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By Root 257 0

defeat seemed sure, the democratic way of life was maintained. Indeed, from 1940 to 1945 Churchill made certain that this was so. At the height of the war, Parliament met regularly. It debated vigorously and critically. On 1 July 1942, as German forces penetrated 130 miles inside Egypt and only 40 miles from Cairo, a full-scale Vote of Censure debate took place in the House of Commons. The debate was called by a Conservative MP, Sir John Wardlaw-Milne, who argued, as did his supporters in the House, that a more effective war leader was needed. On the second day of the debate the Labour left-winger Aneurin Bevan told the House: “The Prime Minister wins debate after debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights debates like a war and the war like a debate.”

The moment in the debate had come when Churchill would have to speak. “I said a little prayer for him as he went off,” his secretary Elizabeth Layton wrote to her parents in Canada. Churchill spoke of the nature and conduct of the war and of his own efforts “under the supervision and control of the War Cabinet”—a true statement of the restrictions on his power of action. He went on to explain that nearly all his work had been done in writing and that “a complete record exists of all the directions I have given, all the enquiries I have made, and the telegrams I have drafted.” And, he added, “I shall be perfectly content to be judged by them.”

Churchill said that he asked “no favours.” He had undertaken the office of Prime Minister and Minister of Defence in May 1940, after defending Neville Chamberlain’s conduct of the war thus far “to the best of my ability” and at a time when the life of the British Empire “hung upon a thread.” He went on to declare: “I am your servant and you have the right to dismiss me when you please. What you have no right to do is to ask me to bear responsibilities without the power of effective action.”

Churchill did not mince his words. “If democracy and Parliamentary institutions are to triumph in this war,” he said, “it is absolutely necessary that Governments resting upon them shall be able to act and dare, that the servants of the Crown shall not be harassed by nagging and snarling, that enemy propaganda shall not be fed needlessly out of our own hands and our reputation disparaged and undermined throughout the world.”

A motion of No Confidence was called—it was defeated by 475 votes to 25. Parliament had spent two days in unfettered and public criticism. The newspapers—despite the necessary wartime censorship—were equally free to criticize, and they did so frequently. On 28 October 1943 Churchill told the House of Commons, the Chamber of which had been destroyed during a German bombing raid on London on the night of 10 May 1941: “Our House has proved itself capable of adapting itself to every change which the swift pace of modern life has brought upon us. It has a collective personality which enjoys the regard of the public, and which imposes itself upon the conduct not only of individual Members but of Parties. It has a code of its own which everyone knows, and it has means of its own of enforcing those manners and habits which have grown up and have been found to be an essential part of our Parliamentary life.”

Churchill was also concerned that, when the Chamber was eventually rebuilt, it should be on the former pattern. As he told the House, which was then sitting in the undamaged Chamber of the House of Lords: “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us. Having dwelt and served for more than forty years in the late Chamber, and having derived very great pleasure and advantage therefrom, I, naturally, would like to see it restored in all essentials to its old form, convenience and dignity. I believe that will be the opinion of the majority of its Members.”

With regard to the destroyed Chamber and parliamentary democracy, Churchill had another point to make: “We are building warships,” he said, “that will not be finished for many years ahead, and various works of construction