The rhetorical culture of the British House of Commons, 1918-1940

两次世界大战之间的几年是政治和经济动荡的时期，但在英国，这些年的特点也是制度相当稳定。以共产主义和法西斯主义为形式的极端主义未能站稳脚跟，选举和议会政治继续以可识别的形式存在。这并不是说什么都没有改变。事实上，这是这个国家全面民主的头几年：1918年，选举权扩大到所有男性和一些女性，女性终于在1928年获得了平等的投票权。与此同时，工党取代自由党成为反对党的主要政党，并在1924年首次组建政府；而保守党从战前的低迷中恢复过来，主导着政治，直到1940年内维尔·张伯伦政府垮台。这项研究探索了变化中的稳定这一主题如何在英国政治的一个关键舞台--下议院--上演。它考察了下议院的修辞文化--也就是围绕议会演讲习惯的正式和非正式惯例--是如何随着时间的推移而演变的，以及它与更广泛的英国政治文化之间的关系。历史学家通常认为--正确地--所有三个主要政党都致力于议会方法。他们忽略了一件事，那就是构成“议会方法”的行为类型可以有很大不同的解释，而且作为党派政治的一部分，也存在着激烈的争议。因此，保守党--他们自己在反对党执政期间经常采取颠覆性策略--将激进的社会党议员的“喧嚣主义”描述为工党不适合执政的证据。然而，这些议员认为他们的行动是引起人们对失业者困境的关注的适当手段。相比之下，工党领袖拉姆齐·麦克唐纳试图引导他的追随者采取争议较少的方法，正是为了反击保守党对违宪的指控。与此同时，自由派把自己描绘成唯一真正致力于议会的人：他们认为，其他政党希望利用议会的特权，通过他们所代表的既得利益建立选举独裁。因此，议会举止和语言等表面上平凡的问题与更广泛的政治辩论相交，并代表着这些辩论。因此，修辞文化的问题与历史学家关注的其他重要问题有关，比如政客们如何试图为了自己的利益而操纵“国家价值观”，以及政治辩论如何在媒体上呈现。当然，这是一个议会议事程序不进行广播的时期，英国广播公司在早年试图避免在其政治报道中出现“争议”。然而，报纸上对公地的广泛报道，既包括对演讲的逐字报道，也包括小品作者的简短报告。因此，我们有可能了解下议院的气氛，同样重要的是，还可以发现一些著名的事件(如1930年工党议员夺取权杖)是如何在议会外进行辩论的。还有大量其他来源--其中许多我已经研究过了--可以用来阐明支配议会言论的惯例。这些作品包括日记、回忆录和漫画，以及描述公地日常生活和习俗的当代作品。这些消息来源中没有几个是中立的：他们对发生的事情的描述带有意识形态色彩，并试图推进某种议程。然而，如果仔细加以处理，它们可以产生重要的见解，让人们了解到，在有关正确行为形式的辩论中，政治行为者认为什么是利害攸关的。希望这一研究对修正我们对这一关键时期的认识做出重要贡献。

The interwar years were a time of political and economic turbulence, but in Britain they were also marked by considerable institutional stability. Extremism, in the form of communism and fascism, failed to gain much of a foothold, and electoral and parliamentary politics continued in a recognisable form. This is not to say that nothing changed. Indeed, these were the first years of full democracy in the country: the franchise was extended to all men and some women in 1918, women finally receiving the vote on equal terms in 1928. Meanwhile, Labour replaced the Liberals as the main party of Opposition, and formed a government for the first time in 1924; whereas the Conservatives recovered from their pre-war doldrums to dominate politics until the collapse of Neville Chamberlain's government in 1940. This research explores how the theme of stability amidst change played out in a crucial arena of British politics - the House of Commons. It examines how the rhetorical culture of the Commons - that is to say, the formal and informal conventions surrounding habits of parliamentary speech - evolved over time and how it related to British political culture more generally.Historians have generally assumed - rightly - that all three main parties were committed to parliamentary methods. What they have overlooked is that the types of behaviour that constituted 'parliamentary methods' were open to widely varying interpretations and were highly contested as part of partisan politics. Thus the Conservatives - who had themselves often engaged in disruptive tactics when in Opposition - portrayed the 'rowdyism' of radical socialist MPs as proof that Labour was unfit to govern. Those MPs, however, saw their actions as a proper means of drawing attention to the plight of the unemployed. Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald, by contrast, sought to steer his followers towards less controversial methods, precisely in order to counter Conservative charges of unconstitutionalism. Liberals, meanwhile, presented themselves as the only ones who were genuinely committed to parliament: the other parties, they argued, wished to ride roughshod over parliament's prerogatives in order to establish elective dictatorship by the vested interests they represented.Therefore, apparently mundane issues of parliamentary deportment and language intersected with, and were representative of, much wider political debates. As such, the question of rhetorical culture is related to other important issues that have preoccupied historians, such as how politicians sought to manipulate 'national values' to their own advantage, and how political debate was represented in the media. This, of course, was a time at which parliamentary proceedings were not broadcast and at which the BBC, in its early years, sought to avoid 'controversy' in its reporting of politics. There was however extensive coverage of the Commons in the newspapers, both in terms of verbatim reporting of speeches and in shorter reports by sketch-writers. It is thus possible to gain a sense of the Commons atmosphere and, equally importantly, to discover how celebrated episodes (such as the seizure of the mace by a Labour MP in 1930) were debated outside parliament. There is also a vast range of other sources - many of which I have already examined - that can be used to cast light on the conventions that governed parliamentary speech. These include diaries, memoirs and cartoons, as well contemporary works describing the routines and customs of the Commons. Few of these sources were neutral: their descriptions of what occurred were ideologically loaded, and sought to advance some kind of agenda. Treated carefully, though, they can yield important insights into what political actors felt was at stake in arguments about the correct forms of behaviour. It is hoped that this research will make an important contribution to revising our understanding of this crucial period.