Book shows aristocracy’s still looking after its own
Rhondda MP Chris Bryant has exposed the absurdity of the British aristocracy’s continued involvement in law-making, says chief reporter Martin Shipton
FOR centuries, Britain’s aristocrats were rarely out of the public eye, happy to display their wealth and landholdings to the world.
These days they keep as low a profile as possible – and when they do have something to say, it usually involves pleading poverty.
In his latest book, Chris Bryant – who gets up early to do his writing – traces the ignoble history of a social class that has always been successful in promoting its own interests.
He sets out his case in the introduction to Entitled, which one suspects gathers together more information and anecdotes about our aristocracy than has appeared in a single volume before.
“In every generation the aristocracy sought to enrich themselves way beyond their personal needs,” he writes. “Anglo Saxon warriors and Norman invaders demanded vast tracts of lands in reward for their valour in battle. Tudor and Stuart lords sought royal monopolies and exclusive patents to enable them to exploit trade and commerce, enclosed common land for their personal use, and gorged themselves on the profits of land stolen from the church.
“Eighteenth-century magnates grew wealthy on sinecures, pensions and ministerial office, and their successors ruthlessly exploited their broad acres with little consideration for those who tenanted their land or worked in their mines.
“When their British estates did not bring in enough profit, they turned their acquisitive eyes abroad, creating and investing heavily in the bloody triangular trade of goods and slaves between Britain, west Africa and the Caribbean, the proceeds of which helped found many of Britain’s proudest houses. “Today’s aristocrats still figure prominently in every list of Britain’s richest people, possessing some of the largest estates and the most profitable real estate in the world, and employing the most expensive lawyers to create complex legal arrangements to enable them to avoid inheritance and other taxes while raking in millions of pounds in agricultural subsidies.
“The result of all these centuries of self-seeking endeavour has been a phenomenal accretion of land and money in the hands of a tiny number of families. In 1872, 12 peers owned more than four million acres, 29 luxuriated in an annual income from land of more than £75,000, the dukes of Westminster, Buccleuch, Bedford, Devonshire and Northumberland all had incomes of more than £175,000, and the duke and duchess of Sutherland headed the list of landowners, their 1,358,545 acres earning them the nickname ‘leviathans of wealth’.
“Remarkably, despite a century of stories of ducal poverty and stately home demolitions, a third of Britain’s land still belongs to the aristocracy and the Country Land and Business Association’s 36,000 members own half the rural land in the country; nearly half of Scotland remains in the hands of 432 private individuals and companies, and more than a quarter of all Scottish estates larger than 5,000 acres are held by aristocratic families.”
On top of this, of course, they were for centuries members of the House of Lords, which gave them the right to make laws. Even after a half-hearted measure of reform under Tony Blair, 90 hereditary peers – elected by themselves – are still able to legislate.
Bryant sprinkles the book with pen portraits of aristocrats who failed to maintain even the pretence of any kind of social responsibility. He writes, for example: “James Brudenell, 7th earl of Cardigan, exhibited all the worst traits of a Victorian peer. He gambled excessively at his London clubs, he engaged in endless affairs with other men’s wives, he resorted to violent punishments to instil discipline in the 11th Hussars, whose command he bought for £40,000, and he spent wildly on lavish entertainment at his country seat of Deene Park and on his steam yacht Dryad. At his death he left debts of more than £365,000.
“Most famously, in the Crimean War, he acrimoniously fell out with his brother-in-law and superior, the earl of Lucan, and led the notorious cavalry charge straight into Russian cannon fire at Balaclava in 1854 that saw 113 out of 673 men killed and another 247 seriously injured.
“His bravery – or bravado – was rewarded with banquets and toasts and the sash of a Knight Commander of the Bath, all of which ignored the fact that in his patrician arrogance Cardigan had deemed the lives of lesser mortals dispensable.”
Replacing the Lords with an elected second chamber remains, as it has done for more than a century, a project for the future.
■ Entitled: A Critical History of the British Aristocracy by Chris Bryant is published by Penguin at £10.99