I found these guys when I read an article about them "arresting" a judge back in March. Seeing such an awesome display, I decided to check out their website. It seems that they have a "John Adams" streak in them!

Good for them. Maybe the Brits need to be shaken up a bit. I mean why any modern country would tolerate a monarchy, even a largely powerless, tax exempt one, is beyond me. Hello? 21st Century? Anyone else notice?

Actually, they are pro Monarchy. From their "Conclusion" page:

Parliament has grabbed executive power from the Crown. The House of Lords has become a body which blindly follows the party whip. And today, our Monarch simply complies with the wishes of the Prime Minister, with no thought or consideration to our sovereignty or the Constitution. Nor, it seems, to the solemn oath she took at her Coronation.

Then they follow with a John Adams quote. So they're like appealing to the queen to perform her duty on an abusive legislature! I find this to be awesome.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, whose position has been usurped by a corrupt House of Commons and who has been forced into the destruction of her Kingdom and the breaking of her coronation oath, no longer governs us in accordance with our laws and customs, as was the situation when she was elected by the people as our Sovereign and our Head of State.

???

And there was me thinking that Monarch was a hereditary position....

guapo

So they're like appealing to the queen to perform her duty on an abusive legislature! I find this to be awesome.

They are appealing for the Queen to revert to the era where she could act upon her own whim without regard to the democratically expressed wishes of her people through their represetnative parliament...
The kind of behaviour from which the American colonies revolted. The kind of despotic behaniour that caused the recent upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia.
Do you also sympathize with Ghaddaffi?

These people are confused. Period.

I suspect that 'these people' doesn't really apply here. It's far more likely to be one slightly eccentric guy who's responsible for pretty much the whole organisation.

Sassenach wrote:I suspect that 'these people' doesn't really apply here. It's far more likely to be one slightly eccentric guy who's responsible for pretty much the whole organisation.

It's certainly more than one guy.

It is more than one, although the leading light is the one who was up in court for non-payment of local taxes and so it was on his behalf that the nutjobs disrupted the court with their 'arrest' attempt (which failed, and was prompted by the judge refusing to take an oath they've invented).

The guy who runs the website is a different weirdo, one who apparently repeatedly asks the police to arrest Ted Heath (Prime Minister between 1970 and 1974) for treason, presumably for taking us into the EC, despite the fact that Heath is dead and that we had a referendum in 1975 which ratified the decision to join.

They are connected to various conspiracy wackaloons, such as those who think that a charity called Common Purpose is the hub of a grand conspiracy to take over the UK using NLP to create a breed of brainwashed leaders. One of their number uses very odd etymology to back up his claims about the UK legal system and sell (literally) the idea that you can proclaim yourself 'Freeman on the land' and thus not be subject to any statute law.

Amongst the people who tried to 'arrest' the judge were members of the neo-fascist British National Party, and it seems that the BCG leader and others have been expelled from the UK Independence Party (a right wing, economically libertarian party) for being too far off base for them and being too close to the BNP.

Their understanding of the Magna Carta is pitiful (for example, they claim it was a treaty between the King and the People, when it was between the King and his Barons), their understanding of the history of English Law is bizarre, and they oppose democracy because it apparently gets in the way of the sovereignty of the people (?).

Confused is just the start. They are the sort of people who would be dangerous if they had a brain. Luckily, they seem to be missing that vital component.

George - a weak monarchy is better than a strong republican presidency as far as I can see. I am republican by inclination, but it's America-centric to look down on us for retaining a monarch (and given that one reason used to justify it's continuation is the tourist dollars we get from Americans who love to come and gawp at the pageantry it's a bit rich). Plenty of modern nations have a monarchy. As well as the UK, Australia, Canada and NZ and a dozen others who recognise Lizzy2, there are Sweden, Japan, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium...

All are modern countries, and all get by with having a monarch. Despite it, perhaps, but we get by. The one thing that is far more damaging to us and more limiting to us as a modern country is the unelected House of Lords. I'd far rather get rid of that than expend a load of energy to replace a weak monarch with a president (and there are some forms of republic I'd oppose vigorously).

Ah so in other word they are the the G.B. version of the Neo-confederate League of the South.

Ah so in other word they are the the G.B. version of the Neo-confederate League of the South.

Well I'm not really too sure about that august body but I can imagine what they're like....

These BCG guys seem to be a good example of the eccentric side of the British far right. They have all the hallmarks, including a pathological dislike of all things EU (except they probably still insist on calling it the Common Market); an obsession with Magna Carta and other aspects of our unwritten constitution which somehow doesn't ever translate into any actual understanding them; a slightly romanticised respect for the institution of monarchy combined with a totally unrealistic understanding of the monarchs role in our polity; a perpetual gripe that the rights of ordinary Englishmen (these type of people are always English, without exception) are being usurped by unspecified forces, and finally a deeply paranoid conviction that the political establishment is out to get them when in fact they're simply regarded as harmless cranks.

Archduke Russell John wrote:Ah so in other word they are the the G.B. version of the Neo-confederate League of the South.

I don't really see the comparison there. I refrained from making a value judgment because I didn't have enough information, and I'm not really partial to their cause, either way, other than supporting every individual's right to decide his own polity--regardless of geographic location.

I made the correlation to Adams because of the tone of the page. Just like some of the Revolutionary characters, these guys are making an appeal to the monarch to take the actions of the parliament as serious acts of treason. In that sense, I can see a parallel to the Catholic/Protestant wars, but not to any league of the south.

supporting every individual's right to decide his own polity--regardless of geographic location

This is a new right on me. Where does it come from, or is it innate?

Because no one has a right to force you into their polity.

The only people who forced you to be in the USA were your parents. They had the right to bring you into the world where they were.

danivon wrote:The only people who forced you to be in the USA were your parents. They had the right to bring you into the world where they were.

And the responsibility, as well.