As reported on the Guardian website, whose number of audited "impressions" has gone up from 10 million a month last year to 22 million, the paper is to mount a challenge to the British Royal Family. While this may appear to many to be about quirks arising from old fashioned traditions, behind some of these constitutional formulae are relics of previous class relations which still have an impact on present ones. Behind royal prerogative lies a significant area of arbitrary unaccountable power in Britain mediated by gentlemen's agreements behind the facade of the two party system. (Consider similarly how class-rooted quirks of the US consitution have been thrown under the spotlight by the recent close electoral contest.) The Guardian is a not-for-profit organisation owned by a trust with roots in Manchester socialism. This present initiative may be criticised from a leftist workerist position as about a trivial battle to allow aristocratic Roman Catholics to be elected monarchs. But that would be a superficial view. I will be happy to refer people to the appropriate argument by Lenin that is is necessary to react to every manifestation of oppression, no matter what stratum or class of people it affects. The importance of this issue reflects on the concept that all people are subject entitled to human rights and the state can be held accountable if they are not properly delivered. This is not socialism but it opens the door to more radical interpretations of democracy, which undermine the old order and prepare the way for the new. The Guardian is usually well briefed and well prepared for its legal challenges. It is going to win this one. ----------------------- From 6th Dec 2000 The Guardian is to back a legal challenge to the 300-year-old law banning Roman Catholics and other non-Protestants from succession to the British throne, on the grounds that it clashes with the Human Rights Act and should be reinterpreted or removed from the statute book. Leading human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC believes the Act of Settlement 1701 may be affected by the European convention on human rights, which became part of UK law two months ago when the Human Rights Act came into force. The challenge to the Act of Settlement coincides with an editorial in the paper which argues for a referendum on the future of the monarchy. Today and over the next few days the paper is running a number of articles advocating republicanism, despite another outdated statute, the Treason Felony Act 1848, which threatens anyone doing so with deportation "for the term of his or her natural life". The paper's editor, Alan Rusbridger wrote last week to the attorney general, Lord Williams of Mostyn, asking for an assurance that he will not be prosecuted, given that he has no intention of advocating overthrow of the monarchy by force. In his letter, he argued the Treason Felony Act breaches article 10 of the European convention, the right to freedom of expression.
