Re: marxism-digest V1 #5640

["Richard Harris" <rhh1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From: "Jose G. Perez" <jg_perez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Fox News baits antiwar protesters

>"Who won your right to show up here today?" another [Fox slogan]
questioned.
>"Protesters or soldiers?"

Protesters, of course.

In 1628 the question of the power of the Crown (read as: the government) to
imprison  a person without just cause (and at that time, just cause
consisted of a natural law concept of crime, widened to include treason -
but treason did not cover protest against state policy as such) was debated
at a joint conference between Commons and Lords.  Sir Edward Coke and Sir
Edward Littleton, both on behalf of the Commons, argued that if a man could
be imprisoned without cause (read: without committing a natural law crime or
treason i.e. essentially compassing the King's death) he would be worse than
a villein (i.e. a medieval serf.)  They appealed to Magna Carta (we now know
not in its original sense.)

J.H.Baker continues "The political atmosphere at this period was explosive
... the country was slipping towards civil war."  And the civil war, this
point would escape the likes of Fox, was a protest, not a conflict between
professional armies.  It was a protest turned to arms.  Exactly because of
the civil war, in England the professional state army was introduced (above
all to control protest. Mercenary soldiers were perfectly good for foreign
adventures)

Baker, J.H. (1990) 'An Introduction to English Legal History' London:
Butterworths

Of course, the struggle was not really or primarily a legal struggle, but a
struggle in society that was also apparent in the legal fora, and thus in a
prime place in the historical record.  The right to protest against the
arbitrary acts of Government is an ancient liberty fought for by blood and
protest.  Never by the state's soldiers.