The Power of Place and Tradition: Parliament at Westminster, 1939–51*

Abstract On 26 October 1950, the house of commons occupied its newly completed chamber in the palace of Westminster, a replacement for its Victorian predecessor that almost a decade earlier had been lost in the Blitz. Written to mark the 75th anniversary of that event and drawing on a wide range of previously untapped sources, this article takes a fresh look at the sitting places that the UK parliament occupied between 1939 and 1951. Despite the significant dangers posed to parliamentarians by remaining in London during the most perilous years of the Second World War, the government and most MPs and peers remained resolved that the palace of Westminster should be seen as a political and psychological emblem of national resistance. From here, parliament could be seen to be leading the nation from the front. They identified deeply with the Victorian palace as an emblem of patriotic loyalty to the country and a worldwide beacon of traditional and longstanding democratic values. Yet remaining here was possible only because, at times of greatest danger, lords and commons were able to retreat to the relative safety of Church House close by, which was formally adopted as parliament's annexe. The same traditions and values played out also in the replacement of the lost commons chamber with a modern building cloaked in a historicist gothic revival style, and in the restoration of pre‐war state ceremonial as a focus of British national identity.