This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/15/big-ben-silent-warning-save-houses-of-parliament
The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| Big Ben is falling silent. It’s our final warning to save the Houses of Parliament | Big Ben is falling silent. It’s our final warning to save the Houses of Parliament |
| (25 days later) | |
| Big Ben, the great hour bell of the Houses of Parliament, is to stop chiming from noon on Monday until 2021. It’s not the first time this has happened, but it will be the longest, beating even the silence during the first world war due to fears of attack from low-flying Zeppelins: a silence which was only lifted to indicate the start of the armistice at 11am on 11 November 1918. | Big Ben, the great hour bell of the Houses of Parliament, is to stop chiming from noon on Monday until 2021. It’s not the first time this has happened, but it will be the longest, beating even the silence during the first world war due to fears of attack from low-flying Zeppelins: a silence which was only lifted to indicate the start of the armistice at 11am on 11 November 1918. |
| Major conservation work to the bells, along with the 160-year-old clock mechanism and tower itself, is desperately needed. That is why the work is going ahead now, separately from the bigger project relating to the Houses of Parliament, which still remains in dire need of renovation. The issues are well-known. Following several years of intense, expert analysis, a joint committee on the Palace of Westminster considered a long and complex report on the solution. Over a year ago it concluded that Britain’s most famous building “faces an impending crisis which we cannot responsibly ignore”. The Palace will either suffer a major catastrophe such as a fire similar to the one which burned down the old Houses of Parliament in 1834, or a series of cumulative smaller failures – water, gas, electricity, asbestos, stonework, sewerage – which will bring the infrastructure of the Palace to a standstill, or cause irreparable damage to Charles Barry and AWN Pugin’s masterpiece. | Major conservation work to the bells, along with the 160-year-old clock mechanism and tower itself, is desperately needed. That is why the work is going ahead now, separately from the bigger project relating to the Houses of Parliament, which still remains in dire need of renovation. The issues are well-known. Following several years of intense, expert analysis, a joint committee on the Palace of Westminster considered a long and complex report on the solution. Over a year ago it concluded that Britain’s most famous building “faces an impending crisis which we cannot responsibly ignore”. The Palace will either suffer a major catastrophe such as a fire similar to the one which burned down the old Houses of Parliament in 1834, or a series of cumulative smaller failures – water, gas, electricity, asbestos, stonework, sewerage – which will bring the infrastructure of the Palace to a standstill, or cause irreparable damage to Charles Barry and AWN Pugin’s masterpiece. |
| The repair bill for the most sensible option will be huge – some £3.5bn – and will involve the removal of all members, staff and activity from the building for a period of six years. The disruption will be great. But this building is not just the home of parliament. It is also a worldwide symbol of Britain and of representative democracy. Scarcely any of the 19.1 million tourists who visit London each year leave without photographing the building, and they currently spend £11.9bn in the city while they’re taking their selfies. Like it or not, that’s more than all the tourist income from everywhere else in the UK combined, alongside which the cost of keeping the Houses of Parliament from falling into ruin suddenly seems a bargain. Without the greatest Victorian gothic building in the world, the UK would be a poorer place, in every respect. And we’re going to need every one of those tourist pounds in our economy, post-Brexit. So something must be done, and urgently. | The repair bill for the most sensible option will be huge – some £3.5bn – and will involve the removal of all members, staff and activity from the building for a period of six years. The disruption will be great. But this building is not just the home of parliament. It is also a worldwide symbol of Britain and of representative democracy. Scarcely any of the 19.1 million tourists who visit London each year leave without photographing the building, and they currently spend £11.9bn in the city while they’re taking their selfies. Like it or not, that’s more than all the tourist income from everywhere else in the UK combined, alongside which the cost of keeping the Houses of Parliament from falling into ruin suddenly seems a bargain. Without the greatest Victorian gothic building in the world, the UK would be a poorer place, in every respect. And we’re going to need every one of those tourist pounds in our economy, post-Brexit. So something must be done, and urgently. |
| Yet the government continues to drag its feet about finding time in the parliamentary calendar for a vote on the repairs needed. The debate has been delayed multiple times since last summer because it’s been filed in the “just too awkward” tray, and pesky events such as a referendum and general election have conveniently allowed further postponement on a decision. Meanwhile, the MP Chris Bryant, who as former shadow leader of the Commons spearheaded the committee’s report, has been valiantly fighting a rearguard action against some MPs who think that the repairs should only be done during parliamentary recesses: a daft option, since that is how the Palace got into such a state in the first place. It also wholly fails to appreciate the massive scale of work required. | Yet the government continues to drag its feet about finding time in the parliamentary calendar for a vote on the repairs needed. The debate has been delayed multiple times since last summer because it’s been filed in the “just too awkward” tray, and pesky events such as a referendum and general election have conveniently allowed further postponement on a decision. Meanwhile, the MP Chris Bryant, who as former shadow leader of the Commons spearheaded the committee’s report, has been valiantly fighting a rearguard action against some MPs who think that the repairs should only be done during parliamentary recesses: a daft option, since that is how the Palace got into such a state in the first place. It also wholly fails to appreciate the massive scale of work required. |
| Reasons for staying put, however, are less about the money (the alternatives are far more time-consuming and expensive) and rather about some members’ desire not to be inconvenienced. It’s been said that a six-year “full decant” would prevent some one-term MPs from ever having the thrill of speaking in the Commons chamber (overlooking the fact that the real thrill should be to represent constituents in any venue, not in the postwar reconstruction of the blitzed Commons). Others have even argued that Brexit will be imperilled if parliamentary debates are not conducted from within the Palace of Westminster: meaning that ironically, a number of leavers are, it seems, remainers on this particular issue. The squabbling is reminiscent of the unedifying arguments among MPs in the 1840s when the Palace was being built, which led to massive overspend and huge delay: something likely to be replicated today if things continue as they are. | Reasons for staying put, however, are less about the money (the alternatives are far more time-consuming and expensive) and rather about some members’ desire not to be inconvenienced. It’s been said that a six-year “full decant” would prevent some one-term MPs from ever having the thrill of speaking in the Commons chamber (overlooking the fact that the real thrill should be to represent constituents in any venue, not in the postwar reconstruction of the blitzed Commons). Others have even argued that Brexit will be imperilled if parliamentary debates are not conducted from within the Palace of Westminster: meaning that ironically, a number of leavers are, it seems, remainers on this particular issue. The squabbling is reminiscent of the unedifying arguments among MPs in the 1840s when the Palace was being built, which led to massive overspend and huge delay: something likely to be replicated today if things continue as they are. |
| So once the silence of the bells begins, silence on the future of the Palace of Westminster must stop. | So once the silence of the bells begins, silence on the future of the Palace of Westminster must stop. |
| • Caroline Shenton is a former director of the Parliamentary Archives, and is author of The Day Parliament Burned Down and Mr Barry’s War: Rebuilding the Houses of Parliament After the Great Fire of 1834. She tweets @dustshoveller | • Caroline Shenton is a former director of the Parliamentary Archives, and is author of The Day Parliament Burned Down and Mr Barry’s War: Rebuilding the Houses of Parliament After the Great Fire of 1834. She tweets @dustshoveller |