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Are The British Out of their Minds?
Windsors Allowed To Loot Public Resources
In 2011 and 2012 the news media have given much attention to public anger about bankers’ bonuses. In particular Stephen Hester's proposed £1m bonus and the £703,000 a year pension that was to be paid to Fred Goodwin, former chief executive of the failed bank RBS, from a "pension pot" of £16.9m. The exploitation of the parliamentary expenses system by avaricious legislators also caused outrage.
But there was hardly a peep from the British people when Charles Windsor, son of the hereditary head of state, took £19m of their money in one year. This was more than the Hester bonus and Goodwin’s pension "pot" combined. And Windsor takes a similar amount every year.
In most countries this would be thought an excessive amount to give to the head of state in spending money, never mind to her son. Indeed, even in the UK the head of state does receive less.
This seems crazy. But is it?
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Democracy Doubly Denied
Time Warped Britain Set To Keep Hereditary Legislators |
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Britain may be stuck with the feudal obscenity of hereditary legislators for a long time yet according to an interview in the Financial Times. Thomas Galbraith, the leader of the House of Lords who inherited his own seat in Britain’s legislature and had held it without a vote for 25 years, warned that it was unlikely that the legislation to reform the feudal chamber of Britain’s legislature would be passed by 2015, the latest date for a general election.
Galbraith wants twenty per cent of the legislators in the reformed chamber to be unelected, including some hereditary legislators. In the same report Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister and promoter of the current reform proposals, was said to be willing to tolerate the feudal leftovers as the price of making progress in democratising what is sometimes misleadingly referred to as “the mother of parliaments”.
Mr. Galbraith warned that the legislature might refuse to democratise the second house or “we may be overwhelmed with other legislation” leaving insufficient time for democracy. In fact the amount of new legislation has been predicted to fall in the second half of the coalition’s term of office. The truth is that 80 per cent of legislators-for-life are determined to defend their privileges according to an opinion poll. The Financial Times reported that these opponents of democratic government come from “across the political spectrum”.
British democrats have been waiting for at least 350 to be free of illegitimate power of the legislators-for-life. It is 100 years since the first reform was enacted.
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USA - Yes We Can
UK - No You Can't
Obama Visit Exposes Shameful Constitution
"It is possible for . . . the grandson of a Kenyan who served as a cook in the British army to stand before you as president of the United States".
President Barack Obama
The 2011 European visit of President Obama has highlighted shameful features of Britain's constitution..
In Ireland the President visited the humble home of a relative in a small Irish town. In Britain he spent the night in the home of one of the richest women in the world. She is paid £12m a year as ceremonial and hereditary head of state. Obama is paid just $400,000 for one of the most onerous jobs there is.
In Ireland the American president spoke to the people who gathered in the streets of Dublin to hear him. In London he addressed the members of a legislature that includes hereditary legislators and legislators-for-life.
President Obama found it remarkable that he should be addressing the two chambers of Parliament. "It is possible for . . . the grandson of a Kenyan who served as a cook in the British army to stand before you as president of the United States". he said.
It would have been undiplomatic for him to have pointed out that if his father had married a British woman it would have been impossible for him to address the American legislature as a representative of his country. For the British constitution does not allow the children of newcomers to become head of state. Only members of the Windsor clan are allowed that privilege.
Nor could a British Obama have taken a seat in the British legislature. As a republican (with a small "r") he would be barred by the Parliamentary Oaths Act that requires an oath of allegiance to the Windsor clan, not to the people.
Britain's racist constitution
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"Everybody” Loves a Wedding
But Feudal Institution Fails to Hold Nation Together
"From the 19th century . . . the farcical state of royal tradition was rectified, first by inventing new ones . . . and second through a campaign in the vulgar press to increase the popularity of the monarchy among British working people". Letter to Financial Times.
Barely a week after the Middleton/Windsor marriage the Scottish National Party achieved a majority in the Scottish parliament for the first time, promising a referendum on independence and demanding control of the Crown Estate in Scotland. Although it is far from certain that that Scotland will leave the UK the argument of monarchists and apologists for monarchy that the feudal institution unites the nation looked more than every like an excuse. But that did not stop them wishing away that part of the population that wants to replace monarchy with democracy.
There is no denying that the wedding spectacle was a marketing success for the monarchists. But that was not enough though for them. Like the supporters of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya they hate to admit that there is anyone who really does not love the beloved leader. This made them strident in their certainties. The one third of the populations that wants to be free of the feudal institution and the majority that did not gaze in awe at the Windsor wedding had to disappear. A newspaper quoted "Steve Edge, a 53-year-old owner of a design agency, who said that 'subconsciously everybody loves' the monarchy, an institution he called the 'true brand of Englishness.' You can see it, he said, 'on days like today . . . with over a billion people watching'".
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Lords of Misrule
350 Years - A Nation Still Waits for Democracy
"Direct elections are how democratic countries get their legislatures. Legislatures are reckoned to work better if they have second chambers. Ergo, Britain should have an elected second chamber. Hard, wasn't it?"
That's how in 2002 the Economist magazine answered the question of what was to be done about the feudal House of Lords. But the Economist was not the first to notice this. Richard Overton, 350 years before, had seen the incompatibility of democracy and Lords. "You only are chosen by the people" he told MPs in A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens, "and therefore in you only is the power of binding the whole nation by making, altering or abolishing of laws. You have therefore prejudiced us in acting so as if you could not make a law without both the royal assent of the king (so you are pleased to express yourselves) and the assent of the Lords".
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. "You only are chosen by the people and therefore in you only is the power of binding the whole nation by making, altering or abolishing of laws. You have therefore prejudiced us in acting so as if you could not make a law without both the royal assent of the king (so you are pleased to express yourselves) and the assent of the Lords".
Richard Overton
A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens, 1646
So converting the British to democratic government is a hard and long job. In 2010 hereditary legislators, Anglican bishops and state appointees still make up the second chamber. The people of Britain have no say in it.
The new governing coalition agreement between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties provides for the for "Lords" to become a "wholly or mainly elected" legislative chamber. But "mainly elected" would mean still undemocratic.
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Taking Liberties
When the British police stop and search citizens at random or because of a gut feeling of wrong-doing they are usually faulted, not for doing so without a reasonable suspicion of law-breaking, but because a disproportionate number of non-white citizens may be the victims.
This may seem advantageous for those who suffer from such discrimination. But it may also have the disadvantage for them of creating the appearance that they enjoy special treatment. For it does indeed put them into another British minority, those whose civil liberties are taken seriously.
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"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
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Thomas Paine
Democrat
Why is it that it often takes the unfair treatment of a minority for the British to stand up in defence of their civil liberties? And why can those who belong to a minority group not depend on the majority's self interest to protect them from infringements of civil liberties that affect the entire population?
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"The Mother of All Parliaments"
Republicans Barred
" I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and her successors, according to law, so help me God."
The 2010 general election to the House of Commons removed the labour party from power and brought about a coaltion government. But the law made standing for election to that chamber pointless for one group of British citizens. They are republicans, banned by the Parliamentary Oaths Act from sitting in "the mother of parliaments".
The 1866 Act requires that elected legislators publicly affirm or swear an oath of allegiance to Elizabeth Windsor (the hereditary head of state described in the oath as “Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth”), to her son Charles Windsor and to any member of her family who might follow her as hereditary head of state. Any representative of the people who fails to do so is liable to be fined and to be thrown out of parliament.
Apologists for this law point out that there are MPs with republican beliefs that have sworn or affirmed allegiance to the monarchy in order to take their seats in parliament. This, they say, means that republicans in Britain are not really denied their civil rights.
In truth a law that requires a representative of the people to lie and to make a statement that is deeply repugnant and inconsistent with a belief in the sovereignty of the people before they may exercise a civil right, is a law that denies them that civil right. A democracy that prevents a democratically elected legislator from taking her or his seat in the legislature without swearing
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allegiance to a feudal institution that is at odds with the democratic spirit and democratic institutions, is a democracy that has no sense of shame.
The Parliamentary Oaths Act has survived in a nation that considers itself a paragon of democracy because to repeal it would be to question the legitimacy of the British monarchy. And those MPs who do question that legitimacy are afraid of the conservative wrath that they would face from both Left and Right if they did so in public.
As so often in Britain's democracy the ease of a shoddy evasion is preferred to the rigours of principle. The mother of parliaments would rather its members swore false oaths and that republicans of deep democratic conviction were denied a basic right, than allow a feudal institution to be undermined.
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Commission censors republicans
"Monarchy is racist" banned
The Commission took the view that we were minded to reject the application for the registration of the "Monarchy is Racist, End Monarchy Referendum" party because, in our view, the proposed name could cause offence to voters if it appeared on a ballot paper.
Conrad Wells, Registrar
The Electoral Commission has refused to register "Monarchy is Racist, End Monarchy Referendum" as the name of a political party. According to Commission official Conrad Wells, "in our view the proposed name could cause offence to voters." The commission has not objected to names that seem to call for non-Welsh people to be expelled from Wales or for a revolution by workers.
The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which established the little known commission, gives it the power to censor party names that it believes are "obscene or offensive."
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Prominent among the names that the Commission has not found offensive are those of the "Wales for the Welsh" and the "Workers Revolutionary" parties. It has also registered the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, the Ulster Protestant League and the Berkshire Stop the War parties.
The Commission has not admitted censoring other party names but has said that it may refuse the register the name of the White Nationalist Party. It has refused to explain which voters it believes would be offended by the name it has banned or why it considers the name "Monarchy Is Racist, End Monarchy Referendum" offensive.
Full report
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BBC: The Greatest Force
Is the British Broadcasting Corporation, sometimes affectionately called “the Beeb” by its admirers “the greatest force for cultural good on the face of the earth” or a politically biased extortion racket?
The first claim was made by Mark Thompson, the state broadcaster's director-general. The second opinion might be held by a republican aware of the corporation's long record of propping-up the feudal institution of monarchy, while harassing citizens for the crime of not seeking its permission to watch TV.
But both points of view draw attention to something else. That is that the BBC, despite its birth in the 20th century, fits well with Britain's feudal attitudes and institutions. (If you doubt this read the statement of the BBC Trust's chairman later in the article). Like an arrogant Lord, it sees itself as a worthy dispenser of what it thinks is good for the masses. And it believes that this entitles it to have its hands in the pockets of the masses whether or not they want what it dispenses.
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BBC Trust Chairman Michael Lyon warned “the government and opposition parties . . . that he and the other trustees were appointed by the Queen, through the Privy Council ‘rather than just at the dictate of ministers’”, according to the Financial Tines. He was “sending a defiant message to politicians of all parties that his organisation will conduct an ‘all-or-nothing’ struggle to protect” the privileges of the corporation.
And by accepting that the BBC may ignore their civil rights merely to broadcast TV, the British have done something even worse. They have signalled that when more serious matters are at stake too, they will accept their subservience to the state.
How the BBC flouts our rights
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The centre for republican democracy |
