The Will of the People_ Winston Churchill and Parliamentary Democracy - Martin Gilbert [45]
Even in wartime Churchill held this view, telling the House of Commons on 13 September 1943: “Party government is not obnoxious to democracy. Indeed Parliamentary democracy has flourished under Party government.” There were, of course, limits to the vigour of parliamentary debate. As he told his fellow parliamentarians on 6 June 1951: “The object of Parliament is to substitute for fisticuffs.” This was a simple but true description of what differentiated parliamentary democracy from tyranny and dictatorship. Eight months earlier, on 24 October 1950, during the debate on the rebuilding of the Chamber in its pre-war form, Churchill said of the House of Commons: “It is the champion of the people against executive oppression,” and he went on to explain what he meant. The House of Commons “has ever been the controller and, if need be, the changer of the rulers of the day and of Ministers appointed by the Crown. It stands forever against oligarchy and one-man power.”
As peacetime Prime Minister, Churchill remained concerned with every aspect of the complex fabric of the methods and traditions of the House of Commons. On 15 November 1951, in defending the Speaker of the House for his interventions at times of unruly debates and interruptions, he declared: “In these hard Party fights under democratic conditions, as in football matches and the like, there are moments when the umpire gets a very rough time.” The Speaker, he explained, “represents and embodies the spirit of the House of Commons and that spirit, which has transported itself to so many lands and climates and to countries far outside our sphere, is one of the gleaming and enduring glories of the British and in a special way … of the English message to the world.”
It was not only in Britain that Churchill saw and admired the working of parliamentary democracy. It flourished in the former Dominions, most notably in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It prevailed in India, which, with its population of more than a billion in the opening years of the twenty-first century, can boast that it is the world’s largest democracy. “All these traditions,” Churchill said in his speech of 24 October 1950, “… have brought us into being over hundreds of years, carrying a large proportion of the thought of the human race with us, as these traditions received new draughts of life as the franchise was extended until it became universal. The House of Commons stands for freedom and law, and this is the message which the Mother of Parliaments has proved itself capable of proclaiming to the world at large.”
The place that parliamentary democracy had, and still has, in maintaining the rights of man in civic society in many nations cannot be sustained and preserved by lip service alone. As Churchill’s lifelong association and involvement in the parliamentary process shows, it has to be believed in, nourished and fought for—sometimes literally fought for on the battlefield—against those who wish to destroy it. It requires permanent, active, positive support—on the floor of the Parliament, on public platforms, and in the hearts and minds of those whose lives and way of life it protects and enhances.
Churchill’s Whitehall
Places in Great Britain mentioned in this book
Acknowledgements
The origin of this book was a lecture I gave in Toronto in 2003 to the Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy. A previous lecture to the society had been given by Sir John Colville, Winston Churchill’s former Joint Principal Private Secretary and friend. It was Colville who helped me over many years to understand Churchill’s work and ideas—and his ideals.
I am grateful to Anne Collins, Esther Goldberg, Michael Levine, Andrew McMurtry and Kay Thomson, who have encouraged me to examine Churchill’s view and practice of parliamentary democracy and whose collective enthusiasm has enabled this book to take shape.
November 16, 2005
Note on Sources
Churchill’s speeches and statements in the House of