Resisting Reform in the Lords, 1911
With the future of the House of Lords up for debate, Edward Pearce recounts the furore surrounding the passing of the 1911 Parliament Act.
Clement Attlee once said 'I am, to use a hideous expression, a crypto-uni-cameralist'. This being flexible England, he prefaced the remark with the words 'My Lords'.
We shall see in the next couple of years as the House of Lords is eyed by two startlingly unradical politicians, Jack Straw and Tony Blair, what form Reform there will take. But no coming dispute about the Upper House will bear comparison for sheer virulence with the Wagnerian conflict which ended with the passing of the 1911 Parliament Act.
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