We must stand tall and be proud of our record on Human Rights

Human rights have taken a battering over recent years, on the end of an onslaught from those who think the wrong people’s rights are being protected, or that it’s a foreign plot to impose alien ideals on the British people.

Even for a passionate advocate of human rights as myself, it’s not easy to stand firm in the face of these attacks. But I do stand firm, because for me it goes right to the heart of everything I believe in.

It was the vision of our politicians in the smouldering ruins of post war Europe whose determination saw the establishment of a basic set of freedoms for everybody, without regard colour, background, sexuality, disability or nationality. People were given the power to take on the might of the state, and stand up to governments that trampled on the fundamental rights of their citizens.

The Labour movement should be enormously proud of our role in establishing protections for human rights both here and abroad. And we should be robust in pressing the case for why human rights matter, arguing that a set of fundamental freedoms benefit all of us, and have brought enormous improvements to the lives of countless people such as victims of crime, the disabled and the elderly.

The post war Labour Government, in spite of so many chronic challenges, played such a key role in establishing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) – adopted on this very day in 1948 by the United Nations. The UK was one of the first signatories.

Clement Atlee’s post war Government was also instrumental in the setting up of the Council of Europe. One of the Council’s first tasks was to draw up a set of rights that would apply to every person – no ifs, not buts. These rights would protect against torture, inhumane treatment, and would uphold crucial democratic freedoms like free speech and a right to privacy. British politicians and British lawyers led the way. So great is the legacy that Labour’s foreign secretary at the time lends his name to the address of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg – Ernest Bevin Quai!

It was Harold Wilson’s Government in 1966 that first allowed British citizens to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. This was a really crucial step – only then did the rights enshrined in the ECHR really gain meaning for the British.

More recently, it was Tony Blair’s Government that took the bold step of legislating for the Human Rights Act (HRA) in 1998. The HRA, in essence, brought the rights of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) into UK law, meaning our judges and our courts could take decisions on whether British people’s rights had been infringed, instead of waiting many years to take cases to Strasbourg.

We as a movement have always has a strong internationalist streak. We’ve campaigned ferociously for the supressed and the marginalised both here and abroad. Many of us have joined protests and marches against Apartheid or in support of democracy in the former communist states of EasternEurope. We know full well the importance of working across borders to further the aims of social justice.

That’s why we get how absolutely fundamental a system like the ECHR is to protecting people’s rights across the continent. It only works with the political will and the moral leadership shown by those countries with exemplary human rights records. Only then can we bring the pressure to bear on those with much worse records, safe in the knowledge our own house is in order.

So threats of walking away from the ECHR and ripping up the HRA, as the Tories are suggesting, would be utterly disastrous for our own international standing, and to the human rights of millions in other countries. Many less scrupulous governments will rub their hands with glee at the prospect of the Tories getting their way. A European human rights system without the UK would be a backward step I don’t want that on my conscience, which is why I’m determined to do all I can to fight the crackpot Tory plans.

We must stand tall and be proud of our record. Confident in facing down the doom mongers who are only too ready to rubbish human rights, and would walk away from our international obligations. Harold Wilson once remarked that the Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing. If promoting and protecting human rights here in the UK and abroad aren’t part of Wilson’s moral crusade, then I don’t know what is.

Sadiq Khan MP is the Shadow Justice Secretary