Human Rights Are For All Not Just Those Who Can Afford to Buy Them

The stale, pale, male aphorism associated with our political elite is far from defunct. The run up to the election is invariably dog whistling O’clock. I can set my watch by them. Be it Enoch Powell (rivers of blood), Michael Howard (“Are you thinking what I’m thinking”?), Gordon Brown (the Britishness test) or UKIPs bongo bongo land (though in fairness to UKIP, they wear their racial epithets on their sleeves).

Homogeneity and inbreeding leads to a lack of creativity and ideas, a by product of which is poor decision making. A phenomena described by George Orwell as, “The decay in the ability of the ruling classes”. Given 54% of Tory MPs have been educated privately (versus 7% of the overall population) and indoctrinated in establishment ideology, it’s little wonder the same old clichés emerge in the run up to every election. I can imagine the pre-election brainstorm at Tory HQ, “How about, go home foreigners, discreetly written on the side of vans cruising immigrant “hot spots”? Or, “Islam is the new IRA” (though I never heard the phrase “Catholic fundamentalism” on Newsnight).

This time they came up with scrapping the Human Rights Act (HRA). In practice, the government has cut legal aid to the point where only the rich can afford to access many aspects of the HRA. Only women on 6 figure salaries, for example, can afford to take their case of sex discrimination to an employment tribunal. In theory, the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is a watchdog, there to uphold the rights of ordinary people. In practice, it’s a toothless organistion, so bereft of funding, and gumption, to render it almost extraneous.

In practice, the most vulnerable in our society have less access to the HRA now than ever before. Under the Con-Dem coalition we have seen the legislature lurch to protect the interests of the state and the powerful, such as large corporations (Amazon, Google, Starbucks, energy giants, banks etc etc) at the expense of the individual. In addition to cutting legal aid (resulting in an 80% reduction in tribunal cases), criminalising peaceful protests and making freedom of information requests more difficult, have, in my view, eroded what little recourse ordinary people had to justice.

Human rights laws are supposed to protect the marginalised from the powerful. This is why a bill of rights (the alternative proposed by the Tories), decided solely by the parliamentary majority, is so perilous. The HRA serves as a check on the majority.

McDonald's Corporation v Steel & Morris is a case in point. McDonalds sued 2 environmental activists (known as the Mc Libel two) over a leaflet they claimed was libelous. Two hearings in English courts found some of the leaflet's contents to be indeed libelous and others to be true.

However, in 2005 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the original case (heard in the UK) had breached Article 6 (right to a fair trial) and Article 10 (right to freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights. In its ruling, the ECHR criticised the way in which UK laws had failed to protect the public right to criticise corporations whose business practices affect people's lives and the environment (which contravenes Article 10). It also ruled that the trial was biased because of the defendants' comparative lack of resources and what they believed were “complex and oppressive UK libel laws”.

In particular the Court held: "in a democratic society even small and informal campaign groups, such as London Greenpeace, must be able to carry on their activities effectively and that there exists a strong public interest in enabling such groups and individuals outside the mainstream to contribute to the public debate by disseminating information and ideas on matters of general public interest such as health and the environment".

It is thanks to the HRA that Jacqueline Carmichael (who has spina bifida) and her husband /carer, are not homeless. They successfully challenged the grossly unjust bedroom tax (AKA tax on poverty). They appealed against the crippling cut to their housing benefit on the grounds that it contravened their human rights. It was physically impossible to fit 2 beds into their tiny flat so Jacqueline’s carer husband had to sleep in a separate room.

It seems the bedroom tax (together with benefit cuts) is also forcing some soldiers, disabled by combat, into destitution. The newspapers regularly report stories of war heroes having to sell their medals to pay for care homes and to avoid eviction. Evictions are at a 10 year high yet, William Hague is reportedly living in a luxury London residence costing the taxpayer £2,000 per day (disclaimer: I have been unable to corroborate the facts of this story..). A charity boss responded, “Who exactly are the scroungers in our society”? Fear not, a government spokesperson reportedly said, “We monitor usage for good value for money”. That’s alright then.

As the Human Rights Group Liberty recently reminded us, the HRA protects victims of crime. For example, as a result of a case brought in the European Court under Articles 3 and 8 of the ECHR, rape victims no longer have to suffer the indignity and trauma of being cross-examined in person by their alleged attackers.

It’s thanks to the Human Rights Act that children with SEN in this country still enjoy the right to mainstream education. Funding for which has been under threat recently by unscrupulous local authorities around the country.

We’ve seen how state powers can be used to abuse the rights of the individual. Undercover police officers spying on the Lawrence family in the aftermath of their son Stephen’s death, rather than looking for his killers. Yet more under cover officers “infiltrating” environmental activists, engaging in sexual relationships and, in some cases, fathering children. The women who fell victim to such “surveillance” described it as “like being raped by the state”.

Finally and compellingly, Liberty warns us, “Anybody’s privacy could be breached by the prying eyes of the state or big corporations, anybody can be wrongly accused of a crime, and anybody could fall foul of careless and insensitive decision-making by public authorities. Hopefully this won’t happen to you but if it did, you might find you need to rely on the Human Rights Act or the European Court of Human Rights to help you”.