February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
There were cries of alarm in the House of Lords in particular. Some peers claimed that the new laws were a threat to the Magna Carta, a bill of rights of sorts dating back to the early 13th century.
The Magna Carta — translated from the Latin it means “Great Charter” — wasn’t a bad effort for its day. But its intent and meaning is sometimes exaggerated.
It wasn’t the result of King John bending to the wishes and needs of his peasant subjects. It was more of a deal between the throne and England’s barons that prevented the crown from overly interfering with the barons as they, well, basically made life pretty miserable for the peasants.
What Magna Carta did, however — and it was a big breakthrough by the dubious socio-economic standards of the time — was to introduce the concept of a limit on the powers of a hitherto absolute monarch.
The barons, louts most of them, made sure that John would sign the deal by capturing London.
The deal between John and his rebellious nobles was signed, sealed and delivered at Runnymede, along the banks of the Thames, on a June day in 1215.
Needless to say, the Magna Carta’s ink, and writ, was running pretty thin by the time it crossed the Irish Sea.
Still, the Great Charter was a profound historical compromise, a new standard for behavior, a stirring rebuttal to the capricious legal practices of crummy rulers down the centuries.
So it was no surprise that their lordships were having seizures when it was suggested that the noble charter was now in danger as a result of new threat from the barons of international terrorism, louts too, all of them.
One particularly grumpy lord, the Earl of Onslow, described the Blair anti-terrorism package as a “rotten stinking bill.”
The rotten stinking bill’s most immediate effect was a release from detention for a group of Muslim men.
They were, however, placed under house arrest instead and now have to wear electronic monitoring bracelets and conform to a series of strict rules on movement to and from their homes. Martha Stewart with beards, if you will.
Prior to this, the concerns of the rebellious lords were being echoed by British newspapers, even the likes of the Daily Telegraph, an organ not exactly soft on louts and terrorists.
The Telegraph opined that the Blair government “got itself into a mess” by holding foreigners in Belmarsh prison without trial, under a law brought in by then Home Secretary David Blunkett three months after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
The Telegraph added that “an unspoken, unpleasant defense” of the new law was that “only certain kinds of British citizen would suffer its rigors.”
Those citizens “would tend to be dusky, with un-English names.” Such thinking reflected a real problem, the paper added.
“If some Muslims were put under house arrest, their coreligionists would feel all the more like a suspect people. Such detention would be a recruiting sergeant for political Islamist extremists, just as internment was for Irish republican extremists.”
At this point, anyone who can produce a Daily Telegraph editorial from the 1970s condemning internment wins a lollipop.
There was more umbrage in the papers, of course.
The Daily Mail stated that over centuries “this nation has enjoyed a tradition of law and liberty that has been an example and inspiration to the world: the right to a fair trial; the presumption of innocence; and the principle that no citizen can have his freedom imperiled by the arbitrary power of the state.”
The Mail described the anti-terror bill as a “draconian piece of legislation.” It accused the Blair government of proposing to “tear up our treasured safeguards as part of the war on terror.
The Sun, not surprisingly, thought the proposed legislation too weak.
“Surveillance, curfews and electronic tags will be no substitute for the security of a prison cell,” the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid argued.
In the end, the uncooperative lords managed to stamp their feet and harrumph enough to win some concessions from Blair’s brigade down the hall in the House of Commons.
Detention would be decided by a judge and not a politician was one change wrung from the steely hands of the prime minister and his present home secretary, Charles Clarke.
All this talk of Magna Carta must have sounded very of odd indeed in some corners of ye kingdom.
Folks in Belfast and other parts of the six shires, er, counties, were doubtless scratching their heads in puzzlement over the lords, earls, viscounts, barons and so forth pounding their fists over a level of house arrest that even allows for potential travel overseas.
They might not have been so amazed at the Commons deliberations that produced the bill in the first place. After all, it was from this august body that a veritable fatwa was directed at Belfast attorney Pat Finucane back in the early days of 1989.
Of course, the robust defense of liberty by their lordships must also have been a bit of a slap in the face for those in the North who, once upon a time, cried pitifully and loudly about civil liberties, human rights and basic justice against the backdrop of arbitrary arrest and seizure, Diplock courts and internment, not to mention illegal interrogation and shooting-to-kill.
Damn it, they forget to cry, “Magna Carta.”
Maybe some did, but perhaps their lordships — some of them are probably still snoozing in the chamber since those distant days — couldn’t understand the accents and figured the restless and ungrateful natives in the six shires were shouting in that strange, incomprehensible tongue of theirs.
Be that as it may, the kingdom atop which sits a queen is now in flux over its magna anti-terrorism bill. Perhaps it needs a peace process.