PARLIAMENT AND THE PRESS
1
That it is a high indignity to, and a notorious breach of the
privilege of, this House for any news-writer in letters or
other papers (as minutes or under any other denomination),
or for any printer or publisher of any printed newspaper of
any denomination, to presume to insert in the said letters
or papers, or to give there in any account of the doings or
other proceedings of this House, or any Committee thereof, as
well during the Recess as the sitting of Parliament, and that
this House will proceed with the utmost severity against such
offenders.
The above resolution, drawn up by the Speaker, Arthur Onslow, was
adopted unanimously on April 13, 1738--a time when the magazines were
audaciously reporting the debates--to give emphasis to much earlier
declarations of the inviolable secrecy of Parliament. It still stands
unrepealed in the Journals of the House of Commons. And yet, for many
years now, about 200 journalists have been employed in the Press
Galleries of the two Houses, the Lobby of the House of Commons--in
which the London correspondents and the writers of political notes
get most of their interesting gossip during the session--and in
the committee-rooms of both Houses upstairs, where commercial
projects which need parliamentary sanction and special matters of
public policy are investigated before the Bills or resolutions
embodying them are passed into law. There are five varieties of the
parliamentary journalist. The largest and most important of the groups
are the reporters of the debates and committees. Then there are the
sketch-writers; the Lobbyists; the writers of London letters, and the
artists. The diversity of their work has the common unifying aim of
satisfying the inquisitiveness of the public in regard to Parliament.
The secrecy of the debates in Parliament, which, as Macaulay says,
would now be a grievance more intolerable than ship-money or the
Star Chamber, was inseparably associated with constitutional freedom
before the Revolution of 1688. It was a precaution devised to protect
the country party--the first fore-runners of democracy--against the
displeasure of the King. In 1641 the Commons made it a breach of
privilege for a Member to deliver out a copy, or notes, of anything
that was brought into their House, or propounded or agitated there.
In the very next year Sir Edward Dearing published a collection of
speeches which he had made in the House. It was innocently done.
Nevertheless, a resolution was solemnly passed by the House ordering
the book to be publicly burnt by the common hangman, and committing
Dearing to the Tower. But in later times the objection of Parliament
to any publication of its debate was due to an intense jealousy of
its independent authority, and resentfulness of any attempt to bring
popular, or outside, influence to bear upon it. In 1788 the growing
practice of giving in the newspapers accounts of what was being done
in the House of Commons was denounced by the Speaker as “a reflection
on the dignity of the House.” A Member said that if such publications
were not sternly repressed, “Parliament would be talked of, when it
did amiss, with the same freedom as any other set of men whatever,”
and Sir Robert Walpole, then at the head of the Government, declared
that if the debates were to be hawked up and down the streets for sale,
the House would be looked upon as the most contemptible Legislative
Assembly on the face of the earth.
This discussion arose on a complaint that the _Gentleman’s Magazine_
was making the reporting of Parliament one of its main features. Its
editor, Edward Cave, was brought to the Bar of the House and condemned
to fine and imprisonment. But the reporting of the debates went on,
for it sent up the circulation of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_. So as
to evade the Standing Order against printing or publishing in print
anything relating to the proceedings in Parliament, the magazine
resorted to the expedient of giving its reports the heading “Debates
in the Senate of Great Lilliput,” and only the first and last letters
of the speakers’ names with a -- in between. Dr. Samuel Johnson was
subsequently employed as the parliamentary reporter of the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_, and his versions of the debates made the oratorical
reputation of some of the statesmen of the eighteenth century. “The
eloquence of Greece and Rome is revived in the British Senate,” said
Voltaire. He had probably read some of Johnson’s reports, and these
reports were written by Johnson in a garret off the Strand, as he said,
without ever having been down to the House of Commons, and possessed
of no more material than the names of the speakers and a few notes
supplied by Cave. Johnson also told Boswell that he “took care the
Whig dogs should not have the best of it,” a saying which explains a
thing that greatly puzzled Sir Robert Walpole the Whig. “He had read,”
he said in the House of Commons, “professed debates of the House,
wherein all the wit, learning and argument appeared on one side, and
on the other nothing was shown but what was low, mean and ridiculous,
and yet, strange to say, the division had gone against the side which,
according to the report, had reason and justice to support it.” Well,
even nowadays the division is carried by the big battalions of the
Government, without reference, sometimes, to the right or wrong of the
question at issue. At least, so it is said.
2
The first of the parliamentary reporters, in the real sense of the
term, was William Woodfall (brother of Henry Woodfall, editor of _The
Public Advertiser_, in which the famous political letters signed Junius
appeared); for he was the first to publish reports of the debates in
both Houses on the following day in _The Morning Chronicle_, from 1769
until 1789, and afterwards in _The Diary_, which he established for
himself. His method of reporting was entirely an effort of memory.
As the taking of notes was prohibited by the Orders of the House,
his custom was to sit in the Strangers’ Gallery during a debate,
with his eyes closed, leaning both hands on his stick and listening
intently. He was popularly supposed to be endowed with something like
supernatural powers, and such was his fame that the first question of
the visitor from the country, on entering the House of Commons, was,
“Which is Memory Woodfall, and which is the Speaker?”
Woodfall’s versions of the speeches were accepted in his day as
wonderful examples of accuracy. In our times, when reporting has
attained so high a perfection, they would be regarded as inadequate
and possibly garbled summaries. Still, they reflected with far greater
faithfulness what was actually said than the more or less imaginary
reports of Dr. Johnson. It is to Woodfall that we owe the best report
extant of one of the most renowned of parliamentary orations--the
speech in which Sheridan moved in the House of Commons on February 7,
1787, that the spoliation of the Begums of Oude should be included in
the articles of the impeachment of Warren Hastings. So great was the
sensation caused by this speech that the Prime Minister, William Pitt,
consented to the adjournment of the House for the extraordinary reason
that the minds of Members were too agitated to continue the discussion
of the question. I have read Woodfall’s version in _The Morning
Chronicle_ of the following day. The newspaper is a small sheet of four
pages, with four columns each. The report of the speech fills just a
page, and is preceded by the following modest apology:
It would be the most arrogant presumption in the Reporter of
a newspaper were he to attempt to follow Mr. Sheridan under
an expectation of its being in his power to do him justice.
A faint sketch of the outlines of his speech which, like the
title to an elegant and copious work, may give the reader
an idea of the nature of the contents, is all that can be
pretended to, and we heartily wish we were able to do even that
better; but we ardently hope the speech will be given to the
public completely and correctly in a separate publication.
Sheridan spoke for five hours and a half, and, at the average rate of
speaking, he must have uttered at least 32,000 words. Woodfall’s report
contains only 4,000 words, just one-eighth of what Sheridan must have
said. If the oration were reported fully and in the first person, as
great parliamentary speeches are now reported, it would fill sixteen
columns of _The Times_, and could hardly have been got into two numbers
of _The Morning Chronicle_ of 1787. Woodfall merely gave the compressed
essence of Sheridan’s argument, making no attempt to reproduce the fire
and energy of the orator. “Mr. Sheridan,” says he in the course of
his report, “whenever occasion offered, animated his speech and gave
it abundant variety and attraction by blending glowing expressions
and figures of rhetoric with his pursuit of detail and his narration
of facts.” To report Sheridan fully and accurately must have been a
difficult feat.
3
At the opening of the nineteenth century the hostility of Parliament to
the Press had almost entirely subsided. The reporters were no longer
regarded as pernicious interlopers and eavesdroppers in the galleries
and lobbies of Westminster. No longer had they to take fugitive notes
by stealth or rely entirely upon their memory, in order to escape
the harrying of the officials. Members had tasted the delight of
seeing their opinions in print, and, to be sure, they liked it. But
the reporters still pursued their avocation arduously under many
difficulties. They had to scramble for places in the Strangers’ Gallery
with mere sightseers. In those days the reporters were allowed to take
notes on the back-row of the Strangers’ Gallery. It was the worst place
in the gallery for seeing and hearing; but notebooks and pencils were
still an unholy sight in the eyes of the Speaker, and the reporters,
sitting in darkness, and so remotely that their heads were but three
feet from the ceiling, were unobserved from the Chair. Even to secure
seats on the back-row the reporters had to be early at the door,
especially on important occasions, for they had no recognized title to
the bench as against other strangers, and it was a case of first come
first seated.
The year 1803 is memorable in the history of the Reporters’ Gallery
as witnessing the first official recognition of the existence of the
reporters, and the breaking with the ancient fiction of Parliament that
in deliberation it is neither seen nor heard by the public. Mr. Speaker
Abbot then acknowledged the right of the reporters to the exclusive
occupation of the back-row of the Strangers’ Gallery. It came about
by an accidental circumstance, rather than through the operation of
general causes. One night William Pitt was expected to make a great
speech on the war with France. A crowd gathered before the door of
the gallery, and in the general rush for the seats the reporters were
unsuccessful. The occupants of the back-row refused to budge, even
when the reporters held out to them the alluring prospect that if they
would only give up their seats they might read Pitt’s speech in print.
Consequently, instead of the usual parliamentary report appearing
in the papers next day, there was given only an account of the
difficulties under which the reports were made as an explanation why
nothing that Pitt had said was made public. The result was that on May
24, 1803, Abbot wrote in his _Diary_: “Settled with Serjeant-at-Arms
that the gallery door should be opened every day, if required, at
twelve; and the Serjeant would let the housekeeper understand that the
newswriters might be let in in their usual places (the back-row of the
gallery), as being understood to have the order of particular Members
like any other stranger.” Not only was the back bench thus reserved
to the reporters, but soon after a door was constructed giving them
special access to it, and a room for writing was also placed at their
service. Simple though it appears, what a stage in the democratization
of the State is marked by this incident! The statesman had come at last
to understand that he could no longer afford to address himself solely
to the House of Commons, that if he was to succeed in his mission he
must appeal to the people outside, and that he could reach them only by
favour of the newspapers.
One of the most famous of parliamentary reporters is Charles
Dickens. He was nineteen years of age in 1831, when he joined _The
True Sun_ (his father being engaged in the same capacity for _The
Morning Chronicle_), and he subsequently reported for _The Mirror of
Parliament_ (a short-lived rival to Hansard) and also for _The Morning
Chronicle_. In May 1865, presiding at the dinner of the Newspaper Press
Fund, he gave an interesting and amusing glimpse of his experiences as
a parliamentary reporter. “I have worn my knees,” said he, “by writing
on them on the old back-row of the old gallery of the old House of
Commons; and I have worn my feet standing to write in a preposterous
pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together
like so many sheep, kept in waiting, say, until the Woolsack might want
restuffing.”
Dickens, indeed, was a witness of that mighty event--the official
establishment of a Reporters’ Gallery in both Houses of Parliament.
In the temporary building that was erected for the Commons after the
fire of 1834 a separate gallery was provided for the Press. The day
it was first occupied, February 19, 1835, should be for ever famous.
The Lords preceded the Commons by three years in recognizing that a
Reporters’ Gallery had become an essential adjunct to Parliament. At
the opening of the nineteenth century the reporters were permitted
to stand with other strangers below the Bar of the House of Lords,
and listen to the debates. In time the taking of notes was allowed,
provided it was done furtively, or with some pretence of concealment.
One evening Lord Chancellor Eldon came down to the Bar to receive
from Mr. Speaker a message from the Commons, and with the expansive
sleeve of his flowing gown knocked the notebook from the hand of a
too forward and indiscreet reporter, Samuel Carter Hall, a well-known
writer in his day. For a moment the panic-stricken attendants were
fearful of dismissal for not having kept the reporter in his proper
place. The journalists were convinced it was their last appearance at
the Bar. But it was the unexpected that happened. The mighty Lord High
Chancellor, in his wig and gown, before that assembly of Lords and
Commons, actually stooped and picked up the notebook, and with a smile
and a word of apology handed it to the reporter. From that evening
all the ridiculous make-belief that no notes were being taken of the
proceedings was at an end. On the ever memorable October 15, 1831,
the Lords took the sensible and yet portentous step of providing a
gallery for the reporters. The recognition of the Press by the Commons
came in 1850. When the present Chamber was opened for the first time
in that year it was found to contain a Reporters’ Gallery, not as an
excrescence or makeshift, but as an integral part of the Assembly,
extending the whole width of the Chamber over the Speaker’s Chair.
Then a remarkable thing occurred. The Chamber had a lofty Gothic roof,
similar to the beautiful roof of the House of Lords, but it was found
to affect injuriously the acoustic properties. And the Prime Minister,
Lord John Russell, and the Leader of the Opposition, Sir Robert Peel,
actually went up to the Reporters’ Gallery personally to put the matter
to the test, with the result that the Commons went back to their
temporary Chamber for another two years until the present glass ceiling
was constructed, thus willingly reducing the architectural splendour of
their House in order that the reporters might hear and publish their
speeches. The complete and final act in the evolution of the Reporters’
Gallery took place in 1909 when both Houses appointed official staffs
to report their proceedings, in continuation of the old record known as
_Hansard_, which was compiled as a private enterprise.
4
Special tickets of admission are issued to the Press representatives
by the Serjeant-at-Arms for the House of Commons, and by the Lord
Great Chamberlain for the House of Lords. The number of men composing
a reporting staff varies on different newspapers, and ranges from five
to twelve. But be the staff large or small, the system of working is
identical in every case. The reporters follow each other in regular
rotation and at stated times, according to the roll, or list, drawn up
by their chief. The “turns” are usually a quarter of an hour, to begin
with, and are shortened, first to ten minutes, and subsequently to
five minutes, as the night advances, bringing nearer the hour at which
the newspaper is to be printed. The object of this system of relays
and short “turns” is to get the “copy” speedily to the compositors.
The entire staff is quickly brought into operation; the preparation of
the report begins within less than half an hour after the House opens,
and thenceforth until the close of the sitting there is a regular
conveyance of “copy” by messengers from Westminster to the printing
offices in the Strand and Fleet Street, or to the London offices of
the provincial newspapers, whence it is telegraphed to the place
of publication. When his “turn” is over, and he is relieved by his
successor, the reporter goes to one of the writing-out rooms. He has a
choice of several large and comfortable rooms in which to transcribe
his notes. This extensive suite of apartments has been added to from
time to time since the opening of the House of Commons in 1852.
Then there are the sketch-writers who produce descriptive summaries
of the proceedings, giving pictures of the scene in the House, the
characteristics of its leading personages, and describing the varying
effects of a great speech in a debate--the passages that were loudly
cheered or ironically greeted. The function of the parliamentary
correspondent, or “Lobbyist,” as he is commonly called, differs
entirely from both reporting and sketch-writing. The Lobbyist frequents
the Lobby of the House of Commons, with the special permission of the
Speaker and the Serjeant-at-Arms, on the search for news.
“The Lobby,” by which name the antechamber of the House of Commons
is known, is a spacious square hall. Its four symmetrical walls are
of limestone of a rather drab colour, with floriated embellishments,
and have windows of painted glass. The ceiling is of carved oak, with
coloured armorial devices. The tessellated pavement, into which the
motto “God Save the Queen” has been worked, has probably been trodden
by more distinguished men and women of every race than have walked the
floor of any other hall in the world. Under lofty archways of exactly
similar proportions and arrangements are four massive swing-doors with
glass panels, through which Members and visitors continually come and
go while the House of Commons is sitting. One door gives entrance from
the fine Central Hall, to which the general public have admittance;
the opposite door leads directly into the Legislative Chamber; the
door to the right admits to the refreshment-rooms, libraries, and
smoking-rooms of the Members; and its opposite door leads out into New
Palace Yard. Such is the outward semblance of that famous Lobby of the
House of Commons, which is often more the centre of political activity
than the Legislative Chamber itself. Bill after Bill may be introduced
in the House, and business may be progressing with the surety and
uneventfulness which all Governments desire, but to get at the true
inwardness of things political one must walk the Lobby. There it is
that events are turned over and discussed from the inside. It is there
you will learn what is going on behind the scenes, the secret moves and
counter-moves in the great fight for place and power between the rival
political Parties.
Here, then, the parliamentary correspondent gathers the political
gossip of Members, the official communications of Government and the
Opposition, and serves them up in crisp paragraphs, often with spicy
personal comments, in the “London Letters” of the provincial Press, or
in the columns headed “Political Notes” of the London morning papers.
5
It was my privilege once to witness statesmen absolutely refusing to
allow the great machinery of Parliament to be put in motion because
of the absence of the reporters. That remarkable event took place in
the House of Lords on December 2, 1902. The Education Bill of the
Unionist Government was before the House. The peers met that day for
the resumption of the debate on the second reading at four o’clock,
instead of a quarter-past four, their usual hour, but by an oversight
no notification of the earlier sitting was conveyed to the Press. The
result was that the Reporters’ Gallery was empty when the time came
for the Marquis of Londonderry, President of the Council of Education,
to address the House, and in the circumstances his lordship naturally
declined to speak. The reporters took their places in the gallery at
a quarter-past four, and Lord Londonderry, seeing them ready with
notebooks and pencils, rose and delivered his speech. What an absolute
change in the point of view of statesmen since William Woodfall sat
in the Strangers’ Gallery of the House of Commons with closed eyes,
endeavouring to fix on his memory the points of the discussion, and,
later still, Charles Dickens stood for hours with tired feet among the
crowd at the Bar of the House of Lords furtively reporting!
“There are three estates in Parliament,” said Macaulay once in a speech
in the House of Commons, “but in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder there
sits a fourth estate more important than them all!” By means of the
fourth estate, or the Press--its relentless observation, its ceaseless
criticism--Parliament has been brought completely under the domination
of the people. The numbers of those who closely and jealously watch the
proceedings of Parliament have, through the agency of the newspapers,
become multitudinous. Each Member of the House of Commons is thereby
impressed with a deep sense of his responsibility to the millions
outside, and especially to that section of them by whose favour he sits
in the Assembly. The influence the Press has upon him is twofold. So
splendidly public is the stage of the House of Commons, so vast is the
audience of interested onlookers, that he is stimulated to do his best
in the service of the State--to achieve great things, if he has the
capacity so to do, as well as the desire--and at the same time he is
oppressed with the uncertainty of his position; and knowing that those
who made him M.P. have the power to unmake, he has often to stoop in
order to placate them and keep them in good humour with himself. Thus
has the Reporters’ Gallery at once made sweet and bitter the career of
the politician, filling it with resounding fame, adding to its cares
and drudgery.