This post was contributed by Devin Frank Law (LLM) graduate. Devin attended Bianca Jagger’s speech at the School of Law’s annual Patrick McAuslan Lecture on Friday, November 6
Bianca Jagger
We all see the signs in the tube, listen to the debates in the evening news and read the contrasting opinions in the Daily Mail and The Guardian.
Should David Cameron’s majority government scrap the Human Rights Act? Should they lead us out of the Convention of Europe? Should the UK exit the European Union?
On Friday 6 November 2015 long-time human rights activist and the Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador Bianca Jagger spoke at Birkbeck to give an enlightened and informative perspective on the UK’s current human rights debate.
While Bianca’s talk did indeed have the emotion, humour and flair one might expect from a human rights rockstar (figuratively speaking) — her talk was also a well-researched and academically sound historical analysis of how Britain developed its long standing and legally robust human rights tradition.
From Magna Carta to migrant crisis
Bianca began her talk by reminding us that Britain was not always a democracy governed by the rule of law. For most of its existence England had a Monarch who answered neither to Parliament nor the people and governed with absolute authority. In the year 1215 this began to change when King John bound himself to the Magna Carta; however, and as Bianca persuasively argued, the principles emanating out of the Magna Carta took 800 years to root themselves in law culminating with the 1998 Act of Parliament — the Human Rights Act.
We were also reminded throughout Bianca’s talk that 730 years after the Magna Carta the people of Europe endured the worst abuse of authority and government power in the continent’s history. In the context of the current debate – should the UK leave the council of Europe – Bianca reminded us that following the horrors of the Second World War, the general consensus of ‘never again’ UK authorities led the way in drafting and establishing the 1950 European Convention of Human Rights.
In the context of the current migration crisis Bianca did state that 65 years after the ratification of the European convention of Human Rights, it’s odd and indeed counterintuitive that in the midst of yet another humanitarian catastrophe, British Politicians are looking to reduce and take away the rights of the people.
One might argue that British politicians are simply looking for political ways to reduce their moral, ethical and legal responsibilities; however, and through her talk, Bianca argued that ‘our’ human rights are the result of hard fought battles and elements of British Society that we the people must defend.
A weak UK Human Rights Act
The underlining message and golden thread of Bianca’s talk was that human rights belong to the people and are there to protect the people. Everyday otherwise normal people rely on their human rights in housing and employment tribunals, in cases against their local councils and in situations where individual police officers attempt to overstep their authority. An important example is the relationship between our democratic duties as citizens and our right to protest when we feel that our political representatives have led us astray.
In closing this blog, I will attempt to leave you with a rather simplistic observation. Bianca’s argument is that we need our human rights and any attempt to weaken our legal rights is an attack on the society we have spent 800 years building.
However, I would point out the Britain’s Human Right’s legal framework is already weak. Compared to other similar countries, Germany or Canada for example, the UK’s Human Right’s Act is incapable of declaring a government decision or policy unconstitutional. If Parliament is truly intent on ignoring human rights, they can.
Perhaps than, what should be taken from Bianca’s talk and this simple observation is that it is as important now as ever before to not only defend the human rights that we do have, but to continue to build a society based on the rule of law and the individual rights of citizens i.e the battle has been hard fought but there is still work to be done.
The message should therefore be that instead of taking three steps backwards and abolishing the Human Rights Act, we should be taking five steps forward and not only protecting the Human Rights Act but actively working to strengthen it so as to ensure that our rights are truly and genuinely protected.
View the Patrick McAuslan lecture 2015 below:
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