Letter: As heirs, we should embody the spirit of Magna Carta and remain resolute in refusing to accept an Irish Sea border

While it has faded into obscurity for many British people, its importance seems to have maintained greater recognition in the USA, having begun an evolutionary process that established the British Parliament, English Common Law, rights to private property that the state couldn’t seize and notions such as you shouldn’t be punished for a crime without being convicted by your peers.

These great notions were taken even further when British colonists went to America. What really drove the American Revolution was the idea that they had the same rights as Englishmen or as Britons in America as Englishmen had in the Mother country.

Magna Carta’s early influence in America is a great reminder that our rights as British citizens are not based on geography but on a thousand years of British history which remains our birth right.

This should be an inspiration to all unionists in the difficult times of recent years not to submit to a mentality that this is the best we can do.

The early American settlers which no doubt included many of the Scotch-Irish (Ulster-Scots) tradition refused to accept the notion that London could tell them they had less rights by virtue of being on the other side of an ocean.

The power which the spirit of Magna Carta invokes is no less inspiring in 2025 than it was in colonial times and the legitimacy of the cause is as worthy in respect of the short distance across the Irish Sea as it was in the longer distance across the Atlantic Ocean.

While acknowledging we haven’t always lived up to the high ideals embodied in Magna Carta, we should nevertheless take heart from the fact that as British people we are the heirs of Magna Carta and drawing on that thousand-year history we should remain resolute in refusing to accept, cooperate with or legitimise an Irish Sea border which says we have less rights on one side of the Irish Sea than the other.

R G McDowell, Belfast BT5