Writing in Scotland on Sunday on 12th April, Martin Roche makes the case for human rights laws and warns against the right’s plans to have the UK label the European Convention on Human Rights.
Scotland on Sunday is not available online. You can read the original transcript of the article here.
By Martin Roche
“Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”
UN Declaration of Human Rights
It’s nearly eighty years since the signing of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR). Proclaimed in Paris on 10th December 1948, it was the first time in history that the world had a charter that called for legal protection for human rights across the globe.
The Declaration has since spawned over seventy similar treaties worldwide. They give legal force to protecting human and civil rights. Sometimes, they temper the instinct to violent conflict, stay the hand of tyrants and give the world a system that promotes civilized behaviours. It is far from perfect, just as the world is far from perfect. Without them we humans are often defenceless against the powerful.
The UNDHR was the product of thousands of years of history that witnessed genocide, rape, plunder, murder, torture, imprisonment, enslavement, forced labour, land theft and loss of indigenous territories and cultures across the globe.
The people who gathered in Paris to sign the Declaration in 1947 had, for the most part, witnessed two world wars in the space of four decades. Up to 100 million people are estimated to have died in the First and Second World Wars. Most were civilians.
Shocking atrocities were committed by Hitler’s Germany, by the Japanese in China and Korea and, in Russia, some 20 million people died, many of them by the hand of their own leaders.
Along with the estimated six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, the Nazis also slaughtered thousands of Roma, Slavs, Jehova’s Witnesses, the disabled, homosexuals, writers and priests and crushed all forms of resistance.
The National Socialist ideology of racial supremacy and the absolute authority of the Nazi party were codified into law. Any form of protest, indeed any form of expression not approved by the party could see the citizen arrested, charged and convicted. At best, the guilty faced life in a concentration camp. At worst, the guillotine ended their lives. There was no appeal.
There are those on the right of British politics that want the UK quit the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Forty-six Europeans nations are signatories to the Convention, meaning it is law in all those countries. Like all laws it has its flaws, but the rights it gives us all are the most precious jewels any society can bestow on its citizens. They include the right to life itself. The Convention makes torture illegal, outlaws slavery and forced labour, enshrines the right to justice and the right to free expression and assembly.
If the UK withdraws from the ECHR there are no guarantees that any British substitute will be as comprehensive or even be enforced with the same legal rigour and moral force as the European Convention.
Our fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers fought for our freedoms. Don’t let smooth talking politicians persuade us to give up the mechanisms that have for eight decades been essential defenders of our most fundamental rights.
Martin Roche sits on the Executive of the European Movement in Scotland.
The European Movement in Scotland is committed to promoting the essential European value of free speech. Consequently, we regularly publish articles by leading academics, journalists and others discussing issues germane to Scotland’s place in Europe. Such articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Movement in Scotland.