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ARTICLES 2006
OUR AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION - PART ONE (A RESPONSE TO SPURIOUS ATTACKS ON OUR CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY) THE QUEEN OF THE SOVEREIGN SOUTH
ARTICLES 2007
THE DEVELOPMENT & THE DECLINE OF THE WESTMINSTER SYSTEM THE QUEEN AS A CITIZEN OF EUROPE
“The Development & The Decline of the Westminster System” May 2007
The recent announcement by General Sir Richard Dannatt KCB CBE MC, Chief of the General Staff of the United Kingdom, that a decision had been made not to allow Prince Harry to join his regiment in Iraq has produced the usual denouncements of favoritism, whereas the truth is that it is quite the reverse. What this decision has actually shown is that, as third in line to the Throne, Prince Harry is not free to lead a normal existence. Whilst he was always ready to put his life on the line to serve his country, his presence would have created a target that would have put the lives of others in danger.
Indeed, rather than being privileged, the exponents of, to quote from Robert Burns, ‘sour bigotry’, should appreciate that being a member of the Royal Family is anything but a privilege but rather an onerous burden that he will have to endure for some time and a cross which his brother, Prince William, will have to bear for the rest of his life.
Whatever one may think of the war in Iraq, or of that in Afghanistan, the hearts of all those who care go out to soldiers fighting on the front-line against terrorism. Although Muslim for well over a thousand years, it is only in recent times that Iraq has been a war-zone of bloodshed and tyranny. Indeed, one finds it difficult to imagine that the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein was once the homeland of thriving civilisations which existed five thousand and more years ago, even before the Pyramids which seem, to most people, to be the sole illustration of those ancient and illustrious times.
The problem is that we know so very little about the real past of those ancient cultures. We can, of course surmise that they would not have been blighted with the asinine election campaigns of our modern politicians with their absurd billion dollar core and non-core promises (did not Disraeli say of his own party: “the mule of politics, that engenders nothing”). However, we do know that even in those distant ages, there were kings and governments and even cities with law and order. The Bible itself tells us in Genesis 4:17 that “Cain was building a City.”
To build and maintain a city obviously requires law and order which means that some sort of civilisation existed long before anything yet uncovered by man. Whilst the earliest written records that are available to us date from the early civilisation of Mesopotamia, there must have been in existence an intelligent culture in Britain which created the ‘standing stones’, the most famous of which is of course, Stonehenge. The name is possible a derivative of Saxon English meaning a stone structure or ‘hanging stones’ of which construction commenced around 2800 BC, thus predating by around 300 years, the pyramids of Egypt!
Stonehenge comprises huge stone slabs and boulders being somehow unaccountably transported for more than 150 miles from the Preseli Mountain range in Wales to Salisbury Plains. The amazing thing about these ‘standing stones’ was their inexplicably accurate alignment to the summer solstice and other astronomical observations. Likewise inexplicable was the mathematical computations used in the earlier construction of the great burial mounds found throughout Great Britain.
In his ‘Guilt and Sorrow’ the nineteenth century romantic poet, William Wordsworth wrote:
“Pile of Stone-henge! so proud to hint yet keep Thy secrets, thou that lov’st to stand and hear”
No one has as yet been able to unlock the secrets of Stonehenge or to uncover the civilisation that constructed it. There are many theories, one of which is that Britain is what remains of what was once was a much greater area of land which spread southwards towards Africa called ‘Atlantis’ first written of by the Greek Philosopher Plato around 360 BC in his dialogues ‘Timeaus and Critias’. However, whilst there is no surviving record, the indisputable fact is that Stonehenge is itself proof that 5,000 years ago there existed in Britain an intelligent civilisation which would have had a law and order society. We will never know whether that ‘society’ was ruled by a King, but we do know through mankind’s first known written records of Sumer in the Mesopotamia of pre-Babylonian days that kings did exist at the time!.
Mesopotamia is the first civilisation so far known to mankind, evolving in 8500 B.C. and progressing into what became the advanced Sumerian culture of around 4000 B.C. It was they who developed the first known writing in the form of lines and shapes called ‘cuneiform’ and, it is thought, were the first people to construct the wheel, used originally for the manufacture of pots.
The Egyptian civilisation closely followed, but it was from Ur in Babylon that Abraham travelled to establish Israel. It is therefore not surprising that there is a great similarity amongst the legends of ancient times and those recounted by Moses in Genesis.
Most of the Kings and Chieftains of these early times were warlords, ruling by force, but along with civilisation came rulers who were perhaps more politicians than military men. Indeed, many of the early Egyptian, Greek and Roman rulers owed their positions to cerebral rather than physical attributes.
However, they all submitted themselves to one or more higher deities and accepted in religious and often in governance, the strictures and advice of the priests. In some societies the priests became the ruler and established what is known as theocracies. Modern day Iran is one such theocracy where since 1979 the political institutions remain subject to the clerics. Ancient Israel was once ruled by prophets and even modern Israel, although democratic, is subject to rabbinical law.
All early religions required a sacrifice of one sort or another for a blessing or an appeasement. Abraham was required to sacrifice Isaac and was released from this only because of his undying faith. The significance is, however, that Abraham accepted the necessity in having to sacrifice his favourite son, whose miraculous birth to the 90 year old Sara and the 100 year old Abraham made him exceedingly valuable indeed.
Religion therefore became intertwined with secular rule and the King became accepted as the living representative, and often sacrifice to the deities. Because the King was needed to govern, it became customary for other humans or animals to be sacrificed in his place. It was thus that the ‘King’ became the physical representative of whatever deities his people worshipped.
The Roman Emperors went a step further and declared themselves to be divine beings. It was in an attempt to emulate the power and authority of the Caesars that the German and Russian Emperors called themselves: ‘Kaiser’ and ‘Czar’ which are derivatives of the word ‘Caesar’
However, when Rome accepted Christianity as its official religion, instead of declaring themselves to be gods, the Emperors thereafter were consecrated unto the Almighty God, as was our Queen at her own Coronation.
In fact the British Coronation ceremony follows almost exactly the ancient Israelite ceremony of dedicating and sacrificing the Sovereign to the service of God and the people, thus making the Monarch a ‘Priest-King’. It is because of her binding Coronation Oath that The Queen has indicated that it is not within her right to abdicate.
The Anointing also has a very special purpose for The Queen. It has been said that: “this has imbued her (The Queen) with a conviction of something irrevocable and that She must do everything within Her power to maintain the Gift of Royal Privilege and Obligation bestowed upon Her.” Shakespeare wrote in his ‘Richard 11’: “Not all the water in a rough sea can wash the balm from an anointed king.”
It is interesting to note that a poll conducted some years ago held that 30% of the people polled believed The Queen had been chosen by God to reign. However, whatever one may think in this regard, what is true is that from the time Augustine converted the pagan Saxon King, Ethelbert, in 597 AD, our monarchy has been based on the scriptures of the Holy Bible.
We, today, owe so very much to the Saxons who found themselves in Britain more by accident than design. Being an Island Kingdom, Britain had been subjected for several thousands of years to many invasions with predators drawn to the riches of the Island of pearls, gold, flints and above all, tin. Trade with Europe and later with the civilisations of the Middle East had been taking place for several thousand years prior to the Roman invasion.
The Saxons were never traders. They, together with the Angles and associated tribes, were living in the swamplands of Schleswig in what is now Northern Germany and Southern Scandinavia, and had no fertile lands or treasures and had therefore been of no interest to the Roman Empire. The Roman historian, Tacitus (AD 55-120), wrote in his ‘Germania’ that the habitat of the Angles was “defended by rivers or forests. Nor in one of these nations does aught remarkable occur, only that they universally join in the worship of Herthum; that is to say, the Mother Earth.”
The known involvement of the Saxon people with Britain goes back to the Roman occupation when in around 300 AD several hundred were brought over by Rome as ‘Foderati’ or mercenaries and stationed to protect the extreme borders against raids. However when facing defeat in 410 AD, the Romans extracted some 5,000 of their soldiers to defend Rome itself against attack, but with raids - predominantly by the Vikings – increasing, the Britons adopted the Roman practice of hiring Saxon mercenaries. However unlike the Romans, they reneged upon their contract and denied payment to the mercenaries, who, seeing the weakened state of those they had been hired to protect, turned aggressor and settled down on land they forcibly occupied in lieu of payment. The richness of the soil and the wealth of the country in general led others from the Saxon lands to migrate, at first in small and non invasive numbers, and then in such quantities as to provoke a dire threat.
Eventually Britain succumbed to the invasion and the Saxons along with the Angles and the Jutes all settled in lands along the east coast of Britain and followed the line of the Thames as far as Oxfordshire. Their sheer numbers were able over time to purge the Christian religion from the occupied lands and to substitute, instead, the worship of their Saxon Gods. The Saxons also eradicated the language of Roman Briton replacing it with their own largely vernacular language, the dialects of which were basically understood by most of the occupying tribes, whereas the more elitist and scholarly Latin was not. This commonplace ability to communicate was a binding factor amongst the ordinary people and as time progressed the disparate peoples who now occupied Britain were able to become one single nation due to the unifying factor of one collective language generally understood by most.
This, of course, also facilitated the development of the early processes of Law and Government and it was in this manner that Saxon Britain deviated from the rest of Europe and developed its own code of laws and methods of governance. It is now so very strange that British law and British justice, once admired throughout the World - even by its enemies, has now been made subject, by the British Parliament itself, to Roman Law and the Napoleonic Code of Europe!
THE CONCEPT OF THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGSHIP
The way in which the Saxon Kings ruled was also dissimilar from other parts of the world, for the Witan, the early precursor of the House of Lords and Privy Council, exacted authority from an early stage. The Witan chose their Kings on the basis of the best person most suitable to rule who may not always have been the eldest male son.
Although Augustine converted King Ethelbert of Kent to Christianity in 597, the edict of Pope Gregory was not to impose Roman traditions upon the Saxons but to adapt their heathen practices and convert their temples for the use of the Christian Church. It was thus that the names of Saxon Gods have been immortalised in the English - and subsequently the world’s - weekdays.
Of course, prior to the Saxon invasions of the 4th and 5th centuries, Christianity had thrived, particularly, during the latter days of the Roman occupation and, it is now believed, even before the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Gildas, who was a monk in the twelfth century at Glastonbury, wrote, from records thought to be later destroyed by fire, that Christianity came to Britain during the reign of Tiberius Caesar who ruled from AD 14 until AD 37.
Constantine’s father, Constantius, had been Emperor of the West and Constantine spend much of his childhood in Britain. He was in York when his father died and he was proclaimed Emperor in his place. It is thought that his mother has been converted to the Christian Faith by the early British church. The huge basilica, St John Lateran, remains as an impressive tribute to Constantine.
Whilst Kings of England were consecrated unto God, this did not mean a combining of Church and State, which always remained separated, even though some political and most clerical offices under the King were held by priests. This was because education and literacy were, until the advent of the printing press, the sole prerogative of the Church,
The State and the Church were combined in 1534 when Henry VIII, as a result of the Act of Supremacy, was recognised as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, but England continued to remain a secular monarchy and not a theocracy as it was the State which controlled the affairs of the Church, albeit in the name of the King. Nevertheless, this joining of State and Church created a complex situation which was totally mishandled by the Stuart dynasty, for the Scottish Kings, who had been strongly influenced through intermarriage with the French monarchy, believed convincingly in the Divine Right of Kingship where the very soul of the King was believed to be the Spirit of God. This was, of course, very similar to early civilisations which had revered their shamans or sorcerers for their magical powers which they believed were an expression of divinity.
Just prior to his accession to the Throne of England, James (then V1 of Scotland), a direct ancestor of The Queen, wrote to Cecil, the Secretary to Elizabeth 1 “For my part, I hold it the office of a king as sitting upon the throne of God” James, as King of England, later stated in a speech to the English Parliament: “Kings are justly called Gods, for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth.” In another speech to Parliament in 1609 James said: “ The State of Monarchy is the supremest thing on earth, for kings are not only God’s lieutenants, and sit upon God’s Throne, but even by god himself they are called Gods.” He had said of Parliament: “I am surprised that my ancestors (he was a great-great grandson of Henry V11) should ever have allowed such an institution to come into existence.” This attitude was an underlying reason for the Civil War of 1642-1651 and the consequent execution of James’s son, Charles 1, and his replacement by a parliamentary republic and then a dictatorship. It is interesting to note that only one other English monarch, Jane 1, had been beheaded although at least six others had been killed or murdered for failing to respect the conventions of English kingship.
THE WESTMINSTER SYSTEM
The mistake that the Stuarts made was that, being superficially Protestant, they believed implicitly in the ‘Divine Right of the King to Rule’ whereas in England there had been constitutional developments entrenching the ancient Saxon beliefs that the King ruled by ‘the (divine) Right of the People’. Dr Geoffrey Fisher GCVO, later Baron Fisher of Lambeth and Archbishop of Canterbury from 1945 until 1961, explained that the difference was that the British Crown was worn, not by ‘Divine Right’ but because it was ‘God called’. William 1 (the Conqueror) appreciated this difference, as did his son, Henry 1, who granted the first Charter of Rights to the people.
We do know that it was during the reign of Henry I (1100 – 1135) that a parliament comprising the bishops and the King’s tenants-in-chief met. This council was the early foundation of the House of Lords. It was more than a century later in 1265 that the famous Parliament of Simon de Montfort met and for the first time had incorporated a representation of burghers from towns and counties together with lesser clergy and knights.
The treaty of Magna Carta gave the Parliament, although embryonic at the time, the right to tax: “No scutage nor aid shall be imposed on our kingdom, unless by common counsel of our kingdom.”
As a consequence, subsequent parliaments, although initially haphazardly constructed and meeting on a random basis throughout the ensuing centuries, had the power to be a constant bar to the absolute rule of kings who tended to summon them to meet as seldom as possible and then generally only when they needed funds.
Whilst there had been earlier Charters granted by the King guaranteeing the rights of the people, the first Magna Carta, forced from King John at Runnymede on the 15th June 1215 by leading nobles backed by an army of some 2000 Knights and retainers, established the guidelines for future parliaments and essentially established the basis on which the conventions of parliamentary government were formed. Additionally, the control of the nation’s finances, originating from Magna Carta, led to the authority of the Commons and its ability to eventually create a Parliamentary system of Government.
As well as ensuring that certain taxes were no longer to be left to the prerogative of the King and could only be collected by the common consent of the Realm, the Great (or Magna) Carta basically guaranteed the freedom of the courts and most importantly the concept of Habeas Corpus. The Charter was incorporated into the Statute Roll in 1297 and was confirmed on some fifty five further occasions by succeeding Kings.
The partition of the Parliament into the two Houses of the Commons and the Lords had the effect of entrenching the essence of Magna Carta and the rule of law into the parliamentary system. It was this fundamental principle that was responsible for the differences which led to the Civil War of the 17th century.
The Westminster Doctrine therefore developed as a result of the centuries-long struggle for power between the King and the Parliament. It was a struggle which could well have cumulated when. in 1649, following the Civil War, the Parliament imprisoned and later executed the King. However, although the Parliament had assumed absolute control of governance, it did not know what to do with supreme authority and failed miserably resulting in almost total chaos ending only when, in 1653, Cromwell closed down the Parliament and assumed for himself total authority as Lord Protector. Never had any English king held such absolute power. Fortunately his republican dynasty ended when his weakly son Richard abdicated and in 1660 Parliament was restored and invited Charles 11, son of Charles l, to take up the throne thus re-establishing the constitutional checks and balances of the fledgling democracy that had existed prior to the Republic.
Charles 11 was, however, a closet Roman Catholic with extremely close ties to his cousin Louis X1V, the King of France, but he never forgot the execution of his father and respected at all times the supremacy of the Parliament, even though he secretly resented it. It was only on his deathbed that he acknowledged his Catholicism. His brother, James 11, however, was a soldier and in no way a diplomat and refused to put aside or trivialise his Roman Catholic beliefs. It was this rather obstinate, but at the same time worthy, attitude that led to the second and final confrontation between Parliament and the King resulting in the Parliament inviting William of Orange, a grandson of Charles 1, to invade and assume the Throne along with his wife, Mary, who was the eldest daughter of James 11. Parliament, later said of James that he has sought “to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion, and the laws and liberties of this kingdom”. The Parliament listed twelve main complaints including the dispensing or suspending of laws of which he did not approve, levying money for his own use without parliamentary consent, gross interfering with elections, corrupting the legal system by establishing his own Courts and initiating arbitrary prosecutions, imposing excessive bail, fines and punishments and maintaining a standing army in peacetime without the consent of Parliament. Following the arrival of William in England, James fled London on the 11th December 1688, throwing the great Seal of England into the Thames and by this act was held to have abdicated.
On the 12th February 1689, Parliament drew up a Declaration of Rights, affirming the Ancient rights and liberties of the people and this was presented on the next day to William and Mary at a formal ceremony at which they were jointly offered the crown. This was the first occasion on which an incoming Sovereign been required to enter into a contract with the Parliament. According to the 17th century jurist, Sir Edward Coke, the legislative supremacy of the Parliament at this time became: “transcendent and absolute”.
The Declaration of Rights was enshrined in the Bill of Rights of 1689, the long title of which is: ‘An Act for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject and settling the succession of the Crown’. The intent of the Act was not to transfer the totality of the Sovereign’s power to parliament but rather to limit the Sovereign in acting against the interests of the Nation as a whole. The ‘Powers’ that were assumed by the Parliament were solely as Trustee for the People. It was required that Parliament thereafter be allowed to function free from any control by the Monarch. Whatever dispensing and suspending Powers that remained with the Monarchy were removed and no taxation could not be levied without Parliamentary consent.
Writing nearly two hundred years after the Bill of Rights was enacted, Macaulay in his ‘History of England’ written between the years of 1849 to 1861, said: “It is because we had a preserving revolution in the seventeenth century that we have not had a destroying revolution in the nineteenth.” It was at this time that the King ceased to have power over the life and death of his subjects, but he was still the Executive Head of Government with the right to select and chair the Council (or Cabinet) of Ministers. Since Parliament had invited William of Orange, a great-grandson of James 1, in 1688 to take the Throne from James 11, the succession was established as a right of the Parliament. It was, actually, only following the invasion and establishment of the Norman dynasty, that The Crown followed the principle of hereditary primogeniture. In Saxon times, it had been subject to election by the Council or Witan and often bypassed the direct line in favour of a person whom it was thought would be a more suitable King.
The greatest deviation in the direct line of succession from 1066 was the Tudor dynasty. Generally The Crown moved on to or was seized only by close claimants, but the claim of Henry V11 was a long bow to draw. Owen Tudor, whose Welsh name was ‘Owain ap Meredith ap Tewdur’, married Katherine of Valois, widow of King Henry V. The couple had five children, the eldest of which was Edmund who married Lady Margaret Beaufort, who, being a descendant of Edward 111 through John of Gaunt, was one amongst many potential claimants to the Throne. Their son, born a few months after Edmund’s death, was Henry Tudor.
The seizing of the Throne by Richard 111, in place of his nephew, the child-king Edward V, caused a revolt in which Henry defeated Richard at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 and, being a descendant of the Royal line through his mother, he was crowned King, by consent of the Parliament, that same year.
When it became clear that Ann, also a daughter of James 11, who, being a Protestant was the heiress presumptive to the Throne after William and Mary, was not going to have any surviving children, it was the Parliament which legislated with the Act of Settlement of 1702 that that the Protestant Princess Sophia, a granddaughter of James 1, would succeed to the Throne. In the terms of the Act: “Princess Sophia Electoress and Dutchess dowager of Hanover and the heirs of her body being Protestants upon whom the crown of England is settled by an Act of Parliament.”
The extraordinary circumstances of the period 1660 to 1714 saw two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren of James 1 becoming Monarchs of England with Charles 11 and James 11 and then with William 111 and Mary 11, Anne 1 and George 1 who, as the son of Sophie (who had died just two months before Anne in 1714.), was invited by the Parliament to ascend the throne. It was at this time that there began a dramatic and permanent transfer of power from the King to the Parliament.
The precedent of Ministers meeting in Cabinet in the absence of the King was established not, as is said because George was a German barbarian who was ignorant and spoke no English and therefore left the Ministers to govern on their own, but because he was required by the English government to further British interests on the Continent.
Whilst Walpole was considered to be the first ‘Prime’ Minister, he never acknowledged himself as such. He was the ‘First Minister’ and the Leader in the Parliament. Any power he exercised was on behalf of the King who was, in effect, still 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 initially used in an official document when Disraeli signed the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 and had no special precedence in the Kingdom until the Order of Precedence of 1905 first recognised the office.
Whilst George 1’s English was very bad, perhaps even excruciating, it did improve and after some years he was actually making notations on ministerial documents in English. However, he, together with the entirety of the Government, would have been proficient in French, thereby completely disproving the theory that the King was unable to communicate with his Ministers.
Furthermore the Court of Hanover was one of the most progressive and cultured in Europe. George was an Elector which meant that he was one of the Council which ‘elected’ from amongst themselves the Holy Roman Emperor. In fact it is possible that George himself may have been elected had he not been selected as King of Great Britain.
George 1 came to the Throne by right of the Act of Settlement (12 and 13 William 111, cap 2, 1702) which legislated that the Crown would go to his mother, Sophie or to the issue of her body. However, the Parliament could easily have amended this Act and, in fact Queen Anne had made it known to her step brother, the ‘old Pretender’ that the Throne could pass to him if he renounced Roman Catholicism and became a Protestant. He refused and the Act remained as is and the Throne passed on her death to her cousin George. Other than being the most senior Protestant in line to the Throne, the British Parliament wished to make use of his connections to extend their influence in Europe to equal or even surpass that of France with which they were then at war in ‘The War of the Spanish Succession .1701-14). His son, George 11 was actually the last King to lead British troops into battle at the Battle of Detingen in 1743.
History books also deride the Hanoverian dynasty as one which was morally corrupt, saved only by the example set by Queen Victoria. It is very easy to judge the times of three hundred years ago by our present standards, which themselves can in no way be said to be pristine! Why pick on the immorality of the Georges and ignore the depravity of the Stuarts? James 1, William 111 and Anne 1 were all said to have homosexual lovers and Charles 11 had countless public mistresses who begat him some sixteen illegitimate children from which several of our current dukedoms descend.
Whilst George 111 and his wife, Charlotte, were the first happily married King and Queen of their dynasty, George had had his fill of mistresses and was even rumoured to have entered into a morganatic (and therefore illegal) marriage with the shoemaker’s daughter, and Quakeress, Hannah Lightfoot.
Even Queen Victoria, as a young person, was said to have been licentious. As Queen she could see nothing wrong in her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, having an open mistress, until her puritanical husband, Albert, persuaded her otherwise. The age of Victorian prudery was not the product of the Queen but that of her Lutheran husband, Albert, the Prince Consort, whom Victoria had married in 1840. Albert, whose father’s sister was Victoria’s mother, wrought huge changes in British society causing Lord Melbourne to bemoan: ‘‘This damned morality will ruin everything!’’
Prince Albert died of typhoid in 1861 at the very young age of 42. Benjamin Disraeli eulogised: “With Prince Albert we have buried our Sovereign. This German Prince has governed England for twenty-one years with a wisdom and energy such as none of our kings have ever shown.” However Victorian morality was in many ways hypocritical. Men still had open mistresses and high society remained licentious. Country house parties were renowned for their orgies but now behind bedroom doors whilst, in company, it was considered to be imprudent to even mention a ladies ‘leg’! In this day and age when alternative ways of sexual expression are taught to teenagers in schools, who are we to condemn the lack of morality of the early Hanoverians? We should not forget that it was under them that England became more of a church-going Nation than ever before and moreover exported its Christian ideals throughout the World.
Whilst people today, with all our material and worldly advantages, may not go to Church and may not even believe in God, we cannot escape the fact that we, of the Crown of the United Kingdom, are Christian nations, in that our laws, our societies and our cultures are based on biblical traditions. We therefore owe a lot to the Hanoverians, for if it were not for them, Westminster democracy may never have developed and we could well have gone the same way as France, and not been the Saviour of the democratic World — such as it is today.
It was thus that during the later reign of George 111, great-grandson of George 1, it became convention for future First (or Prime) Ministers to enjoy the confidence of a majority in the House of Commons. Indeed, it was not until this reign that what had developed over the years in practice was put into words by the then Prime Minister, Lord North (Prime-Minister 1770 to 1782): “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 his son, William 1V, the last to dismiss a Government which still held a majority in the Commons when he dismissed the Melbourne Ministry in 1834 and by the time Victoria, the granddaughter of George 111, ascended the Throne in 1836, the system of government was very similar to that which we have today.
It was during her reign that the nineteenth century law authority Blackstone stated that, “Parliament has sovereign and uncontrollable authority in the making, confirming, enlarging, restraining, abrogating, repealing, reviving and expounding of laws concerning matters of all possible denominations ecclesiastical or temporal, civil, military, maritime or criminal. This being the place where that absolute despotic power, which in all Governments must reside somewhere, is entrusted by the Constitution of those Kingdoms. All mischief’s and grievances, operations and remedies that transcend the ordinary course of laws are within the reach of this extra-ordinary tribunal. It can regulate the succession to the crown, as was done for Henry VII and William III. It can alter the established religion of the land, as was done in a variety of instances in the reigns of Henry VIII and his three children. True it is that “what the Parliament doth no authority upon earth can do”.’
This means that, under the Westminster system, the Parliament, comprising the King, the Lords and the Commons, has, the right to make or unmake any law.
Time and time again, the British Parliament has legislated against the tenor of constitutional convention, even to the extent of extending its own life, such as in 1716 and 1914. The precedent has therefore been set for the convention ‘that parliament can do no wrong’ for it can legislate to legalise what was hitherto an illegality. Whilst the parliaments of most Crown Realms are restricted only by their respective constitutions, the British Parliament is not, for the British Constitution is vested in the Parliament and regrettably now openly flouted by the Executive.
However, it was during the reign of Victoria that the evolution of Westminster took what I believe was a wrong turn with the transfer of much of the Royal Prerogative to the Executive.
In the United Kingdom, the Lower House of the Parliament has virtually nullified the House of Lords and abrogated sovereignty to the European Union so that it can be said that the Parliament now comprises The European Union, The Queen and The Commons.
However in the Realms, such as Australia and Canada, the opinion of Coke and Blackstone on the supremacy of parliament remain applicable, as their written constitutions have ensured the sovereignty of their parliaments, even though there is an increasing trend to empower the Offices of Prime-Minister, creating the illusion of ‘presidential prime-ministerships’.
The Australian Constitution is the only one under The Crown which its Parliament has no power to directly amend. This can only be achieved by a vote of the people at referendum, which is why executive power continues to remain vested in the Queen and exercisable by the Governor-General as Her Majesty’s representative (section 61). However in 1986 the Federal and State Parliaments enacted the Australia Acts which, although introduced ostensibly to remove all vestiges remaining in the State Legislatures of old Colonial Acts passed by the British Parliament in the nineteenth century, also seemed to empower the Australian Parliaments, combined, to be able to amend the Constitution Act of 1900 of the United Kingdom of which the Australia Constitution is a schedule. This is of tremendous concern should one political party control all seven parliaments in Australia.
Albert Venn Dicey’s ’Law of the Constitution’ of 1885, was the first time that the concept of parliamentary democracy was put down in writing detailing the following three principles which distinguished Westminster democracy from all other Constitutional systems:
(1) The legislative supremacy of Parliament. (2) The prevalence of the rule of law. (3) The dependence of the Constitution on the conventions.
Constitutional Monarchists, including myself, have been wont to proudly point to the Westminster system as being based on what is termed the Doctrine of the Separation of powers in that the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, as organs of the government are prevented by constitutional convention from exercising or interfering with the functions of each other. The process is supposed to be that, whilst the Legislature enacts the laws, the Executive must administer them and the Courts interpret them.
It was always felt that the separation of powers is a protection of the freedoms of the people for if they were all entrusted to one entity, then that would surely lead to an abuse of power and a threat to democracy. However, when one analyses the process of government in any country under the Westminster system, one finds that this doctrine does not hold true and in fact has never held true other than as a matter of honour which, unfortunately, is sadly lacking in the parliaments of this modern age.
Prior to the recent modifications to the Lords, it could be said that the British Legislature was somewhat independent of absolute control by the Prime Minister, as the hereditary Peers could never be influenced by the Party Whips. However changes to the House of Lords in 1911 and 1999 have so emasculated their potency, that it can now be said that the Parliament is today dominated absolutely by the Executive. Similarly, in Australia, the Senate was established by the Constitution to be both a House of review and representative of the interests of each State in the Federation. Regrettably it has since become a second party-political chamber controlled by the Whips, and therefore its role as a protector of the people’s democracy has been impaired. The mistake that so many make is to equate ‘Democracy’ with modern Parliamentary Government. In its original Greek translation Democracy means ‘People Power’, not rule by a few which is, regrettably what our Parliaments have now actually become, but due not to any constitutional change but rather to public indifference.
The King, as well as being an integral part of the legislature is also the head of the judiciary and the supreme executive authority in the land. When the Prerogative resided in the King, it was exercised on a strictly impartial basis without fear of favour. However, now that much of the Prerogative, or power, of The Crown, is exercised by the Prime Minister, that impartiality is no more. Even though the Lord Chancellor, as head of the Judicature, was always a member of the Cabinet, at the same time he was an officer of The Crown and sat in the House of Lords and was thus able to maintain a sense of impartiality. Today his Office has been severely politicised and no longer enjoys a measure of autonomy as opposed to the situation in the Realms where Law Officers still continue to zealously guard their independence from political interference.
The only saving factor, in spite of the diminished Prerogative, is the continuing strict impartiality of The Queen and that required of each Governor-General in the Realms.
WORLD GOVERNMENT
George Orwell, made famous by his works ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘1984’, once wrote: “He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past.” How very true the writings of this prophetic man have become, particularly in his 1984, as we experience, in the sterile society of 2007, the increasing intrusiveness of government into our day to day lives.
The nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth saw the loss of most monarchies throughout the World. For the first time there were revolutionaries disseminating anarchism. Theories of secret societies abounded, but have not there been conspiracies amongst humans, ever since gathering into communities, for the sole purpose of gaining power for themselves?
The 19th century Ralph Waldo Emerson was quite right when he wrote: “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members”
The ancient empires sought to conquer or otherwise subdue and rule their known worlds. The Roman Empire was perhaps the first World Government for there was little of the civilised world left outside its borders. The next World Government could be said to be the British Empire, for its flag flew in all four corners of the Globe.
Dante’s book ‘Monarchia’ written in 1329 touches upon the vision of universal supremacy and the 1625 ‘De Jure Belli ac Pacis’ of Hugo Grotius is looked upon as the origins of international law.
Over the past thousand years, particularly since the time of the Crusades, there has been a plethora of secret societies from the Knight Templars to the more esoteric freemasonry orders. More recently we have seen the establishment of the Illuminati, and the Rosicrucians. It is interesting to note the comments of famous individuals of past ages on the subject of conspiracy. In 1798, George Washington stated: “It is not my intention to doubt that the doctrine of the Illuminati and the principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more satisfied of this fact than I am” and in 1844 Benjamin Disraeli (Prime Minister of Great Britain 1868 and 1874-1880), made the very intriguing comment: “The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”
Given the comment of Mayer Rothschild in 1828: “Allow me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who writes the laws” and the earlier observation of Thomas Jefferson 1816: “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered”, it is no wonder that many books have been written and today’s internet is replete with theories of the many conspiracies of the banking and business communities to control global wealth.
Until only recently, to talk about global domination was taboo. Today President George W Bush openly talks about the New World Order, which he supports, provided, of course, it is his New World Order.
The United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other such-like organisations may influence and even control on a global scale, but they do not rule. Indeed, no one entity has ever reached the heights of supreme global dominance as those who control the European Union.
I have written so many times on the manner in which the European Union has become more than simply a ‘common market’ and today has sovereignty over the laws and the Parliaments of its member nations. It has, in fact, if not in name, created an empire over which a bureaucracy rules unanswerable to any elected Legislature.
THE DISEMBOWELMENT OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS AND THE EMPOWERMENT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
The European Union developed from the embryonic European Economic Community, which was created by the 1957 Treaty of Rome. The United Kingdom joined the EEC by acceding to the Treaty of Rome on the 1st January 1973. Members of the British Parliament at the time now admit they had never read the Treaty!
The treaty of Rome has subsequently been amended and added to by subsequent treaties, all of which have been incorporated into British law by Acts of the British Parliament resulting in the complete subjugation of both Parliament and law to the European Union. The latest Treaty that will be acceded in 2007 will incorporate most of the provisions of the European Constitution which was abandoned after being rejected by the voters of France and the Netherlands in 2005.
The Union operates through four principal institutions, these being the Council of Ministers, the European Court of Justice, the European Commission and the European Parliament. The Council has complete authority over the issuing of directives and is the real source of power within the Union. The Parliament, which although comprised of elected representatives of European Regions within the Union, does not allow its members to introduce their own legislation, but only to do the bidding of the Council of Ministers.
The administration of the Union and in particular the drafting of its legislation, is assisted by some 3,000 non-elected committees which often meet in secret and on which no Member of the European Parliament sits. In fact little is known of the composition of these ‘committees’.
The Parliament of the Union is therefore actually a camouflage with rule by a selected few. The sort of Westminster democracy we enjoy under The Crown of the United Kingdom is a total anathema to the dictatorial rule that is the ideal of the Union. This is why it has been the intent of the Union to work assiduously to fragment the United Kingdom and invalidate its constitutional instruments. It has broken Britain into nine regions each answerable direct to Brussels, so that there is no longer any ‘England’ on the map of the Union.
Over recent years moves have been made to dismantle the hereditary constitutional offices of the Kingdom, including the House of Lords which, as a non-elected Chamber was never able to be controlled by the political regime. The member nations of the union have been separated into 93 regions which themselves are divided into sub and sub-sub regions totalling some 1,291!
Shakespeare, that great writer and poet and perhaps the only patriot whose words the British have always turned to in times of war, of stress and of trauma, wrote in his tale of Hamlet “Which bewept to the grave did go.”
Whilst Shakespeare was portraying Orphelia mourning her father, his words could well have used to bemoan the demise of British democracy for, on the 7th March 2007, the British Parliament approved proposals to dismantle the House of Lords and make it an elected Chamber, politicising and thus subordinating the final safeguard in the institution of Westminster democracy to the Executive, which has subordinated its own self to the domination of the European Union.
In 1999, the House of Lords Act removed the right of most hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House. Only ninety two hereditary peers, seventy five of whom were elected by other hereditary peers and seventeen appointed, have been allowed to remain until legislation has been enacted on complete reform.
Whilst the 1832 Reform Act had the effect of empowering the Commons, it was in 1909 that a major confrontation between the two Houses of Parliament led to the humbling of the Upper House from which it never recovered.
The confrontation was prompted by the ‘socialistic’ budget of the then Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd-George who was possibly the most corrupt politician of the 20th century. Lloyd George had been a member of the Commons from 1890. He ended his political life in 1945 as Father of the House but will always be remembered as morally, financially and patriotically corrupt.
He was morally corrupt because, during thirty years of his marriage, he openly kept a mistress, (Frances Stevenson), whom he married almost immediately following his wife’s death. He was financially corrupt because he was responsible for the greatest ‘cash for honours’ scandal of the 20th century (as Blair has been accused of in the 21st). He could also be said to have been patriotically corrupt because, as Prime Minister, he was responsible for seizing much of the Royal Prerogative from George V, who had been weakened by the constitutional crisis of 1911 and the Great War with the Kaiser who, as a grandson of Queen Victoria, was the King’s cousin.
George V had ascended the Throne in 1910 and was immediately thrust into a major conflict between the House of Commons and the House of Lords. This had commenced in the last year of the reign of his father, Edward V11, in 1909 when the Lords rejected the Liberal Government’s budget. This had been drawn-up by the Welsh nationalist, Lloyd George, who in his hatred of the landed gentry, had included provision in the budget for extraordinary high taxation as a means of destroying the establishment classes. The Commons retaliated by legislating to remove the power of the Lords to reject legislation and, following the impasse of two general elections, the Prime Minister, Asquith, gave the King no option but to threaten the Lords with the creation of new Peers which would swamp and thus destroy the integrity of the Chamber. The threatened Lords gave in and also accepted, through the Parliament Act of 1911, the ending of their authority over future money bills.
Lloyd George took rapacious advantage of some mistakes which were made by the Prime Minister, Asquith, and colluded with others dissidents to form his own coalition, thus becoming Prime Minister in his own right in 1916. He immediately set about establishing a War Cabinet with tyrannical powers, over which he retained absolute control, sidelining both King and Parliament. The House of Lords, which, through his earlier actions, had been completely demoralised and destabilized, gave no opposition. Lloyd George cared nothing for honour or convention, even autocratically Sir Joseph Maclay from outside the Parliament to the War Cabinet as Minister of State. It was in this manner that the first ‘presidential prime-ministership’ was established.
The Times reported: “Mr Lloyd George’s Ministry is without doubt the boldest political conception of our time. Some indeed will regard it as a constitutional revolution.” Indeed Lloyd George’s attitude can be epitomised in his comment: “What is a Government for except to dictate.” It is interesting to note that a newly appointed young Federal cabinet minister in Australia made a very similar comment only earlier this year of 2007.
The honours system had always been used to reward those persons who had provided service to King and Country. However Lloyd George manipulated the system for the specific purpose of raising funds. His agent, Maundy Gregory, became the first and, so far, the only person to be convicted of selling honours. During the six years of his prime-ministership, Lloyd George was responsible for 120 hereditary peerages and more than 1,500 knighthoods.
When, some two hundred years ago, Thomas Carlyle wrote: “Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords”, he could never have known how prophetic his words would be, for the detestation of Lloyd George towards the hereditary concept, caused him to deal a near fatal blow to the democracy of the United Kingdom by emasculating the constitutional authority of the House of Lords. Eighty years later, Tony Blair, who could well have been Lloyd George’s protégé - particularly in the disposal of honours, has completed the duplicitous task.
Since the time of Lloyd George, the principle of hereditary succession has been the major target of the politically correct and the Fabian influenced media and so successful has been their campaign that today most people agree that it is wrong to inherit a constitutional position and that all Offices should be elected.
It is this contrived change in public attitudes that has enabled current politicians to eliminate the ancient Constitutional Offices of The Crown which have provided the vital links of liaison between the Sovereign and the Parliament and which have been in position for over five hundred years, thus further isolating The Queen from the processes of Government, which of course is their purpose.
Whilst an elected office is by its very nature, political and therefore subject to influence, corrupt and otherwise, a heredity position owes no obligation to anyone and it was thus by the very right of hereditary succession that peers were protected from the dominance of the political parties and free to vote according to their conscience. Uppermost in the minds of most peers has always been the protection of the freedoms of the people against the avariciousness of governments, for, as is the case with the Monarch, most hereditary peers are not politicians and care nothing for political office.
The removal of these non-partisan, non-controllable, peers from the Parliament was perhaps a necessary stage in implementing the full control of the Union over the affairs of the nation and the absolute removal of the Common Law, which is law based on judicial precedents, and which is only binding if imposed by the highest court of the land which is, of course, the very House of Lords now brought under the control of the political parties. There is therefore a mere remainder of the traditional ‘rights’ which include those still able to be exercised by the Monarch. These ‘rights’ are either Statutory or Prerogative. Statutory rights are those which have been conferred upon the Monarch by Acts of the Parliament whereas prerogative rights are essentially common law ‘rights’ not yet superseded by legislation of the Parliament.
One of the great impediments to a stable constitution in the United Kingdom is that any Act of the Parliament will supersede an earlier Act regardless of the consequences to the Royal Prerogative or the Constitution. Convention dictates that no Parliament can be bound by its predecessor and on this basis, the accession by the Parliament in 1973 to the Treaty of Rome and subsequent treaties is therefore open for any subsequent Parliament to revoke. However, the British Government recently held that certain sections of the Statute of Westminster, which prohibit the British Parliament from legislating on the Succession and the Royal Style and Title without the consent of the Parliaments of the Realms, remain applicable and on this basis have disallowed bills to amend the Act of Settlement. Accordingly, the Statute of Westminster, as an Act of the British Parliament of 1931, has been held to be binding on successor Parliaments.
As each year passes, the stranglehold of the Union over the everyday affairs of the Kingdom grows stronger and stronger. In the month of May 2007 alone the British Parliament has passed 104 new laws to facilitate Union control over the affairs of the United Kingdom. Already most members of the Commons who, whilst admitting to the erosion, and even the enslavement, of British sovereignty, believe that the consequences of leaving the Union would be too high.
Whilst it is the Government and the Parliament which now decides upon and executes foreign treaties, the convention was, and still is, that no treaty should in any manner affect the rights of the King’s subjects given to them by law. However, in accordance to the famous nineteenth century constitutionalist, Dicey, the rule of law is totally dependent upon the supremacy of law. Since it is the Parliament that enacts law, then, according to Dicey, the Parliament itself is supreme over the law. However the Parliament that Dicey referred to was one in which the Monarch retained a strong prerogative as its Head. No one who had ever lived before, could ever have imagined that the Parliament could itself have legislated to give precedence over its laws to an alien power, albeit one on whose council its representative sits.
There is little difference between the rule of law under the Union in Britain today and the rule of law in Vichy France under Nazi Germany. The principle is the same. Subjugation has been achieved but this time without the storm-troopers. The only exception is that there still exists in the United Kingdom, a Crown, which, because it is shared with fifteen other nations and is integral to the constitutions of those nations, is inviolable. Under a constitutional monarchy, the powers of the Nation are reposed in the Crown and the implementation of those powers is divided amongst The King and the Parliament which itself entrusts its authority to the leader of the majority, now called the Prime Minister. These powers, which are not governed by constitutional enactment, such as taxes, become a part of the Royal Prerogative. Up until the nineteenth century, the Prerogative was exercised by the Monarch as his personal duty, but the reliance upon the Parliament to create and maintain the Regency during the last illness of George 111 from 1810 to 1820 meant that the Prerogative had to be shared between the Prince Regent and the Lords Commissioners.
However, doubt has been raised about the legality of the Regency Act, ‘Care of King During his Illness, etc. Act 1811’, because the Great Seal of the Realm was affixed by the Lord Chancellor without the consent of the King, but as George 111 was incapacitated and had earlier unwisely refused to sign a Regency Act, in spite of his earlier illness in 1788, the Government had no choice whatsoever but to assume the Prerogative in this instance.
Following the reign of George 1V, who had earlier acted as Regent, the frustration at the lack of any positive electoral reform since the Statutes of Henry V1 four hundred years earlier led to widespread agitation, particularly since the aristocracy blatantly continued their abuse through the manipulation of a large number of elections to the Commons using what were termed ‘rotten boroughs, which were electorates totally disproportionate to the population . Indeed some of these ‘boroughs’ only had a handful of voters who were influenced or even openly bought, by the landowner. The agitation, which intensified with the huge movements of people to city areas as a result of the Industrial Revolution, persuaded the Parliament to enact ‘The Representation of the People Act 1832’ (commonly referred to as the 1832 Reform Act), to remedy this appalling situation.
According to the preamble to the Act, it was to: “take effectual Measures for correcting diverse Abuses that have long prevailed in the Choice of Members to serve in the Commons House of Parliament.” It also established the current system of a ‘cabinet’ of Ministers comprising Members of the House of Commons and to a lesser extent, the Lords. For the first time, the Monarch was to be recognised as the Head of the Parliament rather than that of the Government. On the 14th August 1854, In his memoirs, Charles C F Greville, Clerk of the Privy Council from 1821 to 1859, wrote: “From the Revolution (1688) to the time of the Reform Bill, that is during 150 years, the system of Parliamentary Government has been consolidating itself and was practically established; the Sovereign nominally, the House of Commons really, appointed the Ministers of the Crown..”
The last time a Monarch personally gave Assent to a Bill of the Parliament was on the 12th August 1854. The Crimea War had just commenced and the very Germanic Prince Consort and, by association, Queen Victoria herself, were immensely unpopular.
The major transfer of the Royal Prerogative, however, occurred not as an Act of the Parliament but rather as a result of the necessity to properly administer the constitutional instruments of government due to the long term absence of Queen Victoria who, following the death of the Prince Consort in 1861, secluded herself at Windsor Castle for some twenty five years refusing throughout to perform many official and all ceremonial duties. Whole generations of Subjects grew up without ever seeing their Monarch! This meant that the Executive was forced to assume elements of the Royal Prerogative to ensure good Government. However, they were all never handed back and it is because of this that Lords Commissioners continue to give Royal Assent in the name of The Queen.
Another convention that ended totally was the tradition that, on the death of the King, the Parliament would be dissolved. The old thinking was that since it was the Monarch who formally summoned the Parliament, the summons expired on the Monarch’s death. However with its increased autonomy, the Parliament itself legislated in 1867 to remove this prerogative.
It was in many ways due to this particular transfer of the Royal Prerogative that prompted Alfred Lord Tennyson to include in his ‘Idylls of the King’, first published in 1859, the phrase: “Our slowly-grown And crown’d Republic’s crowning common sense” which was indicative of the acceptance that, even then, Britain was departing from, what was then accepted as Kingly rule, to a democratic and somewhat anti-monarchical system in which power was constitutionally reposed in the Parliament on a level never before experienced.
Royal Assent to any Bill has not been refused since 1708. The story is that, in 1707 Parliament passed the Scottish Militia Bill (1707) which was submitted to Queen Anne for Assent. However her ministers had second thoughts about the wisdom of establishing a militia in Scotland at a time when there was an increasing support for the Young Pretender, the grandson of James 11, and the Queen was requested to refuse Assent. Prior to the reign of Queen Anne, Monarchs would use the Royal Veto in a similar manner to that used by the President of the United States whenever the Congress and Senate passed legislation he may not agree with.
The practice of a Royal Commissioner formally granting Assent originated during the reign of Henry V111 when he shied away from personally signing the Act of Attainder to execute his Queen, Catherine Howard, and a clause was incorporated into the Act to enable it to receive Assent from Commissioners. The precedent virtually fell into disuse thereafter but was resurrected from time to time and was utilised more frequently during the ill health of George 111 prior to the establishment of the Regency until the seclusion of Queen Victoria when it became accepted custom.
The Commissioners are usually five Peers who are Privy Councillors, including the Lord Chancellor. As ‘The Lords Commissioners’ they occupy a special place in constitutional convention. When announcing Assent a Lord Commissioner will rise and declare: “My Lords, in obedience to Her Majesty’s Commands, and by virtue of the Commission which has been now read, We do declare and notify to you, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament assembled, that Her Majesty has given Her Royal Assent to the several Acts in the Commission mentioned.”
However just because the Prerogative to refuse Assent has not been used for three hundred years in the United Kingdom it does not necessarily follow that it has fallen totally into disuse and been thus invalidated. It remains functional both in the UK as well as throughout the Realms, where it is able to be exercised, without executive restraint, by The Queen’s Representatives, her Governors-General.
In March 2007, the media reported that: “practically in secret, the Prime Minister of Great Britain has abolished the Privy Council office.” Until now, the Privy Council Office had been the administrative centre of the Privy Council, which dates from 895 AD. Its duties have been taken over by the Department of Constitutional Affairs, which, unlike the Privy Council Office, is answerable directly to the Government. Already the Prime Minister, by (mis)-using his numbers in the Parliament has attempted to remove the position of the Lord Chancellor, which is the oldest constitutional office in the land and whilst he failed in this particular endeavour due to an adverse vote in the House of Lords, he has succeeded in stripping the Office of its authority. If there is no Lord Chancellor and no Privy Council, then The Queen is left virtually rudder-less.
The Lords Commissioners, who act as the Officers of The Crown in granting Assent, comprise the Lord Chancellor and up to four other Privy Councillor's, but in the event they are removed, then it is likely that the Executive itself will attempt to exercise control of this responsibility and will become literally ‘the fox guarding the henhouse’.
In January of 1999 the Labour luminary Tony Benn 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.” It could therefore quite legitimately be reasoned that there is no longer any rationale for the process of the Assent? However it nevertheless remains a safeguard in the event of a rogue government, or a constitutional crisis requiring certain Bills not to pass into Acts. Furthermore in The Queen’s other Realms, Her Governors and Governors-General have differing constitutional powers thus enabling them to exercise a greater prerogative in their own right.
Even through The Queen does not personally sign bills into law, people can be well assured that they are all closely studied by Her Majesty and any concerns would have to be alleviated prior to formal Assent being issued by the Commissioners. Her Majesty takes her responsibilities as outlined by Bagehot very seriously, even if her governments do not. According to Bagehot, these responsibilities are: “The Sovereign has, under a Constitutional Monarchy such as ours, three rights: the right to be consulted, the right to encourage and the right to warn. And a King of great sense and sagacity would want no other.”
The Queen’s grandfather, George V, although a staunch traditionalist, was actually quite a reactionary when he was young. However this attitude was expunged from him by his teacher, Professor J R Tanner of St. John’s College, Cambridge, who indoctrinated him with Walter Bagehot’s ‘English Constitution of 1867’. This became his political bible and stood him in good stead as he faced the many constitutional changes of the first half of the twentieth century. It was also the handbook of his son, George V1, who studied Bagehot under J R M Butler of Trinity College, Cambridge. Likewise, his daughter, our own Queen, had Bagehot instilled into the fibre of her very being by her tutor, Sir Henry Marten of Eton.
Whilst the majority of the Royal Prerogative is now exercised by the Prime Minister, it could potentially still be resumed by The Queen, but at the probable cost of a constitutional crisis. With apathy now reigning supreme amongst the populace, few would be there to stand up for The Queen if she were to act against an elected, and what has become, an all-powerful Prime Minister.
Concerned at the extent of the powers now exercised by the British Prime Minister, the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom has proposed to limit the Prerogative exercised by the Prime Minister and Cabinet Ministers and give Parliament a greater say in its use. It is hoped that the Parliaments of the Realms will do likewise and thus put an end towards the trend of the presidential prime-minister.
There remain, however, some constitutional activities which cannot be undertaken by the Prime Minister, perhaps the most important of which is that, as yet, the Prime Minister, unlike Napoleon, cannot appoint or anoint himself and, fortunately, it is still only the Monarch who can summon, prorogue or dissolve the Parliament, albeit almost always on the advice of the Prime Minister.
THE QUEEN
For almost the entirety of her reign, Queen Elizabeth 11 has had to walk a tightrope between the avariciousness of politicians and the right thing to do in the best interests of the people, even though, in so doing, many of her subjects, who know nothing of how restrained her constitutional powers have actually become, constantly criticise or even condemn her.
In their lack of knowledge, they fail to realise how essential it is that Her Majesty does nothing that may give rise to a constitutional crisis, for, whilst Her Majesty reigns by the Grace of God, her rule is now always by the will of the Parliament. The Queen’s previous Prime Ministers in the United Kingdom always respected the position she was in and always heeded her advice. This is no longer the case. We see the same thing happening in Australia and undoubtedly in Canada with Prime Ministers attempting to sideline The Queen’s Representative or when that fails, to flout convention by nominating their puppets as viceroy.
We have seen examples of this in Australia where, in 2003, the Tasmanian State Government appointed the vocal republican and former Diplomat-in-Residence at the Council of Foreign Relations, Richard Butler, as the State’s Governor, and after only one year of what was a highly embarrassing debacle, had to pension him off with A$650,000 of taxpayer’s money.
The State Government of South Australia has only recently announced the nomination of Rear-Admiral Kevin John Scarce AO RAN (Rtd.) as the next Governor of South Australia. Admiral Scarce immediately announced that not only was he a republican but that he intended to promote a republic! In his words: "When the time comes I will be supporting Australia becoming a republic."
The Real-Admiral has since written to me to say: “I am unapologetic about my long-term preference for a republic”, and that: “at some time in the future I expect that Australia would become a Republic and when that time comes it would have my full support.” These highly controversial and constitutionally inappropriate comments have alienated a large section, if not the majority, of what are to be Rear Admiral Scare's people when he is appointed Governor (57% of the South Australian electorate voted against a republic in 1999) and are a clear example of how not to flout Bagehot’s dictum to only ‘encourage’ and ‘warn’.. The Queen only openly speaks her mind on political issues to her Prime Ministers and then only behind closed doors. The pity is, that in failing to follow Her Majesty’s fine example, her Vice-Regal Representatives—such as the Rear-Admiral, only tend to demean the Office they are privileged to hold.
Such nominations are an obviously attempt by politicians to debase the system of Constitutional Monarchy and to encourage criticism of The Queen. By now, Her Majesty is well used to these antics. Indeed, only a few years into her reign, in 1957, the 33 year old Baron Altrincham of Tormatron, wrote in the ‘National and English Review’ that The Queen presents to the public the personality of: “a priggish schoolgirl, captain of the hockey te |
