Britain and US may as well rip up Magna Carta

WHEN I was a child I read about the Magna Carta and how it laid the foundations for British justice.

An agreement grudgingly extracted from an English king in 1215, it states that ‘no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land’.

In other words, a fair trial. The Mayflower pilgrims than brought the same principles to America in the 1600s.

Though I was to realise later in life that the term British justice is at times something of an oxymoron, surely the ‘civilised west’ could feel proud of how liberties and justice have improved since medieval times.

Not so. The British government has decreed, under its terrorism laws, that anyone can be held indefinitely without trial, anytime.

The Americans continue to hold people in Guantanamo Bay. They may as well rip up the Magna Carta and admit we’ve all taken a plunge back into the Middle Ages - and stop waffling about civilisation and democracy.

Nick Folley,

36, Ardcarrig,

Carrigaline,

Co Cork.