Do you
remember when Sundays were a special day - you couldn't go shopping, pubs had
very restricted opening hours, people ate Sunday lunch at lunchtime and there
would be a bloke driving round in a van in the afternoon selling cockles and
winkles for your Sunday tea? Ah, yes, life was very reasonable ... well for
some anyway. For others, however, life was made a little difficult by a local
authority and they found themselves having to comply with the view that Sundays
were sacred. Wednesbury, an old market town in the West Midlands, was the site
of this dedication to the old ways. The Corporation there allowed Associated
Provincial Picture Houses to operate a cinema on the condition that children
under 15 would not be allowed entry on Sundays. Feeling miffed about this
(probably because there was virtually nothing else for children to do on a
Sunday at this time except, of course, to be good, go to Grandma's for tea,
wear their Sunday best clothes, attend Sunday School and be seen and not heard
and so would have potentially been a good source of revenue) they challenged
the local authority in a judicial review. Associated Pictures took the local
government to court saying that they had acted outside their powers by being
completely unreasonable in their decision.
Sadly for our intrepid warriors in the cause of re-inventing Sundays, 1948 was not the year to do so. The Court held that it did not have the right to interfere with the decision of a local authority unless in making that decision, the local authority had taken into account factors that ought not to have been taken into account, or they had failed to take into account factors that ought to have been taken into account, or that the decision was so unreasonable that no reasonable authority would ever consider imposing it. Get that?
So, there you have it...the Court held that the decision by Wednesbury Corporation to uphold the specialness of Sundays with regard to children and movies did not fall into any of those categories. Lord Greene, who was the Master of Rolls at that time and, therefore, a very important person, said:
"It is true the discretion must be exercised reasonably. Now what does that mean? Lawyers familiar with the phraseology commonly used in relation to exercise of statutory discretions often use the word "unreasonable" in a rather comprehensive sense. It has frequently been used and is frequently used as a general description of the things that must not be done. For instance, a person entrusted with a discretion must, so to speak, direct himself properly in law. He must call his own attention to the matters which he is bound to consider. He must exclude from his consideration matters which are irrelevant to what he has to consider. If he does not obey those rules, he may truly be said, and often is said, to be acting "unreasonably." Similarly, there may be something so absurd that no sensible person could ever dream that it lay within the powers of the authority. Warrington LJ in Short v Poole Corporation [1926] Ch. 66, 90, 91 gave the example of the red-haired teacher, dismissed because she had red hair. That is unreasonable in one sense. In another sense it is taking into consideration extraneous matters. It is so unreasonable that it might almost be described as being done in bad faith; and, in fact, all these things run into one another." (Case citation: Associated Provincial Picture Houses v Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 KB 223).
Out of this wonderful piece of logic we get the "Wednesbury Test" which is when you apply all 3 limbs of the Court's decision or "Wednesbury Unreasonableness" which is just the third part - that is, being so unreasonable that no reasonable authority could have decided that way.
Right - now that's clear - I'm off to the Flicks!
Tina Morgan www.john-kennedy.co.uk
Sadly for our intrepid warriors in the cause of re-inventing Sundays, 1948 was not the year to do so. The Court held that it did not have the right to interfere with the decision of a local authority unless in making that decision, the local authority had taken into account factors that ought not to have been taken into account, or they had failed to take into account factors that ought to have been taken into account, or that the decision was so unreasonable that no reasonable authority would ever consider imposing it. Get that?
So, there you have it...the Court held that the decision by Wednesbury Corporation to uphold the specialness of Sundays with regard to children and movies did not fall into any of those categories. Lord Greene, who was the Master of Rolls at that time and, therefore, a very important person, said:
"It is true the discretion must be exercised reasonably. Now what does that mean? Lawyers familiar with the phraseology commonly used in relation to exercise of statutory discretions often use the word "unreasonable" in a rather comprehensive sense. It has frequently been used and is frequently used as a general description of the things that must not be done. For instance, a person entrusted with a discretion must, so to speak, direct himself properly in law. He must call his own attention to the matters which he is bound to consider. He must exclude from his consideration matters which are irrelevant to what he has to consider. If he does not obey those rules, he may truly be said, and often is said, to be acting "unreasonably." Similarly, there may be something so absurd that no sensible person could ever dream that it lay within the powers of the authority. Warrington LJ in Short v Poole Corporation [1926] Ch. 66, 90, 91 gave the example of the red-haired teacher, dismissed because she had red hair. That is unreasonable in one sense. In another sense it is taking into consideration extraneous matters. It is so unreasonable that it might almost be described as being done in bad faith; and, in fact, all these things run into one another." (Case citation: Associated Provincial Picture Houses v Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 KB 223).
Out of this wonderful piece of logic we get the "Wednesbury Test" which is when you apply all 3 limbs of the Court's decision or "Wednesbury Unreasonableness" which is just the third part - that is, being so unreasonable that no reasonable authority could have decided that way.
Right - now that's clear - I'm off to the Flicks!
Tina Morgan www.john-kennedy.co.uk
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