An article in The Spectator magazine of 3 December expressed concern about the number of Tory MPs who are intending to retire at the next election. ‘This loss of experience is a problem’, the article concluded. In a letter published in The Spectator ‘s Christmas edition, Alistair Lexden explained what happened when the problem came up a century ago.
Sir: There is nothing new about a large turnover of Conservative MPs (Politics, 3 December. Over a third of those returned in 1918 departed at the next election in 1922. That meant an intake of 111 among a total of 345 Tory MPs in the next parliament. The new boys responded to their arrival in unfamiliar surroundings by establishing the 1922 Committee, to which all backbenchers gravitated over the years that followed. Its sub-committees met regularly until the 1990s to consider the specific areas of policy assigned to each of them by the whips who kept a close eye on what they did. The true blue Tory Lord Stamfordham, who was George V’s private secretary, worried that ‘a government with a huge majority would stifle the growth of parliamentary capacity’ and deter ‘young men from coming in’. It was by providing serious policy work for backbench MPs to do—rather than leaving them to agitate in little groups as they do now - that discipline was maintained and the exit of large numbers at subsequent elections curbed. The key factor was the appointment of calm, effective whips, who kept the committees under diligent surveillance and behaved firmly, but politely. They are in short supply today.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords. London SW1
