Lives in Cricket No 15 - Michael Falcon

Falcon’s efforts in the House of Commons to improve the condition of agriculture in his constituency. Captain Falcon received a loud ovation, thanked all present for their good work on his behalf and said that he believed agriculture had turned the corner. He was very much encouraged in his work in the House and on the Agricultural Commission by the numerous letters he had received congratulating him on what he had done. Later in the year Captain Falcon spoke of the difficulties that the current government had to face. Again agriculture was to the fore as he assured all that, as Chairman of the Agricultural Commission, 26 he would do his best to protect all interested parties in the industry, specifically noting that the farm labourers must be adequately rewarded for their toils. It was at this point that Captain Falcon’s political fortune took a distinct downturn. Addressing a meeting at Brooke, he declared himself to be a Conservative free trader by upbringing and conviction but wanted to reserve judgement on the Prime Minister’s proposals on trade until they were fully spelt out. He said the government had achieved great things in the past year and he was a supporter of the Safeguarding of Industries Act for professions such as dyeing and barley growing – indeed he had been personally involved in the inquiry into the imposition of a tax on foreign barley – thereby compromising his credentials as a free trader. The problem was that free trade was actually the policy of the Liberal Party, including Captain Falcon’s chief opponent, Hugh Seely, whilst the official Conservative Party policy was one of tariffs to protect important industries from malign foreign influences. Having put his foot in it, Falcon spent the rest of the election campaign backtracking, to his obvious discomfort. 27 At Westminster 51 26 As with the documentation of so much of Falcon’s early life, the Parliamentary Archives have almost nothing surviving on the Commission of Agriculture of the relevant period and the name of Falcon does not feature in what little there is left. It does seem unlikely, at first sight, that an MP who seldom spoke in the House, whose attendance record had been questioned and who had demonstrated that he was of an independent mind by voting against the Government when he disagreed with official policy would be entrusted with the care of such an important Commission. However, the only source we have are the long-range reports in the Norfolk press which seem quite convinced that Falcon was playing a major role at Westminster in the field of agricultural policy. 27 To be fair to Falcon, free trade was traditionally the policy of the Conservative Party. Its leader Stanley Baldwin, influenced by grandees such as Stanley Jackson, had done an about-turn on tariff reform for this election. This might have caught Falcon by surprise and left him wrong-footed. (These days, of course, a politician not ‘on message’ gets a sharp reminder in the form of a mobile phone call from head office.)