At the stroke of midnight last night, a momentous occasion in the history of this country occurred, as the United Kingdom’s military campaign in Northern Ireland was officially wound down for the last time.

Operation Banner was launched in 1969 to protect Catholics from increasingly aggressive Protestant paramilitaries, and, at its peak involved over 30,000 British soldiers. Even today, 5,000 soldiers are stationed in Ulster. Lasting 38 years, it is the longest military operation in the history of the British Army. Conducted at the cost of 763 servicemen killed and over 6,100 wounded, it is also the most deadly since the Korean War.

Yet, what distinguished Operation Banner from the preceding conflicts of the British Army was that it was an operation not against foreigners, but against British people. The operation was not primarily to thwart external threats (although many Republican terrorists did use the Republic as a safe haven), but to instil and maintain civil order. And, that was exactly what was fundamentally wrong about it.

The late King … did endeavour to subvert … the laws and liberties of this kingdom … by raising and keeping a standing army within this kingdom in time of peace without consent of Parliament, and quartering soldiers contrary to law … which [is] utterly and directly contrary to the known laws and statutes and freedom of this realm.

What’s all this then? Well, since you ask, it’s the Bill of Rights 1689, which, like Magna Carta almost 500 years before, guarantees the basic rights of the people. It clearly states, in black and white, that it is against our basic rights to have the state maintain an army on operation in this country. Since it refers to the basic rights (hence its name) of man living in an enlightened society, the Bill of Rights certainly applies consistently across the country (even though it, like Magna Carta, originally applied to England and Wales only). And that includes Northern Ireland.

Similarly, as it refers to rights, it really doesn’t matter one way or another whether Parliament says the state can wage war against its civilians or not. After all, to misquote Louis XIV of France, Parliament is the state. At the most, it is the part of the state that seeks to legitimise the actions of the other parts. However, true rights are inalienable, and no one branch of the government can legitimise any actions of another branch that impinges upon the rights of man.

What was going on in Ulster in the 1960s was intolerable. Clearly, the minority Catholics were being oppressed, and threatened existentially in a way that no people can tolerate. However, the way for the state to combat that was not to garrison a standing army in the province and use it in active operations against fellow British people. The role of the army must be kept fundamentally separate from the police - the latter to defend liberty from internal threats, the former to defend liberty from external threats. Otherwise, the state may be tempted to employ the resources of the armed forces against its own people: a cataclysmic prospect in the age of industrialised warfare.

The Troubles ought to have been countered by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the predecessors to today’s Police Service of Northern Ireland. The fact that today, after 38 years, the police have been restored as the rightful authority in the province is not just a reinforcement of the progress towards peace made in Northern Ireland since 1969, but a reinforcement of the progress towards liberty made in the whole of our country since 1689.

For the past two centuries, it’s been beaten into the British to hate the French, and all their (many, multitudinous, myriad) idiosyncrasies. However, as un-British as it may seem to celebrate the French national holiday, today, I found myself hoisting the red-white-and-blue and marking Bastille Day with as much pride as the most slimy and garlicky Provençal vintner. Every patriotic Briton should feel the same.

Despite what people say, what Bastille Day marked was not the end of monarchy in France. Instead, it was end of absolute monarchy: a system of government unchecked by constitutional limits, unfettered by morality or respect for the rights of any person but the King, and, crucially, completely different to the system used on this side of the Channel. Ours, as a representative monarchy, has been enshrined since Magna Carta, dating back to 1215.

Lacking a French Magna Carta, King Louis XVI was free to rule by decree, arbitrarily and without care. For all the boasts of ‘philosopher kings’, no French king ruled with any intellectual rigour or reason. When, on 11 July 1789, Louis XVI’s Finance Minister, Jacques Necker, advised the King to begin to budget his personal expenses, he was fired for his impudence. This act, one of reason against unreason and compromise against absolutism, sparked the Storming of the Bastille three days later.

The distinction between an absolute monarchy and a constitutionally-bound one is crucial. Whilst every French king was grotesquely unpopular in France, the British king at the time of the French Revolution, George III, was beloved by all, despite his mental faculties and colonial successes (or lack thereof). Even the future George IV, whose profligacy with money (and women) is and was renowned, was never under threat of losing his head, for one simple reason: whereas the French monarchs ruled in spite of the people, the British monarchs ruled because of the people.

Constitutionally-limited monarchy gives the framework of apolitical and non-partisan leadership, with a leader responsible for upholding the rights of the citizen guaranteed by such agreements as Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. Instead of being the statist element that is most arbitary, in a representative democracy, a constitutionally-bound monarch becomes the one that is most constant, and most likely to uphold the natural rights of the people from the otherwise unchecked terrors of either an absolute monarchy or a deified democracy.

That the United Kingdom has enjoyed this for so many centuries, and that France’s diametrically-opposed system collapsed so readily in the face of pitchfork-armed farmers (a taste of things to come), ought to be a celebration of our uniqueness, and the success of our (relatively) people-centric historic constitutional system. Our dislike of absolute rule makes ours the exceptional system that proves the rule.

If the readers of BBC History magazine had their way, everyone in the country would be enjoying a day off work today. In a 2006 poll, their readership chose the 15th June as the date they would like to see dedicated to a new national holiday to celebrate British values. Winning out over more auspicious rivals, such as VE Day, Armistice Day, Trafalgar Day, the 15th June doesn’t seem to have much going for it. That is, except that it was the day the first blow in the fight against tyranny hit home.

On 15 June 1215, the marshland of Runnymede, in Berkshire, was home to one of history’s rarest spectacles: an autocratic ruler giving away his power and his asserted right to rule by force alone. That day, King John of England signed Magna Carta, ending the absolute monarchy and guaranteeing basic liberties of all free men.

Beyond the intricate balancing institutions between the King and his Barons, Magna Carta guaranteed many of the rights that are protected today. It outlawed imprisonment without trial, false imprisonment, and disproportionate punishment; and guaranteed the right to self-defence, the separation of executive and judiciary, and trial by jury.

In short, it enshrined the rule of law and the mechanisms by which our inalienable fundamental rights - to life, liberty, and property - have been protected for the past eight centuries years. Without it, the people would be left as they were, prostrate in front of the state. Whilst Magna Carta did not, as no law thus far has, allowed man to live free of all tyranny, it was inarguably the first step, and, for that reason, ought to be commemorated as heartily as any day before or since.