In every sense, Parliament is worth defending. Photo: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images
When terrorists struck at the United
States in 2001, they targeted the stock exchange, symbol of that
country’s merchant success. Today, in the United Kingdom, they targeted
Parliament.
“Parliament,” Enoch Powell used to say,
“is a word of magic and power in this country”. Our national story is,
in a sense, the story of a great hall on a bend in the Thames.
Successive chapters in that story – the Reformation, the Civil War, the
Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution – were experienced at least
partly as parliamentary events.
As I write these words, we know almost
nothing about the perpetrators’ motives. Few things are as ugly, in the
aftermath of a terrorist attack, as commentators wanting the
criminals to fit – or not to fit – a particular profile. The only things
we can at this stage infer are, first, that the attackers were prepared
to attack teenage tourists; and, second, that they saw Parliament as
their chief target.
Whether that peculiar combination of
inhumanity and political awareness makes them psychopaths or militants,
we can’t yet say. The line between those two categories is not always as
clear as commentators think. What we can say is that, for once, the
phrase “attack on our democracy” is exactly apposite.
It is only natural to take things for
granted. How many times have you walked past a police officer with
nothing more than a mumbled greeting? Next time, remember that the
copper you are walking past is prepared, if need arises, to place
himself between you and a gunman.
Likewise, how many times have you
complained about the uselessness of our MPs? Perhaps you have even
repeated some tired jokes along the lines of “Guy Fawkes, where are you
now that we need you?”
Those jokes were never especially clever.
The reason we commemorate Guy Fawkes Night – the reason it is pretty
much the only historical date that British people still remember – is
that it marks the preservation of our way of life. It takes a real
effort, in our light-polluted present, to imagine how dark England was
in the 17th century, and to recapture the emotions that must have been
stirred as people saw orange sparks cresting the downs, the beacons lit,
for once, not as a warning of foreign invasion, but in celebration.
Guy Fawkes, too, had struck directly at
our legislature. The plotters were not content with assassinating King
James. They wanted to wipe out his MPs, too, and to set up a clerical
absolutism in their place. Parliament, at least on one level, symbolised
free speech, free association and free conscience.
On successive November 5ths, for more than
four centuries, we have celebrated the supremacy of Parliament, knowing
that that phrase is really a shorthand for the supremacy of the people.
And parliamentary supremacy cannot be
exercised other than by elected representatives. They are our champions
and our servants; and when they let us down, we implicitly let ourselves
down. Try to remember that the next time you hear some sneering comment
about the hopelessness of MPs as a group. The chief alternatives to MPs
that have so far been tried are anarchy, fascism, the dictatorship of
the proletariat, absolute monarchy or theocracy.
For some people, whether bad or mad,
democracy is in itself a provocation. So much so, in a few cases, that
they see Parliament as a place to be attacked. For the rest of us, that
should be reason enough to want Parliament defended. In every sense.
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