Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland known internationally as the UK Parliament, British Parliament, or Westminster Parliament, domestically as Parliament, is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It alone possesses legislative supremacy and thereby ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and the overseas territories. Parliament is bicameral but has three parts, consisting of the Sovereign, the House of Lords, the House of Commons; the two houses meet in the Palace of Westminster in the City of Westminster, one of the inner boroughs of the capital city, London. The House of Lords includes two different types of members: the Lords Spiritual, consisting of the most senior bishops of the Church of England, the Lords Temporal, consisting of life peers, appointed by the Sovereign on the advice of the Prime Minister, of 92 hereditary peers, sitting either by virtue of holding a royal office, or by being elected by their fellow hereditary peers.
Prior to the opening of the Supreme Court in October 2009, the House of Lords performed a judicial role through the Law Lords. The House of Commons is an elected chamber with elections to 650 single member constituencies held at least every five years under the first-past-the-post system; the two Houses meet in separate chambers in the Palace of Westminster in London. By constitutional convention, all government ministers, including the Prime Minister, are members of the House of Commons or, less the House of Lords and are thereby accountable to the respective branches of the legislature. Most cabinet ministers are from the Commons, whilst junior ministers can be from either House. However, the Leader of the House of Lords must be a peer; the Parliament of Great Britain was formed in 1707 following the ratification of the Treaty of Union by Acts of Union passed by the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland, both Acts of Union stating, "That the United Kingdom of Great Britain be represented by one and the same Parliament to be styled The Parliament of Great Britain".
At the start of the 19th century, Parliament was further enlarged by Acts of Union ratified by the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland that abolished the latter and added 100 Irish MPs and 32 Lords to the former to create the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 formally amended the name to the "Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", five years after the secession of the Irish Free State in 1922. With the global expansion of the British Empire, the UK Parliament has shaped the political systems of many countries as ex-colonies and so it has been called the "Mother of Parliaments". However, John Bright – who coined the epithet – used it in reference to the political culture of "England" rather than just the parliamentary system. In theory, the UK's supreme legislative power is vested in the Crown-in-Parliament. However, the Crown acts on the advice of the Prime Minister and the powers of the House of Lords are limited to only delaying legislation.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was created on 1 January 1801, by the merger of the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland under the Acts of Union 1800. The principle of ministerial responsibility to the lower House did not develop until the 19th century—the House of Lords was superior to the House of Commons both in theory and in practice. Members of the House of Commons were elected in an antiquated electoral system, under which constituencies of vastly different sizes existed. Thus, the borough of Old Sarum, with seven voters, could elect two members, as could the borough of Dunwich, which had completely disappeared into the sea due to land erosion. Many small constituencies, known as pocket or rotten boroughs, were controlled by members of the House of Lords, who could ensure the election of their relatives or supporters. During the reforms of the 19th century, beginning with the Reform Act 1832, the electoral system for the House of Commons was progressively regularised.
No longer dependent on the Lords for their seats, MPs grew more assertive. The supremacy of the British House of Commons was reaffirmed in the early 20th century. In 1909, the Commons passed the so-called "People's Budget", which made numerous changes to the taxation system which were detrimental to wealthy landowners; the House of Lords, which consisted of powerful landowners, rejected the Budget. On the basis of the Budget's popularity and the Lords' consequent unpopularity, the Liberal Party narrowly won two general elections in 1910. Using the result as a mandate, the Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, introduced the Parliament Bill, which sought to restrict the powers of the House of Lords; when the Lords refused to pass the bill, Asquith countered with a promise extracted from the King in secret before the second general election of 1910 and requested the creation of several hundred Liberal peers, so as to erase the Conservative majority in the House of Lords. In the face of such a threat, the House of Lords narrowly passed the bill.
The Parliament Act 1911, as it became, prevented the Lords from blocking a money bill, allowed them to delay any other bill for a maximum of three sessions, after which it could become law over their objections. However, regardless of the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, t
1885 United Kingdom general election
The 1885 United Kingdom general election was held from 24 November to 18 December 1885. This was the first general election after an extension of the redistribution of seats. For the first time a majority of adult males could vote and most constituencies by law returned a single member to Parliament fulfilling one of the ideals of Chartism to provide direct single-member, single-electorate accountability, it saw the Liberals, led by William Ewart Gladstone, win the most seats, but not an overall majority. As the Irish Nationalists held the balance of power between them and the Conservatives who sat with an increasing number of allied Unionist MPs, this exacerbated divisions within the Liberals over Irish Home Rule and led to a Liberal split and another general election the following year; the 1885 election saw the first socialist party participate, with the Social Democratic Federation led by H. M. Hyndman running three candidates. List of MPs elected in the United Kingdom general election, 1885 Parliamentary franchise in the United Kingdom 1885–1918 Representation of the People Act 1884 Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 Craig, F. W. S.
British Electoral Facts: 1832–1987, Dartmouth: Gower, ISBN 0900178302 Rallings, Colin. British Electoral Facts 1832–1999, Ashgate Publishing Ltd Walker, Brian, "The 1885 and 1886 General Elections in Ireland", History Ireland, 13: 36–40, JSTOR 27725365 Spartacus: Political Parties and Election Results United Kingdom election results—summary results 1885–1979
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major parties in the United Kingdom with the opposing Conservative Party in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The party arose from an alliance of Whigs and free trade Peelites and Radicals favourable to the ideals of the American and French Revolutions in the 1850s. By the end of the 19th century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the following year's general election. Under Prime Ministers Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and H. H. Asquith, the Liberal Party passed the welfare reforms that created a basic British welfare state. Although Asquith was the party's leader, its dominant figure was David Lloyd George. Asquith was overwhelmed by the wartime role of coalition Prime Minister and Lloyd George replaced him as Prime Minister in late 1916, but Asquith remained as Liberal Party leader; the pair fought for years over control of the party.
Historian Martin Pugh in The Oxford Companion to British History argues: Lloyd George made a greater impact on British public life than any other 20th-century leader, thanks to his pre-war introduction of Britain's social welfare system. Furthermore, in foreign affairs, he played a leading role in winning the First World War, redrawing the map of Europe at the peace conference, partitioning Ireland; the government of Lloyd George was dominated by the Conservative Party, which deposed him in 1922. By the end of the 1920s, the Labour Party had replaced the Liberals as the Conservatives' main rival; the party went into decline after 1918 and by the 1950s won no more than six seats at general elections. Apart from notable by-election victories, its fortunes did not improve until it formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance with the newly formed Social Democratic Party in 1981. At the 1983 general election, the Alliance won over a quarter of the vote, but only 23 of the 650 seats it contested. At the 1987 general election, its share of the vote fell below 23% and the Liberal and Social Democratic parties merged in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats.
A splinter group reconstituted the Liberal Party in 1989. It was formed by party members opposed to the merger who saw the Liberal Democrats diluting Liberal ideals. Prominent intellectuals associated with the Liberal Party include the philosopher John Stuart Mill, the economist John Maynard Keynes and social planner William Beveridge; the Liberal Party grew out of the Whigs, who had their origins in an aristocratic faction in the reign of Charles II and the early 19th century Radicals. The Whigs were in favour of increasing the power of Parliament. Although their motives in this were to gain more power for themselves, the more idealistic Whigs came to support an expansion of democracy for its own sake; the great figures of reformist Whiggery were Charles James Fox and his disciple and successor Earl Grey. After decades in opposition, the Whigs returned to power under Grey in 1830 and carried the First Reform Act in 1832; the Reform Act was the climax of Whiggism, but it brought about the Whigs' demise.
The admission of the middle classes to the franchise and to the House of Commons led to the development of a systematic middle class liberalism and the end of Whiggery, although for many years reforming aristocrats held senior positions in the party. In the years after Grey's retirement, the party was led first by Lord Melbourne, a traditional Whig, by Lord John Russell, the son of a Duke but a crusading radical, by Lord Palmerston, a renegade Irish Tory and a conservative, although capable of radical gestures; as early as 1839, Russell had adopted the name of "Liberals", but in reality his party was a loose coalition of Whigs in the House of Lords and Radicals in the Commons. The leading Radicals were John Bright and Richard Cobden, who represented the manufacturing towns which had gained representation under the Reform Act, they favoured social reform, personal liberty, reducing the powers of the Crown and the Church of England, avoidance of war and foreign alliances and above all free trade.
For a century, free trade remained the one cause. In 1841, the Liberals lost office to the Conservatives under Sir Robert Peel, but their period in opposition was short because the Conservatives split over the repeal of the Corn Laws, a free trade issue; this allowed ministries led by Russell and the Peelite Lord Aberdeen to hold office for most of the 1850s and 1860s. A leading Peelite was William Ewart Gladstone, a reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer in most of these governments; the formal foundation of the Liberal Party is traditionally traced to 1859 and the formation of Palmerston's second government. However, the Whig-Radical amalgam could not become a true modern political party while it was dominated by aristocrats and it was not until the departure of the "Two Terrible Old Men", Russell and Palmerston, that Gladstone could become the first leader of the modern Liberal Party; this was brought about by Palmerston's death in 1865 and Russell's retirement in 1868. After a brief Conservative government, Gladstone won a huge victory at the 1868 election and formed the first Liberal government.
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Arthur Richardson (politician)
Arthur Richardson was a British merchant and Liberal-Labour politician from Nottingham. He sat in the House of Commons between 1906 and 1918. Richardson was born in East Bridgford, the son of William Richardson, he was educated at East Bridgford National School and at Magnus Grammar School in Newark-on-Trent, became a tea merchant in the firm of Arthur Richardson and Sons. Richardson was elected at the 1906 general election as the Member of Parliament for Nottingham South, defeating the sitting Unionist MP Lord Henry Cavendish-Bentinck. Although described as Liberal-Labour, he was not a Trade Union sponsored MP, so was not required to join the Labour Party in 1910. Richardson held the seat until the January 1910 election, when he was defeated by Cavendish-Bentinck, he was unsuccessful when he stood again in December 1910, he returned to Parliament seven years when he was elected unopposed as MP for Rotherham at a by-election in February 1917 after the Liberal MP Jack Pease was elevated to the peerage.
He held that seat until the 1918 general election, when he stood unsuccessfully as a Liberal Party candidate in Nottingham West. He contested the next three general elections in the Melton division of Leicestershire. After a clear defeat by the sitting Conservative Party MP Sir Charles Yate in 1922, he lost to Yate by only 44 votes in 1923, but by over 5,000 votes in 1924, he died on 27 June 1936 in Nottingham. Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Arthur Richardson
January 1910 United Kingdom general election
The January 1910 United Kingdom general election was held from 15 January to 10 February 1910. The government called the election in the midst of a constitutional crisis caused by the rejection of the People's Budget by the Conservative-dominated House of Lords, in order to get a mandate to pass the budget; the general election resulted in a hung parliament, with the Conservative Party led by Arthur Balfour and their Liberal Unionist allies receiving the largest number of votes, but the Liberals led by H. H. Asquith winning the largest number of seats, returning two more MPs than the Conservatives. Asquith formed a government with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party, led by John Redmond. Another general election was soon held in December; the Labour Party, led by Arthur Henderson, continued to gather momentum, going from 29 seats to 40. MPs elected in the United Kingdom general election, January 1910 Parliamentary franchise in the United Kingdom 1885–1918 Spartacus: Political Parties and Election Results United Kingdom election results—summary results 1885–1979 January 1910 Conservative manifesto January 1910 Labour manifesto January 1910 Liberal manifesto
Nottingham West (UK Parliament constituency)
Nottingham West was a borough constituency in the city of Nottingham. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; the constituency was created for the 1885 general election, abolished for the 1950 general election. However, a new Nottingham West constituency was created for the 1955 general election, was in turn abolished for the 1983 general election. 1885-1918: The Borough of Nottingham wards of Broxtowe, Forest, St Albans and Wollaton. 1918-1955: The County Borough of Nottingham wards of Broxtowe, St Albans, Wollaton. The constituency was renamed Nottingham North West in 1950. 1955-1974: The County Borough of Nottingham wards of Abbey, Robin Hood, Wollaton. 1974-1983: The County Borough of Nottingham wards of Abbey, Clifton, Robin Hood and Wollaton. Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "N"
Shipley (UK Parliament constituency)
Shipley is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by Philip Davies, a Conservative. 1885-1918: The Municipal Borough of Bradford, the civil parishes of Clayton, Idle, North Bierley, Shipley. 1918-1950: The Urban Districts of Baildon, Guiseley and Yeadon, in the Rural District of Wharfedale the civil parishes of Esholt and Menston. 1950-1983: The Urban Districts of Baildon and Shipley. 1983-2010: The District of Bradford wards of Baildon, Bingley Rural, Shipley East, Shipley West. 2010-present: The District of Bradford wards of Baildon, Bingley Rural, Shipley and Windhill and Wrose. This seat was created in the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885; until 1923 the seat was exclusively represented by elected Liberals and Arthur Creech Jones was Secretary of State for the Colonies during most of the Attlee Ministry. Shipley was for a long time the seat of ex-Chairman of the Conservative 1922 Committee, Sir Marcus Fox, he held the seat for 30 years between the 1970 and 1997 general elections.
At the 1997 general election, the Labour candidate Chris Leslie gained the seat from Fox, becoming the youngest MP of that parliament. He became a junior minister. A number of traditional Labour supporters considered Leslie to be an ardent Blairite, though he was in fact close to Gordon Brown, one of whose staff he married, whose campaign for election as Labour leader he helped run. Leslie narrowly lost the seat in the 2005 election, when the Conservative Party candidate Philip Davies narrowly regained the seat with a majority of 422 votes, which increased to nearly ten thousand votes at the May 2010 general election. In December 2017 the Labour Party announced that its candidate for the next United Kingdom general election would be academic Jo Pike. List of Parliamentary constituencies in West Yorkshire Notes References Political Science Resources Richard Kimber F. W. S. Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1885 - 1918 F. W. S. Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1974 - 1979
