Parliamentary Affairs articles from October 1995

Parliamentary Affairs archives from October 1995

Political sleaze in Britain: causes, concerns and cures.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... Until recently, the term 'sleaze', or more often 'sleazy' (which dates back to the seventeenth century) usually referred to disorderly houses, illicit liquor or drugs dens, low dives, questionable night clubs and other disreputable premises....

Untangling the threads of sleaze: the slide into Nolan. (Nolan Committee's report on political sleaze in the UK)(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... In its introduction, the Nolan Committee Report(1) talked of the common threads - codes of conduct, independent scrutiny, and guidance and education - that would be necessary to underpin those principles it felt essential for ensuring standards...

Public perceptions of sleaze in Britain.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... The British demand high standards from those they elect to serve them in public life. Yet that does not imply that they are confident that those standards will be met. Recent 'sleaze' allegations and other scandals have made public confidence...

The committee on standards in public life: regulating the conduct of members of parliament.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... The Committee on Standards in Public Life under the chairmanship of Lord Nolan was appointed in October 1994 'to examine current concerns about standards of conduct of all holders of public office, including arrangements relating to financial...

Public response and constitutional significance.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... The unprecedented growth of public disquiet about sleaze in contemporary Britain can be interpreted in a number of different ways. Defenders of the status quo point to the relatively sudden and distinctive emergence of the sleaze issue as a...

Feet of clay: threat to the temples of democracy.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... Far from history having ended in the permanent triumph of liberal democracy and the market economy, spectres are still haunting Europe, if not those Marx and Engels thought to see 130 years ago. The discredit of politicians as a class, which...

Private interests and public office: the American experience of sleaze.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... Politics in the United States has long had a reputation for sleaze. Scandals of both the financial and sexual varieties seem endemic and have contributed to a political environment in which politicians are held in low esteem. Periodically,...

Better than their reputation: Danish politicians and the absence of sleaze.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... Some years ago it was revealed how intelligence services in the past bugged leading Communists. In a review of a book on Danish military intelligence, a historian referred to the source of this story as 'an alcoholic former Prime Minister'....

Political sleaze in France: forms and issues.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... The use of their position by politicians to obtain an illicit gain for themselves or their party can easily be distinguished from dubious practices carried out on behalf of the state and in its name. If French political history is mainly...

Sleaze and the sense of malaise in Germany.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... According to the Society for the German Language, 'Politikverdrossenheit' was the German 'word of the year' of 1992. This was, however, a dubious accolade. The term - literally a sullenness or apathy towards politics - is typically used to...

Sleaze in contemporary Greek politics.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... Twenty years after its foundation the Third Hellenic Republic is in the midst of a growing crisis. Its political system and the institutions established after the fall of the military dictatorship in July 1974 proved themselves able to face...

Political sleaze in the Republic of Ireland.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... The question of standards in public life has been a political issue in Ireland for some years, but particularly since a series of scandals concerning politicians and business people in 1991. The topic was given even greater prominence by a...

Can the leopard change its spots? Sleaze in Italy.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... In February 1992 investigating magistrate Antonio Di Pietro, with a few officers of the carabinieri, arrested his first politician: Mario Chiesa, Socialist director of a Milanese nursing home. The politician was charged with extortion of a...

Sleaze in Spain.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... It is difficult to dissociate sleaze in Spain from the wider concern over corruption which has dominated Spanish political life during the 1990s. Indeed, since the general elections of June 1993 corruption has become the single most salient...

No sleaze please, we're priggish.(Sleaze: Politics, Private Interests and Public Reaction)
October 1, 1995... Feasting in public: the rulers' dilemma West African kings once ate in secret, to avoid reminding their people that they too were flesh and blood. The rulers of the former communist empires in effect did the same. And those who hold high...

The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880-1914.
October 1, 1995... Whatever problems John Major may have encountered, he should gain some comfort, at least for his party if not for himself, from the fact that the Conservatives have in the past been torn by ideological conflict and lived to survive it. The...

Conservative Century: The Conservative Party Since 1900.
October 1, 1995... In Conservative Century: the Conservative Party Since 1990, the editors have brought together an impressive number of well-known political science commentators. The compilation is divided into three main thematic, rather than chronological,...

True Blues: The Politics of Conservative Party Membership.
October 1, 1995... In True Blues: The Politics of Conservative Party Membership, the authors argue that 'political parties are a vital feature of liberal democracy and that their members are of considerable importance'. The main thrust of this study is to...

Margaret Thatcher: Prime Minister Indomitable.
October 1, 1995... A mostly American view of the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher is provided by Margaret Thatcher. Prime Minister Indomitable. The book is divided into two parts: the first section evaluates the legacy of Thatcher as...

The New Right in Britain: An Introduction to Theory and Practice.
October 1, 1995... The New Right in Britain is a critical study of one of the key political phenomenon of post-war British politics - as embodied in the voice of Thatcherism. The author argues that the New Right emerged as a response to the economic, social and...

The Centennial History of the Independent Labour Party.
October 1, 1995... Visions are in short supply at the moment and the Labour Party appears busy enough anyway with post-revisionisms, renewals, transformations and reinventions, at least judging by some of the books reviewed here. Perhaps it is a salutary reminder...

The History of the Social Democratic Federation.
October 1, 1995... Visions are in short supply at the moment and the Labour Party appears busy enough anyway with post-revisionisms, renewals, transformations and reinventions, at least judging by some of the books reviewed here. Perhaps it is a salutary reminder...

Harry Pollit.
October 1, 1995... Two biographies could not be of more contrasting character than Kevin Morgan's Harry Pollit, in the 'Lives of the Left' series and A Stomach for Dissent: The Life of Raymond Postgate, written by Postgate's son and daughter-in-law. Pollit's life...

A Stomach for Dissent: The Life of Raymond Postgate.
October 1, 1995... Two biographies could not be of more contrasting character than Kevin Morgan's Harry Pollit, in the 'Lives of the Left' series and A Stomach for Dissent: The Life of Raymond Postgate, written by Postgate's son and daughter-in-law. Pollit's life...

Egalitarian Thought and Labour Politics.
October 1, 1995... Turning to the Labour Party, Radhika Desai's book, Intellectuals and Socialism, charts social democracy in the Labour Party through a Gramscian perspective, seeing the SDP in the early eighties trying to confront 'unintellectual labourism' but...

Intellectuals and Socialism: 'Social Democrats' and the British Labour Party.
October 1, 1995... Turning to the Labour Party, Radhika Desai's book, Intellectuals and Socialism, charts social democracy in the Labour Party through a Gramscian perspective, seeing the SDP in the early eighties trying to confront 'unintellectual labourism' but...

Labour: Decline and Renewal.
October 1, 1995... Of two books on the recent Labour Party itself, Steven Fielding's Labour: Decline and Renewal crams a large amount of factual material, including some well-chosen tables, into a small pocket-book of just over a hundred pages. Ideal for students...

The Labour Party Since 1979: Crisis and Transformation.
October 1, 1995... Of two books on the recent Labour Party itself, Steven Fielding's Labour: Decline and Renewal crams a large amount of factual material, including some well-chosen tables, into a small pocket-book of just over a hundred pages. Ideal for students...

Social Justice: Strategies for National Renewal.
October 1, 1995... Ideas, values and policies loom larger in some recent books which are effectively think-tanks put between covers. The final report of the Commission for Social Justice, Social Justice: Strategies for National Renewal, is by now well-known. A...

Tony Blair: The Moderniser.
October 1, 1995... Of two books on the recent Labour Party itself, Steven Fielding's Labour: Decline and Renewal crams a large amount of factual material, including some well-chosen tables, into a small pocket-book of just over a hundred pages. Ideal for students...

Reinventing the Left.
October 1, 1995... Ideas, values and policies loom larger in some recent books which are effectively think-tanks put between covers. The final report of the Commission for Social Justice, Social Justice: Strategies for National Renewal, is by now well-known. A...