By Charles Kong Soo From T&T Guardian

As part of the UK Magna Carta 800th Anniversary Committee’s activities in promoting the understanding of Magna Carta in the Commonwealth Caribbean, renowned Trinidadian philatelist and numismatist Albert Sydney has drafted several stamp designs for Caribbean governments to consider.

Committee chairman Prof Sir Robert Worcester said he was in Trinidad to hold talks with a popular calypsonian on promoting the principles, awareness and understanding of Magna Carta via calypso, as different genres of music such as rock were used in different parts of the world to highlight the committee’s activities.

Worcester was speaking to the Sunday Guardian yesterday morning at the Hyatt Regency in Port-of-Spain. Later in the evening, he was the guest speaker at the launch of the Commonwealth Caribbean lecture and seminar series at The University of the West Indies (UWI) Learning Resource Centre, St Augustine.

UWI St Augustine has been awarded a grant by the committee to support the work of the university in promoting the understanding of Magna Carta in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Worcester said England will commemorate Magna Carta with a collection of minted coins and printed stamps for the event in June 2015. His lecture ranged from freedom, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, stature in society, gender, race, colour and sexual orientation.

Worcester said the first clause of the 1215 Magna Carta stated the English church shall be free and proclaimed religious liberty. He said that findings showed that the majority of people in T&T said that all religions should be taught in schools. Worcester said the Magna Carta was England’s greatest export as it affected the lives of nearly two billion people in over a hundred countries throughout the world, and influenced constitutional thinking.

He said basic principles where they didn’t exist had led to the loss of liberties, human rights and even genocide taking place yesterday, today and sadly, tomorrow. Dr Hamid Ghany, senior lecturer in Political Science and co-ordinator of the Constitutional Affairs and Parliamentary Studies Unit (Capsu) of UWI’s Faculty of Social Sciences, said he was very honoured to be involved with the project.

Trinidad was the first stop in the lecture series in promoting the understanding of Magna Carta in the Commonwealth Caribbean and will include Barbados, Cave Hill campus, Belize, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Jamaica, Mona and Western Jamaica campuses), St Kitts-Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

IMAGE: Chairman of the Magna Carta 800th Anniversary Committee, Prof Sir Robert Worcester.

For more on this story go to: http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2014-10-19/calypso-promote-magna-carta