The English Bill of Rights
- Elizabeth Down
- Jan 9, 2018
- 4 min read
The Historical Association runs a 'Great Debate' every year for 6th form students, and this year's question was 'Was the 1918 extension of the franchise the most significant moment in British democratic history?'. I'm taking part in the round in school, and below is the speech that I wrote for it. At the time of writing, I haven't got through to the next round and am very unlikely to to be honest, but I thought learning about the Bill of Rights was interesting anyway.
Read on and enjoy!
The Oxford Dictionary defines democracy as ‘a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives’.
To me, this means having free and fair elections and therefore having a government chosen by the people, and where the government has the actual power, not a monarchy. This is the definition that I will be basing my arguments of off, and what I believe best represents British democratic history.
The most significant moment in British democratic history- that’s a big question. As a woman, I spent a long time unsure what I could possibly say was more important than the Representation of the People Act (which I will be calling the Representation act from now on- a millennia of democratic history has not taught us how to have catchy titles).
After all, what could be more important than that major step towards equality for women?
The Magna Carta? Maybe, but it seemed to me that the Magna Carta didn’t really move the country towards democracy. It didn’t give the ordinary people of the country any say in how their government was run, so by my definition of democracy, it isn’t a significant moment for British democratic history.
It turned out that the answer was in one of the periods of history that is considerably underrepresented in history lessons at school- the Glorious Revolution. One of the most well-known bits of legislature from the much more famous American Revolution- the Bill of Rights- was based off the significantly more obscure English Bill of Rights.
If the name seems a bit concise considering what I said about catchy titles, it’s because its actual name is ‘An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown’.
Despite its relative obscurity, the Bill of Rights is really the cornerstone of modern British democracy. It was passed after William and Mary took over as monarchs from James II, who the bill also declared had abdicated after he was so unpopular he fled the country.
The bill established that Parliament was sovereign in Britain, the parliament that was elected by the people, and I therefore consider it the most significant moment in British democratic history. It established frequent sessions of parliament and gave Parliament an unprecedented amount of power- the monarch could no longer suspend laws without parliamentary approval or levy taxes without parliament.
But perhaps most important for British democracy was the passing of free elections into law and the right to petition the king.
This is the main reason that I believe the Bill of Rights to be more important than the Representation act. True, the 1918 act did triple the electorate, but without the free elections established in the Bill of Rights there would be no election for the electorate to vote in. What is the point of any vote, from a man or a woman, if the election is not free and fair?
The right to petition the king without prosecution is also vitally important. Without this leap forward for democratic rights, the suffragettes and suffragists would have had no opportunity to campaign for the right to vote, no platform to campaign on, and no rights to do so as citizens of Britain.
But perhaps even more importantly, this bill represents a shift in the foundations of government in Britain. I think it is the first time it is very clear that Parliament is the most important governing body in Britain, not the monarch, and the psyche of the British people shifts to consider this the best form of government- in other words, democracy overtook monarchy.
True, Parliament was definitely in charge after the civil war 40 years before, but then Charles II came back, so what really changed? The King still had absolute power, which is not democratic at all. But the Bill of Rights was a condition that William and Mary had to agree to in order to rule, and parliament made it very clear that they would not be given the throne unless they did. So this is really the first time that the ‘elected representatives’ I mentioned in the definition at the beginning really run the country. And isn’t that what democracy is?
Everything we have now- everything we recognise as democracy in this country- is built on the foundations laid by the parliament in 1689. And true, not many people in the country had the vote at the time. But that wasn’t the aim of the bill- the aim was to make clear that Britain was a forward-thinking, modern country, 100 years ahead of France and America, and that Britain was ruled by law, not the King.
Without the 1689 Bill of Rights, the 1918 Representation of the People act could not have happened, and democracy- elected representatives of the people governing the country- would not exist as we know it. Therefore I think it is more important than the extension of the franchise, And as the cornerstone of modern democracies not just in Britain but worldwide, I think it is also the most significant moment in British democratic history.
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