It was the State Opening of Parliament today, one of those great British state occasions which involve dressing up in ceremonial dress and undertaking centuries-old rituals.
One of those rituals symbolises, ironically after the recent events surrounding the arrest of Tory MP Damien Green, the barring of the monarch and Crown servants from the Commons. In 1642, King Charles I barged into the Commons to arrest five MPs on charges of treason. Luckily for them, they had long since gone, but the then Speaker of the House of Commons refused to tell the King where they were. Since that time, no Monarch or Crown officials - such as the police - are not supposed to enter the Commons without consent. This is symbolised during the rituals of the State Opening of Parliament by a man known as Black Rod, representing the monarch, who walks up to the open door of the Commons which is then ritually slammed in his face. He then taps on the door with his Black Rod.
After the Queen opened Parliament and read her speech in the Lords - always written by a member of Government - the Speaker of the House of Commons, a dour Scotsman called Michael "Gorbals Mick" Martin, addressed the House of his role in the Damien Green affair.
Despite one of his jobs being to disallow the Monarch and Crown officials - such as the police - into the Commons, especially when MPs are present, this man last week allowed anti-terror police in the Commons after they arrested Tory MP Damien Green, the Shadow Immigration Secretary, after he leaked a document that embarrassed the government over their immigration policy - believed to be that the Home Secretary covered upthe story that 5000 illegal immigrants were issued with licenses to be security guards.
Damien Green was only doing his job as a Member of the Opposition - keeping the government in check - though this doesn't sit well with our Left-Wing Labour Government who are turning this country into a police state.
Until Labour came to power in 1997, it was said that Britain may not be the best country in the world to live in, but it was the safest in the world to go to bed at night.
With Stalinists in power, can that be true nowadays?
Parliament has been corrupted by this assault on its historic freedoms. How CAN Michael Martin survive?
03rd December 2008
Daily Mail
Today the 156th Speaker of the House of Commons will seek to explain to MPs and to the nation what precisely he thought he was doing when he agreed that the Metropolitan Police’s anti-terrorist squad should raid the office of Damian Green.
Whatever he says had better be good. He is the man charged with upholding the historic dignity and freedom of Parliament, yet he has permitted Britain’s police to behave in a manner which would have won the applause of Vladimir Putin.
The official directly responsible for authorising the invasion of a frontbench Tory MP’s office was the Serjeant at Arms, a factory-built civil servant named Jill Pay, elevated to her post when the Speaker sacked the previous incumbent, a retired and excessively decent major-general whose face he decided that he disliked.
Since last week, Ms Pay and Michael Martin have no doubt spent many hours arguing with each other over who said what to whom and when.
Michael Martin will be called on to explain himself to parliament today
But all that matters to the rest of us, citizens of a supposed democracy, is that the Speaker and Serjeant at Arms between them knew that the police intended to invade Parliament’s precincts, to pursue a grossly improper investigation of one of its members, and allowed them to do so.
We must choose our words with care, because the Speaker is quick to defend what passes for his honour with threats of litigation. But in this case, what has happened on his watch is so serious, and the reflection upon himself so damning, that it is hard to be very frightened of what he may achieve by resorting to Messrs Sue, Grabbit & Runne.
MPs often pretend to be shocked by events. This time, many really are. So, too, are the rest of us. The Speaker’s reputation was already below the tideline, following revelations in February about his personal expenses claims.
Less than any of his 155 predecessors does he seem to understand that his high duty transcends party. He does not hold his great office for the exclusive purpose of collecting air miles — a favourite hobby, along with bagpiping.
He is no longer supposed to be the Labour member for Glasgow North-East, serving the convenience of Gordon Brown’s government. His responsibility is to Parliament as an institution and thus, ultimately, to British democracy.
Leaks are the curse of every government. Under Mrs Thatcher, civil servants Sarah Tisdall and Clive Ponting were prosecuted for disclosing material from the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. Tisdall was convicted and imprisoned, Ponting acquitted. A jury accepted his defence that he acted in the public interest.
In Opposition, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown frequently trumpeted the revelations with which they were provided by Whitehall officials secretly sympathetic to New Labour.
Now, however, Brown’s ministers — in this case, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith — are themselves victims. They do not like it. They are happy to exploit every weapon at the disposal of the state, including the anti-terrorist police, to stop the leaks.
It is unsurprising that steps were taken against Chris Galley, the junior official allegedly responsible for passing material to the Tories. It is unprecedented, however, to have allowed anti-terrorist officers to assault the offices of a frontbench Opposition spokesman, merely because he has been the recipient of unauthorised information.
The Prime Minister’s response to last week’s raids on Damian Green was to assert sanctimoniously that no MP can be ‘above the law’.
Jacqui Smith says: ‘These are very serious matters, and the police should be free to pursue their investigations without fear or favour.
We should expect no better from a government tottering on its foundations.
Ministers know that inside 18 months, they will almost certainly be history, expelled from office by a disenchanted electorate.
But Green’s arrest and interrogations, the pillage of his home and Commons office, were carried out by policemen who are supposed to serve us, not Brown and Smith.
The acquiescence of the Speaker and Serjeant at Arms in last week’s raid represents an even graver collapse of judgment. There is no suggestion that Green received material damaging to national security. He was merely able to publish information embarrassing to ministers.
The Tory MP is merely the latest in a long, honourable line of politicians and journalists who have profited from Whitehall indiscretions. In my own days as a newspaper editor, if we had relied upon official pronouncements to tell readers what was happening in Britain, most of our pages would have been blank. Illicit disclosures
are the lifeblood of a free Press and free parliament.
Why did Martin and Pay allow the anti-terrorist squad to rampage through Westminster on such a footling pretext? The only logical explanation — though their own today might be quite different — is that, like those big-booted policemen, they wished to oblige the Government.
If the Speaker today fails convincingly to rebut this charge, neither he nor the Serjeant at Arms can credibly keep their offices. Even before the latest scandal, Martin was deemed a wholly inadequate Speaker.
The Speaker allowed police to raid Tory MP Damian Green's office
He has always claimed that hostility to him, which is widespread among Commons staff as well as MPs, derives from prejudice against his class and Scottishness.
He is a former sheet metalworker and trades union shop steward, steeped in Glasgow Labour politics. Yet his predecessor, Betty Boothroyd, came from an equally humble background, and became recognised as a national treasure.
Martin is merely a man devoid of understanding of the dignity and duties of his office. Reservations about his fitness were expressed when he was elected in 2000, defeating Tory MP Sir George Young, an outstanding parliamentarian.
Labour’s overwhelming parliamentary majority caused them to snub the alleged ‘toff’ candidate and give the job to Martin. MPs have been expressing regrets ever since. Public respect for this Speaker attained its nadir earlier this year when he tooklegal action to try to prevent public disclosure of members’ expenses.
Those who have crossed him, in the House and out of it, say he is a great deal less affable than he tries to appear.
He is a man who likes to get his own way. This need not be a bad thing, but it becomes one when he adopts deplorably bad courses, as he has often done. He is stubborn in his follies.
It was reported on Monday that Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader, was seeking a meeting with Martin’s understrappers, to discuss the statement he will make today.
This would, of course, have represented improper collusion between the Government and the Speaker’s office on one of the most sensitive constitutional issues of recent times.
Harman yesterday denied the story, asserting that the intended meeting was solely to discuss procedure. But New Labour — or New Old Labour, as we should now call it — long ago lost touch with what is right and decent, far less democratic.
The Damian Green affair is a political gift to the Conservatives, because it lays bare Brown’s Britain. Parliament itself has been corrupted, shamed by an assault on its historic freedoms. There will be no need for synthetic indignation in the Commons chamber this afternoon — the anger of MPs is almost as great as that of the rest of us.
Michael Martin has presided over one of the most deplorable episodes in modern parliamentary history. It is hard to see how his Speakership can survive it or deserve to.
dailymail.co.uk
One of those rituals symbolises, ironically after the recent events surrounding the arrest of Tory MP Damien Green, the barring of the monarch and Crown servants from the Commons. In 1642, King Charles I barged into the Commons to arrest five MPs on charges of treason. Luckily for them, they had long since gone, but the then Speaker of the House of Commons refused to tell the King where they were. Since that time, no Monarch or Crown officials - such as the police - are not supposed to enter the Commons without consent. This is symbolised during the rituals of the State Opening of Parliament by a man known as Black Rod, representing the monarch, who walks up to the open door of the Commons which is then ritually slammed in his face. He then taps on the door with his Black Rod.
After the Queen opened Parliament and read her speech in the Lords - always written by a member of Government - the Speaker of the House of Commons, a dour Scotsman called Michael "Gorbals Mick" Martin, addressed the House of his role in the Damien Green affair.
Despite one of his jobs being to disallow the Monarch and Crown officials - such as the police - into the Commons, especially when MPs are present, this man last week allowed anti-terror police in the Commons after they arrested Tory MP Damien Green, the Shadow Immigration Secretary, after he leaked a document that embarrassed the government over their immigration policy - believed to be that the Home Secretary covered upthe story that 5000 illegal immigrants were issued with licenses to be security guards.
Damien Green was only doing his job as a Member of the Opposition - keeping the government in check - though this doesn't sit well with our Left-Wing Labour Government who are turning this country into a police state.
Until Labour came to power in 1997, it was said that Britain may not be the best country in the world to live in, but it was the safest in the world to go to bed at night.
With Stalinists in power, can that be true nowadays?
Parliament has been corrupted by this assault on its historic freedoms. How CAN Michael Martin survive?
03rd December 2008
Daily Mail
Today the 156th Speaker of the House of Commons will seek to explain to MPs and to the nation what precisely he thought he was doing when he agreed that the Metropolitan Police’s anti-terrorist squad should raid the office of Damian Green.
Whatever he says had better be good. He is the man charged with upholding the historic dignity and freedom of Parliament, yet he has permitted Britain’s police to behave in a manner which would have won the applause of Vladimir Putin.
The official directly responsible for authorising the invasion of a frontbench Tory MP’s office was the Serjeant at Arms, a factory-built civil servant named Jill Pay, elevated to her post when the Speaker sacked the previous incumbent, a retired and excessively decent major-general whose face he decided that he disliked.
Since last week, Ms Pay and Michael Martin have no doubt spent many hours arguing with each other over who said what to whom and when.
Michael Martin will be called on to explain himself to parliament today
But all that matters to the rest of us, citizens of a supposed democracy, is that the Speaker and Serjeant at Arms between them knew that the police intended to invade Parliament’s precincts, to pursue a grossly improper investigation of one of its members, and allowed them to do so.
We must choose our words with care, because the Speaker is quick to defend what passes for his honour with threats of litigation. But in this case, what has happened on his watch is so serious, and the reflection upon himself so damning, that it is hard to be very frightened of what he may achieve by resorting to Messrs Sue, Grabbit & Runne.
MPs often pretend to be shocked by events. This time, many really are. So, too, are the rest of us. The Speaker’s reputation was already below the tideline, following revelations in February about his personal expenses claims.
Less than any of his 155 predecessors does he seem to understand that his high duty transcends party. He does not hold his great office for the exclusive purpose of collecting air miles — a favourite hobby, along with bagpiping.
He is no longer supposed to be the Labour member for Glasgow North-East, serving the convenience of Gordon Brown’s government. His responsibility is to Parliament as an institution and thus, ultimately, to British democracy.
Leaks are the curse of every government. Under Mrs Thatcher, civil servants Sarah Tisdall and Clive Ponting were prosecuted for disclosing material from the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. Tisdall was convicted and imprisoned, Ponting acquitted. A jury accepted his defence that he acted in the public interest.
In Opposition, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown frequently trumpeted the revelations with which they were provided by Whitehall officials secretly sympathetic to New Labour.
Now, however, Brown’s ministers — in this case, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith — are themselves victims. They do not like it. They are happy to exploit every weapon at the disposal of the state, including the anti-terrorist police, to stop the leaks.
It is unsurprising that steps were taken against Chris Galley, the junior official allegedly responsible for passing material to the Tories. It is unprecedented, however, to have allowed anti-terrorist officers to assault the offices of a frontbench Opposition spokesman, merely because he has been the recipient of unauthorised information.
The Prime Minister’s response to last week’s raids on Damian Green was to assert sanctimoniously that no MP can be ‘above the law’.
Jacqui Smith says: ‘These are very serious matters, and the police should be free to pursue their investigations without fear or favour.
We should expect no better from a government tottering on its foundations.
Ministers know that inside 18 months, they will almost certainly be history, expelled from office by a disenchanted electorate.
But Green’s arrest and interrogations, the pillage of his home and Commons office, were carried out by policemen who are supposed to serve us, not Brown and Smith.
The acquiescence of the Speaker and Serjeant at Arms in last week’s raid represents an even graver collapse of judgment. There is no suggestion that Green received material damaging to national security. He was merely able to publish information embarrassing to ministers.
The Tory MP is merely the latest in a long, honourable line of politicians and journalists who have profited from Whitehall indiscretions. In my own days as a newspaper editor, if we had relied upon official pronouncements to tell readers what was happening in Britain, most of our pages would have been blank. Illicit disclosures
are the lifeblood of a free Press and free parliament.
Why did Martin and Pay allow the anti-terrorist squad to rampage through Westminster on such a footling pretext? The only logical explanation — though their own today might be quite different — is that, like those big-booted policemen, they wished to oblige the Government.
If the Speaker today fails convincingly to rebut this charge, neither he nor the Serjeant at Arms can credibly keep their offices. Even before the latest scandal, Martin was deemed a wholly inadequate Speaker.
The Speaker allowed police to raid Tory MP Damian Green's office
He has always claimed that hostility to him, which is widespread among Commons staff as well as MPs, derives from prejudice against his class and Scottishness.
He is a former sheet metalworker and trades union shop steward, steeped in Glasgow Labour politics. Yet his predecessor, Betty Boothroyd, came from an equally humble background, and became recognised as a national treasure.
Martin is merely a man devoid of understanding of the dignity and duties of his office. Reservations about his fitness were expressed when he was elected in 2000, defeating Tory MP Sir George Young, an outstanding parliamentarian.
Labour’s overwhelming parliamentary majority caused them to snub the alleged ‘toff’ candidate and give the job to Martin. MPs have been expressing regrets ever since. Public respect for this Speaker attained its nadir earlier this year when he tooklegal action to try to prevent public disclosure of members’ expenses.
Those who have crossed him, in the House and out of it, say he is a great deal less affable than he tries to appear.
He is a man who likes to get his own way. This need not be a bad thing, but it becomes one when he adopts deplorably bad courses, as he has often done. He is stubborn in his follies.
It was reported on Monday that Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader, was seeking a meeting with Martin’s understrappers, to discuss the statement he will make today.
This would, of course, have represented improper collusion between the Government and the Speaker’s office on one of the most sensitive constitutional issues of recent times.
Harman yesterday denied the story, asserting that the intended meeting was solely to discuss procedure. But New Labour — or New Old Labour, as we should now call it — long ago lost touch with what is right and decent, far less democratic.
The Damian Green affair is a political gift to the Conservatives, because it lays bare Brown’s Britain. Parliament itself has been corrupted, shamed by an assault on its historic freedoms. There will be no need for synthetic indignation in the Commons chamber this afternoon — the anger of MPs is almost as great as that of the rest of us.
Michael Martin has presided over one of the most deplorable episodes in modern parliamentary history. It is hard to see how his Speakership can survive it or deserve to.
dailymail.co.uk