TODAY and in the coming days there will be much media attention on the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta.

A sort of Bill of Rights signed at Runnymede in 1215 it limited the power of the monarchy and gave some rights to other influential members of the ruling order known in history as “barons.”

The context was that King John had run short of money to launch new Crusades — wars against Islam — and part of the Magna Carta was about controlling his activities.

Understandably the modern-day successors of this lot — the Royal Family, David Cameron, et al — will be making something of the anniversary.

Why, however, should this interest the labour movement and the left?

As the historian Peter Linebaugh has noted, the Magna Carta does recognise the existence of commoners and the right to use “commons.” Here was a sense of popular rights long before the working class appeared on the stage of British history.

The text of the Magna Carta underwrote many of the disputes about popular rights in the centuries to come.

These disputes were also framed by what was known as the Norman yoke. This referred to changes in British society and law after the successful Norman (French) invasion in 1066. The popular radical call was to return to the days before the Battle of Hastings and the Magna Carta was seen as a key document in that fight for rights.

By the time the Chartist movement was built in the 1830s over 600 years had elapsed since King John signed the Magna Carta. Even so, the People’s Charter was in part a deliberate attempt to echo the sentiments of 1215.

Partly this was about an attempt, and a largely successful one, to place the six points of the Charter in the context of traditional rights. That is, in a sense, to invent a tradition.

The detail of the six points, around adult male suffrage, the secret ballot, payment of MPs and so on, found no echo in the Magna Carta. It was the point that ordinary people, the commoners, had rights that was important.

An exhibition at the British Library in central London is very clear about the link between the Chartists and the Magna Carta. It uses a poster of a Chartist meeting to advertise it. The point is made that the Chartists referred to the Magna Charta and many supporters, often having no access to the text of the 1215 document, did believe that actual reference to the six points was made in it.

The Chartists also used ideas from the American and French revolutions to underwrite their claim that the People’s Charter had historical legitimacy.

There is one aspect of the link between the Magna Carta and the Chartists that we are unlikely to hear much about in the June commemorations.

The 1215 document was signed by King John under the threat, actually carried out, of armed revolt by the barons.

The Chartists therefore used the Magna Carta as clear historical support for the point that it was acceptable to take up arms against overbearing authority. At Newport in South Wales in November 1839 they actually did so.

Now 800 years on, as a Tory government plans to scrap a Human Rights Act and rights to assembly and organisation remain under threat, there may not be a call for armed revolt.

It will however be important to remember, as the Magna Carta is celebrated by the great and the good, that it was about not just their rights but also about ours too.