More Steps in the Right Direction

Internal Decay and Mounting Indifference

The government in the UK is taking aim at restoring some of its sovereignty which had been traded away by the previous Labour government.  In 1998 Labour passed the Human Rights Act which contained a clause subjecting the UK to human rights decisions made by the European Court.  The Cameron government is planning to reverse that decision, thereby making British human rights legislation the sole preserve of Britain and even giving a possible veto to MP's over controversial EU human rights decisions.

Long overdue, is our response.  It is now becoming more evident that Cameron's recent Cabinet reshuffle has not weakened the drive towards re-establishing British sovereignty.  It appears to have turbo-charged it. This, from the Telegraph:

Ministers will “curtail” the power of Europe's human rights laws to ensure that British courts are “supreme”, the Justice Secretary has said.Chris Grayling said the Tories planned to replace Labour’s human rights act and ensure British law would return to a better “balance of rights in responsibilities” in law and would make “supreme court supreme again”. . . .

Mr Grayling said that the policy document and draft bill setting out how to scrap the Human Rights Act and pull out of the European court of human rights which he promised last September will be published in “due course”. He said the reforms would be supported by the “vast majority” of the British public and will be a popular move with many Euro-sceptic backbenchers.

Under the plans, MPs could be given a veto over unpopular decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights. The Human Rights Act would be replaced with a new British Bill of Rights to give MPs and peers the ability to ensure that unpopular rulings of the European Court in Strasbourg do not apply to the UK.  A passage in the 1998 Human Rights Act which requires minsters to have regard to the European Court will be dropped.  This would have the effect of making the Supreme Court the final arbiter of complex human rights cases, not the European Court in Strasbourg.

This is a positive move for freedom and democracy in the UK--both of which have taken a battering over the past two decades.  The fundamental principle is this: one cannot have democracy, on the one hand, and internationalism, on the other.

Internationalism necessarily subverts and suborns democracies.  The unfortunate European experiment is a case in point.  An un-elected, non-democratic court of human rights makes determinations on human rights that force nations into directions and legislation and practices that do not reflect the will of the people.  The UK government subjected the UK to the European Court's judgments.  There have been a sufficient number of controversial rulings, contrary to the desires and wishes of the British people, to stir the government into dumping the authoritarian dictat of the European Court of Human Rights.

Britain's Lord Judge told the BBC that Judge Spielmann was claiming too much power for a body of unelected judges whose rulings could not be challenged. "This is a court which is not answerable to anybody," he said. "My own view is: stop here."

Some examples of how British sovereignty and democracy has been attacked by the Court are:

According to English law, all convicted murderers must be sentenced to life imprisonment (this requirement has been enshrined in English law ever since the death penalty was abolished in 1965). Nevertheless, in most cases, prisoners are eligible for parole after a fixed minimum period set by the judge. However, in cases involving exceptionally violent criminals, judges may impose so-called whole-life sentences, meaning the prisoner will never be eligible for release. There are currently 49 criminals serving whole-life terms in the prison system of England and Wales.

But the ECHR—in a landmark case called Vinter vs. the United Kingdom—ruled in July 2013 that life sentences without any prospect of release or review amount to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and thus are a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.  The ECHR ordered the British government—which cannot appeal the decision—to inform the Council of Europe (the enforcer of ECHR judgments) within six months as to how it would apply the ruling to the whole-life sentences given to three convicted killers—Jeremy Bamber, Douglas Vinter and Peter Moore—whose human rights have allegedly been breached.  [Soeren Kern, The Gatestone Institute]

Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption has gone on record detailing how the European Court has "morphed" from an original mandate to one far more intrusive, controlling and demanding.

Sumption highlighted one example of the ECHR's "creative" role in reinterpreting the Convention "so as to reflect its own view of what rights are required in a modern democracy." This approach has "transformed the Convention from the safeguard against despotism which was intended by its draftsmen, into a template for many aspects of the domestic legal order." It has "involved the recognition of a large number of new rights which are not expressly to be found" in the language of the treaty.

"The process by which democracies decline is...subtle... What happens is that they are slowly drained of what makes them democratic, by a process of internal decay and mounting indifference...." — Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption

"The text of Article 8 protects private and family life, the privacy of the home and of personal correspondence. This perfectly straightforward provision was originally devised as a protection against the surveillance state by totalitarian governments. But in the hands of the Strasbourg court it has been extended to cover the legal status of illegitimate children, immigration and deportation, extradition, aspects of criminal sentencing, abortion, homosexuality, assisted suicide, child abduction, the law of landlord and tenant, and a great deal else besides. None of these extensions are warranted by the express language of the Convention, nor in most cases are they necessary implications."

Sumption added:

"The process by which democracies decline is ... subtle ... What happens is that they are slowly drained of what makes them democratic, by a gradual process of internal decay and mounting indifference, until one suddenly notices that they have become something different, like the republican constitutions of Athens or Rome or the Italian city-states of the Renaissance."

When an internationalist, unelected body--far, far removed from those influenced by its decisions--is making rulings on "illegitimate children, immigration and deportation, extradition, criminal sentencing, abortion, homosexuality, assisted suicide, child abduction, the law of landlord and tenant" it has taken over control of life, limb, and liberty.  This is radical, revolutionary stuff.

Internationalism and democratic governments are oil and water.  The former always works to undermine the latter.  Fundamental human freedoms and genuine human rights are choked and expired by an amorphous authoritarian government which does not answer to those it governs.  Power is no longer of the people, by the people, and for the people. 

Thankfully, the United Nations is an unadulterated mess.  We would not have it any other way.  Long may it last as an inchoate, ineffectual, bumbling stewpot, if it continues to exist at all.  But the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights are different beasts entirely. The UK's intended reversal of course is wise indeed.