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Article published in Tribune for 29 March 2002
Point of View
Blaze a new trail of civil liberties
Labour has traditionally been
strong on equality. For many socialists, it remains the prime
value. Trade unions have always been strong on fraternity.
On liberty, the record of individual Labour members has been
outstanding. Jack Jones, the former TGWU leader, was among many
Labour members who fought in the Spanish Civil War. Anti-fascist
and anti-racist movements have always drawn heavily from the Labour
Party.
And Labour Members have
always been prominent in the National Council for Civil Liberties (now
LIBERTY). It was in 1950, under the post-WW2 Labour
Government, that Britain signed up to the European Convention on Human
Rights - and it was under Labour in 1998 that the Convention was fully
incorporated into UK law
There has been no organised
civil rights focus, however, within the Labour Party. After
1945, Labour focused on health reforms, industry, town planning,
energy and transport. Labour Cabinets were busy taking over the
commanding heights of the economy, whenever they got the chance.
And the prime concerns of the trade union movement lay in collective
action, collective bargaining. It was not until the
1990s, under John Monks, that the TUC swung towards the promotion of
individual workers' rights.
The upshot is that there has
been no affiliated socialist society focusing on civil
liberties. Until now. The Socialist Civil Liberties
Association has been formed, and will meet in general meeting at the
House of Commons on Monday 22 April 2002. The SoCLA Constitution
is at its website www.leftrights.org.uk
Membership (at £5 pa) is limited to Labour Party Members, and
SoCLA is committed by its Constitution to seek affiliation to the
Labour Party in due course.
Organisations may affiliate
to SoCLA (£17 pa) if they are affiliated directly or
indirectly to the Labour Party. Trade union branches will be
entitled to affiliate (if permitted by their own Rules), as
will other affiliated socialist societies.
SoCLA Scotland is headed by a
senior Glasgow political figure Michael Kelly. Kelly says -
"It was not economics that brought me into the Labour
Party. It was the assertion of individual liberty within a
strong community. Over the past ten years, these values have
slipped down the Labour agenda.
As Scots, we are particularly
conscious of the tradition of David Hume. Civil rights, human
rights, are in our blood. We took the lead in the Anti-Apartheid
Movement. Labour should be championing individual rights, not
only for our citizens but for immigrants, and throughout the wider
international community".
Human rights are the stuff of
everyday politics, not some optional extra. They are a
precondition of strong government, for no contemporary administration
that disregards such basic principles can command either legitimacy or
respect.
Many of SoCLA's concerns will be shared with LIBERTY and
international civil rights organisations. But SoCLA will see to
highlight civil rights issues which are bound up with the operation of
the civil state, such as means-testing methods, school selection,
medical procedures, and consistency of law enforcement.
New political thinking is needed to safeguard human rights
in the international management of migration. The
injustices regularly generated by national jurisdictions will be
resolved only by the emergence of a new world concordat on the
consistent treatment of migrants. SoCLA will engage with the
enforcement of civl rights throughout the European Union, and will
cultivate links with other European socialist groupings.
Human rights should extend too to the protection of the
individual against the abuse of power by the corporate sector.
It is arguable that trade unions should now be concerned more with
upholding "their members' individual rights" than with
collective action to secure collective goals.
Children's rights are also moving up the political
agenda. Other rights are likely to become enforceable, as
political fashions develop and change. Later this month (April
2002), the final milestone will be passed in the long process of
ratifying a new International Criminal Court. It will be
established, in spite of the non-participation of the United States.
With more than 200 state jurisdictions in the world, the
human rights agenda offers the prospect of an international common
denominator between them. That agenda is therefore of key
political importance. Every Party ought to have its own internal or
near-Party focus.
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