Chris Upton: House of Commons is now our master and no longer our protector

Jun 3 2009 By Chris Upton, Birmingham Post

As I was cleaning out our moat the other day (one of very few in Balsall Heath), my thoughts turned back to the 14th-century England, and to a man called Peter de la Mare. I suppose he must be a distant ancestor of Walter, the poet of that ilk.

Peter de la Mare has a worthy place in our constitutional history as the first Speaker (in the sense of “spokesman”) of the House of Commons. The lower chamber itself was a relatively new invention, first appearing only in the 1270s, as a body of representatives from the boroughs and shires.

By the 1370s, however, the Commons had need of a spokesman. The country was in a financial mess, the war with France was going badly and Edward III needed more money. What usually happened at moments such as this was that the Commons agreed to a tax to raise funds for Edward, but in return for what they called “redress of grievances”. That is, the King was obliged to read and act upon various petitions brought to him by the knights from the shires.

It was the nearest thing to democracy medieval England could manage. The Commons had little influence but the power of veto; authority lay with the king himself, and his lords and bishops.

At the “Good Parliament” of 1376 things turned very ugly, and the Commons were no longer prepared to mutter from the sidelines. The financial crisis, they argued, was of the government’s own making. Various ministers were accused of siphoning off money and lining their own pockets. No such challenge to the administration had ever been made before, and it fell to Peter de la Mare, a knight from Berkshire, to voice the ill will.

The result was that two of the king’s council were forced to stand down, were tried and convicted. It was the first time members of the government, as it were, had been impeached, and Edward was obliged to create a new council. And then, and only then, would the Commons vote for Edward’s new tax.

It seems to me that the job description of the Speaker has changed little in the intervening 650 years, and it is partly this which has brought down Michael Martin. In his eyes, or so it seems to me, the House of Commons is still the core of our democratic system, and it is his duty to uphold and protect it. By protecting it, so goes the job description, he protects the people – you and me – whom the Commons represents. Martin continued to do so, doggedly, till the end.

If the Speaker’s position has stood still, however, the nature of our democracy, and the role of the Commons, has not. The Commons no longer has to stand up to government and the sovereign and the Lords, as it did in the Middle Ages, because the government itself is no longer outside it, but within it. The MPs are themselves the ministers.

It’s questionable too whether the Commons acts on behalf of the people in the way it once did. The House of Commons is now our master, and no longer our protector.

Time will tell if the current crisis over fees changes this balance of power.

* Dr Chris Upton is Senior Lecturer in History at Newman University College in Birmingham