Lesson video

Hi, everyone, welcome to today's lesson, this is our first out of six lessons in this unit.

In all, we're going to look at what is the right to protest.

Today's lesson, we're going to look at what rights are and where they come from and before we start today's lesson, there's just a couple of things that I need to remind you.

First of all, that you are going to need a pen and a paper or something to write with or write on.

And then please take a moment now to clear away any distractions, including turning off all notifications or any apps or conversation that you're having.

Finally, if you can try to find a quiet place where you wont be disturbed for the remainder of this lesson, I will pause the video now and allow you to grab those things and find that space that you need.

Once you're ready, restart the video, and we will start back with today's lesson.

So, today I'm going to be taking you through three key questions, and we will look at each of these in turns during the course of today's lesson.

First of all, we're going to look up this question here which is what is the rule of law.

When I look at a definition of the rule of law, I'm going to understand the impact the rule of law has had on today's proceedings and today's community, today's laws.

Now we're going to focus on democracy.

I'm going to look at a brief history of democracy in the United Kingdom.

So we're going to look at where it started and how that impacts us today.

Then we're going to do some critical analysis and we're going to identify in your mind, which piece of legislation is the most important.

So we'll have a look through a timeline of rights and we'll analyse which one can be considered more important in respect to the others that we will look up today.

First of all then, we need to look at what this is.

What is the rule of law? Now, as a definition, the rule of law is a fundamental doctrine by which every individual must obey and submit to the law and not arbitrary action by other groups of people.

In essence, nobody is above the law.

So I will give you a couple of seconds there just to write that down and you can then listen to me again as you're writing it down.

So I can summarise some of the words there that you may not be familiar with.

A fundamental doctrine.

We can describe that as being a framework or a set of rules, procedural steps are a test.

So in essence, the rule of law is a test.

It is a list of rules that allow us to say that nobody is above the law.

Nobody can walk beyond their power to which that they have.

Now, all of us in the United Kingdom may have different forms of power depending on the position that you find yourself in a community or an a job role but nobody can go above or beyond the role that you have been given.

There's another word there arbitrary action.

So the term arbitrary describes a cause of action based on no reason or no judgement.

So in essence, people have to back up what they're saying.

So an arbitrary decision is one made without regard for the facts and all the circumstances.

So it doesn't regard any evidential treatment.

So in essence, you have to know what you're doing and you have to be able to back it up through this fundamental doctrine.

So everything and everyone is now held accountable.

Where does that come from then? So we will now look at the origin of the rule of law.

And the rule of law comes from this document here, the Magna Carta.

Now the Magna Carta is Latin and it means the Great Charter.

And it's the first time that law was written down and that everybody including the King would be held accountable for their actions.

Now that means that the king is responsible for the decisions that he makes and for the actions that he goes forward and takes.

The role of the Magna Carta was to bring about equality to make sure that nobody could misuse the power that they have been given.

Now, King John signed this in 1215 so it's 805 years old as of 2020.

So you can see here, you might think well, what does that have to do with today's proceedings? Well, it's the first time that law is put down on paper and can hold even the king accountable.

And you may think whether or not that's a good thing that the king can be held accountable but if the king does something wrong beyond his power, should he be able to be punished for that? Which leads us on quite nicely to this question here but now we have a queen.

So do you think that the king or queen should be held accountable for actions that they participate in? I want you to write down your opinion here.

So either a for or against the statement there with a couple of reasons explaining your point of view.

So do you think that the king or queen should be held accountable? Do you think that the king or queen should be held responsible for things that they do? You pause the video now and complete that task for me If you're all stuck, I'll give you some sentence sums here.

So one reason that I agree that the monarch that's the king or the queen should be held accountable is, or on the other hand, some may disagree due to the fact, what? You might want to bring in some evidence about the Magna Carta here.

So rewind if you feel the need to do so.

So again, pause the video here if you are using the scaffolding and then come back to me in a couple of moments time.

Okay, so now that we know where our rights started back in 1215 with the rule of law, how have these evolved through time? Well as we said there at 1215 is the first time that rules and laws are written down and held everybody accountable and look at treating people fairly without being discriminated against.

It's not for another 400 years until we get another major break there with the English Bill of Rights.

Then, we look at that nearly 300 years before we get the United Nations declaration of human rights.

Two years later, the European Convention of Human Rights is published and then nearly 50 years later, the UK brings in the Human Rights Act for the United Kingdom.

I want to talk you through each of these elements now so that you get a real grasp of which one can you consider to be most important.

First of all, then if we go all the way back to 1689 and the Bill of Rights lays down limits on powers of the monarch again.

So this is an extension of the Magna Carta but it also goes one step further and it sets out the rights of parliament.

And when they've put down these rules into the English Bill of Rights, they've included that they need regular parliamentary sessions that they need free elections so they can vote for who they want without been forced to do so and they should be allowed freedom of speech in parliament.

So while they're sitting in parliament they should be able to question even the monarch.

So even the king or queen at the time and they should be able to question the decisions that they are making.

So a number of clauses to out in English Bill of Rights sought to eliminate the interference from the king or the queen because what parliament said is, they should have their own separate body in the sense of they should not be interfered with by the king or the queen.

Now, whether or not you think that the king or queen should be involved in parliament is another question for another the lesson.

If you look at today's proceedings the Queen allows Boris Johnson our current Prime Minister to run parliament on her behalf and she doesn't get involved.

So it's quite important to say that 300 and so years later that these clauses that were set out in English Bill of Rights still can apply into this standing.

If we move on then to 1948.

So we're looking at 300 years or so.

It's not for another 300 years then, until 1948 that the United Nations put forward this Declaration of Human Rights.

Now it's important here because the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a milestone document, okay? So it's drafted by several countries around the world from different backgrounds, both legal and cultural and their aim is very, very simple.

To allow every person in the world to have this basis of human rights protection.

It states for the first time that everybody has a universal human right.

And for that to happen, they translated this document into all the 500 different languages.

There is a caveat here in that, this is just a statement.

It's a declaration of rights.

Now, unlike the next piece of the puzzle in the timeline that we'll look at, this is just a statement.

It's just a moral guideline on this is how people should be treated.

But nonetheless, it's the first time that we try and recognise everybody's in the world, human rights.

So we're not looking at country specific.

We are just looking at everybody should be entitled to this basic protection.

In 1950 then, we have the European Convention of Human Rights.

Now obviously, this only applies to people that are within the European sort of, what the word we're looking for here guys, European continent.

That's the one and the Council of Europe was founded shortly after the Second World War.

And what we're looking at here is that the Council of Europe got together after the atrocities of World War II and they wanted to protect human rights and the rule of law whilst promoting democracy and democracy we'll come on to and in a couple of moments time.

Now this is based on the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

However, this is something called a treaty and it was signed in Rome in 1950.

And it took three years to come into force in 1953.

But what this does is, this treaty allows basic human rights to be secured.

So this is a directive.

This is what people have to follow if you are part of this council, this body of of countries within Europe.

So unlike the United Nations Declaration, this is now a legal principle that people have to follow.

It takes them 40 years then for the Human Rights Act in the United Kingdom to come into force.

Now in 1998, the Human Rights Act is passed in UK parliament.

And it takes the European Convention of Human Rights, so much like the European Convention took the United Nations.

UK parliament took the European Convention of Human Rights and put that into effect in the United Kingdom.

Now you might say this is a great thing because without this if you feel that your human rights have been denied or that you have been had a breach of human rights, without this piece of legislation, you would have to go all the way to Europe and the European Court of Human Rights to put your case forward to the judges in that court.

Because of the Human Rights Act, because of the 1998 piece of legislation, you can now, if you feel that you've had a human rights breach if you've been denied your human rights you can go to UK-based Courts to make sure that you are entitled and have your human rights upheld.

Okay, now that we've had a look at our timeline, what I'd like you to do is start to consider the following question.

So which event has had the biggest impact to our rights? What I want you to do is just write a short paragraph explaining which of the previous events do you feel has had the biggest impact? So you might look at other arguments and say why they're not as important or why they didn't have the impact as your chosen event.

But this is just starting to get you to think about and critically analyse which events in your opinion has had the biggest effect.

So pause the video now and then complete that task and come back to me once you are ready.

Okay, so I put together a little bit of a model answer here.

I believe that the 1215 Magna Carta is the most important event in relation to our rights as citizens.

The Magna Carta is the first time that equality and fairness is recognised in law and without this, I do not believe that the subsequent piece of legislation would have been followed.

Why is the UNDHR, that's the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

It's a bit of a mouthful, I know but bear with me.

So once the UNDHR was an important step, universally it only acts as a statement of intentions as opposed to legal publication of the Magna Carta.

Now, what you've seen there is I've got a reason why I agree with the Magna Carta.

So I've laid out some reasons and then I've compared it to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

Now, as long as you are sort of paragraph does something similar then you are on the right lines and this is just a basic guide to essay writing for the future.

So we move on and we're going to look out this, what is democracy? So before we go anywhere, what I want you to do is, just write down, what do you think democracy means? So write down your pair but it's a simple definition of what do you think the word democracy means? Okay, so democracy can be quite a broad topic, but I'm saying that the people who govern a country and they make decisions about how society is organised.

Democracy, decisions that affect everyone.

Now in the United Kingdom, we have a process called representative democracy and that means that we choose representatives.

We choose and we elect people who govern us.

We also elect people to question the government and hold them to account on our behalf in parliament.

Now there is another side to democracy.

So whilst the United Kingdom, we have representative democracy.

There is something called direct democracy, but democracy as a whole, Abraham Lincoln said "it's government of the people, by the people, for the people." And you can see a common theme there that it's for the people.

It's about people being in their own control.

Direct democracy then has a long history.

So originated at an ancient Athens and it would be where citizens would get together and they would debate on important issues that they felt that needed to be debated.

Now, in this process, unlike with representative democracy where we elect people on our behalf to make these decisions and involves the citizens, having all of the power and they make all the decisions as a group for themselves rather than through a group of elected people.

On the flip side then with representatives, we choose people.

We allow that election to take place in a fair election and then we vote people into power.

And just as quickly as we can vote people into power, we can then also vote to have people out of power.

So that power that we put in people is through our Members of Parliament, our MP's and they represent their constituencies in parliament.

So if we're unhappy with a decision or we're unhappy with a process or a policy or something that's going on in the United Kingdom, we can go to our MP and on our behalf, they can take our views to parliament.

Now there are two different versions there.

So direct people for people and representative democracy, people choosing representatives.

Now they have their pros and they have their cons and I want you to decide, which is which.

But first, I want us to watch a first, a quick, sorry, a quick video about where democracy comes from and the importance of it.

1215, The Magna Carta limits the power of the King for the first time as the Barons laid down the law with King John.

In 1258, Simon De Montfort's great council and the provisions of Oxford gave a small group of communists, a wider hand in governing the realm.

Like father, like son, Henry tried to back out of the agreement, prompting a civil war, De Montfort I and then his 1265 parliament called representatives from towns and cities together, another first, then the Model Parliament of 1295, gave Boroughs and Shires two representatives each.

1430 and the vote was given to free holders of land worth 40 shillings or more.

And the Putney Debates of 1647, So the levellers argued for voting rights for all.

It was nearly 200 years before the great reform of 1832, swept away rotten Boroughs extending the vote to the new industrial cities, reforms followed reforms, followed reforms and the electorate grew.

And in 1918, universal suffrage was finally achieved for men over 21 and women over 30.

A decade later, matched at 21.

Today every eligible UK citizen over 18 has the right to vote for their representative in parliament.

So that's a very brief history of democracy.

Do you think that the UK should have a direct or a representative democracy? So what I want you to do is, having had look at the information that's been on the screen previously.

I want you to summarise the strengths and weaknesses of both direct and representative democracy and then state which one do you think the UK should have going forward? So try to have at least two strengths and two weaknesses for both direct and representative democracy, and once you've got that to come back to this or pause the video now and then come back to me once you are done.

Again, I've written you a model answer here.

So the people who govern a country make decisions about how society is organised, decisions that affect everyone.

In the UK, we elect people who have govern us, we also let people to question the government and hold them account on our behalf in parliament.

This is called representative or parliamentary democracy.

This allows the country to be more stable and allows laws and policies to be adapted all the time.

However, people argue that direct democracy is better as this allows the people to make decisions quicker without having to trust in other people to make decisions for them.

However, they may not have the expertise to deal with matters across the country.

So there's a balanced argument there.

So I've got reasons for and against representative democracy and reasons for and against direct democracy.

That brings us to the end of today's lesson and remember, we looked at three key questions across this lesson.

We looked at what is the rule of law? So we looked at the definition of what it is and where did it come from? We looked at a brief history of democracy and then we'd have a look at our rights and we identified or you identified, which you thought was the most important piece of legislation.

I'm really excited to see some of the work that you have done today.

So I'm really eager to find out whether you think we should have representative or direct democracy.

And I also want to see on your explanation as to what piece of legislation is the most important in your eyes for in terms of our rights.

If you could share your work with me, if you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter or Instagram, tagging @OakNational and using the hashtag LearnwithOak.

Hopefully, I will see you again next time for lesson two in our scheme of work.

But until then, what I need to remind you to do is after today's quiz, sorry, after today's lesson, please go ahead and complete the exit quiz before you shut down the lesson.

I will see you again next time in our lesson two.