One ring to bind them all

Iris Binstead of SOS has just sent us two reports on the EU Lisbon Treaty and the threats it poses to democracy. The first is by Torquil Dick-Erikson, a commentator on legal affairs and a contributor to the House of Lords report on Corpus Juris. His report is a disturbing account of the EU's Militarized Police, the quaintly named Eurogendarmerie, trained in riot control, able to go anywhere in the EU if called in by a nation state, but reporting only to the EU and leaving only at the orders of the EU. The second report, by Professor Anthony Coughlan, Dublin, clearly describes The Supranational State that will be created by the Lisbon Treaty.

Unless the British Parliament refuses to ratify the treaty, that new state will be the master of Britain and all the other states of the EU – one ring to bind them all.

Top Gear in top gear

"Top Gear is simply about the survival of blokeishness in a feminised world. It's about prime-time gender revenge and anti-authoritarianism and male camaraderie It's about the inner schoolboy in every man. . ." Showing on Dave.

Via An Englishman's Castle , who is always ready to sally forth against political correctness and in defence of liberty and common sense.

Patriots mount legal challenges

We are impressed with the number of stalwart, patriotic individuals who mostly on their own shilling are making valiant attempts to defend the freedom of the British people and in particular to put a halt to the EU’s constitutional treaty of Lisbon.

There is ex-policeman STUART BOWER who is suing the Prime Minister for breach of contract. The Labour Party promised a referendum on the EU constitution, and this influenced the vote of Bower and many others. Now Brown refuses to honour his party’s promise. Bower’s case will be heard in Brighton County Court on Thursday, 7 February at 10;30 am. (You can show your support by showing up, preferably with a sign, at 9:30.)

There is TREVOR COLMAN, an ex-detective inspector, who is promoting parish polls demanding a referendum on the EU. It is our legal right to hold and vote in these parish polls. So far 65 parishes have started the process, and 19 have completed it. Every single poll has shown an overwhelming vote of the people – 95.5% - in support of a referendum on the EU. In addition I want a referendum.com is planning 19 constituency-wide polls.

There is JOHN GOURIET, a veteran of previous freedom struggles, who with millionaire STUART WHEELER is seeking a Judicial Review of the Lisbon Treaty in the courts. Gouriet and Wheeler assert that the Treaty is in gross violation of the British Constitution.

There is ELIZABETH BECKETT who has refused to pay that part of her Council taxes that funds the EU’s regional assemblies which have never been mandated by Parliament.

There is JOHN GALLOWAY who has filed a Complaint with the Parliamentary Ombudsman, declaring that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is being untruthful about the cause and effect of the new EU Constitution, which is masquerading as the Lisbon Treaty and will destroy Britain's sovereignty.

You may know of other legal challenges. If so, let us know.

We hope and pray that there are honest judges with sufficient understanding of the British Constitution to rule justly so that these challenges succeed.

Congratulations, Australia

Vineyard at sunrise, Australia

To honour Australia on Australia Day, we have expanded our file. It's worth looking at, if only to read about the young men who saved Australia in 1942 on the Kokoda Trail. The dogged and gallant heroism of those Aussies and the helpful courage of the Papuan "angels" who carried the wounded back down the Trail just sweeps you away.

We couldn't do justice to them or their country, but this is our salute.

743 years

Evesham, where Montfort and the bachelor knights died defending parliament

On January 20, 1265 the first elected Parliament met in Westminster Palace. On January 21, 2008, at Westminster, the British Parliament, a descendant of that first Parliament, began to vote itself out of existence as Labour MPs and Lib-Dims supported the EU's 'Reform' Treaty, which will destroy the United Kingdom as an independent nation.

Sad, very sad, but not that surprising from this group of people. A broken pledge led to the birth of Parliament and a broken pledge may finish it.

Last year we published the very different story of the beginning of Parliament -

The kind of man who will fight a battle with a broken leg, and win it, Simon de Montfort makes a daring break with history and with Henry III by summoning the first parliament and inviting the people to attend.

Montfort's move is a political calculation, but it is also a defence of the right to advise the king, to have a voice in the king's expenditure of the people's money, and to have honest sheriffs, which Henry III had promised in the Provisions of Oxford and Westminster. When Henry III breaks his pledge, Montfort responds by confronting him with the people.

In December 1264, Montfort sends messengers to every county and many cities and towns, asking them to send two elected representatives to a parliament. They are happy to do so.

For the first time, men across England vote in parliamentary elections. (In the counties they have to meet a 40-shilling property qualification. In the towns there are different voting requirements.) Representatives of the yeomen of the shires and the people of the big towns join archbishops, bishops, earls and knights on January 20, 1265, in Parliament. Nothing like it has been seen since Rome was a republic fifteen hundred years earlier. They confirm the reforms.

Montfort will have to defend the reforms with his life. (See the 13th Century Liberty Timeline and scroll down.) But his astonishing new creation will be confirmed in 1275 and in the Model Parliament of 1295 by Edward I, his godson, and the man who kills him.

The son of a Frenchman, the grandson of an Englishwoman, Montfort has received some negative reviews, but not from the bachelor knights who fought with him to defend reform. Real reform. His last recorded words, also in the Timeline, still inspire us.

James Madison on the EU

A British subject before he became an American citizen, the man who fought for the American Bill of Rights wrote prophetically about Britain and the EU -

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

James Madison

More about the American Revolution here

Precocious Pugin

Pugin's tower

ANW Pugin was the writer and architect who created the Gothic revival in Victorian Britain. That revival, says Roger Scruton, “was an attempt to re-consecrate a land that had been desecrated by industry” and create a circle of belonging.

Born in 1812 Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin grew up surrounded by his father’s architecture students. He had very little formal schooling, but spent his time copying the medieval prints he loved in the British Museum. When he was eight, he designed his first chair. When he was fifteen, he received his first commission – from George IV - for a Gothic standing cup now known as the Coronation Cup.

Pugin also loved the sea and the theatre. After designing furniture for the King, he designed stage sets. The deaths of his young wife, father and mother within the space of a year left him unsure of what he should do. When his aunt died and left him a legacy, he decided to become an architect, though his training consisted of little more than detailed sketches of medieval buildings in Britain and northern Europe (DNB)

Pugin had keen grey eyes, a mind that never forgot what it learned, and boundless good humour. He “would work from sunrise to midnight with extraordinary ease and rapidity. His short thick hands. . .performed their delicate work even under such unfavourable circumstances as sailing his lugger off the south coast of England” (Catholic Encylopaedia). Pugin was also ingenious, and enjoyed turning awkward architectural problems into brilliant building features.

He taught the workers he employed, and entrusted the building of his designs to them. They adored him.

In 1835 Pugin became a Roman Catholic, an unpopular move at the time, but one closely connected with his passion for Gothic architecture. In 1836 he published his most famous book, Contrasts - its beautiful, satirical drawings compare splendid types of medieval buildings with their meagre early nineteenth-century counterparts (Oxford DNB).

The father of eight children, a self-contained whirlwind of energy – once asked why he kept no clerk to help him, Pugin replied: “Clerk, my dear sir, clerk, I never employ one. I should kill him in a week” - Pugin designed dozens of Gothic churches and their interiors as well as houses, hospitals, and schools. Many parishes lacked sufficient funds for his towers or interior decoration, but St Giles, Cheadle, Staffordshire, built at the expense of the earl of Shrewsbury, had a magnificent red sandstone tower and spire, sumptuous colours inside and a chapel that was a blaze of light.

In 1834 the Houses of Parliament were gutted by fire, and Charles Barry was asked to design the new houses in a Gothic style. That Gothic was chosen was largely the result of Pugin’s architecture and writing. Working with Barry, Pugin produced thousands of construction drawings for the new buildings, and designed the tower that houses Big Ben.

The challenges of the eight-acre project were enormous. Quicksands were found during excavations, and part of the structure had to be erected on land reclaimed from the Thames. In the 1840s Pugin created all the interiors of the Houses of Parliament, designing the chambers, libraries, committee rooms, furniture, stained glass (destroyed in the Second World War) and every gas lamp, doorknob, and umbrella stand.

Pugin designed according to two principles - ‘1st, that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction or propriety; 2nd, that all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building’ (True Principles). It is a modern manifesto, except that unlike many modern buildings his seem to have a soul – a tender, sacred, brave and festive soul.

Pugin worked closely with a number of artisans. They included Herbert Minton, who created the decorated tiles in the Houses of Parliament, and John Hardman, the Birmingham button maker and medallist who became Pugin’s close friend and manufactured metalwork and stained glass to his swiftly drawn designs.

Queen Victoria formally opened the Houses of Parliament on 11 November 1852. Pugin, just 40 years old, had died in September, sinking into madness due almost certainly to mercury poisoning.

Gothic architecture enchanted Britain. It may be that like a wise, kind soul it still has something to tell us.

More about British artists here