The Safety House

My secondary school was a rather good one. I started there only a few years after it had changed from a grammar school into a state comprehensive one and the legacy was there for all to see. The old school buildings just oozed history with wooden panelling everywhere occasionally graced with the names of boys and masters who had been involved in one conflict or another. These from the boar war, those from the Great War, more from the Second World War.

We were taught rugby and cricket (football, though not frowned upon in the playground, was not taught as part of the curriculum) and we were able to take lessons on things such as the classics. Indeed one of the most animated and dedicated teachers I ever had was a classics teacher. Whilst the class was going through one of Homer’s books he looked up from the page and said that he was jealous of us because we had so much time left to us in which to enjoy such great works. "There are too many books and so little time left to me" he said.

Another interesting subject we were taught was commerce, which was an odd mixture of business economics and politics. Probably a product of a tight timetable schedule this odd subject produced what was for me a gem of a statement from a teacher. One particular day I was struggling a little with the idea of a second chamber at the houses of parliament. I couldn’t see the point of it so I asked the teacher the typical "yes but why" kind of question privately towards the end of a lesson. Mr. Green (I think that was his name) was obviously a little, well perhaps not annoyed but maybe frustrated that I had not got the gist of it from the comprehensive lesson I had just been given. And then he said "think of it as a safely valve for government".

There was one of those sharp focus moments when everything became much clearer. It was the missing piece for me and made perfect sense. In-fact at that point the second chamber changed from being a superfluous and impenetrable artefact of tradition into an essential part of government.

Which brings me, in a round-a-bout way, to my point.

If there has ever been a time when the value of an independent House of Lords has been there for all to see it has been during this Labour government.

When a powerful government, with a huge mandate from a disinterested people decides to railroad over the traditional values and processes of our great country the House of Lords is there. You can tell when it’s working because government ministers effectively tell you it is. They say things like what the Lords is doing is "completely undemocratic" or they use weasel words like "modernisation". These phrases are replacements for valid argument and are a dead give away that the Lords valve has opened. They are the same kind of statements used by the playground bully who is determined to get his own way for no other reason than it suits his purpose. A purpose that has little to do with the welfare of the kid whose dinner money he has just stolen.

I am a firm believer in a strong and independent House of Lords in its traditional form. Any government that is not is a government that you should look upon with even greater suspicion than usual. They are up to no good.

William Rees-Mogg wades in on this governments meddling in our traditional institutions and positions.

More from The Times online:

THE most serious clash yet between Labour and the House of Lords was looming last night as ministers threatened drastic retaliation to prevent peers blocking new laws.

Another skirmish. This governments need and willingness to invoke the parliament act (or threatening to) is astonishing:

Withdrawing the Bill and putting it into the Commons would add to the pressure on the Government’s timetable. But ministers could be sure of being able to force it through. For while peers would block the Bill when it reached them, it would be reintroduced in the next parliamentary session and pushed through under the Parliament Act, which stops the Lords blocking a measure in two successive sessions.

What happens when a pressure valve is closed off or removed? What happens when our old traditions and safeguards are diminished while pressure exists for closer EU integration and the adoption of foreign constitutions? What benefit have you personally felt to date from all this erosion of our traditional safeguards by New Labour?

That last one is an important question because the dangers are great. If the benefits to you as a citizen of this country are not substantial and felt then you should be asking yourself why the government is taking these risks.

Thatcher once said:

There will always be threats to freedom, not only from frontal assaults, but more insidiously by erosion from within.

And she was right. We ignore this at our peril.

Melanie Phillips gets on the case:

In other words, what we have here is a breakdown of the conventions that have governed us. Both judiciary and government are at fault; but ultimately it is the government which, through its autocratic, legally illiterate, mob-rule, Jacobin-lite approach has provoked this crisis.

Natalie Solent, as part of a gang of three wades in on the case:

As Iain Murray put it in the comments to a Samizdata post introducing Sean Gabb's article, this is no more than the usual practice of a conqueror: to "destroy an icon of the conquered people."

Posted by John at March 8, 2004 08:35 AM | TrackBack