Westminster Abbey and the deep foundations of freedom

Image: Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey is closely connected with the deep foundations of freedom, but those connections are not immediately apparent in the 21st century.

In AD 960 St Dunstan’s monks cleared Thorney Island of brambles, ploughed the fields and built a monastery. The riverine island formed by rivulets of the River Tyburn as it ran into the Thames - lay just west of London. It caught Edward the Confessor’s eye eighty years later, around 1040, when he was looking for a site for his palace. Edward enlarged the monastery on Thorney Island, and built a large stone church in honour of St Peter the Apostle. This church would become known as the “west minster” and later as Westminster Abbey. On 28 December 1065, it was consecrated, while Edward, the last Anglo-Saxon king, lay dying in his palace,

Since then the level of the land has risen, the rivulets have been built over, and Thorney Island has disappeared. Westminster Abbey’s connections with the deep foundations of liberty have been built over, too, so that it is difficult to see them.

St Dunstan who founded the original monastery on the island, was the author of the Coronation Oath, which binds the Sovereign to a covenant of justice with the British people. The Coronation Oath has been sworn in Westminster Abbey for a thousand years, and the history of Britain is evidence that when a King or Queen forgets his or her covenant, the people, though slow to anger, will make every effort to send that king or queen packing.

The first Coronation Oath promised -

“First, that the church of God and the whole Christian people shall have true peace at all time by our judgment; second, that I will forbid extortion and all kinds of wrong-doing to all orders of men; third, that I will enjoin equity and mercy in all judgments.”

To be the guarantor of justice is also to be the guardian of freedom, for freedom is not possible without just laws justly administered. The constitutional role of the King (or Queen) in guaranteeing justice and freedom remains vital today, though government ministers have tried to bury this truth.

In the 12th century, in 1102, Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, called all his bishops and abbots to Westminster. There they denounced and ended slavery in Britain, and their consensus became part of Common Law.

In the 13th century Henry III, the son of John, decided to rebuild Westminster Abbey. Henry’s inspiring architectural vision gave rise to the Gothic Westminster Abbey we know. In contrast, his refusal to keep his promise to uphold Magna Carta inspired a rebellion that gave rise to the reforms of Oxford and Westminster and Britain’s first national parliament. The Coronation Oath and Judaeo-Christian teachings connect Westminster Abbey with the deepest foundations of freedom in Britain.

British reformers were inspired by Judaeo-Christian teachings. Their free and personal interpretation of Scripture placed particular emphasis on the covenant of justice between king and people and on a principle whose political contribution has been curiously overlooked – Christ asks his followers to love their neighbours as they love themselves. When they follow this teaching, and cherish their neighbours, and unite with them, British reformers are able to make unprecedented gains in justice and freedom.

David described Paul Johnson’s description of leadership qualities in a previous post. It is noteworthy, I guess, that the list does not include any mention of faith in Jesus Christ. Christian faith would have been part of a list of British leadership qualities until the 20th century. Some people will call its omission progress.

May we offer a different idea?

Those men and women who over a thousand years haltingly, painfully, and at the cost of their own safety, comfort, and lives established just law, freedom, and representative government were Christians. It is impossible to ignore their faith because just as it was the ground on which Westminster Abbey was built, it was the ground on which they stood.


This post was first published on 28 December 2006. It has been rewritten.

350th anniversary of the Flushing Remonstrance

Thirty Englishmen in the Long Island village of Flushing protested Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant’s arrest, torture and expulsion of a Quaker preacher who had defied Stuyvesant’s ban on all religions but Dutch Reformed Protestantism. Defying possible repercussions the 30 Englishmen signed and delivered the Flushing Remonstrance to Stuyvesant.

They asserted that “If any persons. . . Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist or Quaker. . . come in love to us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them.” They asked that “the law of love, peace and liberty . . . [extend even] to Jews, Turks and Egyptians . . .”, and declared, “Let every man stand or fall to his own Master.”

The Remonstrance enraged Stuyvesant. He forced the signers to retreat. Nevertheless the Remonstrance was never forgotten, and was an inspiration for the religious freedom clause in the US Constitution.

In 1662 Stuyvesant arrested and exiled Flushing citizen John Bowne, who had allowed his house to be used by Quakers. Sent to Holland to be tried, Bowne took his case to the board of the Dutch West India Company. The company buckled before his resolve and the undeniably persuasive argument that tolerance was more profitable than intolerance.

The next day Bowne was released and sent with a letter to deliver to Stuyvesant, who was told to allow full liberty of conscience in New Amsterdam.



New Amsterdam in 1664, the year the city fell to England, and was renamed New York.
Image: Wikimedia Commons, Geheugen van Nederland (Memory of The Netherlands) Collections



The farm is gone, but the Bowne Farmhouse (1661) still stands in Flushing, Queens.
Image: Gotham Gazette

SOS

Iris Binstead has just sent us her latest edition of SOS. It makes for bracing reading.

God Save The Queen

When you play the clip above, you'll hear Land of Hope and Glory first and then the anthem God Save The Queen. Only verse one and three (below) are sung, but the second verse seems pretty apropos given our experience with the EU.

God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen:
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the Queen.

O Lord, our God, arise,
Scatter her enemies,
And make them fall.
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all.

Thy choicest gifts in store,
On her be pleased to pour;
Long may she reign:
May she defend our laws,
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice
God save the Queen.

The Queen has "reached the zenith in age of any British monarch since King Edward the Confessor".

More at Brits at their Best.

What does Gisela know?

Gisela Stuart MP was on the inner group of MPs who devised the original EU constitution. The Lisbon Treaty is virtually identical. To her credit, Gisela is absolutely determined that the British people will have a chance to vote on whether they will support the deep political integration with the EU that will remove British direction and choice from almost every sphere of our life and replace it with EU control and directives.

Bear in mind that Gisela is a Labour MP. She is a British subject who was born a German. In her recent speech in the House of Commons she makes clear her concerns about the Treaty, which must be ratified by the House, and her dismay that her party will not put the Treaty to a vote of the people as they had promised (along with all the other parties) in their election manifesto.

We ask other British MPs to show the courage, cool thinking, and steadfastness that Gisela has shown in defying her party. Her speech is reprinted from Hansard. It begins with a comment from Kelvin Hopkins, MP. It concludes with one from Michael Connarty, MP, that is appalling in its contempt for the British people.

When you finish you will have a very clear idea of what Gisela knows.

Kelvin Hopkins (Luton, North) (Lab): Just to be serious for a brief moment, my hon. Friend was right to say that we want a choice. Does she not think that we, as parliamentarians, could propose
some serious practical alternatives for Europe ­ not for this Europe, but for a much better Europe?

Ms Stuart: Indeed. Let me return to the treaty. I ask the House to bear with me for a few moments, because one problem with most of these debates is that we do not pick up one issue and think it through logically to its conclusion. We tend to switch from institutions to policies and to make one case by using the other argument.

I want to remind everybody of the difference between EFTA, the European Free Trade Association, and the EEC, the European Economic Community. EFTA was a free trading area - something for which I think the Conservatives still hanker. The EEC, as it then was, introduced the freedom of movement of labour, which was very important, because the minute that people are moved between countries, the mechanisms are created that will eventually lead to deeper political integration.

The original institutions of the then EEC ­ the legal mechanisms of directives, the European Court of Justice, which had a mandate for achieving deeper political integration, judicial interventions or qualified majority voting, which came in later ­ have led to an EU with a range of tools, all of which were designed in one way or another to further political integration. The argument about the use of QMV, for example, is always, “We cannot hold up progress by allowing Malta to stop us.” I am afraid that if we are to have a union of nation states, there will be issues on which one member can say no. The minute we remove that right, we become federal states. If that is what people want, that is fine. I am one of those few people who are utterly agnostic about that because, having spent half my life in a federal state, I do not mind what people want, I just think that they need to know what they are getting, and it is no good pretending otherwise.

The UK likes QMV occasionally, but I want to draw attention to something very different, because not only was the movement of labour significant, but there was another tool ­ the internal market. Although the rest of Europe, by and large, always played the internal market in aid of deeper political integration and was little concerned with whether it was fulfilled or not, Britain always liked the internal market as an end in itself rather than a tool. We were therefore much more focused on that notion, but those are the type of tools that the Germans put on the negotiating table that cause us a problem.

The next problem is the time span during which things happen. The working time directive began to be debated in the early 1990s, but did not start to cause us political problems in this country until 18 years later when we realised that allowing the training of junior doctors to comply with the directive meant that many of our increased number of doctors were used up. As for the voters, they could no longer hold anybody responsible because they had all gone from office. People said, “The pass has been sold.”

At this point, I want to consider something that is currently on the table. When I became a Health Minister in 1999, one of the first things that I had to do was to go to Europe ­ I was the foreigner on the team, so they said, “She can do abroad.” There was a Health Ministers’ lunch, at which we all got together. A junior official came up and said, “There’s a case which you may want to raise over lunch. It does not really bother anybody apart from us, but the Dutch are sympathetic to us.” The case was called Kohll v. Decker and it related to a Luxembourg national who went to Germany for dental treatment, and it was asked whether that was part of the internal market.

I remember that the position taken at that lunch was quite eccentric. Only the Dutch Health Minister, who had been around for a long time, realised that there might be a problem, but the case was seen as a peculiarly British obsession. At that stage, we were waiting for another court ruling on the costs related to that case. To argue that, three or four court rulings down the road, we would have a problem with running the national health service, because we were the only country whose health system was completely funded by taxation and based on residency, with no controls ­ unlike other countries ­ was seen as the product of an eccentric lawyer’s imagination running wild. It was argued that I did not have to worry because health was not an EU competence. Health is now becoming an EU competence, albeit only on the public health side.

This is not a debate on the EU health directive or the court cases, but we had a succession of court cases that ended with a British case in 2006, where the ECJ pushed it to the limit and applied the internal market as a mechanism to allow people to travel from one country to another and claim health expenses without prior authorisation. We reached the point where Ministers were saying, “Thus far and no further. We now want a political input.”

That political input is now in a draft EU directive on health, to be published, I understand, on 19 December ­ politically, an extremely active date. I know exactly what will happen. We will get the directive and will be told not to be paranoid, as it is all perfectly all right. An early-day motion has been tabled that states that the logical conclusion of that directive is that it will undermine the way in which we run the NHS. What is so sad is that almost the only mechanism open to Members to raise that issue is an early-day motion. If we are honest, we all know the political significance of early-day motions. We might as well spray graffiti outside Big Ben ­ it would probably have more effect, because at least the cameras would catch it.

If we pass the treaty, whatever it is called, we will create a situation in which, step by step, over the past 30 years ­ through legislation, court intervention or QMV ­ we will have completely recalibrated the presumption of who is in charge of legislation. This House is no longer in charge of all our legislation, so we must now find the areas in which we remain supreme. It can be argued that even matters to do with defence and foreign affairs can be circumvented. Over the decades, and step by step, the presumption as to where legislative power lies has moved away from this place. The problem with health legislation, for instance, is even worse, because that is something that we have devolved to Scotland and Wales. The result is that this House has become even less relevant.

The British people may well be entirely content with that, but it is something that they need to think about. We need to explain what has happened, and that is why this debate is so important.

Three things need to happen when the treaty is considered. First, given that the passerelle clause in its present state is not sufficient, the Government must make a clear commitment to bring in primary legislation, and not just to allow the House to have a vote, before there is any further erosion of our legislative power as a result of QMV. Secondly, the political parties must stop playing silly games about matters such as the new health directive ­ which incidentally looks suspiciously like the Tory policy on patients’ rights ­ and be more open about what they believe.

Thirdly, and most fundamentally, all three main political parties promised in their election manifestos that the treaty was so significant that the British people needed to be asked their opinion. If Labour, as the governing party, is so confident that the treaty represents a good deal for Britain, we should have the courage to ask the people about it, as well as subjecting it to 20-odd days debate in this House.

Michael Connarty: Does my hon. Friend accept that the call for a referendum is to a certain extent emotional and simplistic? She will have read most of the documents on the reform treaty, although she may not have seen the final draft, and I am sure that she has read with interest the reports from the European Scrutiny Committee. Does she agree that any referendum would not be on the reform treaty but would refer to populist and emotional matters such as straight bananas and immigrants stealing our jobs? Does she really want to reduce such an important matter to a travesty like that?

Ms Stuart: I agree that there are dangers associated with referendums. Some countries have banned them, for very good reasons, but two points are worth making. First, in mature democracies, referendums are part of the democratic process. Secondly, when people in Wales and Scotland voted in referendums in the way that we wanted, I did not hear anyone on this side of the House say, “They voted on devolution but they did not know what it was about.” The Labour party has used referendums more than any other, and I must repeat that we promised one on the treaty in our election manifesto. Therefore, there must have been a time when we thought that holding one was the right thing to do.

As I said at the very start of my speech, our relationship with the EU is a constitutional matter. Opinions about it do not fall comfortably along party lines, so I do not entirely agree that it is an issue that can be decided as part of a general election. The fact that the previous Conservative Government did not offer a referendum on Maastricht ­ in fairness, they never said that they would ­ only strengthens the case that I am making.

Thirty years have passed since 1975 when, as I remind my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), the Labour Government under Harold Wilson gave the country a referendum on European Community membership. Given what I said earlier about the shift in the presumption about where power lies and the changes in how this place deals with European affairs, I think that it is appropriate that we ask the people of this country for their opinion.

(Thanks to Anne Palmer and Idris Francis for forwarding the speech.)

"Jeez" - Magna Carta update

We posted earlier that David Rubenstein bought the 700-year-old copy of Magna Carta for $21.3 million, and plans to keep it in the National Archives. He bid on the 1297 copy of Magna Carta at Sotheby's on Tuesday. After being stalled in New York traffic he arrived just four minutes before the auction began with one thought clearly in his mind - "Jeez, wouldn't it be a terrible thing if one of the most important documents in Western civilization were not available for Americans to see anymore?" (WSJ, 20 December 2007)



Abbot's Bridge, Bury St Edmunds
The knights crossed this bridge on horseback for the secret meeting at the Abbey of St Edmund to learn about the one hundred-year-old Charter of Liberties and to unite against King John.

The unsympathetic and unjustified picture of the men who established Magna Carta is overturned in The Knights.

Is The Queen a prisoner?

I am an imaginative soul, probably 'too imaginative' in the negative sense of that phrase.

Several years ago, Paul Burrell, butler to the late Princess of Wales, was rescued by The Queen from a trial in which he was accused of stealing items from the Princess.

Burrell told the press that during an earlier conversation with The Queen she had advised him that there are “powers at work in this country which we have no knowledge about".

The media cast doubts on Burrell's truthfulness and called the remark fantastical.

Is it?

And if it is not, should we wonder whether The Queen is a prisoner of “powers at work in this country which we have no knowledge about", powers that she scarcely knows?

What would those powers be, or more usefully, what would they be doing? It seems to me that one thing they would certainly have done is to persuade her that she has no powers, that she must give Her Royal Assent to whatever they demand.

This is not in our estimation an accurate or truthful description of the balance of powers constitutionally held by the Sovereign, who has sworn an oath to the people to defend their laws and customs. The beautiful and frightening details in case you are interested are here.

That The Queen may mistakenly believe she has no choice but to give Her Royal Assent would explain a great deal. See David’s post below.

"The Queen's actions cause for concern?"

The Queen is about to become the oldest reigning monarch in British history. Her achievements will be the subject of a later post. The following letter was recently published in the Windsor, Ascot and Maidenhead Observer. It concerns us -

For nearly four decades we have been trapped in an unwanted, relentless, process of European "ever closer union".There is a routine. At the instigation of her ministers, the Queen appoints some of their number as her representatives, to negotiate and sign a new treaty on her behalf.

Then they push a Bill through Parliament to ratify that treaty, again acting in her name.

Once the Bill has been passed, the Queen automatically gives it her Royal Assent.

But even before that point, a fresh cycle is already being initiated.

We have now been through that cycle five times.

Each time the Queen has complied with the wishes of her ministers, and each time the British people have lost more of their power to run their own country. Consequently, we now find that about 80 per cent of new laws are being imposed on us from Brussels.

Even some of her most loyal subjects do not see how this can possibly be reconciled with the solemn promise the Queen made at her Coronation, that she would govern us according to our laws and customs.

If the Queen allows it to happen for a sixth time - and on this occasion, also allows us to be denied a referendum which we were promised - then her inaction can only hasten the day when the hereditary monarchy is no longer seen as "fit for purpose".

Dr D R Cooper
Maidenhead, Berkshire

This strikes us as a serious letter with very serious implications.

To urge The Queen to refuse Her Royal Assent to the EU Treaty, write to

Her Majesty The Queen
Buckingham Palace
London SW1A 1AA

You might also wish to sign the Your Own Choice petition.

Defending our children and grandchildren

Yesterday in a post we pointed out that one small, brave step can cascade into very significant successes. Today we are pleased to say that John Gouriet and Defenders of the Realm are seeking a Judicial Review of the EU’s new constitutional treaty. This is a vital step.

In January they will ask the courts to define the limits of British constitutional change beyond which the Government and the Crown may not lawfully go. This should show politicians, the public and, indeed, Her Majesty, that imposition of the EU Treaty is treason.

Gouriet co-founded Defenders of the Realm with the late Norris McWhirter, CBE. The members include: Lord Pearson of Rannoch, Frederick Forsyth, CBE, Edward Fox, OBE, David Hempleman-Adams, Captain John Hutchinson, FRAeS, FRIN, Lindsay Jenkins, David Shepherd, OBE, Roy Faiers, Editor, This England, CJK Arkell, FTCA, and Constitutional Advisers, Leolin Price, CBE, QC, and John Bingley.

Seeking a review and keeping the public informed is costly. We have just contributed to the Voters Research Association, the UK Charity that is helping to fund the Judicial Review.

Checks can be made out to the Voters Research Association, Reg. No. 266552, and sent to 11 Lansdowne Close, Dilton Marsh, Wiltshire DA13 4JH.

Americans who love Britain, please consider helping. The charity accepts contributions in pounds and dollars. Contributions are tax deductible for UK taxpayers.

There is no certainty of success, but there is hope.

Rescuing Britain from the EU

Yesterday we wrote that ideas drawn from Britain’s history of liberty could be used in planning a rescue.

Because the 16th of December is the anniversary of the Boston Tea party we have turned for our first historical example to Brits in America. We think that you will draw your own startling parallels between actions taken two hundred years ago and actions that could be taken in Britain today.

Connections

In the 1760s, Brits in both America and Britain were connected by language, culture, blood, and trade. In America British subjects were shocked when Parliament prohibited them from issuing legal paper money (an action that destabilized their economy) and outraged when Parliament levied taxes on the sale of sugar, coffee and wine.

Some MPs had qualms, but others, supported by George III, insisted that Parliament could tax every subject wherever he was and despite his lack of representation. This was contrary to the rights gained by the British since the 13th century, and William Pitt the Elder passionately urged Parliament to allow Brits in America to be represented in Parliament.

Why the fuss over taxes?

You might wonder why Brits in America were so concerned about taxes. There were several reasons. Like EU functionaries today, British governors lived lavishly. The hard-working citizen could see that his tax money was being wasted, and was infuriated he had no voice in how it was being spent. In addition to his natural compulsion to keep what he earned for his family, and to have a say in how his money would be spent, the 18th century British subject realized some taxes were counter-productive, and would destroy his own and everyone else's well-being.

Because they lived hundreds of years ago, we might imagine they knew less about politics or economics than we do. Reading their letters, books, and pamphlets it becomes obvious that they understood at least as much if not more. They certainly knew their rights, and if they did not, one of hundreds of presses churning out political pamphlets would offer an explanation. We, who are dependent on mainstream newspapers and the BBC, are far less informed. Like a teabag we are well steeped in the prevailing propaganda, but we know little else.

Obstreperous

In addition to being well read, Brits in America were physically active and obstreperous. It is a useful way to be.

In 1765 Parliament insists on passing the Stamp Act, which will tax every piece of printed material in America, including newspapers, bills, legal documents, and playing cards. Journalists are livid, and merchants are worried that the act will wreck commerce.

A Stamp Act Congress convenes in New York, and sends a petition to George III arguing that taxation without representation violates their English civil rights. When the Stamp Act goes into effect November 1, legal transactions in America grind to a halt, and riots break out. The Sons of Liberty, a freedom-loving group, organize in every colony, and force Stamp Act agents to resign.

We are not sure what kind of pressure they brought to bear. Social? Physical?

In Britain the 1628 Petition of Right had outlawed the quartering of soldiers on civilians, but in 1765 Parliament passes a law requiring colonists in America to house, supply, and transport troops. The New York Assembly agrees to house and transport 1100 men, but probably foreseeing an expensive liquor bill, declines to pay for their daily rum and hard cider.

Parliament, as petty as the EU, retaliates by declaring all the acts of the New York Assembly null and void. Violence breaks out between British soldiers and armed colonists, among them members of the Sons of Liberty.

Government arrogance

Parliament withdraws the Stamp Act, and acting with the insolent arrogance of the EU in this century, imposes the Declaratory Act. This states that Parliament has the power to legislate any laws governing the American colonies in all cases. Parliament then imposes the Townshend Acts – new taxes on glass, paper, and tea. To the dismay of British subjects in America the tax money does not go to the soldiers who are supposed to protect them, but into the pockets of the colonial governors. Withholding the salaries of unreasonable governors had been an effective defense against their abuses. Now Parliament had summarily removed this protection.

Joseph Warren, a young Boston doctor, protests the Acts in the Gazette. The British Government prosecutes the newspaper for seditious libel, but the grand jury refuses to return an indictment.

Warren’s friend Sam Adams publishes a Circular Letter that calls on everyone in America to resist taxation without representation. The Circular (think group email plus direct mail) is rushed to every colonial assembly. The Government in London orders the assemblies not to endorse Adams’ Circular, but the assemblies of New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts do. Trade boycotts and coordinated resistance spread.

In 1768, John Dickinson, who lives on a farm near Wilmington, Delaware, is aroused by what he considers the Mother Country's injustice. He writes the Farmer's Letters. His 12 letters spread like wildfire in colonial newspapers, and create a sensation. They deny Parliament’s supremacy, and suggest that Americans can govern themselves.

In 1769 in Virginia 37-year-old George Washington presents a set of resolutions to the House of Burgesses. He calls for Virginia to oppose both taxation without representation and Parliament's plans to try American protestors in Britain where they will be denied a jury of their peers.

In 1771 J.L. de Lolme, who has left Switzerland and become a British citizen, writes a book called The Constitution of England. He points out that the liberties of the people are “feeble defences against the real strength of those who govern.” If a ruler decides to ignore his people’s rights and property, what can they do? De Lolme answers: Resist: The Laws of England look upon resistance “as the ultimate and lawful resource against the violences of Power.” His book becomes a bestseller in America.



And now after this necessarily brief account (hopefully it has not struck you as too long) we come to the Boston Tea Party.

Anger over taxes and the seizure of ships (rightly or wrongly accused of smuggling) inflames tempers. Bostonians boycott East India Company tea so successfully that the Company has tons of unsold tea in its warehouses.

In 1773, Parliament gives the East India Company preferential treatment so it can undersell American tea merchants and smugglers. In November, three East India ships loaded with tea sail into Boston Harbor.

In mass meetings Bostonians decide to send the ships straight back to London. The governor refuses to allow the ships to leave until import duties are paid. Eight thousand Bostonians protest. On the night of December 16, 150 activists disguised as American Indians board the ships, and dump over 200 tons of tea into the drink.

Over the course of previous centuries, men and women in Britain had won the rights that the British in America demanded. Reading, writing, publishing, organizing, petitioning, and meeting together, British subjects in America began to employ what we would call civil disobedience and outright force to defend their rights and liberties. Each action increased the momentum for the next action.

The date led us to begin with this example, but there are plenty more from Britain, and some actions underway today, which we will be examining between now and Twelfth Night.

The seductiveness of the inner circle - why Brown signed the treaty

Hurrying in after the signing was over and signing the EU 'Reform' Treaty by himself, Gordon Brown reminded me of King John when he became a vassal of the Pope and made England a fiefdom of the Papacy. Like John, he was thinking only of himself.

The treaty that Brown has signed destroys Britain’s sovereignty, Britain’s common law, and the British people’s tradition of freedom. The British people do not want it.

Labour thinks it will push it through Parliament next year without allowing the British people to vote on it. Perhaps they are right, but we do not think so. The knights of Magna Carta were slow to respond to John. They were afraid to put their heads above the parapet, but two years later in 1215 they did, and with the knights of God and all the people of London they compelled John to give his assent to the rights and liberties of Magna Carta.

And that was not the end. The knights had to fight for Magna Carta, and when John had died, they spent the remaining years of the 13th century pressing Henry III and Edward I to affirm Magna Carta. When Henry refused, they took the field against him. Montfort and the bachelor knights died, but Prince Edward, later Edward I, was forced to reaffirm Magna Carta.

In 1279 the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham, was afraid that Magna Carta was being forgotten. He ordered all his bishops to post copies on the doors of their cathedrals and threatened to excommunicate anyone who violated its protections. In 1297 Parliament told Edward I that if wanted money from them he would have to reaffirm Magna Carta. Edward affixed his seal.

Just as in the 13th century, so in the 21st. Magna Carta has to be defended. Brown and company are destroying Magna Carta. They are continuing in the idiotic and treasonous steps of their political forbears who have made one treaty after another with European leaders and have illegally given away British rights and liberties.

For a mess of pottage they have sold the British birthright.

Why? Why would Brown do it?

One reason is that he is a Socialist and Socialism is a global religion. It hates nation states. It wants one allegiance to one global state in which national politicians such as Master Blair can play lofty roles. Socialism is an ignorant religion that ignores the scientific facts of freedom, the essential connection between a people being free and being prosperous, the indisputable link between a people’s safety and education and happiness and their ability to make local decisions about their police and their schools and their livelihoods.

But there is another reason for Brown and Miliband and Blair and Heath and Clarke and Major and Heseltine and all the rest of them to support the creation of the EU and the destruction of Britain, aside from the obvious reason that they do not like Britain much, do not understand or love her history, do not forgive her imperfections and seek to support her real goodness, and do not understand political or economic science, and that reason is this –

They want to be part of the inner circle. They want to be in the circle for exactly the same reason that there are circles of girls and boys in schools and circles of men and women in clubs and at work . They want to feel that they are in a special circle and you and most other people are outside it. They think that they are something because they are in the circle. They think the circle is superb.

To walk out of the circle is frightening and, almost worse, embarrassing. Everyone in the circle will dislike them. Those men who jovially put an arm around them will give them the cold shoulder. The man or woman who leaves the circle finds her very sense of self threatened, if not her job and her lucrative contacts.

Besides, everyone in the circle thinks the same thing. They must be right. The 'cascade of information effect' leads them all over the waterfall in the same boat.

To join in fellowship with others is a good thing, but because it is a human thing it has the possibility of being terrible, even monstrous. That is the inner circle of Europe with its circle of stars. It makes grown men and women want to be part of it – to enjoy its lavish pensions and perks, to feel specially precious, to secretly enjoy their snobbish elitism, and to simultaneously feel self-righteous because they are helping to establish a new world order of high-sounding platitudes. Never mind that it will be a disaster because it ignores political science.

That is why Mr Brown signed the treaty. It is irrelevant that he did not sign it with the other plenipotentiaries. He is with them. He is too afraid to be without them. He is too afraid to stand alone for the freedom of the British people.

This is a very bad day, but it is not the end.

Thanks to CS Lewis for brilliantly developing the theme of the inner circle in The Weight of Glory. Thanks to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the Nobel Prize winners who identified the 'cascade of information' effect.