Robert Blackburn

The Abdication of Edward VIII: Legal and Constitutional Perspectives

This chapter explores the abdication of Edward VIII, and so the issue of the extent to which the later Duke of Windsor qualifies as a ‘true’ Windsor, given the reasons for his abdication. It explores, also, the extent to which Edward VIII was badly advised, arguing that had the King been more determined to seek alternatives, he could have challenged the opinion of his Prime Minister in particular. The chapter assesses the extent to which, as an unexpected result of the changes instituted by George V, monarchs found themselves faced with a new reality: that their private lives were as much part of the ‘job description’ as their public and ceremonial duties. Drawing also upon the consequences of the way in which the royal family reacted to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the implication here is that the Windsors can, and will, only survive so long as they are perceived publicly to be doing the job—and continue to be willing to accept a high level of popular expectation of intrusion into what might once have been considered ‘private’ matters for individual Windsors.

Magna Carta: Our common heritage of freedom

Preface by Robert Blackburn Acknowledgements List of Contributors 1. Why Do We Central Europeans Celebrate the Anniversary of Magna Carta? Introductory Remarks Zbigniew Rau, Marek Tracz-Tryniecki, Przemyslaw Zurawski vel Grajewski 2. a) The Hungarian experience of freedom - the tradition of the Golden Bull Attila K. Molnar and Levente Voelgyesi b) The Hungarian Sources 3. a) King, Estates and the Czech Crown. The Legal Sources of the Ideas of Freedom in the Medieval and Early Modern Czech Lands Jana Janisova - Dalibor Janis b) The Czech Sources 4. a) The nobilitys privileges and the formation of civil liberties in old Poland Dorota Malec b) The Polish Sources 5. a) Ruling by Law and by Consent: Monarchy and Noble Estate in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Arturas Vasiliauskas b) The Lithuanian Sources

Election Campaigns: Publicity and the Media

The style of political campaigning at general elections in Britain has dramatically altered in recent times. The single most important feature of modern electioneering has been the arrival of television broadcasting technology, so that today the overwhelming majority of families throughout the country possess a television set in their home which they regularly watch in the evening for entertainment and news bulletins. Following only a short time after radio broadcasting itself had transformed electioneering methods in the 1920s and 1930s, the new technology of television in the 1950s rapidly eclipsed radio as the most popular source of political information and became the primary focus for electioneering by the political parties, not least because it was quickly realised that the visual impact of this medium was at least as important as (and indeed frequently more important than) words alone. As one leading market research company chairman, Robert Worcester, has stated:1 There is no question that the main message that television news during an election campaign gets across is visual. The thing that sticks in people’s minds is what they saw, not what they heard.

The Electorate: Voters and Voting

The registered electorate of the United Kingdom at the time of writing comprises a total of 43 724 954 persons. This means that over four-fifths of the entire population of the United Kingdom are eligible to vote at a general election. Most of those remaining are made up of people who are either too young to vote or whose names have been left off the electoral register erroneously. Today we take it for granted that voting at a general election is one of the fundamental rights of every ordinary citizen. But we should always remember that the principle of ‘one man, one vote’ is of comparatively recent origin, and the notion of ‘one woman, one vote’ even more so. Political equality in Britain was an ideal that had to be campaigned for over many generations by courageous men and women, often in the face of harsh resistance, and the right to vote was finally won for each adult citizen, regardless of property ownership or gender, only in 1928.

The Timing of General Elections

The date of the next general election remains unknown to British voters and opposition parties alike, until it is announced by the Prime Minister approximately five weeks before polling is due to take place. It is the Prime Minister who possesses the constitutional power to select the date for a general election, and he or she formally exercises this power by requesting the Queen to carry out the legal ceremonies involved in dissolving Parliament and causing election writs to be issued to every parliamentary constituency to set the candidature nomination and ballot arrangements in motion. The only legal limitation upon the Prime Minister’s freedom of choice is a 1911 statutory provision that a Parliament will automatically terminate exactly five years after the date of its first meeting. The wording of this fundamental provision controlling the frequency of British general elections reads as follows:1 All Parliaments that shall at any time hereafter be called, assembled, or held, shall and may respectively have continuance for [five] years, and no longer, to be accounted from the day on which by the writ of summons … any future Parliament shall be appointed to meet, unless… any such Parliament hereafter to be summoned, shall be sooner dissolved by His Majesty, his heirs or successors.

Arguments about Proportional Representation

Proportional representation is not in itself a system for elections, but rather a criterion upon which to evaluate the working of any one of a range of electoral systems which can be used for voting purposes. It is a principle or yardstick by which to test the degree of representative proportionality between citizens’ votes and successful party candidates. More precisely, what is looked for is the percentage equivalents between the total national votes cast for the respective parties’ candidates, and the number of seats won by the parties in the House of Commons. Proponents of proportional representation believe that there should be a direct and close correlation between total votes cast for each party across the country at a general election, and the number of seats won by each party in the House of Commons. Under a pure application of the principle, if half the voters in the country vote for the Conservative Party and one-third vote Labour, then half the membership of the House of Commons — 326 MPs — should be Conservative MPs and one-third of the House — 217 MPs — should be Labour. By contrast, in Britain, as Sir Ivor Jennings once succinctly put it, ‘Our system of representation produces the result that the size of a majority in the House of Commons may bear little resemblance to the size of the majority in the country.’1 No one in British politics today is advocating a scheme of electoral reform that is completely proportional between votes and seats (which would require what is called a national list system) and only two countries in the world (the Netherlands and Israel) possess such a method of voting.

The Financial Affairs of the Political Parties

Money is of crucial importance to the election campaigning efforts of the political parties. Not only are there the permanent costs involved in maintaining the central and regional party organisations, but modern methods of political campaigning and election propaganda have become increasingly expensive. Fighting a successful general election campaign in the late twentieth century means spending huge amounts of money on matters ranging from employing the best public relations and marketing agencies, to buying massive quantities of advertising space in the national press and on public billboards, to hiring top film directors and camera crews in the production of party election broadcasts. Political parties in the United Kingdom derive the finance for their work outside Parliament, including that used for their election campaigning expenses, almost exclusively from membership fees and voluntary donations. Clearly, a party which is better funded than its rivals has a considerable advantage at general elections. The more money a political party has at its disposal, the more staff can be hired in organising and administering the election campaign; more and better office facilities and technology can be used in planning the campaign and for special electioneering efforts such as direct-mail canvassing; more and better advertising space can be bought; more and better public relations, marketing, advertising and media agencies and staff can be hired; and more and better transport and communications systems can be used to advantage during the election campaign.

Introduction: British Parliamentary Democracy

L. S. Amery once described the British system of democracy as one of, ‘Government of the people, for the people, with, but not by, the people.’1 Ideas about what democracy means, and what it involves, are as manifold as the innumerable interpretations that have been placed by different philosophers at different times upon the associated concepts of freedom and equality.2 Aristotle, writing over 2000 years ago, expressed the basic principle that in a democracy the people are sovereign.3 Yet the difficulties and complexities that have confronted democratic theory and practice, particularly in modern times, have mostly related to problems of political representation, and to how best the aspirations and wishes of ‘the people’ can be translated into governmental and legislative action. Few societies, apart from, for example, the ancient Greek city-states, have ever been small enough to be able to practise any form of direct personal democracy, in which all citizens have participated in the governmental decision-making of the community. In the democracies of the contemporary Western world, such as the United Kingdom with over 55 million inhabitants, systems of political representation have evolved over hundreds of years, under which political elites are elected to office in order to make decisions concerning government and to make law on the people’s behalf. The crucial democratic link between politicians and people — or government and the governed — is the electoral system.

The Public Announcement of General Elections

The public announcement of a dissolution of Parliament and general election is of special interest in the United Kingdom. This is because the date of an election is uncertain. Unlike many other legislatures around the world, the life of the British Parliament is not of a fured duration. It has a maximum duration of five years’ and a dissolution and general election will be held at some point within that five-year period. Since universal adult suffrage was introduced in 1918, the average length of a Parliament has been three years and seven months, but this says nothing about the expected lifetime of any particular Parliament. This has varied widely in practice from less than one year (1922-23, 1924, 1974) to 1 to 2 years (1950-51, 1964-66) to 2 to 3 years (1929-31) to 3 to 4 years (1919-22,1931-35,1970-74, 1983-87) to 4 to 5 years (1924-29, 1945-50, 1951-55, 1955-59, 1959-64, 1966-70, 1974-79, 1979-83) and during the second world war even beyond five years by prolongation statutes (1935-45). Normally it may be expected that a general election will not be held until four years have passed but today this is to say little more than that a government is unlikely to risk losing the election without any special reason until the necessity to do so is upon the horizon. The legal mechanism by which general elections are called is through the Queen’s Proclamation dissolving Parliament and declaring the meeting of another, which then triggers the statutory timetable for election procedure laid down in the Representation of the People Act 1983.2 The advance decision on the dates of dissolution and general election however is a political one and the Constitution convention is for the Queen to be advised on all such matters by the Prime Minister. The present method for the public announcement of general elections is by way of a press notice being issued from IO Downing Street. This happens a few hours after the Prime Minister has visited the Queen to tender his or her advice at Buckingham Palace. The Notice will begin by formally stating that the Prime Minister has today asked Her Majesty the Queen to proclaim a dissolution of Parliament and that Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to signify that she will comply with this request. Then the dates will be laid out in turn for the dissolution of Parliament, the general election, the first day of the new Parliament and the State Opening. This public announcement will take place about a week before the Queen’s Proclamation. Thus at the last election in 1987 the press notice was issued on Monday 1 I May and the dissolution was on Monday 18 May. The Notice is directly distributed by 10 Downing Street officials to the media and the news will be immediately reported by radio, television and the next editions of all newspapers. As a matter of courtesy a personal letter signed by the Prime Minister, sometimes