2011-07-03
post/7205312908
quote 23:19:06
“ Finally, years after being first elected, Bradlaugh was at last allowed to take his seat thanks to a cool and masterly coup by the speaker, Arthur Wellesley Peel, Sir Robert’s youngest son. No sooner had Peel been re-elected speaker on 12 January 1885 than he got up and said: ‘I have come clearly and without hesitation to the conclusion that it would neither be my duty to prohibit the honourable gentleman from coming nor to permit a motion to be made standing between him and his taking of the oath.’ The leader of the House, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, rose to object. The speaker silenced him, reminding him that Hicks-Beach had himself not yet taken the oath. And that was the end of it. ”
Ferdinand Mount in the subscriber-only LRB article Get off your knees, a review of a biography of Charles Bradlaugh, noted Victorian atheist, campaigner and politician.
As an atheist, he wasn’t allowed to take the oath of office in the Houses of Parliament, to which he as elected in 1880, for six years. The passage above describes the legal manoerver (well, I’d use the word “hack”) that the new Speaker used to finally let him take his seat.
