Luke Gittos

Freedom from Human Rights Laws

Human Rights - Illusory Freedom is a strange little book. It purports to show that the Human Rights Act and the European Court of Human Rights that receives petitions on it should be repealed. Luke Gittos’ historical summaries are adequate, but his conclusions don’t draw from them. So the whole book is unsatisfying.

He correctly claims that international bodies like the UN and the EU have strengthened their positions by adding human rights to their causes. But he then says this is a negative development, without ever listing all the negatives (except perhaps for claiming it lessens discussions on freedom). Instead, he cities individual cases where he thinks justice failed.

The UK has a glorious history of nibbling away at human rights, for example, removing the right to remain silent. Gittos somehow connects this to the European Court of Human Rights being at fault, when of course it was purely the British Parliament that has been the usurper. The same can be said of Anti-Social Behaviour offences, which police can assign without the bother of trial. But rather than lay blame on the Conservatives or Labour, he calls out democracy itself as the problem. His description of the erosion of rights under both parties is strong, but the conclusion that democracy is the cause goes unsupported.

Gittos treats us to bizarre conclusions such as “It is a though all is fair in love and war except the violation of human rights,” and “Human rights rhetoric ossifies our moral thinking.” He then proceeds to dismember human rights organizations by dissecting their marketing materials.

He glosses over the fact the Human Rights Court has served to both promote the cause of human rights in the West, and has helped numerous individuals from countries where human rights have, shall we say, low priority. He barely mentions that the top three sources of human rights cases the court handles are Russia, Turkey and Italy.

Missing from his arguments altogether are checks and balances. The world is (still) unfair, even in the so-called civilized countries like the UK and the USA. Homeland Security oversees lists of potential terrorists numbering over a million, far more than there are in the world. Their travel is made miserable. The UK deports foreigners it fears will foment violence. It can hold people without charge for four weeks. The USA holds immigrants without charge indefinitely. The Human Rights Act seeks to put a check on those kinds of abuses. When it does not fully succeed, or when it is leveraged to excess by unscrupulous lawyers, that does not mean it must be repealed. Bathwater and babies need to be separated. And diapers changed when filled.

One legitimate beef Gittos has is that calling everything a civil rights issue detracts from political failure. And this really is about political failure. Doesn’t matter whether it’s representative democracy (UK) or pretend democracy (Russia). The fault is in the political will or lack thereof.

Ultimately, there is one sentence at the very end where Gittos pleads for rolling back the Human Rights Act, so that societies can at last have real discussions around the concept of “freedom”. But he never makes the case that killing off the Human Rights Act would achieve that, or be beneficial, necessary, or even a little better.

David Wineberg… (more)