TNAG-2327-FCO40-3371-Hong-Kong-Bill-of-Rights-implementation-and-conferences-1991 — Page 76

with an essential constitutional principle. So it is more than ironic that while the British

Government has "given" almost all former colonies a Bill of Rights since 1945, they have not

considered it necessary for one to be enacted in Britain herself. Why so?

Thanks to Jennings who told us it was essential to bear in mind three characteristics of the

British system. In the first place, he said, the law can always be altered by the Parliament

and it is likely to be altered in times of emergency, such as a war. In the second place, Great

Britain differed from many other countries, and from the dictatorship, in that most restrictions

are imposed by the law itself. Therefore, an act is not left to the Government or the police

to determine whether it shall or shall not be a crime. In the third place, the law itself gives,

in practice, as Jennings pointed out, a very substantial discretionary powers to the police and

other governmental authorities. For example, they can prohibit a meeting in the Market

Square, or St. Albans, simply because the meeting will be an obstruction to the public

highway, and therefore unlawful. Thousands of public meetings are thus held every week,

in defiance of the law, simply because the police exercise tolerance. In times of stress,

however, the toleration disappears, and the very considerable restrictions upon fundamental

liberty in England at once become apparent.

With these characteristics in mind, we can well understand now why the British Government enacts its proposed Bill of Rights so much alike to the Basic Law of the HKSAR of the PRC. Both of them are enacted without the essential constitutional principles to protect human rights

in practice, perhaps, no limitations of limitations, no restrictions of restrictions, no hindrances

of hindrances. It is one as good as the other for judges and lawyers, but, I am afraid to say,

it is one as bad as the other for constitutionalists and jurists politically minded: tweedledum

and tweedledee.

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