UK Parliament: What is in a place?

The Houses of Parliament are broken.  I don’t mean this in a metaphorical sense as in the wider state of UK politics (corruption and broken promises etc), physically the building is actually broken.  Paint is peeling, wires are exposed, damp is everywhere and  overall refurbishment and renovation work is needed just about everywhere.  The place in short is a mess and if the mess isn’t sorted out the building may well be on the way to being condemned.  So the question is, what should be done?

The first option is to pay the necessary public money for the renovation works, patch the building up and life will go on.  The second and third option is to either stay in the building till the building starts to fall apart, which conversely may cure the over representation problem if a piece of the ceiling falls on some MPs, or simply close the building down and seek another premises.  The motivations behind the last two arguments tend to fall into be divided between concerns about finances and about values.  Renovating Parliament will be expensive.  To put it bluntly the place is bloody old and has been through a lot.  From Guy Fawkes to the Luftwaffe the building has endured for better or worse.  Perhaps more emotively some MPs have even died on or near the site.  In living memory Airey Neave MP was killed by a car bomb planted by the Irish National Liberation Army in Parliament’s car park. 

But time moves swiftly on and falling voter turnout at the polls and the abandonment of the big 3 parties in favour of alternatives have sounded alarm bells that British politics as we know it cannot go on.  A recent documentary on the BBC about the day to day workings of Parliament, far from making people more sympathetic to the place and the people who work there,  seems to have had the opposite effect.  The place is spoken of as being frozen in time in a bad way, which strikes me as a tad bit hypocritical when I hear people admire nearby Buckingham Palace for the same quality. 

OK so following the above argument we would abandon the old Houses of Parliament and make a brand new building.  We would henceforth lead the monument to a corrupt and old era of politics to a brand and spanking new beacon of truth and virtue (being deliriously optimistic).  We could make the building more open up to the public.  In an ingenious modern quirk the Germans have built a huge public walkway in the new dome of the old Reichstag, allowing Germans to keep an eye from above on their elected representatives.  Perhaps this could be emulated here in the UK? The Commons chamber itself was designed specifically to foster an adversarial attitude to debate.  Perhaps a new chamber, such as a circular one (eg Reichstag or Holyrod) may foster a more cooperative mentality.   A  broad debate could be started off about what this new Parliament building should look like and where it would be located.  At first this break with the past looks very hopeful and bold.

However after careful reflection I have decided that I am not in favour of abandoning Parliament as a building.  I have a number of reasons for this standpoint so I shall start from the financial.  After all of the planning, clearing land, building and furnishing of a new site I doubt much money if anything will ultimately be saved.  Physically there is no escaping the fact that the building is iconic.  It is the centrepiece of many tourist postcards, much more so than the Queen or Buckingham Palace.  To me throwing it all away because of our current disillusionment seems short sighted, bitter and more than a little futile.

I was chatting to someone on Facebook recently about how the Communists in East Germany tore down a royal palace to replace it with a big ugly modern (by 1970s standards) monstrosity of a Parliament building.  I thought it was a shame that the Communists had torn down a historic building for a superficial political point.  My friend pointed out that he was a republican.  I said so was and I have no problem with royal palaces, just the occupants.  I feel the same way about Palace of Westminster.  Put simply changing the setting is just too shallow.  Politicians don't take hints, large or subtle.  So putting them out of the office is unlikely to change anything.  Making them lose their job for not listening however is likely to make them take notice.  As a republican I believe that the last safeguard against tyranny is not the crown. It is us; the people.  If we want change we need to focus on our politicians themselves and not the physical place they work.  If we want change we must demand it and keep up the pressure; by voting, lobbying and constantly debating about the future of our country.  The last one is very important.  Too many people nowadays debate politics like it is some abstract thing that doesn't exist and they have no place in.  Put simply it isn't and we do.  If we don't want to be products of our environment, we have to step up and make our environment a product of us. One has to wonder if we resort to building Parliaments every time irritation with politics gets to a certain level, how many Parliament buildings are we going to have to build, until we be brave and get our hands dirty?