Parliament: The biography.
Volume 2: Reform
Chris Bryant
Doubleday £25
(978-0-85752-224-5)
Church Times Bookshop £22.50 (Use code
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PARLIAMENT nowadays is less a legislature or a vent for the
people's grievances than a "gene-pool" for government. That is the
conclusion reached by Chris Bryant at the end of this second volume
of his history of an institution that, over the centuries, has
witnessed dramatic and often turbulent change.
Bryant is only too familiar
with that of which he writes. He is the Labour MP for the Rhondda
and was Deputy Leader of the Commons in the previous
Administration. He is also a born historian with an elegance of
style which won him deserved applause for volume one (
Books, 18 July). He agrees with recent polls that suggest that
the poor turnout at elections has been driven down not so much by
apathy as by anger with MPs and parties for breaking electoral
promises.
This second volume reflects
on the changed conditions under which MPs now operate. Whereas a
Victorian needed a significant private income or additional job to
be able to sit in Parliament, the vast majority of today's MPs rely
entirely on their Commons salaries - and, as a result, have become
more professional and career-orientated. And, in a media-dominated
age, clever interviews on television have become as important as
speeches in the Chamber.
Church Timesreaders are
likely to be especially interested in Bryant's views on the
significance of the House of Lords - and in how the number of
bishops with seats there came to be pegged at 26. Bryant - who
served as a priest of the Church of England before his election to
Parliament - has no space in which to discuss specifically church
events (there is not a word about the Prayer Book debates of 1927
and 1928), but occasionally he dips his toe into ecclesiastical
waters.
He has harsh things to say,
for instance, about the part played by Archbishop Cosmo Lang in the
Abdication crisis of 1936. Before the publication of Robert
Beaken's book on Lang in 2012, the popular perception of the
Archbishop had been that of an uninvolved bystander. Beaken
revealed that Lang had in fact played a crucial part in the affair,
and had urged the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, to ensure that
the King abdicated in favour of his younger brother Bertie. Bryant
paints poor Lang in stark colours. He claims that the Archbishop
waged a "particularly vicious campaign" against Edward, "dripping
poison" into Baldwin's ears by suggesting that the King was an
alcoholic, mentally ill, and suffering from persecution mania.
Bryant is more sympathetic to Lang's successor, William Temple,
who, he considers, advocated in his speeches and writings a
socially responsible version of Christianity which chimed in with
Labour values - and whom, incidentally, he credits with having
first coined the term "Welfare State". Bryant shares the widely
held view that on Temple's premature death in 1944 the succession
to Canterbury should have gone to the Bishop of Chichester, George
Bell, but that Bell was ruled out by the Prime Minister, Winston
Churchill, because of his opposition to "obliteration bombing" by
the RAF as an unjustifiable act of war. An "irritated Churchill"
appointed Geoffrey Fisher instead, and Bell was not even allowed to
replace Fisher as Bishop of London (William Wand was translated
from Bath & Wells). Bryant sticks out, however, in suggesting
that this was "one of the few cases of Churchill's
vindictiveness".
Today's bishops are far less affluent than their Victorian
counterparts, and hardly any of them now live in palaces. But many
people would be sorry if they ceased to sit in the House of
Lords.
Dr Palmer is a former editor of the Church Times.