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Human Rights

Published 11 May 2007

Shami Chakrabarti gives her view on how things have changed in the realm of civil liberties.

The Blair legacy is mixed and even contradictory when it comes to human rights.

The Human Rights Act, however under-promoted and misunderstood, is nonetheless our modern Bill of Rights - an optimistic and inspirational piece of first-term legislation.

Similarly, legislation furthering sexuality and race equality promoted modern democratic values that are simultaneously British, European and truly universal.

Yet long before 9/11 and the misnamed and ill-fated “War on Terror, Mr Blair was impatient with the implications of rights, freedoms and the Rule of Law. Judges were remote Dickensian figures wedded to outmoded nonsense like the presumption of innocence.

Whether the subject was terrorism, asylum or “anti-social behaviour”, the “rules of the game” were always changing.

Free speech and peaceful protest, rights to personal privacy and fair trials - these principles have all been seriously eroded by rafts of new laws born of the press release rather than the green paper. Even the rule against torture has started to look a little less absolute.

Excuses for Guantanamo and “extraordinary rendition”, arguments that human rights laws don’t bind British forces in Iraq and the desire to deport undesirables to Algeria and Libya seem a long way from the 1997 promise to “bring rights home".

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2 comments from readers

Luksky
08 June 2007 at 23:30

Above mentioned lady, Shamless Akrobati (Director of Liberty, an organisation "fighting" for human rights), never "fights" a cause outside Britain - or the West. She knows, fighting the horrible human right abuses in Somalia, Sudan, Algeria ... you name it, is very DANGEROUS and DOESN'T PAY well.

She then better fight the Gov... The worst thing that can happen to her is to be elected ambassador to XYZstan, world bank, EIBRD, UN or some other place well paid by tax money. I bet we see her there in 7 years time.

mc 22 November 2007 at 12:24

Luksky, Liberty doesn't fight a cause outside Britain because.......they are a domestic human rights organisation. Which means - that's right, you've guessed it - their remit is restricted to Britain. That was taxing on the brain, wasn't it? Also they aren't funded by tax payers money and i find it unlikely that being director of an organisation that survives on membership and any grants they succeed in netting is the most lucrative job in the country.

I'll take your bet on where we'll see SC in seven years time.

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About the writer

A Barrister by background, Shami Chakrabarti has been Director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties) since September 2003. She has been recently appointed a Governor of the London School of Economics and the British Film Institute and a Master of the Bench of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple.