Queen enters House of Lords | Music
| 01:00:00:00 |
| Clark: What would Britain's House of Lords be without its highly developed sense of theatre? But when the Queen opened the latest parliament amid the usual pomp and splendour, she also sounded the political death knell for many of those who sit here.
| 00:07 |
| Queen: A bill will be introduced to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. It will be the first stage in a process of reform to make the House of Lords more democratic and representative.
| 00:22 |
Members of the house | Clark: The game's up for many of these noble lords. The House is in for its biggest upheaval since the days of Oliver Cromwell.
| 00:38 |
Map Britain and Ireland
| Music
| 00:44 |
Ede & Ravenscroft Ltd. | Employee 1: I've started making preparations for this year's state opening of parliament.
| 00:52 |
| Employee 2: Do we have a definite date yet for that?
| 00:56 |
| Employee 1: We don't at the moment, but that should be confirmed later on. The most essential thing to work out at this stage though is the staffing arrangements.
| 00:58 |
| Clark: At Ede & Ravenscroft they've been kitting out peers of the realm for 300 years.
| 01:07 |
Employee of Ede & Ravenscroft | Clark: So if I was an hereditary peer who came to have a robe made, what would you need to know about me to make the right robe for me?
| 01:13 |
| Employee 1: We'd need to know firstly the rank and degree of your peerage. So whether you were a duke, a marquess, an earl, a viscount or a baron. That'd be the first piece of information we'd need to know. The reason being is that the robes for the various degrees of peerage are different. They all appear the same from a distance, but one thing is distinct about them, and that is the number of bars of gold and fur that you see on the robe. Now, four rows of this would be for a duke, three, which you see here, is for an earl. And therefore, by knowing your rank, we would therefore know how many rows to put on the robe. And that will distinguish your rank of peerage.
| 01:21 |
Queen enters house | Music
| 02:12 |
Clark to camera
Super: CHRIS CLARK | Clark: The lords may look very grand in their ermine trimmed robes, but they don't really have much political power any more. They long ago lost the ability to bring down an elected government and block legislation, although they can still delay the passing of laws and frustrate a government that wants to get on with things in a hurry. So Britain's new Labour government has decided to trim their powers even further. | 02:21 |
| And they're going to start by kicking out the hereditary peers, those lords who sit in the chamber because they've inherited a title.
| 02:42 |
Clifford at home | People like Thomas Hugh Clifford, the 14th Baron Clifford of Chudleigh. House by Robert Adam, circa 1760, gardens by Capability Brown. Food courtesy of the servants, supervised by Lady Clarissa.
| 02:57 |
| Clarissa: And I think that Lord Clifford has got Mr Madge, haven't you got Madge coming over to discuss things?
| 03:11 |
| Clifford: He'll be certainly coming around after lunch.
| 03:17 |
| Clarissa: But will he be staying for dinner?
| 03:21 |
| Clifford: No.
| 03:23 |
| Clarissa: Right. So just dinner for two.
| 03:24 |
| Clark: Lord Clifford is one of those facing the chop, and he's not happy about it.
| 03:26 |
Clifford interview | Clifford: Hereditary peers have got passed down to us information which cannot hope to be passed down to life peers. It's - okay, a privilege. It is a privilege. It's a massive responsibility and it's a responsibility which must be executed, I believe, by every hereditary peer.
| 03:31 |
Clifford and Clark climb stairs | Clark: So what exactly do the Cliffords bring to the House of Lords that's special?
| 03:53 |
| Clifford: If you consider it's not just the history of the family which is important, but it's a history of the family's contribution to not only the nation's heritage, but also in fact the word's as such.
| 03:57 |
| Clark: This is a military family, proud of its long tradition of service.
| 04:15 |
| Clifford: And here is a perfect example, my great grandfather, who is Jackie Fisher, First Sea Lord, First World War, and you probably heard the great cry about the dreadnought battleships. Well the Fisher's motto is ‘Fear God and dread nought.' And hence, of course, the name of the battleship.
| 04:19 |
Uniform room | The uniform room which we've just entered holds all of the tunics worn by ancestors of mine...
| 04:46 |
| Clark: As fighting men, the Cliffords were always willing to lend a hand.
| 04:53 |
| Clifford: We go past the uniform of the 9th Lord Clifford, and he was a man who, when he went out with a friend of his to shoot elk and deer and the likes, buffalo in the United States of America and Canada, bumped into a man called General Custer and took part in the Battle of Yellowstone River. | 04:58 |
Portrait of Clifford ancestor | That is Henry Hugh Clifford who fought in the Crimean War, quite apart from the Zulu War, China...
| 05:22 |
| Clark: And what thanks does the family get for centuries of sacrifice? In six months Lord Clifford could be saying farewell the House of Lords for good. Mind you, the Cliffords fighting pedigree doesn't allow surrender as an option.
| 05:30 |
Clifford interview | Clark: So are you disappointed that your son is not going to get to sit in the House of Lords as an hereditary peer?
| 05:44 |
| Clifford: No, I'm disappointed at you Chris, in fact, for saying that he's not going to.
| 05:51 |
| Clark: You don't think you've lost?
| 05:56 |
| Clifford: I think it's a question of trying to present a very balanced argument.
| 05:58 |
| Clark: But what exactly is the argument for retaining hereditary peers in a modern democracy.
| 06:03 |
| Clifford: Remember we are not elected, not elected, therefore we are not biased. We're not looking over our shoulders at the electorate to see if we're doing the right thing, saying the right thing. We're examining our conscious and thinking whether or not the legislation put forward by the other place is correctly drafted, fairly drafted, is practical, and is policeable.
| 06:09 |
Interior of House of Lords | Speaker: My lords, pray be seated.
| 06:32 |
| Clark: It's true that debates in the House of Lords are often less partisan than those in the Commons. But the Lords is still an intensely political body. And this Labour government is fed up with the Lords trying to throw their weight around.
| 06:36 |
Black Rod | Black Rod: Madam Speaker, the Queen commands this honourable house to attend Her Majesty immediately in the House of Peers.
| 06:48 |
| ?: Make way for Black Rod. Make way for Speaker.
| 06:59 |
Clark to camera | Clark: Labour's determination to reshape the House of Lords owes as much to practical politics as it does to high ideals of democracy. Hereditary peers make up two-thirds of the house, and nearly half of them support Labour's political opponents, the Conservatives. Labour has a huge elected majority in the House of Commons. The hereditary peers give the Conservatives an in-built unelected majority in the House of Lords.
| 07:04 |
Lord Colwyn's surgery | Receptionist: Good afternoon, Lord Colwyn's surgery.
| 07:32 |
| Clark: While all hereditary peers are by definition to the manor born, not all of them are born with a manor.
| 07:35 |
| Colwyn: Sadly there's no family fortune at all. My father died when he was 52 years old, so quite a young guy. And I'd actually just qualified. And so it was all a bit of a shock to have to change the name and everything. But I have to tell you, he didn't leave me a single penny. So there's no lands, no family estate, nothing at all. | 07:31 |
| So I was working for a living, I'm still working for a living.
| 08:02 |
| Clark: Meet Ian Anthony Hamilton-Smith, the third Baron Colwyn, a conservative hereditary peer.
| 08:06 |
| Colwyn: It doesn't go back very far. It was Lloyd George and Lloyd George was a liberal, my grandfather was a liberal and he did make a lot of peers. | 08:12 |
| He was one of the first people to actually allow peers, later on in his Prime Ministership, to purchase their peerages. But I'm proud to say that our peerage wasn't purchased.
| 08:19 |
Colwyn on bicycle | Colwyn: The best defence for keeping hereditary peers in the House of Lords is it throws up a cross section of all kinds of people. Here I am, I'm a dentist, we've got bus drivers, we've got guys who've been in the army, the navy. You've got representatives of the medical professions, everything. It throws up a wide cross section of the population.
| 08:30 |
| Clark: Lord Colwyn certainly does his best to live up to the man of many parts tag.
| 08:51 |
Exterior Dorchester | Jazz music
| 08:55 |
| Clark: Welcome to the Dorchester Hotel in London. And ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the Lord Colwyn Band.
| 08:58 |
Function at Dorchester | Jazz music
| 09:05 |
| Colwyn: I regard it very much as my responsibility to make the party a success. It is up to me to get the right numbers play the right stuff. If I do the wrong stuff, they'll all go home.
| 09:14 |
| Jazz music
| 09:22 |
| Colwyn: Some people might say what the hell is he doing on stage wearing funny jackets. And maybe look down on it. But I like to think it shows a versatility and that the British Parliament, the Upper House, is actually a representational of all styles of life. That's the way I look at it, anyhow.
| 09:32 |
Longleat House | Clark: Of course, eccentricity has long been a hallmark of the aristocracy. Beneath the often leaky roofs of England's crumbling piles, lurk some splendid examples.
| 09:49 |
| Tour guide: That wall over there with the opening, that was originally a solid wall. And when King Charles II was staying here, he said he couldn't see or hear the musicians in the minstrels' gallery at the other side of the hall, so by royal command a hole was knocked in the wall so he could then see and hear the musicians, and then after that it was all smartened up.
| 10:00 |
Clark | Clark: Question. What would you do if you owned one of England's finest stately homes and ten thousand acres of the best agricultural land in the kingdom? | 10:22 |
| Well, the 7th Marquess of Bath had already decided that long before he assumed the title. He was an artist.
| 10:31 |
Lord Bath with dog |
Lord Bath: I'd always been praised on drawings. And then when I got to Eton and there had to an extra study, then I took painting, and it was really from that that I found I was being praised and making me think that maybe I was a painter.
| 10:43 |
| Clark: Alexander George Thynn, the 7th Marquess of Bath, is known as much for his subject matter as the quality of his work.
| 11:03 |
| Lord Bath is famous for the scale of his sexual endeavours, portraits of those he describes as his wifelets adorn the walls.
Lord Bath: In this one the heads of | 11:12
11:21 |
Women's portraits on wall | loved ones, staring with my own severed head and then, if we call that Bluebeard, then it's Bluebeard's collection as you go up the stairs.
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| Clark: And so these are the women in your life?
| 11:31 |
| Lord Bath: Yes. Well that's the idea I suppose is to get faces on the wall, so that as I go to bed at night, you know, I have this sort of last conversation with -- all the way round - until we reach number 68, which is as far as I've got in life.
| 11:33 |
| Clark: And every reason to believe that there'll be number 69.
| 11:48 |
| Lord Bath: Unless I tumble down the stairs by mistake, yes, there will be a 69.
| 11:52 |
Longleat House | Clark: Longleat House has been in the Thynn family for 450 years. And to make sure it stayed in the family, the 7th Marquess's father turned the estate into a paying concern, pulling in the tourists with a safari park.
| 11:58 |
| Lord Bath: I think the giraffes are the most beautiful. The monkeys can be the most entertaining. The rhinos, I like that great obtrusive horn. The ones that got chopped off I've got on the Karma Sutra bed, so they look wonderfully phallic on the bed.
| 12:12 |
| Clark: But this hereditary peer, with more history to reflect on than most, will happily vote away his right to sit in the House of Lords.
| 12:35 |
Lord Bath | Lord Bath: Well to have an idea that just from birth you have the right to govern doesn't feel democratic enough.
| 12:43 |
| Clark: The lords don't really govern, do they?
| 12:53 |
| Lord Bath: They would vote and decide whether a law is made or not made. So yes, they are governing. To have that as a right of birth, no it's not within the meritocratic principles of the kind of life we're trying to bring in.
| 12:56 |
Lord Colwyn playing rugby | Clark: Hereditary peers have been fighting a rearguard action for most of this century.
| 13:24 |
| Lord Colwyn: In my younger days when I was playing rugby and I used to out in the Welsh valleys playing for my team, Cheltenham, and they used to put Lord Colwyn on the program, I didn't want them to do it, but they did it, and I was immediately a target for these Welsh miners and I used to, I spent half my time on the stretcher being carried off the field.
| 13:29 |
| Clark: The wonder surely is not that the hereditaries' time is nearly up, but that they've managed to stay part of the political game for so long.
Lord Colwyn: It's not bad tempered, it's fine. | 13:47
13:55 |
Lord Colwyn | This evening's fine. Anyway I'm coming off now and someone younger can take my place.
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| Clark: Their defences breached, the hereditary peers know the end is near.
| 14:05 |
| Clark: Are you not just a touch nostalgic about the idea of your son not being able to sit here?
| 14:10 |
| Lord Colwyn: Yes I suppose. I mean I joke about it. My son in fact voted Labour at the last election, so I can tell him it's his own problem. But yes, I mean it's a long, long tradition that's going to go out of the window. Then again, it's not really justifiable. I can't - with my hand on my heart, I can't justify the fact that you can hand on political power in this country on to families. It's not really, it's not something I'm happy with.
| 14:16 |
Cliffords walk down steps | Clark: The British government hasn't decided what to put in place of the hereditaries. Probably a mixture of appointed and elected peers. The Cliffords will fight to the last man, of course.
| 14:47 |
Lord Clifford | Lord Clifford: They've jumped into a motorboat, the government, they've started the engine and they've headed out to sea. And they don't know how much fuel they've got. And what they're going to do of course when they run out of fuel. And it's a very shark infested sea.
| 14:59 |
Lord Bath's gallery | Clark: Others take a more relaxed view.
| 15:17 |
| Lord Bath: I've made particular speeches which I stand by. I think they were well said. Even well performed. But I haven't my name as a parliamentarian in any sense of the word, and I'm quite happy to keep doing the things which are even more important to me, being a writer and painter.
| 15:20 |
| Clark: It's said that the English aristocracy's greatest talent is for survival. Perhaps evolution has run its course.
| 15:47 |
CREDITS: | ENDS: 01:16:00:00 | |
| Reporter CHRIS CLARK Camera JOHN BENES Sound MARK DOUGLAS Editor MARK DOUGLAS Research ANNA BRACKS
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