it looks to me (a non Brit who is not well versed in British nationality law) like the British Nationality Act of 1981 was useful for restricting immigration to the United Kingdom, so Thatcher’s reputation as a fascist survives intact.
Right of Abode could no longer be acquired by non-British citizens. A limited number of Commonwealth citizens holding Right of Abode were allowed to retain it.
The rights of Commonwealth and Irish citizens to become British citizens by registration were removed and instead they were to be expected to apply for naturalisation if they wanted to acquire British citizenship. Irish citizens, however, who were, or claim British subject nationality retain their right to acquire British citizenship nationality through registration.[5]
Changing the word to “citizen” does not alter a person’s relationship to the crown, it does not make them citizens just pretends to. They are still subject to the authority of the crown, thus subjects. Get prosecuted in England and the the title of the case will be “The Crown versus Joe Bloggs”. Britain is still an [unwritten] constitutional monarchy and all power and all authority flows from the crown. Court cases are made in the name of the crown, laws are enacted by the “King/Queen in Parliament”. British citizenship is citizenship in name only, we’re still really all subjects of the crown. Read any English constitutional law textbook (Smith de Smith is the law student’s classic) and you will find this to be the case.
I’m overdue a dip into de Smith, it’s been a long time, so I’ll have a look on Monday. I find British constitutional law very confusing. Most of my reading in the last decade has been on referendums which are a slightly contentious issue so my genuine confusion about the fundamentals hasn’t been fixed.
My first thoughts on reading de Smith 45 years ago was “This can’t be right, really?”. Any attempt to become de-confused on English constitutional law is doomed to failure. One particular thing that sticks in my mind is that a foreign national, residing in a foreign country, could be held to commit treason against the crown under some circumstances, and that’s one of the more clear-cut conclusions.
English constitutional law is riddled with contradictions, relies in many parts on unwritten, uncodifed, constitutional conventions (e.g. that the reigning monarch will always sign into law any bill presented to them for assent) etcetera, etcetera, so that it is impossible to say with any confidence what the law is until the superior court of the day rules definitively on it. It’s a nasty, sticky mess.
Sometimes the grey zones are a strength. The Good Friday Agreement ended decades or centuries of violence, and relies on unionists believing that the agreement says NI is British, and republicans saying believing NI is Irish.
Or how most monarchists and most republicans are kinda ok with the current constitutional monarchy. The monarchists get their pageantry and on paper the Crown holds supreme power. The republicans know that the Crown can’t wield any of that power, and any power you can’t wield isn’t exactly yours innit.
This is why most voters in Northern Ireland voted remain, because taking Nothern Ireland out of the EU and the single market would reverse cross-border integration and undermine that constructive ambiguity.
