Colourful Tory peer with an instinct for making trouble
When Michael Onslow, who has died at the age of 73, succeeded his father to become seventh Earl of Onslow in 1971, he rapidly came to the conclusion that his constitutional duty as a working peer was to be a nuisance. Though his family had been Tory for generations, it retained a liberal streak ? "Whiggish", as he would have put it ? which ensured that his instinct for trouble-making was not directed exclusively at Labour governments.
Among other causes, he favoured the abolition of the ancient right of hereditary peers like himself to sit in the modern House of Lords, and championed a two-thirds-elected house. But when Labour's 1999 compromise allowed 92 hereditaries to survive, he enjoyed teasing the appointed peers by reminding them that he at least had been elected, albeit by fellow lords who admired his activism.
As a genuine aristocrat of the old school, in an era when "toff" or "grandee" was too liberally scattered around his party, Onslow felt able to wear his pedigree lightly. Unsnobbish, he made friends easily and on Radio 4 once said that his grandfather regarded theirs as "a rather middle-class peerage", because the Onslows had not been one of the great Whig families which overthrew the Stuart monarchy in 1688. But nor had they paid Lloyd George for their seat either.
The results of Onslow's many campaigns were mixed. A vocal opponent of capital punishment and racism (the army nurtured a "passive" version, he observed), Onslow criticised Enoch Powell's views on immigration and called Ian Smith's 1965 declaration of independence in Rhodesia, the future Zimbabwe, treason to the crown. But he also voted against the Maastricht Treaty on European Union and what he saw as over-zealous Brussels legislation (abattoir closure for example), and split one of his private clubs by proposing Norman Tebbit for membership.
Onslow's ebullient flamboyance (he favoured the wearing of bow ties) combined with his mischief-making, large booming presence and theatrical dress sense, could irritate more workmanlike colleagues who pored over the small print of legislation. But he was rarely dull and brought to debate a wide range of experiences no longer common to the upper chamber: those of soldier, farmer, hunter, humorist. He successfully appeared on Have I Got News for You (twice) and presented Supertunes, a five-part series on Radio 3 devoted to his eclectic musical tastes (subjects included rap, ambient house, acid jazz, jungle and thrash metal). "It's time to get trippin' with me, Lord Onslow," he would announce.
Onslow was born to a father who later served as deputy chief whip in the Lords under the last quasi-aristo regimes of Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan in the 50s. After Eton and the Sorbonne, he served in Aden during his national service as an officer in the Life Guards and briefly became a professional photographer before joining Lloyd's as an underwriter. His arrival in the City was marked by the loss of his pet monkey on the London Underground.
But most of his financial activities came to be focused on the 800 acres of Surrey which his family retained to farm when they gave Clandon Park, near Guildford, the family seat since 1641, to the National Trust in 1956. The big house was given an elaborate renovation and opened to the public, while the family moved into a smaller bailiff's house on the estate without regret.
A lover of gossip, Onslow frequented the nearby Onslow Arms and once chased a wayward bullock down the A3 on a horse. He bred canaries and loved wildlife, but also enjoyed fox-hunting and organised shoots on his estate.
The Onslows could trace their rise to Richard Onslow of Blackfriars who became speaker of the Commons in 1566, the first of three Onslows to hold the office. A baronetcy in the 17th century morphed into a peerage in 1716 when Sir Arthur Onslow, ex-speaker and chancellor of the exchequer, became Baron Onslow. As the seventh Earl once explained, "getting pissed with Pitt the Younger" ensured upgrades to viscount, then earl, nearly a century later.
In the late 20th century Onslow could see the "illogicality of having any power over his fellow citizens" just for boozing with Pitt and urged Margaret Thatcher to reform the Lords before a future Labour government botched the task. This was how he regarded Tony Blair's efforts after 1997, a process still not resolved at the time of his death. After welcoming Lord Cranborne's backstairs deal to save the 92, Onslow "conscientiously abstained" on the vote to expel the bulk of hereditaries in 1999, but soldiered on as an elected peer, keen on what he regarded as upholding English liberties against ID cards, stricter asylum controls and the hunting ban. He was a member of the peers human rights committee.
After his fellow old Etonian, David Cameron, became Tory leader in 2005, Onslow wrote him an open letter in the Observer, arguing that successful Tories use "conservative and traditional methods for constructive change" to benefit the people. "Something is missing from our rhetoric. We have a government by a party that reinvented itself by being ashamed of its roots and determinedly betrayed the traditions and ideas of its founders. They may well have been right so to do, but they cannot be trusted to hold dear the traditions of others," he wrote of New Labour.
His was a romantic view and Cameron disappointed him. But Onslow persisted until the end. As late as March he was in the Lords urging Labour's Lord Falconer to scupper the coalition's fixed-term parliaments bill and complaining that the government was now "doolally over constitutional reform".
In April, his daughter's wedding plans were accelerated ? " we did it all in a week,'' he said ? to be certain that he would live to witness the day. He is survived by his wife, Robin, and their three children. His son, Rupert, succeeds to the earldom.
? Michael William Coplestone Dillon Onslow, seventh Earl of Onslow, born 28 February 1938; died 14 May 2011
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