CNN logo
navigation


Infoseek/Big
Yellow/Pathfinder/Warner Bros.


World banner
rule

Labor takes aim at Britain's House of Lords

lords

Party leader wants to strip hereditary peers of voting rights

April 9, 1997
Web posted at: 5:55 p.m. EDT (2155 GMT)

From Correspondent Siobhan Darrow

LONDON (CNN) -- The hereditary peers sit for life in Britain's upper chamber, the House of Lords. They have earned their right to that seat, as they have for hundreds of years, by virtue of their birth.

They wear wigs and have titles like viscount, baron and earl. Some are descended from kings, although the connection sometimes is convoluted.

Take Duke of St. Albans, for example. The duke hails from the bastard offspring of King Charles II or the Earl of Onslow. And a distant relative was a drinking buddy of King George IV.

As British as the queen, Beefeaters or an English pub, the hereditary peers defend their place as a British tradition.

queen

"People get their morals, ideas, philosophy from their forebears," says Lord Mancroft. "There's nothing particularly strange about also passing political power down."

But Britain's Labor Party disagrees.

"It is a fundamental principle of democratic government that people who pass laws should be elected to do that, shouldn't be born to do that," says Robin Cook, Labor's shadow Foreign Secretary.

Lord Merrivale, who inherited his title through his grandfather's service to the crown, counters that being elected to parliament does not guarantee more knowledge about the country's issues.

Labor Party leader Tony Blair calls the upper chamber an anachronism full of dotty old eccentrics, occasionally hauled in from their country homes as Tory voting fodder. Labor wants to take away voting rights of the hereditary peers, who make up two-thirds of the upper chamber.

But Lord Mancroft says Blair's opposition is simply a ruse to "get rid of ... those members who he perceives quite rightly won't vote for him."

The clash between the aristocracy and democracy is nothing new in this country. For more than a century commoners have whittled away at the powers of the House of Lords.

With a general election looming and Labor well ahead in the pools, the blue bloods are bracing for another assault on one of their last trappings of power.

 
rule

Related stories:

Related sites:

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

rule
What You Think Tell us what you think!

You said it...
rule

To the top

© 1997 Cable News Network, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Terms under which this service is provided to you.