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England’s Labour Party has elected the new party leader, Ed Miliband. This unsurprising event was described in this column in our last edition. It must have been a good choice, because the opinion polls held since the leadership contest show that Labourites have been distinctly encouraged by Ed’s push to the top.

It would be difficult to describe the politics of the last two Labour prime ministers. Tony Blair showed disdain for typical socialist dogma, and was probably more to the right than Margaret Thatcher or especially John Major. Gordon Brown (who was never elected by the people) should have been a true blooded socialist, as the relatively poor son of the manse, but wasn’t.

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The crisis arose from the expressed desire of King Edward VIII of England to marry a twice-divorced American woman. While his father George V was ill, struggling through the last years of a longish reign, the Prince of Wales (Edward) had enjoyed a series of affairs with married women. Queen Mary thought this was a youthful phase that her son would grow out of, but Elizabeth, the very young wife of Edward’s younger brother Bertie Duke of York thought otherwise.

Precedent suggested rather forcefully that it was in the spirit of the (unwritten) British Constitution for the sovereign to seek the advice of Ministers before marriage. In order to marry a divorced and foreign woman, a special sanction would have require passing by the British Parliament, and the governing bodies of all the Dominions.

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Execution of Charles I

The history of Great Britain can produce only one genuine civil war. Those students who think that the Wars of the Roses (see also in Toda Historia) was a civil war are quite wrong. That series of battles which saw dethroning of monarchs, usurpation of the throne and the death of thousands of soldiers, was strictly a private struggle between warlike landlords – warlords if you like – to gain the crown by right of battle (and the use of cunning and subterfuge). Civilians, as such, busy in the villages and on the farms, were virtually untouched by the Wars of the Roses, though the people watched with horror as the flower of English chivilary cut each other to pieces.

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The English philosopher Bertrand Russell memorably said that the greatest of the British Kings were the Queens. Setting aside the waspishness of the double meaning, it must be admitted that few of the male gender in the list of the monarchs of England and later Great Britain compare favourably with the ladies in the same list. Alfred (the only King called ‘The Great’ in English history) perhaps, but this war leader and creator of organised education was King only of a part of England. Edward Ist perhaps, but his kingly reputation is blemished (for some) by the bloodiness of his reign, especially in lawless Scotland. Edward Ist was not known as ‘The Hammer of the Scots’ for nothing. He was also responsible for Edward II, not known for anything much except for his male favourites, and the cruel manner of his demise in Berkeley Castle.

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