Mr Speaker : The Memoirs Of Viscount Tonypandy
Merchant: Oxfam
Merchant's Category: Media> Books
George Thomas, a coalminer's son from Tonypandy in Wales, was elected Speaker of the House of Commons in 1976. It was the year of Harold Wilson's resignation as Prime Minister and Jeremy Thorpe's as Liberal Party Leader. The Labour Government lost its overall majority in the Commons and, faced with a desperate struggle to find votes, the procedural rulings of the Speaker became matters of passionate controversy. Tempers were lost, scuffles broke out on the floor of the House and the mace - the symbol of the Speaker's authority was wielded in anger by a Front-Bench MP. During these turbulent years, George Thomas was the right man in the right place. His success as Speaker came towards the end of a career that had begun in Wales, first as a school teacher and then in politics, which he entered as a Christian Socialist in support of beliefs that have lasted a lifetime. His moving and affectionate memoirs tell the story of a man of principle who was equally at home with his constituents in Cardiff and with the leaders and statesmen with whom he was to come into contact as he progressed from the Back Benches to his appointment as Secretary of State for Wales with a seat in the Cabinet. He revives memories of some of the main events of the past twenty years, from the tragedy of the Aberfan disaster, where he provides a moving glimpse of Lord Snowdon helping to console the bereaved, to the Investiture of the Prince of Wales, where he tangled with the Marshal of England and master of ceremonies, the Duke of Norfolk.
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