Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:11, 18 June 2005

Passed on April 12 1927, the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 (17 Geo 5, c. 4) was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that formed a significant landmark in the constitutional history of the UK and British Empire as a whole. The Act had two consequences. The first was to change the full name of the United Kingdom (UK) to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the former United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in recognition of the fact that the Southern part of Ireland was governed by the Irish Free State which had seceded from the UK in 1922.

According to some constitutional theorists, a second, and more important function, was to modify the King's title, and in so doing to replace the concept of a single crown ruling the British Empire with multiple crowns. In this way, by means of the act, each of the Empire's Dominions became a separate kingdom. The Act was thus an important step in the evolution of the Dominions towards full independence. The full title of the Act was An Act to provide for the alteration of the Royal Style and Titles and of the Style of Parliament and for purposes incidental thereto.

It is argued that this change gave the concept of "One Throne, Many Crowns" given practical effect, because it proclaimed that George V was not king United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions but rather of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions. However, most constitutional historians concentrate their focus on the Statute of Westminster, 1931 as being the crucial milestone in the evolution of the relationship between Crown and what was then beginning to be referred to as the British Commonwealth.

The change in the wording of the King's title is subtle, but has the effect of creating a list of nations of which he is king rather than grouping those nations all together as if under one government.

Separating the crown of Great Britain from that of Ireland ended the right of the government in London to advise the king on actions to take regarding Ireland. The King of Ireland would only take advice from ministers in Dublin. The new Governor-General of the Irish Free State in Dublin also became a conduit between the King of Ireland and the government of Saorstát Éireann, and did not receive confidential instructions and documents from the London government.

Separating the crowns also means that changes to the succession must be agreed upon by all of the Commonwealth Realms, lest the personal union of Crowns be broken. Éamon de Valera combined Edward VIII's abdication on 11 December 1936 with a drastic limitation royal power in Ireland. The delay in passing the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act, 1936 meant that Edward VIII was King of Ireland until 12 December 1936.

• see also Royal Style and Titles Act

Parliamentary title

The 1927 Act did not change the title of the United Kingdom explicitly. Rather, it did this by changing the title of the British Parliament. Section 2 of the Act changed Parliament's title from the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Historians generally retrospectively date the coming into being of the modern United Kingdom to December 1922, when the Irish Free State seceded, even though the formal change of title did not occur for another five years. Despite the change of name, the Act provided that there would be no change in the numbering of Parliaments. Thus the legislature then in session continued to be the Thirty-fourth Parliament, and its successors have been numbered accordingly.

Royal title

The Act did not modify the King's title directly. Rather it permitted the King to do so by Royal proclamation, provided the proclamation was issued within six months. Before 1927, King George V reigned as king in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Irish Free State, South Africa, etc. Each of these states, in effect, amounted as Dominions to a subdivision of the United Kingdom. After 1927, however, he reigned as King of Australia, King of New Zealand, King of Ireland, King of South Africa, etc. The form of use in the royal title as issued by George V did not mention the Dominions by name, but referred to them as the "British Dominions beyond the Seas". Nonetheless the Act shattered the previous concept of the shared monarch, replacing it with one of multiple crowns, all worn by one monarch.

One direct consequence of the change in the royal title was that the British government lost the right to formally advise the monarch on the exercise of his or her powers in the Dominions. Rather, the government of each Dominion acquired the exclusive right to do so. This difference was significant because, by constitutional convention, the monarch must, in almost all circumstance, act in accordance with the 'advice' of his or her ministers.

Another implication was that from, 1927 onwards, governors-general rôles of representing the British government in each Dominion were replaced by a 'High Commissioner', whose duties were soon recognised to be virtually identical to those of an ambassador.

Title before

George V, By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India

Title afterwards

George V, By the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.

History

The Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act was passed following the Imperial Conference of 1926 in which, under the shadow of the King-Byng Affair, Canada led a push among the dominions for a reinterpretation of the relationship between Britain, and the dominions so that the latter would be equal to the former rather than subordinate. This required a change in the relationship between the Crown and its realms so that the dominions related to the crown independently and directly rather than as subjects of the British government.

Some historians and constitutaional theorists assert that the passage of the Act marked the start of a change in the way the king and government in the United Kingdom related with the governments of the British Dominions in the British Empire. The Statute of Westminster 1931 carried the change to its logical conclusion which confirmed the independence of Commonwealth countries from the United Kingdom government.

Although an important change in the status of the monarch, and of the Dominions was, they argue, implicit in the Act, neither the British government nor most of the Dominion governments seem to have initially grasped its full significance.

However the government of the Irish Free State put the changes introduced by the Act into immediate effect, assuming the right to select its own Governor-General, demanding a direct right of audience with the King, and beginning to accept the credentials of international ambassadors to the Irish state—something no other Dominion up until that time had done.

The Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act was followed by the Statute of Westminster 1931 which increased the independence of the Dominions even further. This granted Dominon parliaments the power to enact or amend almost any legislation they chose, and removed the right, in most circumstance, for the British Parliament to legislate for the Dominions.

Most Dominions were slower than the Irish Free State to respond to the constitutional changes of 1927 and 1931 with moves to sever such ties with the United Kingdom, and many, when they did, were faced with determined, though ultimately futile, opposition from the United Kingdom's government of the day. Many Dominions waited until the acession of Elizabeth II in 1952 to codify their new autonomy into domestic law.

An interesting consequence of the 1927 Act was that Edward VIII's abdication in 1936 required separate legal acknowledgement in each Commonwealth nation. In the Irish Free State, that acknowledgment, in the form of the External Relations Act, occurred a day later than elsewhere, leaving Edward technically as "King of Ireland" for a day, while George VI was king of all other Commonwealth realms.

In 1948 and 1953, further changes were made to the title of the monarch by British Acts of Parliament. However the law passed in 1953 was the first to apply only to the United Kingdom and its dependencies. In that year the practice was begun of using separate styles for each of the Commonwealth Realms in which the monarch is head of state, the style in each case determined by the native parliament.

In 1953 the Dominion governments agreed that the practice of separate titles should continue in the reign of the new Queen Elizabeth II. Each country adopted their own titles, the British act of parliament clearly stated that it applied only to the United Kingdom and those overseas territories whose foreign relations were controlled by the UK government

See also

• Style of the British Sovereign

External links

• The text of the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927, from Wikisource
• The text of the Royal Proclamation, from Wikisource
• Royal Styles and Titles of Great Britain: Documents. Full text of the Act and of the royal proclamation.

• British laws
• British Empire
• 1927 in law