News from the Centre for Citizenship

If Parliament accepts changes to the law proposed by Justice Secretary Jack Straw, some legislators will be free to resign from the House of Lords, hereditary legislators will not be able to hand on their seats to their children and the House will be able to expel legislators for serious misconduct. But the people would…

Hereditary head of state Elizabeth Windsor has twice written to the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, a conservative group within the Anglican Church, to wish it well. The Fellowship is opposed to the ordination as bishops of gay men and lesbians. The British head of state, who is also titular head of the Church of England,…

Sixty five per cent of Canadians want their country to end its tie to the British monarchy when Elizabeth Windsor dies, according to a poll by the Globe and Mail newspaper. Seventy per cent of those polled said they felt no personal connection to head of state Windsor or her representative in Canada, the Governor-General.…

As a part of a supposedly “radical vision” for Britain the Prime Minister has announced that he intends to ask Parliament to approve a change in the law that would stop the seats of Britain’s 92 hereditary legislators being taken by their children when they die. However, even the introduction of a bill before the…

New Zealand is again to appoint “queen’s counsels”. This follows the recent replacement of the title with “senior counsel”. According to the Attorney-General the title has been brought back to protect “the essential independence of the inner bar”. The New Zealand Republican Movement described the restoration as “a retrograde act”. The change has also been…

The Republican Constitutional Movement has been founded in Denmark to campaign for the end of what is said to be the world’s oldest monarchy. A recent opinion poll suggested that only 15.3% of Danes want a republic. However, 56% of respondents were in favour of revising the constitution. Some republicans see this as a sign…

The Australian Senate has rejected a bill that would have required a vote on the monarchy at the next federal election. The proposal for a non-binding plebiscite was made by the Green party but rejected by a senate committee that considered 250 submissions. The committee recommended a public awareness campaign to prepare Australians for possible…

Charles Windsor, heir to the office of head of state, has succeeded in blocking modern architecture in a redevelopment of the Chelsea Barracks site in London. According to the Financial Times Mr. Windsor was able to persuade fellow feudal rulers in Qatar, the al-Thani family, to intervene to have the plans scrapped. The owner of…

The BBC has dismissed a complaint by the Centre for Citizenship that a claim in a news report that a “leading republican” had been arrested for multiple murders in Northern Ireland show bias against republicans. The most the state broadcaster, which claims to be “the greatest force for cultural good on the face of the…