Over the past couple of days, our TV screens have been awash with jubilation and victory speeches. The accolades of ‘calmness’, ‘sheer determination’ and ‘thoroughness’ have been bestowed upon a new British hero for what has been deemed a ‘stellar performance’. I wish I was talking about Andy Murray here, whose match on Sunday was a show of strategic and athletic perfection, having swiped the Men’s Singles Wimbledon title away from the world number one, Novak Djokovic in three straight sets. Unfortunately it’s not Andy Murray I’m talking about here, it’s Theresa May. And her accolades, unlike Murray’s, are not well deserved.
I’m not going to comment on the man, Abu Qatada here. I will freely admit that I do not know enough about the man to comment. Despite the pages and pages of media fury whipped up over the years, none of it gave me an insight into the man it demonised. None of it was informative. Instead, all I got was flat rhetoric on a caricature of evil; on a comic book villain.
I have little to no patience with the highly religious, whatever novel they like to adhere to. So where religion could be used as a tool to the damage a democratic and secular way of life, I’m going to take my place on the side opposing it. If he committed crimes against society, then surely he must be held accountable for them; that is common sense. However, it is the wider issues that have been brought up by these events that have stirred feelings not only of anger and disgust but, most of all, of dread.
Politicians often use periods of self-satisfied backslapping as springboards for policy. When the public are good and placated, politicians believe they will swallow anything, whether it be chocolate milk or razorblades. And whether it’s the sweet residue or the smear of blood around their mouths, they will smile after.
In tandem with the announcement of Abu Qatada’s deportation to Jordan came the Home Secretary’s firm resolution to remove Britain from the European Convention of Human Rights. To the public, this seems like the double toot of the victory trumpet. According to the right-wing press and their political allies, these are two ‘one-overs’ on the great controlling block of Europe and a victory in the war to return power to the British people.
Of course, this is rubbish. I have been constantly astounded at the reaction that this campaign has got from the public since the first rumbling started at the beginning of this coalition. I am absolutely stunned that one of the issues at the forefront of so many people’s minds is to relinquish their own rights as a human beings. The notion is absolutely insane.
The European Convention of Human Rights was written up post World War in the wake of the mass persecution, genocide and wide scale torture regimes inflicted on their own people and the people they conquered. The victors were shocked into finally providing the people they ruled over or represented - depending on your view - with co-operatively ratified fundamental freedoms, which all countries would uphold for people everywhere. These fundamental freedoms include such basic rights as freedom of expression, freedom from torture or servitude, the right to privacy, fair trials and to regular and free elections.
With the horrors so fresh in the authors’ minds, the images of death camps and slaughter on an industrial scale, what we got was comprehensive, and rightly so. As living, comprehending and self-aware creatures, these are fundamental rights that we deserve. And we deserve to know that all these rights will be upheld; with others watching over us as well should our own government falter. Our lives are short and stressful, in the most part in service of the dreams of those at the top, rather than our own. So this is the very least we should expect in return.
But it’s not just the recent history of the war that the Human Rights Act serves to protect us from. Look back at the previous centuries. These were times of political and social repression, and people were allowed to live in appalling conditions. Think of the factories of the industrial era, the poor houses, the near slavery of the working people, let alone the actual slavery of Europe’s colonial conquests. That in certain stratas of society, a human was considered more like an animal than a human.
Now the government desires to take them away from us and replace them with a Bill of British Rights or UK Bill of Rights, which incidentally makes no mention of the word human. The reason they give for doing this is purely a financial one. What they want is to make it easier to deport people. Abu Qatada was in custody while he was here. He had no freedom to incite anything. All he was was a cost. He cost the taxpayer £1.7 million, which is a measly sum when compared to the trillions spent on bailing out the failed banks. However, our government is in no hurry to introduce legislation to take control of those. This is how it is in pretty much every, or if not every single, case.
I know it seems like a lot of money, but it’s probably a fair price to pay to know that your absolute and essential rights and freedoms are maintained. This comprehensive list was put together by a co-operative of nations and organisations, with Winston Churchill at the helm. It was the coming together of multiple bodies giving us the rights that we, as humans, are entitled to. This was done to ensure these rights weren’t just those a state or government were willing to give us - so long as it didn't infringe on their desires and ambitions. It’s exactly this danger that the introduction of this new Bill would present.
The problem now is the opinion of people has changed over recent years. Instead of casting doubt over our rulers, we instead cast the doubting eye over our own doubt. To question certain government policies or to suspect the possibility of some kind of malevolence, whether at present or a possible future infraction, is seen as paranoia by many, even with the evidence to suggest otherwise.
It has just been revealed to us that our intelligence services have already been engaged for years in mass data mining, that they have bugged fibre optic cables and it’s been suggested that they have found ways around the legal checks and balances we thought were there to protect us. Our government criticises countries like China and Russia, but they do exactly the same thing. Ultimately, these surveillance methods are the responsibility of the Home Secretary, Theresa May – the very same individual that wants to rescind all our rights, including our rights to privacy, and rewrite them.
Our country also doesn’t have the best track record with torture. We have sent our own citizens to the illegal Guantanamo Bay for brutal interrogations, with no one at all facing the consequences since the revelations. Many politicians even believed we should have sent Abu Qatada back to Jordan illegally, in defiance of the Human Rights Act, without the treaty with Jordan that ensures his protection from torture. A human is a human, regardless, and if we want to stand tall over those that do wrong, we cannot be hypocrites. Those that rule over us, for all their expensive educations, seem to have forgotten that. How can we trust a government that has so little regard for human life to rewrite our rights as human beings?
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