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26th Oct 07

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Speakers’ Corner Cologne says:

CONCISE HISTORYOF DEBATING

Modern Debates - and therefore the ones Speaker’s Corner Cologne performs - are held according to the rules of British Parliamentary Style. So let us have a concise look at how Parliament came into being.
Several types of councils and assemblies did exist during the history of mankind. The very first of these assemblies that might have been an early version of modern British Parliament was the so-called witenagemot in Anglo-Saxon England - quite a long time ago. It was a meeting of the counsellors (called witans) of the king. It very rarely happened that any of the witans would openly oppose the king; they merely helped him with his decisions. It was a predecessor of the Curia Regis, which was nothing more than a meeting of the king’s councillors. Therefore, the witenagemot can only loosely be linked to modern Parliament.
In 1215 King John was forced by the English barons to sign the Magna Charta, which took away some of his powers and gave it to the barons in order not to let John do whatever he pleased. For most of the time, he only wanted to do useless, expensive things. This had agreeably only little to do with Parliament, but as we learn from history, it took several days of debate to come up with the exact phrasing of the Magna Charta.

The reign of Henry III, John’s son, finally supplies us with the first acknowledged roots of modern British parliament. Henry had upset the barons by accepting a papal offer. In 1254, the pope had offered Henry the kingdom of Sicily in order to give it to his younger son Edmund. Thus, Edmund would become some kind of king as well, although he was the younger son. In turn, Henry was to pay the pope everything he needed in order to conquest the Hohenstaufen-dynasty, which for obviously was some kind of thorn in the pope’s flesh.
However, Henry had forgotten to ask his barons about whether they liked the plan or not. (Not supposing that he might have chosen just not to ask them...) Therefore, they denied the king the necessary amount of money he needed to give to the pope. In 1258, the barons under the leadership of Simon de Montfort forced Henry to agree to a plan in order to reduce the king’s powers. Montfort was French and summoned the barons to a “parlement” – (French for a big discussion). These meetings became later known as Parliament. A committee of 24 nobles was put together, half of them chosen by the king, half of them by the barons. Their task was to debate about how to reform the constitution. Finally, they came up with the Provisions of Oxford. These provisions explained how the constitution was to be changed: a committee of 15 advisers would help the king in his decisions, and three times a year they had to consult representatives of the realm. One could say that the representatives of the realm who were to be questioned thrice a year were some early version of the House of Commons. In the same year, this assembly of the 15 councillors was put into practice, and one year later, in 1259, they came up with an enlarged version of the Provisions of Oxford, now called the Provisions of Westminster. Nowadays Parliament is still situated in Westminster Palace. Naturally, Henry did not quite like to have mighty councillors around him all the time, who were even allowed to oppose him. In 1261 some divisions in the baronial party appeared. The king used these in order to annul the provisions – with papal sanction. This led to the Baron’s War, during which Simon de Montfort was killed. Nevertheless, before that, in 1264, Montfort had won a major battle of the Baron’s War and summoned his famous representative Parliament. For a while, he practically ruled the country. Yet, in the end he was killed, for the Baron’s War continued until 1267, which gave Prince Edward, son of Henry, enough opportunity for doing so. Thus, Henry III won the war and the provisions that limited the monarchical powers were now finally annulled. However, some of the legal clauses were reaffirmed in the Statute of Marlborough in 1267.

Bottom line was that the barons had failed to establish their control over the crown, but they had helped to prepare the way for the constitutional development of the reign of Edward I. Edward “the Longshanks” was, by the way, by no means as nasty as he is depicted in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart! In 1295, he introduced the Model Parliament, which consisted of different groups of people that should represent a cross section of the country. Yet, there were hardly any clearly defined regulations about who may, might or should be in Parliament. Such regulations were not introduced before the later 14^th century. Clerical representatives, for example, held their own convocations. The knights of the shires were the first who identified themselves more with the common people (the burgesses), and by the end of the 14^th century, the knight’s attitudes paved the way for the House of Commons.

Not before the 15^th century did the parliamentarians, realise their real powers and therefore the goods they could receive for themselves. Now they started to claim privileges, such as freedom from arrest and freedom of debate.

The modern form of the House of Lords with its chancellor and the House of Commons with its speaker first came up in the 16^th century. During ’Oliver Cromwells rule (1649-1658) the parliamentary authority was reduced to nearly non-existent, for Oliver was quite a dictator and spoil-sport in this regard. This was a bit strange, since it had been the Roundheads - the army in support of the parliamentarians - that had fought for Cromwell against Charles I.

After the monarchy had returned, Charles II learned how to manage Parliament, i.e. he tried to get along with the parliamentarians as good as possible. His brother and successor James II did worse. He neglected Parliament. This fact, together with other things that made him unfavourable for the people led to the Glorious Revolution in 1688. It was called glorious because it had been so peaceful without any casualties. James II was banished from England and was forced to spend the rest of his life in France. He tried to recapture his lost kingdom, but he failed – and besides, this has nothing to do with the history of Parliament.

At the end of the 17^th century parliament was divided into the Whig and the Tory Party, whereas the term of “Whig” was never used except as a term of reproach. Nevertheless, the common people were not appropriately represented in this parliament, for there were no salaries paid to the parliamentarians. Therefore, only those who were well off could afford to be part of this parliament. This disadvantage for the commons resisted until late into the 18^th century.

Robert Walpole was a very influential politician under King George I, who ruled from 1714 until 1724. George was German, somehow the English had not been able to supply England with an English king after the death of Queen Anne in 1714, and so they had taken a German guy. The fact that George was not able to speak English might have been an important reason for why politicians gained increasingly political power. There are many reasons for why one could call Walpole the first English Prime Minister. He contributed a lot to giving the House of Commons more power.

In 1800, under George III, England and Ireland united. The parliaments of both countries were put together. The Irish block was a very important opposition during the 19^th century. The Industrial Revolution helped to form new powerful classes that were rich and influential despite originating from common people. This helped to completely reorganize the way of how the Commons were to be represented. There were many reforms in parliament in those days, such as the great reform bill of 1832. Many other reforms during the first half of the 20^th century gave more and more power to the House of Commons and took away power from the House of Lords.

Finally, in 1948 the Representation of the People Act led to universal suffrage (i.e. the universal right to vote), thus giving everybody in the realm a means of influencing actual policy. Now the parliament was more than just a legislative body, but the instrument of the main political power of Great Britain. It consists of the monarch, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Yet nowadays the House of Commons is the main part of the parliament, they have complete control of government finances. The monarch and even the House of Lords are merely remains of the past.

The first International Students Debates took place in the years before the Second World War, but only from 1970 on they became more structured and known. In that year, the first World Debating Championship took place in Glasgow.

Speakers’ Corner Cologne was introduced in the winter term of 2001/02 and is the first official debating society of the University of Cologne.Speaker’s Corner strives to prove itself worthy of its enigmatic history.

Text written by Arno Meyer-Steinhaus.

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