Stiff Upper Lip

Earlier this week, my politics class made the trek from the London Center to Westminster to watch a session of the House of Commons. Held in the Palace of Westminster (seen at left), the members of each party sit facing each other in pews with green cushions — Labour Party on the left and the Conservative Party on the right. When we arrived, one of the conservatives was at the podium criticizing his liberal opponents and posing questions for Speaker of the House Harriet Harman (Labour). When Harman got up, she began addressing the schedule of topical debates for the next week — military operations, road and building repairs, the credit crunch — and answering her opponent's questions.

They then moved on to business questions, which involved a everyone who wanted to speak standing up, either being called on or not, and sitting back down. I was amazed how cordial everyone was when talking about proposals made by other members. They would always use phrases like "my esteemed colleague" and "the dear gentleman or lady", which truly surprised me. You'd never see something like that in American politics.

What I expected to see was what one Scottish representative brought: a bit more of an attitude. He criticized the House for ignoring the needs of Scotland and went so far as to call certain members 'gits' and 'clowns'. When he got yelled at by the moderator, he apologized ... sort of.

"My apologies, Mister Secretary," he said. "My esteemed colleague is a complete twat."

Majority of that session consisted of each member getting up and discussing issues specific to their constituents, many of whom were concerned with TFL's inability to cope with the snowfall of the past week. On a side note, I love British humour. Completely blunt, and very tongue-and-cheek. So many of the House members had great comic wit.

Then, David Miliband (pictured at right), Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, got up to discuss the recent news about the case of Binyam Mohamed, a UK resident who claims he was tortured in Guantanamo Bay. Problems arose when it was revealed that the British High Courts suppressed information regarding the case. The U.S. then threatened to stop sharing information about terrorist threats with the U.K. if the courts did not hand over the information (more details in this story from The Daily Telegraph here). I wish we could have stayed, but we had to leave, as many of us needed to get back to the London Center in time for afternoon classes. It was definitely an interesting and worthwhile trip nonetheless.