Category Archives: great britain

THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL’S STATE FUNERAL


THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL’S STATE FUNERAL


Peter Hitchens has written a superb nostalgic piece in the Mail on Sunday which I couldn’t better, so I have re-posted it below.

I can however add a personal element, which is that my Father, then a Captain, was one of the Officers of Churchill’s old regiment, the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars, who carried his medals, orders and decorations in the funeral procession. My Father is shown in the centre of the above picture above the coffin and immediately on the left of one of the heralds.

The one thing (but rather an important omission) that is missing from Peter Hitchens’ article is the conclusion to be drawn from his final comments. He is right that Britain isn’t that country now but he doesn’t mention that it now serves no useful purpose for the English Nation. It is high time to be rid of it and for England to re-emerge from its choking embrace!

Here is Peter Hitchen’s article:-

So uniquely British, but funeral tells a tale of a different country

What a strange thing it is to see my own memories harden into history, and what is, for me, a vivid and living experience, turn into a blurred and fading piece of film.

Half a century ago, at my strict-regime boarding school on the edge of Dartmoor, we were let off our normal Saturday morning lessons of Latin grammar, French vocabulary, rivers and capitals of South America, mostly taught by fierce, bristling gents with military or Naval ranks.

Instead, we were instructed to sit in rows on hard chairs as the school’s one small black-and-white TV was hoisted on to a high shelf. And for three utterly memorable hours we watched in silence as the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill passed slowly through London.

Outside (and no opportunity was normally missed to make us go outside) it was a freezing day of steely skies and pitiless winds, no small matter if you were forced to wear short trousers, as we all were.

Inside, in the comparative warmth, most of us were, I think, mesmerised, so that we forgot we were watching on a screen not much bigger than a breadboard. I certainly saw and remembered the event as a huge panorama.

Afterwards, we knew, quite simply, that something important had passed from the earth for ever, and that our small country was diminished and bereft.

Nobody who came afterwards would be as we had been before we watched it. By comparison, the assassination of President Kennedy is nothing in my recollections.

Last week, I managed to watch a rare, hard-to-find recording of Sir Winston’s funeral. It is the wrong shape for a modern TV screen, and sometimes the picture swims or blurs.

It is, of course, in black and white, but that only increases the feeling that you are watching something impossibly long ago.

The London of January 1965 is almost as distant from me now as the outbreak of the First World War was from us then. Most of the people who appear in the film are now dead, or impossibly old.

The actual procession looks, at many moments, like one of those jerky old films from the Austro-Hungarian empire that they show to illustrate how hopelessly old-fashioned the pre-1914 world is.

Bluejackets in the sort of uniforms they wore at Jutland pull the gun carriage on which the heavy coffin rests (a tradition in state funerals since the Army’s horses kicked over the traces at Queen Victoria’s obsequies, and sailors ran forward to take over the task).

The cortege moves at a mesmerisingly slow pace, swaying strangely to the music of a dozen military bands, thumping out dirges – occasionally interrupted by those uniquely British parade-ground yells, echoing for miles in the freezing air, as sergeant-majors keep their men in line.

The male members of the Churchill family walk behind the coffin, wearing what must surely be the last black silk top hats seen in London, like a Bolshevik caricature of greedy capitalists.

Lady Churchill, vastly veiled in black, rides in an enormous, sombre coach (lent by the Royal Family, but not from their better-known fleet of gilded carriages).

The coachman riding atop it is cloaked and muffled like something out of the Pickwick Papers, reaching back into a past that some of those present would still just have remembered.

From even further back come the Heralds of the College of Arms, most of them ancient men on sticks, looking a little like animated playing cards in their medieval tabards.

A huge drum horse, loaded with war-drums, leads the bands as its ancestor must have done at Blenheim and Waterloo.

The dead man’s orders and medals, borne on cushions, are carried behind him and arrayed by his coffin when it reaches St Paul’s Cathedral, where it is greeted by a man holding up the City of London’s mighty, ancient, black Sword of Mourning.

It is all so old that it was archaic in 1965, and I doubt it could be done now with a straight face. Yet it would have been as normal in Winston Churchill’s youth as it is outlandish now.

The sense of a last moment of something that is passing is emphasised by the figure of the Queen, not as she is now, but a woman coming to the end of her youth, worn by cares and powerfully moved by the heavy panoply and drapery of death on display.

Beside her, Prince Charles is still an awkward schoolboy.

But in one way the most moving faces are those in the crowds – of men and women then young, now pensioners, and above all, those of the soldiers in the bearer party who struggle, with increasing strain and tension, to lift, carry and lay down the weight of the lead-lined oaken coffin.

These are the days before pizza, milkshakes and sugary drinks fattened and blurred all our features into a bland and puffy sameness.

They look so British, in a hollow, hungry, wartime way, that it almost breaks the heart to see them.

The country they and I grew up in has entirely ceased to exist.


Here is a link to the original Article>>> PETER HITCHENS: So uniquely British, but funeral tells a tale of a different country | Daily Mail Online

AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM – Scottish independence: constitutional implications of the referendum

AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM

Audi Alteram Partem may not be the snappiest title for an article but it is an important principle of both decent propriety and of English Law. It is a fundamental principle of the “Rules of Natural Justice”. It has its roots in Anglo-Saxon Law and it means:- “Hear the other side i.e. of the argument”

(Click here for a learned explanation >>> http://legalperspectives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/audi-alteram-partem-natural-justice.html ).

From, at least, the Act of Union in 1707 this maxim has also meant something in Scottish Law.

I mention Audi Alteram Partem because that is exactly what hasn’t happened in the making of a politically important report:- “Scottish independence: constitutional implications of the referendum”, by the House of Lords Constitution Committee.

This is a Committee in which there is a considerable over-representation of Brit/Scots and hardly any English and is also under the Chairmanship of Baroness Jay. Her only qualification to be in the upper chamber of our legislative assembly is Labourite nepotism. In a proper democracy the Lords would be called our “Senate” and would be properly democratically elected instead of stuffed with the cronies and the dodgy donors of the Establishment parties.

Below I quote an important extract from the text of the report which has been grandiosely entitled:- “Scottish independence: constitutional implications of the referendum”.

This is a Committee which point blank refused to hear evidence from any source that would contradict their politically motivated and pre-determined conclusions.

Baroness Jay has thus in a sense presided over a show trial of the sort that those other pillars of the Left, Joe Stalin and Mao Tse Tung would have been proud of. The aim in this case though wasn’t the ritual humiliation and then slaughter of opponents, but instead the destruction and dismemberment of England.

The bias of this report goes even beyond the refusal to hear the other side of the argument. It includes the attempt to belittle and dismiss any who advanced the contrary point of view. This has been done in the way that the English Democrats and the Campaign for an English Parliament have been referred to. Also His Honour Judge Ian Burns Campbell QC has been dismissed as a “retired diplomat”.

For those interested in hearing the real argument the issue is not the diversionary argument of whatever that oxymoron “International Law” may say. That is a complete red herring. What matters is the Constitution of the UK.

Once this point has been grasped it is painfully obvious that the concept of the “Rest of the UK” calmly sailing on in undisturbed constitutional waters, having quietly dropped Scotland overboard, is an utter fantasy.

If Scotland goes then it can only legally do so with the repeal of the relevant clauses of the Act of Union 1707. This means that the United Kingdom of Great Britain is dissolved and that any subsequent Union which may be cobbled together will not be the same constitutional entity that is now meant by the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”.

(E + S = GB therefore GB – S = E)


This scenario poses a direct challenge to the British Establishment. It will end their games of post imperial posing about “punching above our weight on the world stage” and, as the SNP have stated, means that none of the “Successor” or “New” States would need to automatically take on the vast debts of that most profligate and spendthrift entity, the British State! Cue: Exit Stage Left – panicking bankers and Eurocrats?

Here is the relevant part of the report:-

Principles governing independence

The UK as the continuator state

10. A central question about the constitutional position of the rest of the United Kingdom after a “yes” vote is whether it would continue as the same state. In other words, would the United Kingdom retain the statehood of the UK, with Scotland becoming a new breakaway state? If so, the rest of the UK would technically become the “continuator state” and Scotland the “successor state”. Alternatively, would the remaining part of the United Kingdom and Scotland become two new states?

11. A great deal flows from this question. Were the rest of the UK to be the continuator state, it would retain all of the public institutions of the UK. It would retain the treaty obligations and memberships of international organisations of the existing UK. For example, the rest of the UK would continue as a member of the European Union (with the various opt-outs that the UK now has), the United Nations (including the permanent seat on its Security Council) and NATO. Such memberships would automatically continue; they would not have to be applied for. Were the rest of the UK to be the continuator state it would significantly shape negotiations after a “yes” vote.

12. A comprehensive legal opinion by Professor James Crawford, Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge, and Professor Alan Boyle, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Edinburgh, on the status of Scotland and the rest of the UK in international law was annexed to the Scotland analysispaper on Devolution and the implications of Scottish independence. We are not aware of any serious objection to their analysis of the principles of public international law that would apply to Scottish independence.

13. The UK Government’s position follows this legal opinion: that the rest of the UK would become the continuator state and that Scotland would become a new, successor state. The Advocate General for Scotland, Lord Wallace of Tankerness QC, set out four main reasons for this:-

First, the majority of international precedents—from Russia being the continuator state on the break-up of the Soviet Union to Sudan continuing after South Sudan became a new state—point to the rest of the UK being the continuator state. The most directly relevant precedent is that Great Britain and Northern Ireland continued as the UK after the secession of the Irish Free State in 1922.
Secondly, the rest of the UK would retain the greater share of the population (92%) and territory (68%) of the existing UK. These factors are given weight in public international law.
Thirdly, the likelihood is that the majority of other states would recognise the rest of the UK as the continuator state and recognise Scotland as a new state.
Fourthly, where the alternative of two new states being created has applied—for example, when Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia—that has usually been by mutual agreement. The UK Government would not agree to the UK becoming a new state, so this alternative could not apply. It is relevant that the referendum is taking place only in Scotland: it is not a UK-wide referendum on whether the UK should split into two new states.

14. The majority of our witnesses agreed with this analysis.[11] Professor Alan Boyle said that it was the “only … credible view”. Professor Michael Keating, Chair in Scottish Politics at the University of Aberdeen, referred to the “broad acceptance that the UK would be the continuing state.” Professor Stephen Tierney, Professor of Constitutional Theory at the University of Edinburgh, agreed, as did commentators David Torrance and Mandy Rhodes. The commentator Alex Massie said that it appeared “to be the common-sense attitude. It will be the view that will be taken by the rest of the world. If you vote to leave a club, the club remains.”

15. In her covering letter to the Scottish Government’s written evidence the Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon MSP, appeared to question the proposition that the rest of the UK would be the continuator state. She described it as an “assertion made by the UK” and quoted a passage from Professors Crawford and Boyle’s advice in which they refer to the position in international law depending on arrangements made between the two governments and the position of other states. Having said that, the Scottish Government in their written evidence did not argue explicitly against the principle of the UK being the continuator state and we are not aware of them questioning it in other forums. David Torrance said the Scottish Government “have not taken an unequivocal position … They appear to cast doubt on the rest of the United Kingdom being the [continuator] state, but they have not said what they think would happen.” As so much flows from this it is incumbent on those who question whether the UK would be the continuator state to set out their analysis of what the alternative position would be.

16. The overwhelming view in the evidence we received was that after a “yes” vote the rest of the United Kingdom would continue as the same state: it would be the continuator state. Scotland would become a new, successor state.

17. This would be the case because relevant precedents support that position; it would be consistent with the rest of the UK having the majority of the territory and population of the existing UK; and it would reflect the likely opinion of other countries. No realistic alternative case has been made.

18. The fact that the rest of the UK would be the continuator state shapes discussion on the implications of independence; this report proceeds on that basis.

Footnote
___________________________________________________________________
(11. We received written evidence to the contrary from the Campaign for an English Parliament, the English Democrats and Ian Campbell, a former diplomat.).

Click here for the whole report >>> http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201314/ldselect/ldconst/188/18802.htm

AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM – Scottish independence: constitutional implications of the referendum

AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM

Audi Alteram Partem may not be the snappiest title for an article but it is an important principle of both decent propriety and of English Law. It is a fundamental principle of the “Rules of Natural Justice”. It has its roots in Anglo-Saxon Law and it means:- “Hear the other side i.e. of the argument”

(Click here for a learned explanation >>> http://legalperspectives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/audi-alteram-partem-natural-justice.html ).

From, at least, the Act of Union in 1707 this maxim has also meant something in Scottish Law.

I mention Audi Alteram Partem because that is exactly what hasn’t happened in the making of a politically important report:- “Scottish independence: constitutional implications of the referendum”, by the House of Lords Constitution Committee.

This is a Committee in which there is a considerable over-representation of Brit/Scots and hardly any English and is also under the Chairmanship of Baroness Jay. Her only qualification to be in the upper chamber of our legislative assembly is Labourite nepotism. In a proper democracy the Lords would be called our “Senate” and would be properly democratically elected instead of stuffed with the cronies and the dodgy donors of the Establishment parties.

Below I quote an important extract from the text of the report which has been grandiosely entitled:- “Scottish independence: constitutional implications of the referendum”.

This is a Committee which point blank refused to hear evidence from any source that would contradict their politically motivated and pre-determined conclusions.

Baroness Jay has thus in a sense presided over a show trial of the sort that those other pillars of the Left, Joe Stalin and Mao Tse Tung would have been proud of. The aim in this case though wasn’t the ritual humiliation and then slaughter of opponents, but instead the destruction and dismemberment of England.

The bias of this report goes even beyond the refusal to hear the other side of the argument. It includes the attempt to belittle and dismiss any who advanced the contrary point of view. This has been done in the way that the English Democrats and the Campaign for an English Parliament have been referred to. Also His Honour Judge Ian Burns Campbell QC has been dismissed as a “retired diplomat”.

For those interested in hearing the real argument the issue is not the diversionary argument of whatever that oxymoron “International Law” may say. That is a complete red herring. What matters is the Constitution of the UK.

Once this point has been grasped it is painfully obvious that the concept of the “Rest of the UK” calmly sailing on in undisturbed constitutional waters, having quietly dropped Scotland overboard, is an utter fantasy.

If Scotland goes then it can only legally do so with the repeal of the relevant clauses of the Act of Union 1707. This means that the United Kingdom of Great Britain is dissolved and that any subsequent Union which may be cobbled together will not be the same constitutional entity that is now meant by the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”.

(E + S = GB therefore GB – S = E)


This scenario poses a direct challenge to the British Establishment. It will end their games of post imperial posing about “punching above our weight on the world stage” and, as the SNP have stated, means that none of the “Successor” or “New” States would need to automatically take on the vast debts of that most profligate and spendthrift entity, the British State! Cue: Exit Stage Left – panicking bankers and Eurocrats?

Here is the relevant part of the report:-

Principles governing independence

The UK as the continuator state

10. A central question about the constitutional position of the rest of the United Kingdom after a “yes” vote is whether it would continue as the same state. In other words, would the United Kingdom retain the statehood of the UK, with Scotland becoming a new breakaway state? If so, the rest of the UK would technically become the “continuator state” and Scotland the “successor state”. Alternatively, would the remaining part of the United Kingdom and Scotland become two new states?

11. A great deal flows from this question. Were the rest of the UK to be the continuator state, it would retain all of the public institutions of the UK. It would retain the treaty obligations and memberships of international organisations of the existing UK. For example, the rest of the UK would continue as a member of the European Union (with the various opt-outs that the UK now has), the United Nations (including the permanent seat on its Security Council) and NATO. Such memberships would automatically continue; they would not have to be applied for. Were the rest of the UK to be the continuator state it would significantly shape negotiations after a “yes” vote.

12. A comprehensive legal opinion by Professor James Crawford, Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge, and Professor Alan Boyle, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Edinburgh, on the status of Scotland and the rest of the UK in international law was annexed to the Scotland analysispaper on Devolution and the implications of Scottish independence. We are not aware of any serious objection to their analysis of the principles of public international law that would apply to Scottish independence.

13. The UK Government’s position follows this legal opinion: that the rest of the UK would become the continuator state and that Scotland would become a new, successor state. The Advocate General for Scotland, Lord Wallace of Tankerness QC, set out four main reasons for this:-

First, the majority of international precedents—from Russia being the continuator state on the break-up of the Soviet Union to Sudan continuing after South Sudan became a new state—point to the rest of the UK being the continuator state. The most directly relevant precedent is that Great Britain and Northern Ireland continued as the UK after the secession of the Irish Free State in 1922.
Secondly, the rest of the UK would retain the greater share of the population (92%) and territory (68%) of the existing UK. These factors are given weight in public international law.
Thirdly, the likelihood is that the majority of other states would recognise the rest of the UK as the continuator state and recognise Scotland as a new state.
Fourthly, where the alternative of two new states being created has applied—for example, when Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia—that has usually been by mutual agreement. The UK Government would not agree to the UK becoming a new state, so this alternative could not apply. It is relevant that the referendum is taking place only in Scotland: it is not a UK-wide referendum on whether the UK should split into two new states.

14. The majority of our witnesses agreed with this analysis.[11] Professor Alan Boyle said that it was the “only … credible view”. Professor Michael Keating, Chair in Scottish Politics at the University of Aberdeen, referred to the “broad acceptance that the UK would be the continuing state.” Professor Stephen Tierney, Professor of Constitutional Theory at the University of Edinburgh, agreed, as did commentators David Torrance and Mandy Rhodes. The commentator Alex Massie said that it appeared “to be the common-sense attitude. It will be the view that will be taken by the rest of the world. If you vote to leave a club, the club remains.”

15. In her covering letter to the Scottish Government’s written evidence the Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon MSP, appeared to question the proposition that the rest of the UK would be the continuator state. She described it as an “assertion made by the UK” and quoted a passage from Professors Crawford and Boyle’s advice in which they refer to the position in international law depending on arrangements made between the two governments and the position of other states. Having said that, the Scottish Government in their written evidence did not argue explicitly against the principle of the UK being the continuator state and we are not aware of them questioning it in other forums. David Torrance said the Scottish Government “have not taken an unequivocal position … They appear to cast doubt on the rest of the United Kingdom being the [continuator] state, but they have not said what they think would happen.” As so much flows from this it is incumbent on those who question whether the UK would be the continuator state to set out their analysis of what the alternative position would be.

16. The overwhelming view in the evidence we received was that after a “yes” vote the rest of the United Kingdom would continue as the same state: it would be the continuator state. Scotland would become a new, successor state.

17. This would be the case because relevant precedents support that position; it would be consistent with the rest of the UK having the majority of the territory and population of the existing UK; and it would reflect the likely opinion of other countries. No realistic alternative case has been made.

18. The fact that the rest of the UK would be the continuator state shapes discussion on the implications of independence; this report proceeds on that basis.

Footnote
___________________________________________________________________
(11. We received written evidence to the contrary from the Campaign for an English Parliament, the English Democrats and Ian Campbell, a former diplomat.).

Click here for the whole report >>> http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201314/ldselect/ldconst/188/18802.htm

FARAGE – V – CLEGG – THE LBC EU DEBATE

FARAGE – V – CLEGG – THE LBC EU DEBATE


I watched the LBC/SKY debate between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage over “Britain’s” membership of the EU.  I thought Nigel Farage did very well.  Although he is not as polished a debater as Nick Clegg, he was certainly able to more than hold his own.  From an English nationalist point of view, it was also interesting to hear him confirm repeatedly that he was “British” and to emphasise that what he is concerned about is “Britain’s” place in the world.  His comments will have firmly and finally nailed UKIP’s colours to the mast of Britishness!

So far as Nick Clegg was concerned, there was again talk of “Britain” and “British” interests, although Clegg is not as enthusiastically patriotic about Britain as Nigel Farage, he did take the crown by saying that:- “I want us to be Great Britain, not Little England.  And if you feel the same, then now is the time to make your voice heard”.  My response to Nick Clegg is: Now is the time for a voice standing up for England to be heard!

After Nick Clegg’s performance over student “top-up” fees, we all know that nothing he says should be taken as anything more than a useful line spun for the moment, but it was entertaining to see that even applies to his rhetoric about “our country”.  After the 18th September, we may be moving to the end of “Great Britain” whatever the Westminster and Whitehall Establishment may want (memo to Nick Clegg :- E + S = GB therefore GB – S = E).

One very interesting aspect of the discussions that Sky TV showed afterwards, was interviews with the various political commentators like Sky’s own Adam Bolton and many other media lovies. They all seemed to think that Nick Clegg had won the debate.  This is an interesting illustration of the point made by Drew Weston in his book, ‘The Political Brain’, that people tend to be completely blinded to what other people think during political debates because of their own political identity.

The opinion polls show that by far the majority of people thought that Nigel Farage had won.  This is, of course, for the same reason, in that those people are seeing only what appeals to their political identity.

Putting these reactions together shows that the leading commentators in the British media are so politically divorced from the views of most normal people that they have no instinctive understanding of how most normal people will react to a political point.

It seems that “liberals” think that political debates are won by making precise nit-picking points rather than statements with emotional punch.

The other thing about the debate was that it was very nice to see a studio audience in a TV debate not as carefully selected for Leftist bias as we always seem to find with BBC selected audiences!  I wonder if we will see usual BBC audience bias in the BBC hosted debate in a few days?
 

INDEPENDENT SCOTLAND OUT OF EU = ENGLAND OUT OF EU

The EU Commission President, Senor Barosso, has unwittingly confirmed that if either Scotland or England get independence from the UK then they are out of the EU!

On the Andrew Marr show on Sunday, 16th February, Mr Barosso made clear that an independent Scotland was a “new State” and so would be automatically out of the EU.

He was clearly unaware of the UK’s unique constitution structure because he was apparently unaware that in the event of the dissolution of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain” all the constituent nations of the UK would also be “new States”.  Therefore by Barosso’s logic, we would all be out of the EU!  Not a result that I imagine he would relish!

So England can either get out of the EU through a dissolution of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain” either by Scottish secession or by our own English independence!

So thank you Mr Barosso.  Now we have a road map of two easy ways out of the EU maze!

This is what Senor Barosso said:-
“When asked about the Scottish referendum on independence later this year, Mr Barroso said he respected the ongoing democratic processes surrounding the  debate and said it was for the Scottish people to decide on the country’s future.

But he added: “In case there is a new country, a new state, coming out of a current member state, it will have to apply and… the application and the accession to the European Union will have to be approved by all the other member states of the European Union.”

He went on: “I don’t want to interfere on your referendum here, your democratic discussion here, but of course it will be extremely difficult to get the approval of all the other member states to have a new member coming from one member state.

“We have seen Spain has been opposing even the recognition of Kosovo, for instance. So it is to some extent a similar case because it’s a new country and so I believe it’s going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, a new member state coming out of one of our countries getting the agreement of the others.”

(Here is a link to the Daily Express Article about this >>> NO negotiation of freedom of movement says defiant EU President Jose Manuel Barroso | UK | News | Daily Express )