Runnymede 800 years on

Magna Carta, sealed at Runnymede 800 years ago today, was of course an instrument of power politics, a bargain between a highly imperfect king and a cabal of almost equally imperfect barons.

Despite this, it was a massively important step in the development of modern civilisation for two reasons.

The first is the power with which some of the concepts of justice within the law are expressed in the charter.

Article 40 of the charter says,

"To none will we sell, to none will we deny, to none will we delay right or justice."

(Sometimes quoted in slightly different words as in the image from my quote of the day.)

Those words ring down the centuries as the perfect one line summary of what any system of justice should aim for. The fact that nobody has ever quite got there does not diminish the importance of the aim, or alter the fact that our system of law comes much closer to providing justice because Article 40 of Magna Carta is what it is aiming for.

Article 39, my second quote for the day, means that no freeman can be deprived of his life, liberty or property without due process of law.

But the most important aspect of the charter was the principle it embodied and established that nobody, neither the King nor the government, is above the law.

That principle is the foundation stone on which any free society has to be built.

It is every bit as important today as it has ever been, and the principles of Magna Carta are fundamental to the debate about whether the Labour government's Human Rights Act should be replaces by a British Bill of Rights.

This week I posted on Facebook a picture - which turned out not to be a real image, but a photoshopped one based on the work of an artist called Steve Ullathorne - showing the home of George Orwell with a CCTV camera outside.

The first irony is that such a "Big Brother is watching you" image should be made of the house where the creator of that phrase lived: the second irony is that it turned out to be a doctored image rather that one taken directly from literal reality, just like those in the same book (1984).

This also touched off a vigorous debate amongst various of my friends and colleagues on Facebook about the civil liberties implications of CCTV, government access to data, and various other issues.

CCTV cameras were hundreds of years in the future when Magna Carta was signed 800 years ago today. But without it, we could not even have the kind of mindset which makes it possible to hold that kind of debate about freedom.

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