I come now to the second major alteration
which will be made by the eventual use of the Royal Prerogative – the
suppression of the word ‘British’ from the description both of Her Majesty’s territories
outside the United Kingdom and of the Commonwealth. Incidentally, and as a
minor by-product, this suppression of our nationality has resulted in what is
really nonsense. Strictly speaking, to describe the Queen as Queen of the
United Kingdom and ‘Her other Realms and Territories’ is meaningless. We
describe a monarch by designating the territory of which he is monarch. To say
that he is monarch of a certain territory and his other realms and territories
is as good as to say that he is king of his kingdom. We have perpetrated a
solecism in the title we are proposing to attach to our Sovereign and we have
done so out of what might almost be called an abject desire to eliminate the
expression ‘British’. The same desire has been felt – though not by any means
throughout the British Commonwealth – to eliminate this word before the term
‘Commonwealth’. I noticed that the Leader of the Opposition in Australia said
that he thought the time had come to change the description of the Commonwealth
in the Statute of Westminster as the ‘British Commonwealth of Nations’ into the
‘British Commonwealth’.
Why is it, then, that we are so anxious, in the description of our
own Monarch, in a title for use in this country, to eliminate any reference to
the seat, the focus and the origin of this vast aggregation of territories? Why
is it that this ‘teeming womb of royal Kings’, as the dying Gaunt called it,
wishes now to be anonymous?
When we come to the following part of the title we find the
reason. The history of the term ‘Head of the Commonwealth’ is not a difficult
one to trace. I hope I may be forgiven if I do so very briefly. The British
Nationality Act 1948 removed the status of ‘subject of the King’ as the basis
of British nationality, and substituted for allegiance to the Crown the concept
of a number – I think it was nine – of separate citizenships combined together
by statute. The British Nationality Act 1948 thus brought about an immense
constitutional revolution, an entire alteration of the basis of our subjecthood
and nationality, and since the fact of allegiance to the Crown was the uniting
element of the whole Empire and Commonwealth it brought about a corresponding
revolution in the nature of the unity of Her Majesty’s dominions.
The consequence of that Act immediately followed. If the British
dominions were not those territories which acknowledged the Queen, but were an
aggregation of separate countries enumerated in a statute, it would be possible
not only to add or to subtract territories, but for any of those territories to
throw off their allegiance without any consequential result. That was, in fact,
what happened.
In the following year, India declared its intention to renounce
its allegiance to the Crown and become a republic. Because of that change in the
whole basis of British nationality, the decision did not involve the
consequences which would have followed as little as a year before. The
declaration of the Prime Ministers of 28th April, 1949, included the following
passage:
‘The Government of India have declared and
affirmed India’s desire to continue with her full membership of the
Commonwealth of Nations and her acceptance of the King as the symbol of the
free association of those independent member nations and as such the Head of
the Commonwealth.’
It was accordingly enacted by the India (Consequential Provision)
Act 1949, that the law of this country should continue to apply to India as it
would have done if India had not renounced its allegiance to the Crown. The
result of that is, as we have found in a queer way in the only definition of
the term ‘Commonwealth’ on the Statute Book – it occurs in one of the sections
of the Finance Bill 1950, because a Member of the then Opposition put down an
Amendment to draw attention to the omission – that the Commonwealth consists of
‘Her Majesty’s dominions and India’.
The status of India resulting from these changes and declarations
is an ungraspable one in law or in fact. The Indian Government say that they
recognize the Queen as the Head of the Commonwealth. Well, I recognize the Rt.
Hon. Member for Walthamstow West [Mr. Atlee] as leader of the Opposition, but
that does not make me a Member of the Opposition. When we endeavour to
ascertain into what relationship with Her Majesty’s dominions this recognition of
the Crown as Head of the Commonwealth has brought India, we find ourselves
baulked. It was intended that this relationship should in fact be
uninterpretable. It is, therefore, necessary to inquire what is the minimum
content which entitles us to recognize unity at all, and then to ask whether
that necessary minimum content is applicable in the case of India.
I assert that the essence of unity, whether it be in a close-knit
country or in a loosely-knit federation, is that all the parts recognize that
in certain circumstances they would sacrifice themselves to the interests of
the whole. It is this instinctive recognition of being parts of a whole, which
means that in certain circumstances individual, local, partial interests would
be sacrificed to the general interest, that constitutes unity. Unless there is
some such instinctive, deliberate determination, there is no unity. There may
be an alliance. We may have alliance between two sovereign Powers for the
pursuit of common interests for a particular or for an undefined period; but
that is not unity. That is not the maintenance or the creation of any such
entity as we imply by the name ‘Empire’ or ‘Commonwealth’. I deny that there is
that element, that minimum basic element, of unity binding India to Her Majesty’s
dominions.
I deny that there is present, in that former part of Her Majesty’s
dominions which has deliberately cast off allegiance to her, that minimum,
basic, instinctive recognition of belonging to a greater whole which involves
the ultimate consequence in certain circumstances of self-sacrifice in the
interests of the whole.
I therefore say that this formula ‘Head of the Commonwealth’ and
the declaration in which it is inscribed, are essentially a sham. They are
essentially something which we have invented to blind ourselves to the reality
of the position. Although the changes which will be made in the royal titles as
the result of this Bill are greatly repugnant to me, if they were changes which
were demanded by those who in many wars had fought with this country, by
nations who maintained an allegiance to the Crown, and who signified a desire
to be in the future as we were in the past; if it were our friends who had come
to us and said: ‘We want this’, I would say: ‘Let it go. Let us admit the divisibility
of the Crown. Let us sink into anonymity and cancel the word “British” from our
titles. If they like the conundrum “Head of the Commonwealth” in the royal
style, let it be there.’
However, the underlying evil of this is that we are doing it for the
sake not of our friends but of those who are not our friends. We are doing this
for the sake of those to whom the very names ‘Britain’ and ‘British’ are
repugnant.
Mr. Nicholson
(Farnham): I beg my Hon
Friend to measure his words and to remember the vast sacrifices and the oceans
of blood that India has poured out in the past, and to recognize the deep
affection and feeling that exist throughout India towards this country.
Mr. Powell: I, who have had the advantage and
privilege of serving with the Indian Army in the War, am not likely to be
unmindful of it; but it was an army which owed allegiance to the Crown, an
enthusiastic allegiance, which was its very principle of existence and its binding
force. That allegiance, for good or for evil, has been cast off, with all that
follows.
Now, I am not under any delusion that my words on this occasion
can have any practical effect. None the less, they are not, perhaps,
necessarily in vain. We in this House, whether we are the humblest of the
backbenchers or my Rt. Hon. Friend the First Lord of the Treasury himself [Mr.
Churchill], are in ourselves, in our individual capacities, quite unimportant.
We have a meaning in this place only in so far as in our time and generation we
represent great principles, great elements in the national life, great strands
in our society and national being.
Sometimes, elements which are essential to the life, growth and
existence of Britain seem for a time to be cast into shadow, obscured, and even
destroyed. Yet in the past they have remained alive; they have survived; they
have come to the surface again, and they have been the means of a new
flowering, which no one had suspected. It is because I believe that, in a sense,
for a brief moment, I represent and speak for an indispensable element in the
British Constitution and in British life that I have spoken – I pray, not
entirely in vain.
Seth Barrett Tillman
Seth Barrett Tillman, Response to Liz O'Donnell's—We must embrace desperate people as Europe
fails those fleeing war, The New Reform Club (Sept. 25, 2016, 12:13 PM). [Here]
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