Parliament at work: case- book of parliamentary procedure

OUR justification for the temerity of adding yet another to the enormous number of books about Parliament is that, as teachers of government, we have become aware of a gap in the existing literature

We are not so foolish as to attempt to rival Sir Ivor Jennings' Parliament, or to supersede any of the very competent shorter books about the parliamentary institutions of this country. Our aim is simply to provide a case book which will illustrate the use to which the House of Commons puts its various pro cedures, and the ways in which it attempts to adapt ancient forms to modern needs. We believe that the concrete and fairly detailed examples of parliament at work, herein con tained, are necessary if parliamentary procedure is to become, for the student, something more than a collection of curiosities, as difficult to justify as they are hard to learn.
We do not, however, claim any methodological originality. The idea came to us as a result of reading Stephen K. Bailey's and Howard D. Samuel's brilliant case-book of American Congressional procedure, entitled Congress at Work. Although we have not attempted to imitate it, our debt to it is consider able.