“The European Convention on Human Rights is a very fine Treaty which, as a country, we should be proud to have signed up to. “
No, jack. What we should have done was to have declined to sign up on the basis that none of the rights and fundamental freedoms conferred by that Convention were denied to people in the UK anyway and so our signature was unnecessary. That’s something we could have been proud of. As far as I know in 1950 nobody in the UK suffered torture (Article 3), nobody was subject to unfair trials (Article 6), nobody was denied the right to marry (Article 12 which, interestingly, still does not encompass same-sex marriages), nobody was denied the right to free assembly and membership of a trade union (Article 11), nobody was denied freedom of thought and religion (Article 9), nobody was denied the freedom of expression (Article 10). The few people that did feel these rights had been denied them had adequate recourse available to them via the domestic courts.
“The trouble is with the interpretation our senior legal-beagles place on these Articles.”
“that is why i said it needs amending, those legal eagles are causing this, shame on them.”
It is not the fault of the judges. It is the fault of the convention itself and the UK’s need to comply with it is the fault of successive governments from the one that was in power when it was signed up to today. Some of the Articles are deliberately vague and all encompassing. In particular “Family Life” (Article 8) is not defined and this is the clause that is most frequently criticised when used by people such as the subject of this question. The fact that judges have been able to interpret the law as it stands is not their fault That’s what judges do.
As far as the UK is concerned the Convention was unnecessary, unwarranted, not very useful and, because of its vagueness, open to wide interpretation way beyond its architects’ original intentions. These arguments are insoluble with the Convention in its current form and the only option for the UK is to withdraw its signature and for the 1998 Human Rights Act (which is largely a carbon copy of the Convention) to be repealed. There is no reason why killers such as “GHA” (we cannot even be told the identity of child killers living amongst us) should enjoy the “Right to a Family Life” when she has slaughtered one of its members. She can enjoy (what’s left of) her family life elsewhere.