"[T]here is one fundamental issue at stake in Thursday's Referendum. It is whether the British people of the future are to retain the age-long right through Parliament and parliamentary elections to decide their destiny without being bound by the authoritarian and dead hand of the past imposed by some rigid bureaucratic formula devised by continental constitutionists. What is at stake is the preservation of the great libertarian principle of popular "consultation and consent" which has run like a golden thread through our history. The essence of our unwritten constitution has always been that, while the elected Parliament of the day, interpreting the will of the existing electoral majority, can enact whatever it chooses, it cannot prevent future Parliaments and electorates from exercising the same elastic right."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Letter to The Times (4 June 1975), p. 15
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_Bryant
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Arthur Bryant
Sir Arthur Wynne Morgan Bryant CH CBE (18 February 1899 – 22 January 1985) was an English historian, columnist for The Illustrated London News and man of affairs. His books included studies of Samuel Pepys, accounts of English eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history, and a life of George V. Whilst his scholarly reputation has declined somewhat since his death, he continues to be read and to be the subject of detailed historical studies. He moved in high government circles, where his works wer
36 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Arthur Bryant →
Related Quotes
"[L]ike most of my countrymen I loathe injustice and cruelty, and unlike them I happen to have had some recent experie…"
"I believe that the British unilateral guarantee of Poland's independence—though not necessarily, as you wisely point …"
"Mr. Strauss's subsequent statement in a supplementary question that my Fascist sympathies were "well known." They may…"
"Peace—real and enduring peace—must always be our supreme and ultimate aim, for with our swollen industrial population…"
"It is hard to see how any assured peace can exist in Europe so long as Herr Hitler—that incalculable man of temperame…"
"The key to a nation's future is in her past. A nation that loses it has no future. For men's deepest desires—the inst…"
"The English were what they were because they had long wished to be. Their tradition derived from the Catholic past of…"
"Without justice and charity there can be no England. That is the historic and eternal English vision."
"Before the British regiment of the line is sacrificed to logistics—if sacrificed it is to be—I should like to put on …"
"During the last four centuries, the most important things that had happened were the extension of the Anglo-Saxon rac…"