Search

This article demonstrates the complexity of the foreign policy involvement of the British parliament during the 20th century. Parliamentary government as such provides some procedural means for involvement in foreign policy debate, in Britain as well as in other countries. Researchers have, nevertheless, often argued that parliaments play a limited role in foreign policy. Approaching our topic by combining the analysis of policy documents with more discourse-oriented analysis of parliamentary debates, we argue that noticeable, but not straightforward, parliamentarisation of foreign policy took place in the course of the 20th century. The aftermath of the First World War led to reconsiderations of the degree of parliamentary supervision of foreign policy. The emergence of international organisations, and, recently, European integration, have also complicated parliamentary participation in foreign affairs. The parliamentary oversight of foreign policy is no longer limited to the national level, which has, in the British case, led to calls to reinforce the sovereignty of the national parliament. On the domestic level, parliamentary debates on foreign policy need to be contextualised with extra-parliamentary public discourse. The relation of parliament to civil society at large, especially non-governmental organisations and the media, has created multi-sited debates, further strengthening democratic control of foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders one aspect of Christopher Haigh's influential article 'Anticlericalism and the English Reformation'. His article argued that anticlericalism in early 16th-century England had been exaggerated, mislabelled and (in effect) invented as a scholarly construct. Dr Haigh proceeded to dismantle the foundations of anticlericalism in literature, in litigation, and in legislation. Evidence of anticlericalism in parliament, he maintained, was discontinuous, opportunistic and unrepresentative. This article suggests, however, that Haigh's claim makes insufficient allowance for the scarcity of the sources, underestimates the degree of continuity before and after 1529, and fails to take into account the inherently public character of parliamentary petitioning. It proposes, instead, that the challenging of the Church's wealth, the criticizing of clerical abuses, and the questioning of ecclesiastical jurisdiction recurred in early Tudor parliaments, and that the significance of such thwarted attempts at legislative reform crossed sessions and became cumulative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An appendix is presented of private acts for members of the British parliament in the early 16th century.

A subject index for the 2015 issue of the journal "Parliamentary History" is presented.