Canadian Influences on the British Speakership.

• Author: Laban, Matthew
• Position: Report

The office of Speaker of the United Kingdom House of Commons can trace its origins to 1258 when Peter de Montfort presided over "The Mad Parliament' of that year. In 1376, Peter de la Mare was elected as Parliament's first official spokesman but it was the following year, in 1377, that Sir Thomas Hungerford was the first person to be given the title of Speaker. It is during much more recent history, the period since 1945, however, that this ancient office has undergone its greatest evolution. This article will chart that post-war development and look at how examples from the Canadian Speakership have played a part in shaping its counterpart at Westminster.

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Despite the fact that the Canadian Speakership has yet to achieve the same level of independence and impartiality as the much older and more established British one, in many ways it has been one step ahead of its counterpart at Westminster. One province, British Columbia, had the first woman to hold the office of Speaker anywhere in the Commonwealth. The Canadian House had a Speaker from the Opposition benches nearly seventy years before this took place in the United Kingdom and its method of electing the Chair would be copied when the previous system used at Westminster could not cope with more than two candidates for the post.

One change to affect the office of Speaker at Westminster since the Second World War is the manner by which the person is elected to the post. In 1951, following the Conservative general election victory, William Shepherd Morrison, the former wartime minister and Conservative MP for Cirencester and Tewkesbury, became Speaker. His daughter-in-law, Lady Dunrossil recalls:

He was invited obviously. He didn't know what job he was going to get when they got back in again and 1 remember the excitement when he was invited up. I'm not sure whether he was offered something else or not but, anyway, they were thrilled to accept the Speakership so that was great. (1) During the early post-war period the British Speakership was treated just like a ministerial appointment with the person in question being summoned to Downing Street in the same way as if he were going to become a minister and join the government. The fact that Morrison faced the first contested election for the Speakership since William Gully was opposed in 1895 demonstrates that these days were numbered. Despite the fact that he beat the Labour candidate, Major James Milner, by 318 votes to 251 it did not prevent the emergence of a growing mood against former ministers becoming Speaker.

In 1959, when Speaker Morrison stepped down, the Conservatives yet again put up a former minister in the shape of the Solicitor-General and Conservative MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, Sir Harry Hylton-Foster. The Labour leader, Hugh Gaitskell, voiced his dissatisfaction with the whole process during the Speakership election debate and said:

There are some objections in my opinion to a member of the Treasury Bench being selected for the post of Speaker. We were not enthusiastic when Mr Speaker Morrison was chosen, he had been a Minister, but he was not at that time a Minister, nor had he held Ministerial office--I think I am right in saying--for some years. The right hon. and learned gentleman [Sir Harry Hylton-Foster] comes straight from a distinguished position on the Treasury Bench, and that, I think, is another difficulty. (2) The Opposition and backbenchers wanted an effective champion who was not too close to the government. Nevertheless, Hylton-Foster was chosen as Speaker and Labour did not put up an alternative candidate in the way that they had done eight years before. It was not until 1971, when the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Foreign Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd's name was put forward for the Speakership that this concern came up again. This time it was a Conservative, the MP for Tiverton, Sir Robin Maxwell-Hyslop, who proposed the Labour MP for Kettering, Sir Geoffrey de Freitas (who ironically had been a junior minister in Clement Attlee's...