Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 4 December 1973.
Mr John Mendelson
, Penistone
12:00,
4 December 1973
In that case I will not pursue this any further.
I tell the Government, that the way in which someone in this high office conducts himself is part of the case we have to examine, and the Attorney-General must not merely skate over these things without giving us precisely related statements on the political implications of the legislation as well as the pure letter of the law.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows very well, as do the Government, that it has been the tendency of this Government, and of the Prime Minister in particular, to engage in various policies, to enact a code and then to face the trade unions and say to them, "If you do not accept what we have said in this code you are breaking the law".
The Prime Minister is trying it with the miners. We had almost to coerce him the other day, on a Thursday afternoon, into an admission that the miners had not broken any law whatsoever in refusing to work overtime. It is the repeated technique of this Government, led by the Prime Minister, knowing that the British people are law abiding, to use this kind of propaganda, to confuse what is legitimate activity of an organised working class group with breaking the law, to try to make it appear that everybody opposing the will of the Prime Minister is thereby opposing the whole law-making process if he adopts towards legislation attitudes not acceptable to the Government. This has been a growing tendency.
If they think that that propaganda will work with the people of this country the Government have another think coming. They are gravely mistaken. People are seeing through what they are doing. This is not the first period in British industrial history when Tory Governments have tried to create the impression that the law is what they say it is when they have framed legislation and administered it in a way deliberately directed against the industrial working class—when they allowed an immense increase in the cost of living and said that people could not have wage increases because the law said they could not. None of this will wash.
This is an historic debate.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, North, who initiated it, has done a service to both industry and the country. The country knows that this legislation is futile, useless and hostile to the best interests of industrial relations. The sooner it is swept away the better it will be for everybody.
The political party system in the English-speaking world evolved in the 17th century, during the fight over the ascension of James the Second to the Throne. James was a Catholic and a Stuart. Those who argued for Parliamentary supremacy were called Whigs, after a Scottish word whiggamore, meaning "horse-driver," applied to Protestant rebels. It was meant as an insult.
They were opposed by Tories, from the Irish word toraidhe (literally, "pursuer," but commonly applied to highwaymen and cow thieves). It was used — obviously derisively — to refer to those who supported the Crown.
By the mid 1700s, the words Tory and Whig were commonly used to describe two political groupings. Tories supported the Church of England, the Crown, and the country gentry, while Whigs supported the rights of religious dissent and the rising industrial bourgeoisie. In the 19th century, Whigs became Liberals; Tories became Conservatives.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
