Parliamentary Mandarines

While the clerks are depicted as experts in their field, the three in question are seen more ‘gentlemen than players’. ‘What their job was no Member knew; what their purpose was, not even they quite understood. From day to day, they performed small rituals, and they recorded, and they checked what they had recorded ...’ (p. 41). What is striking is the disdain they show for parliamentary representatives as a class and for the parliamentary process:

‘(The clerks of the House of Commons) have no respect for them (Members); they laugh at them; they compile lists of the twenty most idiotic Members, and the twenty most debauched; they do not work for them ... they treat Members to their faces with civility, and behind their backs as inferior undergraduates who have mistaken their ambitions. (p. 40)’


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