Oliver Cromwell was, apparently, not a fan of Magna Carta. In 1654, London merchant George Cony was imprisoned for refusing to pay customs duties imposed by Cromwell. When Cony’s lawyer argued that the duties breached Magna Carta, Cromwell supposedly said either that ‘they must put on a helmet and troop for it’ or ‘magna farta should not control his actions’.

There may be a fair few people around now who would agree with the Lord Protector, at least in the sense that they would think Magna Carta is a bit overrated. Magna Carta is, from time to time, derided as a ‘myth’ and ‘historical nonsense’. And in history classes in our schools and universities, Magna Carta seldom gets a look-in these days.

It is very rare indeed to find a subject in an Australian university that includes substantial content on Magna Carta. British history in general is scarce enough, and subjects on the history of medieval England are practically non-existent. Medieval history subjects tend to focus instead on European-wide socio-cultural issues—gender roles, cultural transmission, perceptions of life and death, and other things that apparently take priority over the history of our own society.

The same is true in our schools. It would be wrong to claim that Magna Carta does not get a mention in Australia’s national history curriculum for primary and secondary schools. There are, in fact, two brief mentions slotted into optional ‘content elaborations’ in the Year 6 curriculum—in ‘History’ and in ‘Civics and Citizenship’. Yet neither is anything more than a passing mention.

The curriculum is silent on Magna Carta in Year 8, which tackles medieval history and where it would be most appropriate. And though the curriculum outlines optional units on topics as wide-ranging as ‘the Khmer Empire’, ‘Polynesian expansion across the Pacific’, and ‘the Environment Movement’, it skips over the seventeenth century altogether—the century in which Magna Carta was revived as a defence against arbitrary rule and England became a constitutional monarchy.

While textbooks written for the national curriculum usually do include a page (or half) on Magna Carta, many of their accounts are extremely summary, contain significant errors, and fail to explain why Magna Carta is important and what it means.

The problem is not merely that Magna Carta itself is omitted. Magna Carta was effectively a list of concessions forced on an unpopular medieval king by a group of self-interested feudal barons. It is ultimately a thirteenth century document, and it addresses thirteenth century feudal concerns.

But the legacy of Magna Carta is profound. In the first place, it firmly established the tradition that taxes must be raised only with the ‘counsel’ of the taxpayers. In order to tax his barons, therefore, the king had to consult with them first. In a matter of decades, this principle fuelled the rise of Parliament as a body with discretion over taxes, independent from the monarch. Many centuries later, the same principle made possible the rise of liberal democracy.

Magna Carta also inspired concepts such as the ‘due process of law’—the idea that everyone is to be trialled according to a just legal process—and habeas corpus—the idea that there must be a lawful reason to detain someone. To seventeenth century legal theorists like Edward Coke, Magna Carta was an embodiment of the ‘ancient constitution’—a political tradition in which the sovereignty of the law and Parliament were paramount.

To fail to teach the Magna Carta is, in a very real way, to fail to teach the history of liberal democracy itself.

Why, then, is there this relative silence over Magna Carta in our history courses, both at school and university level? It probably has nothing to do with the ambiguous motives of the barons. More likely, it is the result of a broader rejection of Australia’s political heritage and the origins of our society.

About this, we should be very concerned.