Honors Act 1925

The Honors Act 1925 ( English Honors (Prevention of Abuses) Act, 1925 , full title: An Act for the prevention of abuses in connection with the Grant of Honors ) is a law (English Act of Parliament ) of the United Kingdom , which the sale of peerages and other nobility dignity. It was passed on August 7, 1925. The law was introduced in response to the business conduct of Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George , who for years had built up an extensive personal campaign fund through the controversial massive sale of nobility to wealthy people.

Background: Awarding titles in the Victorian era

House of Lords, photographed between 1870 and 1885

Historically, during the midst of Queen Victoria's reign, the British nobility was a relatively homogeneous class. Ennoblement were held only in limited numbers. In addition, new ennobizations were usually carried out within a closed circle of wealthy landowners. Towards the end of the 19th century there was a gradual transformation and expansion of this existing practice. Both the number of ennoblings and the number of recipients rose with each passing year: if the number and circle of those honored had previously been small, there was now an annual increase in numbers. In addition, more and more ennoblings were made in order to honor past valuable services rendered to the state and the public. The framework was broad and outstanding achievements in art and culture as well as in commerce and trade, in public welfare and science were recognized. Increasingly, the incumbent Prime Ministers made use of their right to make proposals in order to ennoble deserved supporters. This opened the House of Lords further; As Lord Curzon remarked in 1917, nobility was no longer an essential patrician privilege and nobility a legitimate object of public ambition. In his words, there was a “democratization of honor lists”. At the same time, these developments went hand in hand with an analogous change in the upper class of society, which was no longer dominated solely by the long-established hereditary nobility, but increasingly also by rich entrepreneurs who had made their way into high society since the late Victorian era . Gradually there was an expansion of the conferral of nobility. While the average annual number of new peers was around 5 between 1837 and 1881, this number doubled between 1882 and 1911.

Selling Peerages under David Lloyd George

Prime Minister David Lloyd George (1919)

While the average annual number of elevations into the nobility had already risen continuously in the late Victorian and Edwardian ages, the practice up to now was expanded at an almost inflationary rate with the beginning of Prime Minister David Lloyd George's term in office . Lloyd George created 90 peers during his tenure between 1916 and 1922 alone. There were also numerous other appointments in other honors. With each year of his tenure as prime minister, the number of new ennobizations continued to grow. What was new - and subsequently particularly controversial -, however, to the bitterness of neutral observers, was not only the sheer number of nobility surveys, men with extremely dubious reputations were now also included in the annually published list of new surveys in the nobility. In 1921, for example, a British shipowner who was convicted of hoarding food during the First World War was ennobled.

Lloyd George, who led part of the Liberal Party , which had been split since 1916 , had no access to party funds; the official financial resources of the Liberal Party were controlled by party leader HH Asquith and his supporters, who had gone into opposition in 1916. He created his own campaign fund by selling nobility titles, which by the end of his tenure as Prime Minister had grown to a total of more than £ 2 million. The Whips of Lloyd George of the Liberal Party and personal trust people like the London professional swindler Maundy Gregory peerages and honors sold at fixed rates of contribution to Lloyd George's donation fund, which he built himself a personal campaign funds. £ 10,000 had to be paid for a Knight , £ 30,000 for a Baronet and more than £ 50,000 for a peerage.

King George V (photo from 1923)

Ultimately, resentment broke out and Westminster was rocked by scandal in June 1922 when the annual list of Birthday Honors was published. The list included Archibald Williamson, Samuel Waring and Joseph Robinson, three very wealthy men who had extremely dubious reputations and who had all come into conflict with the law. The South African Robinson, a wealthy mine owner, had already been fined heavily in the past for fraudulent business practices. King George V , who had already complained several times that Lloyd George ignored the royal prerogatives and distributed peerages without informing him at all, made a formal protest public; In this he lamented "the excessive number of ennobizations awarded, the personality of some of the recipients and the questionable circumstances under which some of the ennobizations were granted in certain circumstances." All parties now called for an investigation.

A debate broke out in the House of Lords, in the course of which Lloyd George was severely attacked. His practices have been denounced as abuse of prime ministerial office; the Duke of Northumberland painted a detailed picture of the past few years of corruption and condemned the Prime Minister for his ruthlessness and dishonesty. In the House of Commons, Lloyd George initially wanted to sit out the matter, but was forced to agree to a debate on the matter due to a motion with more than 300 signatories. Lloyd George was combative and vigorously defended his actions in the ensuing debate in the House of Commons, but finally had to agree to the establishment of a royal commission, which should deal in detail with the award of titles of nobility. On the other hand, he was able to successfully prevent an independent joint investigation committee in Parliament; in the royal commission of inquiry he was able to insert a passage that this should deal with the practice for future ennoblement and thus only very limited old cases would be examined. He was also able to influence the cast and thus prevent his harshest critics in this matter, the Duke of Northumberland, Lord Selborne and the influential James Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury, from being on the commission. He had initially defused the matter, but it marked another step in the decline of the coalition between the Conservative Party and Lloyd George's Liberals and contributed to his overthrow.

After the majority of the Conservatives voted against the continuation of the coalition with Lloyd George's Liberals at the Carlton Club meeting in October 1922 , the way was cleared for a conservative sole government under the new conservative party leader Andrew Bonar Law . He hired his longtime right-hand man, JCC Davidson , to infiltrate and eliminate Maundy Gregory's organization. Several previously announced ennobizations that Gregory's organization had sold to its wealthy clients were discreetly revoked.

The Honors Act

By the time the royal commission finally published its report, Lloyd George had already been overthrown and was sitting on the benches of the opposition. Their two most important proposals were implemented immediately: First, an Honors Scrutiny Committee was set up, consisting of three members of the Privy Council who do not belong to the government. On the other hand, the Honors (Prevention of Abuses) Act was formulated, which makes trading in titles a criminal offense. This was passed on August 7, 1925 without major resistance.

Lloyd George, on the other hand, was able to maneuver himself out of the delicate situation for him through his past influence on the occupation and objectives of the royal commission and also retain control of his personal campaign fund. However, this became another point of contention between him and Asquith's Liberal faction after the Liberal election defeat in 1922 . Asquith's Liberals, despite vehemently and publicly condemning Lloyd George's practices, expected before the two factions reunified that Lloyd George would hand over control of his fund to the party organization; However, the latter refused to do so and held on to his personal control over the money as long as he himself had not been elected leader of a reunited Liberal Party.

Maundy Gregory, Lloyd George's foremost legacy in the sale of nobility, was convicted of the Honors Act in 1933 for attempting to sell Vatican orders of knights to wealthy businessmen in Britain.

literature

• David Cannadine : The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. a. 1990, ISBN 0-300-04761-4 . (Pp. 299–323)
• Travis L. Crosby: The Unknown David Lloyd George: A Statesman in Conflict. IB Tauris, London 2014, ISBN 978-1-78076-485-6 .

Web links

• Honors (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925 Original text of the Act on legislation.gov.uk

Individual evidence

1. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, p. 299.
2. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, pp. 299 f.
3. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, p. 345 ff.
4. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, p. 303.
5. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, p. 304.
6. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, p. 315.
7. ^ Peter Rowland: Lloyd George. Barrie & Jenkins Ltd., London 1975, p. 448.
8. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, p. 317.
9. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, pp. 317 f.
10. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, p. 320.
11. ^ Robert Blake: The Unknown Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Andrew Bonar Law, 1858-1923. Eyre and Spottiswoode, London 1955, p. 443.
    Travis L. Crosby: The Unknown David Lloyd George: A Statesman in Conflict. IB Tauris, London 2014, p. 330.
12. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, pp. 320 f.
13. ↑ Michael Kinnear: The Fall of Lloyd George: The Political Crisis of 1922. Macmillan, London 1973, p. 126 ff.
    Robert Blake: The Unknown Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Andrew Bonar Law, 1858-1923. Eyre and Spottiswoode, London 1955, pp. 457 f.
14. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, p. 322.
15. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, p. 321.
16. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, p. 322.
17. ↑ John Campbell: Pistols at Dawn: Two Hundred Years of Political Rivalry from Pitt and Fox to Blair and Brown. Vintage Books, London 2009, p. 187.
18. ^ David Cannadine: The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1990, p. 323.