Petitioning and People Power in Twentieth-Century Britain

In their contribution, Bocking-Welch, Huzzey, Leston-Bandeira and Miller set out their historico-political approach to the investigation of petitioning as a practice over a one-hundred-year period. In this context, specific petitions or even public discussion of specific petitions provide trace data for exploring the practices which produced them. Rather than a single, stable set of practices, Bocking-Welch, Huzzey, Leston-Bandeira and Miller show those practices are embedded in, shape and are shaped by wider social, cultural and political contexts. By tracing petitioning outwards to these varied contexts, they expand the notion of the political by expanding our understanding of where politics happens and what is involved.