The Last of Their Kind
The news that the
last 92 hereditary peers in the House of Lords were
sitting for the very last time, following the implementation of reforms by the
Labour government, left me quite saddened. [BBC News: Hereditary
peers' last hurrah as 700-year-old system abolished]
The peerage system,
which has effectively functioned as a kind of patronage, has existed for
centuries, perhaps approaching a millennium. The very last hereditary peerage
conferred on a non-royal was awarded in 1984 to Harold Macmillan as Earl of Stockton.
Born to Greatness
William Shakespeare,
in 'Twelfth Night', Act 2, Scene 5, writes, “Some are born great, some
achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” That, to me,
has always been the story of mankind; the way greatness or privilege arrives in
a person's life is sometimes an indeterminable process, yet worthy of note.
For instance, the
longest extant hereditary peerage in England is the Earldom of Arundel,
created in 1138, which is currently held by the Duke of Norfolk. He
also bears the ceremonial hereditary position of Earl Marshal, with the
duty of organising state occasions such as the coronation of the monarch and
the state opening of Parliament.
The family is Roman
Catholic, with the pre-eminent non-royal function of serving a Protestant
monarchy.
Peers and the Magna
Carta
The Magna Carta, upon which
many principles of our modern-day democracies and human rights are based, came
about when the peers, hereditary barons, rebelled to limit the power of the
king. A charter of rights was signed in 1215. The ordinary folk would never
have had the clout and facility to rise against a king who, in those times,
literally held the power of life and death untrammelled and was considered
sanctioned by God.
That said, I
recognise that the significance of hereditary peers had been waning for well
over a century before their removal. In Victorian times, some peers served as
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, on more than one occasion.
Reform and Patronage
In the early
twentieth century, the constitutional balance between the two chambers was
formally and irrevocably redrawn. The Parliament Act 1911 stripped the Lords of
the power to block money bills entirely and reduced their ability to delay
other legislation to two years; the Parliament Act 1949 cut that delay to just
one year.
The elected House
of Commons, as the chamber that forms the government, had been established
as the primary legislative authority, and the Lords' independent power had been
reduced, step by step, to little more than a holding position.
The Salisbury-Addison
Convention of 1945 settled what remained. Under that arrangement, the Lords
agreed not to oppose legislation at second reading, nor to substantially
obstruct any bill that the government had put to the electorate and won a
mandate to implement. What had once been a chamber of real and rival
legislative power had become, by stages, a revising chamber, its role defined
more by restraint than authority.
Life peers were
introduced in the United Kingdom through the Life Peerages Act
1958; this removed the hereditary component; a case of greatness being
thrust upon one as part of political or influential patronage. The conferment
stays with the person, and each individual earns that elevation for themselves
alone.
The Winds of Change
My concern with the
loss of hereditary peers, though some of that cohort have been given life
peerages to sit in the House of Lords, is that the only hereditary component of
the political system is now the monarchy. They stand alone, without the buffer
of any other hereditary roles in our political system to shield them from the
billowing winds of change. [The
Guardian: Starmer restores powers to ousted hereditary peers in Lords shake-up]
The hereditary peers
were, in a meaningful sense, the monarchy's constitutional companions. Both
derived their place in public life from the same foundational principle: that
certain roles could be inherited, carrying with them centuries of obligation, service,
and a legitimacy built not on a single vote but on long continuity.
The presence of peers
embedded in the political landscape normalised that principle within the
constitutional system itself, making the monarchy less anomalous and less
conspicuously alone.
With them gone, the
Crown stands as the only institution in British public life whose authority
rests on birthright rather than democratic mandate or appointment. It has not
merely lost allies; it has lost the broader constitutional culture that once
made the hereditary principle comprehensible and defensible.
It brings to mind a
conversation in the play 'A Man for All Seasons', where Sir Thomas More was
implored by his wife, his daughter, and his son-in-law to arrest someone.
Alice More (Wife): Arrest him!
Sir Thomas More (England's Lord High Chancellor): For what?
Alice More: He's dangerous!
William Roper (Son-in-law): For all we know he's a spy!
Margaret More (Daughter): Father, that man's bad!
Sir Thomas: There's no law against that!
William Roper: There is God's law!
Sir Thomas: Then let God arrest him!
Alice More: While you talk he's gone!
Sir Thomas: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the
law.
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas: Yes!
Sir Thomas: What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after
the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on
you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?
Sir Thomas: This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's
laws, not God's! And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it!),
do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
Sir Thomas: Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
Sketch from A Man For All Seasons
about Sir Thomas More
from What Delicate
Balance? by John Loeffler.
When Laws Fall Flat
Taking the hereditary
peers as the laws in More's analogy, the Labour Party have done precisely what William
Roper threatened; they have cut them all down, leaving only the monarchy
standing. When the devil of republicanism rears its head in a swell of
revolutionary fervour, I do wonder how the Crown can be defended against the
onslaught.
We have seen this
before in England, where political conflict between the Royalists and the
Parliamentarians led to the conviction
of Charles I for high treason and his execution in 1649, ushering in the Commonwealth of
England and the
Protectorate, but the monarchy was restored in 1660.
Patronage and Its
Limits
Hereditary peers were
born to their positions of greatness and should not, in general, be beholden to
political influences that do not serve their interests or the purposes of a
life of public service, if they choose that path.
Life peers are
appointed through patronage that may carry elements of nepotism, cronyism, and corruption;
they are a means by which a Prime Minister could tilt the balance of the House
of Lords by stacking the chamber with loyalists and sycophants. The core
revising function of the chamber can easily be lost, reducing it to a rubber
stamp for poor government policy.
In all, having an appointed or elected House of Lords without the hereditary element does not augur well. Even as we aim for a more egalitarian society, the source of greatness will always come by birth, by achievement, or by conferment. Hierarchies will always exist, no matter how we try to abolish them.
