 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
| First Prev [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 ] Next Last |
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme (it alone has parliamentary sovereignty) legislative institution in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories. At its head is the Sovereign; it also includes an Upper House, called the House of Lords, and a Lower House, called the House of Commons. The House of Lords includes two different types of members—the Lords Spiritual (the senior clergy of the Church of England) and the Lords Temporal (members of the Peerage); it is an almost wholly appointed body. The House of Commons, on the other hand, is a democratically elected chamber. The House of Lords and the House of Commons meet in the Palace of Westminster, sometimes known as the "Houses of Parliament."
Parliament evolved from the ancient council which advised the Sovereign. In theory, power is vested not in Parliament, but in the " Queen-in-Parliament" (or "King-in-Parliament"). The Queen-in-Parliament is often said to be a completely sovereign authority, though such a position is debatable. In modern times, real power is vested in the democratically elected House of Commons; the Sovereign acts only as a figurehead, and the powers of the House of Lords are greatly limited.
The British Parliament is often called the "Mother of Parliaments," as the legislative bodies of many nations—most notably, those of the members of the Commonwealth—are modeled on it. However, it is a misquotation of John Bright, who had actually remarked on 18 January 1865 that "England is the Mother of Parliaments", in the context of supporting demands for expanded voting rights in a country which had pioneered Parliamentary government.
One may trace the origin of Parliament to the times of the Anglo-Saxons. Anglo-Saxon Kings were advised by a council known as the WitenagemotThe Witenagemot (or Witan was a political institution in Anglo-Saxon England which operated between approximately the 7th century and 11th century. The name witenagemot derives from the Old English for "meeting of wise men" witan wise man or counsellor; g, whose foremost members were the King's sons and brothers. The Earldormen, or executive heads of the shireFor information on the fictional Shire of J. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, see Shire (Middle-earth A shire is an administrative area of Great Britain. The first shires were created by the Anglo-Saxons in what is now England and south eastern Scotland.s, also had seats in the Witenagemot, as did the senior clergymen of the state. The King still possessed ultimate authority, but laws were made only after seeking the advice (and, in later times, the consent) of the Witenagemot.
The entire Anglo-Saxon body politic was reformed when William of NormandyWilliam I c. 1027 September 9, 1087), was King of England. Known alternatively as William of Normandy William the Conqueror and William the Bastard he was the illegitimate and only son of Robert the Magnificent, Duke of Normandy, and Herleva, the daughter conquered England in 1066Events January 6 Harold II is crowned King of England the day after Edward the Confessor dies. Tostig Godwinson and Harald Hardraada of Norway invade England. September 25 Harold II defeats Tostig and Harold Hardraada at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, kil. William brought to EnglandEngland is the largest, the most populous, and the most densely populated of the four " Home Nations" which make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). Occupying the south-eastern portion of the island of Great Britain, England the feudal system he was accustomed to in his native FranceThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents.. Thus, he granted land to his most important military supporters, who in turn granted land to their supporters, thus creating a feudal hierarchy. Those who held lands directly from the King were known as tenants-in-chief, and the territories they held were called manors. William I was an absolute ruler, but, as a matter of course, he sought the advice of a council of tenants-in-chief and ecclesiastics, before making laws.
The tenants-in-chief often struggled with their spiritual counterparts and with the King for power. In 1215, they secured from John the Magna Carta, which established that the King may not levy or collect any taxes (except the feudal taxes to which they were hitherto accustomed), save with the consent of his council. It was also established that the most important tenants-in-chief (the earls and the barons), as well as the ecclesiastics ( archbishops, bishops and abbots) be summoned to the council by personal writs from the Sovereign, and that all others be summoned to the council by general writs from the sheriffs of their counties. John later repealed the Magna Carta, but Henry III reinstated it.
The royal council slowly developed into a Parliament. In 1265, Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, who was in rebellion against King Edward I, summoned a parliament of his supporters without any or prior royal authorisation. The archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls and barons were summoned, as were two knights from each shire and two burgesses from each borough. Knights had been summoned to previous councils, but the representation of the boroughs was unprecedented. De Montfort's scheme was formally adopted by Edward I in the so-called "Model Parliament" of 1295. At first, each estate debated independently; by the reign of Edward III, however, Parliament had been separated into two Houses: one, including the nobility and higher clergy, the other, including the knights and burgesses. The authority of Parliament grew under Edward III; it was established that no law could be made, nor any tax levied, without the consent of both Houses as well as of the Sovereign.
The growing influence of Parliament was restrained by numerous civil wars. By the end of the Wars of the Roses, royal supremacy had been restored. The Crown was at the height of its power during the reign of Henry VIII. The number of the Lords Spiritual diminished under Henry, who commanded the Dissolution of the Monasteries, thereby depriving the abbots and priors of their seats in the Upper House. For the first time, the Lords Temporal were more numerous than the Lords Spiritual.
Parliaments continued to behave submissively under the Tudor monarchs who followed Henry, but began to display an unusual sense of independence under Elizabeth I. As England evolved into a world power, members of both Houses actively discussed succession to the Crown (the Queen never married) and condemned various royal policies. Their new-found boldness proved intolerable to Elizabeth's Scottish successor, James I (who was simultaneously King in Scotland as James VI). The great struggle between the Crown and Parliament occurred under James I's successor, Charles I. Alarmed by the arbitrary exercise of royal power, the House of Commons submitted to Charles the Petition of Right, demanding the restoration of their liberties, in 1628. Though he accepted the petition, he later dissolved Parliament and ruled without them for eleven years. It was only after the financial disaster of the Scottish Bishops' Wars ( 1639– 1640) that he was forced to recall Parliament in order that they may authorise new taxes. The new Parliament was quite rebellious; their struggle for power with the Crown culminated in the English Civil War. In 1649, Charles was executed and replaced by the military dictator Oliver Cromwell. The House of Lords was abolished, and the House of Commons remained subordinate to Cromwell. After Cromwell's death, however, the monarchy was restored in 1660. The House of Lords also returned.
Following the Restoration, monarchs undertook to regularly summon Parliament. Nevertheless, there was no explicit guarantee of Parliamentary liberties until James II, an unpopular Catholic ruler, was forced to flee the country in 1688. Parliament "deemed" that he had abdicated, but it offered the Crown to his Protestant daughter Mary, instead of his Catholic son. Mary II ruled jointly with her husband, William III. They agreed to the Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown (the Bill of Rights), which acknowledged several powers Parliaments had claimed under previous Stuart monarchs. No taxes were to be levied, nor any standing armies to be kept during peacetime, without the consent of Parliament. Freedom of speech in Parliamentary debates was also secured.
The influence of Parliament was undoubtedly augmented by the Bill of Rights, but the supremacy of the Crown stil remained clear. It was only after the Hanoverian George I ascended the Throne in 1714 that power began to shift from the Sovereign. George was a German ruler, spoke poor English and preferred to concentrate on his dominions in Europe. He thus entrusted power to a group of his ministers, the foremost of which was Sir Robert Walpole. George III sought to restore royal supremacy, but by the end of his reign, the position of the ministers—who would in turn have to rely on Parliament for support—was cemented.
The principle of ministerial responsibility to the Lower House did not develop until the nineteenth 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. In many cases, members of the Upper House controlled tiny constituencies, known as pocket boroughs or rotten boroughs, and could ensure the election of their relatives or supporters. Many seats in the House of Commons were "owned" by the Lords. After the reforms of the nineteenth century (beginning in 1832), the electoral system in the Lower House was much more regularised. No longer dependent on the Upper House for their seats, members of the House of Commons began to grow more assertive.
The supremacy of the House of Commons was clearly established during the early twentieth century. In 1909, the Commons passed the so-called "People's Budget," which made numerous changes to the taxation stystem in a manner detrimental to wealthy landowners. The House of Lords, which mostly consisted of powerful landowning aristocrats, rejected the Budget. On the basis of the Budget's popularity and the Lords' consequent unpopularity, the Liberal Party won a general election 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. (He did not reintroduce the land tax provision of the People's Budget.) When the Lords refused to pass the bill, Asquith approached the King 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 reluctantly passed the bill. The Parliament Act 1911, as it became known, allowed the Lords to delay a bill for a maximum of three sessions (reduced to two sessions in 1949), after which it could become law over their objections.
Further reforms to the House of Lords have been made during the twentieth century. In 1958, the Life Peerages Act authorised the regular creation of life peerage dignities. By the 1960s, the regular creation of hereditary peerage dignities had ceased; thereafter, almost all new peers were life peers only. More recently, the House of Lords Act 1999 has removed the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the Upper House (although it made an exception for ninety-two of them on a temporary basis). The House of Lords is now a chamber that is, in practice, subordinate to the House of Commons.
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|