‘A Sense of Crowd and Urgency’? Atmosphere and Inconvenience in the Chamber of the Old House of Commons

The house of commons before the 1834 fire that destroyed it was small, poky, and uncomfortable. Its effects on the health, audibility, and behaviour of its members were frequently a cause of complaint, and informed the consideration by two select committees in 1831 and 1833 of what could be done to replace the chamber. This article examines the background to the appointment of the committees, and what their discussions reveal about the unsatisfactory nature of the chamber. It considers why there failed to be a consensus on altering the chamber before its destruction.     

COMMODIFYING DANISH HOUSING COMMONS

Housing was a backbone of the Danish welfare state, but this has been profoundly challenged by the past decades of neoliberal housing politics. In this article we outline the rise of the Danish model of association‐based housing on the edge of the market economy (and the state). From this, we demonstrate how homes in private cooperatives through political interventions in the context of a booming real estate market have plunged into the market economy and been transformed into private commodities in all but name, and we investigate how non‐profit housing associations frontally and stealthily are attacked through neoliberal reforms. This carries the seeds for socio‐spatial polarization and may eventually open the gate for commodification – and thus the dismantling of the little that is left of a socially just housing sector. Yet, while the association‐based model was an accessary to the commodification of cooperative housing, it can possibly be an accomplice in sustaining non‐profit housing as a housing commons.     

Radicals,Tories or Monomaniacs? The Birmingham Currency Reformers in the House of Commons, 1832–67*

Benjamin Disraeli described Thomas Attwood as a ‘provincial banker labouring under a financial monomania’. The leader of the Birmingham Political Union, Attwood's Warwickshire accent and support for a paper currency were widely derided at Westminster. However, the themes of Attwood's brief parliamentary career were shared by the other men who represented Birmingham in the early‐ and mid‐Victorian period. None of these MPs were good party men, and this article illuminates the nature of party labels in the period. Furthermore, it adds a new dimension to the historical understanding of debates on monetary policy and shows how local political identities and traditions interacted with broader party identities. With the exception of Richard Spooner, who was a strong tory on religious and political matters, the currency men are best described as popular radicals, who consistently championed radical political reform and were among the few parliamentary supporters of the ‘People's Charter’. They opposed the new poor law and endorsed factory regulation, a progressive income tax, and religious liberty. Although hostile to the corn laws they believed that free trade without currency reform would depress prices, wages and employment. George Frederick Muntz's death in 1857 and his replacement by John Bright marked a watershed and the end of the influence of the ‘Birmingham school’. Bright appropriated Birmingham's radical tradition as he used the town as a base for his campaign for parliamentary reform. He emphasized Birmingham's contribution to the passing of the 1832 Reform Act but ignored the currency reformers' views on other matters, which had often been at loggerheads with the ‘Manchester school’ and economic liberalism.     

Drafting the Nineteen Propositions,January–July 1642*

This article analyses the drafting of the document eventually printed as the Nineteen Propositions. Section two addresses certain issues regarding the methods and concepts employed in the subsequent analysis, focusing on consensus‐building, constitutional leanings and the drafting of parliamentary declarations in early 1642. Section three examines the origins of the Nineteen Propositions in the draft Declaration of Ways and Means (January 1642) (hereafter cited as the Ways). Section four traces the emergence of the Declaration Concerning Grievances and Remedies (hereafter cited as the Grievances) from the Ways (January–February). Section five examines the junta's efforts to overcome the Lords' prevarication over passing the Grievances (February–May). Section six examines the emergence of the initial draft of the Nineteen Propositions from the Grievances (24–7 May). Section seven analyses the 28 May draft, while section eight explores the amendment of that draft (31 May and 1 June). Section nine examines parliament's abortive attempts to revise the Nineteen Propositions in light of His Majesty's Answer to the XIX Propositions (21 June–2 July). It is concluded that, contrary to the received view, the text of the Nineteen Propositions began to emerge in January rather than May 1642, and that the junta in the Commons rather than the Lords drove this process. The three appendices identify, respectively, the constitutional leanings of the relevant parliamentarians, the parts of the text of the Ways that were repeated in the Grievances, and dates on which the various parts of the final text of the Nineteen Propositions were written.     

‘Whatever Passed in Parliament Ought to be Communicated to the Public’: Reporting the Proceedings of the Reformed Commons, 1833–50

This article considers the opening up of parliamentary proceedings to greater public scrutiny in the two decades after the 1832 Reform Act. It examines developments in the publication of parliamentary debates, considering why proposals for an official parliamentary record were rejected in the 1830s. It also discusses two less well‐studied but equally vital means of publicising parliamentary activity: the publication of official division lists and the sale to the public of parliamentary papers. It argues that the 1830s was a critical decade of change, influenced by shifting perceptions of the relationship between the reformed house of commons and those it sought to represent. This was driven, in particular, by liberal notions of the importance of parliamentary accountability to public opinion: MPs were increasingly aware of the need to keep constituents informed of their parliamentary activities, whether in the chamber, committee room or division lobby. This article also highlights the extent to which the Commons' approach to publicising its activities was constrained not only by the fact that it remained a breach of parliamentary privilege to publish reports of debates, but also by the physical space that the Commons occupied. The destruction of much of the old Palace of Westminster by fire in 1834 provided an important opportunity to remodel existing arrangements, notably with the addition of a second division lobby and the construction of a reporters' gallery.     

The “Commons” Versus the “Commodity”: Alter‐globalization,Anti‐privatization and the Human Right to Water in the Global South

Abstract: In response to the growth of private sector involvement in water supply management globally, anti‐privatization campaigns for a human right to water have emerged in recent years. Simultaneously, alter‐globalization activists have promoted alternative water governance models through North‐South red‐green alliances between organized labour, environmental groups, women's groups, and indigenous groups. In this paper, I explore these distinct (albeit overlapping) responses to water privatization. I first present a generic conceptual model of market environmentalist reforms, and explore the contribution of this framework to debates over ‘neoliberalizing nature’. This conceptual framework is applied to the case of anti‐privatization activism to elucidate the limitations of the human right to water as a conceptual counterpoint to privatization, and as an activist strategy. In contrast, I argue that alter‐globalization strategies—centred on concepts of the commons—are more conceptually coherent, and also more successful as activist strategies. The paper concludes with a reiteration of the need for greater conceptual precision in our analyses of neoliberalization, for both academics and activists.     

St Stephen's in War and Peace: Civil Defence and the Location of Parliament, 1938–51

This essay takes a new look at the destruction and the rebuilding of the house of commons during the 1940s. It argues that behind the home front bravado of the Palace of Westminster steadfastly enduring the blitz lay secret plans for rehousing MPs away from aerial bombardment, contingency scenarios that were then updated after 1945 in the event of attack on London by atomic weapons. The essay also suggests that threats to the security of parliament, together with the necessity to rebuild the Commons, were turned by the coalition government into an opportunity to refashion parliamentary politics in such a way that the two‐party system was restored, along the traditional lines of government and opposition that had become blurred since 1931.     

The Whips of the Liberal Unionist Party in the House of Commons

This note provides the most complete list of Liberal Unionist whips in the house of commons, thus contributing to our understanding of the history of the party in parliament over the entire period of its existence from 1886 to 1912, and charts the extent of the responsibility of the party whip for the organisation of the party outside the house of commons, which peaked during the tenure of Lord Wolmer as whip from 1888 to 1892. The note concludes by observing that the division of labour regarding organisation implemented in the Conservative Party in 1911 mirrors that adopted by the Liberal Unionist Party in 1892, and that this was likely the result of Wolmer, now 2nd earl of Selborne, serving on the committee that recommended the 1911 reforms.