The Will of the People: Winston Churchill and Parliamentary Democracy by Martin Gilbert

Author:Martin Gilbert
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Europe, Political Ideologies, Historical, Democracy, Democracy Great Britain History 20th century, 20th century, Modern, Political, General, Representative government and representation, Great Britain Politics and government 20th century, Political Science, Representative government and representation Great Britain History 20th century, Biography & Autobiography, Prime ministers, Prime ministers Great Britain Biography, Great Britain, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780679314691
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2006-09-12T03:06:00.455782+00:00

6

At Loggerheads with Parliament

Churchill’s faith in parliamentary democracy was severely tested between 1929 and 1939, his decade out of political office—his “wilderness years,” as they are known. He was often a lone voice then, especially on the issue of national defence. Yet throughout those years he was emphatic in asserting the supremacy of Parliament, first in making the decisions about imperial policy and the future of India, and then with regard to foreign affairs, the policy of rearmament, support for the Covenant of the League of Nations, and the need for alliances with other democratic states confronted by the growing threat of totalitarianism—as embodied from 1933 by Nazi Germany.

Speaking in Oxford in 1930, in the annual Romanes Lecture, Churchill urged his listeners to realize the importance of the parliamentary process for each generation: “I see the Houses of Parliament—and particularly the House of Commons—alone among the senates and chambers of the world a living and ruling entity; the swift vehicle of public opinion; the arena—perhaps fortunately padded arena—of the inevitable class and social conflict; the College from which the Ministers of State are chosen, and hitherto the solid and unfailing foundation of the executive power. I regard these parliamentary institutions as precious to us almost beyond compare. They seem to give by far the closest association yet achieved between the life of the people and the action of the state. They possess apparently an unlimited capacity of adaptiveness, and they stand an effective buffer against every form of revolutionary and reactionary violence.” He then urged: “It should be the duty of all faithful subjects to preserve these institutions in their healthy vigour, to guard them against the encroachment of external forces, and to revivify them from one generation to another from the springs of national talent, interest, and esteem.”

As the Nazi Party began making steady gains in the Reichstag, the German Parliament, there were those who pointed out, rightly, that the Reichstag was elected on a basis of universal suffrage, one man one vote, with a secret ballot, much on the British pattern. Indeed, it had been a condition of the establishment of the Weimar Republic in Germany in 1919 that it should be a parliamentary system. After the Second World War, in his war memoirs, Churchill noted that one of the “democratic provisions” of the Weimar Constitution prescribed biennial elections to the Reichstag—elections had to be held every two years. In Britain the statutory period was five years. By the two-year provision, Churchill noted, it had been hoped “to make sure that the masses of the German people should enjoy a complete and continuous control over their Parliament. In practice, of course, it only meant that they lived in a continual atmosphere of febrile political excitement and ceaseless electioneering.”

Such ceaseless electioneering proved to be a recipe for the emergence of extremism, linked as the electoral process was to continual street violence and intimidation. In the national election of 1928, Hitler secured a mere 12 seats in the Reichstag. Two years later the number rose to 107, and, two years after that, in 1932, to 230.

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