The peerage is a legal system of largely hereditary titles in the United Kingdom, which constitute the ranks of British nobility and is part of the British honours system. The term is used both collectively to refer to the entire body of noble titles (or a subdivision thereof), and individually to refer to a specific title (and generally has an initial capital in the former case and not the latter). The holder of a peerage is termed a peer.

In modern practice, no new hereditary peerages are created (except for members of the Royal Family), but only life peerages which carry the personal right to sit and vote in the House of Lords. Peerages, like all modern British honours, are created by the British monarch, taking effect when letters patent are affixed with the Great Seal of the Realm. Her Majesty's Government advises the Sovereign on a new peerage, under a process which scrutinises appointments to political honours. Currently a few hereditary peers, who are elected to represent the others, also retain the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords, as of 1 July 2011 (2011 -07-01)^[update] only 90 members sitting by virtue of a hereditary peerage remain.

Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC (born 3 April 1925), formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, is a British Labour Party politician, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for fifty years, and was also a Cabinet Minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.

His successful campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963. In the Labour Government of 1964–1970 he served first as Postmaster General, where he oversaw the opening of the Post Office Tower, and later as a notably "technocratic" Minister of Technology. In the period when the Labour Party was in Opposition, Benn served for a year as the Chairman of the Labour Party. In the Labour Government of 1974–1979, he returned to the Cabinet, initially serving as Secretary of State for Industry, before being made Secretary of State for Energy, retaining his post when James Callaghan replaced Wilson as Prime Minister. During the Labour Party's time in Opposition during the 1980s, he was seen as the party's prominent figure on the left, and the term "Bennite" has come to be used in Britain for someone of a more radical left-wing position.

Doreen D. Lawrence, née Graham OBE (born 24 October 1952) is a British campaigner and writer who first came to public attention in 1993 as the mother of Stephen Lawrence, a black British teenager who was murdered in a racial attack in South East London.

Lawrence was born in the British crown colony of Jamaica in 1952. At the age of nine, she immigrated to England. She completed her education in south-east London, before becoming a bank worker. In 1972, she married Neville Lawrence; their son Stephen was born in 1974. They divorced in 1999.

Following the murder of their son in 1993, Doreen and Neville Lawrence believed that the Metropolitan Police investigation was not being conducted in a professional manner, citing incompetence and racism as prime flaws. In 1999, after years of campaigning, and with the support of many in the community, the media and politics, a wide-ranging judicial inquiry was established by Jack Straw, the Home Secretary. Chaired by Sir William MacPherson, the inquiry was to investigate the circumstances of Stephen's death. The public inquiry was the subject of intense media interest which became international when it concluded that the Metropolitan Police was "institutionally racist" and that this was one of the primary causes of their failure to solve the case.

Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; born 21 April 1926) is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms, and head of the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations. She is also head of state of the Crown Dependencies.

Elizabeth was born in London, and educated privately at home. Her father acceded to the throne as George VI in 1936 on the abdication of his brother Edward VIII. She began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, in which she served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. On the death of her father in 1952, she became Head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon. Her coronation service in 1953 was the first to be televised. Between 1956 and 1992, the number of her realms varied as territories gained independence and some realms became republics. Today, in addition to the first four aforementioned countries, Elizabeth is Queen of Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.