WES TM NSTER
Page 7
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HAUL
BUT WHAT has an incomplete candleholder got to do with the legislation which — according to your point of view — librerates British transport or throws it to the sharks?
It was Peter Hordern, the Tory Member for Horsham and Crawley, who made all plain.
Apparently, both the British Rail pension fund and the British Museum, plus other unnamed contestants, were all after this piece of silverware. What its particular merit was Mr Hordern did not reveal.
Anyway, British Rail won the day, and the candlestick was added to the pension fund's accumulated works of art.
Over the years there had been a great deal of not altogether admiring comment about the pension fund's penchant for masterpieces. Mr Hordem for one was obviously not overjoyed that at one time the amount of money it devoted to works of art exceeded what the taxpayer gives to the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery and the British Museum.
And to make matters worse, where were the pictures kept? Many of them, revealed Mr Hordern, were in the City Club.
But where can these treasures go? If they were to be hung in station waiting rooms, or placed in railway carriages in the way that pleasant British scenes once appeared, the pension fund might find that its assets had depreciated somewhat as a result of attention from certain members of the travelling public not noted for their love of art.
But all this is by the way. Mr Hordern's brief excursion into the art world was just an interlude in a long and serious speech — as indeed were almost all the contributions during this two-day debate. The odd Shakespeare quotation came as light relief from the torrents of words.
Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour which caused Transport Minister Norman Fowler to give an ultra-short final speech: "The merits of the Bill are self-evident and overwhelming, and I ask the House to support it."
His opposite number, Albert Booth, was not so short, and certainly not so sweet.
He made it perfectly plain that he did not like the Bill. But the Commons — at least that part of it which had stuck it out to the bitter end — did. And said so with a majority of 65 votes.