Sark: constitutional reform

I was interested to read an article in the Guernsey Press & Star of 19
June 2006 about the continuing debates over constitutional reform in
Sark.

Ironically, the Seigneur is urging the Chief Pleas to abolish the
ancient right of the main landowners on the island to sit in the Pleas
(Sark's own parliament) lest the UK's Lord Chancellor make good his
apparent threat to have the Privy Council initiate constitutional
reform directly from London.

The Chief Pleas is due to hold an Extraordinary meeting on 5 July to
debate the matter again (it has been rumbling on unsresolved for the
past seven years)...

Sacha...

This has come about because of the Barclay brothers (owners of the Ritz and
the Daily Telegraph, among many other interests) who own the lease on
Brecqhou and object to the ancient laws of Sark affecting their personal
financial dispositions.

mjcar...

As I understand it, the current threat to Sark's parliamentary
arrangements is a by-product of the Barclay brothers' original
challenge, whereby they objected to the ancient laws by which their
landholding ("fief") would have had to have been passed on intact to
their heirs, rather than divided as they saw fit - a challenge that was
based on Human Rights grounds had the effect of bringing to an end to
some aspects of Sark's feudal system.

However - ironically perhaps - the Barclays do not exercise their right
to sit in the Chief Pleas, and (at least according to the article)
"seem relatively sanguine about constitutional reform", while allegedly
keen to see the Seigneur's position curtailed considerably. The real
pressure is from the UK Government who considers Sark's parliament is
itself in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, inasmuch
as it contains non-elected hereditary elements. The real irony, of
course, is that this selfsame UK Government has an upper house with an
hereditary element which it has talked about reforming for far longer
than Sark's Chief Pleas.