On 16th December 2023, crowds of people gathered around Boston Harbour to witness tea being poured into the dark and choppy waters. The re-enactment was one of a series of events to mark the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. In 1773 a group of American colonists boarded ships, and as an act of protest, flung overboard 342 chests of tea that the British East India Company was trying to import. Their grievances arose from simmering tensions over Parliament sitting in London and imposing taxes on the American colonies, whilst at the same time denying them the right to representation and participation. Not only did this situation violate principles of reason and natural justice, but in the eyes of multiple colonists, it was also incompatible with the rights guaranteed by the British Constitution. For many of the protagonists in what ultimately became the American Revolution, their cause was not iconoclastic, but an assertion of well-established claims and liberties, going back at least to the Magna Carta.
This is an important consideration from a UK perspective, but one which is often overlooked. The Boston Tea Party was without a shadow of a doubt a pivotal moment in the birth process of the United States, but it is also an event which sheds fascinating light on the constitutional history of the United Kingdom. From at the least the time of the Whig historians, both popular and scholarly commentary has tended to embrace the narrative of Britain as a moderate nation, adept at avoiding violent revolution, and in this vision of the British legal and political system, the contemporary paradigm evolved gradually through flexibility, reason and compromise, shunning the excesses of both aristocratic tyranny and decadence, as well as anarchic popular uprisings. The civil wars of the XVII century and beheading of Charles I are either glossed over, or firmly located in the more distant past, before the “Age of Revolutions” (roughly 1775-1848). Equally, the so-called “Glorious Revolution” is depicted as the exception which proves the rule, given that it was achieved without fighting on the island of Great Britain. In light of all of this, any apparent English Revolutions “don’t count”.
Obviously, accepting this interpretation of history requires sweeping a catalogue of seismic events under the metaphorical carpet, for no better reason than they fail to fit the narrative. Nevertheless, even if, just for the sake of argument, we put aside the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the trial of King Charles I, the Interregnum, the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution, there is still the sticky matter of 1775. However uncomfortable it might be to some, the revolution which kicked off the “Age of Revolutions” was a British Revolution, as the colonists in the original thirteen states were rebelling against the rule of King George III.
This does not mean that the American Revolution was entirely a product of British social, legal and political thought. There were indeed many streams of intellectual influence that flowed into this movement, despite the fact that some have been long obscured by Western emphasis on white, male elite discourse, and are only now being given due attention. Yet it remains true that this was a conflict between British colonists and the British Crown, and even though by the end of the saga, the Americans had a new nation and a new identity, this does not alter the character of these events.
For this reason, for constitutionalists looking across the Atlantic, the American Revolution in many respects, represents the road not travelled by. Building blocks of British constitutional and legal argumentation were put to new and creative uses, and a plethora of questions that were allowed to languish unresolved in Europe, were directly addressed, whilst the role of the executive and the source of constitutional authority had to be identified in the making of a new Constitution.
In stark contrast, the United Kingdom continues to operate in a sort of Alice Through the Looking Glass reality, where in theory the Monarch exercises a range of powers, but the collective understanding and expectation is that they wield extremely limited personal authority and stay out of political life. Equally, citizens are subjects of the Crown, and there is no explicit constitutional statement anywhere that sovereignty lies with the People. Furthermore, Parliament is sovereign, but its relationship with the People remains ambiguous, as became painfully clear during the Brexit saga.
We are at pains to stress that we are not suggesting, in a simplistic fashion, that the United Kingdom is worse or better than the United States, but we have wanted to point out that our constitutional self-understanding could usefully be re-examined. Who are we as a society? Where does the seat of political power lie, and how is it held accountable? Exploring these events in the present requires a nuanced examination and engagement with our past, and it is for this reason that occasions like the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party present such a valuable chance to reflect and ask questions, as well as to celebrate some of the positive achievements of our ancestors, when it came to fighting for the freedoms that we currently enjoy. We very much hope that the story of 1773 will also receive due attention in the United Kingdom, as they are very much part of British Constitutional history.
Related Links
December 16th 1773 https://www.december16.org/
