HEREDITARY RIGHTS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 208, 30 May 1936, Page 24

HEREDITARY RIGHTS

Challenged by a Westminster Guide

Questions relating to control of the Palace of Westminster were involved in a case at Bow Street which the magistrate adjourned to consider his decision, says a London paper. Ilenry John Cole, a guide, was charged with obstructing a police officer at tlie entrance to the House of Commons.

Cole’s action, said Mr. G. G. Raphael, prosecuting, was part of a campaign to enforce an imaginary right to enter the Palace of Westminster. He was excluded from the House by order of all the public authorities who had charge of the maintenance of order there. He refused to recognise the right of the police to bar his admission. Lord Esrne Grodon Lennox, secretary to the Lord Great Chamberlain, told the magistrate that Cole had been exeluded on the ground that he ‘‘persistently disregarded (he regulations of the Palace of Westminster." The Lord Great Chamberlain bad had the custody and control of the Palace of Westminster, since the erection of the buildings, and even so far back as 1133. There was no written warrant, but these duties had been handed down by prescriptive and hereditary right. The magistrate said his impression was that the Lord Great Chamberlain particularly when neither the House of Lords nor the House of Commons was sitting, had the right to do what Cole said he had no right to do.

There was no written evidence, or very little, on the subject, but the matter had been investigated at considerable length by a Select Committee in 1901, and he would examine their report before giving his decision.

Charles Frederick Barnes, a verger

at Westminster Abbey, was summoned by Cole for using insulting words and behaviour. Cole declared he asked some women outside Westminster Abbey if they would like a guide, and Barnes pushed in front of him and said, “Excuse me, ladies. If anyone asks you if you want a guide, take no notice. He is no good." In consequence of this he (Cole) lost his job as a guide. After hearing Barnes state that he merely warned the ladies against takiny anybody’s services as a guide, and he did not refer or speak to Cole, the magistrate dismissed the case. Later Cole was brought up again on a further charge of obstructing a police officer at the entrance to New Palace Yard. Houses of Parliament, and Mr. Seward Pearce, prosecuting, explained the facts were substantially the same as in the case in which judgment had been reserved. Mr. Fry, magistrate, remarked- it would be an abuse of the process of the Court for Cole to go on repeating this offence and having the same point tried over and over again. The matter was one of considerable complication. If the court came to the conclusion that the Lord Great Chamberlain was not within his rights in ordering Cole to be excluded from New Palace Yard, that would be an end of the matter. If it was held that he had such a right the question of whether he was acting reasonably or not in making the order was not a matter for the Court to review.

Cole gave an undertaking not to visit the Palace of Westminster pending the magistrate’s judgment.