Jules Verne Forum

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Jules Verne MP?

From: Harry Hayfield <harryhayfield~at~googlemail.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:19:59 +0100
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

BlankNow, we all know that Verne was a councillor in Amiens, but did you
know that he has been seen in the British Parliament? Since 1803, Hansard
(the Parliamentary Record of the British Parliament) has been recording
every single word that every single MP has uttered and following an upgrade
of the Parliamentary servers in 2005, it was decided that this record should
be given it's own personal website which is open to all and sundry to ask
such questions as "Has any MP ever sworn in the House?" or "Is it true that
Winston Churchill referred to Plymouth as a "blasted city"?" or in our case
"Has Jules Verne ever been mentioned in Parliamentary debate?" and the
answer is quite a number of times. Using Hansard I have identified five
occurances where Verne's books have been directly referenced to in the House
of Commons.

The first reference came in 1914 when during a debate on "Food Supply in
Time of War" on May 13th 1914, the honourable member for Bassetlaw, Mr. Hume
Williams (Conservative) remarked: "When I was a boy one used to read the
stories of Jules Verne about people who dived under the sea and men who
fought in the air. We looked upon him as an agreeable teller of fairy
stories. But the picture of yesterday is the fact of to-day, and the dreams
of now are the events of the future" proving that just nine years after his
death, Verne's projections of life in the future were being borne out.

Parliament is of course a place where very important debates take place,
none moreso than the annual Finance Bill debate, which confirms the measures
set out in the Budget and allows the United Kingdom to carry on operating,
but in 1938 that did not stop Sir John Simon (Liberal, Spen Valley) from
harking back to his childhood on July 15th: "As a boy I took great delight,
as I dare say others of my age here now did, in reading the amusing and
fantastic story of Jules Verne, imagining that there might be a man who
could go round the world in 80 days, and yesterday a bold American did the
circuit in 91 hours. If we go on like this, and if a machine is ever devised
that will fly at the rate of 1,000 miles an hour, it will be able to start
on the Equator and remain on the Equator, and, if it goes the right way
round, the occupant of the machine will not know anything of the passage of
time. It will be a remedy for those who feel that they are getting old. The
contrast between making this circuit of the world in three or four days and
the fantasy of Jules Verne that it might perhaps some time be done in 80
days, is not really more striking than the contrast between the sums which
we used to think were enough to spend on our armaments and the sums that we
and the world spend to-day"

And he was not the only one who remembered reading Verne as a boy. During a
defence policy debate on March 4th 1946, Sir Ralph Glyn (Con, Abingdon) not
only did he reference Verne's powers of projection but also wondered what he
could teach the modern miltary: "When I was a boy I used to have read to me
stories by that wonderful man called Jules Verne. Jules Verne was treated as
a man whose writings were fit only for children, but it is amazing when you
read his stories how right he was; if he could have talked to the General
Staffs of the world he might have given them quite a few ideas. I think it
is high time we had some other Jules Verne to write things about the atomic
bomb"

Britain's involvement in the Second World War led to Britain having to be
bailed out by the Americans and despite having massive economic growth as a
result several MP's were worried about how much in hoc Britain was to the
United States. Major Sir Henry D'Avigdor-Goldsmid (Con, Walsall South)
thought during a debate on the economic situation in 1955 that "Our position
after the war was a little like that of the traveller in Jules Vernes' book,
"Round the World in Eighty Days," who, in order to complete his passage
across the Atlantic when the ship he had chartered ran out of fuel, chopped
down the superstructure and burned it in the furnace so that the ship could
proceed" although whether Phileas would have minded the honourable member
forgetting his name would probably keep Vernian theorists up for several
days

As we know, Verne's books are no easy reading matter, with several of them
lasting for more than thirty chapters and probably taking several days to
read from start to finish, a property that Mr. Michael Stewart (Lab, Fulham)
pointed out when he said "The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds has sparked
off an interesting debate. Listening to him, I was never so absorbed since I
read Jules Verne's "Journey to the Moon" many years ago" although that
considering on January 20th 1965 they were debating Research Councils, I am
not sure that the statement was meant in a completely complimentary fashion.

Sadly, Jules then went out of fashion in Parliament and I began to wonder if
I should (after our election in May) get our local MP (whom I will try and
get re-elected) to raise an issue in the House where Verne could be
referenced, thankfully though on October 19th 2001, during a debate on Clean
Fuels, the right honourable lady Jane Griffiths MP (Lab, Reading East)
stated "In 1874, Jules Verne predicted the derivation of energy from water
via hydrogen and 100 years later, in March 1974, "Road and Track" magazine
predicted a future for hydrogen-powered cars" the only sad thing being is
that at the 2005 general election, she was defeated as an MP.

So, Verne has certainly made a name for himself in the British House of
Commons (just like I dare say he's been mentioned just more than a few times
in the Assemble Nationale in Paris) and who can tell that with a new House
on the verge of being elected, some new member (or indeed re-elected member)
may stand up in the House and say "Mr. Speaker, sir, I would like to invoke
the spirit of Jules Verne in this debate..."

Received on Mon 29 Mar 2010 - 10:20:12 IDT

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