John Reid’s Stand against Human Rights Legislation

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

John Reid’s Stand against Human Rights Legislation

Under the guise that the Human Rights Act is hindering “the fight against crime and terrorism”, John Reid has aimed an attack at the Act in a newspaper. Reid is using certain cases where people who have been convicted of crimes and cannot be deported in order to spread fear that the protection of human rights undermines “public safety”. Presenting that there is a balance to be struck between human rights and public security, Reid is advocating that the Labour government codify the practice of human rights violations which it has been carrying out in practice. WDIE condemns this fear-mongering by the former Home Secretary, which is part of the arsenal the state is at presently utilising to spread the most backward concepts of the defence of “our way of life” and to sow suspicion and divisions throughout society.

            The Human Rights Act came into force in 2000 and enacted the European Convention on Human Rights into law. Now John Reid is using the legacy of his tenure as Home Secretary to act as an ideologue to spearhead justifying the elimination of the Human Rights Act. His argument is that allegedly the “world has changed”, and he echoes the Brown pledge regarding the necessity to act against “terrorist extremism”. To this end, Reid said that "we need a review of the workings of our human rights laws at a British and European level".

            He went on to say that the original convention was "adopted 60 years ago in response to Nazi atrocities against individual citizens" and that the Human Rights Act meant that the government was fighting “crime and terror” with “one hand behind our back”. Presumably the hand behind the back is ready to come out in full fascist salute, aiming to “legally” attack human rights by “reviewing” the Human Rights Act.

            The Labour government of the last 10 years has consistently brought in legislation to attack the people’s rights and their civil liberties. Its “anti-terrorism measures” have in practice been used to deny rights and criminalise dissent.

The rhetoric of Reid and the Labour government is that the people’s safety is in jeopardy, promoting the warped thinking that “small groups of individuals” threaten “whole communities” and “whole states”. This perverted logic is being used to attempt to whip up sentiment against sections of the people, particularly Muslims and those of Arab or South Asian nationality, and justify doing away with the rule of law on the grounds that there are exceptional circumstances.

            It must be pointed out that the context of these attacks is the growing resistance of the people to the anti-social and pro-war agenda of the state. In other words, the aim of targeting human rights legislation in conjunction with bringing in ever more legislation to repress the activities of individuals and whole sections of the people has not so much to do with fighting “terrorism” but rather is aimed at quelling and subverting the people’s resistance.

            Reid is encouraging Gordon Brown to take “courageous decisions” on the “great issues of immigration, crime and counter-terrorism”. It is the government, not the working class and people, who are declaring that these are the great issues of the moment. The aim is on the one hand to divert the people so that they take up the government’s discourse and not their own, and on the other to prevent serious consideration of how these issues themselves are manifest in society. Rather than being a contribution to resolving any real problem facing the people, Reid is posing these “great issues” to attack the coherence of the movements of the people against war, to defend the rights of all, and to build a society which embodies their interests and provides their rights with a guarantee.

            The government has had so little respect for the letter and spirit of the Human Rights Act that it declared a “state of emergency” to opt out of its binding provisions. Even now, it is unclear whether this supposed “state of emergency” continues or not, so unseriously has it been treated by the government. Its actions, for instance the detention without trial of foreign nationals under this “state of emergency”, have been ruled illegal by the law lords on more than one occasion. The government has de facto torn up the rule of law, and what is now proposed is to entrench this situation and legalise a permanent state of emergency in which exceptionalism is the rule.

            The argument that a balance must be struck between rights and public safety cannot be accepted. It is inimical to the conception that all have inviolable rights by virtue of being human which must be provided with a guarantee. It is also inimical to the guaranteeing of public safety since it justifies and encourages state terror in the name of the security of the people. This argument hits at the very conception of the rule of law which upholds the public good and is free from arbitrariness and imposition without the people’s participation and against their will.

            Labour’s attempts to criminalise and further alienate the people under the guise of paternal protection is at the very least condescending and is an attempt abolish the rule of law in reality. The people must reject these attempts and step up their resistance in terms of consciousness and organisation to the fascisation of the state.