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We take up the story in 1215 at Runnymede on the River Thames, when King John agreed the terms of what would become known as the Magna Carta, the Great Charter. This was the world's first major Constitution, placing limitations on the use of political power, and setting out the fundamental rights and liberties of the nation's citizens in words and clauses many of which have been repeated in subsequent constitutions throughout the world.
Some fifty years later, Henry Bracton produced his treatise "On the Laws and Customs of England", an extensive analysis of legal and judicial traditions on which our Common Law today is largely based.
During the 1600s, a fledgling Parliament struggled for the right to make the nation's laws, eventually replacing Absolute Monarchy with the foundations of modern Democracy which Britain's hardy sons would take with them to their new land of America.
In the 1700s Britain took the lead in developing the machines and power sources which gave rise to the industrial revolution, then gradually humanizing its working conditions during the 1800s with a series of Factory Acts while steadily widening the franchise to give more and more working people the vote.
As an island, Britain has always been a nation of explorers, mapping the world and setting time and navigational standards. Since 1884, the world has set its clocks according to the time of day on the Meridian of Greenwich, longitude 0°. In Britain too, a clock was developed which could keep perfect time in the roughest seas, thus permitting accurate navigation by the sun and stars.
Meanwhile for some two hundred years or so from 1750 to 1950, Britain ruled the world, presiding over an Empire on which the sun never set. It became fashionable for a time in retrospect to regard the Empire as driven purely by exploitation. Yet many of the Commonwealth nations today continue to use and to benefit from the infrastructure, the political and judicial systems put in place by the mother country, while in others, whose governments have slid into incompetence, corruption and brutality, their impoverished peoples might well look back with nostalgia to the days of relative peace and justice of the old colonial regime.
Emerging from the Victorian Era into the 1900s, the country survived the first world war and the economic slump which followed, only to be drawn once again into war. As often seems to be the case, Britain was at its best when facing adversity, drawing upon hidden reserves of strength supported always by good humour. For a while Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, as the continental European countries capitulated or joined the enemy. This was, as Winston Churchill declared, Britain's finest hour. Or one of them anyway.
The end of World War II saw an exhausted and economically bankrupted nation struggling to get back on its feet. America had backed Britain during the war, but it was the vanquished who received the dollars needed to rebuild. With much of London still in ruins, the Festival of Britain in 1951 put on a brave show of recovery, but whatever the colour of successive governments, the country declined gracefully throughout the second half of the 20th century, overtaken economically and in relative prosperity by its peer nations.
Yet at the same time, our tiny island, a mere spec on the map of the world, retains an influence in world affairs. At the centre of the Commonwealth and the English-speaking community, influential in the developing European Union as it struggles to find its own identity, Britain brings its own particular brand of wisdom and maturity accumulated through centuries of political evolution. We also rejoice in our Britishness, our unique sense of humour, our multiple talents which can be quite a force when we care to use them, and our all-aboutness – nobody pulls the wool over our eyes, at least not for long.
Perhaps Britain can give the world the new political and social direction it so assuredly needs.
Much of the world today continues to live in political conditions varying through anarchy and near-terminal incompetence, to sheer brutality and open genocide, while in the politically developed nations, faith in the competence and honesty of government is low and declining while government spending accounts for some 50% of gross national product. Internationally, the United States, once proud bearer of Britain's constitutional heritage and the role model for the free world, has all but abandoned the essential principles of constitutionalism as its Presidency moves inexorably towards Absolute Monarchy.
Perhaps the time has come, in the words of Monty Python, for something completely different.
A political policy of Peace and Non-Aggression would give us an equitable and prosperous society, and disciplined government guided by a higher moral law. Britain has the size and the temperament for it to happen, and the influence to spread its message. Britain has the finest political pedigree in the world, bar none. Britain invented the essential tools of modern government: constitution, parliamentary democracy, an independent judiciary, all based on the foundation of English Common Law with its sense of fair play and natural justice. We need to revisit our heritage with the respect it deserves, then take up once again the political high ground we have held for so long.
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