Michael Moorcock

How I learned to love the Lords

Michael Moorcock once thought the Upper House was a bastion of anti-democratic privilege, but life in the US has convinced him that he was wrong

issue 17 March 2007

Lost Pines, Texas

When I first moved to America in the early 1990s I arrived as a republican, full of a furious rhetoric about the end of monarchy and the abolition of hereditary privilege. I’d sent a hefty donation to Charter 88, who wanted to see PR, a written constitution and an elected second house. Social justice could not be improved by traditional methods and all the Lords Temporal were good for was raising prize pigs and holding the hands of serial killers whom they visited in jug. The Lords Spiritual were the symbol of an Anglicanism reduced to giving a home to the WI and holding the odd carol service on Christmas Eve.

While some decent old buffer might still be heard speaking up for fair play and moderation and could understand what some other decent old buffer meant when he quoted Pliny the Elder, it was definitely time for a change.

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