Bolshevism At Blandings

A couple of centuries after the French abolished their nobility by revolution, the aristocracy in Britain is alive and rather well in the shape of 742 Lords and 16 Ladies given constitutional power in Parliament by birthright. Good old feudalism in modern government, where else would you find it? Sure, the good Lords really have no constitutional power beyond delaying legislation, and heaven knows that few among them have ever cared to do that. But the New Labour-New Britain of Tony Blair has decided there is no place for an inherited role in government.

This is not a revolution to sweep away evil but to nudge aside the doddering. The announcement was made by the Queen in her opening address to Parliament last week. Her government had decided, she told gathered MPs, the to-be-abolished peers among them, "to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote". This would be "the first stage in a process of reform to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative".

 She couldn't have missed the irony—she is herself appointed Queen on the hereditary principle, and she now spoke of abolishing the principle by which she exists as monarch. And she could hardly have failed to notice that she was announcing also that her husband and her sons too will be thrown out of Parliament with the rest.

Buckingham Palace later acknowledged this on her behalf. Her husband Prince Philip and her sons, Prince Charles and Prince Andrew, will lose their seats and vote in Parliament now. Like so many other Lords, they have neither sat nor voted in years. But aristocracy is losing royal approval, and royalty consequently stands a little less royal. "Formal advice has been received from the government on reforms, and in line with established constitutional practice, the Queen has accepted that advice," Buckingham Palace announced. It was a denial now, The Guardian wrote, of the "connection between DNA and political power" and its logical end would be for the Queen to say: "My government will take steps to abolish me."

There are enough in England who find this abolition a hammer blow on something quite quaint. It's like a Bolshevik breeze into Blandings Castle, a usurpation of the world created by P.G. Wodehouse with matters as sensible and depressing as economics and political science. The young man is getting at the old boys, the new world at the old. In modern terms the old idea was an outrage. In India this would be like the Rajya Sabha packed with the princes that Indira Gandhi wasted little time getting rid of. Maybe it's so late for England to effect such changes that they may as well have left it alone.

SOME of their lordships aren't giving up without a fight, though all the sitting and voting can make little difference beyond delaying their demise in the House within a year or so. The proposed legislation threatens their seats and votes but something remains beyond the title. They have launched a polite struggle now to be allowed entry into the House of Lords bar and club facilities, its library and dining hall even if they don't sit in the chamber and vote, which few did anyhow. But this is surely the last gasp of aristocracy in Parliament. It's one thing to drink and talk at the bar because you won't sit and vote; it's another thing to drink and talk because you can't sit and vote. Even their lordships would decline this pass up to the verandah.

There is no proposal to abolish lordship itself, only membership of the House of Lords. So there will be four kinds of lords—hereditary lords who are members of the House of Lords, hereditary lords who are not members, appointed lords, and the commoners who buy lordships sold in auctions by lords in need. That the lords will now gain some rights is a greater loss. Britain's lords are the only British people who do not have the right to vote. As a lord you would not elect a mere commoner—and that is law. They now face the humiliation of seeing that right restored.

Coming to the end of their days in Parliament, lord after lord has now begun to speak up. The 15th Lord of Stafford became member of the House of Lords in 1986. He made his maiden speech last week, 12 years later. His family, he told Parliament in a plea to retain hereditary lords, has been associated with the House of Lords since 1299, and his family became peers 600 years ago. "During six centuries three members of our family had their heads chopped off...we lost one ancestor every 200 years." The Lord acknowledged that this was because "we kept choosing the wrong side", but that was no reason to deny his family a place in the House of Lords. Just because.

Lord Clwyd made his maiden speech in the House of Lords last week after 11 years, but this was not on the future of lords. He made a case for the government to spend more money on music. "What took you so long to make this excellent speech?" another lord querried. If Lord Clwyd had a reason, he did not offer it.

Britain has two kinds of Lords (and Ladies, the few that there are) in Parliament. The hereditary lords, who are now facing disinheritance, and the life peers, who are appointed lords by the government. The House of Lords has 759 hereditary peers and 512 life peers. The life peers will stay on in the reformed House of Lords, which means that the lordship of the likes of Lord Bagri and Lord Swraj Paul will survive this reform wave. Of the hereditary members 16 are women; of the appointed members in the House of Lords 81 are women, sari-wearing Baroness Shreela Flather among them.

The ornate red and gold chamber can never seat 1,271 members, it has never had to. Of the 633 hereditary peers who have come at least once in their life, more than a third did not turn up at Parliament even once. But this does not mean the other two-thirds ever sat dutifully in the House. The House of Lords keeps records of members who arrive, but not of those in attendance in the chamber. The bar, dining room, etc, are always an attractive rival to lengthy debates, and their lordships are often seen headed in those directions. There is no saying whether appointed peers are more in attendance than the hereditary ones. Among the Indians in the House, Lord Meghnad Desai and Lord Bagri do not go much. Lord Swraj Paul goes and sits there almost every day, but such diligence is rare.

Conservative leader William Hague has attacked the reforms that would turn the House of Lords into a "House of Cronies". The Tories, blue by definition, have not quite defended the hereditary principle, though they haven't attacked it. But they have attacked Blair for taking something away without deciding first what to put in its place. The family of Viscount Cranbourne has been active in political life since the days of Queen Elizabeth I (lords can be duke, marquess, earl, viscount or baron, or just lord, but in the House the unequal are all equal). Now the viscount despairs of the next stage of reforms which won't come "at least for another 87 years". And William Hague has attacked reforms that seek to confer traditional titles on modern favourites to make the likes of "Lord Mandelson of Rio and the Prime Minister himself, Baron (barren) of Ideas. " Tony Blair has offered a compromise to the Lords and blue-blooded Tories; that some hereditary peers will be appointed life peers. A new aristocracy among the aristocracy is only just emerging. England can change its laws more easily than its ways.