British Newspaper Calls for End to Monarchy
L O N D O N, Dec. 6 -- The editor of a major British newspaper is launching a legal challenge to the rules of royal succession — saying they violate the European Human Rights Convention.
The royals are unlikely to be amused.
The challenge, from the editor of the British broadsheet The Guardian, seeks to overturn legislation that says Catholics, those who marry Catholics and those born out of wedlock are excluded from the right to join the line of succession to the throne.
As a member of the European Union, Britain recently adopted the European Human Rights Convention as part of British law.
It gives, for the first time, a codified right to freedom of expression and protection from religious discrimination.
The Guardian says the monarchy violates those very principles in their laws of succession.
“Not many people outside this country are aware of how little the monarchy has been discussed. By mounting a legal challenge we are breaking a taboo,” the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland told ABCNEWS.com.
Part of a Grand Design
As a result of the laws that date back to 1701, dozens of people have been barred from taking their place in the 613-strong order of succession.
The Act passed at a time of widespread fear of Roman Catholics and decrees that only the Protestant heirs of Princess Sophia, granddaughter of King James I, can succeed to the British throne.
The paper aims to argue before the High Court that the 18th-century Act of Settlement contravenes recent human rights laws adopted by the British parliament.
The motive of the left-leaning newspaper-a longstanding critic of the royal family — is not only to reform the monarchy, but to get rid of it altogether.
The Guardian’s two-pronged attack also calls for a referendum on a future head of state — a demand that can potentially land the paper’s editor in a lot of trouble.
Tell Your Story Walking
The Guardian’s legal challenge to the rules of succession to the British throne comes under threat of deportation.
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