Analysis: Blair has history on his side but he can learn from Churchill

Whatever happens in the House of Commons today, there should be no doubt about the constitutional fact of life that will govern proceedings and any war against Iraq. The deployment of troops and the issuing of orders to engage in hostilities are undertaken through the Royal Prerogative alone. That is to say by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

There is no requirement in our constitution for Parliament to give its formal approval or permission for the use of military force, at home or abroad. The President of the United States is required by the constitution and by the War Powers Act of 1973 to gain the permission of Congress. The German constitution won't allow the Chancellor to send German forces on peace- keeping missions without a prior vote in the Bundestag. But in Britain there are no such niceties, and never have been. The greatest myth in the Iraq debate is that Mr Blair is in some sense more dismissive of Parliament than any of his predecessors when it comes to committing British forces.

There are many areas of policy where the Government does appear to view Parliament as a tiresome distraction but, on the question of using military force, Mr Blair can be said to have been as scrupulous as any of his predecessors. His failing is not a formal or constitutional one; it is a political, even a moral one, in that he doesn't seem to want to use Parliament in its broader role – as a sounding board, a way to gauge the mood of the nation, and to legitimise executive action. It is there that the historical precedents are the most revealing, and Mr Blair would do well to pay heed to them.

The power to declare war is a prerogative power, exercised by the Government on behalf of the Queen. Thanks to the "gift" of its absolute powers made by the monarchy in the settlement of 1688 this prerogative is now one that resides with the Prime Minister and Whitehall rather than Parliament. Of course that did not prevent individual monarchs from trying to exercise their influence on the armies that fought in their names. The most disastrous example was George III's choice of Lord North as the Prime Minister to save the American colonies before and during the American Revolutionary War of 1776 to 1783.

Real power has long resided not with the monarch or Parliament but the Prime Minister. When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, this was reported to the House of Commons in what the Hansard of the day termed a "Prime Minister's announcement". A motion was made prior to the announcement by the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, but this was procedural and related to the manner in which certain emergency legislation was to be considered. Other MPs responded to the Prime Minister's speech in a short debate, before the motion was put and carried. Our folk memory, of Chamberlain's grim broadcast ending with the words: "I have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany" is the correct one. Chamberlain took us into a war on the wireless, and Commons approval and a declaration in the name of George VI were mere formalities.

The House of Commons came into its own after the declaration of war. The mass abstention of Conservative MPs during the famous Narvik debate of 1940 (when British forces had been sent to save Norway and then ignominiously withdrawn) finished Chamberlain and brought in Winston Churchill, who used the chamber of the Commons as the cockpit of his propaganda effort. Many of those inspirational phrases about our finest hour and our debt to "the few" were heard first in the Commons and later broadcast to the nation. When the war was going badly, Churchill faced many fierce critics, notably Aneurin Bevan, across the floor of the House. When things became truly parlous, national security demanded that such debates took place in secret. But all the way through Churchill was clear about his accountability to the Commons and alert to its value.

Since the end of the Second World War British forces have been involved in countless military actions. In the cases of the principal wars – Korea in 1950, Suez in 1956, the Falklands in 1982 and the Gulf in 1991 – the important debates in all of these came only after the troops were sent.

In the case of Suez, the most crucial was held on 1 November 1956, when rumours began to circulate that the British, French and Israelis had secretly colluded to attack Egypt, in defiance of international law and contrary to assurances given by ministers. The leader of the Opposition, Hugh Gaitskell, called for the Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, to resign and the session was so stormy that the Speaker had to suspend it. We were bombing Egypt as MPs spoke, and Eden's policy did not change (it took US pressure to do that), but, in the words of one contemporary observer, Parliament had managed to "rock the landing craft". It surely hastened Eden's decline and made his decision to resign shortly afterwards inevitable. He was replaced by his Chancellor, Harold Macmillan. The House of Commons mattered.

Many parliamentary debates in time of war, as had been the case in Churchill's time, are on a technical device, the "motion to adjourn", which tends to baffle outsiders. It leaves dissidents in the difficult position of being unable to table meaningful amendments, for example to render action subject to UN approval. Mr Blair's apparent intention to hold a debate on the adjournment today has thus enraged his critics.

Yet it must be said that, again, he has many precedents on his side. During the Falklands war, there were 14 statements and five debates, all on motions to adjourn. But that did not stop them being momentous, solemn occasions, especially the first, when Parliament was recalled on a Saturday to discuss the crisis. Even though Margaret Thatcher had already decided to dispatch the Task Force she knew she needed the legitimacy of parliamentary approval and later described the debate as "the most difficult I ever had to face". During the 1991 Gulf War there were seven ministerial statements and only one debate on a substantive motion, again after hostilities began. The British intervention in Kosovo and Serbia in 1999 was the subject of 10 ministerial statements and four debates on motions to adjourn.

But why doesn't Mr Blair follow the precedent he himself set the last time the West confronted Saddam Hussein in 1998? In February the Commons debated a substantive motion approving the use of force against President Saddam if he continued to defy the UN's will – and did so before hostilities broke out. The motion was passed, President Saddam carried on playing games with the weapons inspectors and Iraq was duly bombed later that year. In doing so Mr Blair seemed to be following Churchill's philosophy, set down half a century before, that "there are grave dangers that false impressions may be created abroad by a debate prominently occupied by a handful of dissenters. It is better to have a division, so that everyone can know how the House of Commons stands and in which proportion." What does Mr Blair have to fear from that today?

Lessons of the past

1. Lord North
Appointed Prime Minister by George III in an attempt to save the American colonies

2. Neville Chamberlain
Commons approval of declaration of war against Germany was a formality

3. Winston Churchill
Used Commons as cockpit of his propaganda effort

4. Anthony Eden
Stormy Commons debate over Suez hastened his decline

5. Margaret Thatcher
Announced Falklands decision in Commons after sending Task Force

6. John Major
Allowed debate on 1991 Gulf War only after start of hostilities

7. Tony Blair
Four Commons debates on action in Balkans; and Commons debated strikes against Saddam Hussein before bombing in 1998