Professor David Sleight reflects on US heroism which protected Magna Carta in 1940

The sacrifices made throughout eight centuries to protect the liberties and freedoms enshrined in Magna Carta have been significant and absolute. No more so than Officers Socha and Lynch of the New York Police Department who on the 4th July 1940, at immense personal risk, lifted a bag containing a suspect bomb and walked with purpose away from the British Pavilion at the World Fair in New York, and the hundreds of Americans queuing to see Lincoln Cathedral’s 1215 Magna Carta.

They reached open ground away from the public. They began to make good their retreat to safety. They did not succeed in their final and most important duty that day – to preserve the sanctity of their own lives. They were both killed instantly by the bomb exploding, and two other Officers, Federer and Gallagher, were seriously injured.

Through such deeds will heroic people be known.

In Lincoln, UK next year, our ambition at the University of Lincoln and Lincoln Cathedral along with the American Bar Association is to come together to formally commemorate their sacrifice to protect Magna Carta and the American public – it will be almost exactly 75 years on, and the descendants of Officers Socha and Flynn must know that there is a memory fuelled by gratitude on this side of the Atlantic that has endured and carries the deepest respect for their forebears’ selfless duty.

The American people then took Lincoln Cathedral’s Magna Carta into safety during World War II and stored it in Fort Knox throughout. It was returned after the war, but has been a constant touchstone between our peoples, travelling back many times since. It is currently on its way to Washington, DC and will no doubt be visited by thousands of pilgrims once again.

Lincoln Castle’s new underground Visitor Vault will be opened next year and we will invite the world to visit Lincoln and see the only 1215 original with writing on the reverse (it says “Lincoln”, proving our eight hundred year provenance), but also we will be the only place in the world to have a companion 1217 Charter of the Forest alongside. The City of Lincoln has been a secure repository for the greater part of the last millennium, and we hope visitors will feel the continuity of that history when they visit – connecting deep into the Lincolnshire soil.

For our global brethren this is profound – the explorers that have set off from this county’s shores, especially from Boston, UK – have explored, charted and mapped the world. Banks, Bass, Flinders – from the New World to the Australian continent – Lincolnshire has begat great explorers and endeavourers. Our county has also boasted great thinkers such as Newton and Boole, and inventors of innovative engineering creating agricultural and military machines. We have created power generation systems for two centuries and exported them the world over – including perhaps the most poignant for our American cousins: the generator that powered the torch held aloft the Statue of Liberty from it’s opening in 1886. Made in Lincolnshire, that shined a light across the New World for decades.

And for Officers Socha & Lynch, perhaps that is the most poignant metaphor of their sacrifice – they kept the light of liberty shining through those deep dark days of the 20th Century so we may still come together to celebrate 800 years of liberty in 2015.

 Professor David Sleight is the Dean for Public Engagement at the University of Lincoln, and a trustee of the Historic Lincoln Trust.