Human Rights and the Supreme Court of Europe

On 9 July 2013, Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, said this in The Daily Mail:

“As a result of a misguided ruling in Strasbourg, our judges cannot now tell the most brutal of murderers, such as Dale Cregan, the man who butchered two policewomen in Manchester, that they will never be let out of prison. No matter how awful their offence, no matter the terrible damage they might have done, yesterday’s ruling from the European Court of Human Rights means that every offender who receives a whole life tariff must be given the right to a review of the sentence, keeping open the possibility of release.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the tentacles of the ECHR creep all too far into areas which should be matters for national courts and national parliaments to deal with… It’s tried to set itself up as the Supreme Court of Europe…

The phrase ‘human rights’… is becoming more and more discredited here because the public, rightly, doesn’t understand why it’s been used as justification for paying rapists compensation for ‘frustration’ at a delay to their parole hearing or allowing terrorists to stay here despite their stated aim to harm this country and its citizens…

I simply do not believe that the noble intentions of the writers of the original convention were ever intended to be used to give justification for paedophiles to challenge being placed on the sex offenders register, or give a convicted killer who slaughtered his family the reason to claim his whole-life tariff is ‘inhuman and degrading’. Or to take judgments that seem to completely forget the rights of the victims and their families.

We need to curtail the role of the European Court of Human Rights in the UK. The days when it could interfere with the settled wishes of the British Parliament and people must end…

Labour and the Lib Dems will have none of it. They want things to stay as they are. This is mad. I don’t understand them.”

Oh, I understand them very well, Chris. They are at war with the British people. The immigrant, the criminal, these are their pet footsoldiers. Political correctness, positive discrimination, the race laws, victim-unfriendly human rights legislation imposed on us by foreigners and a thousand others nasty, little Brit-seeking bomblets would be their weapons of mass destruction.

You and the rest of the Tories are at war with us as well, of course. You put the fat cat bankers and trough-gobbling businessmen a long way before the people you’re elected to serve.

And all of you are happy to put our young men and women in harm’s way for Israel, America, oil and a global Utopia drenched in innocent blood.

That's a given.

Max Hastings said this in The Mail on the same day:

“The stranglehold which Human Rights now exercises on the way we conduct our affairs, to the advantage of no one save terrorists and… lawyers, has become a very bad joke…

Yesterday’s verdict from the European Court of Human Rights, branding whole-life tariffs for murderers in British prisons as ‘inhuman and degrading’, represents an insulting intrusion into our national affairs, made by people who are quite unfit to influence them.

Of course, this is merely the latest of many foolish and inappropriate judgments, but that does not make it more acceptable. The European Convention was adopted in 1950, the Court created in 1959. Those were days when many countries, the Soviet Empire notable among them, routinely imprisoned, tortured and executed people, often without trial. Franco’s Spain was still garrotting domestic critics…

The issue here is the right of Britain, as a state with a responsible and long-proven legal system, to adopt its own policies about appropriate punishments for criminals. What we do with our murderers has absolutely no influence on the right of other nations to make different arrangements. It seems intolerable that 16 Strasbourg judges should dictate to Britain how it addresses crime and punishment…

The Strasbourg Court takes pride in the fact that it is constantly extending its remit… Other countries are protected, to some degree, by domestic judges who are more robust than our own in upholding national interests, especially on security matters. Who can imagine France, for instance, dallying for years as did Britain and its courts over the deportation of the appalling Abu Qatada?…

It seems intolerable for this country to remain in thrall to the Strasbourg Court, and its ever more intrusive and absurd judgments. It is grotesque that a cluster of ill-qualified judges, several of them drawn from the most corrupt and ill-governed nations in Europe, should abuse their powers to lay down law, quite literally, to the Government of Britain.”

Max added:

“The Liberal Democrats currently block any legislative attempt to escape from the human rights quagmire.”

He also described Cherie Blair as ‘a standard-bearer of the legal profession which waxes fat on HR spoils.’

Thanks to you and Chris for idenitifying the enemy, Max. Labour; the Lib Dems; the Blairs; a wallet-stuffing legal profession; ‘domestic judges’ and a high and mighty bunch of finger-wagging foreigners in Strasbourg.

Chris didn’t mention the Tories and their banker bosses, neither did Max. And neither did Max say anything about the media’s role in the all-round awfulness.

Never mind. For once, our political and media masters are telling it straight.

For this small mercy we should be grateful.