On Sunday 23rd October 1642, a ferocious battle took place in Edgehill, England.
It was the first ever battle of the English civil war between the Royalists and Parliamentarians; King Charles I against the Earl of Essex.
Any attempts of constitutional compromise broke down between Charles and Parliament earlier that year, and both parties raised large armies to gain their way by force of arms.
What’s the relevance, you’re probably wondering?
Well, is it not deeply chilling and horrendously ironic that, according to the latest documents leaked by Snowden, that ‘Edgehill’ is the name GCHQ decided to call its surveillance program in which it can crack encrypted data?
Yes, I think it is.
Edgehill was part of a war fought bascially to overthrow an increasingly isolated and erratic autocrat in the form of Charles I. So it’s odd that ‘they’ would name it Edgehill, as if we don’t fight to protect the freedoms we’ve gained as a nation since that time, we may find ourselves back at the beginning, under the reign of some equally as terrible, undemocratic, dictatorship.
