BBC Radio 4 is a radio station that considers itself informed and informative, a bastion of the Reithian educational mission of Auntie Beeb. It is indeed a radio station on which regulars varying from pompous Today Show host John Humphreys to the snobbish and far-less-left-wing-than-he-thinks-he-is though admittedly clever and funny comedian Armando Iannucci regularly heap implied and explicit scorn on those they suppose to be less educated and less intelligent than themselves—i.e. everyone else. Yet this morning some of those on the station proved themselves (not for the first time by any means) to be staggeringly ignorant, at least by the standards which they believe they meet and everyone else does not. This morning they revealed, obviously accidentally, that they do not know that Britain already has a Bill of Rights. I shall explain the circumstances of this revelation in a second or two, and a second or two after that I shall explain the Bill of Rights itself for those who wish or need to know about it, but first let me make clear where I’m coming from here. You may suspect that I am being just as contemptuously arrogant here as the people I’m accusing of contemptuous arrogance. But the reason I’d say I’m not is this. I’m not contemptuous of those I suppose to be less educated and/or intelligent than me. Nor am I contemptuous about those who I know are more educated and/or intelligent than me but who happen not to know that Britain already has a Bill of Rights. But I am contemptuous of the kind of people who are contemptuous of those they suppose to be less educated and intelligent (no and/or for these people) than themselves but who in fact don’t even know that Britain already has a Bill of Rights.
Right, I’m glad we’ve got that sorted.
So, anyway, this morning, just after the 7.30 news, or maybe just before, it’s not on iPlayer yet and, anyway, who cares?, the surely-not-coincidentally named Michael Buerk (all he needs is a definite article for a middle name and the picture is complete) was previewing The Moral Maze, a discussion programme that he chairs. As The Moral Maze aims to discuss the ethical issues behind the week’s news stories and therefore tries to be relevant, “The” Buerk’s preview was prefaced by a distinctly pro-May-sounding account of Home Secretary Theresa May’s dubious and indeed much disputed claim that under the Human Rights Act, a European law adopted by Britain in 1998, and which some Tories want us to unadopt, an otherwise apparently illegal immigrant was allowed to stay in Britain because he has a cat. “The” Buerk has form for retrograde palpable nonsense, claiming in 2005 for example that the “shift in the balance of power between the sexes” has gone too far and that men are now just “sperm donors”, so I’m quite comfortable making these claims about “The” Buerk’s views on immigrants, the law, and cats, however much they are actually based on groggy early morning half-listening. What I did hear clearly, though, was the next bit. It was about history, so the brain woke instantly and the ears perked up. What The Buerk (screw the quote marks, they’re not necessary) suggested next, as the premise of tonight’s show’s discussion, was that perhaps instead of relying on European laws and conventions, Britain should adopt its “own Bill of Rights....” Obviously not realizing that, as I say, Britain already has a Bill of Rights. This was bad enough, this already had my blood boiling, and with my hypertension issues that is not a good thing, but what he followed that up with made it even worse. What he followed up that up with was “.... perhaps based on that of the United States.” Rrrrgggrrrggghhhrrraaaggghhh!!!
Those of you who are historians, or at least historians of the modern (ish) world, will know precisely why I go Rrrrgggrrrggghhhrrraaaggghhh!!! You will know that it is because, as I say, Britain already has a Bill of Rights. And far from being based on the American Bill of Rights, the American Bill of Rights (1791) is partly based on the British Bill of Rights (1689, actually originally technically the English Bill of Rights, as it was passed before the 1707 Act of Union that abolished the Scottish Parliament and incorporated Scotland into an English-British state). Now, once again, let me be clear, I have no contempt for those of you who are not historians and do not know that Britain already has a Bill of Rights, or that it helped inspire the American one. I do not even contemptuously suppose that you are less educated and/or intelligent than me just because I know something in my area of expertise that is not in yours and you therefore don’t. Perhaps you’re highly educated and/or highly intelligent, but have been misinformed by those who contemptuously suppose themselves to be more educated and intelligent than you are. That said, if you do reflexively think yourself as being more educated and intelligent than everyone else, and yet don’t know that Britain already has a Bill of Rights, and that it influenced the American one, then I think you are indeed a Buerk. By the way, if any of you are thinking that it’s our fault, historians’ fault, that you don’t know Britain already has a Bill of Rights—that we sit in Ivory Towers staring up our own bottoms instead of communicating our knowledge to others—then I can tell you the whole Bill of Rights thing has been explained by Simon Schama, David Starkey, and many others in numerous radio and TV programmes and perfectly readable best-selling spin-off books. If you haven’t heard or seen the numerous radio and TV programmes or read the perfectly readable best-selling spin-off books, that’s fair enough. But don’t blame us.
Anyway, in that spirit, briefly, here’s the thing. James, Duke of York came to the throne as King James II at the death of his brother, Charles II, in 1685. Even before then, “Whigs” had opposed James being crowned because he was suspected of believing in the divine right of kings and absolute monarchy, and because he was a Catholic, though many thought the religion was not unrelated to the politics. His actions in his reign seemed to confirm these fears, and, after a son was born in the summer of 1688, offering the prospect of a whole new dynasty of tyrannical Catholic Stuart kings, leading parliamentarians decided to act. They invited William of Orange, the arch-enemy of absolutist King Louis XIV of France, the European champion of Protestantism, and the husband of Mary, James’s daughter, to invade Britain and sort James out. William landed at Torbay on 5 November, James went to meet and resist the new would-be William the Conqueror, but then bottled it and legged it, leaving the country by Christmas-time. After that Parliament reformed as a Convention, declared that James had abdicated the throne, and declared William III and Mary II King and Queen. The Convention also passed a Declaration of Rights that listed the misdeeds of James, set out specific limits on monarchical power, and set out the basic political rights of the English (later British) Parliament and people. The declaration was passed into law by Parliament as a Bill of Rights on 16 December 1689. So there you go: the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 and the Bill of Rights of 1689.
Below is a link to the English Bill of Rights from the Yale University Law School Avalon Project that digitizes “Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy”. Below that is a link to the US Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution, also from the Avalon Project. The US Bill of Rights was adopted on 15 December 1791, 102 years minus one day after the English one. Read the two and you'll see many similarities and that the latter was influenced by the former.
Below all that is a link to a Sunday Times article from 2005 reporting on The Buerk attacking some studio newsreaders for being autocue-reading “lame brains”, and even attacking one of them for being a “complete dumbo”. (The Buerk read the BBC One o’clock News from 1986 to 2003, the Nine o’clock News from 1988 to 2000, and the Ten o’clock News from 2000 to 2003.) The Buerk reckons proper journalists ought to be able to write their own scripts, so we can assume he wrote the script for his preview of The Moral Maze. In which he said that maybe Britain should have its own Bill of Rights, perhaps modeled on the American one. The article shows that John Humphreys agrees, saying that newsreading requires “no brain”. (John Humphreys read the BBC Nine o’clock News from 1981 to 1987.) The Sunday Times then invites readers to send in their views on the question of whether newsreaders are “the voice of authority or highly trained, autocue-reading monkeys?”
Quite right too.
ReplyDeleteWhy the BBC fell for this line, rather than saying to the Conservatives "You've been banging on about this for five years or so - how come you haven't provided us with any draft Bill?" - well, that's anyone's guess (not a hard one, in present circs).
And don't forget the Scottish Parliament's Claim of Right, showing that 1689 wasn't just an English thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claim_of_Right_Act_1689