The Lords and Lloyd George

As a whole generation of aristocratic young officers was wiped out in the Great War, the long term viability of the Lords was under discussion in the 1920s.

At the same time the Liberal premier Lloyd George was using the permission he had been given by a reluctant King George V to create peers for clearly defined political purposes.

Lloyd George and his ‘fixer’ Maundy Gregory caused a huge scandal by selling peerages which added to the debate.

The proposal to have a non-political Lords representing society as a whole was subsumed into the syndicalist theory to replace capitalism, which was killed by national boredom with politics.

While writing this I realised the significance of the song we sang as National Service recruits 70 years ago: Lloyd George knew my father; Father knew Lloyd George’, repeated ad nauseam mile after mile.

A V Martin,

Westfield Close,

Wigginton, York

House of Commons shores up democracy

If Geoffrey Searstone’s letter (May 18) encourages a public debate on democracy, we will be in his debt.

The purpose of democracy, as I understand it, is that the body of laws that govern all of us as citizens of a country should be seen and accepted as reasonable, just and fair by all of us, not simply imposed on us by an individual or a clique or a pressure group.

The British way of achieving this is by a House of Commons, where all new laws and revisions of laws are debated in detail and voted upon by members elected by universal suffrage. They cast their votes on behalf of us, their constituents to whom they are answerable, after they have heard, discussed and questioned the arguments for and against the proposed law.

The democratic consistency of this approach, as contrasted with referendums, is why Westminster has been dubbed The Mother of Parliaments, and why the Brexit Bill must be subject to a House of Commons vote.

Maurice Vassie,

Cartmans Cottage,

Deighton, York