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By Root 292 0

the Parliamentary countries that we should build a Chamber, starting afresh, which can only seat two-thirds of its Members. It is difficult to explain this to those who do not know our ways. They cannot easily be made to understand why we consider that the intensity, passion, intimacy, informality and spontaneity of our Debates constitute the personality of the House of Commons and endow it at once with its focus and its strength … it is the champion of the people against executive oppression … the House of Commons has ever been the controller, and if need be, the changer of the rulers of the day and of the Ministers appointed by the Crown. It stands for every man against the oligarchy and one-man power … The House of Commons stands for freedom and law, and this is the message which the Mother of Parliaments has proved herself capable of proclaiming to the world at large.

Churchill was convinced that the pre-war structure should be retained—that in times of crisis or emergency, an overpacked Chamber gave credence to the urgency of the moment. In all other parliamentary assemblies in the world, where every Member has a seat, it is much harder to gain a sense of crisis from the actual disposition of Members around the Chamber. Churchill’s view prevailed. The rebuilt Chamber, like the old, has insufficient seats for all its Members, thereby enhancing, as Churchill saw it, the democratic nature of the parliamentary scene.

Twelve years earlier, on 18 December 1938, in an article in the News of the World, Churchill had written of how he had been in many legislatures of the world, “but I have never seen one in which I should care to make a speech.” He had seen so many foreign assemblies “where they all sit in a semi-circle, and everyone has a place, or even a desk, which he can bang when he is displeased, and where each speaker goes up to a pulpit to harangue an audience scattered through a large area.” Churchill’s experience and perspective was clear: “The essential of keen debate is the sense of a crowd, clustering together craning forward, gathering round the speaker, with the cheers and counter-cheers flung back from side to side.” It was this quality that was preserved in the rebuilding of the Chamber in 1950.

For almost six years, Churchill was Leader of the Opposition. He insisted throughout in maintaining a balance of criticism. He saw no virtue in criticism for its own sake, believing that parliamentary democracy should allow for a sense of common purpose whenever that was offered. Thus he would not allow his party to oppose the India Independence Bill—feeling that independence should be the gift of the whole House, not of one Party—and he supported Clement Attlee’s introduction of National Military Service to meet the demands of the Korean War, a United Nations’ enterprise.

Such cooperation did not mean that Churchill did not also see the House of Commons as the essential forum for the sharpest of criticisms. On 12 September 1950 he told the House, in defence of the strong Conservativ ecriticisms of government policy: “Both Governments and Oppositions have responsibilities to discharge, but they are a different order. The Government, with their whole control over our executive power, have the burden and the duty … to make sure that the safety of the country is provided for; the shape, formation, and the direction of policy is in their hands alone. The responsibilities of the Opposition are limited to aiding the Government in the measures which we agree are for national safety and also to criticizing and correcting … any errors and shortcomings which may be apparent, but the Opposition are not responsible for proposing integrated and complicated measures of policy.”

One change that had begun in the 1930s was not to Churchill’s taste but, by 1950, had become too integral a part of parliamentary procedure to change. This was the Committee system, whereby much legislation was discussed in various committees before it came to the floor of the House. On 1 January 1939 he had written, in the News of the World: “Sometimes,