THE QUEEN AND THE ABORTION BILLS

By James Bogle, Esq.

In the light of the recent Abortion Reform Bill 2018 in the Isle of Man, in the UK, I would like to take this opportunity to reply to those who ask "why did the Queen sign it [the Abortion Bill]? Isn’t she supposed to be a Christian?".

The Isle of Man is an island off the coast of the UK, between England and Wales to the East, and Ireland to the West. It is a self-governing part of the UK and its Bills, like those in the UK Parliament, are, once passed by the Isle of Man Parliament, declared law by what is called "the Royal Assent", an assent that is not personal but purely formal and is, in effect, a rubber stamp exercise.

This Isle of Man abortion legislation has almost certainly been influenced by the recent abortion referendum in nearby Ireland, a republic with no monarchy, in which some 2/3rd of the Irish people voted to abort their own future. That, alone, tends to show that dispensing with the Monarchy is no protection against abortion laws. Indeed, in America, a republic with no monarchy, there are many more babies aborted than in the UK, a kingdom which retains the Monarchy.

Here, then, is the answer to those who try to blame the Queen for the abortion laws.

It is an answer standard among almost all UK constitutional lawyers (of which I am one).

The short answer is that the Queen has no power (save for the exception of a Bill to abolish democracy, Parliament or the Constitution) to veto any Bill duly and properly passed by the UK or Isle of Man Parliaments.

To attempt to do so would be an act of sedition and a coup d’état against the British Constitution, the UK Parliament and the State, which she has sworn before God to protect. It would thus be immoral, even if her aim was the good one of seeking to circumvent the Abortion Bill/ Act.

St Paul teaches ( Rom 3:8) that we may not do evil that good may come of it.

Thus, neither we, nor the Queen, may morally or legally engineer a coup d’état in order to stop a Bill duly and lawfully passed by Parliament, even an abortion Bill. The blame for the Abortion Act lies with Parliament, not the Queen. She is blameless.

Let us examine the issue in a bit more detail.

The Crown has always had only limited powers, limited in medieval times but even more heavily limited following the English Civil War and the settlement of 1688 which (for the first time) put Parliament above the Monarch, save for certain very limited powers. The US President has retained powers that were once those of the British Monarch, King George III, but such powers are no longer those of the British Monarch. The British Monarch now has only extremely limited powers, one of which is vitally important.

These limited powers are called "the Prerogative Powers" or "the Royal Prerogative" and the extent of such powers are determined by various UK constitutional sources, since we have no written Constitution (unlike the USA which famously has a Constitution which was written by the American Founding Fathers in the 18th century).

The UK constitutional sources include the UK Parliament, the UK courts and what are called "constitutional conventions".

These conventions are an important part of the unwritten British Constitution.

The Royal Prerogative is largely exercised, on behalf of the Queen, by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.

There are very few Prerogative Powers that can still be exercised by the Queen personally, but there remains one that is supremely important: the power to protect democracy, as we shall shortly see.

The Prerogative Powers include:

• The power to appoint and dismiss the Prime Minister (but she can only appoint the leader of the majority party and can only dismiss him if he loses his majority)

• The power to summon, prorogue and dissolve Parliament (but only in accordance with statutes passed by Parliament and she is obliged to follow the "advice" of the Cabinet)

• The power to make war and peace (but she is obliged to follow the "advice" of the Cabinet)

• The power to command the armed forces of the United Kingdom (but only in accordance with the "advice" of the Cabinet)

• The power to regulate the Civil Service (but only in accordance with the "advice" of the Cabinet)

• The power to ratify treaties (but only in accordance with the "advice" of the Cabinet)

• The power to issue passports (but only in accordance with the "advice" of the Cabinet)

• The power to appoint bishops and archbishops of the Church of England (but only in accordance with the "advice" of the Cabinet)

• The power to create peers i.e.

members of the House of Lords, the upper House of Parliament (both life peers and hereditary peers - but only in accordance with the "advice" of the Cabinet).

The "advice" of the Cabinet must be followed. The Queen cannot reject such advice. Thus the real rulers of the country are the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. This is because they are elected, whereas the Queen is not and, in our UK democracy, as in other democracies,

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The Queen and the Abortion Bills

J. Bogle/ Continued from Page 5

the government must be elected by the people. But the Queen has a vital role in protecting that democracy, as we shall shortly see.

Her Majesty cannot do the following: - vote; - express any shading of political opinion in public; - sit in the House of Commons (the lower House of Parliament, equivalent to the US House of Representatives), although the building is royal property.

She addresses the opening session of each new Parliament, but she cannot write her own speech. That is written for her by the government and she delivers it at the state opening of Parliament. Throughout her speech she announces what the government will be doing, describing it as "my government", but, in fact, everything in the programme will have been decided by the Prime Minister and Cabinet, not the Queen herself; - the Queen cannot refuse to sign a Bill of Parliament, properly and duly passed; and - she cannot appear as a witness in court or rent property from her subjects. Note that: SHE CANNOT REFUSE TO SIGN A BILL OF PARLIAMENT. She has no power to do so and she would be acting illegally if she pretended to exercise such a power.

There is one big exception - and it is the one remaining really important power of the Monarch: she can refuse a bill to abolish democracy.

In short, the Queen’s chief power is to stop any PM or government from installing a dictatorship like that of Hitler or Stalin or any other dictator.

This power alone makes the Queen absolutely vital to democracy and the UK Constitution and worth all her pomp and circumstance, carriages, palaces, robes and royal accoutrements.

Likewise her family are important, since her successor will come from that same Royal Family and any likely successors must be diligently and carefully brought up to be ready to succeed her and, if necessary, to exercise that power to protect democracy. Hence the importance of the Royal Family and the Royal succession.

Save the one big exception I have noted, if the Queen attempted to exceed her powers, and, by her own will, tried to veto a Bill passed by Parliament, that would be an illegal and immoral attempted coup d’état, since she would be seeking to overthrow the will of the dulyelected Parliament and thus to overthrow the Constitution, the Parliament, democracy and the State, the very things she has solemnly sworn, before God and the people, on the Gospels, at her coronation, to protect.

She would thereby be putting herself above the Constitution, the Parliament, the people, the State and the law of the land, all of which she has sworn to protect.

She would also be putting herself above the moral law and God’s law since no Christian is permitted to be a traitor or seditious. We are all bound to be loyal to our country and its Constitution, the Queen included.

At her Coronation, the Queen swears, on the Gospels and before the Archbishop, to govern her lands "...according to their respective laws and customs", i.e.

the respective Constitutions. Likewise, the US President, at his inauguration, swears that he "will, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States".

Normally, therefore, the Queen’s Royal Assent (with the one, big, prime exception) is no more than a rubber stamp and carries no personal moral assent on her part. She is neither giving her assent, nor withholding it. It is a mere formality and thus morally neutral.

This, as I say, is subject to one, vitally important, big exception - an exception which more than justifies the Queen’s special position.

That one prime, and vitally important, big exception is her right, nay duty, to refuse assent to a Bill which extends the life of a Parliament, or the tenure of a Cabinet, indefinitely, or, indeed, any other kind of Bill attempting to abolish democracy.

All agree that she could lawfully (and thus morally) refuse assent to such a Bill and, indeed, that it would be her duty so to do, even when the government concerned had, originally, been duly and properly elected by the people.

Her power is not to stop any government from being elected (that is the supreme democratic power of the people) but to stop that government from trying to abolish all future elections and thus democracy. The Queen’s power is thus to be used precisely to protect the people’s sovereign power to elect the government.

The same applies to her Majesty’s representative in other countries, in accordance with their respective Constitutions. For example, famously, in Australia in November 1975, the Governor-General, the Queen’s representative, in strict and legal accord with the Australian Constitution, and faced with a Prime Minister, Mr Gough Whitlam, who refused to hold an election after he had several times been denied funding by the upper House (the Australian Senate), removed the Prime Minister.

The Australian Governor-General then, in accordance with section 57 of the Australian Constitution, dissolved both Houses of Parliament and appointed the Leader of the Opposition to be a caretaker Prime Minister, but only after the latter had sworn to hold a General Election within one month. And, when the election was held, the Australian people responded by voting, in the biggest ever electoral landslide, against Mr. Whitlam and his government.

The Governor-General had thus acted to protect democracy, the Australian Constitution and the State by putting the whole matter to the people, in accordance with the Australian Constitution. He had furthermore fortified his decision by first taking the advice of the Chief Justice of the High Court (the Australian constitutional court).

The Queen does not have such wide powers as the Australian Constitution gives her representative in Australia, the Governor-General, but, under the British Constitution, she does still have the one residual power to protect British democracy, the Constitution and the State from a dictator who would abolish democracy.

Remember, by contrast, what happened in Germany in the 1930s. The German people were duped into voting for Hitler in 1933.

In our British Constitution, whilst the Queen could not prevent such an election, nevertheless, so soon as the newly elected government attempted to abolish democracy, as Hitler and the Nazis did after the death of President von Hindenburg, she could lawfully veto that attempt.

Since the Germans had (perhaps unwisely) abolished their Monarchy, and replaced it with a President, once that President had died, they no longer had a sovereign who could prevent the unconstitutional abolition of democracy by Hitler and the Nazis.

Hence, also, the importance of the hereditary principle.

Once a President dies, another has to be elected. Once a monarch dies, his heir apparent automatically becomes the lawful sovereign and cannot be circumvented by a dictator.

Hitler seized power once President von Hindenburg had died and before there was any opportunity to hold new presidential elections and elect a new President. Hitler exploited the time gap caused by the need for a presidential election, to abolish democracy, the Weimar Constitution and the office of President and merged the offices of Chancellor and President to create a new, unconstituional and illegal office for himself - the office of Fuehrer, or "leader".

However, if there had still been a King of Germany, not requiring to be elected but being King by right of the hereditary principle, such a king could have vetoed that illegal seizure of power by Hitler and thus prevented the Nazi take-over of Germany and the abolition of German democracy.

Thus, this residuary Prerogative Power is a vitally important one, vested in an hereditary monarch, and is the real reason why we invest the Queen with such importance. She is our last bulwark against a British version of Hitler or Stalin seeking to abolish democracy.

The Queen is thus worth every penny on account of that power alone.

In fact, however, the Queen costs us almost nothing.

Of the 88 pence p.a. per taxpayer that she costs us, most of that comes back to us from the substantial income that the Royal Family brings to the UK each year.

Furthermore, she, herself, contributes a great deal from her own purse each year, paying herself for things that, in republican countries, the State would normally pay for.

Compare that with a US President who, in a non-election year, costs the US taxpayer over $US1 billion, and much more in an election year!

Thus, the Queen and the Royal Family are undoubtedly the best and most costeffective political investment that the UK could possibly make for the safety, security and future of the country. ■ James Bogle (Mr. Bogle is junior counsel in the UK Supreme Court BREXIT case, and in numerous pro-life cases in the UK)

Her Magesty opens Parliament's two-year session.