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The issue of the secret ballot in the Cambridge and Oxford Union Societies, c.1830–72: an extension of the nineteenth-century parliamentary culture of debate

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SUMMARYIn this article, debating societies are considered an inherent part of the formation of a parliamentary culture in Britain. Despite the fact that the nineteenth-century Cambridge and Oxford Union Societies were considered to be ‘training grounds' for statesmen, their debating practices have not been systematically studied in relation to national politics. This is largely due to the fact that the role of debate has remained understated in studies of parliamentary history, even though it is one of the fundamental political features in the Westminster system. Nineteenth-century parliamentary debate did not just occur for its own sake, rather it had a constitutional and political dimension that was related to procedure. Since then, many accounts of British parliamentary political culture consider ‘debate’ in procedural terms. This article focuses on the significance of the debate culture in nineteenth-century British parliamentary politics. It shows that there was an interchange of ideas and concepts b...