CM 2 

: The British Constitution, an « unwritten constitution »

A constitution is a book of rules, which concerns :

• relations between the institutions of the state
• relations between the institutions of the state and the individuals who live in it
• relations between all individuals in the state

The institution of the State share the 3 powers :

• legislative, from latin lex, the lawmakers : Parliament
• executive, the Government. In UK, it's the PM and his Cabinet (24 people) + a lot of other
people
• judicial, the referees, who watch if the laws are being respected. In UK, the Supreme Court,
and lower courts for civil and criminal cases.

Usually, Constitution is one huge book, which was written at a certain time, in a certain place, by a
certain number of people who wrote and signed the document. (it's the case for the US Constitution
and the French 5th Republic) Generally, the constitution comes from a Revolution.

But Britain doesn't have a written Constitution in a neat little book, like in France. It's a collection
of scattered documents in various languages, and unwritten modifications.
The Magna Carta of 1215 is the first written document of the Constitution. It was in latin. It sets
important rules about the law. No one can be killed without trial, the judges have to be law
specialists, and not just friends of the king. The sentences have to be proportional to the crime.

Since 1215, the British state has been accumulating documents in their Constitution. Some
documents from the 13-15th century are in Latin or French. In the 16th, there are some in
Shakespearian English. The different amendments of the right to vote are all separate documents in
the Constitution. The Brexit is also in there. Every law voted in Parliament is added to the
Constitution, and outdated or unwanted laws are taken out.
The advantages of the British constitution : it is very flexible, it's easy to add or remove parts to it.
The Constitution isn't frozen, it is still being changed today. They were made in various places, in
different languages, signed by lots of different people.

In the 17th century, they had a revolution, and briefly had a Republic. But when the monarchy
returned, the decisions made by the Republicans were removed by the king.

The British Constitution is basically soft power : it influences people without them knowing it.

What's in the constitution ?

• It is a legal document, so most documents concern the law, there are two types of laws.
• Most documents are written down, but some were never written, it is simply tradition.
• There are books of instructions on how to use the Constitution, written by legal experts.

The laws in the British Constitution come from the judges, or the Parliament. But there are sources
of laws that come from outside the UK. There are laws from the European Union (which will be
removed or modified), and there are international treaties. The UK's relationships with other States
create legal documents which tie the two countries.

In the British system, the judges can make laws. In case of a new crime, which does not have an
existing law, the legal experts can propose laws to resolve the case. If they are considered good
laws, they become effective in all the country. It takes about 5 months to make a law, it is relatively
slow.
The judges' laws are Common Law. Examples :
• In 1611, the judges decided that the King cannot create a new crime just by proclaiming it,
he has to get the approval.
• Since 1912 the Executive can't tax people directly, it has to be approved by the Parliament.
• 1947 : Police have to inform the reasons why they arrest you when they do.
The Parliament's laws are Statute Law. (statutory) Examples :
• The Representation of the People Acts, which extended the right to vote.
• Bill of Rights 1689, which reduced the divine rights of the King, and forced him to respect
the laws.
• The Parliament Act of 1911 made the House of Commons officially superior to the House of
Lords.
• The laws for decentralisation in the 1990s.

Some of the important parts of the British Constitution are never written down, they are not laws
but traditions. For example, the Parliament meet at least once per year, only because it's a tradition.
The House of Commons was never created legally, it just became like that and everyone kept doing
it. The Parliamentary Committees are proportional to the size of the party which creates it, but it is
only via "gentleman's agreement", no law forces them to do so.

20 septembre 2022 : The need for a reform of Constitution

RAPPEL, THE 3 BIGGEST PARTIES IN THE UK : Conservative Party (liberal, centre-right to

right-wing), Labour Party (social-democratic, centre-left), Liberal Democrats (ideas party, in
coalition with the other 2 parties)

The British people realised they were in a political crisis, probably in the 1950s.
1956 : Suez Crisis, about the Suez Canal in Egypt. Egypt was independent and didn't want the
revenues of the canal to be taken by Britain, so they took control of Egypt. France and UK attacked
Egypt, and the USA and USSR told them to stop the attack.

At first, the UK didn't want to join the European Union, but in the 60s, during an economical crisis,
the British people wanted to join for business reasons. French presidnt De Gaulle refused (they only
wanted it for the money, and were too pro-American) but they eventually joined in 1973.

The need for a Reform was felt first in the 1970s. During a Labour Government, the Conservatives
asked for a reform of the constitution. But it became more serious in the 80s, under PM Margaret
Thatcher. It was a very centralised government, the executive had a lot of power, and Thatcher had
a strong majority in Parliament. People called it an elective dictatorship. It was very hard to stop a
Prime Minister from doing bad things once they had power. In 1988, a group called Charter 88
proposed a solution to the democratic problem in the UK. Charter 88 was composed mostly of
LibDems. The Labour Party supported the Charter, but not the Conservatives. The Charter said that
freedom was too dependent on the benevolence of the rulers, and had been rationed out to the
British people. Freedom is the most important value in the British system.
Here are the propositions of Charter 88 :
• creation of a Bill of Rights, explaining all of the rights of the British People
• Parliament should control the executive, the government.
• There should be more transparence, the governement should give more information to the
public.
• There needs to be a more fair system of voting. The system for the General Elections is
called "first pass the post" : the party with the most votes gets all the power, even if they
have only a few more votes than the other party. The Charter wants a PR system : if you get
 30percent of the votes, you get 30percent of the power. It would create a coalition between
all the parties.
• They criticized the House of Lords, who are never elected by the people. The monarchy isn't
democratic either. Only the House of Commons is democratic. The Charter says the House
of Lords should be replaced by another chamber which is not hereditary.
• The judiciary should be independent; it should be separate from the Executive and
Legislative. In the British system at the time, the Supreme Court used to be inside the
Parliament, and the boss of the Supreme Court was a member of the Government.
• The redistribution of power between the different parts of the UK. All the power was in
London, there was no decentralization. There should be a bit of local power and autonomy
for the regions.
• There should be a neat, written Constitution, like in the other countries.

In 1997, Tony Blair became Prime Minister, and he agreed with a few of the problems and solutions
proposed by Charter 88. The Tony Blair government did a lot of reforms between 1997 and 2007.
After these reforms, there was more democracy :
• reform of the House of Lords (they limited the number of hereditary aristocrats to 92),
• they created a true separate Supreme Court,
• more transparent and open Government thanks to the Freedom of Information Act,
• started the Devolution of the authority, but only 4 of the 12 regions have recieved power
(Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London) The other regions of England go fuck
themselves, no power at all for them. It is an assymetrical system. Even in the 4 regions, the
power is unequal, Scotland has more power and autonomy than Wales.

27 septembre : The problems in the British Constitution (encore, il a pas fini)

In 1976, the Lord Chancellor (Most important judge) called the British system an "elective
dictatorship". The Prime Minister had too much powers, and could not really be stopped from
doing whatever they want. This became evident in the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher (PM from
1979 to 1990) governed wothout asking the approval from her ministers. She used an aggressive
way of ruling and was a very strong Prime Minister.

This led to the creation of a small group of intellectuals and political activists from smaller parties,
who wrote Charter 88. (voir au-dessus)
This movement said that the British people had less freedom than they believed. The freedom of the
people depended of the rulers, they had the power to take it away. Charter 88 said that the British
people were subjects, not citizens. They were liberals, so they fought for freedom (like John Locke
who created the Liberal movement in the 17th century).

From 1997 to 2007, Tony Blair was the Prime Minister. He was from the Labour Party, and he
agreed with the solutions proposed by Charter 88. He started reforming, and resolved a few
problems, but also did not fully commit to do all the changes that Charter 88 told to do.
Blair revealed himself to be part of the problem. In 2003, he allowed the invasion of Iraq, even
though it was an illegal war according to British and international laws. The British government
pretended that Iraq could launch missiles to attack Britain within minutes. In truth, Blair had a
secret agreement with the US government, because they both wanted to change the regime of
Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Blair lied to the public and to his ministers, in order to send the British
army to Iraq. The government used false documents to justify the attack on Iraq, which were
nicknamed the "Dodgy Dossier".

In 2009, there was the Expenses Scandal. The Freedom of Information Act had been voted by
Blair's Parliament in 2000, to force the Government to give more information to the journalists and
the people.
Some journalists asked the Government for information on how the public money was spent by the
Government, and the Government gave a very unclear answer, by releasing millions of documents
reporting all the expenses of the Government. Using the Internet, thousands of British people
looked at all the documents, and proved that almost all the people in the Government were corrupt,
and bought things for themselves using the people's tax money, by classifying every expense as a
"parliamentary expense". Dozens of people resigned, and some even went to prison.

All these problems root from the same big problem : a problem of confidence. Confidence is the
glue of all human relationships. In a political system, things only work if there is trust between the
people and the rulers. Due to all these frauds and issues, the British people no longer believed in
their rulers. They called Tony Blair "BLIAR".

In 2007-2008, there was a big international crisis called the "Credit Crunch". The banks refused to
lend money to people because they were losing money with the crisis. And the banks didn't even
lend money to other banks to help them, because they were competitors and did not trust each other.
In Britain, to save money, the Government reduced its spending, by removing some social aids (it
was very hard for poor people for about 10 years).
In France, they did the opposite. When the economy is good, the French Government saves money,
and when times get hard, the Government spends its money to help people get out of the crisis. This
is an idea created by economist John Keynes.

There were the "Cash For" scandals. Politicians accepted money from big companies, in order to
change the laws in their favour. Others asked for money to make someone a Lord (Cash for
honours).

From 1961 to 2011, the british secret police spied on more than 1000 groups of people, mostly
socialist and ecologist groups.
People also lose confidence in their police, due to these incidents and a lot of others.