English House of Lords Falls

This series has nine easy 5-minute installments. This first installment: Liberal Speeches Against the Lords.

Introduction
In 1999 the hereditary peers were reduced to 92. Further reforms were enacted in the 21st. century. That said, this is the story of the major reduction in the power of the British nobility in the House of Lords.

On August 10, 1911, the ancient British House of Lords gathered in somber and resentful session and solemnly voted for the “Parliament Bill,” a measure which reduced their own importance in the government to a mere shadow. This vote came as the climax of a five-year struggle. The Lords have for generations been a Conservative body, holding back every Liberal measure of importance in England. Of late years the Liberal party has protested with ever-increasing vehemence against the unfairness of this unbalanced system, by means of which the Conservatives when elected to power by the people could legislate as they pleased, whereas the Liberals, though they might carry elections overwhelmingly, were yet blocked in all their chief purposes of legislation.

When the Liberals found themselves elected to power by a vast majority in 1905, they were still seeking to get on peaceably with the Lords, but this soon proved impossible. In January of 1910 the Liberals deliberately adjourned Parliament and appealed to the people in a new election. They were again returned to power, though by a reduced majority; yet the Lords continued to oppose them. Again, they appealed to the people in December of 1910, this time with the distinct announcement that if re-elected to authority they would pass the “Parliament Bill” destroying the power of the Lords. In this third election they were still upheld by the people. Hence when the Lords resisted the Parliament Bill, King George stood ready to create as many new Peers from the Liberal party as might be necessary to pass the offensive bill through the House of Lords. It was in face of this threat that the Lords yielded at last and voted most unwillingly for their own loss of power.

Of this great step in the democratizing of England, we give three characteristic British views — first, that of a well-known Liberal member of Parliament, who naturally approves of it; secondly, that of a fair-minded though despondent Conservative; and thirdly, that of a rabid Conservative who can see nothing but shame, ruin, and the extreme of wickedness in the change. He speaks in the tone of the “Die-hards,” the Peers who refused all surrender and held out to the last, raving at their opponents, assailing them with curses and even with fists, and in general aiding the rest of the world to realize that the manners of some portion of the British Peerage needed reform quite as much as their governmental privileges.

The selections are from:

• special article in Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 by Arthur Ponsonby published in 1914.
• special article in Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 by Sydney Brooks published in 1914.
• special article in Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 by Captain George Swinton published in 1914.

For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Summary of daily installments:

We begin with Arthur Ponsonby (1871-1946). He was a left-wing British politician, writer, and social activist.

Time: 1911

A great and memorable struggle has ended with the passage of the Parliament Bill into law. In the calm atmosphere of retrospect, we may now look back on the various stages of this prolonged conflict, from its inception to its completion, and further, with the whole scene before us, we may reflect on the wider meaning and real significance of the victory which has been gained on behalf of democracy, freedom, and popular self-government.

In the progressive cause there can be no finality, no termination to the combat, no truce, no rest. But we may fairly regard the conclusion of this particular struggle as the achievement of a notable step in advance and as the acquisition of territory that can not well be recaptured. The admission of the Parliament Bill to the statute-book marks an epoch and fills the hearts of those who are pursuing high ideals in politics and sociology with great hopes for the future. The long sequence of the events which have led up to this achievement has not been smooth or without incident. There have been moments of failure, of rebuff, and even of disaster. It would almost seem as if the motive power which has carried the party of progress through the storm and stress, and landed it in security, had been outside the control of any one man or any set of men. Although distinguished men have led and there have been many valiant workers in the field, a movement that has extended over nearly a hundred years must have its origin and energy deeper down than in any mere party policy. It is the inevitable outcome of the steady but inexorable evolution of free institutions among a liberty-loving people.

In order, first of all, to trace the course of the actual controversy as it has been carried on in the House of Commons and in the country, it is not necessary to go further back than 1883. In that year the Lords had rejected the Franchise Bill, and it was then that Mr. Bright, in a speech at Leeds dealing with the deadlocks between the two Houses, sketched a plan which was really the essence and origin of the principle adopted in the Parliament Act that has just become law. The Lords had rejected many Liberal measures before then; attempts had been made to get round or overcome their opposition; but not till then was any practical method formulated for dealing with the serious and permanent obstruction to progressive legislation. Mr. Bright himself had condemned the peers and declared that “their arrogance and class selfishness had long been at war with the highest interests of the nation,” and now he advocated a specific remedy, which he declared would be obtained by “limiting the veto which the House of Lords exercises over the proceedings of the House of Commons.” The actual plan was that a Bill rejected by the Lords should be sent up to them again, “but when the Bill came down to the House of Commons in the second session, and the Commons would not agree to the amendments of the Lords, then the Lords should be bound to accept the Bill.” This method of procedure, it will be seen, was more expeditious and drastic than the scheme in the Parliament Act.

Mr. Chamberlain joined vigorously in the campaign against the Peers. Telling passages from his speeches are quoted to this day, such as when he declared that “the House of Lords had never contributed one iota to popular liberty and popular freedom, or done anything to advance the common weal,” but “had protected every abuse and sheltered every privilege.”

No further mention of the Bright scheme was made for some time. Six years of Conservative rule (1886-1892) diverted the attention of Liberals as a party in opposition to other matters, and the Lords subsided, as they always have done in such periods, into an entirely innocuous, negligible, and utterly useless adjunct of the Conservative Government.

In the brief period between 1892-1895, the animus against the House of Lords was kindled afresh. Several Liberal Bills were mutilated or lost, and the rejection of the second Home Rule Bill served to fan the flames into a dangerous blaze. The Bright plan was recalled by Lord Morley. “I think,” he said (at Newcastle on May 21, 1894), “there will have to be some definite attempt to carry out what Mr. Bright at the Leeds Conference of 1883 suggested, by which the power of the House of Lords — this non-elected, this non-representative, this hereditary, this packed Tory Chamber — by which the veto of that body shall be strictly limited.” Mr. Gladstone, too, in his last speech in the House of Commons on the wrecking amendments which the Lords had made on the Parish Councils Bill, dwelt on the fundamental differences between the two Houses, and said that “a state of things had been created which could not continue,” and declared it to be “a controversy which once raised must go forward to an issue.”

But by far the most formidable, the most vigorous, the most animated, and, at the time, apparently sincere attack was contained in a series of speeches delivered in 1894 by Lord Rosebery, who was then in a position of responsibility as leader of the Liberal party. If, as subsequent events have shown, he was unmoved by the underlying principle and cause for which his eloquent pleading stood, anyhow we must believe he was deeply impressed by the prospect of his personal ambition as the leader of a party being thwarted by the contemptuous action of an irresponsible body. His words, however, stand, and have been quoted again and again as the most effective attack against the partisan nature of the Second Chamber: — “What I complain of in the House of Lords is that during the tenure of one Government it is a Second Chamber of an inexorable kind, but while another Government is in, it is no Second Chamber at all… Therefore, the result, the effect of the House of Lords as it at present stands, is this, that in one case it acts as a Court of Appeal, and a packed Court of Appeal, against the Liberal party, while in the other case, the case of the Conservative Government, it acts not as a Second Chamber at all. In the one case we have the two Chambers under a Liberal Government, under a Conservative Government we have a single Chamber. Therefore, I say, we are face to face with a great difficulty, a great danger, a great peril to the State.” So vehement and repeated were Lord Rosebery’s denunciations that grave anxiety is said to have been caused in the highest quarters.

Sydney Brooks begins here. Captain George Swinton begins here.

More information here and here and below.

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