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The great and the good turned out to mark the 800th anniversary of King John sealing Magna Carta in 1215.
Bar Chairman Alistair MacDonald QC was among the throng that joined the Queen at Runnymede, where the Duke of Cambridge unveiled a commemorative artwork.
Alluding to his government’s plans to scrap the Human Rights Act, Prime Minister David Cameron told those gathered: “For centuries, Magna Carta has been quoted to help promote human rights and alleviate suffering all around the world. But here in Britain ironically, the place where those ideas were first set out, the good name of human rights has sometimes been distorted and devalued. It falls to us in this generation to restore the reputation of those rights – and their critical underpinning of our legal system. It is our duty to safeguard the legacy, the idea, the momentous achievement of those barons.”
The great and the good turned out to mark the 800th anniversary of King John sealing Magna Carta in 1215.
Bar Chairman Alistair MacDonald QC was among the throng that joined the Queen at Runnymede, where the Duke of Cambridge unveiled a commemorative artwork.
Alluding to his government’s plans to scrap the Human Rights Act, Prime Minister David Cameron told those gathered: “For centuries, Magna Carta has been quoted to help promote human rights and alleviate suffering all around the world. But here in Britain ironically, the place where those ideas were first set out, the good name of human rights has sometimes been distorted and devalued. It falls to us in this generation to restore the reputation of those rights – and their critical underpinning of our legal system. It is our duty to safeguard the legacy, the idea, the momentous achievement of those barons.”
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