Civitas

He writes:

‘I have no objection to the ceremonies introduced last February for foreigners who take British citizenship. …But there is a world of difference between a ceremony designed to welcome those who switch allegiance from one sovereign authority to another, and … a Blairite [one]… for people who were born British.’

I have slightly altered Mr Utley's wording because, in the original, what he contrasts citizenship ceremonies for foreigners seeking naturalisation with is not some equivalent citizenship ceremony for native born Britons, but a religious service.

Mr Utley makes this substitution following the inadvertent usage of the term 'service' by a Guardian reporter to refer to the proposed ceremony. This word struck Mr Utley as apposite, since, in his eyes, what the government seems to be proposing is nothing less than ‘an act of communal worship ...[whose] object of veneration would not be God, so much as the Government and the constitution of the United Kingdom, with particular reference to the Home Office’s plans to improve racial integration and “community cohesion”.

I could not agree with Mr Ultley more in thinking that the present Government is liable to exploit the proposed ceremony, as it does every other opportunity that presents itself, to promote its own glory in the eyes of the public, as well as plug its own highly questionable levelling agenda.

Moreover, I agree with Mr Utley that, were all that could be gained from any form of such ceremony, none would be worth introducing.

Maybe, the risk of the ceremony being politicised in this way makes it one not worth taking.

However, it is by no means clear that every such form of ceremony would be alien to the spirit of the British Constitution. Nor is it clear that no form of such ceremony could serve any useful political purpose today, claims that appear to be the central reasons offerred by Mr Utley for rejecting the idea of one.

That Mr Utley thinks any such ceremony would be alien to the British constitution is indciated when he writes:

‘Until this government came along, nobody thought that there was need of any state- sponsored ceremony to mark any particular stage in a youngster’s development as a member of the body politic. For Britons, the accumulation of all … rights and responsibilities [of adult citizens] was just a natural part of growing up.’

That Mr Utley thinks no useful purpose could be served by any such form of ceremony is indicated when he observes:

‘We who are born free, need no citizenship oaths … to make us feel that we belong…. Such humiliations are for the people of insecure countries, riven by revolution, or for nations … with a long history of authoritarian rule.’

It is, perhaps, for these two reasons, he writes:

‘The great thing about being born a British subject is that hundred of years’ worth of rights and liberties come free with our first gulp of breath. No rites of passage are required.’

Classical liberals may, with good cause, be equally as unwilling as Mr Utley ‘to chant from a text written by our …buffoon of a Home Secretary’, or to see their children encouraged to do so.

However, Mr Utley seems a little too eager to dismiss the idea there could be any merit in any such form of ceremony. That eagerness leads him to make some pretty remarkable and highly contestable claims.

As a matter of historical fact, it is just not true that ‘before the present government, nobody had thought there was need of any state-sponsored ceremony to mark any particular stage in a youngster’s development as a member of the body politic.’ What else were the Corporation Act of 1661 and the Test Act of 1672, which required any form of public office holder to swear allegiance to the sovereign, but ‘state-sponsored ceremonies to mark a particular stage in a youngster’s development as a member of the body politic’?

It is, therefore, just untrue that, until the present government came along, ‘for Britons, the accumulation of all .. rights and responsibilites [of adult citizens] was just a natural part of growing up.’

After all, until 1829, Englishmen could not vote unless they had signed up to the articles of the Anglican Creed. Some natural accumulation of rights!

No, the civil and political rights of Britons, as we understand these today, had to fought hard for to be won. Moreover, they came only incrementally and gradually through struggle at and following the Glorious Revolution.

As to the value of any form of citizenship ceremony for British citizens, while fully sharing Mr Utley’s reservations about the merits of any form of one likely to issue from the any current government minister or appointee, it seems too hasty to write off the very idea of such a ceremony as easily as Mr Utley seems keen to do.

He sees any such ceremony unnecessary because he thinks the liberties of Englishmen too securely entrenched to need being secured or reinforced by such ceremonies. I beg to differ.

It is true no formal oath or declaration of allegiance by itself carries much moral force, especially if the authority to which allegiance is given is, like the Nazi government was, an evil one. But a sincerely sworn oath or declaration of allegiance given to a worthy source of authority cannot but be a good and a cohesive force in any society whose members customarily are given over to make such pledges.

Making oaths has been the time-honoured way in which the British polity has obtained both the law-abidingness and allegiance of its active members. This holds true, all the way from those who undertake jury duty or give evidence in court, through memebrs of the police and armed forces, all the way up to the sovereign, to whom, wrongly, Mr Utley supposes British subjects unconditionally bound.

At the coronation of every incumbent British sovereign since the Glorious Revolution, he or she is made to swear an oath in which, among other things, he or she undertakes to govern in accordance with statute and common law and to preserve and uphold all the customary rights belonging to their subjects as custom and statute accord them.

Arguably, since 1688, it has been accepted that the allegiance of British subjects to their sovereigns, and to all those who act in the name of the sovereign, is dependent upon the sovereign and those acting in his or her name acting in accordance with these time-honoured statutes and customs.

It is precisely the seeming eagerness with which the present government seesm so keen to sign away all these time-honoured statutes and traditional liberties of the British to what will bean essentially unaccountable ruling power situated in Brussels that makes it such a dangerous force.

Moreover, in an age, when nominal British citizenship can all too easily mask allegiance to some sinister and fanatical foreign prince or charismatic leader, what harm is there to require all future British citizens, wherever they might have been born, to make such an oath of allegiance? Our present situation is more akin to seventeenth century England when deep religious conflicts threatened the body politic than it to that of Edwardian England or England just after 1945, when loyalites could be taken for granted.

Rather than dismissing the present-day relevance or value of oaths of allegiance for citizens of this country, those who cherish their British citizenship for the traditional liberties it accords whoever enjoys it would do well at this time to be urging their political masters and mistresses, right up to the very top, to remember what they themselves have personally undertaken to uphold and be loyal to in swearing the oaths they did upon assuming their offices.

Similarly, they should give serious consideration to restricting the franchise to those prepared to swear such oaths. It should be thought by all Britons a privilege to be such and to enjoy the rights attendant upon being such rather than something which the authrorities should be anxiously pseeking to persuade them to exercise.

I leave the last word on this subject to that great champion of English liberty, John Locke:

‘Submitting to the Laws of any country, living quietly, and enjoying privileges and protection under them makes not a man a member of that society: This is only a local protection and homage due to, and from all those, who, not being in a state of war, come within the territories belonging to any government, to all parts of whereof the force of law extends.… Thus we see that foreigners, by living all their lives under another government, and enjoying the privileges and protection of it, though they are bound , even in conscience, to submit to its administration, as far forth of any Denison; yet do not thereby come to be subjects or members of that commonwealth. Nothing can make any man so, but his actually entering into it by positive engagement, and express compact... This is … that consent which makes any one a member of any commonwealth.’ (Second Treatise of Government, section. 122; Locke's emphasis)