In re Bromley, the Boundaries of Law, and the Bureaucratic Refusal to Read

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⟡ SWANK London Ltd. Evidentiary Catalogue

⟡ Very Very Snobby Post No. 630.A

The Presumption They Pretended Didn't Exist

Or, The Section They Forgot to Cite Before Stealing My Children

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Metadata

Filed Date: 13 July 2025
Reference Code: SWANK-C17-BROMLEY
Court File Name: 2025-07-13_Addendum_BromleyCA1989_PresumptionAgainstRemoval
Summary:
This dispatch confirms what every social worker should have read before escalating: the Children Act 1989 contains a statutory presumption against state interference. Westminster bypassed it without cause — or law.

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I. What Happened

On 23 June 2025, four U.S. citizen children were removed under an Emergency Protection Order by Westminster Children’s Services. No immediate risk. No documented harm. No lawful consultation.

And crucially — no reading of Bromley’s Family Law, page 630.

There, nestled in plain legal English, the principle is spelled out:

“The state, whether in the guise of a local authority or a court, should not interfere.”
— Lord Mackay, Children Act 1989 Commentary

But interfere they did.

Without warning, without proper threshold, and in open defiance of a section of law that has existed for 36 years.

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II. What the Law Says (Not That They Cared)

The Children Act 1989 was built upon a presumption of non-intervention — a doctrine rooted in legal restraint and the preservation of family autonomy.

Section 1(5) is unambiguous:

“The court shall not make any order unless it considers that doing so would be better for the child than making no order at all.”

This is not discretionary. It is structural.

The same page in Bromley cites:

• The Munro Review (2011), which warned against untrained overreach

• The Family Justice Review, which condemned delay, distortion, and legal inflation

• The general collapse of credibility when professionals act before thinking

And yet — that is exactly what Westminster did.

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III. Why SWANK Logged It

Because Bromley is not poetry — it’s precedent.
Because Section 1(5) is not optional — it’s law.
Because the Family Court cannot protect what the Local Authority has already demolished.

Westminster’s social workers didn’t forget this principle —
they bypassed it.

And when I reminded them of case law (Orkney, Cleveland), they responded not with legal justification — but with silence, then seizure.

This page is now preserved to show:
The law warned them. The archive now does too.

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IV. Violations

• Children Act 1989, s.1(5) – Order issued when none was justified

• Article 8 ECHR – Family life interrupted without lawful necessity

• Institutional failure to engage with foundational public law

• Procedural defiance of Bromley’s judicially accepted commentary

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V. SWANK’s Position

This entry is a legal mirror.

It reflects every principle they violated, every presumption they ignored, and every statute they claimed to uphold while acting in open defiance of it.

The Children Act 1989 was not written to enable administrative vengeance.
It was not passed to reward narrative over evidence.
And it does not permit seizure by spreadsheet.

SWANK files this page not as commentary —
but as ceremony.

A record of the law.
A record of the breach.
A record of the silence that followed.

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