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Winston Churchill recalled as 'great leader'

Crowds watch from the Millennium Bridge as the Havengore barge passes along the River Thames, in central London, at the head of a procession recreating the journey it made 50 years ago carrying the coffin of former British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill. Picture by Press Association  
Crowds watch from the Millennium Bridge as the Havengore barge passes along the River Thames, in central London, at the head of a procession recreating the journey it made 50 years ago carrying the coffin of former British prime minister Sir Winston Churc Crowds watch from the Millennium Bridge as the Havengore barge passes along the River Thames, in central London, at the head of a procession recreating the journey it made 50 years ago carrying the coffin of former British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill. Picture by Press Association  
By Staff Reporter

WINSTON Churchill was remembered as "a great leader and a great Briton" at events to mark 50 years since the former British prime minister's state funeral.

Yesterday his descendants travelled the Thames on the boat that carried the his coffin in 1965.

The three main British party leaders - none of whom were born when Churchill died - laid wreaths at his Commons statue.

Wreaths were also laid by Commons Speaker John Bercow, his Lords counterpart Baroness d'Souza and Tory MP Sir Nicholas Soames - Churchill's grandson - after a service in Parliament's St Mary's Undercroft chapel.

Alongside them was 17-year-old Nathania Ewruje, the winner of the English-Speaking Union's (ESU) Winston Churchill Cup for Public Speaking, who recited from a 1955 Churchill speech.

Mr Bercow praised Churchill's "recognition and fulfilment of the role of the House of Commons" as "the essence of our democracy" during an extraordinarily long parliamentary career.

And he suggested it was emblematic of the stature of the wartime prime minister that he refused all pleas for him to take a seat in the Lords - adding he was very much "a green benches man".