The Commons' New Home
By WILSON HARRIS THE opening of the new House of Commons by the King on Thursday begins another chapter in the long history of Parliament. The last chapter, which Mr. Hitler's bombers ended on May 10th, 1941, was not a very long one as things go. The House then destroyed had been in use for less than a hundred years—for complete re-building after the fire of 1834 lasted till 1852. It is not the last chamber that echoed to Pitt and Fox, or saw Burke, artificially dramatic, fling his dagger on the floor, or seated the reformed Parliament of 1833, or heard Peel split his party when he ordained the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. All that, and very much else—mast notably the vicissitudes Parliament underwent at the hands of Charles with his divine right and Oliver with his assumed right—happened in the deconsecrated St. Stephen's Chapel, where the Commons had met since they crossed the road from the Chapter Hcuse of the Abbey when Edward VI was king.
Even so, the last House gathered memories enough about it in its ninety years. If the scandal of the Crimean War mis- management blackened the fame of one of the first administra- tions to fill its Treasnry Bench, the same decade saw a notable —indeed the final—step taken towards establishing the freedom of the Press by the removal one by one of the taxes, on paper, on each advertisement, on each printed copy, that had restricted circulations, and therefore the public's know- ledge of events, ,to insignificant proportions. It was Glad- stone who set the coping-stone on that great work, dishing the Lords by tacking remission of the paper-duty on to his Budget, which the Lords were powerless to amend. Already then the two great duellists, Gladstone on the one eside and Disraeli on the other, were taking position, opening a tourney across the despatch-boxes--those boxes which perished in the fire of 1941—which knew no parallel till, in the last decade of the last century and the first of this, Arthur Balfour and Cham- berlain found in Asquith an opponent more than worthy of their steel.
It was in the same House, the House that is gone, that in 1881 the Irish members filibustered through an unbroken sitting from a Monday afternoon till a Wednesday morning, when Speaker Brand threw all precedent overboard and started the practice of the closure by putting the motion to the vote though several members were still clamouring to speak. It was here that Lloyd George laid the foundations of the Welfare State with his health and unemployment insurance measures ; here that Edward Grey made the greatest and gravest speech of his career on the third of August in 1914 ; here, on the third of another mOnth twenty-five years later, that Neville Chamberlain announced once more the existence of a state of war with Germany. It was here that Winston Churchill rose for the first time as Prime Minister at the despatch-t ox on the Speaker's right, one year to a day before the roof of the Chamber crashed flaming on despatch-boxes and green benches and Speaker's chair ; here that he preached the hard gospel of " blood and toil and tears and sweat " here that Anthony Eden, as Secretary for War, announced amid moving cheers the miracle of Dunkirk here that the Prime Minister uttered his historic affirmation that if need be we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing- grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in th streets, we shall fight in the hills ; we shall never surrender." There was in due time a surrender ; but it was not by Britain ; and it was announced not in that Chamber but to Members crowding the red benches of the House of Lords, lent to the Commons as a temporary home till their new habitation was ready.
Now Parliament resumes its normal aspect. The new House of Commons stands. on the same site as the old, with the Central Lobby once more the centre-piece of the legis- lative structure. It will be possible as before, if all doors are open (as they are certain not to be) to stand in the Lobby and see southward the Lord Chancellor on the Woolsack and north- ward the Speaker in his chair. Where the new House of Commons differs from the old it is for the better. The ameni- ties are improved, particularly in the matter of light and air. The Press will work under less serious handicaps. But the essentials are the same. In prodecure, indeed, they have varied little since the Long Parliament dragged out its pro- tracted session. And on two points the Commons have been adamant. Their Chamber must retain the rectangular shape that dates back to the days when the Commons, moving into St. Stephen's Chapel, accepted the seating they found there ; how far that originally promoted the party system is a matter for conjecture, but the rectangular Chamber, with the two sides facing each other squarely, certainly has a very different psychological effect from that created in the normal semi- circular European Chamber, with its numerous gradations from Right to Left (and with its Members advancing elabor- ately to a tribune to make elaborate deliverances, instead of speaking much less formally from their places).
The other stipulation, unintelligible to foreigners, was that the House of Commons should be of a size to seat no more than about two-thirds of its members. By that arrangement a fairly empty House looks less empty, the intimacy of debate can be maintained and the familiar crowding of Members standing behind the Bar on an exciting night provides an element of exhilaration which the House would be much the poorer for losing. In this, as in everything else that matters, the new Chamber can be counted on worthily to sustain the traditions of the old. Great speeches will be made there, great decisions taken. The new benches and panels will mellow as history gathers round them. Speaker will succeed Speaker, Ministers Ministers and Members Members. And in the new House, as in its predecessors, session by session the prayer will be framed, and surely not go unanswered, that God Almighty may bless the proceedings transacted there.
Previous page
