Word: alec
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Britons of both major parties have been disturbed by the current rowdiness and inanity. Last November, on the occasion of his maiden speech as Prime Minister, Harold Wilson was howled down by offended Tories. A fortnight ago, both Wilson and Opposition Leader Sir Alec Douglas-Home could scarcely speak above the din. Members on both sides bawl "Shut up!" and "Withdraw!" at each other. Documents are waved, fists shaken, and at times several members are on their feet simultaneously, shouting repetitious points of order whose only purpose seems obstruction...
Last month the Tories were all set to pounce on the Labor government with a motion in the House of Commons to censure the drastic and controversial measures of Harold Wilson's first 100 days. Out of respect for the dying Winston Churchill, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and his fellow Tories held their tongues. By last week, when the debate finally came, both sides were fairly bursting to get at each other's throats...
...dollar project for the supersonic Concord airliner. Home could hardly be heard. For as he began to speak the House dissolved into a raging bedlam of angry partisans, bellowing insults at one another, shaking fists, waving sheaves of papers in the turbulent air. Amid repeated pleas for order, Sir Alec managed to charge that the Labor government had gone back on its campaign promises to revitalize Britain, turned instead to "panic measures" and "hysterical accounts of Britain's problems" that had spread "doubt and confusion" throughout the land. "I do not know how the right honorable gentlemen opposite...
...noisy jeering came from the Tory benches. Trying to make himself heard between outbursts ("Resign! Resign!") of up to 20 minutes' duration, the Prime Minister dismissed Sir Alec as a "scat singer,"* blamed Britain's economic squeeze on the "irresponsibility" of the former administration. And, he warned, the squeeze was going to get worse. With that, he announced bitter news for the aircraft industry: cancellation of two major contracts for military planes, which the government decided were too expensive and would take too long to build. Britain could buy the planes more cheaply from the U.S., Wilson said...
...Churchill lay in state in Westminster Hall, the three party leaders, Labor's Wilson, the Conservatives' Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and the Liberals' Jo Grimond, stood together in reverent silence before the catafalque. They must have recognized the Tightness of the scene, for in this very hall and on the very spot where Churchill lay Simon de Montfort had called together Britain's first Parliament 700 years before almost to the day. In its long history the hall had seen prodigies, from the Court of William Rufus in 1099 to the trials of Guy Fawkes...