Danger in England!!!

[Fit2BKilted]

I would really appreciate seeing that written apology you recieved, Tom!

[Mike_Oettle]

Well done, Tom! Pernicious officials of that type deserve the public embarrassment they are so fond of handing out.
And at a game fair, too! What could he have been thinking?

Canuck of NI wrote: “ ‘Citizens’ can carry a sgian dubh, ‘subjects’ cannot?”
Until relatively recently, British nationals were invariably referred to as British subjects (subjects of the Queen/King). Perhaps somebody in the UK can give me a date, but there is now an Act of Parliament which specifically describes such “subjects” as citizens.
Having been born a subject of King George VI, and grown up as a subject of Queen Elizabeth until I was 11, I objected to having my subject status arbitrarily removed by the government of my country.
This is especially so because the referendum which decided that South Africa should become a republic was actually illegal.
The country’s electorate comprised white people (countrywide) and Coloured people (only in the Cape Province), but the Prime Minister of the day, Dr H F Verwoerd, arbitrarily announced that only white people would be able to vote, and that South West Africans would also be able to.
This despite the fact that South West Africa (now Namibia) was never incorporated into South Africa.
Had South Africa then had a Constitution like the one it has now, the courts would have overruled this decision.
But already in the mid-1950s the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court ruled (in a judgment originating with a National Party-appointed jurist) that Parliament was sovereign, and could pass any legislation it wished.
That judgment was against the spirit of the Constitution of the time, but it was supported by the National Party, and became a standard by which later law-making and executive decisions would be measured.
In fact Parliament never did pass an Act authorising Verwoerd’s arbitrary change in the electorate, but the decision was allowed to stand, and has bedevilled the country’s history ever since.
And getting back to the topic under discussion: South African citizenship already existed in law in 1961, which meant that when I came of age I was automatically a citizen. But I have nonetheless been deprived of my subjecthood.
Regards,
Mike