Patterns of Privilege: Citizenship Rights in Britain

Abstract

In the English non-Republican tradition citizenship concerns the various privileges, duties and obligations that define one’s place as a fully participant member of society. These privileges include voting rights, the ability to stand for election, eligibility for appointment to public office and entitlements to social welfare benefits and public housing. Obligations include the duty of allegiance to the Crown, perhaps better defined as loyalty to the state, though some would still dispute this,1 obeying the laws, paying taxes and performing military service, especially in times of national emergency. In the Common Law tradition the notion of citizens’ rights is absent. Dummett and Nicol argue that the Calvin case in 1606 reduced allegiance to passive obedience and asserted that this obedience was due both from subjects and resident aliens. Thus no rights arose from subject status but permanent obligations did.2 The view that voting rights are a civic privilege which could be removed by Parliament can be seen in the Labour Government’s Green Paper of 1977 where they are openly listed under civic privileges.3 Even such an influential constitutional document as the Declaration of Rights, 1688, which limited the powers of the Monarch and established the supremacy of Parliament, was a Parliamentary Statute and was not entrenched, for example, in a written constitution. It could therefore be amended by Parliament.