MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON THE Speaker of the House of Commons, the Serjeant at Arms and the officers and attendants are to be con- gratulated upon the excellence of the arrangements made last week for the inauguration of the new Chamber. With his habitual courtesy Mr. Speaker had invited to the ceremony those members of the War Parliament whom their former constituents, with distressing lack of gratitude or wisdom, had omitted to return to Westminster. This reunion of the old with the new boys was felicitous and moving. From the floor of the Chamber the present members gazed up at their one-time colleagues packed amicably together in the Strangers' Gallery. They may have noticed that here and there some familiar form had acquired in the interval an added rotundity or that the clustering locks of 1935 had now become sparse and grey ; but they cannot have failed to be impressed by the massive brows, by the contours of firm patriotism, of their distinguished predecessors. " They were giants," they must have murmured, " in those days." The Speaker had the imaginative tact to defy all precedent in allowing these guests and visitors to be present while Prayers were said. It was indeed a strange experience to hear again those fine familiar words and to turn in solemn devotion with one's face to the wall. Almost instinctively, when Prayers were over, the hand stretched down to pick up the name-card on the bench and to slip it into the little rack. No—we were no more the initiated ; we were no longer there. Yet for those who, in their desire to avoid unnecessary pain, have since their dismissal been unwilling to attend the debates of Parlia- ment, it was agreeable to observe that the spirit and manner of the House, as distinct from its physical form, had remained exactly the same. There was that old inimitable combination of dignity and chaff ; the curious impression that the occasion had about it both the solemnity of a religious dedi- cation and the gay friendliness of a college gaudy. We went away feeling that, sad as it might be to be excluded from that great assembly, there remained a community of experience and feeling such as time could not efface. We were grateful to the Speaker for his thoughtfulness. * 4' * * Appropriately enough I had been reading during the past few days Dr. Maurice Hastings' fascinating study, The Parliament House, recently published by the Architectural Press. It is comforting that a book of durable importance could have been produced so lavishly for the small contem- porary sum of twelve shillings and sixpence. , Dr. Hastings contends, and he may well be right, that the strange shape adopted by successive Chambers is due to the chance fact that the Commons, when allocated at last a local habitation and a name, were housed in St. Stephen's Chapel. The reasons, he contends, for everything in our present Parliament Chamber are to be explained by reference to the past. " Unless this is realised," he writes, " the building cannot be understood as it should be ; and this explains why, when the Commons meet, they appear more like a choir seated in a chapel than a legis- lative assembly." Dr. Hastings Ms devoted so much energy into researches into the dim history of the Palace of West- minster, he has disclosed with such delighted gusto the errors of former archaeologists, that I should hesitate to question the accuracy of his deductions. He is probably right in deciding that members sit opposite each other because St. Stephen's was once a chapel and that, when they bow on entering the Chamber, they are bowing, not to Mr. Speaker or his chair, but to an altar which was there situated in Papist times. Yet I am also convinced that the perpetuation of these illogical seating arrangements was due, not to any reverence for the past, but to a definite and commendable teleological idea. When in May, 1941, the old Chamber was neatly extracted by the Luftwaffe as if it had been a decaying molar, a slight discussion arose whether the opportunity should not be taken to construct the new House of Commons in more logical shape. There were some eccentrics even who suggested that the Mother of Parliaments (if I may employ that arrogant but inaccurate phrase) should ape the fashions of the Continent and assume rotunda form. How convenient it would be, such logicians argued, if the new House of Commons were so constructed as to be able to accommodate all its members ; how useful if every individual Member of Parliament had his own seat and desk permanently reserved for him, and if, when addressing the Assembly, he could mount a rostrum. The more experienced parliamentarians rejected these-1 must admit most tentative—proposals with disgust. It was essential, they said, that the Government front bench and the Opposition front bench should be in such close propinquity as to enable a Minister, without being heard in the Press Gallery, to indicate to an opponent that he had got the whole thing wrong and had better discuss it later over a glass in the t smoking room. It was important, they argued, that the Chamber should contain fewer seats than there were Members, since a dull orator must not be too embarrassed by emptiness whereas an interesting orator would be stimulated by a sense of circumambient overcrowding. Above all, they insisted, if we were to imitate those silly foreign rotundas we should be dealing a mortal blow to the two-party system. The moment legislators start sitting in circles they begin to dis- integrate ; and since the two-party system is the foundation of our liberties, we must retain the splendid dichotomy represented by the floor of the House. How right they were.
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I do not agree with Mr. Robert Lutyens and other younger architects that it was unfortunate that the new Chamber was not constructed in a contemporary formula—there is no contemporary formula—or that it was disgraceful for the Committee to have insisted upon the imitation of an imitation, the fake of a fake, thereby once again arraying the Mother of Parliaments in fancy dress. It seems to me that Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and his gifted brother have achieved a sensible compromise ; they have not broken abruptly with the Barry- Pugin formula but have merely 'rendered it more hygienic. No longer will those who sit upon the front benches be con- scious that the vapours of the Thames valley are passing through the grating up their trouser legs ; no longer will that hard insistent light beat doWn upon them from the roof ; no longer will foreign ambassadors be crowded together like swallows upon a telegraph line. The reporters in future will not only have room to use their pencils but also mechanical ears wherewith to hear. One may regret the good green and the buttons of the former benches ; one may feel that the present green is somewhat arsenical and that the oak has a dyspeptic hue. But what krelief for Members who wait in anxiety to deliver their speeaies to see the Blue sky through clear windows and to be spared the exasperation of gazing for hour after hour upon the chickens and delphiniums of Pugin's stained glass. Moreover the subterranean palace which Sir Giles Gilbert Scott has created for the ease and delectation of our present and future statesmen can compare with the soft spaciousness of the corridors and cabins of the most osten- tatious liner. But it is not stone and mortar, not oak nor leather, which constitute the British House of Commons. It is the Members themselves who,• whether frousty or air- conditioned, whether inaudible or amplified, maintain the identity of that immortal assemblage. It is for them, with their school-boy levity, their adult tolerance, to become and remain " the worthy guardians of the honour of this House."
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