Dogs bark, and the caravan moves on

The river of commentary de-constructing the Magna Carta in the immediate aftermath of the Prime Minister’s Mail on Sunday piece on ‘British Values’ has just about run its course for now.

Perhaps the most devastating was Dominic Selwood’s in yesterday’s Telegraph which appeared alongside a piece by regular columnist Mary Riddell urging Ed Miliband to, wait for it, evoke the Magna Carta in the run up to next year’s General Election!

Magna Carta is dead, long live the Magna Carta

For every constitutional historian who painstakingly attempts to empty it of meaning rendering it redundant, there will be someone, somewhere who can think of no better way of drawing attention to their rights campaign than my summoning its eight-century old symbolic power.

Even Tim Berners-Lee ….

If you still have an appetite for a balanced and illuminating account of its influence do take an hour to listen to this recording of Linda Colley’s powerful and richly evocative lecture: Magna Carta: memories, invention and forgetting

I was listening to Linda’s lecture on Tuesday in between taking part in a Magna Carta 800 anniversary stakeholder meeting at Royal Holloway and attending a dinner with many of the people who will shape next year’s official commemoration

It struck me during the day how many hobbyists as well as scholars the Magna Carta attracts. The official celebrations seem to rest in the hands of an eclectic mix of town hall officials, historical preservations societies and array of museums trusts and charities representing the key sites associated with the ancient manuscript all choreographed by the Magna Carta 800 Committee under the Chair of Sir Robert Worcester.

For me the best contribution of the day came from the irrepressible Rev Robin Griffith-Jones, the Master of the Temple

In the legacy session he referenced his experience of working on the King James Bible 400th anniversary in 2011 and the 350th anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer With humour and verve he described the many meetings — just like the one he was speaking to — in years preceding both, the Melvyn Bragg Radio 4 series, the Queen’s visit and endless conversations about embroidering the link between antiquity and modernity. In the end it was all very satisfying but almost nobody noticed.

How do we avoid the same fate next year?

I am not pretending to have all or any of the answers but I wanted to use this post to set out some thoughts on we might frame next year’s commemoration and the legacy it might leave and how we can invite the sort of people who would not know what a stakeholder meeting is to participate.

For me, there should be three elements to this: celebration, education and agitation.

Celebration

It is an elastic idea. It fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit.

We all know the phrase, but it contains so much, the idea of the individual, the idea of responsibility, choice, and the life of the intellect, perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea; it can be said to contain the world. VS Naipaul on liberty

If the Magna Carta can only ever be but start to a conversation about liberty, justice and rights and responsibilities it still has a power unmatched by any other — forgive me — brand in this space. Yesterday Britain’s only living Nobel laureate VS Naipaul speaking at a conference on Liberty defined it as follows:

We enjoy these freedoms, we depend upon this justice but are we, sometimes, not guilty of taking them for granted.

Do we ever imagine what it might be like to function without them?

Might not next year be a special opportunity to unleash our immense British cultural and creative talent to create a luminous celebration of the freedom and justice we enjoy?

What does it mean to be free?

Education

The story of how we carved out these freedoms and how we extended them is the defining narrative arc of English and British history. Those who have argued this week that studying the Magna Carta in isolation from what preceded it and history of protest and justice movements through the last 800 years are surely right.

Indeed the only way to truly understand the Magna Carta is to recognise that we are celebrating it not an ancient settlement between a King and nobles but its survival as an emblem of possibility. Its relevance lies in our re-imagining of it as a source of permission to challenge authority, constrain the powerful and protect the weak through the ages.

Next year we should not just celebrate our freedoms but understand the sacrifices that we were made by so many to achieve them and the impoverishment, isolation and anger that fuelled the protests movements that delivered them.

Agitation

How could anyone concerned with liberty, social justice or freedom of speech not want to harness next years as an opportunity to advance their cause?

We are not short of such issues. It would be negligent not to invoke the Magna Carta as people all over the world have done so over the centuries around the world.

So moving forward into the anniversary year we should continue to expect politicians to brigade the Magna Carta into their election armoury, we can expect lots of pageantry that we are so good at but there is also the promise of something else next year.

The very essence of the Magna Carta in its immemorial, restive power and how it has been invoked through the ages.

2015 is a unique, unmissable opportunity for civil society in all its forms to engage with this energy.

Is embroidering celebration with education and agitation a way of framing this response?

I would welcome your feedback @steve4good DM for my e mail details