Anglonautes > English vocabulary / words > Politics > UK

Yesterday Mr Brown referred to the British Constitution as "unwritten". That is misleading. A more accurate description would be "un-codified". In common with the citizens of other countries, subjects of the British Crown enjoy certain legally prescribed rights and freedoms. And like the governments of other nations, British administrations are bound by the chains of law and convention.

The difference is that the various Royal Charters, Acts of Parliament and legal rulings that make up the framework of proper British governance have never been gathered and written down in a single legal document in the style of, for example, the Constitution of the US.

Up until the 19th century, the history of the British constitution was, in large part, the history of the struggle for power between the monarch and the aristocracy. In 1215 a coalition of disgruntled barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta (or Great Charter), left, guaranteeing the right for freemen to be judged, not by the king, but their peers. The monarch was also forced to pledge that "to no one will we deny or delay right or justice", a significant undertaking at a time when rulers enjoyed power unchecked by formal commitments.

The dispute over the limits of royal power rumbled on over the following centuries but it exploded again with great force in the 17th century during the reign of King Charles I. A period of turmoil culminated in the so-called "Glorious Revolution". In 1688, a collection of peers deposed James II and invited Prince William of Orange and his wife Mary to become joint sovereigns on the condition that they acquiesce to some rigid restrictions on the power of the monarchy and guarantees of the rights of parliament. This settlement was enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which guaranteed freedom of speech, frequent parliaments and free elections. This settlement, perhaps more than anything else before or since, was the basis for our system of parliamentary sovereignty. But still only a minority of rich men were entitled to vote. It took a succession of reform acts to widen the franchise.

The battle over government that has raged since Magna Carta,
I,
4 July 2007,
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/
article2733250.ece - broken link

On This Day - July 22, 1994

From The Times Archive

Tony Blair became
the youngest leader of the Labour Party

TODAY marks the beginning of a new chapter in British politics. After 15 years of unelectability, there is now a good chance that the Labour Party will become a fighting Opposition again.

With Tony Blair at its helm, the principles of competition which lie at the heart of the Tory agenda will be exercised against the very seat of power. If the Conservatives manage to hold on to office at the next election, it will be not because Labour lets them in, but because the governing party has won the battle of ideas and the trust of the British people.

The leadership campaign was the biggest democratic exercise ever undertaken within a British political party. There was a surprising degree of uniformity in the preferences of MPs and MEPs, party members and trade-union levy-payers.

In all three sections, Mr Blair won more votes than John Prescott and Margaret Beckett put together. In the deputy’s race, Mr Prescott was also the clear favourite across the board. Nobody in the Labour movement can complain about the result.

Nor was there the usual acrimony or point-scoring between the candidates. All three conducted themselves with dignity. Mr Blair may have emerged with few concrete proposals in the way of a mandate. But he has also managed to avoid giving hostages which would have constrained policy changes in the future.

From The Times Archives > On This Day - July 22, 1994,
The Times, 22.7.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp

On This Day - April 21, 1992

From The Times Archive

Despite his victory in the 1992 general election,
John Major could not escape the shadow of his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher

MARGARET THATCHER broke her election purdah yesterday to issue a warning to her successor, John Major, claiming that there was no such ideology as “Majorism” and that the prime minister was “not his own man”.

In a forthright article entitled Do not undo my work in the latest edition of the American magazine Newsweek, the former prime minister instructs Mr Major to adhere to her principles. She bluntly warns him not to jettison her legacy which, she suggests, she handed down to him, by allowing public borrowing and the government machine to expand again.

Her comments dramatically illustrate that, with the election over, she intends to cast aside inhibitions about criticising Mr Major’s administration and the direction in which he is taking the Conservative party. Her growing disillusion with Mr Major’s strategy comes out forcibly in her warning about the rise in public spending and his appointment of her rival for the leadership, Michael Heseltine, as the trade and industry secretary.

Since her departure from the Commons and Mr Major’s election victory, Mrs Thatcher’s ability to wound the Government is more limited. But her stern, almost dictatorial, comments will send a shiver through ministers and give a foretaste of the strict watch she intends to keep on them from the Lords. Mr Major and most of his cabinet were still on their Easter break last night.

On This Day - April 21, 1992, The Times, 21.4.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp

On This Day - May 6, 1989

From The Times Archive

Margaret Thatcher's first ten years
as Prime Minister were marked
by many changes
to the economy's manufacturing base

“MRS THATCHER prefers people who make money to people who make things,” complained a delegate at the Confederation of British Industry conference last year. He was not quite right. Mrs Thatcher likes people who make both.

In the early years of her administration, John Ashcroft, chairman of Coloroll, was reckoned to be her favourite entrepreneur. It was, thought the beleaguered metal bashers of Brum, typical of Mrs Thatcher that a manufacturer of pastel wallpapers should be fêted while the solid industries which founded an empire struggled to survive. Ashcroft had all the attributes admired by Mrs Thatcher. He is self-made and, by his own admission, pushy. He produced a concept called “Death RAE,” under which managers are Responsible for their actions, Accountable for them and Exposed to the consequences.

He was also young, charming and good-looking, attributes also admired by Mrs Thatcher. He was frequently at No 10, held up as an example for industry to follow. At the same time, Alan Sugar became one of Mrs Thatcher’s most famous multi-millionaires by building Amstrad into a leading computer manufacturer from an unpromising start in a street market selling car radio aerials.

The backbone of British industry was affronted by praise heaped upon some businessmen while others struggled to survive the harshest economic environment since the Second World War.

From The Times Archives > On This Day - May 6, 1989,
Times, 6.5.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp

On This Day - April 12, 1988

From The Times Archive

By Philip Webster,
Chief Political Correspondent

In the late 1980s a poll tax
was seen by Margaret Thatcher
as a vote-winner to replace
the 'unfair' rates system

A FEW days before the Conservative local government conference last month the organisers received a request from Downing Street. The Prime Minister, unlike in the past when she had spoken informally to councillors and candidates, wanted to address the conference.

A space in the programme was found, and Mrs Margaret Thatcher surprised and uplifted her 700-strong audience with a speech in which she urged them to go out and fight in the May 5 elections on perhaps the most controversial part of her third term: the community charge, or poll tax.

She called the charge the “ready reckoner” by which people would be able to judge for the first time exactly how local authorities were spending their money.

She said: “We should welcome that because Conservative councils are careful with people’s money; Conservative councils are good managers. It is Labour authorities who have to be rate-capped because they spend other people’s money like water.”

According to party strategists, Mrs Thatcher’s early intervention, along with her effectively simple description of the charge, galvanised the local campaign. Nervousness about the effects of the poll tax in the elections has been replaced by a determination to turn it to the party’s advantage. When they open the Tory campaign tomorrow, Mr Peter Brooke, the party chairman, and Mr Nicholas Ridley, Secretary of State for the Environment, are expected to emphasise that the votes people cast this May and next will determine the level of community charge they pay when the system is introduced.

On This Day - April 12, 1988, Times, 12.4.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp

July 6 1850

The death

of a remarkable prime minister

From The Guardian archive

July 6 1850
The Guardian

Our latest intelligence on Wednesday contained the melancholy announcement, received by electric telegraph, of the decease of Sir Robert Peel of the injuries received by the fall from his horse on Saturday.

[The ex-prime minister] had called at Buckingham Palace. Proceeding up Constitution Hill, he had arrived nearly opposite the wicket gate leading into the Green Park, when he met Miss Ellis, one of Lady Dover's daughters. Sir Robert had scarcely exchanged salutes with this young lady, when his horse, becoming restive, swerved towards the rails of Green Park, and threw Sir Robert sideways on his left shoulder.

Sir Robert, on being raised, groaned very heavily, and [asked] whether he was much hurt, replied, "Yes, very much."

From A Special Correspondent: From 1841 to 1846 I heard every speech he delivered and [have read] every speech he ever delivered. He is open to the reproach of having been a dextrous party leader, often leading people who trusted him astray as to his real objects.

But, apart from this, his public life of forty years is associated with some of the most remarkable of the measures which have changed the very character of the government; the remodelling of the currency, the improvement of the executive in Ireland, the amelioration of the criminal law, catholic emancipation, and commercial freedom, are the monuments of his public career.

[As a young MP] Peel was in the prime of manhood, and the champion of the protestant interest. It would have been absurd to expect an early abandonment of his position.

But any one who will take the time to read his speeches during several years prior to catholic emancipation will detect the gradual conquest of his intellect over his prejudices.

Any observer, during the period between 1841 and 1846, could discern that the intellect of Sir Robert Peel was capitulating to the arguments of the economists and that the repeal of the corn laws was merely a question of time.

Had [the Irish potato] famine been followed by the European revolutions of 1848, with the corn-law unrepealed, the Anti-corn-law League in full operation and the middle classes exasperated to the last pitch of endurance, the whole fabric of English society would have been shaken to its very foundations.

From that tremendous peril did Sir Robert Peel save us; and he accomplished it at the sacrifice of his power, his reputation and even his health.

From The Guardian archive > July 6 1850 >
The death of a remarkable prime minister,
G,
republished 6.7.2007, p. 36,
http://digital.guardian.co.uk/guardian/2007/07/06/
pages/ber36.shtml