Foreign News: Every Modern Convenience

On a moonlight night in May 1941, seven German bombs struck Britain’s historic House of Commons. The Great Mace and Minny, the Commons cat, escaped unscathed. But the House was completely destroyed, from the carpet to the false ceiling that Queen Victoria installed to improve acoustics. Last week, almost a decade later, the job of rebuilding the House of Commons was well under way; the honorable members, who meanwhile have been meeting in the House of Lords, were hopeful that they would return to their old debating ground by next fall.

The new chamber is made mostly of Clipsham and Portland stone; its mass of carved woodwork is of English oak, felled in Shropshire, specially tempered at a government research center and carved to the detailed designs of Architect Sir Giles Scott. The new furnishings will come from members of the Commonwealth—the speaker’s chair from Australia, the table from Canada, dispatch boxes from New Zealand, doors from India and Pakistan. The rebuilt House will be able to seat 437 members, an improvement of 171 in the old total, but still not enough to seat all 625 members of the new Parliament at once.* Other revolutionary improvements will include fluorescent lighting, airconditioning, and 15 interviewing rooms for the members who, unlike their more fortunate U.S. counterparts, have no offices of their own (many have had to attend to their office work sitting on benches in the public lobbies). A final touch, announced last week, will be a layer of special metal sheeting, placed under the carpet, that will be kept at a constant temperature of 80° F., “ensuring that the feet of the occupants would be kept constantly warmed.”

*No less a parliamentarian than Winston Churchill has argued against a chamber large enough to seat all members, because most of the debates would be carried on in the depressing atmosphere of a half-empty theater.