A
couple of days ago one of the leading lights in the UK movement for
the reversion to common law and the British constitution, Roger Hayes
the BCG chairman was arrested by four police officers attending his
home, taken to court and sentenced to twenty one days in prison. A
couple of quick points of clarification before moving on the the main
subject of this post. Firstly there is a lot of nonsense being talked
about a police state and silencing an active critic of the status
quo, and that may well be the case, but the arrest, sentencing and
imprisonment is entirely in keeping with current UK courts policy,
and in no way an unusual or conspiratorial set of circumstances. The
offence stated is that of failure to pay Council Tax, a legal
requirement in the UK, and Mr. Hayes had consistently refused to
attend court to answer the charges and had been convicted in
absentia, thereby rendering him liable for a twenty one day custodial
sentence. This would be the case with anyone in the same position. Of
course that does not preclude a conspiracy, but it does slightly
lessen the need for hysteria.
The
real purpose of this article is to address the two key, and
fundamental problems with the whole freeman on the land and common
law movement. This is a group of individuals who have decided that,
for a variety of reasons, they no longer wish to be engaged in UK
society in terms of accessing services, paying taxes, voting and so
on. Often these reasons are based around the concept that the UK
government is fundamentally corrupt and that engaging with the
current system renders one complicit in illegal wars, state
terrorism, state torture and so on. The rights and wrongs of these
points of view can be argued ad infinitum, as can the merits of the
legal arguments used to justify common law and the freeman position.
In brief the position states that each of us comprises two
individuals, one recognised by the state, and one not. The state
recognition is based on birth certificates initially and the argument
runs that registration of a birth is a contract, and since it is done
within days of birth the person being registered in unable to give
consent to enter into that contract and the contract is therefore
able to be rejected in the individual chooses and avows so to do once
they reach maturity.
So
far, so straight forward but the problems are equally
straightforward. Firstly, UK court law is based on the system of
precedent, that is, a case is judged based on similar cases that have
come before the court before. The only place where new precedent can
be authorised is the court of the Lords of Appeal in ordinary, a
panel of senior law lords who are the final arbiter in complex legal
cases. The process requires an enormous investment of money in legal
advise and representation, far beyond the means of anyone involved in
the movement. This precludes the possibility of the common law
movement achieving judgements that overturn precedent. The second
problem is one of scale. Historically, if you want to change the
status quo you require a group at least comparable to the group
maintaining the current position. Consider the Indian Independence
movement of which Ghandi was a leader. It would never have worked
without the backing of tens of millions of Indian workers. The
Russian revolution would have been impossible without the backing of
the proletariat, the French revolution without the backing of the
peasant class. With the best of intent, the common law/freeman
movement are a group of thousands rather than hundreds or even tens
of thousands, and until that changes, there is no possibility of
radical reform. If the authority challenges you and you respond
“Yeah? You and whose army?” and the authority can respond “This
one” you really don't have a tenable position.
Until
such time that there is a groundswell of support in the hundreds of
thousands, possibly millions, there will be no change, only empty
words, and more misguided individuals ending up in jail to little, if
any purpose.
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