Political Commentary
Honours, titles and Mr Heath
Patrick Cosgrave
" Dull," said a friend briefly the other night, commenting on the New Year's list. " Singular," I replied, and that is, I think, the right adjective to apply to the whole of Mr Heath's conduct over honours. Let us take the major question first — why have there been no hereditary peerages since 1970, and does the Prime Minister intend to continue where Mr Wilson left off, and hand out no more of the most prized honours of all? Mr David Wood has said that Mr Heath has given no indication of his thinking on the matter, but this is not quite true. During the last general election campaign, he was pressed hard on the subject, and his replies, if not exactly illuminating, were certainly full of interest. It was suggested that the Tories, known to hunger after a renewed flow of hereditary titles, were, for that reason, a snobbish party. "Whether or not you have hereditary honours," Mr Heath replied, "has nothing whatever to do with snobbism in my view. I would have thought everybody here knew enough about my background to know this . . . it isn't an aristocratic background, in fact it's a working-class background, let's not beat about the bush. And as far as hereditary honours are concerned, this is a matter which is decided by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister and I don't propose to discuss it in public."
Well, well, we all thought at the time, what's he so sensitive about? It seemed difficult to believe that a fairly simple and obvious — indeed, rather lighthearted — question had touched a vein of social sensitivity in Mr Heath, the revelation of which he had sought to cover with a display of that tetchiness which is one of his rather unpleasing characteristics. One of the reporters present chid him gently for his stuffy attitude, and Mr Heath retorted, "With great respect I don't think it is a stuffy attitude: I think it's an attitude which is respecting the con stitution . . ." Most of those present at the press conference came away with the impression that Mr Heath had merely stumbled clumsily into a rather tortuous series of responses, as he is inclined to do when his mind, is not really on the subject under discussion; but most also had the feeling that he did favour the restoration of hereditary titles, though he seemed to fear that the public discussion of any such inclination would do him no good during the election campaign. Certainly, the higher-ups of the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations were, at that time, purring with satisfaction, as the prospect of the only kind of reward for long service to the party and the country which they regard as appropriate loomed up once more.
Since then, however, there has been only silence, and the actual practice of the Prime Minister, in giving life peerages as well as less significant honours, has given rise to confusion. Although Mr Heath has not avowedly followed Mr Wilson's new practice of not recommending any strictly political honours, there have been far fewer decorations going to the faithful servants of the party — and of local government — in the constituencies, and this has given rise to a good deal of concern at a time when the reform of local government has created a particular need for the smooth operation of that system whereby the older man or woman can be eased out of his or her position only with the aid of some suitable recognition of past performance. At the same time Mr Heath, even more than Mr Wilson, has regularly shown an almost obsessive concern with the smaller details of his honours lists, a concern which reflects, so his colleagues say, a very precise appreciation of the nicer gradations between different honours. Yet it is difficult to see what, if any, principle governs his recommendations.
Take something of perhaps greater consequence, the two most interesting life peerages awarded during the life of this government. One went to the historian Robert Blake, the other to Mrs Diana Elles, lawyer, housewife, formidable campaigner for the Common Market and for a variety of social causes. It was puzzling to see the motivation behing the giving of such a large gong to Lord Blake.
True, he was a known Conservative — though in his Ford lectures on the history of the Party he built a rather complicated thesis about the nature of modern conservativism on the supposition that lain Macleod, Mr Maudling, Mr Powell and Mr Heath had all served together under Lord Butler in the Conservative Research Department, though Mr Heath, in fact, never worked there. There are better scholars, and better conservatives, in academia, who more likely would develop into formidable men there. Lady Elles's elevation, on the contrary, was an imaginative act, and has been more than justified by what she has done since. But hers was a peerage which gave considerable offence among the higher female ranks of the Tory Party, where it was widely felt that others had had longer service, and had demonstrated a steadier loyalty, than she.
It was perfectly understandable, when Labour came to power in 1964, that Mr Wilson should eschew the idea of creating more hereditary peers. It was clear from the moment of his election that he and his government opposed the hereditary principle, and that they intended to make extensive use of elevations to life peerages both to change the House of Lords and to bring into the Upper Chamber talent from outside politics which would be of use to them. It is true that Mr Wilson, no more than Mr Heath, never seriously violated the tiresome bit of Court protocol behind which Mr Heath sheltered in 1970, which dictates that a Prime Minister should not discuss in public matters normally covered in private conversations with the Sovereign. But Mr Wilson's attitude and policy were nonetheless perfectly clear and even if one objected to them, or considered them pernicious — and many people believe that a hereditary monarchy cannot long survive without a constantly renewed hereditary aristocracy — nobody could complain that they did not know where they stood with the government. That is not a compliment which could be paid to Mr Heath. Yet several consequences of his choices over five Honours Lists can be discerned. First, since Mr Heath has been rather miserly with life peerages — Mr Wilson recommended a prodigal 160 creations — the House of Lords looks like retaining, for some time to come, the character established for it by Mr Wilson. Second, if Mr Heath were to survive for another term, and to continue in the same way, it would be extremely difficult for a successor government to reestablish the hereditary principle, and a major change would have been made in the constitution without any kind of serious public discussion or acknowledgement. Third—and this is a more generalised version of the last point — if current practices were to continue Prime Ministers would achieve — though over a far longer period than would normally be convenient to them — precisely the objective of Mr Wilson's Bill for reforming the House of Lords, a Bill which was supported by Mr Heath and defeated by the combined exertions of Mr Foot and Mr Powell. That objective was to pass even more patronage into the hands of the Prime Minister of the day and to enable him to dominate the Upper Chamber. For it is clearly the case that any such Chamber, if it is not merely to be controlled by the party in power as, quite properly, a Lower Chamber is, and if it is to serve some kind of independent deliberative function in relation to the government of the day, must either be hereditary or elected in some indirect fashion. It is surely not unreasonable to ask Mr Heath to make his views and plans known.
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