35 Years of Wrong "Rights"

Some Leavers voted for the UK to leave the European Union in the 2016 Referendum because they don't like human rights interventions in immigration cases. But European human rights are nothing to do with the EU. They are the province of the Council of Europe, set up in Strasbourg in 1951 in response to Second World War atrocities. Therefore the last thing human rights should do is to enable minorities to establish themselves in Europe..... In 1977 I knew that the European Convention on Human Rights would be used to challenge Mrs Thatcher's intended policy to stop foreign men using marriage to live in the UK. So on 10 June 1977 I complained to the European Commission of Human Rights that the British Government allows foreign men to live in the UK through marriage even though I (and other British men) cannot live in their countries through marriage.... This, surely, is what human rights were meant to prevent. I cited Article 3 of the Convention: "cruel and inhuman treatment". But the Commission rejected my complaint on the grounds I hadn't been subject to a decision by a Government body. So I complained to the Equal Opportunities Commission, which I knew was campaigning against Conservative Party policy to end this concession. Its response was that my complaint was outside its ambit. So I complained to the European Commission about the EOC. Its response (eventually) was that I should challenge the EOC in the UK courts. To this end I applied for legal aid for which I was financially eligible. But the Law Society rejected my request.... 35 years ago today the European Court of Human Rights determined in favour of 3 (non-British) women whose husbands weren't allowed to live in the UK. This was the final nail in the coffin of Mrs Thatcher's 1979 election manifesto promise. The British Government's response was to make it harder for foreign wives to live in the UK. ("The Times" 29 May 1985, page 1.) Which is a cause of much hardship, as described in this blog of 22 February 2017.