More Royal Designations Restored in Canada

The announcement of the restoration of historical names for Canadian Army corps on 19 April 2013 was the next logical step in the phased approach begun in August 2011, when the historical name of the Canadian Army was restored, along with the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force.

It is quite apparent that our victorious campaign is still paying huge dividends in terms of the continuing impact it will have on all other regiments and corps that unfortunately lost their identity back in the 1960s because of the misguided attempt to purge ourselves of our British (i.e., Canadian) heritage and traditions.

It is especially gratifying that these most recent changes were requested by soldiers and officers in the army itself. The earlier restorations have created a natural momentum for other reinstatements, and it is only fair that if others are going to get back their identity, the same be afforded to all.

“Our country continues to ask a great deal of our soldiers. Our government is committed to honouring their actions, heritage and sacrifices,” said Minister MacKay. “Restoring these historic identities is an important way of reconnecting today’s men and women in uniform with the proud history and traditions they carry with them as members of the Canadian Army.”

The historical designations of the following corps have been restored:

• Royal Canadian Armoured Corps;
• The Corps of Royal Canadian Engineers;
• Royal Canadian Corps of Signals;
• Royal Canadian Infantry Corps; and
• The Corps of Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

These and other heritage changes are being phased in over the next year as Canada and its military prepares to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War and the 75th anniversary of the Second World War.

For more background information on these restorations, you can find it here.  

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Her Majesty's Birthday

Happy birthday to Her Britannic Majesty!

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The Audience

Easter Eve yours truly went to see the play The Audience at the Gielgud Theatre in London. If you don't mind spoilers, please continue reading.

It was indeed a fascinating experience to watch this play.

The play consists of a number of audiences Her Britannic Majesty hosts for her British Prime Ministers. As the real audiences that have taken place are all strictly confidential, the audiences in the play are all intelligent speculation on what might have been said in real life.

Although the audiences are the centerpiece and bulk of the play, there are a few other elements. There are three actresses playing younger versions of Her Britannic Majesty. There is a scene with Princess Elizabeth's speech in South Africa on the occasion of her 21 ^st birthday. There is talk of praying that the King and Queen have a boy.

But even without these other elements, The Audience is about much more than just these individual audiences. At a couple of occasions the Prime Minister is met with fierce opposition from the Sovereign, but when the Prime Minister asks the Queen whether she supports the Prime Minister, the answer is always that the Prime Minister will always have her support.

The audiences in the play come in a non-chronological, but the chronologically first audience – in real life – was with Winston Churchill. Churchill wants the audience to be with the Sovereign seated and the Prime Minister, just as Queen Victoria sat at Privy Council and the advisors standing. It ends with him sitting.

Moreover, Churchill gives clear instructions on how the audience is to be conducted, after all he is the one who has experience as Prime Minister from the reign of George VI. The Prime Minister is to talk, and Her Majesty is to listen. The Queen then gives a statement of frustration on her diminished role.

The scene brings thoughts to many incidents in British and European history. When George V ascended the throne, he was pressured into accepting Parliament Act 1911 in a way Edward VII refused. Edward VII's son-in-law Haakon VII of Norway came to the throne in 1905 after Norway had decided to retain the monarchy. Behind the scene there was a fight for power between the monarch and the politicos. The monarch lost on several points, and he is known to have said about his handkerchief that it was something he was allowed to poke his nose in. It is also said about the Emperor Charles of Austria that some of those behind the coup against him would not have dared depose the old Emperor Francis Joseph. Also, when the Swedes emasculated their King in the 1970s, they waited for Carl XVI Gustaf to ascend the throne.

There can probably be found even more examples of politicos securing their power when a new monarch is on the throne. Although this is not the only time emasculation of the monarch happens, it is a vulnerable phase of a reign, and this is why this scene with the reign's first Prime Minister with his instructions is so particularly relevant for history of monarchy, not only in Britain and the Commonwealth but all over the world. It gives us a reminder to keep a watch when a new monarch comes to the throne.

Churchill also has a discussion with Her Majesty on the name of the royal house, considering the tradition that it is the man's surname that gets passed on. With another pre-Thatcher Prime Minister Her Majesty has a conversation on “reforming” the House of Lords, Her Majesty communicating her disapproval of a weakening of the hereditary principle. The play could certainly do with a short intellectual argument for hereditary elements in the constitutional system instead of just a simple, non-argued statement in its support.

This play is a wonderful example of how one can take a concrete concept – in this case the weekly audiences with the Prime Minister – and make it about so much more; about events at a particular time, political philosophy, roles of constitutional institutions, etc.

The play runs live in London until mid-June. It will be screened in movie theaters around the world.


Cross-posted at Wilson Revolution Unplugged.

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Oxford & Cambridge: For Queen & Country

The Monarchist reported previously this year on an anniversary debate at the Cambridge Union Society.

The motion was:

This House would fight for Queen and Country.

The motion was defeated, and the debate can be seen here:

The Oxford Union also did an anniversary debate, and the motion was:

This House will NOT fight for Queen & Country.

The motion failed.

The debate can be seen here:

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Tide to Turn Shortly – Order in Council Coming Soon

Yours truly had the pleasure of this weekend to attend the play The Audience at the Gielgud Theatre in London. Yours truly was part of a small party priviliged to visit the main role actress, Helen Mirren, in her dressing room after the show. Reliable sources say the play will run in movie theaters around the world in a not so distant future.

On this very short trip to London, yours truly, as a gentleman scribe of The Monarchist, also met with a source very close to the Crown. The source could reveal that plans are under way for a proclamation to be issued by an Order in Council on the very day of the 60^th anniversary of Her Britannic Majesty's coronation – this upcoming 2^nd of June.

The essence of the proclamation will be that the long process of emasculation of the non-elected elements of the British constitutional order, that being essentially the Crown and the House of Lords, will be stopped and thereafter reversed.

How this will play out, we will get a better idea of when the proclamation is made in early June. The proclamation will be the first step in a new process in a new direction, as a process that has been going on for more than a century cannot be reversed in one day, very much as Rome – or London – was not built in one day.

Now it's just to wait for the proclamation...

Queen Victoria holding a Privy Council meeting. By Sir David Wilkie. Oil on canvas.

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Little Man at No. 10

A small man does a big thing:

Mr Cameron soothed that his proposals were for “voluntary self-regulation”. The use of a royal charter amendable only by a two-thirds majority, avoided, he said, crossing the “Rubicon” of “giving future governments the ability to restrict freedom of the press”.
But new clause 27A alone makes it about as voluntary as the Charge of the Light Brigade was for the average member of the 17th Lancers – and the claim of “self-regulation” is equally dishonest. What came out on Monday is, in effect, a state press law, one of the strongest in Europe, and the Rubicon has been definitively crossed.

Freedom of the press, established by men such as Milton and Locke, has been severely curtailed by an overgrown child who professes to be a conservative. Despite having gone to Eton and Oxford it was clearly never explained to Mr Cameron, or perhaps he skipped that lesson, that the essence of being a conservative is to conserve. To conserve all that is beautiful, valuable and true. Those things which are so not merely for today but for the generations yet to come and for those long past.

To put it in crudely scientific terms, a conservative demands a vast data set before drawing up a workable hypothesis. His antithesis, who is not the liberal but the Jacobin, is uninterested in empirical data. Before the Jacobin is a pillar of fire, albeit one of his own imagination, that commands the total obedience of him and all around him. The old term for such men is a fanatic.

More than being merely an ill tempered man, the fanatic is someone who builds a theory and demands that the facts conform. A conservative is a man who patiently observes the facts and hopes a workable theory might be teased out. It is a theory that he teases out, not an infallible pronouncement. Human beings are not omniscient and error is the lot of man. Even when a conservative says that something is good, true and wise context is noted and qualification is always made.

The recent subversion of ancient British liberties are not, at least not immediately, the product of fanatics. Mr Cameron is a reasonable man. The Prime Minister prides himself on being reasonable. His acts are done in the light of public outrage. Among the attributes that a conservative must possess, which the Prime Minister sadly does not, is a certain detachment from the times. The ability to lean against the mantelpiece and let the children squabble for awhile. The sort of trait that generations of Etonian masters attempted to imbue in their young wards.

So long ago that was.

Now Her Majesty's First Minister, a Tory from an old Tory family, bends to a fickle mob. Not a fanatic or a demagogue, he is something far less respectable: A coward craving love. This is more than securing popular support. The current ministry will live or die based on the performance of the British economy. The hacking scandal is a sideshow that will, in time, be forgotten. History is replete with examples of an outraged people and its habitual bursts of outrage. The role of the statesman is to cast his field of vision, as Mrs Thatcher and Mr Churchill did, much further afield.

The tabloid hacking scandals were not the product of a free press. They were the product of greedy and ambitious journalists breaking the law to advanced their ends. There is no shortage of laws to punish the guilty. Many of these laws were not enforced because some public officials failed in their duty. Then the law must punish them too. The issue at stake in the hacking scandal is the credibility of the law, not the need for more laws.

Only a mentality lacking in historical knowledge could imagine that the hacking scandal is so bad, so horrible and without precedent, that it requires this draconian a response. The old hacks of Grubb and Fleet Street are spinning in their graves. For this you have sacrificed one of your most sacred inheritances?

David Cameron is not a Jacobin. But he is aiding and abetting the self-seekers and Jacobins of modern British politics. He has sold his birth right and not even for a mess of pottage.

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"A Sense of History"

H/T: Charles Burris, The LRC Blog

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"The Man"

H/T: Charles Burris, The LRC Blog

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The Restoration of Queen's Counsel Down Under

Following on the heels of New Zealand's restoration in November 2012 of the prestigious post-nominal letters "QC", so goes Australia beginning with Queensland then probably Victoria and perhaps others. New Zealand and now Queensland leads the way:

But Queensland's government announced last year it would end the practice and restore the rank of Queen's Counsel because the title was more distinguished and more highly regarded internationally. The government was also concerned that the initials SC might be mistaken for the Star of Courage – an Australian award for acts of bravery – or special counsel, a term used by some law firms for solicitors who are not partners.

Most Canadian provinces still follow the practice, with the exception of Ontario and the federal government of Canada. I expect Prime Minister Harper will one day reverse this 1993 decision, as will Prime Minister (in waiting) Tony Abbott of Australia (fingers crossed) in the fullness of time.

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Hudson's Bay Returns to its Roots

The Hudson's Bay Company, the oldest company in  North America and, at one time, the largest landowner in the world, is returning to its traditional roots by resurrecting its old coat of arms and going back to its full original name. Good. Yet another indication of the abject failure of previous modernist corporate branding.

 

 

"We’ve taken what is a very meaningful two-pronged approach to the redesign: maintaining our heritage while modernizing the new Hudson’s Bay Company. It’s a throwback to our remarkable history and an image for the direction we’re heading in"

Interestingly, one of its most illustrious Governors was John Churchill, the Earl of Marlborough prior to his rise in the peerage as the 1st Duke of Marlborough.

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Anne Twomey on Changing the Rules of Succession in the Commonwealth Realms

Changing the Rules of Succession and the Problem of the Realms from Department of Political Science on Vimeo.

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Prince Charles Accession to Throne will not deliver republic says key Australian republican

The Hon. Bob Carr is a prominent republican and was a leading voice in the run-up to the 1999 Australian referendum to end the monarchy. He is a former premier of New South Wales and is now Australia's Minister of Foreign Affairs.

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Dedicated Entry for Britons, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and Other Realms into the UK

I concur with the spirit of Professor Flint's post over at ACM, and thank him for reminding us that second reading of this very important private members bill, sponsored by MP Andrew Rosindell, will be read in the British House of Commons on the first of March. I have been in personal contact with Mr. Rosindell, and have commended him on his bill.



It is indeed a constitutional travesty and injustice that subjects of Her Majesty's realms are not treated with appropriate decorum when they enter the UK (even Britons don't have a dedicated channel), and are treated as second class subjects. Imagine an ageing war veteran, who fought to defend England during the darkest days of the Second World War, lining up in the "foreigner's line", while EU citizens, who may have fought against the very country in which they are entering, are treated with special reverence. Bloody hell.

What this bill will also do, if it is successful, is demonstrate the value of collective allegiance and show republicans that if they become a republic they will be treated as foreigners. It will show the citizens of the Crown Commonwealth the value of their collective identity, that it actually means something and that it can be made to confer some benefit, most especially if the arrangement is mutually reciprocated by all sixteen realms.

God speed to Andrew Rosindell on March the first!

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Queensland restores Royal Arms

What would you rather have as a symbol of a proud state, a royal coat of arms with all of the beautiful heraldry, history, tradition and gravitas that it represents?




Or this depressing blob, which signifies what exactly, other than the false, the ugly and the vacant? We are overjoyed that sanity has prevailed in Queensland, and that the government there has reverted back to the resplendence of its monarchical heritage.

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The Attorney General of Queensland introduces the Succession to the Crown Bill

The young Attorney General of Queensland, an obvious constitutional monarchist, introduces the Succession to the Crown Bill in that Australian state. One detects a sense of courteous bemusement by the listening state parliamentarians. It is also politically apparent that Queensland is proudly and independently sending a message to Canberra that you don't have exclusive jurisdiction over the rules governing who Queensland's head of state is or who that head of state eventually becomes.

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Queensland goes it alone

The Succession to the Crown Bill gets more interesting by the week:

At last year's Council of Australian Government's meeting, the federal government had wanted each state to refer its powers to the commonwealth, whereas Premier Campbell Newman believed each state should pass its own legislation, in line with "our position as a separate sovereign state".

On Wednesday, state Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie announced Queensland would do just that, introducing the Succession to the Crown Bill 2013 into Parliament.

In a statement announcing the bill, Mr Bleijie said "Queensland would reserve its right as a sovereign state to amend its own laws regarding the royal succession"...

“Queensland is proud of its own relationship with the monarchy and as a sovereign state it should look to preserve this status at all times," Mr Bleijie said in a statement.

Whatever one thinks of Queensland choosing to pass its own succession law (the other Australian states seem to be content to let the federal government take care of that one), you can't argue with that last sentence. Republicans beware: the next time in the next 50 years or so when you attempt another referendum, think really hard about what states will actually follow you.

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Holy Decision

I was astonished as any—shocked and dismayed, in fact, if I am to be honest with myself—to hear that Pope Bendict XVI has decided to resign his throne at the end of the month, and in so doing be the first abidicating pontiff since Celestine V vacated the Vicarship way back in 1294, more than seven hundred years ago. I had previously assumed this to be utterly unthinkable, especially from such a deeply conservative pontiff as Benedict—much as I still believe it to be utterly unthinkable that the Queen would ever contemplate abdicating.

Yet I am simply unwilling to pit my infinitely tiny and temporary mind against the manifest scholarship and accumulated wisdom of such a deeply pious and holy man. It is indeed with mixed feelings, but I suppose we must humbly accept the Pope at his word when he says that he was not prepared to see the Church suffer as a result of his increasing frailty. Personally, I would never have thought such a thing myself—if anything, when the pontiff has been noticed to suffer, as Pope John Paul II did in his final years, there is an increased reverence which just might translate into more recruitment from a faithless world.

Progressives will no doubt laud this as a triumphant decision, and a step in the right direction. If they hope this announcement might lead to a more reformist type to take the reigns of spiritual and moral power, they shouldn't hold their breath. We traditionalists know that path is doomed, one that will inevitability undermine the indestructible magic of the Pope's office. That was the great understanding of this Pope; in the short time that he was there, His Holiness did much to shore up the faith and that most inspiring institution:

Benedict XVI's achievements as pontiff have been remarkable. He has renewed the worship of the Church, reconnecting it to the majesty and deep piety of the past. He has forged new links with non-Catholics, for example by bringing ex-Anglicans into the fold through the Ordinariate. He has promulgated teaching documents reconnecting the love and teaching of Christ to the structures of the Church – structures that, it would appear, he feels now unable to continue ruling.

If there is to be a blessing from this news, it is assumed that Benedict XVI will have immense influence on who his successor will be, and therefore project his power on the future of the Church longer than if he stayed until his mortal end and heavenly beginning. If this is true, then we are dealing with one crafty Pope, and traditionalists have every reason to feel upbeat about today's astonishing decision.

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"That abject, squalid, shameless avowal"

Exactly eighty years after one of the most famous and notorious debates at the Oxford Union debating society, which received worldwide publicity in February 1933 for the sheer temerity of voting in favour of the motion -- "that this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country" -- the Cambridge Union Society repeated the performance just last night to commemorate the historic anniversary. Apparently the students of Cambridge University will still not fight for Queen and Country.

It came as a shock back in 1933 to suddenly contemplate that England's young were now a degenerate, decadent lot who had descended into frivolity. Churchill called the motion "that abject, squalid, shameless avowal... It is a very disquieting and disgusting symptom." But the Great War was still fresh in the minds of many, and no doubt some of the students who were present had barely known their fathers, fathers who never came back from the trenches. Appeasement was in the air in the 1930s; another Armegeddon was not for them.

I've no idea what the excuse of today's generation is. If a video of this debate becomes available, please do let me know.

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The King of Con-Men

The amazing story of Gregor MacGregor, the man who pulled off one of the biggest frauds in history and undoubtedly the greatest confidence trick of all time. To echo The Economist, how did he succeed in persuading people not only to invest their savings in the bonds of a non-existent government, but also to emigrate to a fictional country. How on earth did he manage it?

 

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Position of the Monarchist League of Canada on Changing the Rules of Succession

The “office of The Queen” includes the Sovereign’s constitutional status, powers and rights in Canada. Neither the ban on the marriages of heirs to Roman Catholics, nor the common law governing male preference primogeniture, can properly be said to be royal powers or prerogatives in Canada. Thus, they do not affect the “office of The Queen” in Canada. The line of succession is determined by UK law and not by the Sovereign or Canadian law.

Canada’s Constitution provides that the Sovereign of the UK is also the Sovereign of Canada. The preamble to and s.9 of the Constitution Act, 1867, when read together, provide that The Queen exercising sovereign authority over Canada in 1867 was the reigning monarch of the UK. The legal rules relating to the succession to the Throne are established by UK statute (the Act of Settlement, 1701, is but one of them) and the common law. Those rules and provisions do have constitutional implications, in that they determine the selection of the person who is the Sovereign of the United Kingdom, which in turn is recognized as the Sovereign of Canada (as contemplated by the preamble to and s.9 of the Constitution Act, 1867). That is different from stating that the UK laws of succession are themselves part of the Constitution of Canada.

Moreover, the Act of Settlement of 1701 and other UK statutes relating to the succession to the Throne are not amongst the statutes declared by s.52 of the Constitution Act, 1982 and the schedule thereto to be part of the Constitution of Canada. There is no Canadian law of succession in that sense. This was confirmed by the Ontario Superior Court in O’Donohue v. Canada, 2003, wherein Justice Rouleau found that “Canada’s structure as a constitutional monarchy and the principle of sharing the British monarch are fundamental to our constitutional framework.” In light of the preamble of the Constitution Act, 1867 and its “clear statement that we are to share the Crown with the United Kingdom,” he held that “it is axiomatic that the rules of succession must be shared and be in symmetry with those of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries.”

That does not make the Crown any the less Canadian. Nor does it mean that Canada does not have a role to play in the changes to the laws governing succession. The Preamble to the Statute of Westminster reflects the convention that the assent of all Dominion Parliaments to alterations to the laws of succession must be sought. This is not inconsistent with Canada’s sovereignty or the concept of the Crown in Canada, but rather, is fully expressive of it. Indeed, the overarching goal of the Statute of Westminster was to confirm the full equality of all of the Dominions, rather than any colonial status. The convention expressed in the preamble to the Statute of Westminster reflects the free choice of all of Her Majesty’s realms to share one Sovereign chosen under one set of rules.

The 1982 repatriation did not incorporate the UK laws of succession into either Canada’s Constitution or laws or amend the preamble to the Statute of Westminster. That deliberate choice is a reflection of the decision to leave the question of succession to be determined by UK law as opposed to establishing a Canadian law of succession. The UK is not legislating on Canada’s behalf in this regard, which it can no longer do thanks to the repatriation and the Constitution Act, 1982. There remains a Crown in Right of Canada, and, as before, the person occupying that office is determined in accordance with the UK laws of succession.

There is no doubt that Canada remains fully capable of choosing its own Sovereign, or indeed, of choosing not to have a Sovereign. In such a case, of course, Canada would be required to amend the Constitution, so as to clarify that The Queen referenced in s. 9 Constitution Act, 1867 would now be chosen by rules other than those in place in the UK from time to time. In such a scenario, Canada would be deliberately choosing to no longer share a Sovereign with the other realms, and hence Canada would not be bound by the convention expressed by the preamble to the Statute of Westminster, 1931. Such a change would clearly be amending Canada’s Constitution. Such an amendment would trigger the unanimity formula under s.41(a) of the Constitution Act, 1982, as this would constitute a change to the office of The Queen.

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