WEDNESDAY’S vote in the House of Commons when there was a 113 majority for the replacement of the House of Lords by an elected assembly was both unexpected, and unwanted by the leaders of the Labour and Tory parties.
For some time the unelected Lords, a relic of feudal society, have been like a bone in the throat of the Blair government because of their greater regard for the liberty of the subject.
Blair and co have wracked their brains for a means to get the House of Lords off of their backs, and from this sprang Wednesday’s vote when the House of Commons voted on a variety of measures, mainly on the numbers of appointed and elected members there would be in any new second chamber.
The majority for a fully elected second chamber was in fact a vote against Prime Minister Blair, who in the eyes of many MPs has discredited the House of Lords for ever with the cash for peerages scandal.
This damned the idea of the House of Lords being appointed. However the reality behind the non binding motion is that British capitalism has not got the strength to host two wholly elected Houses of Parliament. The different factions of a much weakened ruling class would in no time be at each other’s throats, utilising the two elected houses as their vehicles.
As well, the abolition of the hereditary Lords would be the beginning of the end for the hereditary and completely out of date monarchy.
What will they do – elect a monarch from a number of contestants in a new sensational phone-in TV show?
Another very unwelcome truth as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned, is that the House of Commons is just as discredited as the House of Lords.
The House of Commons has been snubbed by Prime Minister Blair from day one of his three governments, with his announcement of policy changes in the press, often weeks before the House of Commons debated them and ‘decided’ on them.
The electorate has experienced electing two of the three Blair governments with massive majorities only to see their views on the NHS and the war in Iraq completely and utterly ignored.
The arrangements between the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the monarchy are the legacy of the victory of the bourgeoisie over the feudal reaction in the 1640s, when it abolished both the Lords and the Monarchy, and the compromise that it made in the 1660s when it decided that it would be securer if it ruled utilising a House of Lords and a Monarch, provided that they both knew their place in the new order.
True the arrangement is hopelessly out of date now when British capitalism is on its knees, and has lost all independence, power and glory.
However, the ruling class know that they tinker with these constitutional arrangements at their peril, since once the crumbling edifice comes under the hammer, there is no telling just where it will all end.
The scheme to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with an elected rival to the House of Commons will be buried. The bourgeoisie will get on with the task of strengthening the state apparatus for the massive collision that is on the way with the working class over the attempt to abolish the Welfare State.
The working class is now thinking over a situation where the Welfare State, brought in by Labour, is now being destroyed by the same party. What parliament was made to hand over to the working class in 1948, it is now taking back.
The struggle of the working class is set to take an anti and unparliamentary turn, with massive strikes and struggles to defend the Welfare State.
This defence can only be carried out by a working class led by a party that is determined to expropriate the bosses and smash their state apparatus, including the abolition of both the House of Commons and House of Lords.
The working class will organise this struggle through the building of workers councils of action, and it is these councils of action that will be the basis for a soviet Britain. The parliamentary farce that is being played out remains just that, a historical joke being played on the bourgeois order.
