Hanging? Sheepstealing?
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Worse than that . . .
ELEVEN Conservative MPs voted against the Government and many abstained. Hon Gentlemen brayed and Rt Hon Gentlemen howled or Howelled according to their sympathies. A junior minister confessed that he hated and detested the cause that he espoused.
Was the Administration trying to bring back hanging for sheepstealing, or to abolish the Church or overthrow the monarchy? As the hangman said to the prisoner, you must be choking.
This was no such political frolic; this was a constitutional threat of the first magnitude. The Government had suggested that there was an economic and environmental case for increasing the maximum weight of five-axle vehicles to 40 tonnes and had invited Parliament to think it over for a couple of months.
"What about a gesture to the people?" demanded Canterbury's enraged Conservative MP, David Crouch. A gentleman to his fingertips as well as Rt Hon, David Howell, Secretary of State for Transport, resisted the temptation to make one even to his Hon Friend.
Meanwhile, in a dastardly attempt to divert public attention from the Government's fell design, Sir Geoffrey Howe, Package King of 11 Downing Street, was masquerading as Santa Claus to handicapped children. The disguise was so effective that even the Chancellor's Jack Russell terrier, which is apparently liable to see red, had to be locked up.