‘Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?’ This joke by the late Tony Hancock echoes the consensus that Magna Carta has an important place in our national story, but without quite knowing why. Governments should know better, but our current government has failed to heed its guidance.
Its origin more than 800 years ago was of course in a very different society. King John, the younger brother and successor of the revered king, Richard the Lionheart, asserted dictatorial power and used it to extort money from the barons, the richest of his subjects, in order to fight his battles with the French. The barons resisted and the country was on the brink of civil war. Magna Carta was John’s peace offering to the barons, sponsored by Pope Innocent III. It ran to 63 paragraphs, most
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