Taking Liberties

A Good Day for Princess Anne?

Today we learn that Downing Street and the Palace have discussed plans to change the rules of succession to the throne, removing the bar on marrying Roman Catholics and discretionary primogeniture.  If this happens, and at the moment there is just a Private Members' Bill, then Princess Anne would leapfrog Princes Andrew and Edward (and their children) in line to the throne.  Possibly not an idea she would relish.  And, again getting ahead of ourselves, Kate Middleton could more easily convert to Catholicism if she wanted.

There are further complications.  The Commonwealth needs to be consulted to ensure that they would be happy with any changes, or there could be a variety of heads of state (which might share the work around...) There may be some concern about the monarch's role as governor of the Church of England and her relationship with the Church of Scotland.  The legislation is complicated, too: the law date from the Act of Settlement (1701), but have also been restated in other acts, such as the Act of Union (1707).  I wonder what would happen if a case was brought under the Human Rights Act, too. 

The government is clear that all this may take some time, and it points to some of the problems when two very different ideas of the constitution clash.  In 1701, the monarch, the established church and, indeed, the nation, were seen as bound up, inseparable, and mutually supportive - a somewhat mythic, organic whole.  Counter to this view might be a more contractual, rights-based society, based on consent and the principle of the separation of powers.  The British story of liberty has always been about the tension between these two views of society, but the caution currently being shown in such matters suggests that the political balance may still lie with the former.

I wonder what Henry VIII would have made of either such caution (he'd have cut this gordian knot quickly, I imagine) and the legacy of the Reformation.

From Fishladders to the Bosporus

I cashed in some airmiles and escaped to Istanbul at the weekend in search of sahlep (thanks Marie for the tip off) and the world's belly button, and succeeded in finding both.  But before this, as the plane headed east, following the Thames below, I skipped past Stephen Fry's podgram and the Monocle Weekly, and listened to a podcast of Professor Vincent's talk on Magna Carta (iTunes had kindly synched it for me).  A lot of it was about debunking the myth of Magna Carta (it was never intended as great constitutional document), and I was interested to hear more about the Lincoln copy's trip to the US in the 1940s, something that I hope to talk about at conference in a couple of weeks.

Part of the debunking was a great list of all the peculiar clauses of the charter, including the outlawing of fish ladders on the Thames.  Prof. Vincent explained that this was about fears that the Thames would cease to be navigable and threaten London's status as a port if the barons upstream interrupted the flow of water, an interesting clash of economic, political and even ecological interests.  Having just taken off from Heathrow and following the Thames, the current debate about airport expansion came to mind.  I wasn't convinced by one of the columnists in the paper given out on the plane that global warming was simply interest group hot air.

I was also interested to read in the paper (which later turned into a useful fly swat) that on Monday (23rd), an attempt to repeal the offences of seditious libel and criminal defamation would be made, and that a Bill of Rights is back on the agenda in a green paper (and even a Twitter feed).  Commentators were keen to emphasise the need to make the distinction between contingent rights we may hold as citizens, and our human rights, which are not dependent on our 'duties' or 'responsibilities', but are part of human dignity.  Stephen Fry crops up here, too.

Citizenship and Copyright

Back from lunch with Andrea and Jamie.  To distract Andrea from the stress of the final stages of preparations for the Henry VIII exhibition, I bring up the 'Monty Hall Problem' in relation to working out which of our three coffees has the milk in it (there's a crema on all three, so we can't see).  I'm not sure that bringing some maths and cognitive dissonance is much of a distraction.  Some chocolate or a drink later may have been a better bet.

I mention this, because earlier this week, Professor James Boyle (of Duke University) kindly came to speak to us about his new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind as part of the c21st curatorship project that I help to run.  It's a great talk, and may be similar to the one given at the RSA (a podcast should be available soon). The exhibition didn't have anything about copyright or even much on the need to access information in a democracy, although it was one of the unstated themes and part of the rationale for putting it on in a library (along with the associated events and discussions).  His talk about the balance between protecting the rights of the creator, the need to provide accessible source material as the raw material for new innovations, whether cultural or economic, the 'enclosing' of most of the cultural output of the c20th, and the current lack of empirical, understanding of the real economic relationship between protection and free access was fascinating. 

But, to go back to cognitive dissonance, how many of us would have thought that the uncontrolled, free Internet, with all its problems of libel, pornography and copyright breaches, was the way to go back in 1992, rather than a closed, controlled system like minitel or ceefax.  Open access, he suggested, is not always the best or the right thing, but it's the right thing more often than we think.  The complicated balance of rights, the need to discuss these things openly, and a concentration on the end result or benefit to society brought to mind one of the lonelier cases in the exhibition - J S Mill's On Liberty.

Challenging the Past

An early morning view of the Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery (looking at my mug shot, I see the web editor has also been inspired to grab his paintbrush by yesterday's post).  The exhibition looks like it's going to be a great success - the queues were already long when we left. The curator gave a great, and well-timed tour: after doing several at Taking Liberties, I know how tricky it can be.

One of the most interesting, and possibly suprising rooms looked at Picasso's play with historical styles and types.  It was taking history and making something new, and vibrant from it.  Elsewhere there were still lifes, with skulls and the inevitably reflections on mortality and war.  I was briefly reminded of the current brutality in Northern Ireland and how it seems like a particularly grim and pointless historical dead end. 

The case of the Lord and the green custard

The recent attack on Lord Mandelson by a green-custard wielding anti-Heathrow expansion protester brought several things to mind. It clearly did to John Prescott, too, who responded to the incident on YouTube (I'm not sure which is most intimidating: Mandelson's post-custard stare or Prescott's eggy left hook). 

The news seemed more interested in the purported security breach than in the issues raised by the protester, which is always one of the dangers of direct action. The accessibility of politicians, it seems to me, is the important issue, since they are always replaceable (there's a great scene preceding the Cato Street Conspiracy in Julian Rathbone's A Very English Agent on this very point). The thought that they never get to meet people on the street is terrifying.

Last words... not

The exhibition is now closed, despite all the cards in the 'Have Your Say' section demanding that it be made permanent.

This said, when I went down to have a final look around yesterday, it was a hive of activity, with the Registry beginning to disperse the loans back to their homes, wrapping the treasures in honeycombs of bubble wrap. The speakers on the videos were still in operation, so the whole atmosphere was quite animated. I also noted some of the designers for Andrea's Henry VIII exhibition measuring things up, like the new owners of a house checking out the size of the new curtains.

Meanwhile, the website and interactive will continue, there are 11 podcasts posted, and I'm tempted to keep this bully pulpit going until the Typepad account is wrested from my cold, RSI'd fingers.

For one thing, the news is full of stories intimately tied to the exhibition's subject matter. Today's talks between Obama and Brown are redolent with the way history is used by politicians to frame their policies (a 'global' New Deal, Britain's self-association with Free Trade...), Lee Miller's MI5 file, last weekend's Convention on Modern Liberty, University Challengegate, pensions as inalienable property despite the 'court of public opinion'... And that's without the financial crisis, pressures on the EU, school lotteries, etc., etc.

Meanwhile, I've been reading about the Polish constitution in the 18th century and making my way through Keith Thomas's The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England. Both arguably relatively obscure, but full of potential blog topics - the extent to which modern human rights theory is based on the notion of personal, human fulfilment, and why stasis is often preferred to change.

Together with some final reflection on what the exhibition got right, where there were serious omissions, and whether it comes to any conclusions about the 'big changes' (have reforms been the result of people demanding them, or simply a compromise by the establishment; have our liberties increased or been curtailed; and is there something particular about British liberty, whatever 'British' means, and so on), there is potential for the odd appearance of an entry in your RSS reader.

Plus, of course, you can also book your tickets for Henry VIII exhibition, guest curated by David Starkey.