Hansard

Hansard is the title of the official records she kept of the meetings of the British Parliament and the parliaments of various countries that formerly the British Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations belonged or still belong. The name is derived from Hansard Thomas Curson Hansard, the long-time printer and publisher of the records of the meetings of the British Parliament.

The Hansard contains the records of parliamentary speeches and debates in a particular legislative body, making it the Anglo-Saxon counterpart to the published as " negotiations of the German Bundestag / printed matter " transcripts of the German parliamentary sessions in the successor states of the British Empire. A Hansard is usually from the collected logs of verbal utterances and sporadic especially important non-verbal actions of all parliamentary sessions of a legislature or parliament sessions of a particular portion of a parliamentary term.

In addition to the original Hansard, in which can track the sessions of the Parliament of Westminster in London, Hansard be made ​​for the parliamentary sessions of the following countries: Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya, Tanzania and Jamaica.

Historical Background

Until 1771 only the decisions and actions, but not the debates of Lords and the House of Commons had been published. As the interest in public was always greater in the debates in particular of the lower house, began several parliamentarians to publish unofficial reports of the session flows that have been sometimes treated by publishers and editors as meetings of conspirators clubs or gangs of robbers, to give the reader more " exciting " to offer. Accordingly, this session records name as "Proceedings of the Lower Room of the Robin Hood Society " or " Debates of the Senate of Magna Lilliputia " led.

Since the publication of statements made ​​in Parliament was still forbidden at that time in the British Empire, the publisher, authors and editors of these publications were sometimes prosecuted at the insistence. When finally even Brass Crosby, the Lord Mayor of London, was charged at the behest of Parliament because he had refused to punish a publisher of clandestine Parliament notes, there were violent public protests, to an implied duty of the outgoing parliament Policy led: the publication of sittings of Parliament was now officially tolerated. As a result, numerous publications sprouted from the ground, try to do the debates of Parliament to the public, such as the " Parliamentary Register " by John Almon and John Debrett, which was published from 1775 to 1813.

1802 William Cobbett started in competition with the register, also to publish records of parliamentary proceedings. 1809 the publisher Thomas Curson Hansard began to procure the release of Cobbett records. 1812 sold Cobbett - get into private financial hardships - his publication organ of Hansard. Later, the publication was named after this.

Hansard employed in the first years no stenographers, who co rubbed their utterances in Parliament one to one, but reconstructed the parliamentary debates until the next day based on the publications of the morning papers by collation of the various reports of the various London newspapers. The result was, of course, that these records the tenor of the parliamentary sessions, at best, in principle, at worst, and at best partially not correct reproductions that literal utterances, while many formulations were lost. Later the highest possible degree of accuracy was through careful note-taking as a guiding principle of the Hansard.

Hansard sat down over time against competing products such as the Parliamentary register or Barrows Mirror of Parliamentary Proceedings by. 1889 was the Parliament of this development and granted the Hansard subsidization, which has since ensures and guarantees that the Hansard as a reference book for parliamentarians and the public has the opportunity to recall previous statements almost word for word a complete recording operation.

As a source for historical research which Hansard plays an eminent significance. Especially since the 1960s, the Hansard is turning its attention to the technical science, which has since been heartily exploiting him as a source for professional representations of people, goals and decisions of British politics.