Page 16 - PT Winter 2021-2022

A VIEW FROM THE HIGH STREET

Gethin Russell-Jones

get very edgy when governments constitutional rights and starts Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).
tinker with human rights. In messing about with its moving parts, Again, following the Second World
I my view, we are born free, and we should begin to get worried. And War, the great European powers
every person is an equal child of God, my dis-ease comes not from the gathered to safeguard individual
our Heavenly Father. Government conduct of a remote central American liberty after the despotic carnage of
tinkering may be acceptable in regime but the mother of parliaments that conflict.
times of national emergency but it’s in Westminster. Winston Churchill, among others,
not the norm. The current Conservative was a signatory to this ground-
During the two World Wars, government has opened a breaking piece of legislation that
British society bore little consultation to change some of the helped to frame post-war Europe.
resemblance to the one enjoyed provisions contained in the Human In 1998, the landslide Labour
in peacetime. Police powers were Rights Act 1998. Government passed the Human
greatly extended and normal This Act enables UK citizens to Rights Act, incorporating the ECHR
everyday routines were disturbed by petition the courts when they feel that into British law. This new piece of
the long arm of government. the state has overreached its powers legislation enabled UK citizens to get
and denied their human rights. the full benefit of the ECHR in British
We have experienced similar The UK has a long tradition of courts without needing to travel to
arrangements during the pandemic. respecting individual liberty. When Strasbourg.
Faced with rampant disease and a the Magna Carta was signed in 1215, And now the British Government
squeeze on the NHS’s finite resources, it enshrined the concept of the rule has decided in its wisdom to meddle
human liberties were greatly affected. of law. This meant and continues to with rights so hard won. The
We have lived through mean, that no one is above the law. intention is to revise the Human
extraordinary times, when it was Governments, monarchs, earthly Rights Act and replace it with a
deemed unlawful to travel, socialize powers, as well as private citizens are Bill of Rights.
or even attend a place of worship all accountable to properly made laws. They want to close so-called
with others. But it was in the national Thus, if an individual has been loopholes in the Act that in their
interest for a short period of time robbed of their rights by state power, opinion allow foreign criminals to find
and the public largely supported legal redress is available to them. shelter in the UK by pleading certain
these extreme measures on the After the horrors of World War provisions of the HRA.
understanding that these freedoms Two, the United Nations adopted There are some, however, who
would be restored as soon as it was the Universal Declaration of Human smell a rat. Schona Jolly QC, a human
safe to do so. Rights, consisting of thirty articles rights barrister, is quoted in The
But when a democratically elected that enshrined the ‘basic rights and Times (14 January) as saying that
government opens the bonnet of fundamental freedoms’ of individuals the plans had ‘all the hallmarks of
everywhere. a cynical attempt to water down
‘...the British Government has decided in its ‘Human beings,’ rights protections, including for
wisdom to meddle with rights so hard won.’ it announced, ‘are some of the most vulnerable in our
born free and equal society, under the nationalist guise of
in dignity and reframing the arguments about what
rights’ regardless of is quintessentially British’.
‘nationality, place of The book of Genesis in its early
residence, gender, chapters furnishes a glorious picture
national or ethnic of humankind. We bear the divine
origin, colour, image and are given a mandate to
religion, language, tend God’s good creation.
or any other status.’ Human beings are children of the
This in turn had king of the universe, enjoying great
a huge impact rights and responsibilities.
on the European Let all governments tread carefully.

16 The Plain Truth Winter 2021-2022 Find us online at www.plain-truth.org.uk