Allegiance, Democracy and Treason
All British subjects owe allegiance to their monarch, wherever they may be. For example, until recently the police constable’s oath contained, “I solemnly and sincerely declare that I will well and truly serve our sovereign Lady, the Queen …”. In return for this allegiance, the Queen is bound by the Coronation Oath to govern us according to our laws and customs and to maintain the Protestant Reformed religion established by law. Yet Lord Justice Laws, a constitutional expert, has ruled that no religious belief could be protected under the law (1). Are we to infer that the Queen’s promise to her people has in some way been revoked or superseded without our rulers telling us?
If ever the Queen should infringe our rights, the barons who are guardians of Magna Carta “…with all the commons of the land shall distrain and annoy us by every means in their power; that is, by seizing our castles, lands and possessions, and every other mode, till the wrong shall be repaired to their satisfaction, saving our person, our queen and our children. And when it shall be repaired, they shall obey us as before.” As Henry de Bracton put it hundreds of years ago, “The King is under no man, but he is under God and the Law”. So the people have the better end of the bargain.
Article 8 of the Maastricht Treaty, signed on 7th February 1992, says:
1. Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union.
2. Citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights conferred by the Treaty and shall be subject to the duties imposed thereby.
Hansard for 1st February 1993 confirms that this applies, not only to all British subjects, but also to the Queen herself. So Her Majesty has been made a vassal of the European Union and is subject to the duties imposed thereby. In other words, she is no longer sovereign in her own land and the words “our Sovereign Lady” are now omitted from the policeman’s oath. She has been put in an impossible position, for she is bound on the one hand by her coronation oath to govern us according to our laws and on the other by the Maastricht Treaty to do the bidding of the EU.
Most of us feel no allegiance to the EU and some feel uneasy about their allegiance to the Queen because of her subservience to the EU. The covenant between the people and their monarch, which is the essence of the British Constitution that has served us so well for over three hundred years, is being destroyed because it is incompatible with our membership of the EU. The politicians should have asked us first, for our constitution was not theirs to give away.
It is impossible to calculate how much our membership of the EU costs us. Many of these costs are a consequence of unwanted rules and regulations and the best estimates are of the order of two thousand pounds a year for every man, woman and child in the country. In spite of this vast cost and in spite of the fact that membership requires us to give up what is perhaps the best constitution the world has ever seen, P. Bottomley, M.P. for West Worthing, for reasons best known to himself, thinks it would be crackers for us to withdraw from the EU. Consequently, he would prefer to swear a vague oath of allegiance to the British people rather than an explicit one to the monarch who represents them. He was unwilling to tell us that the restructuring and eventual privatization of the N.H.S. and the closure of the Post Offices were a direct consequence of the EU Services Directives, which require the provision of all services to be privatized.
It would have been much easier for him to tell us the truth and he would then have appeared as the knight in shining armour! If his allegiance is to the British people, why is he so economical with the truth? If the E.U. is the marvellous thing that Bottomley apparently thinks it is, why is he not shouting its virtues from the roof-tops? Why does he not say, “We’re getting rid of the Royal Mail and the National Health Service to make way for the super new services that are going to be provided for you by courtesy of the E.U.”?
Make no mistake: the E.U. intends to get rid of anything that is essentially British. British Rail has gone, the Royal Mail and British Weights and Measures are going, the National Health Service is being dismantled, the British Armed Forces are being run down and the Church of England is under attack (with the Pope taking advantage of the circumstances). We are no longer allowed to call ourselves English on official documents and, indeed, England itself has been erased from official maps where only constituent euro-regions are now named. G. K. Chesterton’s words come to mind:
… But do not quite forget
For we are the people of England and we have not spoken yet.
The overriding reason for Bottomley’s silence is probably this: if we all knew the truth, an overwhelming majority would be clamouring for immediate withdrawal from the E.U. and condign punishment for those who have so grievously deceived us.
Democracy is usually described as government of the people, by the people and for the people; in other words the people are sovereign or supreme. In view of the covenant between the British people and their sovereign (or, at least, the person who was their sovereign before the Maastricht Treaty came into force) described above, our Constitutional Monarchy was a democratic form of government in which the people had chosen their monarch to exercise their sovereignty.
Almost any form of government would work were it not for human nature. Democracy works in spite of human failings and appears to be the best form of government yet devised; but to understand it, we need to be quite clear as to what we mean by a people.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives, “people: persons composing community, tribe, race or nation.” Without being too pedantic, let us therefore agree that the British people and the British nation are the same thing. So when we said that Great Britain was a democracy, we meant that sovereignty belonged to the British people or British nation. We thus see that democracy and national sovereignty are virtually the same thing. On the other hand, a state can be sovereign without being democratic. For example, England during the reign of Henry VIII, the former Soviet Union, Germany between 1933 and 1945 and the Vatican (which is a theocracy).
That great parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, said, “I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong … But I do say, that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.”
When the Common Market, as it then called itself, told us to repeal the Merchant Shipping Act 1988, Tony Benn said, “… I was brought up to believe, and I still believe, that when people vote in an election they must be entitled to know that the party for which they vote, if it has a majority, will be able to enact laws under which they will be governed.” These are surely the words of a true democrat.
Our democracy worked because people used to obey laws with which they disagreed since they knew that, sooner or later, they could vote in a new parliament which would change unpopular laws. This, as Tony Benn has pointed out, is no longer true. (2)
Democracy cannot exist at the European level because Europe consists not of one people but of several peoples. The founders of the E.U. knew this all along and a few years ago Peter Mandelson (now Lord Rumba of Rio) admitted as much when he said that the E.U. Constitution “…cannot be held hostage to democratic voting.” He also said, “…the democratic experiment in Europe has failed. We must now move on to the post-democratic society.” (3)
It is interesting to compare Mandelson’s statement with what Edward Heath told us in January 1973 when he took us in (in both senses of the expression). “There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified.” (4) However, in private he said “The British public are too stupid to be involved in governing themselves.” (3) As early as 1966 he had said “We should frankly recognise this surrender of sovereignty and its purpose.” (5)
The question that now arises is what is this post-democratic society we are already living in? George Orwell gave us a pretty good idea in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and the former Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky says that the E.U. is very similar to the old U.S.S.R. of which he has personal, unpleasant experience. Indeed, how could it be otherwise when the people are no longer governed by consent in accordance with their own laws, but by coercion in accordance with foreign laws? We have seen civil unrest in Greece and other E.U. countries. Perhaps we shall soon see the European Gendarmerie Force in action. This paramilitary police force has for some years been training near Vicenza in northern Italy. Who can say that it won’t be deployed in the United Kingdom?
So what happened to the Common Market we thought we had joined in 1973? The answer is it never existed; it was just a front for the creation of a superstate. Indeed, Jean Monnet said so in 1952. (5)
High treason is not a difficult concept to understand. Once again, the Concise Oxford Dictionary tells us what we need to know: “high treason, violation by subject of allegiance to sovereign or to chief authority of State.” It is a particularly vile crime that is sometimes committed inadvertently by decent people who have been tricked. For example, P.G. Wodehouse, beloved by many of us for his delightful writing, made the mistake of saying that the Germans treated him well after they arrested him in France during the war. (Of course they did; they knew a propaganda coup when they saw one!) He thus gave comfort to the King’s enemies, and that is high treason. After the war, Oxford University rescinded his degree and he had to emigrate to the United States.
Nowadays town mayors sometimes sign twinning arrangements which commit them to working for a United Europe. The word united means “made one.” Two distinct states can share a head of state: for example, the Stuarts were heads of state of both Scotland and England before the Act of Union of 1707 and the Hanoverians up to William IV were kings of both the United Kingdom and Hanover. But a single state, such as the U.S.A. or a United Europe, can have only one head of state. Indeed, our head of state is now some Belgian gentleman whose name I don’t remember (van Rumpy Pumpy?). Were the civic dignitaries who signed such twinning arrangements aware that they were committing themselves to removing the Queen from her position as head of state and were thus guilty of high treason? Probably not. On the other hand, the Local Government International Bureau, which deals with town twinning, almost certainly knew what it was doing.
On 5th March 2008, the following motion came before the House of Commons: “Notwithstanding any provision of the European Communities Act 1972, nothing in this Act shall affect or be construed by any court in the United Kingdom as affecting the supremacy of the United Kingdom Parliament.” 380 “honourable” members voted against. Their names are listed in Hansard, columns 1879-1882. Is it conceivable that they didn’t know that they were putting the Queen in breach of her solemn promise made before God to govern us according to our laws? They must surely have known that, rather than helping the Queen in the onerous task of governing the nation, they were committing high treason. Did no-one tell John Major that by passing the Maastricht Treaty Bill he was not only in breach of his oath of allegiance but was also committing high treason? Ministers should remember that they are not the bosses as some of them seem to think. The word minister means servant; they are the Queen’s servants and have sworn to serve her.
Most of us want a Europe of friendly democratic states; but, as we have seen, the E.U. has been building something quite different. Where did we go wrong? Who’s to blame? What’s to be done?
The Act of Settlement of 1701 (a statute in force) says “The laws of England are the birthright of the people…” We, the British people, went to sleep, and while we slept, the politicians stole our birthright. In a democracy, the people have a part to play. It is not sufficient merely to elect people to the House of Commons, we should also keep an eye on them. We neglected our duty, and so are partly responsible for what has happened. As Edmund Burke said “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.”
Some of us have now woken up, but many are still asleep. We must wake those who sleep, tell them what is happening, and then demand withdrawal from the E.U. and the return of our democracy.
John Strange – 8th May 2010 at Worthing