In the relevant episode of his TV series, he sums up The Magna Carta as follows:
"Anybody expecting to find in it some sort of primitive constitution is going to be in for a bit of a shock when they read the details, because the liberties enumerated here boil down largely to tax reliefs for the armoured and land classes"
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Simon Schama on The Magna Carta
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16 comments:
Golly, he's going downhill fast. Talk about a nonsequitur.
D, but is he factually correct? I know that he is but popular opinion differs.
MW, some people would argue that the US Declaration of Independence is not much more than a list of justifications by the land-owning and business-owning for refusal to pay tax...
BE, that's as maybe, but it's not my specialist topic.
He is not factually correct. It was certainly about tax, but not in the way Schama put it. John had lost Normandy in 1204 and campaigned for a decade trying to get it back, which was massively expensive. He'd been abusing all sorts of traditional revenue-raising perks of the throne. The closest Schama gets to being right is that narrowly, the rebellion that led to Magna Carta was sparked by a refusal on the part of some barons (East Anglian in particular) to pay scutage, saying it wasn't traditionally paid in respect of overseas campaigns, and this wasn't true, it had been.
But it was a reaction - among other things - to abusive taxation.
The other things shouldn't be entirely left out either. Unhappiness with foreign counsellors was important in the thirteenth century and contributed later to the difficulties faced by Edward II. Magna Carta names several French nobles who, the English Barons reckoned, had too much influence. This was a recurring issue of that century.
(But it wasn't a bill of rights, and the people who base petitions on it and try to present them to the Queen, and blather about being Freemen On The Land or whatever are twats, not least because almost none of MC is valid in contemporary law)
PR, ta for extra background, but...
"But it was a reaction - among other things - to abusive taxation."
Call it what you like. Had the barons campaigned for an overall reduction in taxation for everybody, and led the way by reducing the taxes/rents that they collected from their own tenants, fair enough, but that is exactly what they didn't do.
Peter,
Thank you for calling me a twat. I am almost certain you have researched the subject for years in order to come up with this stunning observation.
MC1215 is a Treaty, not a statute, and nor was it a Bill. It cannot be repealed by any parliament because they did not create it. The first parliament was created in 1265.
Freemen do not present anything to the queen.
Lawful Rebels do. And they don't present petitions, they serve affidavits. Affidavits are the single most powerful documents in law.
They serve affidavits using their right which is laid out in Ch 61. Truthfully, the Treaty was between the King and the Barons. So the only way people like me can use Ch 61 is under the formation of a Barons Committee. In 2001 (following the unlawful House of Lords Act 1999) a Barons Committee was formed, and they served their affidavits on the monarch. I have revoked my allegiance to the queen because she has violated every single one of her Coronation Oaths and I have sworn allegiance to the BC instead.
Ch61 and Ch39 are very much in force today.
Who's the twat now?
CR.
Mark, I think that's a bit anachronistic. There was a very powerful force driving change down the social scale: feudalism.
CR, nobody is taking the slightest notice of your Barons Committee or of their affidavits. They have no legal force whatsoever. Sorry.
I don't offer the Queen any allegiance either, but that's because I'm a Republican. Not that this makes any difference in practice; it's just a statement of principle.
PR, SS is the history expert not me, I was just reporting was he actually said. Was he simplifying "a bit"? Yes of course.
But we observe the same thing all the time - the Lib Cons merrily hike VAT from £80 billion to £93 billion a year, and then expect a pat on the back because Council Tax (which only raises £25 billion) has been frozen.
Peter,
"They have no legal force whatsoever"
I couldn't agree more.
What you fail to comprehend is that legal and lawful are not the same.
My affidavits are lawful.
An MP agrees:
http://talking-clock.blogspot.com/
Common law beats statute law. Every time.
CR.
Mark, I'm really just suggesting that Schama put an unnecessary and anachronistic niggle into a perfectly valid point about MC - it wasn't a Bill of Rights, that's for sure.
CR, if you really want to use a Bill Cash quote, then bear in mind the bit where he says: "It does not matter what statute says; habeas corpus comes first, unless it has been expressly excluded by statute." Although he contradicts himself during the course of that single sentence (this is Bill Cash, after all), he is finally recognising that statute can override Habeas Corpus - as indeed it did during WWII and in N Ireland during internment.
The distinction you try to make between lawful and legal might have some value in principle, as an expression of the limitations of proper government power, but it has none in practice - it's a distinction our constitution does not recognise.
I actually wish you were right and we could opt out. But we can't. Not in the way you're trying to, at least. I have spent some time looking at the lawful rebellion and freeman stuff and, I'm afraid, it seems to be unmitigated drivel, full of episodes similar to the Bill Cash quote above, where something is hailed as proof of one of their assertions when in fact it is no such thing.
"And what about Magna Carta... Did she die in vain?".
Anthony A. Hancock.
Peter,
Mea culpa.
I should have read the whole thing but I didn't.
When I did, I decided that the end of the sentence doesn't matter. Habeas corpus cannot be and has not been excluded by statute.
It is not within parliaments remit to do so.
CR.
CR - 'decided that the end of the sentence doesn't matter. Habeas corpus cannot be and has not been excluded by statute.'
Habeas Corpus has been suspended by statute, several times. Remember internment? I pointed this out in my last comment.
You're proving my point for me, I'm afraid. This is just wishful thinking, divorced from reality.
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