Red Pepper » Peter Apps

Rights and wrong: Why we don’t want a new bill of rights

admin — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:48:29 +0000

On 17 November 2000, two adults with learning difficulties were at home in their council flat. For 15 months, they had been victimised by a gang of teenagers. The council had visited their home, concluding that they were unsafe. But nothing was done; they were left unprotected. And on that night, the gang broke into their house and held them prisoner for three days. They were both physically and sexually abused.
Their compensation claims were rejected by the English courts. But this summer, they forced the council into a settlement. It was only because of the European Court of Human Rights that they were able to do so.
To many people in Britain, this would come as a surprise. After a sustained campaign in the right-wing media, ‘human rights’ has become almost a dirty term. Portrayed as arcane, illogical and bureaucratic, they are seen as the enemy of common sense and friend only of illegal immigrants and paedophiles.
Attacking the Human Rights Act has been a personal priority for David Cameron, who has repeatedly pledged to replace it with a ‘British bill of rights’. An independent commission was set up by the government in March with the aim of investigating how this might work in practice.
Before we embrace Cameron’s proposal, it might do good to consider how our human rights law actually works in practice.
Legal revolution
The Human Rights Act 1998 was nothing short of a legal revolution. It incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) directly into British law. For the first time, you could argue human rights cases in British courts; public bodies could be taken to court for breaches of human rights; and if a law was passed in violation of the ECHR, judges could issue a ‘declaration of incompatibility’.
Since then, the limits of the Act have been most consistently tested by the ‘war on terror’ – control orders, evidence gained through torture, detention without charge, trials where the case against the suspect is not fully declared. In many of these cases the outcome has been a messy compromise that satisfies neither supporters of the government’s security measures nor campaigners against them. But the only way to challenge such increasingly authoritarian government measures was the Human Rights Act.
Its impact doesn’t stop with terrorism cases. The effect of the ECHR stretches way beyond what you might consider their original remit. For example, it is Article 2, guaranteeing the right to life, that means family members must be involved in an inquest when someone dies in the state’s custody. Article 5 (the right to liberty) forces police to explain the reason for an arrest in a language a suspect can understand. And Article 3 (freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment) means a council must pay out compensation when it fails to protect vulnerable adults from a gang.
Since 2000, when the act came into force, our domestic law has developed in accordance with human rights principles. In housing law, they hold up evictions. In employment law, they have greatly expanded protection from discrimination. Even the freedom of the press to report on matters of public interest is based in human rights law.
Years of progress
These same rights might be protected by a British bill of rights. But the ECHR represents a document that has been unpacked by years of legal argument and judicial scrutiny, so that the full implications of each article can be enforced. And many of these implications are highly inconvenient for those in power. It is not unusual for Britain to be found in violation of the convention.
Wipe the slate clean with a new bill of rights, and you start all over again. Years of progress would be lost.
Perhaps more importantly, the Human Rights Act handed power to the courts. Backed up by the judges in Strasbourg, for the first time in English history they have had the authority to question parliament and the government of the day. And over the past decade, with the government progressively hacking away at civil liberties, this authority has been more important than ever.
In many ways the Human Rights Act is a British bill of rights. And unlike the one Cameron proposes, it gives someone independent of government the power to enforce it.
This is the real reason the Human Rights Act angers him: it places limits on what he can do. A new bill of rights would give him a free hand to redefine these limits. And that’s not the sort of freedom we need the law to be defending.

Remember the dead, fight for the living

admin — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 22:09:44 +0000

This summer, a minor Shell oil spill in the North Sea hit the headlines in Europe, while in Nigeria a UN report into the company’s practices was stirring up controversy. Unlike in the North Sea, Shell oil spills in Nigeria do not tend to make the news – and they are much less likely to be cleaned up. The UN report accused the company of 50 years of systematic pollution in the Niger Delta, which has left the region crippled, unsafe and barren. Since the report was funded by Shell, campaigners fear the full extent of the damage may be even worse than it acknowledges.
Along with other companies, Shell has been extracting the oil from the Niger Delta for decades. Since the 1960s, it has made a reported £300 billion profit from the region – at a massive cost to the local people. Poorly maintained pipes have meant constant spillages, ruining fertile land, killing fish and poisoning drinking water. One drinking well, surveyed in the UN report, showed levels of the carcinogenic chemical benzene at more than 900 times the World Health Organisation’s safe standard.
Resistance from local people to this exploitation has a rich history. In 1993, a small tribal group called the Ogoni achieved the seemingly impossible. They formed a group called Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and mounted a peaceful campaign of resistance that forced Shell out of Ogoniland, their home.
Among the leaders of this movement was Ken Saro-Wiwa, and for a while it looked as if they might succeed in reclaiming their homeland from Shell. However, the corporation – and the Nigerian government – had other ideas.
A leaked government memo from 1994 stated that ‘Shell operations are still impossible unless ruthless military actions are taken’ and suggested ‘wasting vocal individuals’. A month later, Ogoniland was invaded by a Nigerian military task force, which murdered and brutalised the local population.
Ken Saro-Wiwa, the most vocal of individuals, was in particular danger. In November 1995, he and eight other activists were arrested by the government on trumped up murder charges. Despite international condemnation of the trial, all nine men were hanged.
Before he died, Saro-Wiwa’s last words were: ‘Lord, take my soul, but the struggle continues.’
These words have proved true. While the exploitation of the region has continued, so has the resistance. In Nigeria, MOSOP is still active and still fighting against what is being done to the Ogoni people’s land. Globally, many groups have sprung up to challenge the oil companies and governments that allow it to happen.

Among them is the Remember Saro-Wiwa project, based in the UK. ‘The project is about campaigning and activism,’ says co-ordinator Ben Amunwa. ‘We’re trying to raise the issue of the Ogoni here in London, which houses many of the energy companies responsible, and is also the destination of the profits they make.’
The project has set out to create a ‘living memorial’ to Saro-Wiwa. ‘We wanted to create a unique piece of public art, something different to the Victorian-era colonial work all over London. We wanted something to highlight the effect our oil dependence has, and the suffering it causes, for communities all over the world.’
The artwork is in the form of a life-sized Nigerian-style steel bus, with the names of the nine executed Ogoni activists, and Saro-Wiwa’s words – ‘I accuse the oil companies of practising genocide against the Ogoni’ – inscribed on the side.
The ‘memorial’ also takes the form of activism and awareness campaigns. The project has plans to release research about the ongoing human rights abuses in the Niger Delta.
‘In many ways, the situation is deteriorating,’ says Amunwa. ‘Military assaults are ongoing; whole villages are being decimated by the task force. There are daily oil spills. Twice as much oil has been spilt in the Delta region than was lost in the Deepwater oil disaster last year. Gas flaring (the practice of burning oil in the open air) has continued now for four decades, and in a region where the average life expectancy is only 45. People have lived and died only ever knowing that reality.’
In Nigeria, activists are still demanding the implementation of a bill of rights for the Ogoni people, and more control over their land and resources. The Remember Saro-Wiwa project is seeking to extend that struggle to England.
‘Oil companies rely on our consent and compliance,’ says Amunwa. ‘They try to make themselves look responsible by sponsoring art galleries, exhibitions and that sort of thing. We can target sites where they have a visible presence.’
‘Many of our savings and pensions are invested in Shell, and therefore in the destruction they’re responsible for,’ he continues. ‘We should all be looking at investing our money responsibly. In the UK, we should also be asking what our government is doing to hold British companies to account.’

The bus is currently located at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham http://www.berniegrantcentre.co.uk/

Southampton: Unions set the pace

admin — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 09:04:46 +0000

‘I’d say it’s a unique action – something that’s never happened before,’ Mike Tucker, branch secretary of Southampton Unison tells me.

‘Never before in Southampton?’ I ask. There is a pause.

‘No,’ he says, ‘never before in the country.’

It is then that I finally realise the scale of what has been happening in Southampton over the last month. While the most obvious sign of the industrial unrest are the piles of rubbish building up on every corner, what Southampton’s council workers are doing is likely to set the standard for unions and public sector workers fighting pay cuts, dismissals and pension reforms for years to come.

Industrial action has been on the cards for some time. Since Royston Smith took over as head of Southampton’s Conservative city council, the city has suffered some of the worst cuts of any local area in the country. Among many other things, rent in council houses is being hiked, local charities are losing funding, millions have been taken out of funds for disabled adults, and pensioners are losing day care centres and cheap meals on wheels.

Most significantly in terms of the industrial action, the council announced that all staff earning over £17,500 would be subjected to a 5.4 per cent pay cut and 250 council jobs would go.

This ‘offer’ was unanimously rejected by Unite and Unison, the unions representing the majority of Southampton’s council workers. The employers then told staff they would be dismissed and rehired on the new, inferior terms. These dismissals took effect this Monday, 11 July – but the fight continues.

Since March, the unions had been promising the most serious industrial action ever seen in the city. In May it arrived.

Toll collectors from Southampton’s Itchen bridge and traffic wardens walked out for a series of week-long strikes, estimated to cost the council a quarter of a million in toll collection and parking fines, no doubt much to the delight of Southampton’s drivers.

Perhaps less pleasing for the city’s residents was the refuse collectors’ strike: they have been walking out on and off throughout June. City bins are taped up, and piles of rubbish are mounting up outside houses, particularly where Southampton’s student population has moved en masse out of the city for the summer.

While the action has not been constant, the waves of on-off strikes have left mountains of rubbish baking in the sunshine, attracting flies and rats. Yet there has been little backlash.

‘People are still generally supportive,’ says Mike Tucker. ‘They know we live in the city too, we all have to deal with it. Once the strike ends it will be difficult and unpleasant for the workers to clear.

‘They want nothing more than to be back at work, but they’re in a position where they don’t feel they have any choice. Some workers are in a position where, with inflation, they could be losing 15 per cent of their income in one year.’

After six weeks of strikes, the unions remain resolute. This week the action has spread to embrace more sections of the council’s staff. Port health officers are now on strike, causing problems for the city’s £300 million a year port.

Street sweepers, library workers, building maintenance workers and social care contact supervisors make a total of 668 workers from eight sections on strike, with most actions lasting for seven days.

Those in work, meanwhile, have been contributing to the strikers’ hardship fund, as well as carrying out other forms of industrial action, including working to rule and refusing overtime.

‘The tactics we are developing here,’ says Mike Tucker, ‘will be used elsewhere.’ This mass action is certainly unprecedented, and the outcome will be watched closely. It is one of the first real battles against the Coalition government’s programme of austerity cuts, and there is a feeling that it may set the blueprint for battles up and down the country.

So far, the council has failed to give in to the unions’ demands, pleading poverty. But according to the unions, the lack of money does not justify the cuts.

‘They are trying to solve their own financial problems at the expense of the workers. Their political priorities come first. Southampton is almost unique in having a council tax exemption for all over-65s: an expensive policy which keeps them voting Tory. Then they found £15 million to spend on the Titanic Museum.’

The cost of this museum totals 60 per cent of the financial black hole that the council has been using to justify its cuts to services, pay and staff. The council sold assets and took short term loans to fund it, somewhat punching a hole in its narrative of ‘dire’ financial circumstances.

In the general election last year, council leader Royston Smith ran John Denham to within 200 votes in the former Labour safe seat of Southampton Itchen. As a consolation prize, Smith took over as head of the Conservative city council, and, perhaps with half an eye on his future career, began engineering the budget which has caused such fury in the city.

But he is being faced down by a determined and united workforce who have managed to fight a unique campaign against his programme of cuts. After being derided in the local press for taking a holiday in Egypt in the middle of the strikes, his party may well suffer the backlash in the local elections next year.

For now, though, the country should be watching the Southampton strikes. Whatever the eventual outcome, the unions are giving an outstanding lesson on how to fight Coalition policies on a local level.