Time, Space, Memory, Community and Power
K is for ‘Kangaroo closure’, a procedure invented in 1909 in the context of a bitter parliamentary battle over the Liberal government’s budget proposals. It then attracted execration; these days, known as the selection of amendments, its association with efforts to limit the opportunities for debate has been largely forgotten. Lord Robert Cecil, the conservative… Continue reading Kangaroo closure
To break a long gap in posts in this blog, J is for Journal, the essential record of what has been decided in either House of Parliament (not what is said: the official report of the debates is an entirely different matter). The Journals of the House of Commons and the House of Lords are… Continue reading Journal
I'm lucky enough to be one of the four new British Academy / Wolfson Foundation Research Professors chosen in 2017. The arrangement provides us with funding for three years' worth of uninterrupted research, a huge luxury and enormous privilege. I'm very proud and very grateful to the Academy and the Foundation for the opportunity, and… Continue reading Reformation to Referendum: a new history of Parliament
I is for impeachment, a parliamentary prosecution in which classically the lower House of the legislature acts to present the alleged malefactor for trial, and the upper House sits in judgement. Much has been heard about the procedure in recent years, first because of its deployment in Brazil against the President, Dilma Rousseff, resulting in… Continue reading Impeachment
H is for the Henry VIII Clause, a nickname given to a provision in an Act of Parliament that delegates to a minister the power to modify the Act itself, or other Acts of Parliament. The delegation by Parliament of various powers to ministers – ‘delegated legislation’ or ‘secondary legislation’ – became common during the… Continue reading Henry VIII Clauses
G is for gallery, where since at least the seventeenth century the presence of members of the public, looking on to the Houses’ debates has been connived at by Members, officially forbidden and in practice tolerated, before, much more recently, it has been actively encouraged. The history of the galleries is closely bound up with… Continue reading Gallery
‘The Frank’, the privilege of free postage for Members of Parliament, became during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries notorious for its abuse, not just by Members, but by virtually everybody else as well.
