University of Leipzig

Recent changes in the constitution of Great Britain

by

 Maria Brüßler

Content:

1. Introduction page 1

2. Attitudes towards the constitution and its changes page 2

2.1. Reforms of Parliament page 3
2.2. Electoral Reform page 5
2.3. Individual Rights page 6
2.4. Devolution and regional government page 8
2.5. Written constitution or not page 11

3. Conclusion page 12

1. Introduction

Before dealing with the actual topic it is necessary to explain how the current situation could arise. This will be done in the following with a very brief overview over the history of the British constitution and its main sources. The first document belonging to the constitution is the Magna Charta from 1215. It was to protect the rights of the community against the Crown. As a result of the Declaration of Rights the powers of Parliament were extended by the Bill of Rights in 1689. Thirdly in 1832 was the Great Reform Bill which reformed the system of Parliamentary representation. The last great reforms were in 1911 the Parliament Act which decreased the power of the House of Lords and in1918 the Representation of the People Act which gave women over 30 the right to vote. As a result of this development the British people are not citizens as in any other modern, democratic state but they are subjects of the Crown and accept the Queen as their head of state.

It can be seen that the constitution dates back almost 800 years. This is much more than many other constitutions, for example the German one. As one can imagine it has undergone many grave changes. During the 18th century it was an aristocratic ′balanced′ constitution. In the course of the Victorian Age it became a middle-class liberal constitution which developed to the liberal democratic constitution that it is today. Furthermore a few words to the process of change have to be said in advance. This process consists of dialogue between the forces of conservation on the one hand and the forces of transformation on the other. The resulting upshot is always a compromise which represents the terms and arrangements on which a country can be ruled and which the people will accept.1

2. Attitudes towards the constitution and its changes

As a result of the development outlined above Britain has now a unitary, uncodified (often called ′unwritten′) and flexible constitution. These characteristics can also be seen as the explanation why the constitution could be changed so often and above all so gravely. At the moment there are many discussions going on how to reform it. There are of course various points of view from no change at all to radical reforms, but the greatest difference between the reformers is that some want piecemeal reforms; however radical and others champion a written constitution. All political parties have different attitudes and several groups and individuals support changes only on certain fields such as devolution. During the last 15 years there has been a movement for constitutional reform which was never seen in Britain before to such an extent. A very important step in this direction marked the foundation of the "Charter 88" (named after the charter from 1688), an independent organisation of politicians, academics, lawyers, writers and journalists. It has over 80,000 supporters “that believe there is a better way to run the country.” ² They call for a Bill of Rights, for a written constitution to define and limit the powers of Parliament, for a reform of the House of Lords to make it a democratic and non-hereditary chamber and for Proportional Representation (short PR) instead of the first-past-the-post electoral system. It is said that these demands are at least partly due to the long period of Conservative government, first under Margaret Thatcher and then under John Mayor, during which the opposition came to the insight that the constitutional situation as it was then no longer worked the way it was supposed to work. It simply gave too much power to the governing party. 

In the following the opinions of Britain′s three most popular parties will be compared in respect to the topics reforms in Parliament, electoral reform, individual rights (including Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act), devolution and whether Britain should have a written constitution or not. The steps that have been taken already and the ones that are to be taken will also be discussed.

[...]

1 Coxall, Bill/Robins, Lynton: Contemporary British Politics. London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1998, p. 165

2 www.charter88.org.uk [ 2003-06-03 ]