Magna Carta

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords, how apt and suitable it is that this ground-breaking debate should have been introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, whose most distinguished Speakership of the Commons—the first of her gender—is exactly the right harbinger for the memorable celebrations that stretch in front of us. I am looking forward to hearing about their nature and detail, but I do not think any questions of mine will elicit more information than the noble Chairman of Committees is already going to tell us and of which we have some advance notice from the work programme of the further committees of both Houses that are designing this constitutional jamboree.

I have a personal link to the great events, in that for 24 years—the third longest tenure of any MP for the City of London since 1283—I represented the City in Parliament. The City is the only body specifically referred to in a provision of Magna Carta which still remains in force. It is in section 9, which provides that the City of London,

“shall have all the old liberties and customs which it has been used to have”.

Through my City connections, I am aware of one coincidence worth recording. In the great American celebration of 1776, the American Bar Association in 1976 moved lock, stock and barrel to London for its annual gathering. The Drapers’ Company, of which I am a liveryman, invited to its election dinner in July that notable American academic Professor Goodhart, father of my noble friend Lord Goodhart and at that time Master of University College Oxford, who was already co-opted onto a working party of welcome. In his guest-of-honour speech to the drapers, Professor Goodhart, after revealing that he came from a country with drapes but no drapers, and was thus overwhelmed suddenly to meet 200 drapers in a single hall, said that a more naive member of the welcoming party could not tell what all the fuss was about, whereupon another colleague whispered to the professor: “Silly old buffer; he doesn’t realise that it’s because of Adam Smith’s publication of The Wealth of Nations”.

For an American to be involved was also a bright omen for Sir Robert Worcester—now an Englishman from American roots—being so closely involved in the Magna Carta preparations. The great global law summit—a world-class international conference to be held in London in February 2015—though not, of course, a House of Lords event—is a splendid heir to the American Bar Association’s compliment in 1976.



The one sadness for some of us, perhaps for many and even for all, is that we should have been robbed by death in 2011 of the late Lord Bingham of Cornhill, whose book in 2010, The Rule of Law, was an offering to Magna Carta’s greatness and was described by reviewers as so much more than a book for lawyers. I am profoundly impressed by what the Library has served us up with in comprehensive briefing, and I personally commend the slim volume to which these events have introduced me in a splendid series published by Oxford University Press entitled Magna Carta: A Very Short Introduction by Professor Nicholas Vincent, professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia. He has brought home to me how far back the seeds that led to Runnymede were sown and how much rolling of the wicket occurred in the decades that preceded the historic sealing—sealing, not signing—using seals that only the British Library still retains attached to the original charter. So far I have not been able to secure a copy of the late Lord Bingham’s speech in the Guildhall when Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House who died so recently, came over. However, I have a copy of the speech Lord Bingham gave at St Albans Cathedral in 2011, the year of his death, the forerunner to Professor Bogdanor’s similar address at the same festival this year.

It is a moment for remarking tiny data that one has noticed: that the 26 right reverend Prelates in your Lordships’ House today exercise the tiniest of majorities over the 25 Barons at Runnymede. It was, of course, a particular implication of chapter 39 of the charter that provided the basis for the creation of the Lords Spiritual as a separate category, as Enoch Powell’s history of the medieval House of Lords tells.

I am delighted that so much of the preparations of the parliamentary working parties are for educational plans, and I have one small suggestion to make. The noble Lord, Lord Bew, heard me suggest that a novel which embraced the G8 summit in Enniskillen this year would have been a suitable vehicle for spreading the word about such events, as did Ian Rankin’s novel about a similar summit held at Gleneagles. This time I shall draw on my own childhood and those of my sons. I grew up with the World War One board games of L’Attaque and Dover Patrol. In due course I found even better the World War Two version entitled Tri-Tactics. They were outstanding in that they were demanding but gentle games which introduced the young to the subtleties of warfare. Later I spent hours on the floor with my sons playing Kingmaker, the similar version for the Wars of the Roses which demanded a grasp of the interstices of strategy. Diplomacy was another version on a wider scale.

Having read the whys and wherefores and the toing and froing of Professor Vincent’s account of the prolonged run-up to Runnymede, I cannot but believe that you could make a highly educational and testing board game. To those who say that board games are passé, I would say that Monopoly and Cluedo are back. One of my grandsons told me that Buccaneer, another in the same genre, was the best birthday present he had had. There is plenty of time to design Runnymede.

In the mean time, I would be the last to describe this debate, which some might equate with what the House of Lords summons inexplicably includes, as “mere motion”. It is a marvellous fount of anticipation. For myself, I am optimistic about the total project and encouraged by the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, wound up her speech.