Vice-Regal Saint: "England, an epitaph"
The New Criterion on the Treaty of Lisbon:
We’ve always had a soft spot for the patriotic song “Rule, Britannia!” partly because of the catchy tune, partly because of the bracing atmosphere of freedom the song presupposes and evokes:
Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!Written in 1740 to commemorate King Alfred’s victory over the Vikings. The song has become synonymous with British derring-do. Runnymede. The defeat of the Spanish Armada. The defeat of Napoleon. The defiance and defeat of Hitler. The tradition of common law, individual liberty, and economic freedom … Say goodbye to all that. To date, the response to Gordon Brown’s usurpation of Britain’s sovereignty has been confined to a few journalistic sallies. Across that green and pleasant land, supine acquiescence is the order of the day. With only paltry exceptions, we see the same thing on the Continent. The handover of freedom and self-government to a smug, self-perpetuating, unelected bureaucratic elite is virtually complete, awaiting only ratification by the parliaments of the member countries.
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2 comments:
There is a revival of the purple post card campaign to HM The Queen
http://www.european-referendum.org.uk/
Telephone enquiries to any of the following:
Derek Norman (Chairman) 01480 435837
Tony Bennett (Secretary) 01279 635789
Graham Wood (Development Officer) 01904 795204
e-mail: european_referendum@yahoo.co.uk
WORDING OF THE APPEAL TO THE QUEEN:
Your Majesty,
I appeal to you to defend and uphold the British Constitution, as you promised us in your Coronation Oath. I urge you to refuse your Royal Assent to any Bill to enact the E.U. Reform Treaty, unless we, the British people, have first been allowed to have our say in a fair referendum. You promised to govern us according to our laws and customs. The Bill of Rights 1689 states that we should never be ruled by ‘foreign powers’.
In 2004, after large numbers of Britons petitioned both you and your government, Tony Blair promised us a referendum on the European Constitution. As nearly all European and British leaders agree, the E.U. Reform Treaty is a virtual carbon copy of the European Constitution, with around 99% of its wording the same as four years ago.
This Treaty will bring in a European government. Britain would be forced to accept a European foreign and defence policy, including an E.U. army and paramiltary units with the right to operate on our soil. Precious rights such as the presumption of innocence and trial by jury will no longer be guaranteed. Under the Treaty, the E.U. will have power to further remove what independence we have left, without our consent. You may by convention have to follow government advice when giving Royal Assent, but, equally, the government must not give you unconstitutional advice.
I agree with the sentiments of hotspur. I may include it under our polls and petitions section.
I also liked this part of the New Criterion post:
It is a sad moment for Britain. The lumbering machinery of the state has ridden roughshod over the people. And most of them no longer seem to mind. The journalist Rosemary Righter got it exactly right in a tart leader for The Times:
“History will remember this day as a day when new paths of hope were opened to the European ideal.” Thus spoke José Sócrates, the Prime Minister of Portugal, at the signing ceremony of the European treaty that dares not speak its true name.
Pass the hemlock. And the sick bag. The “European ideal” consists, it is now evident, of imposing on voters far-reaching changes to the way they are to be governed, without allowing them a look-in, or a voice. The “path of hope” beckons only to Europe’s most messianic federalists: it consists of a treaty clause that says that governments may in future cede powers to Brussels without consulting their parliaments, let alone their cussed voters.
History will indeed have a word for this: perfidy. Every single one of the 27 signatories of the Lisbon treaty is guilty of a breach of the democratic compact, monumental in its arrogance. Every one of them knows that, shorn of a few preambular paragraphs, chopped up and reassembled in a deliberately unreadable jumble of “amendments,” it resurrects the EU constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters.
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