Background

In 1910, Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith introduced the Parliament Bill, which would have removed the House of Lords' right to permanently block Bills coming up from the House of Commons. The Bill repeatedly passed the Commons by a large majority, but remained stalled in the House of Lords, which was largely made up of Conservatives and had no intention of seeing its powers reduced.

In order to force through the passage of the bill, Asquith asked King George V to create enough Liberal peers to give supporters of the draft law a majority in the House of Lords. The King agreed, but stated he would have done only if the Lords rejected the Bill another time. In the aftermath of this new announcement, those who had until then opposed the bill divided in two factions: the hedgers and the ditchers or die-hards.

Hedgers

Those who reluctantly decided to vote for Asquith's proposal were called hedgers, a term used to define investors who "play it safe" and avoid risk as much as possible; hedgers reasoned that the Lords by that point had only two choice: either vote down the bill, in which case many new Liberal peers would have been appointed, allowing the bill to pass regardless, or pass the bill. While in both cases the bill was going to be enacted, no option was worse for Conservatives than the first one: had it materialized they would have lost whatever political influence they had, and the upper chamber would have effectively become a rubber stamp for Liberal governments. As such, they believed the bill passing with no Liberal peers being appointed was the lesser evil, and acted accordingly.

Ditchers

Those who decided to take a principled stand against the Bill, feeling unable to vote for something they did not truly support, were called "last ditchers" or "die-hards". This latter category was mostly made up of Tory farmers, landowners, and aristocracy, who were staunchly opposed to all social 'equalitarian' reforms limiting the privileges of the Nobility.

Passage of the bill

The Parliament Bill passed in the House of Lords on 11 August 1911 with 131 votes in favor and 114 against; it was enacted as the Parliament Act 1911 shortly thereafter.