By Michael Faulkner – February 08, 2009
Its masthead proclaims that TPJ Magazine is dedicated to the
promotion and preservation of constitutional democracy. Not surprisingly given
its provenance, most TPJ columnists concern themselves primarily with the
defence of constitutional democracy in the United States where, during recent
years, the Bush/Cheney inspired accretion of executive power has been most
egregious. In Britain it is widely assumed that the prevalent parliamentary
system of government, despite occasional irregularities and abuses, works
pretty well and does not need to be changed radically.
This is a view I have never accepted. Recent exposure of
some rather shabby practices by four obscure Labour members of the House of
Lords (the second chamber of the British parliament) has prompted me to reflect
on some of the constitutional questions involved. The shabby practices
concerned are merely the latest episode in the seemingly unending series of
exposures of venality in government. The facts of the case – as far as
they are known – may be stated simply. The Labour peers (Lords Taylor,
Truscott, Moonie and Scape) were entrapped by reporters from the Sunday Times,
posing as lobbyists for a fictitious Hong Kong based businessman. They
discussed the possibility of using their legislative powers to amend actual
legislation – a business rate supplement bill - in order to favour a
projected business enterprise. Payments for such services, ranging from £24.000 to £120.000 were
mentioned by the peers. Of course, no payment was actually made but it seems
clear from what transpired that such corrupt practices are common in the House
of Lords. They are, however explicitly prohibited by the chamber’s code of
conduct, according to which peers ‘must never accept any financial inducement
as an incentive.’ However, those who choose to feather their nests in this way
cannot be stripped of their peerages. As Lord Moonie commented, there is ‘nothing
they can do with you unless you break the law.’
The leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Royall, who is a
Labour peer, has felt compelled to write a defence of the unelected second
chamber, published in The Guardian (28th January). In an embarrassing piece of
special pleading that reads like a 1950s school textbook defence of the
‘British Constitution’ she says that she is ‘genuinely sorry’ that the House
has been brought into disrepute and promises to put it in order. The government
is deeply embarrassed. New Labour came into office in 1997 promising to put an
end to the sleaze and corruption that had marked the last years of the Tory
government. But when Blair resigned in 2007 his administration was mired in the
corruption of the ‘cash for coronets’ scandal. Now, little more than a year
away from the next election, Brown presides over a similar state of affairs.
Plus ca change! As his government
pours extra billions into a salvage operation to save the banks from the
consequences of the banksters’ own malpractices, the last thing he needs is the
petty pilfering of thousands by ermine coated Labour peers.
The House of Lords
– reform or abolition?
The House of Lords has always been, and remains today, an
affront to any serious version of parliamentary democracy. It may surprise some
US liberals to learn that Britain’s upper house of parliament is still
unelected. Its 743 members include 75 hereditary peers 614 life peers, 26
bishops and 12 judges (Law Lords). In the absence of a Supreme Court in the
U.K. the House of Lords is the highest court in the land and the final court of
appeal.
For more than one hundred years it has resisted democratic
reform. The first great confrontation between the two houses of parliament in
Britain occurred before the First World War, in 1909/11, when the elected
chamber – the House of Commons – was itself grossly undemocratic as
women were denied the vote. In those days the hereditary Lords could block any
legislation passed by the Commons and thus cripple the legislative process. In
1909 they kicked out the Liberal government’s budget and modest attempts to
introduce social welfare legislation. They then rejected the 1911 Parliament
Act which sought to prevent them from blocking finance bills and limited to two
years their power to delay bills. They only caved in when Lloyd George
threatened to overwhelm them by creating enough life peers to swamp the
hereditary peers. Despite the Parliament Act the Lords bitterly resisted the
Irish Home Rule Bill in 1912, thus contributing to delaying home rule until
after the war. Despite its reduced powers, the House of Lords remained a deeply
reactionary hereditary chamber until 1958 when life peerages were introduced.
But the hereditary peers remained in place.
Tony Benn’s defence of
democracy.
In 1960 the Labour MP, Tony Benn (or Anthony Wedgwood-Benn
as he was then), took a historic stand in defence of the democratic principle
against hereditary peerages. The son of a peer, he was elected to parliament in 1950. On the death of his father
he inherited the title and his seat in the House of Lords. Benn, according to
the hereditary rule, could not remain in the Commons, despite having been
elected to serve there. He was expelled. Despite the prohibition on standing
for election to parliament, he stood again in 1961 and was duly elected. An
electoral court unseated him, outrageously awarding the election to the Tory
candidate he had defeated. This caused a public outcry. Benn renounced his
title - the first peer to do so. He was reinstated as the MP for Bristol South
East, and remained in parliament with one short break until he retired in 2000.
In 1963 the Tory government passed the Peerages Act, allowing peers to renounce
their titles.
Tony Benn is an inspirational figure on the left in Britain.
Contrary to the depressing trajectory from left to right followed by so many
professional politicians, Benn has moved further to the left. The older he has
become, the more radical have become his socialist principles. Reflecting on
his experience in the Labour governments of the 1960s and 70s, he wrote:
‘As a minister I experienced the power of industrialists and
bankers to get their way by the use of the crudest form of economic pressure, even blackmail, against a Labour
government…..Parliamentary democracy is, in truth, little more than a means of
securing a periodical change in the management team, which is then allowed to preside
over a system that remains in essence intact.’
In 2001 Benn retired from parliament in order, in his own
words, to ‘spend more time involved in politics.’ This he has done with an
energy and enthusiasm uncommon in an octogenarian. Amongst the many issues on
which he has campaigned, opposition to the House of Lords has ranked high.
Nearly thirty years ago, in a speech to the 1980 Labour Party conference, he
called for the abolition of the second chamber by subverting it from within. He
advocated the creation by a Labour government of 1000 peers who would then vote
for the abolition of the chamber. Following this they would abolish the peerage
itself. At a stroke this whole preposterous antiquarian system of power, pomp
and privilege would be swept away.
In this he was only advocating what the party had itself
proposed at the time of its foundation. The 1918 conference agreed without
debate to a resolution declaring that ‘a hereditary chamber such as the House
of Lords should be abolished.’ It also confirmed ‘its opposition to any form of
second chamber whether elected by the House of Commons or otherwise.’ The Labour governments of 1924 and 1929
were minority governments and, even if they had wished to do so, would not have
been able to legislate for abolition. During its long years in opposition from
1931 to 1945, the party once again, in 1934 pledged to ‘pass legislation
abolishing the House of Lords as a hereditary chamber.’ The 1945 Labour government, elected
with a huge parliamentary majority, not only failed to abolish the second
chamber, but left it unreformed as a bastion of hereditary privilege and
obstruction. Since then the debate about its form and future has continued,
and, despite the reforms which have removed most of the hereditary members, it
remains, in name and nature, an anachronistic blight on the system of
parliamentary democracy. The system of ‘honours’ by which favoured individuals
are ‘elevated’ to the ‘Lords’ through prime ministerial use of the ‘Royal
Prerogative’, is symptomatic of this malaise. Corruption of one kind or another
has been endemic to this system over most of the twentieth century and into the
twenty first.
A democratic alternative to the present chamber would be one
wholly elected. The objection to this (that it would simply duplicate the lower
house) has resulted in the sorry mess that exists at present – an
undemocratic, largely appointed chamber. The other alternative is to do what
could and should have been done decades ago: abolish the House of Lords and
accept a unicameral system. I can see no democratic objection to this. But it
will not happen because there are powerful vested interests opposed to the
strengthening of parliamentary democracy. To sweep away the Lords and the
class-ridden system of pomp and privilege with which it is associated, would
strike at the heart of the institution which holds it all together, and whose
mystique still numbs the minds of large numbers of people – the British
monarchy.
More than two hundred years ago Thomas Paine exposed the
hereditary monarchy as an affront to democracy and common sense. In spite of
all the specious arguments of its defenders and apologists over the centuries,
it remains so today. Power and privilege based on unelected office is
inconsistent with democracy. To be a consistent democrat is to be a republican. 