LSHG Conference: The Vote - What Went Wrong?

The Vote- What Went Wrong?
Saturday 27th February
Institute of Historical Research
Senate House, London WC1


Some recommended reading on the subject

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 against the disenfranchisement of black voters in
the US and Catholics in the North of Ireland in the 1960s.
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.

Conference Papers [alpha order]

Owen Ashton - 'W E Adams, Chartism and Republicanism'

Logie Barrow - 'Enfranchisement and Stupefaction: vaccination and the vote'

Ian Bullock - 'Gulfs, fissures and cracks. Democracy and the British Left in the early 20th Century'

Neil Davidson - 'Social Neoliberalism, "Regimes of Consolidation" and the Assault on Representative Democracy, 1989-2008'

Keith Flett - 'The origins of the electoral impulse in the British working class'

Mike Haynes - 'Parliament: The Return of Old Corruption'

Advance Registration is encouraged:-
Send cash or cheque [made payable to Keith Flett] for £10 [£5 concs] to LSHG, 38 Mitchley Rd, London N17 9HG