The Right Honourable
(abbreviated as The Rt Hon.) is an honorific prefix that is traditionally applied to
certain people in the United Kingdom
, Canada
, Australia, New Zealand
, the Anglophone
Caribbean and other Commonwealth
Realms, and occasionally elsewhere. Examples of this are
The Right Honourable Gordon Brown,
Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom and
The Right
Honourable Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of
Canada.
Entitlement
People entitled to the prefix in a personal capacity are:
In order to differentiate
peer who are Privy
Counsellors from those who are not, sometimes the
suffix PC is added to the
title.
In addition, some people are entitled to the prefix in an official
capacity, i.e. the prefix is added to the name of the office, not
the name of the person:
The Lord Mayor of Bristol uses the prefix without official
sanction.
All other Lord Mayors are "
The Right
Worshipful"; other Lord Provosts do not use an honorific.
Collective entities
"The Right Honourable" is also added as a prefix to the name of
various collective entities, e.g.:
- The
Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal (of the United
Kingdom etc.) in Parliament Assembled (the House of Lords
);
- The
Right Honourable the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses (now usually
the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom etc.) in
Parliament Assembled (the House of Commons
) ; and
- The Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty
(the Board of Admiralty)
- The Right Honourable the Lords of the Committee of the Privy
Council appointed for the consideration of all matters relating to
Trade and Foreign Plantations (the Board
of Trade)
See also the collective use of "Most Honourable," as in "The Lords
of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council" (the
Privy Council).
Use of the honorific
The honorific is normally used only on the front of envelopes and
other written documents: for example, the Rt Hon.
Dennis Skinner MP is otherwise referred to
simply as "Mr Skinner".
In the
House of
Commons, members refer to each other as "the honourable
member for ..." or "the right honourable member for ..."
depending on whether or not they are Privy Councillors.
Members usually refer to those in their own party as, "My (right)
honourable friend", and to those in other parties as "the (right)
honourable lady / gentleman"
When a married woman holds this style, she uses her own given name
in her style. So, when
Margaret
Thatcher was made a Privy Councillor her formal style changed
from "Mrs Denis Thatcher" to "The Right Honourable Margaret
Thatcher".
Outside the United Kingdom
Generally within the Commonwealth, ministers and judges are
The Honourable unless they
are appointed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, in which
case they are
The Right Honourable.
Such persons generally
include Prime Ministers and judges of the Court of Appeal of
New
Zealand, and several other Commonwealth prime
ministers.
Australia
In
Australia some Premiers of the
Australian colonies in the 19th century were appointed members of
the UK Privy Council and were thus entitled to be called
The
Right Honourable.
After Federation in 1901, the Governor-General, the Chief
Justice of the High Court of Australia
, the Prime
Minister and some other senior ministers held the title.
There has never been an Australian Privy Council.
In 1972
Labor Prime Minister
Gough Whitlam declined appointment to
the Privy Council, but the practice was resumed by
Malcolm Fraser in 1975. In 1983
Bob Hawke declined the appointment, and the
appointment of Australians to the Privy Council
was abolished in 1986. The last
Governor-General to be entitled to the style was
Sir Ninian Stephen. The last politician to be
entitled to the style was
Ian Sinclair,
who retired in 1998.
The only living Australians holding the title
The Right
Honourable for life are:
The Lord Mayors of
Sydney,
Melbourne,
Brisbane,
Perth,
Adelaide
and
Hobart
are styled
The Right Honourable, but the style (which has
no connection with the Privy Council) attaches to the title of Lord
Mayor, and not to their names, and is relinquished upon leaving
office. Reginald Withers holds the title Right Honourable for life
by virtue of being a member of the Privy Council, not by virtue of
being former Lord Mayor of Perth.
Canada
In Canada, members of the
Queen's Privy Council for
Canada receive the honorific
The Honourable, with only
the occupants of the most senior public offices being made
The
Right Honourable, as they used to be appointed to the UK Privy
Council.
L'Honorable and le Très
Honorable are used in French by
the federal government, but the Office
québécois de la langue française (the Quebec
government
body setting standards for the French language in Quebec) considers
them improper loan expressions and advises the use of
Monsieur and Madame (Mr. and Ms.)
instead.
Individuals who hold, or have held, the following offices are
awarded the style
The Right Honourable for life:
(Governors General also use the style
His/Her Excellency during their term of
office.)
Before the style Right Honourable came into use for all prime
ministers, three prime ministers did not have the style as they
were not UK Privy Counsellors. These were the Hon
Alexander Mackenzie, the Hon. Sir
John Abbott and the Hon. Sir
Mackenzie Bowell.
Several prominent Canadians (mostly politicians) have become
members of the
Privy
Council of the United Kingdom and have thus been entitled to
use the title Right Honourable, either because of their services in
Britain (e.g. serving as envoys to London) or as members of the
Imperial War Cabinet or due to
their prominence in the
Canadian
Cabinet. These include:
1 - As Prime Minister.
2 - Tupper was appointed when he was no longer Prime
Minister and St. Laurent was appointed when he was a cabinet
minister under Mackenzie King.
3 - Massey became Governor General over a decade
later. He was made "Right Honourable" while serving
as Canada's High Commissioner to
London.
4 - As Chief Justice of
Canada
5 - As Governor
General of Canada.
6 - Duff did not become Chief Justice until
1933.
Canadian appointments to the British Privy Council were ended by
the government of
Lester Pearson.
Since then, the style may be granted for life only by the Governor
General to eminent Canadians who have not held any of the offices
that would otherwise entitle them to the style. It has been granted
to the following individuals:
Ireland
Members of the
Privy Council of
Ireland were entitled to be addressed as
The Right
Honourable until the Privy Council was abolished with the
creation of the
Irish Free State in
1922; nevertheless, the
Lord Mayor
of Dublin, like his counterparts in the United Kingdom,
retained the usage of the honorific after this time as a result of
a separate conferring of the title by law; in 2001 the honorific
was removed as a consequence of
local
government law reform. The
Lord
Mayor of Cork has never been entitled to the title.
New Zealand
In
New
Zealand, the Prime
Minister and some other senior cabinet ministers have
customarily been appointed to the UK Privy Council and styled
The Right Honourable. Senior Judges are also often
appointed as Privy Counsellors.
The former Prime Minister
Helen Clark
did not recommend any new Privy Counsellors. At present, there are
no Privy Counsellors in the New Zealand parliament. Privy
Counsellors recently retired include former Prime Minister Helen
Clark, the former Speaker of the House,
Jonathan Hunt, and former Prime
Minister
Jenny Shipley.
Winston Peters was defeated at the election.
In 2009 it was announced that Prime Minister
John Key had decided not to make any further
recommendations to the British Prime Minister for appointments to
the Council.
The living New Zealanders holding the title The Right Honourable
for life are:
The Republic of Turkey
The President of the Council of State of the Republic of Turkey, is
also styled with the prefix "The Right Honourable"
[29978].
The Council of State of the Turkish State was transformed from the
"Supreme Council for Judicial Regulations (Meclis-i Vala-i Ahkam-ı
Adliye)" of the Imperial Ottoman State, and thus imported with it
the various titles and honorifics in such era.
See also
References
External links
, Belfast
and York
; and of
Melbourne
, Sydney
, Perth
, Adelaide
, Brisbane
and Hobart
;
and
and Glasgow
.
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