they were both interesting. I was more persuaded by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry), although I disagreed with some of his speech, than I was by the flamboyant oratory of my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse), parts of whose speech seemed to verge on megalomania. For this reason, I found him somewhat unconvincing.

I received a telegram this evening which said: Good luck and congratulations to you and your friends on your courage and integrity. I thought when I read that, "That's me all right." As one who has a long record of being in some trouble with discipline, I am not unused to this sort of tribute. But it ended with another tribute which I have never received before: "From three Tory admirers." This is not an area of the world from which I have had the pleasure of receiving support in the past.

I was also put back a little by the way it started—" To the Rt. Hon. Hugh Jenkins"—and then of course the penny dropped—