Parties
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‘By God my Lord, if you can bear this you are the strongest man in England’: the appointment of ‘Harley’s Dozen’ new peers in the winter of 1711/12
Current rumours suggest that the government may be on the point of boosting the numbers of Conservative peers in the House of Lords. In the winter of 1711/12 the administration of the earl of Oxford also turned to bolstering its…
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Reporting George I’s parliaments: a Prussian diplomat’s view
In the latest blog from The Georgian Lords, Dr Charles Littleton continues his examination of foreign reporters of Parliamentary events – a theme that will also feature in our forthcoming coverage for Parliament Week. A recent entry in the History…
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When every vote counted: what minority government in the 1970s meant for MPs
With Parliament back and Theresa May’s government trying to pass controversial legislation, Emmeline Ledgerwood, one of our oral history project volunteers and PhD student at the British Library/University of Leicester, blogs on the periods of minority government during the 1970s,…
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“Void of all faith and honour?” The fall(s) and rise of Viscount Bolingbroke
In this latest blog post from the Georgian Lords, Dr Robin Eagles considers the instability of the early years of George I’s reign and the changing fortunes of former secretary of state, Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke The Hanoverian succession…
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‘Not another one!’: going to the polls in historical perspective
With UK electors heading off to the national polls for the third time in as many years and as part of our Election 2017 series, Dr Philip Salmon, editor of the Victorian Commons, looks for similar levels of electioneering activity…
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Parliaments, Politics & People Seminar: ‘A distant and Whiggish country’: The Conservative Party and Scottish elections, 1832–1847
At our last ‘Parliaments, politics and people’ seminar, Gary Hutchison (University of Edinburgh – and former winner of the HPT’s undergraduate dissertation prize) spoke on his research into the Conservative Party and Scottish elections after 1832. Here he gives an…
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Voices from our Oral History Project: Tam Dalyell
Following the sad news last month of the death of the fondly remembered maverick MP Tam Dalyell, today we begin an occasional series exploring interviews with former MPs from our oral history project we have now lost… Since his death,…
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Labour Unrest: Ramsay MacDonald and the Labour party, 1931
Our series this summer has taken a look at historical cases of division within political parties. In our last post of the series, this week we discuss the Labour party of the 1930s, and how Ramsay MacDonald came to be…
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David Lloyd George and Herbert Asquith: Liberals at war
Inspired by the political upheaval in many of our political parties after the Brexit vote, we’ve been looking this summer at some historic party splits. In today’s blog we move into the 20th century, and the personal and political rivalry…