BREXIT THE CROWN & CONTINUING CONNECTION
Sydney Cove – 7 February, 1788: ‘We have come today to take possession of this fifth great continental division of the earth on behalf of the British people. I do not doubt that this country will prove the most valuable acquisition Great Britain ever made’. Governor Arthur Phillip RN, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol.1
The island continent of New Holland, now Australia, was seized by force of arms in 1788.
Captain-General Governor Arthur Phillip RN on the 7th of February 1788 proclaimed ‘British Sovereignty’ over New Holland from ‘Cape York in the most northern extremity to the southern extremity… South Cape’.
The First Peoples did not give consent, nor was a treaty entered into. It remains to be done.
‘To seize from its original occupants all their symbols and monuments, probably forms the most enduring injury which one group of people can inflict upon another’. C.D. Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, Penguin, 1974
Westminster 1900: The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900, a statute of British Parliament, received Queen Victoria’s assent on 9 July 1900.
Section 127 of this statute of British Parliament proclaimed: ‘In reckoning the number of the people of the Commonwealth [of Australia] or of a state or other part of the [Federal] Commonwealth aboriginal natives [Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples] shall not be counted’.
‘The provisions of this [Australia Constitution] Act referring to the Queen [Victoria] shall extend to Her Majesty’s heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom’.
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Sydney, Centennial Park: ‘The proclamation declared that on and after the first day of January, One thousand nine hundred and one, [1901] the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australian, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia should be united in a Federal Commonwealth under the name of the Commonwealth of Australia’.
London: Within fifty (50) years of invasion a Select Committee of the British Parliament acknowledged; ‘It is impossible to contemplate the condition or the prospects of that unfortunate race without the deepest commiseration…You cannot overrate the solicitude of H.M. Government on the subject of the Aborigines of New Holland. Still it is impossible that the government should forget that the original aggression was ours’. Lord John Russell to Sir George Gipps, 21 December 1838, Historical Records of Australia, Series 1. Vol XX.
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Westminster: With Brexit, Prime Boris Johnson succeeded in re-establishing ‘Sovereignty in the United Kingdom’ on 31 January 2020. Post Brexit the ‘United Kingdom’ may cease to exist or exist in name only.
Should the Union collapse responsibilities accrued from Britain’s ‘original aggression’ would survive and not be ‘swept away on the tide of history’.
Britain is on the cusp of Succession. The silent cipher – Queen Victoria’s ‘heir and successor’ – by continuing connection will, as Head of State, inherit Australia.
‘Survival’ – ‘continuing connection’ – ‘swept away on the tide of history’ are concepts only too familiar to the Australia’s Sovereign First Peoples. See: A Cracker-Jack Opinion – Your Land is My Land
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State of Victoria, Yorta Yorta Aboriginal Community: In the Federal Court of Australia 1998 Judge Howard Olney found‘…dispossession of the original inhabitants and their descendants has continued to the present time…The tide of history has undoubtedly washed away any traditional right that the indigenous people may have previously exercised…’
London: ‘The tide of history ‘ is linked to England’s lingering ancient ‘Domesday’ Law as expressed by the UK Privy Council in Copper V Stuart 1889…’New South Wales was peacefully annexed’.
EPILOGUE
Dispossession and forced willy-nilly removal of the ‘original inhabitants’ – ‘whether one want[ed] it of not’ is a recurrent theme in Native Title Claim Tribunals. It continues to be a catalyst for dissent between claimants throughout the Commonwealth of Australia. See: No Sweat