History
- 11 July 2005 - The bill was passed by the House of Commons and was passed up to the House of Lords.
- 11 October 2005 - The bill was read by the House of Lords as a 300-strong group of protesters demonstrated in Hyde Park. Forty-seven Lords spoke in the debate, of whom nine came out in support of the bill.
- 31 January 2006 - The Commons supported an amendment from the House of Lords by 288 to 278, contrary to the position of the Government. A second Lords amendment was approved by 283 votes to 282 in the absence of Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had apparently underestimated support for the amendment. This made the bill the Labour government's second defeat since the 2005 election. The Tories' strategy to win the vote was inspired by the episode "A Good Day" of the American television series The West Wing.
- 16 February 2006 - The Bill received Royal Assent to become the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 c. 1.
- 1 October 2007 - The act came partially into force with the publication of a Statutory Instrument. Remaining provisions awaiting commencement are the insertion of sections 29B(3), 29H(2), 29I(2)(b) and 29I(4) into the Public Order Act 1986:
A complete summary of the voting in the various divisions of this bill may be found at www.publicwhip.org.uk.
Read more about this topic: Racial And Religious Hatred Act 2006
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.”
—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)
“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)