Labour urged to prevent human rights being painted as a “left-wing issue”

The director of Liberty Akiko Hart has argued that Labour needs to resist Conservative attempts at weaponising human rights by portraying them as a “left-wing issue”.

Hart was speaking at at a LabourList and Fire Brigades Union fringe event on Tuesday alongside the general secretary of the FBU Matt Wrack, national secretary of the Blacklist Support Group Dave Smith,  and Zarah Sultana MP, chair of the Socialist Campaign Group.

Hart noted the strangeness of human rights being seen as “left” issue while civil liberties are sometimes treated as a more right-wing concdern.

She also spoke about how the Conservatives were imposing an “increasingly hostile climate around protest, through legislation and sentencing”, and portraying environment protestors like Just Stop Oil as “divisive, unpopular, and unsuccessful”.

The panel discussed the Conservative government’s repeated infringements on civil liberties.  The government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Act passed in April 2022 considerably lowered the threshold of what might amount to “serious disruption to the life of the community”.

Hart focussed on stop and search policing methods, which she described as a “fundamentally racist” initiative, causing “even greater distrust between communities and the police and yet it is one of the cornerstones of policing by at least one of the main parties”.

Lawyers lead Labour and should uphold civil liberties, not work to violate them, says Dave Smith at @LabourList‘s Where does the Labour Party stand on civil liberties?
With @DaveBlacklist, @AkikoMHart, @zarahsultan and @MattWrack in partnership with @libertyhq #Lab23 #Labconf23 pic.twitter.com/pZmxyk7TeF

— LabourList (@LabourList) October 9, 2023

Sultana focused on the impact of the Conservative’s authoritarian policies, arguing that “these laws deprive ordinary people of our rights, core rights like the right to protest, increase powers of the state and police powers”.

Smith noted Labour had not opposed the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill, despite the CHIS Act saying that undercover officers have “total impunity. They will never ever be prosecuted.”

Smith asked with anger: “Where’s Labour on this?… The Labour front bench is full of lawyers, lawyers should be upholding civil liberties, not allowing the state to violate them.”

Wrack focussed on the racial implications of violations of civil liberties, arguing that “every element of state power disproportionately effects certain communities… A civil rights agenda should be to massively reduce the powers of the police, and stop the extension of the powers of the police”.

Wrack expressed concerns with Starmer’s Labour, saying that one of his fears was that Labour are attempting to say “to the British establishment with the reigns of government, with foreign policy, defence, and with civil liberties as well: they were absolutely adamant they would not shift on that legislation”.

An inquiry would just be a way of kicking the can down the road, Wrack added. Wrack also highlighted how the FBU had seen its own members spied on, and how the government’s minimimum services level legislation threatened to significantly restrict the right to strike.

Smith added: “The police are not neutral, they are not a neutral organisation. They do not treat all their citizens their same. Inquiry after inquiry after inquiry has found its institutionally racist, institutionally homophobic, institutionally corrupt”.

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