Dr Henry Miller, formerly of the History of Parliament Trust, but now at the University of Manchester, reports back from his recent seminar paper discussing the enormous popularity of petitioning in the ‘long 19th century’ (c. 1780-1914)…
The second ‘Parliaments, politics and people’ seminar of the summer term took place on the 26 May. The premise of my paper was that many accounts of modern British political history privilege the struggle for the right to vote, voting, elections and electoral culture, and political parties. As a result they have almost entirely ignored petitioning, which was the most popular, accessible and open form of political activity in this pre-democratic era. Thousands of petitions, containing millions of signatures were sent to the House of Commons every year after 1833. These figures do not take into account other forms of petitioning activity, such as petitions to the Lords, monarch, government departments and…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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