Shaking up the Lords
JEREMY CORBYN wonders whether we'll ever have reform of the House of Lords.
ON WEDNESDAY, the House of Commons will be invited to vote yet again on potential reform of the House of Lords.
This saga is as old as British political history itself and the Lords remain an unbelievable anachronism and an affront to any kind of democracy.
Historically, the Lords performed a completely reactionary role against progressive governments going back to the 1832 Reform Act and their blocking of the 1908 Liberal budget, which was designed to introduce national insurance and state pensions to Britain for the first time.
At that point, they lost a great deal of power with the 1911 Parliament Act which reduced their powers to that of delay, rather than veto to the decisions of the House of Commons.
Since then, the main developments have been the growth of life peerages and the abolition of hereditary peerages by the current Labour majority in the House of Commons.
Successive prime ministers found the power of patronage to appoint people as life peers an irresistible drug.
Blair has appointed more life peers than any other prime minister. Bizarrely, he has even created one hereditary peer.
Over the last 15 years, the preponderance of lawyers in the House of Lords has often meant that the most draconian illiberal, anti-terrorist legislation has been in part controlled or even feted by the upper chamber.
The last time that the Commons voted on Lords Reform, devious chicanery by government whips ensured that all of the options presented by Robin Cook were defeated. New Labour's power of patronage was, in effect, renewed.
There is a school of thought that argues that it is not necessary to have an upper chamber at all and instead to have a unicameral system.
Today, the Commons will vote in ascending order on proposals raging from keeping the status quo right through to a 100 per cent elected upper chamber.
Hopefully, MPs will seize this historic opportunity to introduce an accountable democracy into the upper chamber.
I urge Morning Star readers not to hold their breath, as it is quite possible that the Commons will again make no decision at all.
What a waste IN a week's time, Parliament will be voting on the government's white paper to plan the replacement of the Trident nuclear submarine fleet and a new generation of nuclear weapons and submarines to carry them.
Last weekend saw an NHS day of action and saw protests outside hundreds of hospitals across the country that are faced with cuts or partial closure.
MPs who claim to be opposed to NHS cuts and in support of increased spending on education and social services, should think very carefully before they vote. Twenty-five billion pounds of capital spending on the new submarines, added to £50 billion running costs over the next five years, could make a huge difference not just to health and education spending in this country but also in providing resources to deal with many of the global problems of the Aids pandemic and sanitation crisis faced by the world's poorest people.
The Trident replacement would not only be illegal within the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty but it represents the development of new weapons of mass destruction and removes any pretence that Britain can lecture the rest of the world on peace and disarmament.
It will do nothing to make the world a safer and more secure place, but it will encourage a process of rearmament around the world.
I have asked the Foreign Office for a statement detailing what policy they plan to advocate at the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference preparatory meeting in Vienna in May. So far, my request has been greeted by a deafening silence.
Reflections on 50 years of Ghana's independence THIS week sees the 50th anniversary of Ghana's independence.
In 1957, the achievement of independence by Ghana under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah was an amazing, historical event. Only six years earlier, Nkrumah had been sentenced to prison by the British colonial administration as leader of the Convention People's Party after he campaigned for home rule, immediately followed by independence.
After winning 1952 elections, he was released from prison and went on to become Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957.
Nkrumah's vision of African unity was a development of the ideas of the pan-African unity conference held in Manchester in 1945 and the strong thinking of many progressive African leaders that the only way the continent would ever achieve overall independence and the necessary share of its own natural resources would be through the unity of all African peoples.
From 1957 onwards, life was very exciting in Ghana. It became the centre of a lot of pan-African thinking and saw rapid industrial development.
Nkrumah was overthrown in a 1966 coup inspired by external forces while he was en route to Vietnam on a Commonwealth peace mission to try to negotiate a ceasefire. But his vision of African unity has never been extinguished.
Since independence from the colonial powers, African countries have faced the brutality of the neocolonial trade and development system, which has left many Africans with a falling standard of living.
Even today, all the major transport infrastructure is designed to remove Africa's natural resources to Asia, Europe and north America, rather than aiding pan-African development.
This year is also the 200th anniversary of the end of the slave trade. The riches of Africa were forcibly exploited by the slave traders and the European sugar and cotton magnates, who grew fat on the terrible lives of African slaves in the Caribbean and north America.
In gaining its independence, Ghana showed that the days of the Gold Coast, the major source of slaves and the start of the journey of death for millions of Africans, was forever put behind them.
While celebrating the huge political achievement of independence in Africa, it is also necessary to bear in mind the power of global capital, much of it centred in Europe, which keeps Africa poor in order to make huge profits.
• Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North. He can be contacted at corbynj@parliament.uk
