It was reported in this morning’s press that Theresa May’s Government has abandoned, for the moment, the idea of replacing the operation of the European Convention on Human Rights within the UK with a British Bill of Rights. This is good news. The ECHR grew out of the searing experience of two world wars when the UN declared as its objective the building of a world free of war, oppression and discrimination. To redraft the law is a monumental undertaking for which the current administration appears sadly lacking in resources.
In his 2016 Peace Proposal to the United Nations, Daisaku Ikeda offers three ideas that require prompt and coordinated action by governments and civil society These are:
- Humanitarian aid and human rights protection
- Ecological integrity and disaster risk reduction
- disarmament and the prohibition of nuclear weapons.
(Universal Respect for Human Dignity: The Great Path to Peace (SGI, 2016 p.33)
Leaving aside for the moment the third bullet point, the UK Government’s record in regard to the first and second of these is dire. During the last year there have been increases in intolerances and racial disharmony while the official attitude towards refugees has been shameful. ‘Security’ is now a buzzword around not having to bother to consider anyone as an individual. The fact that the Investigatory Powers Act (2016) – the ‘snoopers charter’ – passed through Parliament without a peep is evidence of this. As Margaret Atwood once commented – our Governments treat as like ear-tagged cattle.
Meanwhile poisonous infrastructure projects such as fracking and a third runway at Heathrow having been – effectively – given the go ahead. Despite newspaper headlines carrying pleas by headmasters of schools for the government to protect the air that our children breathe, and terrifying statistics of air quality in London being worse than Beijing, the Government staggers ahead blindly with its plan to put another quarter of a million planes in British skies with all the accompanying NOx emissions and dust particulates.
A disdain for the lives and wellbeing of refugee children is reflected in a disdain for the lives and wellbeing of children of this country. It reflects a Society that has lost sight of the idea of a child being a citizen of the future, or indeed of the meaning of the word citizen. There is little point in our teachers arguing over the future of education in this country if no-one can breathe.
No government can solve every problem on its own. But its role is to show leadership and to inspire others to take action for change and improvement. Political solutions alone will not work. In or out of Europe, nothing will change in terms of individual wellbeing of people in the UK until attitudes change – away from the consumer as fodder for the ambitions of giant corporates – towards a respect for the individual and the dignity of life. At the moment sadly there is little sign of that happening at official level.
