Equality And Human Rights?

What Equality, exactly? Plainly not economic equality. And there is none without that. As for Human Rights, in this sense of the term, nothing that was largely written by David Maxwell Fyfe ever did have anything to do with the Left. Not the European Union into which he so castigated Anthony Eden for not having taken Britain at the start. And not this, either.

There was a reason why the incorporation of such things into British domestic law was never attempted by any Labour Government until that of Tony Blair. It duly proved useless as civil liberties were shredded; it was the dear old House of Commons that stopped the detention of people for 42 days without charge.

And it duly proved useless as the poor, the sick and the disabled were persecuted on a scale and with a venom that had not been seen since before the War, if ever. That persecution has of course continued into and as the age of austerity. Against that, human rights legislation has been of only the most occasional use, if any. That has always been the intention.

In May 1948, the pompously self-styled Congress of Europe assembled in the Hall of Knights, in The Hague. Addressing that assembly, Winston Churchill called it "the Voice of Europe". But in fact it was mostly made up of politicians who had recently been defeated at the polls, of the representatives of Royal and Noble Houses that had fairly recently been dispossessed at least in political terms, of the likes of Churchill who fell into both categories, and of people whose lives' work was trying to delude themselves that so did they.

In the name of the order that had held sway for a century between the defeat of Napoleon and the First World War, their aim was very explicitly to check the Social Democracy that was sweeping Western Europe at the time. The material that they produced had that intention, and it has had that effect. Lo and behold, Tony Blair had it written into British domestic law.

And lo and behold, the body that he created for its enforcement, when it is not sacking black and disabled staff first, and when it is not failing to find anything wrong with the Government's handling of the Windrush scandal, is now trying to bring down Jeremy Corbyn. Not that Corbyn is necessarily helping himself by backing down when he ought to be fighting back.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.