The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays (18 page)

WITHENSHAW
: Well we seem to be a full complement except for
Mr. French. Has anybody heard whether he’s coming?

MRS. EBURY
: I hope to God not.

WITHENSHAW
: Mr. French always has the best interests of the House at heart. That is why he comes over as a sanctimonious busybody with an Energen roll where his balls ought to be—no need to start writing yet, Miss Gotobed.

MCTEAZLE
: I don’t know what the P.M. was thinking of.

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: I expect he was thinking of having a balanced committee to lend the kind of credibility to our report which has eluded him in public life.

WITHENSHAW
(
to
MADDIE
): Not yet. (
Stands.)
Now, as this Select Committee has, as it were, lost its Chairman of the last session, our first duty as a Committee is to make good that loss.
(
Very rapidly now.)

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: Propose Mr. Withenshaw.

MCTEAZLE
: Second.

WITHENSHAW
: Any other nominations?
The question is put——

ALL
: Aye.

WITHENSHAW
: Thank you Mrs. Ebury and gentlemen. (
Sits.)
Let’s get started. (
To
MADDIE
.) Mr. Withenshaw called to chair. The Chairman’s draft report, having been read for the first time—any objections to that?—thank you—was further considered as follows:

Paragraph I. In performing the duty entrusted to them your Committee took as their guiding principle that it is the just and proper expectation of the electorate and the country at large, that its representatives in Parliament should bring
probity, honourable intent and decent conduct, not merely to the discharge of the business of government but also to their personal and social behaviour, which needs must stand in an exemplary relationship to the behaviour of the British people generally.

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: I must say that strikes an authentic
Lancastrian note. Who wrote this?

WITHENSHAW
: Would you mind?

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: Was it the P.M.?

WITHENSHAW
: No.

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: I’ll know if it becomes Tennysonian, you know.

WITHENSHAW
: You’re out of order, Mr. Cocklebury-Smythe. (
MADDIE
has her hand up, the other hand writing busily but laboriously.)
Not that bit, Miss Gotobed.

MADDIE
: ‘… called to chair.’

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
:
The
chair.

WITHENSHAW
(
at
MADDIE
’s
speed which is about 30 words a minute): ‘The
chair. The Chair-man’s draft report having been read for the first time was further con-sider-ed as fol-lows——’ The next bit is the draft report which you’ve got so you don’t have to write it down again.

MADDIE
(
with the document
): All this about setting an example?

WITHENSHAW
: Yes.

MADDIE
: You should tell them to mind their own business.

WITHENSHAW
: Who?

MADDIE
: Whoever it is who wants to know. It’s a load of rubbish.

WITHENSHAW
: What is?

MADDIE
: People don’t care what M.P.s do in their spare time, they just want them to do their jobs properly bringing down prices and everything.

WITHENSHAW
: Yes, well…

MADDIE
: Why don’t they have a Select Committee to report on what M.P.s have been up to in their
working
hours—that’s what people want to know.

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: It’s rather more complicated than that—er—Arab oil and …
(
The following speeches overlap each other until the

CHAIRMAN
calls the meeting to order.)

CHAMBERLAIN: …
the Unions.

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: M.P.s don’t have the power they used to have, you know.

MCTBAZLB
: Foreign exchange—the Bank of England.

MRS. BBURY
: The multi-national companies.

MCTBAZLB
: Not to mention government by Cabinet.

CHAMBERLAIN
: Government by Cabal.

MRS. BBURY
: Brussels.

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: The Whips.

WITHENSHAW
: Just a minute—that’ll do—come to order.

MADDIB
: I’m sorry.

WITHENSHAW
: Paragraph 2. Your Committee took it as self-evident that the consent to govern may be withheld if the people lose respect for the Commons either severally or as an institution, either through executive or constitutional deficiency, either on practical or moral grounds. It is on this latter ground—the morality of the honourable
600
—that your Committee has fixed its lance, determined to ride fearlessly into the jaws of controversy.

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: It is the P.M., isn’t it?

WITHENSHAW
: I’m not saying it is, and anyway what’s wrong with Her Majesty’s first minister keeping a close watch on the interests of the people re clean living on the back benches.

MADDIB
: It isn’t the people, it’s the newspapers.

MCTBAZLE
: That’s true.

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: Well the newspapers
are
the people in a sense—they are the channel of the government’s answerability to the governed. The Fourth Estate of the realm speaking for the hearts and minds of the people.

MRS. EBURY
: And on top of that they’re as smug a collection of inaccurate, hypocritical, self-important, bullying, shoddily printed sick-bags as you’d hope to find in a month of Sundays, and dailies, and the weeklies aren’t much better.

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: They’re not all that inaccurate.

CHAMBERLAIN
: You can’t ignore them.

MADDIE
: Nothing would happen if you did. They’ve got more people writing about football than writing about you and that’s in the
cricket
season—they know what they’re about.

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: The press, you see, is not just an ordinary
commercial enterprise like selling haberdashery.

MADDIE
: Yes it is.

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: Yes I know it is, but it is also the
watchdog of democracy, which haberdashery, by and large, is not.

MADDIE
: If the press is all that, you should be asking
them
about chasing after anything in a skirt, which they do. You should have a Select Committee on it—‘Your Committee doesn’t think it right for journalists to carry on as if there was no tomorrow.’

WITHENSHAW
: Thank you——

MADDIE
: You’re just as entitled to enjoy yourself as they are.

WITHENSHAW
: Thank you very much——

MADDIE
: You should tell them to mind their own business.

WITHENSHAW
: Paragraphs 1 and 2 read and agreed to.

MADDIE: I
would——
(
The
CHAIRMAN
looks at her.)
Sorry.
(She starts writing.)

WITHENSHAW
: Paragraph 3.

MADDIE
(
with her hand up):
Paragraphs 1 and 2 …

WITHENSHAW
: … read and agreed to. Paragraph 3.

MADDIE
(
with her hand up)
:… read and …

WITHENSHAW
: … agreed to …

MADDIE
: … agreed to …

WITHENSHAW
: Paragraph 3.

MADDIE
: Thank you. Sorry.

WITHENSHAW
(
clears throat):
Your Committee and their
predecessors in the last session have had before them the papers laid before the House including the written depositions (appendix A) and memoranda (appendix B).
(
ALL
turn over to next page.)
Paragraph 4. Your Committee also had before them a large assortment of press cuttings on this and related matters (appendix C). Your Committee did not feel that any purpose
would be served by calling all the authors of these articles, which were in any case frequently anonymous or pseudonymous, and invariably uncorroborated.

MRS. EBURY
: Amendment, Mr. Chairman.

WITHENSHAW
: Yes, Mrs. Ebury.

MRS. EBURY
: Paragraph 4, line 4. After ‘invariably uncorroborated’ insert ‘and actuated by malice’.

WITHENSHAW
: Amendment proposed. After ‘invariably uncorroborated’ insert ‘and actuated by malice’. In favour?

ALL
(
except
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
): Aye.

WITHENSHAW
: Against.

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: No.

WITHENSHAW
: Amendment stands. (
To
MADDIE
.) All right?

MADME
: Act…

MCTEAZLE
: … u … a … (
pause)
… ted

CHAMBERLAIN
: by …

MADDIE
: by …

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: Malice.

MADDIE
: Mal…

MRS. EBURY
: iss … (
MADDIE
looks up) … ice
.

WITHENSHAW
: Mrs. Ebury in brackets.

MADDIE
(
pause):
In brack-ets.

WITHENSHAW
: No, no just put her in brackets. (
Apologetically.)
It’s her first time you know.

ALL
: Oh yes … naturally … time to settle down…

WITHENSHAW
: Very good. Paragraph now ends ‘invariably
uncorroborated and actuated by malice’.

CHAMBERLAIN
: Amendment, Mr. Chairman.

WITHENSHAW
: Yes, Mr. Chamberlain.

CHAMBERLAIN
: Insert after ‘malice’ the words ‘and cynical
pursuit of cheap sensationalism’.

WITHENSHAW
: Amendment put. In favour?

ALL
(
except
COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE)
: Aye.

WITHENSHAW
: Against?

COCKLEBURY-SMYTHE
: No.

WITHENSHAW
: Amendment stands.

CHAMBERLAIN
(
to
MADDIE
): Me in brackets.

MADDIB
: … cyn …

CHAMBERLAIN
(
at
MADDIE
’s
speed
): … ical pursuit

MADDIE
: … ical purs …

CHAMBERLAIN
: … uit of …

MADDIE
: … suit of…

CHAMBERLAIN
: … cheap sens …

MADDIE
: … cheap sense …

CHAMBERLAIN
: … ationalism.
(
This may have been fractionally faster than the last amendment
.)