It's interesting that government lawyers on behalf of The Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, depend upon “parliamentary privilege” granted by the Bill of Rights 1688/9 to stop the publication of a Home Office report on ID cards, when it was argued that Parliamentary committee discussions should be made available under freedom of information legislation.

Yet when the Bill of Rights is quoted “That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void” in defence of parking fines levied without conviction, then it (the Bill of Rights) is ruled (by National Parking Adjudication Service – NPAS in the case of Barnby v NPAS) as being made for another era and dismissed; withCaroline Shepard, Chief NPAS adjudicator writing in Parking News issue 224, July 2006: “The Bill of Rights must be read in a contemporary light ………”

Similarly we have seen all governments from Heath to Blair and Brown ignoring the Bill of Rights when it comes to handing powers to foreign jurisdictions (the European Union for instance): “….. no foreign prince or person prelate state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction power supremacy pre-eminence or authority ecclesiastical or spiritual within this realm”.

So we now have a government that makes up the rules and bends the law to suit the particular set of circumstances it faces. We saw the same thing over the Metric Martyrs case where a judge arbitrarily introduces a concept of hierarchy of laws (constitutional laws and ordinary laws) to allow a judgment to be made that suits the outcome that the EU prescribes and government appears to desire.

I wonder whether there has been any judgment that has been beneficial to challengers ofthe EU integration process and “ever closer union” I know of none.

Can we expect any 'beneficial' judgements from our courts, when the Lisbon Treaty (93 to 96% of the EU Constitution) has been be adopted and the European Court of Justice control our judicial ‘process’ with their prescribed “Corpus Juris”.
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The EU is illegal according to the British Constitution (Jack Straw and Britannist both recently lied that the UK doesn't have one, but the UK does have a constitution).
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Originally Posted by PolishUser:
The EU is illegal according to the British Constitution (Jack Straw and Britannist both recently lied that the UK doesn't have one, but the UK does have a constitution).

the uk dose not have a Constitution LOL why are we a country then and i believe it is in the queens coronation orth but i could be wrong
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The UK does not have a constitution; it has a body of constitutional law. All bar 3 jurisdictions are governed by a unitary document known as a constitution. Constitutions are clear - they are usually called the constitution of a country and can only be changed subject to a specific voting process.

Louisiana does not have a constitution but is governed under a purchase arrangement. New Zealand is governed by treaty.

Those laws and conventions that are part of the body of UK constitutional law have varied over the centuries and there are many mistakes promulgated, on this forum in particular, about what those laws are. The Magna Carta 1215 is not part of our body of laws at all having never been enforced, but parts of it were subsequently duplicated and became part of our legal system.

The Laws LJ hierarchy of laws, which aarable alludes to, does seem to be out of kilter with our system of laws since many 'constitutional' laws have been impliedly repealed by virtue of the fact that new law has overruled them.

It is, as I understand it, still accepted in all other cases that the latest law always supercedes earlier laws. All laws are amenable to change and all laws can be removed or enacted by a simple vote of Parliament. As Eurosceptics we have to hold on to this principle since it is part of our argument that Parliament is sovereign and can at any time vote to remove us from the EU.

Anyone who argues, as some have on this forum, that the repeal of a particular law is treason, or that a law such as Magna Carta is unamenable to amendment, undermine our case. Parliament can impliedly or actually delete all that remains of the 13th century Magna Cartae. Parliament can change or abolish the treason laws. Parliament can withdraw us from the EU. Parliament is sovereign.

aarable sets an interesting challenge, but I do believe that we have cases where metric road signs have been removed as unlawful and Imperial measures remain in force.

Ashley Mote, when he was bailed prior to sentence, refused to hand over his diplomatic passport at the judge's request and argued the supremacy of the EU over the English judiciary. The judge refused to accept Ashley Mote's argument that EU law prevailed in his court and confiscated Mote's diplomatic passport. In that case a criminal tried to enforce EU laws over English laws and to the judge's credit he didn't accept the arguments. I count that as a victory for English law.

The same criminal had tried to avoid prosecution in the UK by claiming an EU immunity to prosecution. Again it was accepted that the UK lack of immunity to prosecution, an integral part of our constitutional laws, was superior to the immunity enjoyed by many EU Parliamentarians. I count this as a victory for UK law.
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PU, by which article of our 'constitution' is the EU illegal? Methinks you have neither studied nor read our body of constitutional law and don't know what you're talking about.
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Obviously Gremlin you did not read my post otherwise you would have noted that the government obviously thinks we have one.

Matthew Parris recently wrote, “We are not hugely interested in constitutions. That’s why we don’t have one.”What is this poison that drips incessantly into the public veins?

John Adams, a U.S. President and drafter of the American Constitution, called the English Constitution “the most stupendous fabric of human invention” in all history.


The Guardian published an article by George Monbiot in January claiming we had no constitution:

"Not having a written constitution allowed Blair and his advisers to go to war without reference to parliament or the public."

Margaret Becket who is an expert on constitutional law, wrote back:
What you have stated above, the claim we that we do not have a 'written constitution', is misleading, since technically it means we do not have a codified constitution. Perhaps you would like to point out to us where it is not codified?

We have observed that Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement, these are indeed codified. The claim that we do not have a written constitution is usually made in comparison of the codification of the American constitution, which is Masonic, and was made at one time.

But it should be born in mind that the claim that we in Britain do not have a constitution is used as propaganda formulated against the Rights of the People and in so doing is taking us down the path of tyranny, as made clear by Tom Paine when he said ‘…the constitution was made for the people and not government’.

For the record; we the People of Britain do indeed have a constitution and in accordance with it’s statues, the matter of going to war lies with the monarch NOT Parliament! We in Britain have a republic in which the Peoples’ power (the ‘prerogative’) is held by the monarch for their life-time. Parliament does not hold that power, further more an Oath of Allegiance has to be taken by anyone who wishes to take a seat in Parliament, this incorporates the laws of our land.

Mr Monboit’s article shows a lack of constitutional grasp by writing as he has - by referring to a "unwritten constitution" and calling it a "gentleman's agreement", and by not correcting such misinformation. It is this ignorance that has been deliberately propagated amongst the people of this nation which has effectively so far, allowed Blair to act as a dictator. What Mr Monbiot has suggested in his article about the constitutional reform, is too weak and incorrect, because it is clear he does not seem to realise what the government is proposing do to our enshrined laws and in so doing, you as a paper, are supporting the uprising of treasonable power.

The Fabian strategy is globalisation, Iraq and Afghanistan wars are merely part of this plan to which the People of Britain and other countries come a very poor second. It should be noted that Blair was head of the Fabian’s before becoming leader of the Labour party.

Last year 2007, we in Britain supposedly celebrated the end of slavery which often involved the use of physical chains and forced labour, now the dynamics of the game have changed and far from been abolished there is evidence that our parliamentarians have put the people of this nation even more deeply into the slavery into the European Union with its ever mounting tyrannical laws and controls including the loss of our inalienable rights, not least Habeas Corpus.

Furthermore, there is ample evidence from government documents that Edward Heath and others committed treason in taking us as a nation into the European Union. See http://tinyurl.com/2pfmcd
We look forward to hearing from you and trust you will correct this information in your newspaper and thus provide your readers with the truth of our very real 'written constitution'.

Yours Sincerely
Elizabeth Beckett

http://www.namastepublishing.co.uk/Elizabeth%20Beckett%20-%20News%20Black%20Out
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Forget about whether we have a constitution or
not - we have one.

The point of this thread is the Bill of Rights and its employment.

The government are referring to it for their purposes, yet when the public try to wheel it out to protect their ancient rights, the government tries to ignore it.

The whole purpose of the law is to make it simple for the public to understand and use. When people like you, gremlin, come along and support the concept that we do not have a constitution, you are aiding and abetting the forces of tyrrany.

We have a problem with laws since 1972 in that the legitimacy of Britain's membership of the EU is now being openly questioned - that is serious, as when people talk of the rule of law, the response will be: whose law are we talking about?

We do however have our constitution, whether you call it codified uncodified or whatever and that should be a comfort to all freedom loving peoples.
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Originally Posted by :
Gremlin you did not read my post otherwise you would have noted that the government obviously thinks we have one.

aarable, You didn't read your own post. There is nothing in it which gives the impression that the government believes we have a constitution.
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Originally Posted by :
Margaret Becket who is an expert on constitutional law, wrote back

Margaret Beckett - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Margaret Beckett qualified as a metallurgist at UMIST. She has never studied constitutional law and none of her cabinet posts suggest she has.
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Originally Posted by :
We have observed that Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement, these are indeed codified

You do not know what the word codified means.

cod·i·fy (kd-f, kd-)
tr.v. cod·i·fied, cod·i·fy·ing, cod·i·fies
1. To reduce to a code: codify laws.
2. To arrange or systematize

The laws you list are not reduced to a code. They have not been arranged or systematized. Far from it. Magna Carta is not codified, but has been reduced to virtually nothing. In the Bodleian Law Library there is no place where the statutes are ordered in a code. I had cause to refer to MC in a case I brought and found its current expression in Halsbury's Statutes which is an indexed encyclopaedia of statute law, but not a code.

aarable, you wouldn't know where to start in a law library. You know nothing about the structure of our constitutional law.
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