Parliamentary Authority and British Political Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Resource Type
- Book
- Authors
- Griffin, Ben
- Source
- Staging Authority: Presentation and Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe. A Handbook. :225-258
- Subject
- Language
During Britain’s great political crisis of the 1830s, governing elites responded to radical criticisms of the constitution by reforming parliament in such a way that it made new claims to political authority. The reformed parliament claimed to be more responsive to public opinion and more genuinely representative of the nation than ever before. As a result, political elites were subjected to unprecedented scrutiny. This chapter examines how parliamentary reporting increased rapidly to meet the enormous public appetite for parliamentary news; it then examines the kinds of performances that MPs engaged in as they tried to meet public expectations. The chapter argues that this parliamentary culture rested on the exclusion of women and on the construction of certain kinds of ‘whiteness.’ It concludes by showing how parliament lost its central place in British political culture, with important consequences for British democracy.