House of Lords Abolishes Seats Tied to Lineage

LONDON — They clung to their claret-colored benches for months, threatened to disrupt Britain’s upper house of Parliament like football hooligans and cried “treason.” But in the end, Britain’s aristocrats accepted their fate Tuesday and agreed to abolish the centuries-old right of more than 700 hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords.

Hundreds of peers crowded into the gilded chamber for the third and final reading of the House of Lords Bill, which in effect marked the end of parliamentary life for those who sit in the upper house solely because they were born into the upper crust.

The reform bill must undergo a final vote in the House of Commons, where it is virtually guaranteed passage by the governing Labor Party majority. Most hereditary peers are expected to have shed their ermine robes and exited the House of Lords by the time Queen Elizabeth II opens the next session of Parliament in mid-November.

The full House of Lords voted 221 to 81, with hundreds of abstentions and absentees, in favor of the compromise legislation that allows 92 hereditary peers to remain in the House temporarily, along with bishops and appointed life peers, until the government comes up with an alternative system for filling the chamber. Hereditary peers make up about two-thirds of the House’s approximately 1,200 members.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has promised that his reform of the upper chamber will enter a second stage once a Royal Commission headed by Conservative Party member Lord Wakeham issues its recommendations at the end of the year.

But the opposition Conservatives, who went into the vote enjoying a 3-1 majority in the House of Lords, charge that Blair is trying to stack the chamber with his cronies.

“We will end up with a house of patronage,” warned Lord Strathclyde, leader of the Tory peers, during debate on the measure Tuesday.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper called the bill a “dog’s breakfast masquerading as reform,” saying that no one, including the prime minister and Lord Wakeham, “has any idea what is coming next.”

Blair, who has vowed to fight “the forces of conservatism” in Britain, insists that the reform is meant to get rid of an anachronistic birthright and turn the upper chamber into a modern branch of government.

Yet he also has hinted that he would prefer to see an entirely appointed upper house, while electoral reformers want a democratically elected one.

The House of Lords, which traces its origins back to William the Conqueror in 1081, has little real power and has long been mocked by critics as a ward of inbred weirdos and geriatric relics more interested in the parliamentary bars and restrooms than in the debating chamber.

The upper house is a legislative watchdog, able to mend poorly drafted bills sent over from the popularly elected House of Commons and to delay--but not kill--those it does not like. It can call elections if a government tries to extend its life beyond the legal five-year term. The government went beyond its term only twice this century--during World War I and World War II.

Under the compromise agreement, the 92 hereditary peers who will remain during the interim period must seek election next month from fellow hereditary members and, in the case of deputy speakers and committee chairs, from the entire house.

About 250 hereditary peers have said they want to stay on the job, and, having shunned democratic elections for generations, they suddenly find themselves in the position of reluctant campaigners. Each has been allowed to write a personal manifesto of no more than 75 words.

Some lords refused to commit their talents to print, saying they were already known by their fellow aristocrats or that such electioneering was beneath a hereditary peer. The 7th Earl of Onslow said it would be “arrogant to list any achievement” and refused to be so “vainglorious” as to “proclaim a personal manifesto.”

The earl--who had vowed that he and his Tory mates would fight the reform “like hooligans” until the compromise was accepted--has decided he will try to stay on.

Other members tried their hand at slogan-writing. Lord Geddes promised “Brains. Breadth. Brevity,” and Lord Rennell said he was “a sporting diplomat or a diplomatic sport.”

Lord Seaford described himself as “a small and happy bison farmer with aspirations above his station,” while Baroness Strange, whose title dates to 1628, wrote something akin to a personal ad: “Brings flowers. Loves House of Lords. Passionate about War Widows.”

Passion marked the lords’ final debate before they voted to surrender their seats.

Early in the evening, the Earl of Burford, who is descended from the illegitimate offspring of Charles II and his mistress, Nell Gwyn, threw the tradition-bound house into a panic by climbing onto the red cushion known as the Woolsack, where the British lord chancellor sits, and shouting, “Treason!”

“My lords, this bill drafted in Brussels is treason! What we are witnessing is the abolition of Britain!” he yelled, echoing many Conservatives’ fears that Pan-European sentiment is overshadowing British tradition.

“Get him out!” horrified peers shouted before the earl was hustled out of the hall.

The earl is the son of the 14th Duke of St. Albans, Hereditary Grand Falconer of England, and is not a hereditary peer because his father is still alive.

While denounced by many fellow aristocrats, his breach of House of Lords etiquette was greeted warmly by some.

“It was a rare, spirited moment in what is otherwise a rather depressing end,” said conservative political commentator Matthew Parris. Acknowledging on Sky News that some of the hereditary peers are “nutters” and that the House of Lords was a “weird place,” he added: “We need a few daredevils. We need a few nut cases. We need an Earl of Burford or two.”

In the end, Lord Strathclyde called on fellow Tory peers to abstain rather than vote against the compromise bill.

“I reject utterly the imputation that we have acted through the generations out of narrow and petty self-interest, and not always in the interest of what we believed was best for our country,” he said.

“A long chapter of history is being closed tonight,” he added. “The prime minister has taken a knife and scored a giant gash across the face of history. But the past is no longer the point. The point is the future. The future of the House. The future of our Parliament.”