A fully equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts, and lasts longer
Rivalry between the House of Lords and the House of Commons is not confined to Parliament, with peers and MPS facing each other across playing fields
LLOYD GEORGE ADDING FUEL TO LORDS VS COMMONS COMPETITION,
The entire House of Commons made a habit of adjourning for the Derby
In some ways, the two Houses of Parliament are rather like the two ancient universities, Oxford and Cambridge. The Commons and Lords have their own colours, their own distinctive locations and celebrated alumni, and their own peculiar traditions and conventions. Like Cantabrigians and Oxonians, they refer to each other, half-affectionately and half-dismissively, as “the Other Place”. And like Oxbridge, they have a long tradition of rivalry – sometimes a friendly rivalry, at other times less so. Peers tend to be circumspect in their criticism of the Commons in order to avoid inflaming opinion against the House of Lords, but many MPS feel less need for restraint. In December 2014, for instance, former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond called for a “peasants’ revolt-type vote” (presumably another referendum) to abolish the Upper House and accomplish “something forwardlooking and modern in England”, while then-deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg described the House of Lords as a “standing affront to democracy”.
Yet even these intemperate remarks, which rather underestimate the contribution of the mostly appointed Lords to legislative scrutiny, pale in comparison with the invective hurled between the Chambers in the early 1900s. When Chancellor David Lloyd George introduced the “People’s Budget” in 1909, he triggered a constitutional crisis arising from the Lords’ determination to reject the funding of welfare reform through increased taxation on income and land. Peers organised public meetings portraying Lloyd George’s budget as the thin end of the socialist wedge, with the Duke of Beaufort suggesting that he would like to see Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, then president of the Board of Trade and a rising star in politics, “in the middle of 20 couple of dog hounds”. In response, Lloyd George stated in a speech at Newcastle that: “a fully equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts; and dukes are just as great a terror and they last longer”. The constitutional crisis was eventually resolved (after two General Elections and the intervention of the King) by stripping the Lords of some of their powers, but a healthy antagonism has remained a central feature of the Westminster system ever since.
In common with the longstanding Varsity tradition, the ongoing strife between the two Houses has often been expressed on the sporting field. Of course, the Oxbridge parallel can be pushed too far. Unlike the universities, the Houses of Parliament seldom select members solely on the basis of their cardiovascular fitness and hand-eye coordination, and Lords vs Commons fixtures rarely attract crowds on the scale of Varsity matches at Twickenham or Lord’s. Nevertheless, the fact that such fixtures happen at all should be a source of some admiration, given the constant pressure on parliamentarians’ timetables and the relentless (and often rather unkind) public scrutiny of their doings.
Things were rather different, of course, in Churchill’s early days, when the press was more respectful and vastly less intrusive. Parliamentary life itself was much more relaxed, leaving ample time for hunting and racing. In his autobiography, My Early Life, Churchill talks of a time when: “English society still existed in its old form… The leading figures of society were in many cases the leading statesmen in Parliament, and also the leading sportsmen on the Turf.” Churchill relates how Lord Salisbury avoided calling Cabinet meetings when there was racing at Newmarket, and how the entire House of Commons made a habit of adjourning for the Derby.
Churchill himself found time amidst his political work to play in a number of polo contests between the two Houses. There was no shortage of riding men in Westminster in the 1900s and 1910s. The Polo Monthly reported in 1910 that the Speaker of the House of Commons, James W Lowther, was one of six Masters of Foxhounds in the lower House, while hunting peers included Viscount Valentia, the Earl of Lonsdale and Viscount Duncannon. The Polo Monthly identified at least 31 members of the Commons after the first 1910 Election as polo players, including a “Mr Winston Churchill, who is now so very much in the public eye”. The House of Commons Polo Club was founded in 1904, playing twice a week in the early morning on ground adjoining Wembley Park Station. Following an early match in 1873, semi-regular contests between the two Houses began in 1906, competing for a challenge cup presented by the Earl of Harrington and played for at Ranelagh.
Matches were resumed after the war. At one particularly memorable match in 1922,
It does help to have points of contact between different parties
the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Westminster, Earl Fitzwilliam and Viscount Wimborne played for the Lords, with Sir Philip Sassoon, Lt Col Hon Frederick Vernon, Captain Hon Frederick Guest and Churchill playing for the Commons. The Lords won by five goals to three, possibly aided by the injury Churchill acquired in India, which required him to play with strapping on his shoulder. The original Harrington trophy was won outright by the Commons by virtue of their third successive victory in 1925 but a new Challenge Cup was arranged in 1926 (with the peers winning the first match). By 1930, however, The Polo Monthly was complaining that “polo would appear to be a lost (or undiscovered) art amongst Members of the House of Commons, as last season it was found impossible to raise a team of MPS to oppose the Lords”. At present, Westminster harbours some retired players (Richard Benyon, Sir Nicholas Soames) but not, apparently, any active players. There is also no All-party Parliamentary Group devoted to polo, as there is for other sports, ranging from boxing and pigeon-racing to cricket and rugby union. Sadly, a revival of the Harrington Cup seems a remote prospect.
rugby union
Sports other than polo can also boast proud parliamentary traditions, albeit often in the form of joint Commons/lords teams rather than rival sides. Joint teams have the advantage of requiring fewer parliamentarians to surrender precious time during evenings or weekends, and also offer rare opportunities for teamwork across party and chamber divides. Lord Addington, an active playing member of the Commons & Lords Rugby Union Football Club, says “it does help to have points of contact between different parties – most people will agree on some things”. The focus of the team is “getting out there and taking part”, but this does not preclude a competitive edge: “If you’re not trying to win it, you’re not playing.” Parliamentary rugby also offers the chance to come into contact with members of other legislatures. A Parliamentary World Cup now takes place the week before each Rugby World Cup in the host nation, offering (in the words of Mark Pawsey MP) “a fantastic opportunity for parliamentarians from around the world to come together over a shared love of the game”.
There is also a joint Commons/lords cricket team that, in recent years, has taken to the field at Lord’s against an MCC XI, resuming a tradition stemming from the mid-19th century until 1939. James Morris MP, a former Oxford University batsman, captains an Mp-heavy XI, which has featured the likes of Danny Alexander, Crispin Blunt and the ubiquitous Ed Balls. The team has raised money and awareness for a number of charities, including Chance to Shine, the Cricket Foundation’s initiative to inspire a new generation of state-school cricketers, and, more recently, the victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster. The links between the MCC and high politics may be looser than once they were – a recent MCC feature stated that, “in recent years you would have to be pretty unlucky to bump into a Member of Parliament in the Long Room” – but there is clearly still a strong appetite for parliamentary cricket.
Despite the loss of polo and the crossparty amity shown by more recent joint endeavours, there are still some sporting fields in which Lords vs Commons rivalry continues, such as the annual Vizianagram Lords vs Commons rifle shooting match at Bisley. The match takes place on the final Friday of the NRA Imperial Meeting, and is named after the Maharajah of Vizianagram, who paid £400 to fund a trophy for the match in 1870.
MPS and peers also compete in an annual clay pigeon match. Organised by BASC and sponsored by Hambledon Vineyard, the match takes place each July in shooting grounds around London; past venues include Holland & Holland, West Wycombe, and Squerryes Court. MPS led by Bill Wiggin and peers led by Lord Dear compete for a silver trophy and the honour of being named top gun. A luncheon follows the match, with expert speakers addressing topics relevant to shooting (grey partridges were a recent
focus) and offering busy parliamentarians the chance to reflect on pressing issues facing the sport.
Competition is typically fierce, with the peers winning an especially close match in 2016 by just one clay. “You can’t not be competitive if you’re in politics, so you’ll inevitably get drawn into that element of it,” says Wiggin. Despite this, a sporting spirit prevails: “There are one or two exceptional shots in Parliament. But if we just picked our best people nobody would really benefit.” The two Chambers playing each other makes for a better match than playing expert teams from outside. And, Wiggin notes, the “real winner from the competition is shooting itself”.
As well as demonstrating legislators’ interest in the shooting industry, the competition offers important opportunities for parliamentarians from different backgrounds to gain an understanding of the sport: “Particularly in the House of Commons, we encourage as many shooters as possible, whether they’re Labour or Conservative, male or female, it doesn’t matter. The winner should be the sports participant outside Parliament who now has a Government and Opposition who understand the details of what they get up to.”
tug of war
From the public’s point of view, the bestknown of Westminster’s sporting contests is undoubtedly the annual tug-of-war between MPS and peers in Westminster Abbey College Garden. Held in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support, the event regularly raises more than £100,000 while also offering parliamentarians the chance to prove who the real political heavyweights are. In an interview with The Spectator, Lord Dobbs, author of House of Cards, attempted to explain away yet another Lords defeat in 2015: “I suspect the tug of war is the main reason why the Commons has insisted on reform of the House of Lords. Ejecting most of the hereditaries meant that we have been deprived of young, vigorous countryfolk who used to sit on the red benches. It’s another political fix.” He added, however, that he was glad to see an SNP MP, Angus Macneil, joining a team made up predominantly of Conservative MPS: “Nice to see them pulling in the same direction for once.” At a time when politics seems characterised by fragmentation and discord, perhaps the sports field is the only place where they’ll find common ground.
I suspect the tug of war is the main reason why the Commons has insisted on reform