Geoffrey Howe

Saturday

Geoffrey Howe

Most sacrilegious murder

From our UK edition

Nineteen eighty-five was the year in which I became closely engaged in the revolution that was to overthrow the Soviet empire. Poland was the last of five loveless republics of the Warsaw Pact which I visited between February and April, and it was the one which made by far the deepest impression on me. For the most publicly dramatic event of my entire iron curtain tour was my pilgrimage to the church of St Stanislaw Kostko and the grave of Father Jerzy Popieluszko. Popieluszko was the pro-Solidarity Catholic priest, whose murder by the Polish police in October 1984 is the core of this gripping and perceptive description of Poland’s decisive role in the demolition of European communism.

Saturday

Geoffrey Howe

Don’t vote for us

From our UK edition

Where next for the House of Lords? The debate has moved on a long way since that question raced up the agenda, after Labour's landslide victory in 1997. It was possible then for sensible people to regard the Lords as an archaic anomaly with no practical role and even less claim to legitimacy. There was, at that time, more than one reason for taking that view. First, the fact that a clear majority of the House (the hereditaries, 750 out of 1,270) were there only because of an accident of birth – scant justification for political power in a modern democracy. Second, because one party, the Conservatives, had a large and permanent majority in the House (200 more than Lab and Lib combined).