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The Dangers of The European Union
Below are Papers delivered by Philip Benwell MBE in Great Britain
THE CROWN V THE COMMONWEALTH REALMS THE CROWN OF THE COMMONWEALTH REALMS THE ASSOCIATION OF THE COMMONWEALTH REALMS THE QUEEN, THE REALMS AND EUROPE
Below are Papers delivered at the Sydney Conference of the Association of the Commonwealth Realms
PAPER - 1 AN OVERVIEW OF THE EUROPEAN UNION PAPER - 2 THE CROWN VERSUS THE EUROPEAN UNION PAPER 3 - WHY SHOULD WE BE CONCERNED PAPER 4 - CAN BRITAIN LEGALLY WITHDRAW
THE QUEEN AS A CITIZEN OF EUROPE
Matters of
By
Philip Benwell MBE,
That Britain has abrogated sovereignty to Europe is now undoubted.
The question is whether it may also have illicitly endangered the sovereignty of the Queen’s Realms and broken the intent of the Statute of Westminster?
Philip Benwell MBE, National Chairman of the Australian Monarchist League
has raised these issues during a tour of the United Kingdom in April and May of 2002 when speaking at a rally at Trafalgar Square and to a meeting of the Swinton Circle in the House of Lords as well as to other gatherings throughout Great Britain
@Copyright Philip Benwell MBE 24th April 2002 Box 1068, Double Bay 1360, Australia
THE ADDRESS TO THE ST. GEORGE’S DAY RALLY AT TRAFALGAR SQUARE Sunday April 21st 2002
It was two years ago when I spoke in this very spot to warn of the separation of the British Peoples. How we who have all derived from this great land are now so distant that even our courts have declared us foreigners one to another.
It is within living memory that so many people from the then colonies of the British Empire and later from the Realms rushed to the aid of the Motherland giving freely of our blood whenever called upon particularly in the two great wars of the last century.
We did this not just because we are one People but also in gratitude for the gift of constitutional freedom and democracy Britain freely gave to us. Never in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine that this very freedom and this very democracy matured in these islands over a thousand years of strife and conflict would be endangered by the acts of those elected to guard Britain’s welfare.
In past years, your colonies and particularly the British Realms of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, without reservation rushed to the defence of Great Britain when it was in danger and few families in our lands were untouched by the loss of loved ones.
We did this gladly in gratitude because Britain had always been looked upon as our ancestral homeland. However just sixteen years following the closure of the last World War, we of the Realms who all fought with you as one, were discarded as you would a faithful but unwanted dog, for in 1961 your Government sent out Duncan Sandys, your Commonwealth Minister, to tell us that Britain was joining Europe and its special relations with the Commonwealth and its commitments to the British Realms one to another were to be put to an end.
Later that year your Government introduced the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill and it was thus that so many of British descent were led to discover that their homeland had become for them a foreign country. British passports were denied to us, but the sting has been in the tail, for now British sovereign passports are also now denied to those in Britain itself!
Just as Europe was the battlefield which bound us in ties of blood, it became the catalyst which split those ties asunder.
Those former political leaders, revered by so many, Churchill, Attlee and in Australia, Menzies, all warned of the dire consequences, not of the creation of a trading block, but of political integration which was always to be the end purpose of the Treaty of Rome. That we in the Dominions have survived, and survived well, is a tribute to the secure nature of our constitutions which protects Australia and Canada, but not, unfortunately, New Zealand nor even Britain itself, against the perfidy of our politicians.
Although the same blood may mingle through our veins, years of treachery by our politicians have so separated us that today when we are allowed to arrive in what should be our spiritual homeland, we are cast out into the outer whilst your new European Allies, many of whom are the very people you pleaded with us to help save you from, are given special preference of entry.
Having betrayed us in the Realms, your Government then continued to humiliate Britain by humbling itself at the feet of Europe and committed upon its course then lied to and deceived not only the Commonwealth but the British People themselves.
Our Magna Carta, that holiest grail of our freedom, lies cast aside by the very Parliament that has been established to protect our Liberties.
Magna Carta and that other mainstay of our democracy, the Bill of Rights, have always been looked upon with derision by European politicians, for in Europe it is the State which is always supreme whereas within the British sphere it has always been our practice to place the rights and the liberties of the Individual above the interests of the State.
European politicians laugh at and deride the checks and balances existent within our Westminster System. European Governments have always been despotic.
We can understand this, but what we cannot understand, what we cannot accept, is the fact of British politicians themselves suborning Westminster to European political control when they realise very well how totally alien it is to the very essence of our British democracy.
Indeed Britain has never had friends in Europe. It has for a thousand years or more, stood alone as a sentinel of Christianity and freedom in a world of corruption and greed. These islands have had their times of evil and strife, but the seeds of decency and democracy implanted in the soul of the very People themselves have always won through.
Some sceptics have termed the European Union a 'farce'. I would venture, however, that it is anything but. Indeed it is the most dangerous force ever to invade our lives since 1066, for today we face a situation that within a few years there will be no England. There will be no Britain. The powers of Europe will have won; not due to their superiority in battle, nor to their political ingenuity but to the betrayal of the ancient liberties of this great land by those who are elected to govern us.
As has been proven by the case of the Metric Martyrs, to all intents and purposes Britain is now a vassal State owing suzerainty to Europe.
You may well ask, for what did our forefathers shed their blood to protect Britain from European powers in centuries past?
Above me is the statue of Nelson and, indeed all around London there are monuments to Britain’s great men and women who gave their lives to protect these shores. Their glory now lies shattered along with the freedom they and so many others fought so bravely for.
I am here to put forward the case on behalf of the People of Australia, who fought so very hard to protect our own sovereignty; that in its insane purpose to submit to European domination, Britain has not only disqualified itself from membership of the Commonwealth of Nations; it has greatly endangered the sovereignty of The Crown which we all share.
This cannot be and it must not be.
The former Dominions that remain under The Crown have, through the Statute of Westminster, power and authority to reject any attempt to alter the status of The Crown.
The breaking of the links with the British Realms, the tacit moves of support for Australia to become a Republic, are these all not a part of a greater plan to isolate this Kingdom, this bastion of democracy, to make it easier to merge it into Europe?
Never forget that Europe will not tolerate the dilemma that is Northern Ireland and it will not be long before the British Government betrays the North and forces through union with Eire regardless of the consequences in bloodshed! Similarly with Gibraltar and Spain!
Like an army of white ants, these Fabian inspired creatures, following the ideology of the Roman general Fabius Cunctator himself, "For the right moment you must wait, ... but when the time comes you must strike hard" have for years chipped away, changing the foundations of our liberty, whilst we, the people, sat idly by, steeped in our own apathy and ignorance, as so many did in the years before the last World War mocking the warnings of Churchill with ridicule and derision.
Make no mistake, now that these ‘politically correct’, these harbingers of the ‘New Age’, are in positions of authority today, they will strike harder and harder and the only thing that can stop them now is the will of the People, the very same ‘will’ that stopped a republic in Australia against all odds.
On her assumption of Prime Ministerial Office in 1979, Margaret Thatcher said on her arrival at 10 Downing Street "Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair may we bring hope". Whatever else this lady may have achieved, whatever great things she may have done, as far as Europe is concerned I regret to say that the totality of the Thatcher years in Government as well as that that of Major gave us not truth, but error; not faith but doubt and has led us today into almost total despair.
We share with you the concerns of the Barons' Constitutional Committee established under Magna Carta that there has been a significant but silent erosion of the prerogative of The Crown whose Authority is now almost totally exercised by the Prime Minister.
Never forget, however, that the power of The Crown derives from The People and yet until now I have never ever heard the voice of The People raised against the encroachment of The Crown's Authority by both the Parliament and Prime Minister!
Nor did I hear what should have been the anger of The People when the Blair Government removed the hereditary peers and thus enhanced the power of the Commons though the elimination of those Lords who had neither cause nor reason to be shackled to party politics.
Had I been involved in the constitutional defence of this country in a similar position to that in Australia, I would have fought tooth and nail against the proposals to restructure the House of Lords, not because I am against necessary reform. but because these very proposals have served, not just to remove a vital link in Britain's democracy but to bring the totality of the Lords under the patronage of the Prime Minister. The involvement of the hereditary peers may have appeared to be an anachronism from the past, and eccentric though some may have been, nevertheless they could never be totally controlled or totally influenced by party politics and this is why they had to be removed.
Precedent holds that The Queen Herself no longer has the power to refuse Assent to any lawful Bill of a lawfully elected Parliament. In fact we The People have allowed the Monarch's powers to be so diminished that it is doubtful that today Her Majesty would even be allowed to publicly express an opinion which is contrary to that of Her Government! From the time of Henry V, Monarchs of England and Great Britain have upheld the motto ‘Dieu et mon droit’ - ‘God and My Right’. However restrained by precedent and protocol Her Majesty might be, Her duty is always to protect the Rights and the Liberties of the British People.
We live in an age of reconciliation; an age where we are told that we must always turn the other cheek, but it appears that this age of reconciliation is only for us; not for them, for they continue with their aggression and they use our weakness to their advantage.
The British People have never been an aggressive people and it is rarely that they will stand up and be counted. The last time was more than 60 years ago following the almost too late realisation of how right Churchill's exhortations were.
However today when Britain is under attack as never before, it is time not just to stand up and be counted; it is time to fight, to march forward and to destroy this menace which is attempting to destroy our very liberty and our very freedom.
Let us never forget that the Parliament is there for the People, not the People for the Parliament. Indeed, the democracy we all share is dependent on the will of the People and it is only through the will of the British People that you will be able to defeat the menace of European domination for this is the heritage, this is the right, that has been passed onto us all by our forefathers.
It is with this in mind that I come to you here today with a promise; a promise to pledge the support of the people in my country and those of the other British Realms of Canada and New Zealand who are now aware of what is happening to their Motherland.
A pledge that although our governments will sit idly by and even give tacit support to your politicians as they betray a thousand years of democracy, we who love Britain will support your cause in whatever way we can.
We will fight tooth and nail to ensure the integrity of The Crown. For I say to you that your England is also our England.
Your heritage, the Common Law of England, is also our Law.
Your Constitution, the font of Westminster, is also our Constitution.
Your Queen is our Queen and your Crown is also our Crown.
Let us not forget for these are the links that bind us together.
We are one people with a common culture and a common language and it is as one people that we must march forward and bring to an end the tragedy that is happening to this our motherland.
What I ask of you in return is that you all combine and stand up as one fraternity with the sole objective of removing the stigma of European domination from this land.
I plead with you to put aside any personal differences or ambitions and to come together as one force dedicated to destroying this invasion of our ancient liberties and freedoms.
Our democracy, our inheritance descended from the mists of time, is our only hope of freedom for our Government is of the People and by the People and in the end it is only the People who must count.
Let us therefore march forward and as one united body destroy the peril to our great kingdom and to the British Realms.
Very soon the People of these islands will vote on whether or not to retain the British Sterling currency. Every force imaginable will be used in support of the Euro; millions of pounds of taxpayers money will be exhausted by the Government; for they know that if they win this, it will be the last nail in the coffin of the freedom of the British subject.
Our fight must not be in vain. We who are patriots here today have a duty and a responsibility under our great heritage; the Ancient Liberties of the English People, that sacred trust handed down to us all, to ensure that the People reject European domination, not just over our currency, but over the democracy of the British People themselves.
The words of Cromwell, repeated by Leo Amery in May of 1940 in his attack on Neville Chamberlain, are only to apt today with regard to all those who so treacherously seek to destroy the great Liberty of this Nation "Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God go".
Please, I beg of you, for the sake of Britain, for the sake of Australia and the other Realms; let us be done with Europe. In the name of God let it go.
Philip Benwell MBE Trafalgar Square April 21st 2002
The House of Lords Wednesday 24th April 2002
This is the fourth time that I have spoken to meetings in this place and over the past three years I have made several friendships which will last long into the future.
I am sorry that I cannot say the same for our Peoples, for Britain is drifting further apart from its old Imperial relationships intent on submerging itself into Europe.
Tragically the sole thing that is uniting us today is membership of an increasingly uninspiring Commonwealth and unquestioning obedience to the whims and fancies of the President of the United States of America.
When I was last in the United Kingdom some two years ago, I talked about the tragedy that was the separation of the British Peoples.
I told of the anguish and the bitterness felt by Australians and indeed so many who once held British Passports, but now being relegated to individual citizenship of the Dominions to which they belong, find themselves shunted into queues for 'Aliens' or 'Others' whenever they are allowed to enter Britain. These are people who were of Britain, whose loyalty was to Britain, even to the extent of willingly shedding their blood whenever Britain faced danger. These Loyal Subjects of The Queen had always looked on Britain as their real 'home' and it is these people who, together with English Common Law and so many other facets that put the 'Great' into Britain, have been sacrificed on the alter of subservience to Europe.
I am afraid that the situation has not improved, in fact it worsens as each day passes.
Fresh from elections, the Blair Government has successfully channelled the passage of the Treaty of Nice through the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Despite calling upon the age old bastions of the democracy of our Nations, Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and the Coronation Oath, it is now clear that The Queen’s prerogative is held to have been so eroded in Great Britain that Her Majesty has no choice but to grant Assent even if it may lead to the detriment of Her People!
The Prerogative of the Monarch is a power that derives from the People through the Common Law of England. It is one of the Ancient Liberties of the People and one of the major checks against the excesses of the Executive. Despite the current view that the Royal Prerogative is limited to the convention that the Sovereign must only act solely on the advice of Her Ministers it should always be clearly understood that the Monarchy is not there for the benefit of the Government nor even of the Parliament but exists to look after and to protect the interests of the People
Whilst the other Realms have their written constitutions, that of the United Kingdom is uncodified. Consequently whatever their individual constitutions, the Authority of The Crown in all the Realms is generally determined through convention and the determination of the reserve powers.
Since the Statute of Westminster of 1931, the constitutional conventions of the Realms evolved in accordance with their own precedents. Since we in Australia have provision that our written constitution can only be changed through a referendum process, we have so far been able to maintain the prerogative (which is exercisable through our Governor-General) in a fairly intact state despite the machinations of our Governments and the passage of the Australia Acts, the constitutionality of which is highly questionable.
What has become known as ‘Westminster Democracy’ is a system evolved over the centuries to best protect our democracy.
In fact the word ‘Democracy in its original Greek translation means 'People Power' and despite the assertions of republicans, democracy does not mean republicanism nor does it mean monarchism, but simply that the Power of the Nation resides in the People, something which we believe our Constitutional Monarchy is best equipped to do.
In the 1926 Imperial Conference, Lord Balfour very clearly defined the relationship between the United Kingdom and the Dominions with the words “They are autonomous communities within the British Empire equal in status in no way subordinate to one another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs though united by a common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations”. It is these words which form the basis of the Statute of Westminster.
Whilst the French may have popularized (some say corrupted) the word ‘Liberty’, make no mistake, it was Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and all those other bits and pieces of English history that had made Britain the forerunner of modern democracy It was this heritage and English Common Law that the United States of America took to its constitutional heart and which helped to bring it within the circle of the Free World.
This process to democracy has not been an easy road for the British People, and I find it amazing that a people, predominantly descended from anyone brave enough to invade and settle Britain’s shores, had been able to develop within them a spirit of freedom which has never yet been extinguished.
Was it not Baldwin who said just sixty five years ago: "From the earliest days whatever the mistakes we have made, whatever we have suffered from, there are no two things so alien to our people as tyranny and intimidation. Neither of them has ever taken root in England nor I believe ever will".
How things have changed!
In the years since the last Churchill Government, there appears to have been somewhat of a metamorphosis in the thinking of our leaders, other than the brief administrations of Eden and Home; for the spirit of freedom, patriotism and loyalty that was once their lifeblood and indeed which ran through the veins of the entire Nation seems no longer to be present and is today replaced almost solely by totalitarianism and ambition.
In Australia I believe that we have more of a democracy than that of our Mother Parliament here in Britain for our Constitution is greater than Parliament as it cannot change the Constitution, only the People can do that. However in Britain Parliament is supreme and can themselves effect constitutional change. This is a dangerous situation particularly now that the Government has emasculated the independence of the Lords and by swamping it with Labour Peers has tried to make it somewhat subservient to the will of the Prime Minister.
In Australia, however radical a Federal Government may be, it cannot tamper with the Senate or with our federal arrangements unless put to the People at Referendum, as occurred when we rejected attempts to turn us into a republic.
The recent attack on our Constitutional arrangements had its initial roots way back in the 1960’s with the treachery we in Australia experienced at the hands of the Macmillan Government when Britain reneged on its traditional arrangements with the 'Crown Commonwealth' to join Europe. However the rapid rise of republicanism was fed by the breakdown of the marriage of the Prince of Wales followed by the antics of the younger Royals as these issues created a tremendously dismal situation leading many Australians to accept that they may be better off without the Monarchy.
Even anti-republicans shied away from and even refused to mention The Queen during the recent referendum, so low had their ideal of the Monarchy fallen.
The recent passing of The Queen Mother has given us all cause for reflection and I believe that most here today would not only mourn the passing of a great Lady but also of a more decent, more moral and more understandable age.
It is said that The Queen was surprised at the extent of the outpouring of grief, but is Her Majesty now so closeted from ordinary folk that She is no longer aware of the love and affection with which She is personally held? The Crown is not just an ingredient of our Constitutional Monarchy but indeed is the very soul of the Ancient Liberties of the British Peoples in all those countries of which Her Majesty is Queen?
In Her Majesty’s farewell broadcast at the end of her tour of Australia in 1954 she said, “I hope that this visit has served to remind you of the wonderful heritage we share. I also hope that it has demonstrated that The Crown is a human link between all the people who owe allegiance to me, and allegiance of mutual love and respect never of compulsion”.
We all pride ourselves on our allegiance to The Queen, however having described The Crown in this manner and bearing in mind that ‘allegiance’ is a two way street, how, we ask, can circumstances have made it possible for Parliament to require Her Majesty to acquiesce in the abrogation of the Authority of the British Parliament and, as a potential consequence, that of The Crown, to Europe thus endangering the links Her Majesty so aptly describes?
How is it that our English Common Law handed down to us over the centuries and which embodies our Ancient Liberties has been made subject to a totally alien body which by tradition has never had any empathy with Liberty or true democracy?
How is it possible that our system has allowed the irregular establishment of new conventions through the gradual usurpation of power and authority both from the People and from the Crown?
For long we have known that the allegiance of our politicians is no longer to the People but to their Party Whips and that it was only the Lords which could be independent of the party political system which was why its very structure had to be destroyed by the Blair Government.
Our system of Westminster Democracy created the delicate balance termed the 'Division of Powers' between the Legislature (which is the Parliament), the Executive (comprising The Crown, the Ministry and the Public Service) and the Judiciary which is, of course, the Courts of Law.
The warning by the Frenchman Montesquieu that the combining of any of these powers created the risk of despotism is now only too apt particularly with Britain’s judicial independence being continuously diminished by the superiority of European Law. The Executive and the Legislature are now indirectly if not directly controlled from the Office of the Prime Minister and The Monarch has now become subject in almost every way to Parliament which in the absence of an effective Lords is now effective only through the Commons which itself has become subservient to the Office of Prime Minister.
Since the creation of a more democratic franchise with the Reform Act of 1832, it is appreciated that the Sovereign has always been required to be totally independent of politics, to act impartially and to follow the advice of Her elected Government, however the supreme responsibility of the Monarch must always be to protect the interests of the People. If this means breaking with convention then convention must be broken, constitutional crisis or not.
I am afraid that over the past three hundred and fifty years we have turned the full circle from the then belief in absolute monarchy which led to the execution of Charles 1, to the Bill of Rights and the later establishment of the Cabinet Council and now to the Presidential Prime Minister-ship.
However, the intention of the Bill of Rights of 1689 was never to transfer the totality of the Sovereign's power to politicians but rather to limit the Sovereign in acting against the interests of the Nation as a whole. The ‘Powers’ that were assumed by the Parliaments were solely as Trustee for the People. It was required that Parliament thereafter be allowed to function free from interference by the Monarch. Whatever dispensing and suspending Powers that remained with the Monarchy were removed and taxation could not be levied without Parliamentary consent.
All written constitutions within the Westminster system have provision for change. In Australia this can only be effected by a majority vote Australia-wide plus a majority vote in a majority of States. The Canadian Constitution can only be amended by a unanimous vote of all ten provincial Parliaments. However in the Mother Parliament of the United Kingdom, because the Constitution is largely unwritten and draws upon a myriad of precedents and laws, there is no defined provision for constitutional change. In the absence of any arrangements for a referendum process or a joint sitting, the British Constitution is continually updated and amended by Acts of the Parliament subject only to the consent of the Monarch obtained through the Royal Assent. This is why parliamentarians in Great Britain hold that Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights and the other documents which form a part of Britain’s constitutional arrangements are not binding upon the Parliament for all time. In his Silver Jubilee Address to Parliament in 1935, King George V described the Constitution in these words: "The complex forms and balanced spirit of our Constitution were not the discovery of a single era, still less of a single party or of a single person. They are the slow accretion of centuries, the outcome of patience, tradition and experience.."
In the early years of the 18th Century we looked to the Parliament to protect the People against the machinations of the Monarch. Today in the 21st Century, we now look to the Monarch to protect the People against the machinations of the Parliament. Not even the wisest of our parliamentary forefathers would ever have dreamed of how the sort of party political control that exists today has been able to subvert democracy to allow today's Prime Minister to exert similar authority to that of Cromwell during the Protectorate.
Whilst Walpole is considered to be the first ‘Prime’ Minister, he never acknowledged himself as such. He was the 'First Minister' and the Leader in the Parliament on behalf of the Sovereign. Any power he exercised was on behalf of the King who was in effect the Nation's Chief Executive. It was the King who chaired the Cabinet Council and it was only in his absence that it was chaired by the 'First Minister'. In fact the term 'Prime Minister' was only first used in an official document when Disraeli signed the Treaty of Berlin in 1878.
It was not until the reign of George 111 that what had developed over the years in practice was put into words by Lord North "Your Majesty is well apprised that in this country the Prince on the Throne cannot with prudence oppose the deliberate resolution of the House of Commons".
King George 111 was the last to chair a Cabinet Council (in 1781) and William 1V the last to dismiss a Government which still held a majority in the Commons when he dismissed the Melbourne Ministry in 1834. By the time Queen Victoria died in 1901 the outward appearances of the system of Government was very similar to that of today. Gladstone had established many of the parliamentary procedures which are the groundwork for the practice of Parliament today and following the rejection of Lord Curzon in favour of the commoner Baldwin in 1923 to become Prime Minister, the custom was established that all future Prime Ministers would be from the House of Commons.
Whilst the reign of George V saw some erosion of the Royal Prerogative it was nothing compared to the assumption of Authority by Churchill during the years of the Second World War but even that faded into insignificance with the virtual removal of any freedom of initiative by today's rigid control of parliamentarians by the Party Whips. The majority of changes occurring since the period of the Walpole Administration in the early 18th Century had hardly been noticed at the time but over the centuries they have accumulated to represent a tremendous progression of Authority all passing into the hands of the Prime Minister.
Indeed, the evolvement of the supremacy of the British Parliament since 1689 and the separation of the Cabinet from a Privy Council Committee and the assumption of much of its Authority by the Office of Prime Minister, accelerated since the days of Lloyd George, has today led to a situation where the Prime Minister can be termed an 'elected dictator'. Britain has never tolerated despots for long but the totalitarianism of Tony Blair is cleverly disguised in the constitutional cloak of parliamentary democracy.
In January of 1999 Tony Benn himself has admitted that under Blair 'We have shifted from a parliamentary system to a presidential one because the British Constitution allows that to happen because the powers of the Crown are at the disposal of the Prime Minister'.
No Monarch of Great Britain has refused Assent to any Act of the Parliament since Queen Anne in 1707 and whilst this can in no way mean that The Queen’s Prerogative in this regard has lapsed totally it is doubtful that the People would accept a veto of a Bill by Her Majesty unless there was a very valid reason such as it being declared unconstitutional by the Courts.
In Australia in 1975 the then Governor-General Sir John Kerr was asked to sign a Minute of an Executive Council held in his absence relating to Government borrowings outside the guidelines of the Loan Council. Sir John, himself a former Chief Justice of New South Wales, held that the matter was justiciable and open to be corrected in the Courts and that he therefore did not need to interfere but should meekly accept the request of the Prime Minister and sign!
According to Evatt, the Australian Labor politician and eminent constitutional lawyer "the principle that constitutional practice excludes from the consideration of the Governor in any Dominion the determination of all legal questions because direct responsibility for the action of the Governor in assenting to Bills or any proposed administrative act rests upon the Ministers holding office". Therefore constitutionality or even legality can only be decided in the Courts.
However, had Kerr refused to sign the Minute, the events that led to the dismissal of the Whitlam Government may never have occurred and Australia would have avoided a constitutional crisis.
It seems to many to be somewhat of a paradox that our Governor-General, as The Queen’s Representative, can exercise far greater power than Her Majesty can now as Queen of the United Kingdom.
In Australia, we have a monarchical system of which the Queen becomes not a part for under the Australian Constitution, once The Queen has appointed the Governor-General (always upon the advice of the Prime Minister), the Governor-General assumes to himself (or herself) very specific and wide-ranging powers. Gough Whitlam, who more than any other Prime Minister should know, itemizes these powers:
He can dismiss the Government. He can appoint and dismiss individual Ministers. He can decide which department each Minister is to administer. He can dissolve the House of Representatives. If, for instance, the Senate refuses to vote on a budget, he can dissolve the House of Representatives and if, after a fresh election for the House of Representatives, the Senate still refuses to vote on the Budget, he can again dissolve the House of Representatives. He can call or prorogue both Houses. He need not grant a double dissolution even though the Government asks for it. He need not call a Joint Sitting if the Houses still disagree after a Double Dissolution. He need not Assent to a Bill or Bills passed at any Joint Sitting. He need not submit to the electors a bill to alter the Constitution which has twice been passed by one House and rejected by the other. He need not in fact Assent to a Bill to alter the Constitution even if it has been approved by the electors. He need not Assent to any Bill which has been passed by both Houses. He could even refuse to take the advice of his Ministers to send a message to Parliament asking for grants of money.”
The defeat of the Referendum to make us into a republic together with the two extremely successful Visits of The Queen during the past two and a half years, proves, I believe, that our Crown is safer than it has been for many years, and I doubt very much whether, over the next decade, any future referendum on a republic will succeed under Section 128 of our Constitution even if it were to have the bipartisan support of both Liberal and Labor. However we need to watch very carefully the consequences of any potential erosion of the Authority of The Crown particularly as a result of those Acts of Parliament passed to facilitate European Union over the past twenty-nine years since 1973 whereby European Law has been enabled to supersede the Law of the United kingdom, thus crippling the very heart of British sovereignty built up for over a thousand years.
The question we must all ask ourselves is that whilst the British Parliament is now supreme, in the sense of the internal constitutional arrangements of Britain, does it have the right, bearing in mind Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights and other treaties the substance of which lies with the People and not Parliament, to pass the sovereignty of the Kingdom to an alien entity?.
There are only two venues to oppose the will of the Government. One is to determine the constitutionality of its Acts in the Courts and the other is to work for its defeat in the electorate. The uncodified Constitution of the United Kingdom leaves much to the interpretation of the Courts. It was hoped that there might be a court decision upholding the supremacy of the laws of the United Kingdom in the legal action taken by the Metric Martyrs but the Judgment of Lord Justice Laws instead made it clear that "All the specific rights and obligations which EU Law creates are by the European Communities Act incorporated into our domestic law and rank supreme".
In this manner, by acknowledged lies and by acknowledged deceit our Governments, supported by past Parliaments of the United Kingdom, have betrayed the awesome trust that has been bestowed upon them by the People. Not only have they cast aside Magna Carta and English Common Law. They have handed over to foreign powers the ancient Liberties of the English People, Liberties for which over the past thousand years and more the English peoples have shed their blood and given their lives.
There are three main Vows and Declarations made by The Queen in which She has dedicated Herself to the service of the People.
The first was on Her 21st Birthday when the then Princess Elizabeth broadcast
"I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial family to which we all belong, but I shall not have the strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in with me, as I now invite you to do. I know that your support will be unfailingly given. God help me to make good my vow and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it".
The second was the Declaration which followed the Proclamation:
"On the sudden death of my dear father I am called to fulfil the duties of Sovereignty ... My heart is too full for me to say more to you today than that I shall always work, as my father did throughout his reign, to uphold the constitutional Government and to advance the happiness and prosperity of my peoples, spread as they are the world over. I know that in my resolve to follow his shining example of service and devotion, I shall be inspired by the loyalty and affection of those whose Queen I have been called upon to be and by the counsel of their Parliaments, I pray that God will help me to discharge worthily this heavy task that has been laid upon me so early in my life". And the third was the Coronation Oath where Her Majesty solemnly promised and swore:
"to govern the Peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon, and of your Possessions and other Territories to any of them belonging or pertaining, according to their respective laws and customs".
The Declaration is to rule "by the counsel of their Parliaments" and in Her Majesty’s Coronation Oath She vowed to govern "according to their respective laws and customs"
Over the past three hundred years the wording has changed but the meaning has always been the same. Some have held that the word 'law' is meant to relate to the Laws of God but the very Coronation Oath taken by William and Mary in 1689 was specifically to govern according to the 'statutes in Parliament agreed on'.
It is therefore clear that the those three words in the Coronation Oath 'according to law' make it subject to the Parliament, itself now subservient to the paradoxical laws of Europe.
In its supremacy the Parliament can no longer allow the Monarch the power to refuse Assent to any lawful Bill of a lawfully elected Parliament. In fact the Authority of the Monarch has today been so diminished by Parliament and Prime Minister that it is doubtful that Her Majesty could even publicly express an opinion which is contrary to that of Her (elected) Government!
The word 'Sovereignty' derives from the French word 'souverainete' meaning the equivalent of 'supreme power' and 'freedom from external control'. It is a sad fact that European Control of Britain's laws means that there can be no supreme sovereignty whether resting with the Sovereign or with the Parliament.
The Authority which rests with the Parliament, however, is only on a temporary basis as the Commons must submit to the People at regular intervals. The question must therefore be asked, perhaps in the Courts, whether the Parliament, as the provisional custodian of such Authority on behalf of the People, is able to transfer sovereignty to another body, particularly a foreign one?
The past few hundred years have seen soldiers, explorers and settlers travelling from this Island Kingdom and colonising a quarter of the World. It then held out its hand to so many of those nations it conquered or settled to help them into adult independence.
Most went their own way bound lightly only by their voluntary association through the Commonwealth. Others, like Canada and Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea charted their own constitutional independence but retained Westminster under The Crown.
In 1913 when King George V laid the foundation stone of Australia House in London he told the audience “I am well assured that as in the past in any national emergency Australia will play her part for the common cause and that the loyalty of her sons will never be appealed to in vain”. The next year more than 50,000 had enlisted to fight for Britain in Europe. The Labor leader and soon to be Prime Minister Andrew Fisher promised to defend Britain “to our last man and to our last shilling”.
By the end of the Second World War, Australia had sacrificed thousands of men in a common fight against a common enemy. Imagine therefore, the horror that spread throughout the Australian Government following the 1961 visit of the British Commonwealth Secretary Duncan Sandys when he told us that Britain was going into Europe and that we must thereafter find our own way.
It was no wonder that Australia felt that it was being 'sold down the river' particular since it was just 20 years following the time when so many Australians volunteered to fight in Europe for Britain against Britain's enemy! To add insult to injury, that November, the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill was introduced into the British Parliament and it was thus that thousands of British and Australians discovered that their homeland had become for them a foreign country!
In reminding Macmillan of the mutual obligations imposed between Australia and Britain by the ties of history, language and culture, the then Prime Minister Robert Menzies wrote in May 1961 to say :"Your European partners would require obligations of you in respect of world political and strategic problems and in respect of United Kingdom decisions on these matters. What, in these circumstances, would be the United Kingdom outlook towards Australia, towards Canada, towards the Commonwealth collectively?"
Macmillan responded with an assurance that no approach to Europe would be made until 'satisfactory arrangements to protect Commonwealth interests had been found'. Earlier in 1955 the then Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden had advised Menzies that Britain would not join a project that would so "substantially weaken the Commonwealth relationship, both economically and politically".
This sentiment was continued by Macmillan who went even further to assure us that provision would be made for the Commonwealth when at the same time Europe was stating that this was not to be so. Clearly we were all to be cast adrift with Britain, then still considered to be our Motherland, intent on reneging upon all of its treaties and obligations! In fact, had not Britain found itself rejected by de Gaulle's veto, the economies of the Commonwealth would have been even more detrimentally effected than they were, but as it was, the period of Britain's waiting as it humbled itself before the powers of Europe, gave us sufficient time to find our own feet and our own markets.
In rejecting the initial application of the United Kingdom, De Gaulle so very aptly described Britain as 'Maritime and insular' and that our nature, our structure and our 'very situation differs profoundly from those of the Continentals'. However having destroyed any integrity the British Government had with the British Commonwealth it decided to plunge into what had changed from the Common Market to the European Union in 1973 and it was thus that the process of the undermining of Britain's sovereignty by its own Parliament began.
In signing the Treaty of Rome on the 1st of January 1973, Edward Heath, reassured the Parliament and the British people that what they were joining was solely a 'trading partnership'. Indeed in the 1971 Government White Paper, entitled "Britain and Europe" one can find the statements:
"There is no question of Britain losing essential national sovereignty;"
"The British safeguards of habeas corpus and trial by jury will remain intact. So will the principle that a man is innocent until he has been proved guilty."
That Edward Heath had spelled out the benefits but hid all the liabilities was proven in his 1990 interview with the BBC when asked if he had known all along that Britain was signing up to a Federal Europe and he replied "Of course, yes".
In his 'Schuman Declaration of May 1950' Robert Schuman referred explicitly to the 'Federation of Europe' as one of the long term political objectives of the European Coal and Steel Community, the prototype of the Common Market itself the forerunner of today's European Community.
Indeed, anyone with any common sense at the time having read the 1957 Treaty of Rome would have had a clear understanding that the principle objective of the Treaty was 'the ever closer union of the peoples of Europe'. It was evident that this was the basis by which member nations would develop into a European Federation in fact if not in name. Tony Blair himself in Warsaw has stated: ‘Europe is no longer just about peace .. It is about the projection of collective power ... Europe must become a superpower'.
Perhaps it is pertinent at this time to quote from Gwilym Lloyd George the son of David Lloyd George and a politician himself, who wrote 'politicians are like monkeys: the higher they climb up the tree the more revolting are the parts they expose'
There have been several amendments to the Treaty which have served to diminish Britain's national sovereignty and enhance the once ostensibly palatable 'Common Market' creating the unpalatable 'European Union' of today. However the multitude of stages in the absorption and indeed encapsulation of Britain into Europe are too numerous to discuss here. Suffice it to say that more laws have been passed within the European Union than in the entirety of Britain's constitutional democracy.
In his book 'Measure of the Years' Sir Robert Menzies, then seventy five years of age, pondered upon Britain's entry into Europe and the consequences to Australia and indeed to the whole Commonwealth. It is very interesting to see how his prophetic words of wisdom had been cast aside by those in Britain intent on forcing Europe on an unsuspecting people.
"I rather gather that though the parties in the House are pro-European, the people outside the Parliament are not so sure .... I think there are deep-seated instincts and a sort of patriotic insularity which combine to make the Englishman distrust the idea of subordinating his interests, and his political rights to any institution established in Europe, empowered to give him orders but not responsible to him ... Britain is the home of responsible government, of the supremacy of Parliament and of the rule of law, the law involved being British".
"In incorporating 'European Law' into the body of legislation in Britain the Parliament would not be exercising its own judgment or the judgment of the electors, but would be carrying out its duty to the European Community".
"My only constitutional concern has been to show that the normal concept of sovereignty which is applied to the British Parliament would be qualified in a large number of very important ways". He went on to say that "the structure of the European Commission and Parliament can in no way be termed 'responsible Government' in British terms".
Immediately following his first election victory in 1996, Prime Minister Blair with the highest popularity rating of any post-war Prime Minister supported by the most European Government since that of Edward Heath, has, in his Napoleonic like posture, aggressively pursued the absorption of Britain into Europe and in the course of doing so has effected more constitutional changes than any other Prime Minister before him.
To list but a few of the radical changes his Government has:
Enabled the supremacy of the European Convention on Human Rights to supersede domestic law in the United Kingdom Broken up the Kingdom into regions to better facilitate control from Europe, which has done more than even the Industrial Revolution to divide England into North and South. Dispersed the political independence of the House of Lords through the removal of hereditary peers. Introduced proposals for electoral reform and the further centralization of Government.
Lord Acton's words are only too apt when he said "Power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely."
The case of what has come to be called 'the Metric Martyrs' where the High Court has held that European Law now supersedes British Law has brought home to the Public for the first time officially the extent of Britain's loss of sovereignty and the extent of the lies |
