How we declare war

Conor Gearty

LRB cover, Volume 9 Number 11

This David Gentleman cover for an election issue of the ‘LRB’ in 1987 shows a Britain ‘muted’ by the ‘secretive and repressive Mrs Thatcher’. Fifteen years later, the muting goes on, in a country where, as Conor Gearty is obliged to recognise, the Prime Minister is free, constitutionally, to lead us into a war without being authorised to do so by Parliament – a Parliament which, as we go to press, will be graciously de-muted to discuss the war question, but not to vote on it.

In Britain, the rule of law and democratic accountability work best when they are not urgently needed. Every five years or so a new Armed Forces Act comes before Parliament, the most recent having passed into law in May 2001. These Bills are minutely examined in both the Commons and the Lords: such legislation is invariably scrutinised by a select committee specially appointed for the purpose, and the 39 clauses and seven schedules of the 2001 Bill were also the subject of debate in both chambers.

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[*] The Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders since 1945 was reviewed in the LRB by R.W. Johnson (19 October 2000).