Peer convicted of gay sex offences could be expelled from Lords under new rules
An hereditary peer who was prosecuted for gay sex offences in a trial that scandalised 1950s Britain could lose his seat in the House of Lords under new proposals.
Last month it was revealed that four Labour peers had discussed changing legislation at the behest of lobbyists for payments of up to £120,000.
The story was broken by Sunday Times journalists who posed a lobbyists and held meetings with peers on behalf of ficticious clients.
The revelations led Justice Secretary Jack Straw to propose that members of the House of Lords who have been convicted of a criminal offence should be expelled and stripped of their titles.
Jeffrey Archer, who was convicted of perjury, Lord Watson, who was convicted of arson and Lord Black, who was convicted of fraud, are all at risk.
One of the 90 hereditary peers elected in 1999 to continue to serve in the Lords is also in danger of losing his seat.
Lord Montagu, 82, was jailed after a notorious trial for homosexual offences in 1954.
In 2007 he said that he is bisexual in a Channel 4 documentary about the case and its aftermath, when the public and press unexpectedly began to question whether homosexuality should be criminalised.
Lord Montagu, a distinguished member of the British aristocracy and founder of the National Motor Museum, has had two wives since the trial and has maintained his innocence since the guilty verdict.
He succeeded to his title aged two.
He was imprisoned along with Daily Mail journalist Peter Wildeblood and Dorset landowner Michael Pitt-Rivers, Montagu’s cousin, after he was found guilty of “conspiracy to incite certain male persons to commit serious offences with male persons.”
Wildeblood had met the 28-year-old Edward Montagu, Third Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, through a publicity agent.
Lord Montagu invited him to stay at his isolated beach hut in Beaulieu in August 1952 along with his then lover, 23-year-old army nurse Corporal Eddie McNally, and his RAF friend, John Reynolds.
In January 1954, police launched simultaneous dawn raids on Wildeblood, Montagu and Pitt-Rivers, who had also been staying at Beaulieu that weekend.
Wildeblood had dramatically told court during the trial that he was gay.
He also pioneered the cause by writing Against the Law and openly discussing what it was like to be a homosexual.
In the wake of the case the Home Office set up the Wolfenden Committee to consider changing the law.
Consensual sex in private between homosexuals, was parlially decriminalised by Parliament in 1967, but the age of consent was set at 21.
