Tory peer is just the latest in a long line of ministers in the woodpile
Updated on 09 July 2008
Calls have been made for a Tory peer to resign after he used the expression "nigger in the woodpile" in the commons.
"What has been brought out today is without a doubt the nigger in the woodpile, if such an expression is allowed any more."Lord Mackie of Benshie
Lord Dixon-Smith, the conservative spokesman for communities and local government, made the remark when debating housing laws on Monday.
But Channel 4 News online has discovered that other politicians, including a current shadow cabinet member, have got away with using the expression in the past.
The phrase was originally used to describe fugitive slaves who hid in piles of firewood as they fled persecution in the American in the mid-19th century.
In November a Tory councillor in Bedfordshire resigned after using the same words. Yet high-profile politicians have seemingly thought nothing of using the phrase in the past.
According to Hansard's electronic archives, the oldest recorded use of the term was on 1 March 1990, during a debate on fostering in the commons.
Former Cardiff North MP Gwilym Jones said: "I am afraid that my own council, Cardiff, will still be the worst nigger in the woodpile, with an increase of at least 110 per cent. There is no justification for an increase of 110 per cent. It is ludicrous."
It was five years until the expression was used again, by the then member for Ruislip-Northwood John Wilkinson, in a discussion about fishing policy.
He said: "The conservation regime is being circumvented by the procedure of quota-hopping, whereby the European Court, no less, has, as usual, proved to be the nigger in the woodpile."
Two years later on 21 July 1997 Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, now a shadow minister in Cameron's cabinet, said during a debate on a finance bill at a standing committee:
"In my intervention on the economic secretary, I tried to make the point, I do not know whether my honourable friend will agree, that the real nigger in the woodpile of the clause is the lack of consultation of those in the industry who know what they are talking about."
During a debate on the reconstruction of Iraq on 12 November 2003 it was the turn of the Lord Mackie of Benshie, the current Liberal Democrat spokesman on Scotland, to use the expression. He said:
"My Lords, it is obvious that a great deal of good work has been done and is going on. However, what has been brought out today is without a doubt the nigger in the woodpile, if such an expression is allowed any more.
The most recent recorded use of the term was by Lord Dixon-Smith on 7 July this year. He said:
"The homes and communities agency is not a body to which we object in principle.
"As the minister has explained, it is an amalgamation of the housing corporation and English partnerships. Of course, the nigger in the woodpile, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee has already pointed out, is that it still incorporates what I call the hangover of the new towns legislation."
