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No monarchs were beheaded, but the upheaval on the tiny, weather-beaten English Channel island of Sark was nothing short of revolutionary. For 400 years, the 600-strong community, which has no paved roads, cars or streetlights, has remained Europe's last bastion of feudalism. A powerful overlord appointed the...
That changed on Jan. 16, when the Chief Pleas passed a law mandating universal suffrage and ending the practice of reserving seats for the landed gentry. It also agreed to limit the role of the island's master, known in Sark's French-English patois as the Seigneur, and to...
A historic event, perhaps, but not exactly 1789 all over again. What motivated the Chief Pleas was not the islanders' democratic fervor, but pressure from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. After protracted debate, Sark decided last year to add more elected seats to the legislature, but insisted...
The Barclays, through their lawyer Gordon Dawes, told TIME that their ultimate goal is democratic reform on Sark, but the pair is also in open conflict with the Seigneur, 80-year-old Michael Beaumont, whom Dawes calls a "dictator ruling through deference." Beaumont supports full democracy and has called for...
Supporters of the status quo insist their system is fundamentally fair. "There are many places where the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations could focus on promoting democracy rather than this small community that has not committed war or persecution, and has lived happily on its own...