Thorns in the Woolsack

Hardly any other institution in the world has been denounced, ridiculed and threatened with reform so often and so roundly as Britain's House of Lords. Harold Macmillan called it "a mausoleum." Winston Churchill went him several better, denouncing the Lords as "one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepresentative, irresponsible, absentee." Plans to emasculate the upper house are just as common today as they were in Gilbert & Sullivan's lolanthe, in which the Lord Chancellor complained: "Ah, my lords, it is indeed painful to have to sit upon a woolsack which is stuffed with such thorns as these." Anachronistic as it may be, the House of Lords demonstrated last week that it can still make a thorny nuisance of itself.

For the occasion, a postwar record number of peers (377 out of the 700-odd eligible members) jammed the benches, spilling over onto the steps of the Queen's vacant throne and standing at the other end of the chamber. Late afternoon sunlight streamed through the tall west windows, flecking the gilded hall with the reds, blues, purples and whites of ancient aristocrats memorialized in stained glass above the heads of their descendants. The lords milled about, unaccustomed to the crush. The confusion became so great that at one point Lord Salisbury, 74, struggling to his feet, got tangled in the cord of his hearing aid and nearly fell to the carpet. Lord Byers, his debating opponent, remarked solicitously: "I do hope the noble lord has not hanged himself."

Not Quite. The reason for this uncharacteristic flurry was a vote on a Labor government order tightening Britain's economic boycott of Rhodesia. Though Labor has a comfortable 72-vote majority in the House of Commons, Conservative hereditary peers dominate the Lords, which still has the power to delay for one year legislation passed by the House of Commons.

Since white Rhodesians have fervent allies in many right-wing Tories, and their sympathizers are dotted across the political spectrum, Conservative Leader Edward Heath thought the issue ripe for a showdown. His logic: if the Lords voted the government down overwhelmingly, Labor might well demand abolition of the upper house, which he believed it would not dare do without calling a general election. Since the government has lost all but one of the last nine by elections for the House of Commons--an Evening Standard poll last week showed the Tories running 16% ahead of Labor--a general election now would almost certainly produce a Tory majority in the Commons and catapult Ted Heath into 10 Downing Street.

Heath did not quite make it. From the overstuffed red woolsack,* the Lord Chancellor announced the vote: "184 lords are content, 193 lords are not content." The government had lost by a margin of only nine votes, far fewer than predicted. Shaken, the Lords opposition leader, Lord Carrington, immediately indicated that Conservatives would let the order through without delay if the government reintroduces it.

Pressing the Attack. Prime Minister Harold Wilson, elated by the unexpectedly narrow defeat, nonetheless pressed the attack on their lordships. He sidetracked an interparty commission on reform of the House of Lords set up last December and promised early introduction of a government bill that would cut the Lords' delaying powers to perhaps three months. "Most of its members," he said scornfully, "sit by the right of succession from some near or distant ancestor."

As a result of a reform passed by Harold Macmillan's Conservative government in 1958, there are now 143 life peers ennobled for merit whose titles will die with them. One likely feature of Wilson's bill: hereditary dukes and barons will be allowed to keep their titles and pass them on to their heirs, but only men and women elevated for distinguished service will be able to vote in the House of Lords.

* Now filled with wool from Britain and Commonwealth nations, the woolsack traditionally symbolizes the landed gentry that forced King Edward III (1312-77) to concede power to Parliament in return for tax revenues.

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