Succession to the Crown Bill

I will be returning to this topic of changing the Succession to the Crown Act,  following the funeral of Margaret Thatcher. In the meantime I have received the following remarks by Anne Palmer on the subjct which in my view deserves as large a readership as possible:

§§§§§

We have fought two World Wars to ensure our way of life remains the same governed by and through our long standing Common Law Constitution. That we are governed by elected Politicians that govern this Country according to that same Common law Constitution also. That our Monarchy remains as it has been for Hundreds of Years. All set down in 600 years old or more Constitutional Documents from Magna Carta 1215 and our Declaration and Bill of Rights 1688 and 1689. The Act of Settlement, Act of Union, plus many others.  Many brave and wonderful people gave their young lives for all of us in two World Wars. Yet here, we are allowing foreigners to dictate what even our Monarch has to comply with-foreign laws.  We betray all those that gave their lives for our  freedom.  No, that is not exactly right. Those Members of Parliament that we in innocence and trust, elected and pay, betray all those that lost their lives not only fighting in that last war that I remember well and one in which our Queen played Her part in that war too,  we betray innocent children and babies also that lost their lives in the bombing of this Country, for they never had a chance to live.

The  proposed Succession to the Crown Bill requires nine (9) changes to nine different parts of our long standing Common law Constitution.  Countries on the Continent can easily change their Constitutions because after that war, they had NEW written Constitutions that are easily changed where as ours goes back for hundreds of years and why the people of this Country, that may have lost relatives in that last war, may have to “fight” all be-it in a different way- to keep our long standing Common Law Constitution that so many gave their lives for.  Not to be governed by foreigners but to continue with our way of life and according to the Constitution so many gave their lives for.  We cannot afford to let them down now. 

15^th Feb 2013. Lord Wallace of Tankerness (Liberal Democrat,) began the debate, saying: ‘This is a bill with a clear purpose; to bring gender equality to the rules of succession and to remove explicit pieces of religious discrimination from our statute book.’

He continued: ‘The bill does three things. First, it ends the system of male preference primogeniture in the line of succession. Secondly, it removes the bar on a person who marries a Roman Catholic from succeeding to the Throne - a legal barrier that applies to Catholics and only Catholics and no other faith. Thirdly, it replaces the Royal Marriages Act 1772 - an Act that requires any descendent of King George II to seek the reigning monarch's consent before marrying, without which their marriage is void... With King George II's descendants now numbering in their hundreds, this law is clearly unworkable and so it is replaced with a provision that the monarch need only consent to the marriages of the first six individuals in the line of succession, without which they would lose their place.’

§§§§§

The third reading of the Bill in the House of Lords is scheduled for later this month, it will then, after the formality of Royal Assent, become law, until then it is not!