CHAPTER NINE - THE QUEEN, THE REALMS AND EUROPE
CHAPTER NINE - THE QUEEN, THE REALMS AND EUROPE
CHAPTER NINE -
THE QUEEN, THE REALMS AND EUROPE
(Delivered to the Conference of the Association of the Commonwealth Realms574
at the Imperial College, Kensington – October 2006)
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is indeed my very great pleasure to welcome you all to what I believe to be the first ever conference designed to explore the impact that the various treaties and instruments entered into by the British Parliament may have on the Crown of the United Kingdom and of the Commonwealth Realms, which are, of course, those nations which have remained under the Crown and which have as their Sovereign, Her Majesty the Queen.
Since the Statute of Westminster of 1931108, there have been so many changes both in those countries which were previously termed dominions and of course, in the United Kingdom itself.
The concerns that this conference will explore will be how some of these changes have affected the relationships that have evolved between the Crown of the United Kingdom and the constitutions of the Commonwealth Realms.
Of course, since 1931 most of those former colonies of the British Empire, have become republics and are therefore not dependent on the Crown for their constitutional stability. South Africa535 and the later Dominions of Ceylon536 (now Sri Lanka) and Pakistan537 which opted to become republics are clearly the worse off for it.
The Commonwealth of Nations352 is a magnificent creation but, unlike the League of Nations and the United Nations which followed, the Commonwealth was not born out of war, but out of a peaceful transition from empire to a friendly association of nations now each independent in their own sovereignties.
Such a thing has never before occurred in the entire history of the known world. Although the dear wish of George VI123, it is entirely due to his daughter, Her Majesty our Queen, whose dedication and perseverance often in the face of political ambition and even vitriol, moulded an incongruent and often mutinous peoples into a voluntarily association of nations, which today freely meet as equals with the former Mother Country of the United Kingdom, but still under the leadership and guidance of our Queen.
Supporters of the European Union88 point to it as the keeper of world peace. It is true that it has ensured peace in Europe, but only by the compliant handing to the main architect of the horrors and tragedies of the first and second world wars of the 20th Century, the domination that it originally sought.
Has not, however, the Commonwealth by creating an environment for debate and resolution, covering a quarter of the globe, brought about a greater peace throughout what could easily have become a disparate and embattled world?
It was a natural evolvement that the British Empire should come to an end by the peoples it governed in one way or another seeking self-determination and independence from Britain and establish their own constitutional systems of government.
Although none experience the freedoms that we, who remain under the Crown, possess, nevertheless, all but a very few experience some sort of democratic governance in one form or another. The Commonwealth was able to come into being because the British Empire instilled into those people under its authority a respect for British law and British justice.
Whilst 37 of the 53 nations of the Commonwealth have each gone their separate ways, 16, including the United Kingdom, remain under the Crown. Over the next decade it is probable that several of these countries will each go its own way and become republics which we can only hope each one will follow as closely as possible the example of Westminster democracy based on British law and justice, as is essentially the case in countries such as India. They will see this as the natural course of their constitutional evolvement, although by placing their constitutional future in the flawed hands of their politicians, it is evident that their freedoms will be impaired.
Having said this, I must admit to my chagrin that the protection of the Crown has not worked as effectively as it should have done in this, the United Kingdom, source of modern democracy. I put this down essentially to the apathy of the people, which has led to the seeming replacement of ‘the Queen in Parliament’ by the ‘Prime Minister in Cabinet’!
Whilst the peoples of the United Kingdom have, in the main, been compliant in the erosion by stealth of the Constitution in the United Kingdom we, in Australia have already defeated one attempt by republicans to do likewise and are working so desperately hard to ensure the defeat of what is certainly to come.
Our politicians and our media inform us that to change to a republic is ‘the natural step to adulthood’, but they forget that we and the other two remaining ‘old Commonwealth’ nations of Canada and New Zealand were populated and settled by the British and our societies exist with our own adapted versions of British culture, British law, and British justice.
We are each essentially ‘diasporas’ of the British people and impairing or removing the Crown in these countries will only lead to an impairment or even loss of our democracies and freedoms.
This is because our constitutional freedoms are reliant upon the Crown, for it is only by placing the power and authority of the nation under the protection of the Crown, which is always representative of its people under it, that that power and that authority will be kept safe from the machinations of political intrigue.
The purpose of this conference and the meeting at the House of Lords538 on next Wednesday, the 1st November, is to explore not only the current capacity of the Crown to protect the people, but also the failure of the people to protect the Crown.
Those of you who have attended the various talks I have given over many years in this country will appreciate that during those years I have been raising concerns over the way in which the European Union has been able to exert actual parliamentary, legal and constitutional control over what should be - but are no longer - the sovereign instruments of Great Britain.
This conference should look at the many questions which must be raised and which must be answered concerning the sovereignty of the Crown of the United Kingdom.
The Westminster system in the United Kingdom is based on an elected Parliament comprising the Queen, the House of Lords and the House of Commons.
The Monarch is the impartial umpire representing always the national interest independent from party politics.
The House of Lords is, or should be – and unfortunately after the next round of changes will most probably not be - the House of Review whose purpose is to essentially ensure the constitutionality, legality and fairness of any Act that is before the parliament prior to Assent. The House of Commons is the House of Government, the initiator of legislation and the comptroller of the nation’s finances.
I have read it stated that the House of Lords should be subservient to the House of Commons. This must not be, for it is through the independence of Queen, Lords and Commons that the whole process of the checks and balances to ensure democratic governance works effectively.
If you remove or impair the integrity and independence of one, you impair the entire system. It is like a house of cards. Take just one supporting card from the bottom and the whole edifice faces collapse.
Westminster can work only if the Monarch and the parliament are answerable to each other and allegiant to no one save the people. The purpose of the Act of Settlement is to ensure that no longer will the King be subject to influence by any externally controlled authority whether temporal or religious.
At this moment, you will find on the royal web-site the claim that: The Queen is also Fount of Justice, from whom justice in the United Kingdom derives ... Extracts from this section astoundingly claim:
As a national of the United Kingdom, The Queen is a citizen of the European Union.
but that in no way affects her prerogatives and responsibilities as the Sovereign.
In the case of European Union law, laws are enforced in the United Kingdom through the United Kingdom's national courts. There is therefore no machinery by which European law can be applied to the Queen in her personal capacity.539
Any lawyer worth his salt will tell you that these claims are patently wrong. As early as June 1990, some sixteen years ago, the European Court of Justice ruled, in what is called ‘the Factortame case540’, that national courts could strike down laws which contravened EU law. In other words, EU law is supreme throughout the United Kingdom whatever the ruling may be by a British court or even by the British parliament!
I know that there is the argument that Parliament could at any time repeal the European Communities Act541 which, it is claimed, demonstrates the sovereignty of Parliament. However, just as any visitor to this country is free to leave it at any time, whilst that individual remains within the sovereignty of these borders, he or she is under the jurisdiction of the law of the United Kingdom. It is the same with the Parliament. As long as Britain remains in the Union, it must obey the laws and dictates of the Union.
Article 8 of the 1992 (Maastricht) Treaty on European Union524, to which Her Majesty the Queen was a signatory, specifically states:
- Citizenship of the Union is hereby established.
Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of
the Union.
- Citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights conferred by this Treaty and shall
be subject to the duties imposed thereby.
It has been said that the establishment of Union Citizenship was, to quote: the turning point in the evolution in European integration. Citizenship is not simply a one-way ticket to a passport. It is an obligation, indeed a contract, on the part of the individual to protect and uphold the laws, values and integrity of the whole. Passports of non-European Union countries display their national symbols to indicate that the bearer is allegiant to and thereby under the protection of that nation-state. If I am not mistaken, do not British passports bear the symbols indicating the sovereignty of the European Union, regardless of the assurances that may have been made at the time of the signing of the treaty?
The very fact that Britain has been a party to creating a citizenship of the Union has by that very act recognized that the Union itself is tantamount to a nation-state. We are members of the United Nations85, and we all are obligated to the responsibilities of our membership, but we are not citizens of that body, nor are we of any other entity with which we have entered into treaty arrangements.
The Queen cannot be a citizen of the United Kingdom, for the Monarch is the fount of citizenship. The Queen should not be issued with a passport, for it is in the name of Her Majesty that passports are issued.
However, in making the Queen a citizen of the European Union, has not the British Government also made Her Majesty subject to the authority and to the laws of that Union thereby putting aside the immunity which by ‘national’ tradition applies to the Sovereign?
Apart from the Factortame ruling, did not Lord Justice Laws, in the matter of the Metric Martyrs542, rule 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.543
The comment that laws – whether European or not - are enforced in the United Kingdom through the United Kingdom's national courts and that there is no machinery by which European law can be applied to the Queen in her personal capacity, can therefore have no standing in law. What then of the position of the Crown in (the British) parliament and in law. How can it be supreme when it is clearly not? If the Crown in the United Kingdom is subject to the rule of the European Union, how does this affect the integrity of the Crown of the Commonwealth Realms?
Whilst in the earlier years of the last century, the Crown became divisible amongst the then sovereign and independent Dominions, there was no legislation creating separate crowns for all constitutions of the Dominions, or as is now termed ‘the Realms’. Whilst we all operate independently one from another and whilst we are all constitutionally separate, we are nevertheless all ‘under the Crown of the United Kingdom’.
In my country of Australia, we call the separate, divided component of the ‘Crown of the United Kingdom’ ‘the Crown of Australia’. However, whilst the Queen is Queen of Australia by Act of the Australian Parliament276, as well as by Her Majesty’s Coronation Oath350, there is no legislative or constitutional document creating a separate Crown.
As our constitutions stand at the moment, neither our ‘Crown’ nor the ‘Crown’ of Canada nor indeed those of the other Realms can exist without the ‘Crown of the United Kingdom’. It is possible for a referendum to be held creating an Australian Crown, but this would involve fairly complex (and may I say virtually impossible) drafting to ensure that we did not lose all that we have gained from being ‘under the Crown of the United Kingdom’.
In the United Kingdom, parliament has legislative jurisdiction over the Crown, which is different from Australia where it is the people alone who possess such authority. This means that in the United Kingdom, the Crown is subject to the overriding will of the parliament.
On many occasions the Queen has been called upon to refuse Royal Assent, however, were Her Majesty to do so, it would cause a confrontation with those in authority who have little or no regard for convention, let alone tradition, and could lead to a constitutional crisis from which the Monarchy might never recover. There are many people who criticise the Queen for not acting in accordance with their wishes. They should be here today but they are not, neither will they be seen if the time ever comes for loyal subjects to stand up and be counted. Indeed, it is due solely to the apathy and even indifference of the people that, as I have already mentioned, the Prime Minister in the name of the parliament, has been able to usurp into his own hand much of the Royal Prerogative, bypassing the Queen in all but the very few constitutional requirements in which he cannot interfere.
The treaty arrangements entered into with the European Union have tended to increase the authority of the parliament and particularly the Government, even though they have at the same time curbed sovereignty, but the sovereignty curtailed relates more to the authority of the people represented by the Queen in parliament as well as to answerability of the politician to the electorate.
We must never forget that in Europe, governance is in the name of the state, whereas in Britain it is still in the name of the Crown. The state is whatever the politicians may decide it to be whereas the Crown is representative always of the wishes of the people.
The only problem, as the 18th century Montesquieu, whom I often quote, said:
The tyranny of a prince is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.142
Under the Westminster system, which, I might mention is totally alien to any political structure in Europe, the people place their confidence in the parliament they elect. If that parliament betrays that confidence, it is then up to the people to remedy that at the next election. However, this can only be in the event the people actually understand how their liberties are being reduced day by day.
The multitude of legislation emanating from Brussels and pouring through the British Parliament confuses even its own members, so how can one expect the people to understand the meaning, the intent and the erosion of their sovereignty with each treaty that is entered into and with each Bill that passes through their parliament? There are those, however, who, to quote from Matthew, have been as voices crying in the wilderness.545
One gentlemen in the United Kingdom recently sent me some notes he had compiled in which he had referred to the acts of the Parliament in entering into the various treaties with the Union as: ‘High Treason, misprision of treason and sedition on an unprecedented scale and contempt of the Sovereign Some words of his did strike me as perhaps an accurate – albeit it a constitutionally horrific - picture of the current situation today:
It would seem that the sovereignty of the British People is no longer embodied in the Queen but is now lodged within the European Union.
The Oxford English dictionary described Treason as: ‘the crime of betraying one’s country’.
In 1940 Marshal Pétain546, with the full authority of the French Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, signed the Armistice with Germany and established Vichy France leading to the passing of the sovereignty of the French people to German control. In 1945 he was condemned and convicted of High Treason.
In April 1970 Edward Heath520 in his election campaign stated that European integration would not happen except with the full-hearted consent of the Parliaments and peoples of the new member countries.566
In 1972, with the full knowledge that what they were entering into was not simply an economic union but a political one, his government passed the European Communities Act 1972 and on the 1st of January 1, 1973, Britain became a part of the European Union causing the passing of the sovereignty of the British people to that Union.
It is no wonder that so many people, particularly those of a period when the world was not made up of different shades of ‘politically correct’ grey but a time when white was white and black was black, condemn Heath and others for betraying Britain and thereby committing treason. Indoctrinated by the Fabian orientated media, certain politicians, journalists and others label these patriots as right wing loonies and to paraphrase Horace547 hope that they are consigned to oblivion548.
The fact is that no one in authority will entertain any action for treason against their own. It is a case of ‘setting a fox to guard the henhouse549. Perhaps this is why so many of the politically correct in the parliament voted to outlaw fox hunting!
The time is not far off when European legislation will ensure that all of us in this room could well ourselves be in breach of one law or another for expressing our concerns. Such is the pathetic situation in the United Kingdom today. Betrayed are those great men of Britain who have gone before.
I close with these words:
Our loyal, brave people... should know the truth. They should know that there has been a gross neglect and deficiency in our defences; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road... and do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of the bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year, unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in olden time.620
Words as relevant today as they were nearly seventy years ago when first uttered by Winston Churchill in 1938 in protest against the Munich settlement. Food for thought indeed.
Ladies & Gentlemen, I leave you to your deliberations
Saturday 28 October 2006
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