LICENCES NEEDED?

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 120, 17 November 1932, Page 4

LICENCES NEEDED?

TO WEAR A BLAZER

LAW IN, ENGLAND

"Whore is your, college blazer licence!" .. '.'.■'.'■..• .1. -J. '• ......_ ' "1 haven't'one." " ... "Then you must get'a'licfcjice, which will cost you a guinea a year for every year you wear your blazer, and you -will also have to" pay a £20 fiiie for I failing to notify tho County Council that you owned one." This is not a. passage from a. comedy on "Dora Twenty Years On," but the law of armorial bearings as, in. the qpiniony of sorno experts, it is to-day, says tho "Morning' Post." Every schoolboy who wears a cap" with his school badge, every member of a sports club who wears its blazer, and every sentimentalist who retains as a souvenir the shield of his old school or college or snuff-boxes and china adorned with ita emblem is, they maintain, flouting the law. .-. .. .'. . : These pitfalls for-innocent Englishmen were explained _to a ...".Mozning Post" representative who was investigating the case of a Norfolk man who was recently fined for owning a ring engraved with his college crest. The fact that he had left the college was held to make him liable to buy the ordinary licence, for "wearing or using armorial bearings," and it was suggested that the- same would apply to anyone wearing a blazer or cap with the arms of a college or club of which he was no longer a member. A MOOT POINTS Furth;erm.ore, inquiries' revealed that, even, whilft' one/is at "college, "it. is a. moot 'point whether" 6ne: ought not to have -a - licence ■■> for --a blazer with its crest; Hore are-some views. . Tho College of Heralds: "The law as regards; licences for armorial- bearings does not concern us, but there ia no doubt that almost anything in. the way of a school or club badgo counts as an armorial bearing—even the flowers and suns y,ou.s{;'eron tho caps of some elementary.schools';" '."<'■'.'. ;_ The jLoridou* County Council: ■ "The licence .takeivoutlby tho school or :club COycrs.Vall its members and the ""only peopla;who would have to pay for blazers and capa aro 'old boys,' where there exists no organisation, to cover them." Tho Post Office-: "Unofficially our view as vendor of the licences is that everyone is ..liable to pay the tax ex-cept-tho actual officials of the-corpor-ation-or body concerned. That means' that, strictly speaking, schoolboys, undergraduates, and club members should pay. tho guinea licence. A licence taken out by a college, for instance, covers only its officials, and this' applies even to the use- of note-paper-bearing a collego or club crest on it.'' The Law (Revenue Act, 1869): "Armorial bearings means and includes any armorial bearing * crest or ensign by .Tvhateyer ■namoTthe isamc shall be called. Every .person wha. shall neglect or refuse to deliver any declaration (that' he 'wears or .uses' armorial bearings) . .-'-.' shall forfeit a-penalty of £20." The few. legal decisions on, the question support the' Post Office view that one must" be an official to escape, but the humble blazer has apparently never had its fato decided.