Now that we are embraced by the
new Labour Paradise (aka Nirvana) we can be sure that an early and easy
constitutional change will be the expulsion of the hereditary peers from the
House of Lords. The hereditaries’ privileges cannot be defended but their final
departure should not proceed without some tribute and nostalgic regret.
As it happens, I am currently re-reading the delightful anthology The
Library Looking-Glass by Lord David Cecil, not a hereditary peer himself,
but a sibling of the 5th Marquess of Salisbury, entitled to a
courtesy title, and a sprig of a powerful aristocratic family. Lord David
(1902-1986) was an author, critic and Oxford Professor of Literature. He made
an early reputation with his study of the poet William Cowper The Stricken
Deer (1929) and was an expert on 19th century writers and poets
like Scott, Austen, Pater and Bridges. His biography of Lord Melbourne, Lord
M, (1954) was widely admired.
He neglected his tutorial duties
and one of his undergraduates, Kingsley Amis, was enraged when Lord David took 1
½ terms to contact him, promptly to disappear to Italy again! He was a public
figure and was familiar to the public for his machine-gun staccato verbal
delivery. I think he sometimes appeared on the BBC TV Brains Trust programme on
a Sunday afternoon in the late 1950s. Remember that? Chaired urbanely by Norman
Fisher, its discussions contained the wisdom of the likes of Isaiah Berlin, Noel
Annan, Barbara Wootton and Jacob Bronowski – light years away from the pap
served up by the BBC these days!
Lord David’s brother, “Bobbety”
Cranbourne, later 5th Marquess of Salisbury was a sterner figure.
After the classic Eton, Oxford and The Guards, Cranbourne became a Tory
stalwart, winning pre-war minor office and he developed a particular knowledge
of Africa. Befriended by Churchill, he joined the war-time cabinet, becoming Dominions
Secretary and leader of the House of Lords when he inherited the Salisbury title.
A power in the post-war Churchill and Eden ministries, he famously interviewed the
Eden cabinet to establish who should succeed when Eden’s health broke down in
1957. The contest to “emerge” (nothing so vulgar as a leadership election in
those days!) was between Rab Butler, the favourite, and Harold MacMillan.
Bobbety, with his peculiar speech impediment, shot the same question at all the
ministers: Well, is it Wab or Hawold? Harold won.
Boofy was a harmless aristocrat
of no great distinction who wrote a lively column in the Daily Mail. He
was persuaded in 1965 to sponsor a private member’s bill in the Lords to
decriminalise homosexual acts between 2 consenting adults, as recommended in
the Wolfenden report of 1957. Boofy’s bill sailed through the Lords although Leo
Abse’s Commons equivalent encountered stiff opposition. “A Buggers’ Charter, it
was dubbed. Wilson’s government refused to handle this hot potato but
eventually this liberal step became law in 1967.
Boofy’s other passion was the
protection of badgers but his attempts to legislate against badger culls failed
miserably.
In his dotage, he claimed not to
understand why his homosexual bill triumphed while his badger bill failed. A
friend gently observed “Boofy, perhaps there are not many badgers in the House
of Lords…”
So, after centuries of dominance
it will be time soon to say farewell to the famous names of Cecil, Cavendish,
Gore and Spencer.
We can only echo the eloquent words
of Lord Chief Justice Crewe in the De Vere Oxford peerage case of 1626;
Time hath his revolutions.
There must be a period and an end of all temporal things, finis rerum, an end
of names and dignities and whatsoever is terrene; and why not of De Vere? For
where is Bohun; where is Mowbray; where is Mortimer; nay, which is more and
most of all, where is Plantagenet? They are entombed in the urns and sepulchres
of mortality.
SMD
15.9.24
Text copyright© Sidney Donald
2024
