Just hours after Britain's The Guardian published a very unusual story about how it had been "prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights," the gag has been lifted.

"The existence of a previously secret injunction against the media by oil traders Trafigura can now be revealed," The Guardian now writes.

It appears the legal firm representing a company accused of dumping toxic waste in Ivory Coast has withdrawn its objection to The Guardian reporting that a member of parliament wants an explanation for why information about the dumping case was being suppressed.

As The Guardian notes:

The right to report (on) parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority — up to the king — over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes's battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, 'it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to.' "