1. The Wimbledon Oath
On Saturday 20 June 1789, members of the French Third Estate assembled in a Real Tennis court at Versailles to formulate a challenge to the ancien régime.
Inspired by the US declaration of independence of 1776, they swore an oath not to separate until they had created a constitution for the kingdom which transferred political authority from the king to his subjects – without abolishing the monarchy.
It wasn’t to prove an easy task but this revolutionary act resulted in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the first French constitution of 1791. It also laid the ground for the inauguration of the Third Republic in 1870 and the settlements of 1946 and 1958.
No one in France doubts that their country now has a democratic constitution which invests power in the people of the country. Its article 3 states : “La souveraineté nationale appartient au people”[1]
Now, supposing those 576 representatives of the Third Estate were to re-assemble for a reunion at Wimbledon on 20 June this year. Would they consider that the United Kingdom has a constitution fit for a modern democracy?
Would they decide that there is a cogent set of rules vesting power in the people? Would they consider that there is reliable separation of powers and arrangements for mutual policing (checks and balances) between institutions? Would they be able to identify a set of overtly-stated principles that political behaviour: entitlements by birth to liberty, equality and fraternity, for instance? Would they be satisfied that human and civic rights are protected by the law and that there are effective measures to prevent abuse and corruption; that the police cannot be set on the opponents of the state?
Or would they resolve that Britain today self-evidently does not have a constitution worthy of the name but that it could do with one?
As evidence for the bumbling continuation of the British ancien régime, our time travelling members of then Third Estate would probably want to highlight the strange case of an anachronistic institution that no one knows what to do with. The House of Lords.
[1] Article 3 of the 1958 constitution
The Cavalier Constitution 