CFP: LSHG Conference: The Vote - What Went Wrong?

Conference and Call for Papers:
The Vote — What went wrong?
Saturday 27th February 2010 at 9.30am
Institute of Historical Research

The recent scandal over Parliamentary expenses has
raised major questions about Parliamentary
democracy and its relationship to the labour movement
and the left.
Historically the left has fought for democracy and the
vote from the Chartists to the Suffragettes to those
who campaigned around the disenfranchisement of
black voters in the US and Catholics in the North of
Ireland in the 1960s.
Papers are invited from historians working on struggles
for democracy and the vote but the conference will
also look at wider historical contexts.
There has been since at least the 1960s in the UK a
link between social democracy and corruption, but the
same has also applied elsewhere, for example in Italy.
Has the attempt to democratise Parliamentary
institutions led simply to a replication of the old corrupt
practices of the past?
Finally the conference will examine alternative
strategies for democracy on the left, not least the
Soviets and workers councils that have appeared at
moments in the last 140 years or so from the Paris
Commune onwards.
Proposals of no more than 500 words should be
emailed to keith1917@btinternet.com by 1 December.