Power struggle

INTERESTING article on the Magna Carta interpretation which the Chartists consciously framed the People's Charter to echo and to complete the democratising process symbolised by this ancient document. Unfortunately, we stand today, in relation to transnational corporate institutions like the EU that support them, in the same tradition of resistance and struggle against arbitrary, unequal exercise of power and privilege as the barons did at Runnymede 800 years ago. Throughout history, Magna Carta has been used as a totemic document in struggles against aggressive and overbearing elites, referred to in the English revolution and the Suffragettes and, by anti-colonial freedom fighters Gandhi and Mandela. Like some parts of the Bible, Magna Carta is a document of class struggle, a supportive and sustaining document to which downtrodden groups across the world have anchored their rebellions. Its hypocritical invocation and celebration by modern corporate and political elites who, like King John, exercised power arbitrarily, aggressively, and illegally at home and abroad should not blind us to its usefulness in our current struggles to free ourselves from all pervasive capitalism, its our heritage.