Anointed Monarchs versus the veiled republic of oligarchs

 This weblog began some years ago with an article on the importance of anointing in the English Coronation service.  The precedent is Biblical – just as the kings of Israel of times yore were anointed with oil, so too our kings and queens.  Soon another coronation will be upon us with the crowning of King Charles III.  This great celebration inevitably following upon the sad loss and national bereavement of our longest-reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, whose coronation service formed the subject of the very first article on “A Voice From the Shires”.

With the falling asleep of Queen Elizabeth II and the imminent anointing and crowning of King Charles, it seemed a fitting moment to revisit the topic of monarchy.  One can see from the public reaction to the falling asleep of the abdicated king of Greece that monarchy holds a deep meaning for peoples even after official abolition – however much on paper the correct processes were followed to create a republic.

Monarchy is the most human of governmental institutions.  It is based both upon a connection with the transcendent and personal relationship.  It is the retold and accepted story of modern history that we shifted from monarchy, rule of the one, to democracy, rule of the people.  This is considered within our current paradigm to be a story of benign progress.  What our paradigm of thought fails to consider is that all that Weber categorised as the irrational and inexplicable is actually the most human aspect of our civilisation.  Within that seemingly irrational realm is faith, loyalty to an anointed monarch, folk culture, high culture – all that is not procedural or bureaucratic.  Most significantly a bureaucratic society cannot reach to or aspire to the transcendent.  The Transcendent is that which is beyond analysis and categorisation.  It is understood rather through tradition and revelation, without being contrary to logic – it is super-logical or over and above the rational.

History is only going in one direction because the oligarchies of the globe ensure it.  There is no natural law that means a breaking down of tradition and “modernisation” of systems is inevitable or better.  Only because he thinks within a limited paradigm can Sir (knighted by a monarch) Keir Starmer describe the House of Lords as “indefensible”.  What if we had permitted the restoration of the monarchy in Yugoslavia or Afghanistan?  Perhaps much bloodshed might have been averted because of the inspirational and unifying charism of monarchy.

In trying to get around this conundrum, this loss of the higher by reducing to the procedural, the English utilitarians thought they had an answer.  The liberal English journalist Walter Bagehot who wrote in the Nineteenth century for what today remains the voice of liberalism, the Economist newspaper, suggested the concept of the “veiled republic”.  He divided government into its efficient and dignified functions.  The efficient side of the constitution was the functional and bureaucratic part, which actually ran the country.  On the other side was the dignified part of the constitution, which included the monarchy, the ceremony, the ritual.  From his secular liberal perspective the dignified also had a function – to veil the English republic and to instil affection in British citizens for the apparent kingdom to which they felt they belonged.  While Bagehot believed utilitarianism worked, he acknowledged that it did not inspire or create affection in men’s hearts.

What though if we step outside the secular liberal paradigm and instead ask the question what if the coronation as a sacrament were a true sacrament?  And what if, instead of adopting a Protestant reductionism, we recognised the existence of an anointed monarch as an iconic participation in the divine rather than an idolatrous distraction from God?  Everything if perceived incorrectly can become an idol, but everything when viewed correctly points to God.

We would then be able to understand the power of Royalty as something real, not a deceptive veil pulled across the drab reality.  Ever since the Enlightenment the Western mind has been trained to imagine that there is something behind the tradition, something base and mechanical or an abuse of power.  We have become incapable of recognising that many parts of life are not a base trick, but instead point to a higher reality, something better, something even more true and something even more beautiful.

Of course the man who is crowned is a mere fallen mortal, but he participates through his holy and sacramental anointing in something higher than himself.  He is a bridge to the eternal.  This is why from the British monarch to the Emperors of the Byzantine Empire, there was something sacred about monarchy.  Before too in pagan times the Roman Emperor was actually recognised as a deity.  Christian faith put this right, placing the monarch in an anointed role, but no longer divine himself.

This is the reason for the Royal “we” as the monarch refers both to himself and the higher entity to which he belongs not from merit but through a sacrament of anointing.

From Weber to Bagehot an unremitting message is enforced.  Reality is reduced to the processes, the bureaucracy, but on the other side, everything that seems to participate in the good, the true and the beautiful is irrational and merely a veil across the base facts.

This though is not convincing if we step outside of the secular-liberal paradigm.  Anointed monarchy is personal not a rigid system.  Monarchy is a living and breathing institution, based not on abstract rules and processes, but personal relationship and history.  The Monarch is the father of the people, the government is based upon bloodline and the realm thereby is a family.

Such a system raises alarm bells for the modern secularist.  Comes to mind the arbitrary rule of a James II or Ivan Grozny.  And yet historians now seriously question the Whig account of James Stuart’s rule.  Religious toleration and resistance to a narrow-minded and Protestant oligarchy is perhaps a more accurate understanding.  Even in Russia there are moves afoot to rehabilitate Ivan the Terrible’s memory and some even call for his canonisation.  Unlike Henry VIII who stripped religion bare (to whom he is often compared) he was of real significance in achieving Moscow’s status as the Third Rome after the fall of Constantinople.

We must remember as the cliché goes, the victors write the history.  And those victors of the “Glorious Revolution” in England could have just as easily been the corrupt oligarchs of the Seventeenth Century, just as today traditional institutions are attacked by the men of Davos.

Two of the most arbitrary rulers were of course the first two Tudor kings, who attacked commonweal and Church.  While they were anointed and crowned correctly, Henry Tudor was an usurper and not only did he exhibit miserliness, but his line under his son and Thomas Cromwell would bring forward a modern and more bureaucratic system eliminating the age of chivalry last symbolised by Richard III and his gallant and brave falling at Bosworth.

The anointing might have taken place, but it was based upon lies and thereby we see the danger of illegitimate power.  Monarchy works because the fallen man participates in the meaning of his anointing and is able thereby to transcend his compromised nature.  He then rules as a father of his nation, just as Nicholas II was determined to do, even abdicating to protect his subjects and finally achieving martyrdom at the hands of the Bolsheviks.

And France too is evidence of what the removal of a Christian Monarch can unleash.  The horror of the guillotine and the cruel and inhuman suppression of the Royalist-peasant uprising in the Vendee are the result of revolution in the name of progress and reason.  The successful revolutionaries, it must be remembered, first attacked faith and even paraded a statue of the female personification of Reason in a horrible parody of the Mother of God.

From the Vendee to the modern Greek public there is a supra-rational recognition of a truth of the link between them and a ruler anointed through Christian ritual as part of a family that has a right to rule.  And very powerfully was this demonstrated by the many who filed past the coffin of the late Queen Elizabeth, lying in state in Westminster Hall.  This was of course inexplicable to the new elites in this country who are cosmopolitan people of nowhere.

Faith in the transcendental God is vital to good monarchy.  To go further faith in an Incarnate God facilitates and promotes true and good Monarchy  There is always the risk of a fallen monarch who no longer fulfils his telos.  The alternative though is a compromise with man’s fallenness – a bureaucratic system that always plans for the worst in human nature.  It protects us, but prevents us reaching the heights.  It no longer allows for aspiring to virtue, only mediocrity.

Fear of arbitrary government has led to a procedural and bureaucratic existence where Reason remains an idol hostile to loyalty, faith and a Christian teleology for the people.  Or perhaps a certain narrative of the dangers of arbitrary personal rule has been used and exploited for a power grab by the oligarchs from whom monarchs were supposed to protect their subjects.

LAWFARE - THE WEAPON OF THE PROGRESSIVE ASS

When Charles Dickens revived the old phrase “the laws is an ass” in his novel "Oliver Twist", he was writing in a time when despite the legal reforms in the Victorian age, law generally meant the law of precedent known as common law and the law of equity or fairness.  The former was the strict interpretation of legal rights, the latter was the evolution of a process of fairness within the jurisdiction of the Lord Chancellor, known as the keeper of the King’s conscience. 

In his novel that focused particularly on the legal profession, “Bleak House”, Dickens portrayed lawyers as mercenary, cynical and self-interested.  Those who became caught up especially in equity disputes in the Court of Chancery, where the Lord Chancellor sat, found themselves consuming their capital and destroying their happiness, chasing the chimera of legal settlement in their favour.  The interminable case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce has entered the popular consciousness of Englishmen.  It was of course ironic that the area of law meant to do away with a legalistic and inflexible approach itself had become a burden upon litigants.

Yet today we have a new and particularly post-modern form of legal abuse – that often referred to as lawfare, implying war by other means.  Examples current are the ongoing persecution of the hunting community through the courts and the blatant political attempts to prevent implementation of the referendum on EU membership.

What makes the development of lawfare so troubling is that England was a nation in which the rule of law was a sacrosanct principle.  Back before Henry II (who built upon Anglo Saxon respect for the law in his legal reforms) the King’s Peace meant that common law in Anglo-Saxon England that extended across the realm.  These principles, although much undermined, survived post the Conquest and were restored by Henry II and reluctantly reaffirmed by his son, King John when he signed the Magna Carta in 1215.

That deep respect for the rule of law, by which an English aristocrat like the commonest felon could be sentenced to die on the scaffold, as a principle before which every Englishman was equal, spread across the globe.  Most famously the constitutional governmental system in the United States built upon the English principle of the rule of law.  Through the Commonwealth this principle became worldwide.

What then is the modern Western nation state without the rule of law?  It is that system of commonwealth suffering from that constitution most feared by the Whigs in their rhetoric at least, arbitrary government!

Yet what Whigs say should never be taken at face value.  The Whigs overturned important principles such as the precedent of Royal Succession and used their new found power in England to run a corrupt oligarchy.  It is interesting and telling that today’s liberals, who use the law as a weapon against political opponents, are the philosophical descendants of the Whigs.  That belief in history going in a positivist direction has been further affirmed harmfully through a Left wing account of jurisprudence by the American academic of the Left, Professor Ronald Dworkin.  "Progress", according to the ideology of the Left, could now be enforced by judge-made law.  A hybrid of Whig positivism and cultural- Marxist jurisprudence has given us "lawfare".

By taking advantage of the Englishman’s reverence for the rule of law, corrupt progressives are not just blatantly attempting to overturn referendum results, but to tie up the Englishman in red tape and restrictive laws   In a sense the ban on hunting with hounds was the test case, the canary in the coalmine.  Contrary to the principles of English common law, which looked to established practice for legality, Parliamentary statute overturned generations of a country sport, symbiotically tied in with rural life, in a complex ecosystem of nature, agriculture, sport and tradition.  The English common law would never have ruled in such a way.  It depended upon Parliamentary statute to overturn a prescriptive right to hunt.  After such an egregious victory, many more things became subject to bans and restrictive legislation, until the Englishman has found it difficult to emerge from his house without breaking one law or another.

This abuse came from the growing importance of parliamentary statute, depending upon a transient majority in the Commons, over the importance of common law, which looked to legal precedent and also, in a sense even more importantly, established usage.  If something had been done for time immemorial, then in a free country it must be legal – unless a Parliamentary statute overruled this.

There is nothing antiquated, quaint or anachronistic about the common law: the most serious offence of murder remains a common law offence.  Statute though, with its expression of the sacrosanct principle of Parliamentary sovereignty, commands legal legitimacy and transcends pre-existing common law.  Courts would go on following precedent until overruled by a new act of Parliament. Statutes should be rare and something like a matter of last resort.

The problem with the increasing level of legislation is not just that it is used to restrict an Englishman’s historical rights, but that there is nearly always a political agenda behind it.  There is currently a lot of talk about the Benn Act, which – against all precedent and having been passed through a breach of parliamentary convention – forces the executive to approach the EU for an extension in the event of no deal at the time of the legislated deadline. 

Those MPs who passed the bill in a cynical and political manoeuvre now grow disingenuously indignant about the rule of law when the Prime Minister has threatened to disobey this cynical law – as though the Benn Act were some ancient principle handed down for generations.  What hypocrites!  This law is nothing more than a tactic and yet it is granted the same sanctity as court rulings based in centuries of precedent.

Even worse and especially since the creation of a “supreme court” by Tony Blair’s government, the problem of judge-made law through judicial review is growing and threatening the nation with a constitutional crisis.

Before our eyes we can see that the Whig history was wrong about our constitution.  We are governed by the Queen in Parliament.  Within its realm Parliament is sovereign, but it depends upon the head of state for Royal Assent.  Furthermore Parliamentary sovereignty has nothing to do with the exercise of the Royal Prerogative and neither is that Prerogative justiciable. 

This is not simply a misreading of history that is leading to a constitutional crisis.  It is also to do with that ongoing problem of the “long march through the institutions” by the cultural Marxists.  To a large extent left-wing liberals are the useful idiots of the cultural Marxist agenda, even if they are not fully-aware or fully-signed-up to the agenda of cultural Marxism.  In any event, they are willing to breach with precedent, protocol and prescriptive rights to achieve a political agenda. 

That means that longstanding practices unpopular with or unnoticed by the majority, such as foxhunting and shooting can no longer depend upon being established customs.  They are threatened by a simple majority in the Commons.  If the Lords object they will be overruled (and since Blair’s reforms, the Upper House has been completely corrupted, anyway).  The exercise of the Royal Prerogative by a Government to achieve democratic goals such as dissolution or prorogation are prevented by statute or the Supreme Court.

The whole agenda of the progressives, by which they essentially cheat the system, is reliant upon the Englishman’s acquiescence to the law as an-almost-sacred principle.  Nonetheless, this cannot carry on forever.  If one or two political movements use the law to frustrate democracy or destroy ways of life, then the law itself will lose credibility.  There is an arrogant contempt of the law by those who weaponise it for their own political goals, however complacent they are about their own righteousness.  Being self-satisfied about one’s political views and having the power to abuse the law cannot go on with impunity.  The danger is progressives (liberals and cultural Marxists) will push people too far so that the law and our institutions are no longer respected.  That will not only take away their power, but be a loss and a blow for Anglo Saxon civilisation.  The mistake was to believe the Whig analysis of ever-increasing parliamentary power and history heading in a liberal direction, rather than recognising our rights and civilisation depend upon established usage, custom and precedent.  That Tory spirit of precedent and prescriptive rights in our law making is needed if our institutions and respect for the law are to survive.

Bishops against Tories

 A hundred years ago it would have seemed an absurd political division.  The Church of England was the Conservative Party at prayer.  In recent times there are constant clashes between the Bishops and leading Conservatives.  Currently the news is not only focused on the letter from the Anglican Bishops to the Government on welfare policy, but criticism from that even more conservative institution, the Roman Catholic Church, in the form of comments in a newspaper interview by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster.  Why has Conservatism, the guardian of our institutions, fallen out so badly so often with our culturally most important institution over the last millennium, the Church?

This is not an irrelevant matter.  Anyone who believes in a Burkean form of Conservatism or gives some credence to the idea of the Big Society, must surely recognise the Church as part of our social fabric, independent of the bureaucratic state.  The criticism of Government policy on welfare has not so much come from an ideological standpoint, based upon obscure theological doctrine, as from an empirical reaction to the facts on the ground, in the parishes.

Anglicanism is often dismissed by those on the Liberal Right as a sort of soft-Socialism led by pink Bishops.  When the blogger worked at Church House however he discovered a far more sincere conservatism on issues like Lords reform and same-sex marriage than that put forward by some ostensibly Right wing politicians.

It is the contention of this blog that since Durkheim, the Left has annexed the concept of organic society from the Right and twisted it to forward its own ends.  The Right has meekly accepted this annexation and has been left on the paltry soil of the reductionist doctrine of liberal individualism.  And yet it is very difficult to articulate a conservative position from a liberal individualist perspective.  So we end up in the absurd position of a Conservative Prime Minister leading an attack on marriage to further a concept of individualism and freedom of choice through same-sex marriage legislation.

Of course the idea of a conservative and organic society that emphasises the importance of the church, the monarchy and the family can be traced back to the French conservative thinker Louis Gabriele Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald.  For de Bonald liberal individualism was the error behind the French Revolution.  Our social institutions are of divine origin and precede the individual.  It was his outlook that Durkheim relied on for his own Left wing agenda.  Surely the Right needs to start emphasising again the importance of institutions and abandon some of its socially Darwinist attitudes.  In that way, we can answer the Left’s accusations of heartlessness towards the poor in a way that gives a greater role to the institution and not the bureaucratic approach of targets and means testing.  When our spiritual leaders are speaking out against our morally-driven policies then there needs to be reflection. Surely respect for the wisdom of an institution should come naturally to the Right. 

When it is not necessary to change it is necessary not to change (originally published on Conservative Home on 31st January 2013)

Conservatism is more of an attitude than a political dogma.  While there are many in the modern Conservative Party who adhere to political creeds such as libertarianism or liberal conservatism, surely a desire to conserve and a scepticism about sudden change is more about values and attachment to the tried-and-tested than ideology or political theory.  And that is a good thing.  I still believe that while the majority of the British public are not necessarily overly enamoured with the concept of the invisible hand of the market or shrinking the state, they do possess an innate conservatism.  It is that commonsense sceptism about political theories that kept the ancient institutions of state, the monarchy, the established church and the House of Lords intact in the turbulence of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries and saw the Conservative Party flourish in the era of universal suffrage in the last Century.  Lose touch with that conservative attitude and the Party loses the foundations of its support.

That is why it is deeply worrying that the Conservative Party seems to have developed an enthusiasm to be seen to be doing and changing.  My suspicion is that most people would prefer it if politicians did less not more.  The trouble with politics is that it can attract the sort of person who wants to make their name and usually a name is gained by changing something, whether or not the change is good – Edward Heath taking Britain into the Commonmarket or Nick Clegg’s abortive attempt to destroy the House of Lords spring to mind.  The Conservative Party should be the natural foil to this – it represents the attitude so pithily summed up by the second Viscount Falkland:  “When it is not necessary to change it is necessary not to change.”

It seems that many of the areas of policy where the Conservative Party has been perceived as vulnerable in recent times are where they have been more radical.  It is people’s natural conservatism that leads them to resent the growth of the supermarket at the expense of the local high street and it is again conservatism that leads people to resist development in their backyard; indeed the whole urge to protect the environment is a sort of conservatism – the conservation movement.

I believe Mr Cameron got it right when he realised that much of the alleged toxification of the Conservative brand could be cured while remaining true to Conservative values.  It is right that we are now a party of conservation and a party of localism.  Localism, despite its being given a name like a dogma is fundamentally conservative - as Edmund Burke pointed out patriotism springs from people’s membership of the little platoons rather than loyalty to a large, overweening state.  The Big Society is truly conservative – it is about voluntary organisations holding society together rather than that same overweening state the Socialists look to.

Unfortunately, the Coalition I believe obscures the clarity of who the Conservatives are.  What could be more un-conservative than attempting to unravel the constitution by abolishing the House of Lords or attacking marriage by changing its definition to include same-sex partnerships?  It is very worrying to many voters with a conservative outlook to see the Party that should represent them allowing the Liberal Democrats to run away with policies that attack institutions far more important to a conservative outlook than deregulation of the market.

What is also disconcerting is when MPs seem to rush headlong enthusiastically into reform.  Those reforms may well be justified, but if conservatism is more of an attitude of scepticism than political dogma, much as elected police commissioners may fit in with Localism, should we not have approached the policy with more of a sceptical try-it-and- see, piecemeal approach?  Instead there seems to be something almost zealous about the Party’s approach to change.

A case in point is the reform of the laws of succession, being rushed through Parliament in one day.  To a Liberal Democrat such as Nick Clegg the longstanding nature of primogeniture is a reason to overthrow it.  Surely to conservatives the approach is one of not rushing, but thinking through the implications.  Of course, it probably will be better for the survival of the monarchy if primogeniture is abolished, but there will be unforeseen implications and that is exactly why the conservative response should be to carry out this reform in a slower and more considered way.

One is reminded of the Church of England being disconcerted by the enthusiasm of Methodism.  The Anglican Church reacted in a conservative way; it exhibited an attitude of scepticism about the enthusiastic hymn-singing and evangelism.  Now in the long run it was probably a good idea for the congregation to sing hymns, but the conservative attitude is to take these things step-by-step and not to rush people who might be uncomfortable about change.  So please let’s have a little less enthusiasm and a bit more English reserve!

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2013/01/matthew-groves.html

A Guide to the Reform of the House of Lords (originally published on Respublica's Disraeli Room on 16th January 2012)

The composition of the upper house of Parliament has been under question for some time and yet still the question has not been answered.  There have been piecemeal reforms, such as the passing of the two Parliament Acts, the introduction of Life Peers and the removal of the vast majority of hereditary peers, but still the questions are asked.  The Coalition Government has now published a draft House of Lords Reform Bill.

Current Composition

The vast majority of peers are now life peers.  The total number of members of the House of Lords is 788 active members.  This number is divided into 26 Lords Spiritual (Bishops of the Church of England) and the remaining 762 are Lords Temporal.  Of the Lords Temporal there are 92 hereditary peers who have inherited their seats to the Lords and the remainder are life peers, whose seats are removed at their death.

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of life peers under the current Coalition Government.  Since May 2010 there have been 117 peerages created.

There is a mechanism for replacing hereditaries when they pass away.  A by-election is held among the hereditaries (both those sitting and those who have lost their automatic right to sit voting).  The winner replaces his deceased colleague.

History

The House of Lords is the upper house of Parliament and originally was only composed of Lords Spiritual (the bishops) and the Lords Temporal (senior aristocrats).  It emerged in a recognisable form during the Fourteenth Century.  Historically it was more powerful than the Commons, whose members represented the interests of the shires and boroughs.

Under the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, along with the Monarchy the House of Lords was abolished.  With the Restoration of Monarchy and Lords a more gradual evolution took place, which saw the diminishing of the power of the Lords and the growth in the power of the Commons.

In the early Twentieth Century the Commons cemented its supremacy with the passing of the 1911 Parliament Act.  This legislation was in response to the landed interest represented in the Lords resisting the Liberal Government’s Budget, which included a heavy tax on the landed interest.  Under the threat of the Lords being flooded with new Liberal peers, the Lords gave way and accepted the Parliament Act.

Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949

Money bills to become law automatically if not passed by the Lords within one month.

Other bills can be forced through the Lords if rejected three times (provided two years had passed since the Second reading).

This time was to be shortened to two sessions by the Parliament Act 1949.

Further reforms have also affected the Lords.  Life peers were created by the Life Peerages Act 1958.  The House of Lords Act 1999 took away the right of most hereditaries to sit in the house, with only 92 allowed to remain until an obscure second stage of reform took place.

The Law Lords lost their place in the Lords and the Lord Chancellor his role as speaker of the House as a result of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.  As a result the House of Lords is no longer the highest court in the land.  Many of these changes were criticised for having no overall purpose and unpicking the constitutional settlement.

Role of the Lords

The role of the Lords, like that of many British institutions, has evolved rather than been planned.  It has not had its role determined by experts sitting down and working out what it should be; rather it has filled the necessary gaps and provided the function of a revising chamber filled with experts, senior politicians and spiritual and legal leaders.

It sees its purpose as enabling the Commons to think again.  It has no right to override the supremacy of the Commons, but it generally achieves its purpose of considering issues away from the heat of partisan debate with more independence of thought and expertise.  The question therefore left begging is why change it?

Current Proposals

To an extent the argument for reform is that the need has arisen almost by accident.  A system that worked well has been unpicked almost in a fit of absence of mind as New Labour tinkered with the constitution to suit its short-term political needs.

Therefore the scenario presents itself as to what should this second stage of reform be?  The Government itself in its draft bill has left many options open.

It is proposed to have either an 80% elected or a 100% elected Upper Chamber.  Peers would be elected for fifteen year terms and be unable to stand again.  If the 80% option is chosen twelve of the current 26 Lords Spiritual would remain.  With the 100% option they would all be lost.

The case for reform is that Great Britain’s bicameral system is unusual in that it is unelected.  It is also argued that an elected Lords would have more legitimacy and therefore be better able to hold the Commons to account.

The dangers of reform are that the House becomes more partisan, loses its expert and spiritual elements, is made up of politicians who could not make it into the Commons and that it challenges the supremacy of the Commons (the flipside of the argument for an elected chamber).

When embarking upon constitutional reform it is vital that debate is considered and informed.  As the Commons makes up its mind on the 80% or 100% option it must ask the question: What is the purpose of the Lords?  We do not have a written constitution and rather like the Monarchy, the role of the Lords has evolved.  Therefore MPs must look at the current situation to see what the Lords actually does and then ask themselves will current reforms enhance that role or diminish it.  In essence, through evolution, the Lords has become a revising expert chamber, with a strong spiritual and legal input.  Will 80% or 100% elected peers further this equilibrium or hinder it?

- See more at: http://www.respublica.org.uk/item/A-Guide-to-the-Reform-of-the-House-of-Lords

The Point of the Lords Spiritual (originally published on Respublica's Disraeli Room on 29th March 2012)

The bishops in the Lords have in recent years become far more active, the intention being to demonstrate that they do have a vital role in the constitution. Government proposals involve two options, one to retain twelve of the twenty-six bishops and the other to expel them altogether.

Writing for ResPublica’s essay collection on Lords Reform “Our House: Reflections on Representation and Reform in the House of Lords”, the Bishop of Leicester, the Convenor of the Lords Spiritual, has argued that they are representative of the regions, with church parishes across the nation. In a Parliament that is very focused on London, they bring a regional and localist perspective that should be welcomed; surely this is an example of localism embedded into the constitution. The bishops are more representative of the whole of Britain than MPs and peers. The argument made by some, such as Theos, that more specialised, political Lords Spiritual, less focused on the diocese, would diminish that “rootedness” in the regions.

Furthermore the interests that they represent are those of the voluntary sector so vital to civil society. If British society is to be reinvigorated by turning more to the little platoons that make up the Big Society, the leaders of the faith groups, which make up such a strong part of that Big Society, must have a place. So why remove them from the role in the legislature that our history has given them?

Reform Proposals and the Dangers of a Reductive Policy of Equality

The presence of Church of England Bishops is often criticised as discriminating against other faiths and humanists. But the Church of England itself is on record as not opposing in principle other denominations or faith groups having appointees on the Bishops’ Bench. Just as for historic reasons Church of England Bishops sit in the Lords, so for historic reasons representatives of the established Church of Scotland never sat in the Upper House. History has presented us with the House of Lords as it is and has given us the Lords Spiritual who fulfill a useful role.

Furthermore, while there are no rabbis and no imams in the Lords ex officio (it must be remembered that the mechanism of creating a life peerage remains for luminaries of other religious traditions), it would seem to be cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face to expel bishops simply in adherence to an abstract theory of equality. No one would gain, but all denominations and faiths would be the losers. Other faith groups generally welcome the contribution the bishops make (as can be seen by the contributions of faith leaders to the Joint Committee). It is not straightforward practically to select representatives of other faiths acceptable to all strands of those faiths, but, there are very specific and strong reasons why the Anglican leaders should have a place in the Lords – they represent the established church, they have been there historically and they can bring a spiritual dimension to debate that is welcomed by other faith groups.

But aren’t they out of touch?

In a study for its report “Coming off the Bench”, Theos found that the bishops had been voting and attending debates more often in recent days, but that they rarely voted en bloc and seemed to see their role as one of witness rather than to alter the course of legislation. For example on welfare reform, the bishops have been more willing to speak out and vote. This has been welcomed by some, but strongly criticized by those who feel popular government policies are being delayed.

However, whether one agrees with the bishops on the specifics of a particular issue, their role in the House of Lords cannot be to follow the short-term opinion polls. They are not elected and must therefore be there to come at matters from another angle than the current fashion of opinion. If the role of the Upper House overall is to give the Commons the opportunity to think again, the role of the Lords Spiritual is surely to enable that reflection to take place informed by a spiritual and Christian angle.

Not only Leaders of the Established Church

Our stable and evolved constitution has provided us with an Upper House made up of bishops in addition to peers. Is it right that the bishops should have a say because they lead the national Christian church? As the established Church, the Church of England is there for everyone, not just those who can recite the Nicean Creed. According to the Church of England, three out of ten people in England regard themselves as being Anglican and six out of ten regard themselves as Christian.

But there is much more to their role than this: The bishops do not just speak for the Church of England and are there by right as Lords Spiritual not Church of England delegates. Not only do the Lords Spiritual keep Christianity in the public square, they represent the concerns of other faith groups and even non-faith groups. The Bishops represent a great diversity of groups, in particular civic society and the local regions; they are not simply speaking for the established church. They ensure more than a short-termist, secularist or populist view dominates debate. This is to the benefit of the nation, whether we always agree with what they say or not.

• S

- See more at: http://www.respublica.org.uk/item/The-Point-of-the-Lords-Spiritual