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This article engages with recent work on the nature of the press in the late 17th and early 18th centuries that has emphasized that print, and more specifically printed news, came to dominate religious and political affairs. Recent scholarship has suggested that political elites embraced the new opportunities that the lapse of licensing (1695) offered by reading and buying newspapers and periodicals in ever greater numbers. Inherent in this portrayal of news culture is a sense that censorship had little effect on news-writers. Journalists, so it is claimed, were left alone to pursue their trade free from any consistent interference. This article, by contrast, argues that scribal news - handwritten newspapers - continued to be important in the 18th century. The reason for the survival of scribal news-writers such as John Dyer can be found, I argue, in understanding the complex relationship between press and parliament. Far from embracing the press, most members of parliament were, in fact, reluctant to allow unhindered publication of their discussions. While recognizing the importance of news to political debate, this article insists that the continued production of scribal news is indispensable for understanding both the nature of censorship and the power of the press in post-licensing England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Labour Party in the 1990s supported enactment of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) rights for party-political as well as principled reasons. The Human Rights Bill sought to balance parliamentary sovereignty and effective protection of rights, relying on both legal and political remedies for victims of violations. Whilst the potentially major constitutional and legal effects of the bill, which made it highly controversial from the start in the press, were partly hidden by highly-technical drafting, members of both Houses were fully aware of the scale of the bill's implications. Scrutiny was particularly rigorous in relation to the effect of decisions of the European Commission and Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on domestic courts especially in the light of the Strasbourg organs' view of the ECHR as an evolving instrument, the position of particular interest groups such as journalistic and religious organisations, domestic courts' new obligation to interpret legislation so far as possible compatibly with the rights and their power to make a declaration of incompatibility should that prove impossible, and parliamentary scrutiny of legislation to remedy incompatibilities. Some worries have proved well founded, and political controversy has not diminished since 1998, partly because of heightened concern with measures to combat terrorism since 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the corruption issues between the press and parliament sectors during the late Stuart period in Great Britain. It details the innovations in the print-parliament relationship and discusses one neglected aspect on the issue. According to the author, both the parliament and the press had a symbiotic relationship before the later Stuart period during the expansion of the fiscal-military state. Moreover, a print campaign by author Robert Crosfeild on corruption is discussed.

The article discusses the linkage between the interactive nature of parliamentary and press development in Great Britain. Many historians have been focusing on areas of reciprocity and cooperation to highlight how the two institutions evolved symbiotically. In addition, it has also been considered how the relationship between parliament and the press has wider relevance for the so-called public sphere.