
How the British aristocracy preserved their power - BrandiATMuhkuh
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/07/how-the-aristocracy-preserved-their-power
======
tryingagainbro
Read the article, and unless I missed it, they didn't mention the real reason:
Primogeniture, or one person keeps it all. So you have 100,000 acres from the
15th century and the oldest son gets to it all, intact. If it was split over
the centuries, they'd have next to nothing.
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/to-the-
ma...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/to-the-manor-born-
the-female-aristocrats-battling-to-inherit-the-title-8656310.html)
[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/10/new-duke-
of-...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/10/new-duke-of-
westminster-hugh-grosvenor-inherit-fortune)

~~~
Quarrelsome
bring back Gavelkind?

~~~
tryingagainbro
Why? I see nothing wrong with the this system, _the original owner and the
state agree to it._

Probably UK is better since a huge estate can make /generate much more income
/employment than a 1000 plots of 1.2 acres each.

They have power because they have money. A window washer that is the second
cousin of Queen Elizabeth and with a nobility title is just a window washer,
barely making ends meet. Now Queen Elizabeth's second cousin with 50,000
acres, a nobility title and two castles is a different thing :)

------
Aloha
This article presents the idea that aristocracy on whole in Britain is as
powerful as it ever was - which is a fallacy - the aristocracy was devastated
by the death of an entire generation of its best and brightest in World War I,
it was bled deeply by taxes between 1918 and 1980, it was stripped largely of
its political power (reduction of hereditary peers, removal of the veto power
of the House of Lords, removal of the House of Lords as a court of appeal) -
those who survived (with wealth) have survived because of either the specific
assets they owned - or because of good business savvy, or a combination of
both.

Consider that a majority of the peerage didn't come out still owning estates -
most of them fell out into the middle class and 'work for a living' \- even
those with great wealth, now mostly act as businessmen rather than merely
shepherds of that wealth.

~~~
gwern
Overall, this article is a tissue of misleading statistics, anecdotes, and
lack of context. The largest figure mentioned is 4 billion pounds; which is
about as much as you might earn by selling an odd video game about crude
blocks to Microsoft. Wow, so impress, much 'preservation of power'. The House
of Lords rhetoric is also odd - how do anecdotes about a largely inactive
house they've been mostly expelled out of show that they "preserved their
power"? Or take this one:

> The figures for Scotland are even more striking. Nearly half the land is in
> the hands of 432 private individuals and companies. More than a quarter of
> all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of
> aristocratic families. In total they hold some 2.24m acres, largely in the
> Lowlands.

'private individuals and companies' != 'aristocracy', by any means. You could
say something very similar about the USA, which has not had an aristocracy in
200+ years - because _all_ countries have considerable wealth inequality. And,
uh, what exactly are we supposed to take away from dicing Scottish
landholdings into "estates of more than 5,000 acres"? Perhaps we are supposed
to be astonished by the fact that rich people buy London real estate and
"rent" it out? Or perhaps we are supposed to be impressed by

> According to the 2016 Sunday Times Rich List, 30 peers are each worth £100m
> or more.

So in other words, they're collectively worth about as much as Magic Leap or
Slack? Truly impressive, I see now that England is ruled as much as ever by
the aristocracy, it is merely hidden better. Hang the bastards!

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I think you're trying too hard.

Minecraft is a phenomenon. Why would you feel the need to talk it down as an
"odd video game" just so that its price doesn't seem so high.

You apparently also think that an individual being worth the same as 1/30th of
a highly successful business even though their main claim to fame was being
born to the right person isn't remarkable.

~~~
gwern
If Minecraft were the only video game in history, or the most successful one,
or the majority of the video game industry, then you might have a point. But
it is merely one of many franchises or players along with Mario, League of
Legends, Starcraft, Dota, WoW, Angry Birds etc etc. That is my point: none of
these numbers are given any kind of context and OP is relying on sheer
innumeracy to intimidate the reader. "4 _billion_ pounds! Wow, that's a lot!"
Actually no, it's not, it's a tiny portion of an entire economy (UK national
wealth is more like 9000 billion pounds). What OP needs to do is show that
aristocrats control a large and relatively unchanged from historical levels of
the economy, and they fail abysmally at that, to the point where you have to
conclude the opposite: if the richest aristocrat they can find is that poor
and these are the best statistics they can come up with, that rather disproves
their case.

> You apparently also think that an individual being worth the same as 1/30th
> of a highly successful business even though their main claim to fame was
> being born to the right person isn't remarkable.

It isn't. The Forbes list has many non-aristocrats who inherited much or all
of their money and are vastly wealthier. Consider the Waltons heirs. As I
said, wealth inequality is nothing new or interesting.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Surely you choose Minecraft because it was unusual, unusual in delivering so
much wealth to one person. The creator of Mario isn't as rich is he? You could
point to a lot of people who have contributed amazing things to society and
who aren't even millionaires, but you did exactly the opposite. You found a
game dev who was very unusually a Billionaire, then you talked down the
product that made him so rich as if he wasn't even special.

You also said the House of Lords is "largely inactive" which doesn't really
seem connected with reality either.

Do you mind sharing why you're so keen to minimise this?

~~~
gwern
> Surely you choose Minecraft because it was unusual, unusual in delivering so
> much wealth to one person.

Notch shared a lot of the money, hence my focus on the total sales price. Lots
of people have gotten extremely rich on an individual level from video games,
if you want to nitpick about that: Gabe Newell or Palmer Luckey. There are
other Asian examples, and a number of billionaires benefit heavily from video
games, like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. None of this affects my point: no
matter how you slice it, the quoted aristocrat is not particularly wealthy.

> You also said the House of Lords is "largely inactive" which doesn't really
> seem connected with reality either.

That's literally from the article.

> Do you mind sharing why you're so keen to minimise this?

Because I am incensed by lying with statistics. There is no excuse for lines
like "Nearly half the land is in the hands of 432 private individuals and
companies". _That is lying to the reader_ and trying to trick them.
Unforgivable.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The word inactive is not in the article. The article says the hereditery peers
seldom turned up, not that the house of lords stopped having a say in how the
country was run. The point the author is trying to make is the opposite of
yours, that they rule without bothering to even give the appearance of
interest in the affairs of those they rule over.

Can you explain why you think the quote about 432 landowners is a lie and what
it's trying to trick people into thinking?

Can I also note that taking a noble stand against misinformation and
misleading uses of numbers seems inconsistent with the points I've already
taken issue with.

~~~
gwern
If they are rarely showing up, then they are not shaping the debate or likely
doing anything but voting, assuming they are not merely having minimal quorums
and slacking on that as well; this inherently cedes all initiative and the
public debate, and is a huge loss of power. Imagine a president who didn't
bother to give speeches, travel, propose new legislation, or do much beyond
veto occasional legislation. How much power would he have? Darn little. And
they then lost most of that.

> Can you explain why you think the quote about 432 landowners is a lie and
> what it's trying to trick people into thinking?

It is a lie because it is implying that most or all of them are aristocrats
and implying 'private individuals' is a synonym for them and trying to get the
reader to not notice that technically 'individuals and corporations' !=
aristocrats and in fact many or most of them likely are not because of the
massive decimation in aristocratic wealth, while not even trying to make the
case for that; it is pure begging the question, it cannot add any evidence to
the claim the aristocracy still controls as large a fraction of national
wealth as it ever did (at best, you could reason backwards - 'assuming they
are still wealthy, then a large fraction of those 432 must be aristocrats').

------
keenerd
> The figures for Scotland are even more striking. Nearly half the land is in
> the hands of 432 private individuals and companies. More than a quarter of
> all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of
> aristocratic families. In total they hold some 2.24m acres, largely in the
> Lowlands.

This is balanced by their Right to Roam. For those in the US, this will sound
completely insane: there is no concept of trespassing provided you act
responsibly when on other's land. Access to the country is a common right, and
the owners are stewards to it.

~~Arguably, the most practical way for such a law to come into existence is
for the bulk of the land to be owned by a tiny minority, and for a democratic
majority to create the law.~~ Strike that, didn't research. Sorry.

~~~
pjc50
Edit: thankyou for amending your comment about this being a good way to
achieve right to roam. It's a rare thing from anyone on the internet to admit
any kind of inaccuracy.

This view ignores all the history and has it exactly backwards. A full
description would require at least one book, although I'd suggest starting
with [http://www.andywightman.com/poor-had-no-
lawyers](http://www.andywightman.com/poor-had-no-lawyers)

A few things which must be taken into account:

\- pre-feudal common ownership

\- confiscation of land during the 1700s Jacobite rebellions. "More than a
quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of
aristocratic families" is not at all surprising when you consider that those
families were given the land from its original owners and occupants at
gunpoint by the government.

\- the Highland Clearances

In short, the right to roam pre-existed; it was only removed by extremely
questionable action; and the minority who owned the land fought access to it.

(For the situation in England&Wales, start at the Kinder Scout mass trespass)

~~~
onetimeusename
The Jacobites were themselves aristocrats and were violently rebelling against
the monarchy. Also, the Highland Clearances were not acts of theft, the
landowners already owned the land at that point.

edit: I should also state that the Highland Clearances were complex but get
retold as: "rich people stole land from poor people" often.

~~~
dalbasal
_Highland Clearances were complex but get retold as: "rich people stole land
from poor people" often._

This is where I think we need to treat history differently from current
events, because concepts like ownership, title, rights and such are ultimately
subjective outside an agreed legal context. Obviously, there is disagreement
here.

I don't know much about that period, but there are countless examples of
similar things.

The system of land ownership was at one point, tribal (clannish). tribes
controled lands and chiefs control tribes, rights to the land negotiated
custom and familial means. Chiefs became lords. Tribesmen, tenants. Titles,
privelages and customs changed.

Eventually, the lords became modern peope, industrial era capitalists.
Economies became monetary. Clans ceased to exist. Titles became wealth.
Tenants became squatters.

I think it's hard to follow the history, while maintaining a modern sense of
property.

I can certainly see how people view the scottish peasant class as having a
moral claim to the property.

~~~
arethuza
"Chiefs became lords."

They became feudal lords by accepting the King of Scots as their feudal
overlord - this is what gave them the "ownership" of lands that had previously
been held communally.

 _" The Poor Had No Lawyers - ho Owns Scotland and How They Got it"_ covers
this and much more:

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006WB2E9Q/ref=dp-kindle-
redirec...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006WB2E9Q/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

Scotland has had well over a thousand years of legal shenanigans around land
ownership - it is amazingly complex for such a small country.

------
dalbasal
I think the short (or maybe trite) answer is _land_. The aristocratic
"investment thesis" held true in the long term. The UK hasn't had land reform
since the civil wars, so big landholdings didn't changed much except in
Ireland.

To pick a sentence amlost at random:

 _" More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are
held by a list of aristocratic families."_

Today the dominant economic institution is companies. You could make
statements like the one above and replace one with the other. Besides that,
it's largely similar. The moral mythology is completely different, but the
politics and economics largely hold true.

Tryagainbro brings up primogeniture, which is important. Companies have that
built in.

------
throw2016
These are sophisticated power and wealth structures that are adept at keeping
and growing their wealth and power intact over tens of generations.

The more wealth you have the more potential impact you have whatever the
system, and feudal power structures like the UK which were never broken unlike
say China and Russia with land reform have strong historical and real world
ties to power.

Beneficiaries will obviously justify or diminish its impact, and those not
doing well in the current system will direct their anger and frustration here.

Land is the source of wealth and power and is finite. These are generational
conflicts as societies figure out the best way to manage their assets and
resources. The aristocracy is simply self interested like all of us in doing
their best to retain what they have accumulated.

Capitalism has not solved or addressed inheritance, its a nod nod wink wink
kind of thing, and claims of equality and the level playing field while loudly
made do not hold up the slightest in the real world we live in.

~~~
maxxxxx
In Germany nobility is not as much in the public eye as in Britain but when
you read the news I am always surprised how many of them are still there with
enormous wealth.

~~~
lvkleist
Only the ones in the west. Most of the Prussian aristocrats who owned land in
what became western Poland or the German Democratic Republic were disowned and
fled/were killed.

------
hithereagain
Also interesting, this article about Venice, where (apparently) the wealthiest
families in 1427 are still the wealthiest families

[https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-
in-14...](https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are-
still-the-richest-families-in-florence/)

[http://voxeu.org/article/what-s-your-surname-
intergeneration...](http://voxeu.org/article/what-s-your-surname-
intergenerational-mobility-over-six-centuries)

------
eternalban
They incorporated select technocratic subsets of the society into the ruling
class (the embryonic "deep state"), engineered the 'personhood' of the
corporation, and have errected the global framework (currently incubating
until the demise of the "Last Empire") that will insure the continuity of
their lording it over the rest of us.

------
lurcio
As for the 'British' Crown, if my memory serves me right the Domesday book
records that William the Conq. did a 50/40/10 land split with the Church and
his nobles. (To this day a significant percentage of land is not even recorded
in the land registry. We might assume this is held in perpetuity without
falling under inheritance laws. Everyone else is to this day a tenant on the
land).

It would have been more than prodigal to lose when the system is in your
hands...

Daniel 4 is interesting in this regard: "This matter is by the decree of the
watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the
living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it
to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men."

Bless them!

~~~
pmyteh
That land is not registered in the Land Registry doesn't necessarily mean that
it's held in some kind of perpetual corporation. Compulsory registration on
sale was phased in after 1925 and, IIRC, you weren't obliged to register land
if it passed by inheritance or gift until very recently. That doesn't mean
that inheritance taxes weren't paid. It's not uncommon to come across
unregistered parcels of land in conveyancing even now; they're simply
registered when it becomes necessary.

~~~
tryingagainbro
_they 're simply registered when it becomes necessary._

How can you prove it's yours? or if someone challenges it, you register it?

This is weird, especially in a country with 1000+ years legal tradition. One
would assume that everything is registered, with the state owning the rest
that is not assigned to private parties.

In many third world countries it's common for people to work /live on the land
that "everyone" knows it's theirs--via family line--but can't prove /register
it legally (whatever the law is.)

~~~
pmyteh
> How can you prove it's yours? or if someone challenges it, you register it?

For an unregistered plot, in theory you demonstrate ownership by providing a
series of valid conveyancing deeds back to a valid original grant. If they're
lost, flawed, or destroyed in a fire, things can get messy. The Land
Registry's guide to handling first registration in situations where the deeds
are missing is a good example:
[https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-
registratio...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registration-
of-title-where-deeds-have-been-lost-or-destroyed/practice-guide-2-first-
registration-of-title-if-deeds-are-lost-or-destroyed)

In practice, if you've occupied the land continuously for a long period of
time then you can have possessory rights in the land even in the absence of a
good chain of title.

You're right that this is all pretty unsatisfactory, which is why the Land
Registry was set up in 1925 and registration made increasingly-more-compulsory
since then. But as pjc50 notes, we don't have a full cadastre, so we are where
we are.

Interestingly Scotland had a registration system (of conveyances rather than
of land per se) much earlier. So even within the UK we're not without
precedents.

~~~
mcguire
" _If they 're lost, flawed, or destroyed in a fire, things can get messy._"

This was a reasonably common occurrence in the American west. In particular, I
believe that's how most of the possessors of Spanish land grants in New Mexico
were dispossessed.

------
gumby
Even if the subject doesn't interest you: this is a masterfully written flame
worthy of reading on that basis. Certainly much more enjoyable than the more
typical polemics.

As for the article itself, I feel it sadly doesn't even make its own case
particularly well, cherry picking statistics and aggregating dissimilar data
(e.g. clumping aristos and private corporations together when looking at
Scottish landholding)

As it happens I agree politically with the writer that aristocracy is not a
good idea (though hard to eradicate in any society), not that I care much if
Great Britain has problems.

------
cmdkeen
Chris Bryant is of course a Labour MP. Intriguingly he was also caught up in
the expenses scandal. One does wonder whether his book (which is being
serialised here) manages to wonder about how the occupants of "the other
place" get and hold onto power.

It also manages to recycle many of the popular tropes about the aristocracy
avoiding taxes, perfectly legally, while ignoring the concept of noblesse
oblige which was for a long time the flip side of aristocratic privilege.
We're starting to see a similar concept return in the form of billionaires
being criticised if they fail to sign up to donate their money.

~~~
coldtea
> _It also manages to recycle many of the popular tropes about the aristocracy
> avoiding taxes, perfectly legally, while ignoring the concept of noblesse
> oblige which was for a long time the flip side of aristocratic privilege._

Yeah, so noble of them...

------
mathattack
I'm surprised the aristocracy survived the financial crisis. I would have
thought popular discontent would have killed their tax breaks.

------
Sacho
tl;dr: they're good businessmen and do their best to preserve the wealth they
were handed over from their parents.

The article spends too long telling irrelevant stories to make its few points:

\- owning land is a great way to get rich

\- the rich evade taxes by restructuring their business

\- investing in business keeps your family's wealth intact

\- networking from elite clubs helps you find opportunities to invest in

None of these points are specific to aristocrats. We all strive towards these
goals - my family started out living in a rented apartment, and their first
milestone was buying their own house. They wanted their kids to go to an elite
university so we could get good networking opportunities. Investing in
business is just a truism - past a certain point of wealth, it's no longer
worth it to sell your time for money, compared to investing.

The writer also spends some time carefully conflating the aristocracy of old
with the modern aristocrats, in a weird non-sequitur parallel. People of old
did something bad, therefore...what, exactly? This is bigotry and prejudice,
but we hate rich people, so it's okay.

As a whole this reminds me of Varys's riddle from Game of Thrones - if you are
so incensed at the aristocracy, why do you keep giving them power?

~~~
pjc50
> carefully conflating the aristocracy of old with the modern aristocrats

> preserve the wealth they were handed over from their parents

There's a conflict between these. If your father got his wealth by driving out
subsistence farmers at gunpoint, to what extent can you say it's nothing to do
with you and that your wealth is a totally meritocratic inheritance?

Note that owning land is a great _zero sum_ way to get rich. If the Duke of
Westminster owns half of London, and isn't interested in selling it, you can't
invest there.

> if you are so incensed at the aristocracy, why do you keep giving them power

Please explain how the people are incensed are also "giving them power" in any
meaningful sense?

~~~
Sacho
> There's a conflict between these. If your father got his wealth by driving
> out subsistence farmers at gunpoint, to what extent can you say it's nothing
> to do with you and that your wealth is a totally meritocratic inheritance?

Because it wasn't your father, it was your...how many generations are there
between us and the middle ages, again? This is a time jump in the article
itself:

> Historically, the British aristocracy’s defining feature was not a noble
> aspiration to serve the common weal but a desperate desire for self-
> advancement. They stole land under the pretence of piety in the early middle
> ages, they seized it by conquest, they expropriated it from the monasteries
> and they enclosed it for their private use under the pretence of efficiency.

> .....

> And when democracy finally and rudely shunted them aside, they found new
> means of preserving their extravagant riches without the tedium of
> pretending they sought the common interest. Far from dying away, they remain
> very much alive.

Moreover, the UK has been a democracy for quite some time now, and has had
ample time to address inheritance law, and land ownership law. Like the
article states:

> That is no accident. British laws on land tenure, inheritance tax, corporate
> governance and discretionary trusts still make it easy to hide wealth from
> public view. Land is subsidised, and taxed more lightly than residential
> property. Unearned income bears less of a burden than earned income.

The article claims that this is the secret to the power of the aristocracy.
This power is given to them by laws, designed and voted in by MPs, who are in
turn voted in by the people.

~~~
pjc50
> the UK has been a democracy for quite some time now, and has had ample time
> to address inheritance law, and land ownership law

This is true, and it hasn't had time to do it since first properly overruling
the Lords in 1911. For some reason the newspapers owned by Lord Rothermere
have agitated against it.

The Scottish government has had much less time (since May 1999) to work on the
subject and has got much further with land reform.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
And the tiny steps it has taken (e.g. suggesting it would be good to know who
owns all the land) were denounced as being akin to Mugabe's actions in
Zimbabwe by prime minister David Cameron's father-in-law who just happened to
be a major land owner.

------
pjc50
TLDR: property ownership, including leasehold; tax avoidance, such as through
trusts; and the House of Lords.

There are a lot fewer aristocracy than there were at the start of the 20th
century, but those that remain are extremely wealthy.

------
zeveb
> Historically, the British aristocracy’s defining feature was not a noble
> aspiration to serve the common weal but a desperate desire for self-
> advancement. They stole land under the pretence of piety in the early middle
> ages, they seized it by conquest, they expropriated it from the monasteries
> and they enclosed it for their private use under the pretence of efficiency.
> They grasped wealth, corruptly carved out their niche at the pinnacle of
> society and held on to it with a vice-like grip. They endlessly reinforced
> their own status and enforced deference on others through ostentatiously
> exorbitant expenditure on palaces, clothing and jewellery. They laid down a
> strict set of rules for the rest of society, but lived by a different
> standard.

That sounds like a very good description of the Bolsheviks the Guardian
supported so fervently.

