Gallery

Abstract

The Lords is certainly more archaic than the nation's educational system. Witness the swearing in recently (March 26th) of our first West Indian peer — Baron Constantine of Maraval in Trinidad and Tobago and of Nelson in the County Palatine of Lancaster (better known as Sir Learie, the ex‐Test cricketer) — with yer actual Hereditary Earl Marshall of England, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Marquess of Cholmondeley, in attendance to give special distinction to the occasion. The bowing and scraping, hat‐raising and wand‐waving, robes and regalia, is — to my untutored mind — more akin to the black art of Voodoo than democracy at work. Nevertheless when the noble Lords get down to it and concentrate their collective mind on a serious and important issue they are still worth listening to; they talk the kind of good sense which is born of experience and shorn of party prejudice. Often it comes as a welcome relief to much of the Commons nonsense. Thus when the peers went ‘swanning’ a short time ago (March 19th) and discussed in detail and at great length (for nealy seven hours) the Swann Report: The Flow into Employment of Scientists, Engineers and Technologists (Cmnd. 3760) it was a further encouraging example of the oft‐criticized Upper Chamber at its best.

Citation

Render, J. (1969), "Gallery", Education + Training, Vol. 11 No. 5, pp. 202-203. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb016139