Agapacracy:

A Proposal for House of Lords Reform

I delivered an abbreviated version of the following essay at a conference in September 2023 honouring the life and work of Rowan Williams.

I was a young student at Westcott House Theological College in Cambridge from 1977 – 80, the same three years that Rowan Williams was Tutor there. So, he is someone I knew before he became famous. And I have followed his subsequent career, both as church dignitary and as public intellectual, with a great deal of sympathy, mixed with wondering admiration for the, at times, sheer anguished courage of his witness. During my time at Westcott House, it was Rowan who, more than anyone else, taught me to appreciate the aesthetic truth-bearing potential of the sermon, as a form of folk art. Meanwhile, he also reassured me as to the legitimacy of combining the role of priest in the Church of England with a serious interest, for example, in the thought of Hegel. For this, I owe him a great debt of gratitude.

Here, however, I am particularly concerned with what he subsequently came to stand for as a member of the House of Lords: from 2002 – 12, one of the ‘Lords Spiritual’, the twenty-six Anglican bishops there; and then, from 2012 – 20, one of the ‘Lords Temporal’, sitting as a cross-bencher, Baron Williams of Oystermouth; until he chose to retire.

The Labour Party is more or less committed, if not straight away, then in the medium term, to undertake major reform of the House of Lords; notably, rendering it an all-elected, and altogether smaller institution. In the process, it seems likely that the ‘Lords Spiritual’ will disappear. Some of them, at least, will want to protest that something, in principle, of real value will, as a result, have been lost. And amongst the strongest arguments to that effect is, surely, the example of Lord Williams: all that he, so notably, embodied.

But, of course, the response will be: how can an arrangement privileging just one church over all others, in this way, be justified in the twenty-first century? An arrangement privileging just one religion over all others? An arrangement, of any kind, like this, privileging religion as such, in the governance of an otherwise essentially secular state?

Is it not, after all, a complete anachronism?

The Well-informed Will of the Majority – and the Public Conscience

Well, I want to argue: yes – and no.

I have mentioned Hegel. Amongst the very many things that Hegel was interested in, one, as it happens, was British politics.

In his lecture series on the ‘philosophy of right’, first delivered in Heidelberg in 1817, then in Berlin during the 1820s, Hegel is posing the basic question: what is the best possible state realistically imaginable in present-day conditions?¹ He does not actually quote the American Founding Fathers. But like them he, too, favours a bicameral legislature – in effect, a rationalised version of the British system – first and foremost, because the duality of a Lower and an Upper House is valuable in itself: as providing for a dialectical interplay of opposites, a fine-tuned balance. Like his older American contemporaries John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, moreover, he thinks: the more difference between the two houses the better. Different role; different quality of debate; different selection process.

Granted: two hundred years later, Hegel’s actual notion of the ideal duality here looks very dated. Indeed, it remains interesting, in this context, just by virtue of the way in which it so completely pre-dates the democratic thought-world constituted by universal suffrage; the thought-world, so dominant today, of those great propaganda-machines for the management of universal suffrage, mass political parties.

The Labour Party – because it is a political party – naturally assumes that reform of the House of Lords must, in the end, involve a system of election by universal suffrage. I, however, want to question this.

Right at the end of his life, in 1831, Hegel in fact published a substantial essay on ‘The English Reform Bill’, then being debated in Westminster.² Here, he develops quite a scathing critique of the British state, in a number of aspects: the failure of the British university system to produce a properly educated ruling class; the heavy taxes levied by the British government; the effective barring of access to justice, other than to the very rich; the oppression of the Roman Catholic Irish; the deplorable class distinctions, within the Church of England, between rich and poor clergy.³ And so forth. All this, quite apart from the inequity of the electoral system, which the Reform Bill was intended to tackle: ‘rotten boroughs’ with tiny populations, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, major new centres of population without parliamentary representation.

Nevertheless, as Hegel saw it, British political culture did have one altogether priceless, redeeming virtue. Namely, a remarkable tradition of free-spirited public service: the inspiration of a group of, as he put it, ‘brilliant men wholly devoted to political activity and the interest of the state’.⁴ This was an ethos primarily nurtured within the House of Lords; although to some extent also spilling out into the Commons. And, Hegel thought, the proper function of any Upper House, like the Lords, is, in essence, to provide a space within which the spirit in question here might thrive. It is that spirit which counts. By contrast, in his view, the primary task of the Lower House, in an ideal bicameral legislature, is to channel the demands made by all manner of entrepreneurial spirit – the Lower House, therefore, is to be filled with representatives of the emergent bourgeoisie. But the Upper House is properly to be filled, far rather, with great aristocrats, for whom politics is a matter of noblesse oblige. Its rightful members are qualified to belong in it, as being that class of men amongst whom, the evidence suggests, such an attitude to public service is most likely to be at home. No restless parvenus, therefore! No unscrupulous populists! But, at the bare minimum, men of serious inherited wealth, guaranteed by compulsory primogeniture; who are, thus, too rich to be easily bribe-able.

Such, in a nutshell, was Hegel’s conception.

Since his day, however, the world has been transformed, not least, by the achievement of mass literacy. This has led, first, to universal suffrage. Then, as a consequence, to the competing propaganda-ideologies of mass political parties. And hence, also, to the gradual withering away of the old-time prestige of the aristocracy; the prestige, hitherto, sustaining that moral culture of noblesse oblige which he had looked to, as the ideal inspiration of the Upper House.

Yet, I would argue, the underlying principle still holds good: that the duality of a bicameral legislature is valuable in itself, as a means of achieving a fine-tuned balance; an appropriately two-hemisphered brain to govern the body politic. And that the more difference there is between the two houses, the better, for this purpose.

It just needs to be a somewhat different balance. A different difference. The basic framework, adapted to serve another context.

§

Thus, what I want to propose is this:

• that the House of Commons should, ideally, represent the well-informed will of the majority; but

• that the Upper House should represent the public conscience, precisely inasmuch as the public conscience transcends the well-informed will of the majority.

A Lower House, then, dedicated to maximum democratic legitimacy, as now. An Upper House, on the other hand, balancing that, by virtue of its dedication to the channelling of maximum moral authority. An authority forever challenging the all too natural collective egoism, and tendency to complacency, of the majority; the prime moral frailties of majoritarian rule, no matter how well-informed the majority in question may be.

Where, though, is the chief store of organised moral authority in our society?

Is it not in – the charitable sector, as a whole? Is it not the moral authority won by charitable good works?

Therefore: let the House of Lords be replaced with a House of Charities. In place of the aristocratic patrons of charity, who used to fill the place – now, let it be the charities themselves. Those admirable embodiments of the public conscience: the charities of all religions, and of none.

I envisage a hundred full-time legislators, say. Or two hundred. Whatever number is required to undertake the same basic tasks as the present House of Lords. ‘Senators’, let us call them. Elected, not by universal suffrage, but by the charities, to represent them. According to an electoral system devised, and supervised, by the Charity Commission. No mere front organisations for political parties, mind; but properly autonomous charities.

One half of the system, then: democracy. (The etymology, of course, is from the Greek: a conjunction of demos and kratía, whole-of-the people-rule.) The other half: ‘agapacracy’, a conjunction of agapé and kratía, charity-rule.

‘Agapacracy’: I have coined the word. It is an idea as maverick as the idea of universal suffrage was in Hegel’s day. However, Geist (Spirit) moves on.

Two Alternative Visions of Second-Chamber Reform

In order to appreciate the merits of the ‘agapacratic’ proposal outlined above, let us consider two other recent suggestions, in this regard. First: the proposals made by the Labour Party-sponsored Commission on the U. K.’s Future, presided over by Gordon Brown; set up in 2020 and reporting in the autumn of 2022.⁵ And second: the proposals sketched out in the book, The Politics of Virtue by John Milbank and Adrian Pabst (2016).⁶ Thus:

(a) The Labour Party Report

Reacting against the perceived ethical dereliction of the Tory government under Boris Johnson, the Report envisages a ‘much tougher new system for enforcing ethical standards in public life.’ In the first instance, its main focus is on the more immediate initiatives to be taken by an incoming Labour government. But, in the longer run, it looks forward to a grand ‘Constitutional Convention’ to debate and decide upon a wholesale rebooting of the British political system, with a view to the general restoration of national morale.

As regards reform, specifically, of the House of Lords: it surveys the history of this from the first Parliament Act, in 1911, onwards. That Act, triggered by the refusal of the Conservative-dominated House of Lords to pass the ‘people’s budget’ of 1909, entirely abolished the Lords’ previous power of veto over money bills; and, with regard to other bills, reduced its veto-powers to the imposition of a two-years delay. In 1949, the second Parliament Act further reduced that, to a one-year delay. Subsequently, in 1958 for the first time, life peers were introduced. And the Labour government of 1997 removed most, though not all, of the hereditary peers.

But the 1911 Act, in its preamble, is called a temporary measure, pending much more radical democratic reform. And that promise, so the Report argues, has never adequately been fulfilled. There were still, at the time of the Report, ninety-one hereditary peers. (The up to twenty-six bishops are not in fact mentioned.) And with the number of peers fluctuating at around eight hundred, the present House is the second largest legislative chamber in the world, exceeded only by the Chinese National People’s Congress; far larger, it is argued, than necessary; and swollen, recently, by scandalous Tory use of prime ministerial patronage, not least the practice of awarding peerages to party donors.

The Report advocates a drastic cut in the number of peers, to perhaps two hundred; full-time parliamentarians, democratically elected by universal suffrage, only on a different electoral cycle from that of the Commons, and according to an electoral system which remains unspecified. As for the Upper House’s role, it is proposed that this should continue to involve the ‘constructive scrutiny of legislation and government policy’, on the same basis as at present. It should however also have a particular responsibility (a) for ‘bringing together the voices of the different nations and regions of the UK at the centre of government’; (b) for ‘monitoring adherence to standards in public life’; and (c) ‘most significant of all, [for] exercising new but precisely drawn powers to safeguard the constitution of the United Kingdom and the distribution of power within it’. The Report, indeed, draws attention to the one exception to the general abolition of the old House of Lords’ veto-power in the 1911 Parliament Act: namely, their Lordships’ continuing ability to prevent the House of Commons from over-riding the usual five-year limit on the time elapsing between general elections. And it is proposed to amplify this already-existing restraint on the potential hubris of the Commons by giving the reformed Upper House additional powers of enforcement with regard to the currently non-binding Sewel Convention of 1999: that is, the principle that the U. K. government will never normally legislate on matters within the devolved responsibility of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies, without the express consent of those Assemblies.

The new Upper House envisaged here will accordingly be called an ‘Assembly of the Nations and Regions’.

There is, I think, one basic objection to this proposal as a whole. The trouble is that it is a party-political proposal, which with regard to the selection of Upper-House members, or Senators, will merely replace one form of party-political process, prime-ministerial patronage, with another, the formation of competing party candidate-lists. Elected on some variant of the same universal-suffrage basis as members of the Commons, these Senators will have a different remit, but their source of authority will be identical. This is potentially a recipe for bitter conflict; as the two Houses compete with one another over matters of disagreement between them. Currently, again, the tone of debate in House of Lords tends to be altogether more civilised than that prevailing in the Commons. The presence of numerous cross-benchers helps in that regard. But those cross-benchers would likely disappear, in this Assembly envisaged by the Labour Party.

The members of an agapacratic Senate, by contrast, would be there as representatives, not of political parties, but of organisations obliged to remain, demonstrably, independent of political parties. They would thus have quite a different sort of authority. Their debates, therefore, would not consist of partisan point-scoring, the way that debates in the House of Commons inevitably tend to. This would surely produce a far richer complementarity between the two Houses.

(b) Milbank and Pabst

As Milbank and Pabst put it: ‘The House of Lords can be regarded as the natural, organic place for the culminative representation and participation of civil society in the political arena’. I agree!

They envisage a reformed Upper House, functioning as a grand ‘Association of Associations’. Part elected, part appointed, part nominated, this ‘associative Lords’ would comprise five elements:

1. ‘Representatives of all faiths in recognition of the contribution that religious communities make to community cohesion and the public, common good.’
2. ‘Representatives of towns, cities and counties to enhance the presence of localities and regions at the centre.’
2. ‘Representatives of towns, cities and counties to enhance the presence of localities and regions at the centre.’
3. ‘Public and private sector employees such as doctors, nurses, teachers, managers, administrators and workers.’
4. ‘Distinguished figures from an array of sectors and professions, including universities, trade unions, the civil service, the armed forces, the police, business, law, sports, the arts and the sciences.’
5. ‘A continued self-elected number of representatives of the hereditary peerage, whose role must be re-thought in terms of the ecological guardianship of land and local culture.’

This is a bit of a puzzling mix of heterogeneous categories. No indication is given of how such an Upper House might actually be put together: on what principle each category would be allocated a particular number of representatives; or how the allocation might be carried out. Agapacracy has the advantage of a much more readily explicable logic; as I hope to show, potentially providing much clearer guidance.

The inclusion, here, of ‘representatives of all faiths’ overlaps with agapacracy. (I absolutely deplore the use of the word ‘faith’ in the plural, but never mind!⁷) Milbank and Pabst speak of these representatives having such a role ex officio, as the Lords Spiritual currently do. But I consider it better that the role of Senator should be a full-time occupation; which of course it could not be in that case. So, I would have them replaced, in the Anglican context, by representatives elected by the General Synod. (These might, or might not, then be a new sort of bishop …) And, mutatis mutandis, the same in every religious context, alike. Also, of course, including the organised Humanists in this category.

I am not sure, on the other hand, about including ‘representatives of towns, cities and counties.’ For, would not that simply mean, again, opening the door to full-blown party politics, in what ideally would be a domain representing quite a different mode of civil activism? The House of Commons, quite rightly, includes representatives of every geographical corner of the U.K., every town, every city, every county. Why replicate this?

The inclusion of categories 3 and 4 seems to derive from old-fashioned, romantic Christian Socialist nostalgia for mediaeval guilds.⁸ Milbank and Pabst actually speak of the ideal Upper House as a ‘meta-guild’.⁹ How well does this fit, though, with present-day reality? The role played by non-charitable pressure groups, of all sorts, in helping energise party politics may be positive, or it may be negative: trade unions sponsoring the Labour Party, wealthy businesses funding the Conservative Party, and so forth. But there is nothing intrinsic to such pressure groups that points beyond the limitations of party politics; as the work of charities potentially does.

As for the residue of the hereditary peerage still included here, for the ‘ecological guardianship of land and local culture’: would not that purpose be better, less controversially, served by including the appropriate charities, as such?

‘Agapacracy’: Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the basic rationale of ‘agapacracy’?

To recapitulate: agapacracy is the determining principle of one half of an ideal, hybrid legislature; the other half of which would be democracy. All citizens are required to obey the law. Therefore democracy, rightly, gives all citizens a share in electing the legislators. But democracy, in the primary sense of majority-rule considered purely in itself, does nothing to promote a proper ethical spirit of generosity towards foreigners, or minorities. Nor, considered purely in itself, does it do anything to prevent manipulation, by propaganda. On the contrary! Indeed, it is constantly liable to exacerbate manipulative class conflict. It also tends to favour short-termism in the outlook of governments limping from one election to the next, and failing properly to consider the interests of future generations. In all these regards, it needs correctives. Agapacracy is, in principle, the most systematic organisation of such correctives.

Thus, I repeat, whereas a good democracy is governed by well-informed representatives of the will of the majority, agapacracy, by contrast, is an immediate counter-balance to the intrinsic shortcomings of democracy, in that it is the work of delegates charged with representing the public conscience, precisely insofar as this forever transcends the will of the majority, no matter how well informed the majority may be, as regards their own true self-interest – that is, insofar as it remains merely self-interest.

In a bicameral legislature, agapacracy is the ethos of an ideal Upper House. The Lower House, given primacy in constituting the executive arm of the state, ideally embodies democratic legitimacy. The Upper House however, responsible for revising legislation and, where necessary, restraining a populist majority in the Lower House, ideally embodies moral authority. It is the arena in which the state most immediately encounters civil society, at its most authoritative. As such, its ethos needs to be kept as distinct as possible from the party politics of the lower House. Of course, good party politics may be more or less porous to agapacratic influence; but the primary proper purpose of political parties is to facilitate democracy. Whereas, a debating chamber primarily dedicated to the spirit of agapacracy has to draw upon the energies of quite another species of organisation.

Given that the chief store of already organised moral authority within civil society is, in general, the charitable sector, an agapacratic Upper House will be elected by the charities. This privilege will thus not only be a reward for the charities’ contribution to the workings of the public conscience in action; but also, a recognition of their consequent hands-on expertise.

A major role of the Upper House in modern bicameral legislatures has always tended to be restraint on the vagaries of populism; working as an institutional check on demagoguery. As Vice-President Aaron Burr famously declared in his valedictory address to the United States Senate in 1805:

This house is a sanctuary; a citadel of law, of order, and of liberty; it is here – it is here in this exalted refuge – here, if anywhere, will be resistance made to the storms of political frenzy and the silent arts of corruption. And if the Constitution be destined ever to perish by the sacrilegious hands of the demagogue or the usurper, which God avert, its expiring agonies will be witnessed on this floor. ¹⁰

In general, the American Founding Fathers admired the British House of Lords for, as they saw it, exercising just such a role. And according to Hegel, likewise: the good state, as such, will essentially maintain a steady equilibrium between the need for unifying political focus (embodied in the monarch) and the need for maximum governmental openness to the legitimate concerns of the citizenry (via the legislature). There is an endemic risk of conflict here – provoked by tyranny on one side and by populism on the other side. A risk needing to be resisted by the two mediating agencies, (a) of the civil service and (b) of the Upper House.

Aristocracy, however, having now lost the necessary authority to do the job here, agapacracy would be an ideal mutation of this primary mediating role of the Upper House.

2. What will count as a ‘charity’, for this purpose?

The list of qualifying organisations will largely, although not entirely, be the same as the current list of charities recognised by the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

The current list includes the following twelve categories of charity, according to ‘charitable purpose’:

(a) the prevention or relief of poverty
(b) the advancement of education
(c) the advancement of religion
(d) the advancement of health or the saving of lives
(e) the advancement of citizenship or community development
(f) the advancement of the arts, culture, heritage or science
(g) the advancement of amateur sport
(h) the advancement of human rights, conflict resolution and reconciliation or the promotion of religious or racial harmony or equality and diversity
(i) the advancement of environmental protection or improvement
(j) the relief of those in need, by reason of youth, age, ill health, disability, financial hardship or other disadvantage
(k) the advancement of animal welfare
(l) the promotion of the efficiency of the armed forces of the Crown, or of the efficiency of the police, fire and rescue services or ambulance services.

If you want a definition: a charity is any organisation essentially seeking to help implement the demands of the public conscience, un-mixed with the partisan self-assertion of a particular embattled ethnic or class identity. With this proviso, any organisation essentially dependant, for its funding and voluntary support, on appeal to the public conscience, counts as a charity.

Let the combative representation of ethnic or class interests be left to political parties. No front-organisation of a political party should be accorded charitable status, for electoral purposes. And neither should any organisation advocating violence, instead of, or alongside its appeal to the public conscience. The Charity Commission, for the most part, operates according to these criteria. Yet, there remain anomalies. The Campaign Against the Arms Trade, to take just one example, is not presently recognised as a charity: too ‘political’, it is said. However, CAAT is not aligned to any political party. Nor, so far as I am aware, has it ever advocated violence. Its supporters tend to be pacifists. As I would understand the criteria, it is absolutely a charity, a pure appeal to the public conscience: one might place it in either one of categories (b), (d) or (h). – Why not?

On the other hand: should public schools (in the British sense of fee-paying private schools) count as charities, for electoral purposes? In my view: no. The Charity Commission has them down as fully fledged charities. And yet, they scarcely meet the (vital) criterion of not serving combative class-interests!¹¹

No doubt, the refereeing of an agapacratic regime by a new (U.K. wide) Charity Commission will generate all sorts of controversy. This, though, is by no means to be regarded as a drawback to such a system. On the contrary, what could be more desirably educational, than for debate to rage over the proper nature of agapé and, in systematic detail, the ways it ought to impact upon public policy?

3. How would an agapacratic system actually function?

The supervisory role of the Charity Commission will clearly be crucial. Once it had got going, the agapacratic Senate itself, as a whole, would, I guess, elect the members of the Commission.

Charities with related concerns would need to cluster together into non-geographical ‘constituencies.’ Each of these might then, in negotiation with the Charity Commission, decide upon an appropriate electoral system for itself, to return a specified number of Senators. (So, as I have said, the Church for England for example might look to its General Synod, to serve as an electoral college.) Each context will require different arrangements.

In order to determine the number of votes allocated to each charity, there will be required some formula for measuring, so to speak, their ‘moral credit’. One obvious measure would be the number of volunteer hours mobilised. Another measure: the scale of the charity’s expenditure, funded by free-will donations, directly spent on its specific charitable purpose.¹² Such a financial measure would thus exclude (a) expenditure funded by the state, from tax revenue, channelled by the charity; (b) expenditure funded by commercial enterprise, under the aegis of the charity; (c) expenditure on publicity with a view to fund-raising; (d) expenditure on the sort of administrative costs liable to be incurred by any substantial enterprise, alike whether charitable or not (offices and their furnishings, pensions, legal and accountancy fees, etc.). ‘Moral credit’, as a source of electoral entitlement, would, in short, simply accrue from the actual doing of the good works for which the charity was originally set up. Thus, it would serve as the best possible measure of already institutionalised moral authority; the authority which an ideal Upper House would then seek to gather together, and directly incorporate into the governance of the state.

(It may also be argued that differences in score between the various categories of charity would need to be somewhat levelled out, so as to maximise the sheer range of diverse expertise that ends up being mobilised ...)

Many of the most active, and expert, Upper House-members in the pre-existent system would no doubt be liable to reappear in the newly reformed, agapacratic Upper House; only, in quite a different representative capacity.

4. How might the transition to such a system come about?

The first prerequisite would be a growing disgust with untrammelled democratic party politics, as a whole.

Suppose such disgust developed to a much greater extent than at present. At first, this might be good news for hitherto marginal, populist parties. But, then, suppose the populists gained power, and, being incompetent, were also widely seen to flounder. Suppose this were to happen repeatedly. After several such cycles, a countervailing demand for agapacracy might become the unifying common focus for an extensive alliance of public conscience movements. (By ‘public conscience movements’ I mean fresh currents of ethical critique, transcending both narrow religious-confessional and party-political loyalty; often close kin to certain charities, but more diffuse. The first such movement was the campaign for the abolition of slavery, launched in the U.K. in 1787. They have proliferated, above all, in the last several decades ...)

A series of citizens’ assemblies might serve to clarify the basic idea. And, little by little, it might at last become such a vote-winner that political parties reluctantly start to adopt it; notwithstanding the loss of party-political patronage involved. For, after all, that loss of patronage will also affect their party-political opponents.

5. How long do you imagine this taking?

Two hundred years.

But who knows?

At this stage, what is needed is just to give the idea a name, and make some rough preliminary sketches.