Tag Archives: Liberal party

MP of the Month: Alfred Rhodes Bristow (1818-1875)

Posted on November 25, 2020 by sball1832

By the 1850s a seat in Parliament was proving a useful career path for men of relatively humble means to achieve substantial professional advancement. A prime example was our MP of Month, Alfred Rhodes Bristow. The son of a Greenwich … Continue reading →

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MP of the Month: Sidney Herbert – still dancing to Nightingale’s tune

Posted on September 16, 2019 by salmonphilip

September’s MP of the Month is Sidney Herbert, who was born on this day (16 September) in 1810 and widely expected to become a Victorian prime minister. Fate, however, cruelly intervened, as Dr Ruscombe Foster, the author of an important … Continue reading →

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MP of the Month: Sir Charles Tilston Bright (1832-1888), pioneering telegraph engineer

Posted on February 20, 2019 by sball1832

An important aspect of our study of the reformed Commons is the degree to which representatives of science and industry were incorporated into the legislature during a period of great economic expansion. Our MP of the Month was among those … Continue reading →

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MP of the Month: John Tomlinson Hibbert (1824-1908)

Posted on August 29, 2017 by Kathryn Rix

This month marks the 150th anniversary of the passing of the 1867 Reform Act. Introduced by Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Derby’s Conservative government, it added around a million voters to the register, primarily in borough constituencies. This greatly exceeded the … Continue reading →

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Party Affiliation in the Reformed Commons, 1832-68

Posted on June 19, 2017 by sball1832

As the election results were declared in each constituency at this month’s general election, they were swiftly collated by the media to give an assessment of the overall balance of power within the new House of Commons. With each candidate’s … Continue reading →

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Minority governments and major change: a Victorian view

Posted on June 12, 2017 by salmonphilip

For most modern commentators the prospects for minority governments, based on the experience of the last half century or so, don’t look particularly good. Nearly all the recent examples currently being revisited by analysts, such as those of the 1970s, … Continue reading →

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MP of the month: Rowland Alston (1782-1865)

Posted on January 25, 2016 by salmonphilip

Rowland Alston’s career provides a useful illustration of just how diverse (and to a modern eye incongruous) the political outlook of MPs in the same party could be before the development of more formal modern political allegiances. It also serves … Continue reading →

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Wiping the slate: some laws recently repealed

Posted on February 3, 2013 by salmonphilip

Last week (31 Jan. 2013) saw the enactment of the Statute Laws Repeal Act, a legislative initiative aimed at tidying up the UK’s statute book by repealing a host of obsolete and defunct laws, ranging from the 1500s to the present … Continue reading →

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