Members of the House were involved in a heated exchange during the voting on the Education Code resolution. The intense confrontation led to one member being asked to leave after he refused to withdraw a comment deemed inappropriate.

Published Friday, June 3, 1966

House passes the Code

- Speaker orders out Coke

Gleaner Parliamentary Reporter

The bitterly disputed Education Code resolution was passed in the House of Representatives last night in circumstances that retained a quality of drama to the end. The voting was doing party lines: 21 Government members voting in favour of the motion and nine Opposition members against. One opposition member abstained.

Shortly before the near two-day-long debate closed, there was a heated scene centering around Minister of Education Edwin Allen, who was delivering the wind- address,  B.B. Coke, and the Speaker.  In it, Coke was ordered out of the House by a Speaker whose tones were raised in anger, and  Coke left.

The incident started when the Speaker appealed for fewer sotto voce remarks across the floor, and added his surprise that teachers in the House did not respect, the ruling of the Chair. At once, Coke was on his feet shouting, saying that the members concerned had been attacked in a capacity in which they did not sit in the House, and that the Speaker’s remarks were “most unfair”.

A voice from the government benches said it was disrespect to the Speaker for any member to address him in those tones. The Speaker supported this observation with the statement that such behaviour was all the more surprising in that it came from a member who had once sat in the Speaker’s chair.  When Coke added that it was “a rude remark”, the Speaker asked him to withdraw.

Coke (shouting and gesticulating): I will not withdraw. It is most unfair.

The Speaker: (raising his voice angrily): Then, will you please leave this chamber?.

Coke (defiantly): I will.

Coke collected his papers and briefcase and strode stiffly out of the chamber.

Earlier in the closing scenes, the voice of the minister of education broke and sank to less than half its normal volume as he recalled how, when his leg was broken and this was reported at a teachers’ conference, the reading of the letter he sent on the subject was jeered at.

And, in the act of taking his seat, after proclaiming that God and history would be judge of his actions, Allen concluded with: “My heart is pure and I know that I am right.”

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