William Shepherd

The day the English barons and King John signed the Magna Carta is often regarded as the first tentative step from absolute monarchy to government by the people. Nothing is ever this straightforward but in a recent poll by The Times newspaper a quarter of the five thousand people polled voted the Magna Carta as the most important milestone in English Constitutional history. The event took place at Runnymede an island in the River Thames on 15th June 1215.

But in the 18th century the Vatican started harmonising everyone’s calendar. There were sound reasons for this because the sun and moon were getting out of alignment. In England the loss of eleven days this entailed happened in September 1752 shifting Christmas to just 355 days after Christmas 1751. The complications rippled on for centuries.

In the Gregorian calendar the years 1800 and 1900 were no longer leap years but in the Julian calendar they were. This resulted in the difference between the two calendars increasing to 12 days after February 1800 and then to 13 days a century later. 2000 was a leap year in both calendars. So Old Christmas Eve that was on the 4th January in 1753 is now on 6th January every year and coincides with Twelfth Night.

Be that as it may one way or another in England eleven days have been lost since Magna Carta was signed in 1215. So to avoid confusion about the 800th anniversary in 2015 it makes sense to associate Magna Carta II with the Summer Solstice rather than with a specific date like the 15th or the 26th.

The text of Magna Carta bears many traces of haste and is clearly the product of much bargaining and many hands. Most of its clauses deal with specific…and often long-standing…grievances rather than with general principles of law. Some of the grievances are self-explanatory but others can be understood only in the context of the feudal society in which they arose. Of a few clauses, the precise meaning is still a matter of argument.

Magna Carta attempted to do several things: to define the power of the monarch vis-à-vis the barons; to safeguard the powers of the Church and to codify some of the rights ordinary people enjoyed under Common Law. So it ended up setting down some basic ideas of liberty, democracy and constitutionalism. Many of these have tended to be taken for granted ever since. But for any renewal of theories of governance it represents quite a good departure point.

The document begins with a greeting from John, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his officials and loyal subjects.

About two-thirds of the clauses of Magna Carta are concerned with matters of feudal governance and the misuse of their powers by royal officials. Many of these clauses can be adapted or updated to suit modern conditions. The scope for extortion and abuse in the feudal system…as in almost any system…was great so governance needed a light touch with rights, duties, rules and regulations applied benevolently.

Complaints about administration of The Good Old Law were rife long before King John came to the throne with abuses aggravated by the difficulty of obtaining redress. One of the things Magna Carta does is to set out the means for obtaining a fair hearing of complaints against the king and his agents…and against lesser feudal lords.

The first clause in Magna Carta concedes the freedom of the Church and its right to elect its own dignitaries without royal interference. This was a reflection of a dispute between King John and the Pope over Stephen Langton's election as Archbishop of Canterbury. It does not appear in the Articles of the Barons and it was a moot point whether to include it in the Magna Carta at all. Here is the translated text of this clause from the British Library website.

‘First that we have granted to God and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired. That we wish this so to be observed, appears from the fact that of our own free will, before the outbreak of the present dispute between us and our barons, we granted and confirmed by charter the freedom of the Church's elections - a right reckoned to be of the greatest necessity and importance to it - and caused this to be confirmed by Pope Innocent III. This freedom we shall observe ourselves, and desire to be observed in good faith by our heirs in perpetuity.

Magna Carta’s final clause also concerns Church matters. It goes like this: ‘It is accordingly our wish and command that the English Church shall be free and that men in our kingdom shall have and keep all these liberties, rights, and concessions, well and peaceably in their fulness and entirety for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things and all places for ever’. Future weblogs will discuss clauses about debts, merchants and the City of London ( 9,10,1,13 and 41) and those that seek to codify conflicting rights regarding the use of rivers and woodlands ( 33, 44, 47 and 48) and all other clauses deserving of a place in Magna Carta II - the sequel.

In January 1979…27 years ago…the American-backed Shah of Iran was forced into exile. Later that years Ayatollah Khomeini called the US the Great Satan. This was the signal for the storming of the American Embassy in Tehran when 52 hostages were taken and held for 444 days. Perhaps it was no accident that this is .666 of 666 days.

In April 1980 the Americans tried the Rambo approach and sent the helicopters in to rescue their hostages only to scurry back home with their tails between their legs and eight servicemen dead. After this the stand-off continued until November 1986 when the Reagan Administration was all but engulfed by the Ollie North Affair and the Iran-Contra Scandal involving the sale of arms, bibles and birthday cakes to Iran and dodgy goings-on in Central America in return for freeing hostages in Lebanon. Nobody has ever really got to the bottom of all this.

Next in July 1988 a US warship shot down an Iranian airliner killing all 250 onboard. They did this by mistake…but friendly fire it was not. Officially Iran and America were still not on speaking terms. Anything official was passed through Swiss diplomats. The name-calling reached school playground level in January 2002 when George Dubya Bush declared in his State of the Union address that Iran…along with Iraq and North Korea…were an Axis of Evil.

This War of Words escalated further this year when Iran’s newly-elected President Ahmadinejad reminded America of Iran’s long-standing policy to destroy Israel. Americans are unpredictable when rattled so this name-calling must be reined in. Cold War era brinkmanship is bad news when Russia and China are big traders with Iran.

That is the background. Events started hotting up on Bank Holiday Monday. I was chatting to the boss of Mahavi’s …an Information Technology lecturer, fluent in four languages and brought up in Tehran. He was in a state of shock after watching Iranian Television in his lunch break with its official announcement that Iran had exploded a nuclear device. Returning home to the boat in the evening after two days in West St Leonard’s I found that the rain had got into my electricity supply and tripped the switch so I missed the BBC News. No electricity meant waiting for the morning papers where I assumed the Iranian atomic bomb test would be front page news.

Instead the most I could find in Tuesday’s newspapers was a couple of column inches tucked away on the inside pages of The Times reporting that Iran had ‘said it had conducted research into nuclear fusion, which can be used for nuclear weapons.’ Sadat Hosseini of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation was reported as saying that the first research was done five years ago but that was it. Unusually for The Times the piece was not sourced…no (AP) or (Reuter).

The next mention in The Times were two further column inches on Wednesday under the headline Iran nuclear talks agreed. It seemed that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany were to meet the next day in Vienna to discuss a proposal to end the crisis over Iran’s nuclear programme. These few lines were sourced to China’s Foreign Ministry by way of Foreign Staff at The Times...an improvement of sorts.

Finally on Wednesday evening the BBC admitted something was afoot when reporting that the US Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice had offered to enter into talks with Iran. An Iranian Spokesman promptly let it be known that ‘given the insistence by Iranian authorities on continuing uranium enrichment, Rice’s comments can be considered propaganda moves’. Just so. But after 27 years of belligerence I would say that Bush’s Neocons are rattled.

A notice in the Times…by-lined Associated Press…reports President Uribe’s re-election in the most peaceful election in Colombia for more than a decade. He is the first incumbent to be returned to office in more than a century so he must be doing something right. He won an impressive 62% of the vote and his re-election seems to buck the trend of left-wing leaders taking office in Latin America. Perhaps we are witnessing a shift in the zeitgeist with London’s Victoria & Albert Museum even opening a Ché Guevara Exhibition next week…although to the wry amusement of Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein and a friend of the exhibition’s curator, his name has been removed from the guest list causing him to wonder whether Guevara himself would have been barred.

However of somewhat greater interest to the male half of Colombia is the Football World Cup starting next week. On this side of the pond the Great Unwashed are decking each other and the halls and bonnets of their homes with the flag of St George. But spare a thought for the dark underbelly of these global spectaculars. Pakistan produces 85% of the world’s soccer balls…and it’s done like this…one stitch at a time…like here in the City of Sialkot.

Noam Chomsky has been pointing out that the United States of America meets all the criteria for a Failed State. Here are Noamsky’s seven solutions: ‘Accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court; sign and carry forward the Kyoto Protocol; let the UN take the lead in international crises; rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in confronting terror; keep to the traditional interpretation of the UN Charter; give up the Security Council veto and have ‘a decent respect for the opinion of mankind’ as the Declaration of Independence advises, even if power centres disagree; cut back sharply on military spending and sharply increase social spending’. How about generous helpings of motherhood and apple pie for Cloud Cuckoo Landas well?

One of Washington’s little private jokes is the biblical verse etched into the wall of the main lobby of the Original CIA Building. It is from the Gospel according to Saint John…Chapter 8 verse 32…and reads: ‘And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.’ Omitted is the proviso: ‘but keep it to yourself and on no account tell the people. To do so constitutes a federal felony punishable by lethal injection’.

I spent most of the Bank Holiday Weekend in West St Leonard’s. It was the first time I had been to the Bexhill end of St Leonard’s west of Marine Court and was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a world I never knew existed. I even ventured as far out as Crowhurst. My hostess for the weekend was Françoise de Naillat…l’artiste de verre. I earned my keep on Sunday by helping her clean up assorted boxes, crates and fused glass works of art in her garage.

The first evening in town I went with Françoise to see the Da Vinci Code…she for the first time and I for the second. And yes...Audrey Tautou was as big a treat on the silver screen this time as the time before. Am I the only person who enjoys seeing good films more than once? My argument is that the first time I am focussed on the ‘and then…and then’ while on subsequent viewings my attention is caught by other things. And with a good film these other things are the artistic things that tend to pass you by…or get taken in subliminally…the first time around.

Another first was Hastings College. Martin Hutchings…Connie’s husband for 15 years…has finally escaped from her shadow and struck out on his own artistically. He invited me to a showing of some of his work on exhibition for a couple of days. So I dragged Françoise along…en route to the Coach & Horses for a jug or two of cider. Below is the sort of thing Martin is into at the moment. But tomorrow who knows? Unlike many abstract artists Martin at least knows how to draw…my minimum criteria if I am to take the work of such artists seriously.

David Cameron is busily neutralising the drawing rooms, common rooms and dining rooms of Left-Liberal England . Without being tribal Labour supporters, those who would call themselves progressive or vaguely Left-of-Centre do not form any great electoral bloc. But they are opinion formers. And when they shift others shift with them. They were in love with Tony Blair but the affection is not transferring to Gordon Brown. For the first time in two decades it no longer feels awkward for someone to admit to being a Tory.

Few of these people will in the end vote for David Cameron but they are not struck on Gordon Brown either. Gordon Brown just does not get the juices flowing in Harrogate, Hampstead or Hay-on-Wye like Tony Blair. Smart Left-Liberal England’s love affair with New Labour is evaporating and there is little doubt that the picture David Cameron and his acolytes are painting of the latest Tory leader has made him hard for Progressives to hate. He is de-Satanising their political world and airbrushing out the knee-jerk Left-Liberal link between Thatcherism and Toryism.

However it is not all sweetness and light in the New Model Conservative Party. A socially conservative alliance of Tory MPs that goes by the name of Cornerstone…is busy flexing its right-wing muscles. This from them: ‘the idea that we can parachute insubstantial and untested candidates with little knowledge of the local scene into key seats to win the confidence of people they seek to represent is the bizarre theory of people who spend too much time with the Pseuds and Posers of London’s Chichi Set and not enough time in normal Britain.’ Ouch! It can only get worse.