Britain – September 2019

BRITAIN (^19)
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
http://www.britain-magazine.com
PHOTOS:
© ROGER HARRIS/JESSICA TAYLOR/ROBERT HARDING/ALAMY/UK PARLIAMENT
Chronologically speaking, the Norman Porch is a good
place to start. The steps that lead up to the Porch from
the Sovereign’s Entrance mark the start of the processional
route taken by Her Majesty The Queen at the State
Opening of Parliament: the, typically annual, moment that
all three aspects of Parliament – the Crown, the Commons
and the Lords – come together.
In preparation for her arrival, a contingent of the
Queen’s Body Guard – Beefeaters in their scarlet livery,
armed with swords and lanterns – have already performed
a duty of their own: a ceremonial search of the passages
beneath the Palace of Westminster, recalling the morning
of 5 November 1605, when their predecessors thwarted
the Gunpowder Plot in the building’s undercroft.
From the Porch, the Queen proceeds to the Robing Room,
where she dons her Imperial State Crown and ceremonial
robes in preparation for the Opening of Parliament. Robed
and ready, she makes her stately progress through the Royal
Gallery, a grand hall featuring portraits of monarchs from
the Georgian era to the present, as well as two vast paintings
by Daniel Maclise, uninching portrayals of pivotal battles
in British military history: Waterloo and Trafalgar.
Doubtless feeling the weight of history, the Queen
proceeds to the Prince’s Chamber, a spectacular anteroom
for the upper chamber. Here to gaze upward at are paintings
of the Tudors on one side, a family who worked well if
manipulatively with Parliament, particularly when divorces
were sought. On the other side are portraits of the Stuarts,
who worked rather less successfully with Parliament,
believing unswervingly in the Divine Right of Kings.
The Prince’s Chamber leads straight into the House
of Lords, the upper house, famously characterised by its
red-leather seats, where lifetime (plus 90 hereditary) peers
sit in what must be seen as Pugin’s masterpiece. His vision
reaches its resplendent apotheosis in the dais-mounted
Royal Throne, a gilded affair based on the Coronation
Chair at Westminster Abbey. From here, the Queen delivers
her speech (written by the Prime Minister), accompanied
by Prince Charles. But rst, one of Parliament’s most
striking traditions must ensue.
This is the moment that Black Rod, a senior ofcer in
the House of Lords, is despatched from the upper house
to the Commons to summon MPs to the Queen’s address.
Tradition dictates that Black Rod should knock three times
on the Commons’ door, which has been slammed shut
as a symbol of the lower house’s independence. The door
is then opened and the Prime Minister, the Leader of
the Opposition and other senior MPs make deliberately
slow progress to the Lords, obliging the Queen to wait,
symbolising that the true seat of power in the country
lies with the Commons.
Anyone surveying the room from the bar, from where
the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition listen
to the address, should note the Woolsack, in front of the
throne, upon which the Lord Speaker sits; a 14th-century
innovation, it reects the economic importance of the wool
trade to England, its stufng made up of wool from each
country in the union and the Commonwealth.
If the Lords is the most ornate room in the palace, the
Commons, in its signature green, is almost strikingly plain.
The lack of detail is made up for in atmosphere, keenly felt
in the Members’ Lobby, the anteroom for the Commons,
where MPs gather before the house sits and where
journalists interrogate them on the day’s developments.
To enter the Commons, MPs must pass under a
blackened archway, known as Churchill’s Arch, which,