THOSE peers who have more than a passing knowledge of
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the Old Testament must have wondered for a moment how Lord Mishcon would paraphrase King David's lament for Saul and Jonathan when he used those immortal words from Samuel to describe the relationship between Lords Bellwin and Mowbray, the Government spokesmen who had masterminded the progress of the Transport Bill through the Upper House.
His beginning — "They are lovely and pleasant in their lives" — was indeed most
gracious, but surely he was not going to follow on with -and in their death they were not divided"?
No one need have had any doubts. As the son of a rabbi and a former vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Lord Mishcon knows how far he can go with the Old Testament without offen ding the susceptibilities of others. And he had a most apposite substitution for the mournful but proud words of the King of Judah .. . "and, my Lords, in their departmental briefs they were not divided".
Lord Mishcon was the most imaginative of all those who had nice things to say at the end of the work on the Bill.
He could, like David, lament — he hardly altered his first opinion that the measure was "doctrinaire, muddle-headed, rushed". But, unlike David, who ordered the slaying of the Amalekite who killed Saul, Lord Mishcon was not seeking retribution.
Instead he had more praise for his main opponent, Lord Bellwin — if his piloting of the Bill was equalled by the drivers they had been talking about, he was, said the noble lord, perfectly sure that the nation would be satisfied with its drivers at all events.
The only other peer who approached him in flights of fancy during what Lord Lucas called "the exchange of pleasantries" was Lord Teviot.
The former busman recalled that for the past 12 years Lord Lucas had talked about freight, and he had talked about passengers.
"We must both get dusted down, get wrapped in tissue paper and be put back in our box, ready to come back again, whichever Government is then in power, when there is future legislation," he decided.
Now there are those who would like to see all Lords and Ladies put in their boxes, and without the benefit of tissue paper.
But surely even they would regret the ending of a legislative chamber where.
strongly fought battles end with unchanged opinions thrust back for a moment to make way for an exchange of civilised words?