Conservative hereditary peer Lord Sudeley dies aged 83
Lord Sudeley, a lifelong Conservative who sat in the Upper House as a hereditary peer for 39 years until he was expelled by the House of Lords Act 1999, has died aged 83 of undisclosed causes. The aristocrat was known for his controversial statements, such as when he complained that the abolition of slavery had cost his plantation-owning family money and told e Observer in 1998 that his politics were as far right “as it’s possible to be”.
The peer served as chair and president of the Monday Club, a pressure group opposed to the Race Relations Act and to non-white immigration to Britain. Its ties to the Conservative Party were cut in 2001. He was also president of the far-right Traditional Britain Group.
After leaving the Lords, when Tony Blair’s Labour government scrapped the automatic right of all hereditary peers to take their places in the Upper Chamber, Sudeley made numerous unsuccessful bids to return.
He contested more than a dozen Lords by-elections over the years, receiving either zero votes or one vote from the Conservative or crossbench group of hereditary peers on each occasion.