#G060* - Elisabeth BECKETT 07-Feb-2009 In Memoriam
Hi,
I am proud to say that I knew Elisabeth Beckett over many years.
I have taken the majority of the item below from Cathrine Glass & David Abbott's excellent blog
Brits At Their Best, where you can see their original - my last posting regarding Elisabeth can be seen at
LINKElisabeth Beckett
Elisabeth
Beckett, who has died, intrigued us with her knowledge and mystical
insights and immeasurably enriched our understanding of the
British
Constitution.
By her example she showed what it means to fearlessly defend justice and freedom.
We
spoke with her several times by phone and first wrote about her a
little more than a year ago, after she had discovered that her local
council’s money was being used to fund a
European Union-dictated
regional assembly.
To protest
the expenditure of money for a foreign-mandated assembly that she
understood had no standing under the British Constitution, Elisabeth
refused to pay her Council taxes, and appealed the matter to the High
Court.
In response the
government brought all its power to bear on Elisabeth, who at the time
was 83. She received numerous letters from council officers and visits
from bailiffs to the Old Vicarage in
Alston, Cumbria.
Elisabeth hands a response to a
Police Sergeant from her wheelchair.
The
mother of two daughters and two sons, Elisabeth was the daughter of
Ronald Brymer Beckett, an administrator and judge in India, and Norah
Anderson Beckett. In a second career, as an art historian, Ronald
Beckett published a magisterial edition of the correspondence of
John Constable.
Last
year, Elisabeth laid charges of treason against Gordon Brown at the
Newcastle Magistrates Court on the ground that the Prime Minister had
forced The Queen against her
Coronation Oath to agree the
Lisbon Treaty
(the
EU Constitution).
These were exhausting trips for Elisabeth, who must have been growing weak even then from leukaemia.
At the time we were afraid that the wheels of justice would grind exceedingly slow, and so it has proved.
Elisabeth's last act, from her deathbed, was to write
a letter to The Queen.
We published the letter, which reflects Elisabeth's devotion to her
country's freedom and her disappointment with those she felt had failed
to defend Britain.
PS. Having now read her books in CD format I now hope that they are published in the future so do look out for them!