Out of the Ghetto

When British Attorney General Douglas Hogg accepted a hereditary peerage in 1928, his son was furious. Down from Oxford stormed young Quintin McGarel Hogg, complaining that the new family title would one day keep him from becoming Prime Minister--since British Prime Ministers by tradition are chosen from the House of Commons, not the Lords. In 1950, after his father died, ambitious Tory Hogg reluctantly became the second Viscount Hailsham and thus a member of the Lords, which he described as "a political ghetto." Last week, having triumphantly returned from representing Britain at the Moscow test ban talks, Science Minister Hailsham, 55, finally got a chance to escape that ghetto-and thus enter the running as one of Harold Macmillan's possible successors.

Given the required royal assent by Queen Elizabeth II was a new Peerage Act enabling a member of the Lords, for the first time in 300 years, to renounce his title to run for the Commons. As originally drawn by the government, the bill would not have gone into effect until Parliament was dissolved for the next election, which need not be held until fall 1964. That, to the Lords, looked suspiciously like a maneuver to keep Hailsham from getting into the political swim, presumably engineered by some of his rivals for the prime ministership--or even by Harold Macmillan, who is sounding increasingly reluctant to step down. When the bill reached the Lords, they voted to amend it to make it effective as soon as the Queen approved. To avoid a fuss, the Tory Party went along with the amendment in the Commons.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.