Wednesbury

I was talking about Wednesbury the other day. Interested in a way cause of the case Associated Provincial Picture Houses v Wednesbury Corporation where, under judicial review, the standard of unreasonableness was decided for further legal cases.

I wondered if the cinema was still there ... lol!!!

Back in 1948 the local authorities in Wednesbury issued a licence to the cinema on the grounds that no children were to be allowed in on Sundays. I don't know if this was on religious grounds or because it was thought that older people should have the cinema to themselves on one day a week .. I would think it was for the former reason .. on religious grounds.

The cinema, not surprizingly, tried to get this overturned, seeing that children were off schools on a Sunday and they could hope that they would come to the cinema.

I'd've thought that the cinema really had quite a good case .. after all, if adults could go the cinema on Sundays, why couldn't children? But, this wasn't how the court saw it.

The law that came out of this case stated that for the law to interfere with public body decisions the decision had to be so unreasonable that no reasonable person would ever have arrived at it.

Judicial review is when the law reviews decisions made by public bodies by examining them in a court of law and deciding whether they can stand as law as they are.

There were three points to this unreasonableness.

1. That points were taken into account that shouldn't've been.

2. That points were left out that shouldn't've been.

3. Resulting in a decision by a public body that just couldn't be seen as
reasonable.

The court looked at the decision by Wednesbury Corporation, applied these points, and decided that the decision not to let children in to the cinema on a Sunday wasn't so unreasonable that no public authority would not consder applying this as law.

Maybe it could be considered unfair but still couldn't be seen as totally unreasonable.

That was way back in 1948 and things have changed quite a bit since then, though the Wednesday Principles are still seen as good law. Irrationality was defined in 1985 in the GHCQ case for legal reference in regard to the Wednesbury principles as "Being so outrageous in its defiance of logic or accepted moral standards that no sensible person who applied their mind to it could have come to this conclusion" .. or words similar to that anyway ... lol!!!. The Human Rights Act 1998 which came into force in 2000 meant that any decisions should be made within the context of this law so they would be considered both in terms of irrationality and illegality in respect to the GRA 1998.

Also, now, there's the question of proportionality becoming a test in judicial review .. this is where the decision has to be seen as being proportionate to the problem.

It's a softer approach than the Wednesbury priniple .. proportionality states that the outcome must be in proportion to the seriousness or not of the case .. don't use a sledgehammer to crack a nut as one judge put it. And is often used in human rights cases where there are conflicting interests.

I wonder if proportionality would've altered the Wednesbury decision if it had been around in 1948. I think banning kids from cinemas on a Sunday was rather heavy handed and not proportional .. but it was a different era then so my way of seeing it would be different. There was no Sunday opening for major shops then .. infact, Sunday opening was defeated in Parliament in 1986 when Mrs Thatcher's government tried to extend the very limited Sunday opening hours of the time so it's easy to see why the Wednesday decision was made in 1948.

I blogged about all this after coming back from Wednesbury one day after another lovely day there, talking to lovely interested and interesting people of all ages. You get there on the Metro .. which was another adventure for me. I'd gone to have a look round .. mainly because I recognised the name because of the judicial review case and I just wanted to go and have a look round. Well, I did everywhere but, ofcourse, this had just kind of got into my mind, travelling on The Metro, when I'd seen Wednesbury station and thought something like Ooooooh, look .. Wednesbury!!!!

I'd come back and said what a lovely place it is. Went back a few more times. Just testing .. lol!!! And throughly enjoyed myself every time. Lovely charity shops .. at that time .. with lots of hippy type clothes in them.

Had a wonderful time.

Oh, yes, and The Wednesbury Picture House is now Walker's Bingo.

People said that I would like the Black Country and I did. Given that times change and apparently Britain is now broken .. as in Broken Britain, and everywhere apparently has it's problems. All, I can say is that I did like it and they were right.