Binning the smoke alarm: Why repealing the Human Rights Act would
be the biggest mistake of a generation
Following plans announced at the Conservative Party’s recent conference to
withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, Harriet Johnson reminds
us why we signed it in the first place, and underlines why it remains such an
important safeguard over half a century later.
This week, as expected, the Conservative Party promised once again to repeal the
Human Rights Act – to rapturous applause from the party faithful. Making the
announcement, David Cameron began by pointedly stating that the European
Convention on Human Rights was drafted shortly after the Second World War. He
said this as if that made it outdated; as if it made it unnecessary – as if it were,
somehow, an emergency measure.
Hours after the Prime Minister’s speech Fergus Ankcorn, Bill Moore and Eric Brown
spoke of their experiences during the Second World War at a memorial dinner in
London. All three are veterans of that conflict: Ankcorn was a prisoner of war;
Moore was a Flight Sergeant in Bomber Command; and Brown was one of the
people sent to interrogate Himmler and Goering after the war had ended.
They talked about victory and loss. They talked about the extreme bravery of their
comrades, while dismissing their own heroism as if it were ordinary. And they talked
about some of the worst atrocities of war. About being subjected to treatment
more appalling than anyone should be able to imagine. About seeing their friends
brutally massacred. About walking into a camp where human bodies were piled
twenty feet high – not laid out neatly or respectfully, but all jumbled in a heap, “as
if”, said Captain Brown, “they had been bulldozed”.
These were things that they experienced themselves, within the last century, in
Western Europe. It seems, now, inconceivable. The violence and suffering, and their
scale, are too much to comprehend, especially for those of us who have never had to
witness it.
It was against that background that Britain signed the European Convention on
Human Rights. In doing so, we made some simple promises:
Having seen so many people murdered, we promised not to unlawfully kill. Having
been tortured, we promised not to torture. Having seen the labour camps, we
promised not to enslave. Having learned of innocents arrested for no reason, we
promised not to unlawfully imprison. Having been subjected to summary
executions, we promised to give a fair trial. Having seen the blameless punished for
things that were not crimes, we promised never to do the same. Having been spied
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upon, we promised a right to privacy. Having had our loved ones torn away, we
promised a right to a family life. Having seen people persecuted for their religion,
we guaranteed a right to believe. Having seen the courageous imprisoned for
speaking out, we promised a right to free expression.
Human rights acknowledge that human beings are capable of awful things. They are
a statement about who we are, and, perhaps more importantly, who we are not.
They say, not just “this is the behavior we will not tolerate in our enemies”, but also
“and neither will we tolerate it in ourselves”. They are about looking at what our
enemies did, and promising: no matter how tempting; no matter what the
provocation; no matter how much pressure is put on us by the baying mob – there
are lines we will not cross. They are about confronting the worst demons within us,
and forcing them to submit to the better angels of our nature.
To dismiss the Convention because it grew out of war is misguided. Prior to the
Second World War few would ever have imagined human beings were capable of
such things in modern times. We know now that we are. Let us not think, in times
of peace, that warm days will never cease.
The value of a promise is not in its making, but in its keeping. To believe that we no
longer need to keep these promises, that we no longer need these rights, is like
dismantling your smoke alarm because you’ve never had a fire. It would be
wonderful to believe nobody would ever cross the lines we drew in 1953 – but
history has taught us that one day, someone will try.
We know too that oppression doesn’t announce itself with fire and shot. It knocks at
the door as a friend might and waits, silver-tongued, to be invited in. It takes control
slowly through consent, not force.
Repealing the Human Rights Act is being sold as a common sense thing to do, as if
we were giving up something we never used anyway. The Conservative Party are
not saying to white, middle-class, educated voters ‘we want to tap your phones’.
They have couched their policy in terms designed to make the country think this only
applies to Other People, to those who are damaging “society as a whole”.
But repealing the Human Rights Act, and withdrawing from the Convention, doesn’t
happen one right at a time, or on a person-by-person basis. If it happens, it happens
to us all. And – as Nigel Evans MP realised too late after voting for the law that later
denied him legal aid – thinking it’ll never happen to you doesn’t mean it never will.
In refusing to surrender our fundamental rights, we stand fast behind the lines our
grandparents drew – and we lose nothing. In giving them away, in telling ourselves
it is only the foreign; the criminal; the Other who suffers – we risk everything.
Harriet Johnson
October 2014
Doughty Street Chambers 54 Doughty Street, London, WC1N 2LS
T +44(0)20 7 404 1313 E [email protected]
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