William Tyler
1688/1776: Britain and America Divided by Constitution

William Tyler - 1688/1776: Britain and America Divided by Constitution

- And welcome everyone who’s joined us this evening, it’s evening here, whatever time it is with you, you are more than welcome. Now, I’m going to talk about the two constitutions. That is to say Britain’s and America’s, and how we got there at the first place, and what the similarities are and what the differences might be. But when I was preparing this, the first thought I had was that there’s stupid and there’s downright ridiculous. You see, I’ve taught the English Revolution of 1688 many times, I have also taught the American Revolution in the 1770s but only in England. I’d never until this moment had the temerity to talk about the American constitution to Americans. So if you are American and you’re listening this evening, by the end of the talk, you’re going to feel so massively superior to me because I’m bound to put my foot in it in all sorts of ways. So you’ve got a really exciting time and you’ll be at the finish and at the end thinking really? He doesn’t know nothing! I’m really much cleverer than I thought I was. Well, as we say in Britain, in for a penny, in for a pound. To let me begin then, chronologically, with the English Revolution of 1688. It was on the 10th of December, 1688 that King James II fled his capital and went to the coast to find a ship for France. Why? Because his son-in-law, William of Orange from the Netherlands, was advancing from Devon straight headed for London. He had with him, well now, we don’t know quite how many. He landed in Devon at a place called Brixham near Torquay, a little fishing port and it still is a little fishing port, a beautiful place.

He’d landed with 15,000 men, but by the time he was nearing London, he had a much larger army because well, in truth, James’ own army had deserted him at Salisbury, and even his Commander in Chief, John Churchill, later Duke of Marlborough, was with William. So James really was in a bad way. The day before, the 9th of December, James’ wife, Mary of Modena, an Italian princess, and his baby son in arms, another James, had already left England for exile in France. So James is pretty well without, well, without friends in the palace in London before he went, and he is reported to have said I’m in no good condition, nay, in as bad as one as is possible. But little did anyone realise in that December of 1688, that there would be no resistance to William of Orange at all entering London. In fact, London has draped anything they could find orange in colour from their windows to welcome him. And he accepted the crown on behalf of himself and his wife, Mary, the daughter by his first marriage of James, the king. William and Mary accepted the crown on offer, as offered to them by the English parliament, and no one knew then in that December that this year would go down in English history and be referred to only there as the Glorious Revolution or the Bloodless Revolution. Well, it was bloodless in England, to all intents and purposes, but it was anything but bloodless in Scotland and, in particular, in Ireland. But the English are always focused only on themselves, and so we don’t tell the story, well, when I was at school, we weren’t told the story really about Scotland and Ireland, it was not connected with the Glorious Revolution.

And today, of course, those issues are much more in the foreground, but this was, for England, a bloodless revolution. We were exchanging a Catholic king for a Protestant king and queen, the only time in English history we’ve had joint monarchs, and James had brought all this upon himself. He’d only been reigning since the death of his brother, Charles II in 1685, for three years. He was undone by his deeply held Catholic views and his errant attitude, arrogant attitude to Protestants and to people that he felt beneath him, rather like his father, King Charles I, and he was absolutely nothing like his brother, Charles II, who was conciliating and calculating. James, what you saw is what you got, and what you saw wasn’t attractive to the English. And the earlier events of 1688 alone are enough to show us how the Protestant majority of England resented James’ attempt to put the clock back, and they feared reintroduce Catholicism, and they feared the autocracy of his father. We hadn’t fought a civil war to go backwards. And there were two specific events earlier in 1688, which you could say ignited the fire of revolution. Firstly in June, he had a son born and this son was immediately baptised a Catholic and to the English, that meant, because he was a boy, and by his first wife James had only had two daughters, Mary, the one married to William of Orange, and Ann, later Queen Ann, they thought they would be bypassed and we would have established here a Catholic autocratic dynasty. Catholicism in everyone’s minds in England was linked with autocracy.

They only had to look across the channel at the reign of Louis the XIV of France to see that, and we did not want that. Therefore, on the 30th of June, 1688, a group of powerful Protestant politicians in England, referred later to as the Immortal Seven, invited William by letter and his wife Mary, to come to England. And their letter begins in this way: We are so pleased to hear that your Highness is willing to help us. We strongly believe that England gets worse by the day, and we need to protect ourselves before it is too late. The people are very unhappy with the present government, which threatens their religion, freedom, and property daily. You can believe that 19 out of 20 people want a change of king. Well, whether that was accurate or not, I don’t know, what we do know is that the English gentry and aristocracy, members of the House of Commons and members of the House of Lords had had enough of James and they wanted a change, and this was a momentous thing to do. After one attempt to cross the channel, which was stopped and failed because of bad weather, William eventually landed, as I say, in Brixham in South Devon with a force of 15,000 men, and began, in that late part of 1688, to march on London. It was a slow march though, firstly because the roads were absolutely atrocious in Devon, and they’re not so much better now in the summer when they get blocked with holiday makers, but they were just muddy lanes, and this is December. I mean, it was really bad. And William was anxious to try and garner support as he went along. You see originally, he was meant to land in the Northeast of England where there were people ready to come to his side. It was an unknown picture down in the Southwest, but people did, he was welcomed wherever he went. And it is true, and maybe the authors of the letter inviting him to come were right, because ordinary people turned out in large numbers to welcome him.

A new world now dawned. A democratic new world, or at least the first steps on the road to a modern democracy. This marks the beginning of modern England. Historians are everlastingly saying this marks the beginning of, but I think 1688, I put my cap on that, 1688 marks the beginning of modern England, and it’s all cemented the following year, 1689, by the Bill of Rights, which became law, and this is absolutely fascinating. This is the settlement that Cromwell was unable to impose on Charles I and now, of course, it isn’t imposed on William, he accepts it. You could say that they couldn’t ever have had a Bill of Rights with James II, as they couldn’t have with Charles I but now, parliament is able to state its terms, if you like. It’s the victory settlement of the civil war, it’s parliament’s victory over the king. It’s exactly what Cromwell had originally wanted. Now, what did William want out of all of this? William wanted the Royal Navy, he wanted the British Army, and he wanted cash. Why? Because he wanted to defend the Netherlands against Louis XIV’s France. So from William’s point of view, he’s prepared almost to accept anything, provided he gets those three things. What do parliament want? They want to pull him back, or should I say they want to pull the concept of monarchy back because it’s this point that we go towards what many call a constitutional monarchy rather than a autocratic monarchy. Now, you can argue how constitutional it was in 1688 and so on, but it is, it marks this big difference.

The Bill of Rights, it’s always called the Bill of Rights, even though it’s an act of parliament, the Bill of Rights says this: The pretended power of suspending the laws and dispensing with laws by regal authority without consent of parliament is illegal. So the king cannot, they say pretended power because they’re still claiming that Charles I, who abused the old system, well, let them choose to write it that way, but they’re now saying absolutely, fundamentally in an act of parliament, that the king cannot dispense with laws. The queen can’t say, for example, no, I don’t want five pounds added to my bottle of gin during the budget. She can’t, she can’t interfere. Parliament can say we don’t want five pounds added to the bottle of gin, but the queen has no power in that respect. It goes on to say: Levying of taxes without grant of parliament is illegal. The king, like Charles I had done, cannot raise money except parliament gives them the nod. Only parliament can tax, not the crown. Goes on to say: Keeping a standing army in time of peace, unless it be with the consent of parliament, is against the law. And James had had an Irish Catholic army on Hounslow Heath outside London without permission of parliament. No longer. No longer can the king keep a standing army and in fact, parliament goes further and says there will be no standing army unless we agree to it. Now of course, obviously we have had for generations and generations a professional army, which is a standing army. But the crown can’t say I’m going to expand the army. It can’t say I want general so-and-so to be in charge. It cannot reduce the money. Everything is decided by parliament, not by the crown. It says elections of members of parliament ought to be free. Well, that’s a wish because it’s all a bit dodgy until we get to parliamentary reform in the 19th century.

So say my father is member of parliament and retires or dies. Well, I shall become member of parliament because I’m the son. Oh, and you don’t want to vote for me? Can I offer you a drink? Can I offer you a hundred pounds for your vote? So we have to wait a bit but it’s there, and that’s the important thing. And this is very important, the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in parliament ought not be impeached or questioned in any court or place outside of parliament. MPs in parliament can say what they like, it cannot be subject to law or impeachment. It goes on to say: Excessive bail in criminal cases ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. That, in some ways, reinforces old Magna Carta. The redress of all grievances and for the amending, strengthening, and preserving of the laws, parliament ought to be held frequently. In other words, no longer can the king, as Charles I had done, reign for 11 years without calling parliament, parliament must be called frequently. It also barred Roman Catholics from the throne, and that, of course, is, well potentially, a difficulty in the future because it doesn’t make sense. The Prince of Wales as heir to the throne could have married a Muslim, a Jew, a Methodist, oh God forbid a Methodist, but a Methodist, or anybody, Hindu, Sikh, Atheist, anybody except a Roman Catholic. Well, at some point, if say Prince George had a Catholic girlfriend, they would have to change the law. But the act says Roman Catholics are barred from the throne of England as it has been found by experience that it’s inconsistent with the safety and welfare of the Protestant kingdom to be governed by a papist prince.

And then they lay down that William III and Mary II were the legitimate sovereigns, their children would succeed. If they had no children, and maybe William died, then Mary’s heirs would, if she remarried, would take the throne. And if there were no children either through William and Mary or Mary and a second marriage, then the throne would pass to princess Ann, later queen Ann, and any of her children. But of course, William and Mary’s marriage ended without children, Mary died before William, and William was anyhow unlikely to have children, well, if he wasn’t gay, he was bisexual. He was unlikely to father children. Ann, of course, had so many children and sadly lost them all. Ann has had a very bad press, I feel really bad about Ann. Today, she’d take a tablet with her breakfast and she would have been able to have children, it’s really sad, but there were none. So when she died in 1714, there was a heck of a trouble, because James II’s son is still alive, that baby. Well, of course he is, he was only born in 1688. So they quickly had to find someone, so they go down the family tree and they find the first Protestant, who is George Electorate of Hanover, who parliament invites to come and he’s George I. So twice parliament has asked a king to come. The Dutchman, William, and then the Hanoverian German, George. So to round up on this little bit I think, if England began its march towards greater democracy without civil war, we need to remind ourselves that we’d already fought a civil war some 40 years before, and that in effect, all we had been waiting for was a legal settlement of parliament’s victory, and that’s what the Bill of Rights is.

Now, I’ve always thought and I still think, they should have made Charles II sign, but they were in such a mess in 1660 that they didn’t push their luck, because if they had, there might have been civil war erupted again, only 10 years since war had ended. So we have to wait ‘til 1688, and all those things coming together that I explained, William wanting British arms and money, and parliament wanting a deal where he was no longer this king by divine right but by parliamentary invitation. And so it’s really 1688 which marks the victory of parliament, and I think in all truth, if we could bring Cromwell back to life and tell him this story, he would be quite happy with the settlement of 1688. He never wanted, as I said last week, he never himself wanted a republic, they didn’t know how, that’s not what they were after. This is Chris Bryant, who’s a Labour member of parliament, but he’s also the historian of the House of Commons, and in his book, Volume I of Parliament: The Biography, he writes this: Charles James Fox, the politician would call Charles II a disgrace to the history of our country. The historian, McCauley, would portray James II as a villainous absolutist and William of Orange as a selfless deliverer. The myth that the Bill of Rights changed the law rather than restated it, and that the bill established for once and all the supremacy of parliament over the monarch, acquired a potency that helped entrench it as accepted fact.

But, says Bryant, the seeds of the idea that parliament must have its way was sown by Clarendon’s insistence at the restoration in 1660 had to be effected by parliamentary statute. That Charles was invited back and it was signed by parliament. Hmm, but Charles went on his own merry way, as we say, and it was not really resolved. It’s 1688 that resolves it for Britain, and we have our foot firmly on a path which says to modern democracy. Now by comparison, there can be no debate over the fact that the United States began its own march towards democracy with a war against the colonial power of Britain. The Revolutionary War as Americans call it, the American War of Independence as the British call it. But that’s not quite correct, is it? And if you’ve been following some of my talks, you know it isn’t correct because what? 140 odd years before, the English who came, for example, to Massachusetts and Connecticut had struck out on a democratic route in their own communities, and in the wider community of the colony as a whole. And that early experience of democracy, remember, the laws of Connecticut and of Massachusetts, those feed into the American Revolution of the 1770s and into the American constitution itself, and that’s important. Why is it important? Because the 1688 revolution and the 1776 revolution are founded in the same period of the 1640s when English men and women stood up against absolutism, against autocracy, and for what today we would call the rule of law. And that’s why, deep, deep down, Americans and British, and when we say British we mean Australians, Canadians, Afghans, New Zealanders, so on and so forth, we deep down share the same basis for this democracy. Those extraordinary men and women who resisted Charles I.

Those extraordinary men and women who sailed from England, literally for them, into the unknown in appalling conditions across the Atlantic to find, as they say, to build a new Jerusalem. I find that story an extraordinary one in world history, because out of that comes modern democracy. Eat your hearts out in Paris, we’re talking both these revolutions before the French. And grounded, grounded in such a way that we never turn back. The French turned back endlessly with the war bond kings, Louis XVIII and Charles X coming back, then Napoleon III coming back, and then Vichy France. No, no, no, our path in Britain and America, and in those former parts of the British Empire, has been clear. That these men and women, forget 1688, forget 1776, these ordinary men and women stood up for what they believed was right and they wanted democracy. Now, we can be highly critical, of course, because we’re judging a other period many centuries ago, and the wokest amongst us will point out women didn’t have the vote, black people didn’t have the vote, and so it goes on. Well yeah, but sorry, I think we’ll have to take it in context, and the context is that what they began has led today to women having the vote and to black people having the vote, and you cannot put our values back to the 17th century, I just don’t think it works.

Many of you will disagree, you’re welcome to. John Louis, in his book, How it Happened in America, which is, I’ll put all these books on the blog, How it Happened in America is a primary source material, but he gives an introduction in each part and this is part two, independence. And in this introduction, he writes: With the Treaty of Paris in 1763, bringing an end to the Seven Years’ War both in India and North America, against the French, and which Britain won, Britain seemed masters of all they surveyed in America. We had beaten the French in America and by America, I mean modern day Canada and modern day United States. Britain was triumphant in 1763. But, says Louis, it was precisely this mastership which proved British undoing. The British wanted to rule the colonies by remote control from London, while the Americans, now we’re not talking about Canadians, we’re talking about Americans, while the Americans wanted self government. Indeed, they had long before created local law making assemblies, what I was talking about. I wouldn’t describe the constitution of Connecticut or Massachusetts as local, I’m not sure I would use that word. There was another rout between London and America, London tended to treat America, and again, this now what is today the United States, as a useful supply of raw materials and a captive market for its own manufactured goods.

Well, you only needed to visit, in the early 18th century, Boston and you would have sat on a Chippendale chair imported from England. You would have been reading a book that had been imported from England. Everything of a cultured way of life in Boston had been imported. I’m a Bristolian and it’s often said that if a Bristolian visited Boston in the early 18th century, they would see little difference between the two cities. They’re both British cities. They’re both English cities. But, and that’s the rub, London tended to treat America as a useful supply of raw materials and a captive market for its own manufactured goods. The American trade with other countries was either taxed or simply prohibited. Now up until 1763, the British had a light touch in America, but after the defeat of the French and they controlled everything, their touch becomes harder, they become tougher in their dealings with the British in America, the colonists. They introduced, for example in 1764, the Sugar Act, which put stiff duties on imported molasses from the Caribbean. They introduced the Stamp Act in 1765, which ordered that revenue stamps be fixed to all printed documents circulated in the American colonies including newspapers. And it was a terrible mistake for London. The middle classes in America don’t take kindly, I’m not talking about the frontiersman, we’re talking about the heavily educated, indistinguishable from Bristolians, in Boston, for example.

Why should we be paying tax in this way? My brother, who’s still living in Bristol, doesn’t, why am I? It was extremely foolish. It’s largely, I think, a mixed case of hubris, we defeated the French, now we can do what the hell we like, and also stupidity that they did not understand what they were doing. They did not understand the resentment that was being fueled in America. And of course, as we all know, America was not represented in the Houses of Parliament in London. In the middle ages, when we were in France, there were MPs returned from towns like Tourney, now in Belgium, were returned as MPs to London. Calais had an MP, Boston had no MP. Well, of course, it was impractical, no one’s saying that we should have had MPs from Boston, there’s no way. It takes months as it were to travel back, how could you? You couldn’t. And so inevitably, what is going to happen, happens. The key revolutionary start we all know well enough and it’s the Boston Tea Party. In fact, it’s the tax on tea that rendered America coffee drinkers and the British tea drinkers. We got tea cheap, Americans developed coffee plantations and got coffee cheaper. That’s why we’re divided in that way. But the first opening shots, as all the Americans listening know only too well, were fired at Lexington on the 19th of April, 1775, but even before those shots were fired, in a speech at Richmond in Virginia, Patrick Henry said this: Gentlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace! The war has actually begun.

The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? I know not what cause others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death. And at the moment he spoke it, Patrick Henry is British. We come from the same stock. We come from the same constitutional arguments. We come from the same basic outlook about freedom, about the rule of law. And nothing really gets the British really annoyed, really up in arms, until their freedom as an individual is attacked, and these British in America were no different. And then the story unfolds in the way we know. Battle of Bunker Hill outside Boston. In 1775, George Washington, who gained his military experience as an officer in the wars against France, which have just ended, Washington is named Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. Continental being the word used before we can use the word federal, because the word doesn’t exist at the moment in America. And Washington had learned the tactics of the British Army. Really important, he knew his enemy. It was another marvellous own goal by the British. The Battle of Great Bridge, again in 1775, when the British attempted to free slaves to create an army, which was actually defeated by Virginians and North Carolinans. In 1776, whilst the war is going on, the Americans declare independence, 4th of July, 1776. This is a momentous date in the history of both countries. It’s a momentous date in the history of the world. I want to read from the Rough Guide History of the United States, short circuit the story ‘cause I’m always fighting for time. Although in early 1776, some delegates still hoped for reconciliation with Britain, and even George Washington opposed succession.

By spring, the ground swelling Congress towards independence was becoming, in John Adams’ words, a torrent. The foreign alliances essential to win the war could only be formed if America became a sovereign nation. Even if the thorny issue of how individual colonies had yet to establish their own state governments and constitutions, could consent to such a union had yet to be settled. On the 7th of June, seven of the 13 colonies represented in Congress voted for Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingstone to prepare a proclamation. Adams insisted that Jefferson should do the job. First, because you are a Virginian, in other words not from New England. Second, I am obnoxious , suspected, and unpopular. Third, you can write 10 times better than I can. It’s wonderful. And so Jefferson’s draught, amended by both committee and then by Congress, is passed. And now the die is cast, there’s no going back now. America has declared independence, they must fight this war to the finish. I don’t think they ever had any doubt that they would win. On the 17th of October, 1777, British General Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga. On the 18th of October, 1781, it’s all over. British General Lord Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown.

And the Prime Minister back in London, that is Lord North, exclaims and says this: Lord North received the news in London of the surrender at Yorktown and shouted out oh God, it’s over, it’s all over! And it was. And just a snippet here about 1782. 1782, the year after the surrender at Yorktown. Oh, I should explain because it was suggested that this is lager, it isn’t, it’s sparkling water with raspberry, strawberry, and blueberry, unsweetened. I’m teaching and I’m diabetic, so it’s not what you think it is. 1782, both the British Army and its loyalist supporters have already begun to leave North America when the British Parliament votes in February not to continue waging a war. Although Sir Guy Carlton, who replaces Kenton as British commander in April, continues to occupy New York, the British successively evacuate Wilmington, Savannah, and Charleston. After Lord North resigned as Prime Minister in March, ‘82, his successor, Lord Rockingham, authorises talks with the American peace mission which opens in Paris in April. It’s over, it’s finished. As the name of the tune while the British soldiers marched away from the surrender at Yorktown says, the world turned upside down. The world turned upside down. And so it was, but when all the dust had settled, it becomes clear that the road to democracy, mapped out in Britain in 1688, is now matched by a different road but a parallel road in America in 1776. A different but a parallel. Not like a French constitution, they run in parallel.

And whatever happens, temporary, and relations between Britain and the United States, the roots of our democracy lie in the same place. I may have told some of you this story before, I’m sure I have, but I think it’s worth saying, after 9/11, I went to my local supermarket, I was living in Essex then, I went to my local supermarket in the county of Essex and the Essex Fire Brigade were collecting money in buckets for the New York Fire Brigade, and it’s the first time ever in England I’ve seen people hand notes in, five pound notes, 10 pound notes, 20 pound notes. It was an extraordinary thing. And the following as I was driving around Essex giving various talks, it was amazing, I couldn’t believe it, how many stars and stripes people had, because we don’t normally fly flags in Britain like you Americans do. But suddenly, every village seemed to have found a stars and stripes to fly, and I thought then this is beyond politicians, this is something different. This is something about our belief in democracy and freedom, and this is based in 1640. Now, this I know I’ve told you before because I’ve quoted it before, but it is so wonderful and says everything in about two lines. This is the end of the American writer’s poem, The White Cliffs, which she wrote in an attempt to persuade American public opinion behind Britain in 1940. And she ends by being critical of Britain, but then comes around to saying actually, she says this, she talks about the American constitution, writing: When in the course of human events, writing it out so all the world could see, whence come the powers of all just governments, the tree of liberty grew and changed and spread, but the seed was English.

I am American bred, I’ve seen much to hate here in England, she’s in England. I am American bred, I’ve seen much to hate here, much to forgive, but in a world where England is finished and dead, I do not wish to live. And if you put it around the other way, in a world where America is finished and dead, we do not wish to live. We are linked beyond politics by 1640, and I don’t mean just the educated, the elite if you like, but everybody. Interestingly, on the fifth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, that is the 4th of July, 1826, John Adams was one of only three of the secretaries to the Declaration who was still alive, and he was asked to go and speak, and this is quite amazing, really. If I get the right book, this is a book by Robert Alison called the American Revolution. Again, I’ll put this on my list, but he writes right at the end of this book, so this is the 4th of July, 1826. In Quincy, Massachusetts, citizens asked John Adams to attend their own celebrations on July the 4th, he declined. They asked if he would propose a toast to be given in his name, he said he would gladly do it and he sent it, independence forever! They said would you add some more, Mister Adams? Not a word, he said. Now, if that isn’t English, I don’t know what is. That is also American. Not a word, he said. Independence forever says it all, I’m not going to add anything else. It’s a very English response, it’s a very American response, and Adams, of course, was both English born when America was part of Britain, and he said it when he was an American and an American who drafted the Declaration of Independence. I find that little story that Alison found a very moving story, and it links in ways I want it to link the story.

Now, I’ve got a sheet of paper here, I don’t know whether you can read that, it says stop. Now, it’s not to stop the talk, it’s to stop because I’m going into another area. I’ve probably offended lots of Americans with what I’ve already said, this is where I offend pretty well everyone, I suppose. I’m going to look at the comparisons between the two countries and then finally, I’m going to say the difficulties that both our democracies, indeed all democracies in the Western world, face in the 21st century. So as I get more looking at what’s coming in the future, then the more it becomes my personal view. Now, if I was teaching children, and probably in universities as well, I would have to be very careful and say on the one hand, on the other hand. Now, I’m not going to do that because you’re all, as I say, grown up boys and girls and you’re quite capable of making your own decision and challenging, as it were, what I say. But let me try and do the comparison bit first then, and the first thing to say is that both the American and the British constitutions have been copied all over the world, and they’ve been followed by countries who see them as providing a basis for their own constitutions, and yet, we have two distinct political systems. America, of course, has a written constitution. Although the written constitution can be and has been amended from time to time. Britain does not have an unwritten constitution as some people say, it has, in legal terms, an uncodified constitution, and what do we mean by uncodified? Well, we’ve got the Bill of Rights, which is an act of parliament, but we’ve also got other acts of parliament. For example, the Petition of Right from Charles I reign. We’ve also got Magna Carta. We’ve got the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679.

We’ve got the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 and 1999. And we developed during Tony Blair’s Prime Ministership, we devolve power to Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. So we also have a written, but it’s not put into one code. The Americans’ is a model for the constitution. Short, to the point, and clear but with amendments because times change. Britain has an uncodified one, not written down but written in bits, and if we needed to write another bit through parliament, we could do it just as the Americans can do it with an amendment. Strangely enough, the American system is more rigid than the British. To get an amendment in the States, first of all a proposal, which has to be proposed by two thirds of the Senate and the members of the House of Representatives. And then it has to be ratified after three quarters of the total members in Congress agree to it. And there have only been 27 amendments, but there have been 27. Doesn’t mean to say there would have to be a slowdown in the number of amendments, it could be, and if you say yes, but you’ve got to get the parties to agree or at least significant numbers, well so you do in Britain, in parliament, it’s not a given, but we don’t have that complexity. Now, I’m not going to argue for one system against the other, that’s really not my point, my point is that both have a system but the system is different. There’s nothing wrong. During the Brexit debate in Britain, there was this dreadful word sovereignty, and we were told by those politicians in favour of Brexit what sovereignty meant.

Well, I’d done sovereignty at Oxford in the 1960’s as part of my law degree, and I have to say, and any royalist listening to this will know, that sovereignty is a complex concept. It isn’t simple and nor is democracy simple. And that’s so easily proved because American democracy and British democracy is not identical, but it does not mean to say that they are both democracies, nor does it mean to say that the American is superior to the British or the British to American. They developed differently and they developed in response to the cultural developments in both countries. It’s an obvious thing to say, but I think people lose sight of that. The United States has a President and we have a monarch, and most Americans think that’s a huge difference. Well, hang on a moment. Our monarch has very, very, very limited political power. The queen is an icon and represents the state. The real power lies with the Prime Minister, and in more recent decades, the accusation against Prime Ministers who take little notice of the literature of the House of Commons is that they are governing in a Presidential style. And when the English say Presidential style, they mean in an American Presidential style. So as an American President might choose or try to ignore Congress, so a modern British Prime Minister will try and choose or in some way defeat any control by the legislature, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, but the House of Commons in effect. So the systems are not that different, except that in America, the head of state and the head of government are the same, and we’ve got a division between the head of state and the head of government, and I think that’s where Americans to say the benefit of their system against our system, there seems to be … And somebody asked me a question on an earlier talk about why on Earth were we royalists. Well, because it works, basically.

It works and in a silly way, it’s fun really as well. And it is a breath of fresh air when we hear the queen or increasingly, the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Cambridge, speak about something like climate change and not have a political slant on it, not like Biden or not like Johnson, but say it as ordinary people say it, frankly. But we will have to disagree about that, that the history of the birth of America is rooted in this anti-monarchable view, and that comes from not from America, it comes from the 1640’s of those who took up arms against Charles I, that’s where it comes from. And of course, we both have a bicameral government or Parliament or Congress, bicameral Congress, bicameral Parliament. House of Representatives, Senate, and we have House of Lords and House of Commons, and don’t any American tonight ask me to defend the House of Lords, it is indefensible and everybody knows it’s indefensible and it doesn’t work. We have got to move on. We’ve had temporary solutions for over 100 years now and we cannot go on, and we certainly can’t go on with people appointed by political party leaders, well, we won’t go into all the sleaziness around who’s appointed to the House of Lords. But even if you aren’t British, maybe there’s an American listening tonight with a lot of money who would like to have a seat in the House of Lords.

Well, I’ll give you the telephone numbers you can phone, just choose your political party, doesn’t matter which, and it’s cheaper if you decide to be a liberal, of course, and more expensive if you want to be a conservative, and just give some money to the head or the leader of the party for the next general election and offer your skills in the House of Lords. We’re very cynical, I think, most of us about the House of Lords in Britain. So we do have a bicameral, and eventually we shall have, I don’t see any way around it, we also shall have an elective second chamber. What else can we say? Yeah, now this is the big one. Well, let me leave the big one for a moment. In America, the elections take place every four years where the President is elected. The members of the Senate, every six years. House of Representatives, every two. Whereas ours is all bundled together, no elections for House of Lords, Prime Minister and elections to the House of Commons, one and the same thing because it’s the leader of the party that has the most seats in the House of Commons that becomes Prime Minister. So there’s a difference there, I really don’t think one can make too much of that. America, well of course, as a federal state, which Britain is not, then there is always the tension between individual states and the Federal government, but we want to say we don’t have that anymore. We have it between the Scottish parliament and Westminster. We have it between the Senate in Wales and Westminster. And we have it between the Northern Ireland Assembly and Westminster, and we are moving, and indeed, if we are going to keep Scotland on board, we shall have to go to a much more federal constitution in some way, or constitutional settlement in some way.

So I don’t think we’re that far apart, to be perfectly honest. Well, I think what’s happening is Britain is moving in an American direction, but the big issue is separation of powers for all of us. All the lawyers know separation of powers is that there are three elements of government who operate separately and one is the legislature, Congress in America, Parliament in Britain. One is the executive, that is to say, in America, the President and his cabinet. In England, the Prime Minister and his cabinet. And then there’s the judicial, exactly the same in both countries. Now, the separation of powers has always been difficult when British looked at the American system because of a political appointment to the Supreme Court, but we here, under the present government, are moving increasingly towards interference by the politicians with the judicial. This government, Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor, Home Secretary, have all joined the course of this government so far, made various attacks on the judicial. Most people have no concept of that, they’re not interested in that, but this concept of the separation of powers is important, and we’re going to need, in both countries, I think in the 21st century, to look again at this separation of powers and how that can function efficiently in a modern world. I promised you that there would be this at the end. Today in my opinion, we face in both America and in Britain, challenges to what I’d call our traditional democratic system, the one I’ve just been talking about. Only yesterday did Hilary Clinton warn of the dangers to American democracy of a second Trump presidency, and although clearly she’s political, but there are many American academics who would agree with that.

Last week, there’s a letter in the Times from a former conservative treasury secretary commenting on the latest British government assault on the separation of powers which seeks to introduce an Act of Parliament which will allow any minister, any cabinet member, to overrule a judicial judgement . That’s all worrying. I haven’t time but we may do it on another occasion, at looking at the pressures on democracy in both Britain and the States. That would be even more difficult, many people in Britain are not so aware of the dangers to democracy. Every lawyer I speak to is aware of it. In America, it’s divided. It seems, looking from the outside in, to be very divided between parties, or at least a large part or a part of the Republican party and others in America. I’m not saying that either Trump or Johnson are fascists, that would be silly. I am saying that both Trump and Johnson are populist and have authoritarian leanings. It’s American academics, because of Trump, who have looked at these questions afresh and drawn up lists, checklists you might say, of what it is to be a fascist, and you can tick it through and it’s interesting how many boxes can be ticked in Britain looking at Johnson, not least because we’re not America and we’ve never had flags behind ministers when they speak. We now have Union Jacks behind the ministers when they speak and I have to say in Britain, that doesn’t always go down well. Now, that’s a small thing. A positive view is that we need to discover a new form of democracy for the 21st century in both countries.

I’ve said our democratic systems aren’t absolute, we both changed our systems, they evolved. They’ve evolved without revolution, unless you count the American Civil War, I really wouldn’t count that. Our democratic systems have evolved, what we need now is open, informed, and national debates on where we go from here. And I can’t do better than refer to the words of a Britain who became an American, Thomas Jefferson. Now, I know New York, responding to wokists, have removed Jefferson’s statue from New York City Hall, well, I won’t comment about that, make your own minds up. To me, Jefferson is a really important figure, and Jefferson said this in a speech, long after the American Declaration of Independence. He made this speech in September, 1820, and Jefferson said something really important for both America and the United Kingdom in the 21st century. Jefferson: I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves. That’s democracy. And if we think we’re not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education.

That, as an educator, was my huge gripe about Brexit. People were so ignorant of the issues, whatever they voted. And Jefferson said democracy is about the people themselves, and he basically said you must trust the people but you must give the resources to make judgments. The teaching about democracy in Britain is lamentable. I’m not sure it’s much better in the States. And Jefferson ends, this is the true corrector of abuses of constitutional power. And I would argue that under Trump, we saw abuses of constitutional power, and I would argue that in Britain under Johnson, we’re seeing abuses of constitutional power, and Jefferson says we overcome that in a democracy by having an educated electorate, and if I feel I can vote for no candidate in the next general election, I shall scrawl across my ballot paper Jefferson. Thanks very much for listening.

• [Wendy] Thanks, William, for a really outstanding presentation. I’d like to take you up on your offer.

• Right, go on, please.

• [Wendy] Of another presentation.

• Oh okay , I thought you were going to say . Oh, I’m relieved about that. Anyhow, let’s see, I’ve got some questions here.

Q&A and Comments:

• [Wendy] It’s very alarming. This presentation’s extremely alarming as to what’s happening, and especially you see all the psychological ploys of putting a flag behind the politicians, as you say, nationalism.

• Well, we now have, in Britain, paid for by the taxpayer, official photographers for every member of the cabinet. We’ve never had that before.

Who’s this Myra? Is that Myra? Oh no, Rosemary. Rosemary, thank you very much. Rosemary has written don’t worry about offending Americans, our constitution is being shredded as I write. Well, I didn’t go that far in saying that. I’m really worried about it, I’m grateful for that comment.

Q: How and why did William and Mary rule jointly?

A: Oh, that’s a nice question I can answer. Because Mary was legitimate in the sense that she was the daughter of the first marriage of James II to a lady called Ann Hyde, and she, that is to say Mary, was brought up as a Protestant. So William’s claim to the throne, if you want to put it like that, is legitimised by Mary ruling with him. In reality, William made all the decisions. It was a love match, despite William’s odd sexuality, I always feel really sorry. If any of you visit Holland, by the way, go to the royal palace there and you can see a lot of stuff about Mary .

Q: Who were William and Mary’s troops, were they Dutch?

A: Yes, they were Dutch and they were German mercenaries. The 15,000 that came, he had what were called the Blue Guards, which were crack Dutch troops, he had German mercenaries, and a few English, but once he got here, it wasn’t ordinary Englishmen who went to him, it was the army of James who went over to him. One interesting story is two sergeants in a English regiment took their men with them, not the officers, two sergeants took them to William, the whole regiment, and William promoted them to officers, as it were, straight away. This is my friend, Irene, who’s a fellow lawyer. Well, I won’t be rude about age but she’s around my age.

Q: Isn’t our present government in Britain wanting to annul or rescind laws which have been passed by parliament?

A: Yes, and this is one of the problems about our House of Commons which votes the way they’re told to vote by the party.

Q: Who is it that invited William there?

A: They’re called the Immortal Seven, they’re not really important as such, it’s just that somebody had to do it and these seven men, they met outside the town of Chesterfield in Derbyshire, they met in a pub inevitably, and made the decision to send the letter. Yeah, yeah, it did make sense.

Somebody’s written this and I can’t seem to, John, it did make sense to bar a Catholic from being monarch for the same reason Oliver Cromwell removed Charles I, because of the connection to the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. Yes, but also very importantly, it would have led to absolutism and autocracy, and that is what we fought against in the Civil War. And no way would a Muslim have become part of the monarchy at that time.

No, you’re absolutely right, they were only concerned about, and there weren’t Methodists. They were only concerned about Catholics. All I’m saying is today, there’s no law preventing the queen marrying again and marrying a Catholic or a Jew or a Methodist or whatever. So I think you would just have to wait to see what would happen, but I cannot imagine we wouldn’t allow the sovereign or the heir to the throne to marry a Catholic, it wouldn’t make sense to me.

Was ? Yes, he was, but he’s something like 15th in the line of succession. It’s a long story, that succession. They just had to find to find the nearest Protestant. The American constitution is actually based on the Bible, was that same true with the English Bill of Rights? No, no, the English Bill of Rights was a very political document, not a grandstanding document in that way.

Oh, John has put in some ways, I wish Great Britain would adopt the US system of government. Well, we have what we have and if we had any chance of having, let me be broad minded , had any chance of having as Prime Minister or President, Trump or Hilary, I think I’d stick with our system. You’re absolutely right, Arlene, well done. The Declaration of Independence was actually written on the 2nd of July and it was signed by everyone on the 4th.

Q: And Richard, it was signed over a much longer period of time, even July the 4th was dated, declaration is not verified. Does it matter?

A: Not really, no, it doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter. It’s there.

Q: Why did the English want to continue having a monarchy at that time?

A: Because that’s the way we had governed ourselves, with a monarch and a parliament, since the 13th century. It was the normal order of things, and as I think I said last week, the English are very traditional in the way they look at things. We like precedent, precedent is what we like. We didn’t want a republic.

Q: Sorry, for goodness sake, who on Earth would we have elected as President?

A: No, no, we simply wouldn’t go down that way. Yes, absolutely right, Mike. The UK treated America like India, extracting as much money as possible, another golden goose. Yes, that’s a perfectly valid statement to make.

Q: What do I feel about the demographic changes will have on the closeness of the two nations?

A: That’s more difficult to answer. In terms of Britain, I don’t think the demographic changes make any difference at all until we had numbers of Muslim immigrants and that has altered things. It’s very interesting on big royal occasions how many black British turn out and are deeply royalist. I can’t answer, America has different groups than we do and so it raises different questions such as the Japanese, for example, and Chinese, and although we do have that, we don’t have the same sorts of issues, I’m not sure. I think the closeness is there, I don’t think it’s going to disappear, I don’t think it will ever disappear, personally. Oh Monty, I grew up in South Africa where the bulk of imports came from Britain.

My mother-in-law would only eat English marmalade. Oh, good for her! But I hope it was Oxford marmalade. Devolution within the was, in my view, a huge mistake, and in mine.

Absolutely, who said that? John, absolutely mine as well, I think the whole thing was a disaster. If we were going to have a federal state, we should’ve had a federal state. I don’t want a federal state, but you can’t have what we’ve got, which is neither fish nor fowl.

David, that’s a very good question. Jefferson was French. He was.

Q: Did his influence in the drafting show this preference for the French?

A: No, and the reason is because there was no French constitution in 1776 for them to refer to. The one he could refer to is the enlightenment ideas of what he had in front of him were the constitutions of Massachusetts and Connecticut and others, and they are distinctly English. So no, that’s a very interesting question and we could spend a lot of time on the influence of France, but in this respect, I don’t think there’s French influence.

Q: Isn’t a major difference that our so-called unwritten constitution can be done away with at any time by a parliamentary majority?

A: Anything in Britain can be done by a parliamentary majority. We got rid of a king, Edward VIII, in pretty well 24 hours. If we wanted to get rid of the queen, it would be very easy to do, but both in Britain and America in the 21st century, parliament or congress could not do something which was opposed by a huge body of the population. They simply couldn’t do it, and so I think the danger of that is limited. If however, the opinion in Britain was to get rid of the monarchy, perhaps when the queen dies, and Parliament was to pass it, well yes.

Q: What is bicameral?

A: Sorry Jackie, that’s terrible of me. It simply means, as Ellie has said, it means two houses. Unicameral is one House of Parliament, which New Zealand have, Britain and America and Canada and Australia have two houses and it’s called bicameral. Oddly enough, I’m in favour of unicameral because I think I’d like my politicians to work harder, and I don’t know, I think there’s other ways of doing, the New Zealand system works perfectly well. I know New Zealand is a small country compared to the States or Britain, but it works. That’s nice of you. The House of Representatives elected has the power of the purse ultimately and plays a big role in government, unlike the House of Lords. Yeah, but our House of Commons is the equivalent to the House of Representatives and they also have the power of the purse ultimately. Our House of Lords relates to the Senate, it’s just that ours is, I can’t defend the House of Lords, I’m not going to. The irony is the American President has power similar to that of, his party cannot get rid of him even if they wanted to.

No, who said that? ‘Cause that’s very good. Michael, that’s a really point because in Britain, we could get rid of Boris Johnson. One, his party can knife him in the back and that looks as though it may happen, or there could be a significant vote in the House of Commons, in other words, the opposition parties plus renegades within his own party can pass a vote of no confidence, and no Prime Minister has ever overridden a vote of no confidence which has gone against them. So we can get rid of a Prime Minister.

Yes, the Supreme Court in the United Kingdom is appointed.

Oh, thank you, Ron, that’s really good of you. The Senate is not elected every six years, one third of the Senate is elected every two years and each Senator is elected for a six year term. Bless you for that.

Q: Have the judges also stepped into the political arena?

A: Oh Priscilla, oh! Oh, that’s , oh you’ve stirred that up. I’ll calm down. I would say no but I’m a lawyer.

Margaret, I’m very worried about the stability of democracy in Britain at present time. So am I, and I can’t tell you how many people phone me up or email me and say what can we do?

• What do you say? William? First of all, can this be our last question? Because we have the chief rabbi of London coming onto our next presentation. So I wanted to thank you very, very, very much, but I want to ask you a question before we end off. What do you say when asked?

• I say make sure you and all your family vote in the next general election, and I say to them also you should write to your member of Parliament, in America write to your Congressman or Congresswoman, write to your local paper, write to national papers, but there’s little we can actually, and that’s one of the problems with modern democracy in both countries, there’s very little that the individual citizen can do to influence events.

Q: - What about going on marches and protests? Definitely don’t write Thomas Jefferson across the ballot, right?

A: - Yeah. I have done that before, not with Jefferson, I’ve written something, not rude but I’ve written none of these candidates.

Q: - What about petitions? What about petitions? What about really galvanising?

A: - We have a system now with petitions, and if it reaches a certain number, it has to be debated in the House of Commons and that’s really good. And yes, I do sign petitions for that. It’s such a difficult question, Wendy, for an ordinary citizen to exercise. I’m not in favour of marches, because they get taken over by an extremist group often and it leads to violence, that’s awful, that does nothing to help.

• That’s true. I think we need to pay attention and actually we need to have the conversation, and if it doesn’t amount to that, then we need to find champions to start a petition and certainly to follow up and to keep the momentum going, I’m all for that.

• I think you should go into the House of Lords and I can write you and say I want you to raise this question.

• [Wendy] You can trust me to do it.

• Well , I think I could you, yes.

• To be serious, when I was a principal and had difficulties politically, I did have members in the House of Lords who would stand up and speak, and there was one awful, well it’s funny in retrospect, a lady who was a great liberal and was very well known, Lady David, and she was very connected with my colleagues in the city and she stood up once in the House of Lords and said William has asked me to say this. And it got reported in Hands Up that I had told her what to say, which was deeply embarrassing.

• No, I won’t throw you under the bus, don’t worry. So let’s just find our lords and let’s find our people and honestly, this is a time where issues should not be ignored, we need to address them. We need to have courage and when we stand together, it’s much easier.

• Absolutely true.

• Power in numbers. So William, thanks a million, to be continued.

• To be continued. Bye, Wendy.

• Thank you very much. Bye bye, everybody, thanks for joining us and thank you to Judy.

• [William] Bye, everyone, bye bye.

• [Wendy] Thanks, bye.

• [Judi] Bye, everybody.