European Convention on Human Rights

Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate and thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, for initiating it. The tradition of human rights legislation was forged, as other noble Lords have said, in the mid-20th century as a consequence of the experience of the depth of humanity’s inhumanity. Human rights legislation has its very roots in Europe’s Christian heritage and embodies the church’s teaching on the moral significance of every person. We may say, therefore, that the ECHR is one of the remedies against history repeating itself. Recent experience in the Balkans should warn us that totalitarianism is not so distant that it can be treated as a thing of the past in Europe.

The term “human rights” finds its first usage in the Middle Ages. However, from the very earliest laws, such as the code of Shulgi in Mesopotamia, the need to establish dignity and justice was recognised. The king of Lagash in 2094 BCE promised the native god that,

“he would never subjugate the orphan and widow to the powerful”,

nor,

“surrender the man with one lamb to the man with one bullock”.

The king concludes,

“I did not demand work, I made hate, violence and the clamour for justice disappear. I established justice in the country”.

One might say that the objective of human rights is to end hatred, violence and the clamour for justice, but what is noticeable about the role of the king is that he acted as a mediator between gods and humans, and his legitimation came from “above”. Today, much human rights legislation is compatible with Christian theology and some would argue—I would include myself among them—that they require a concept of the divine if they are to be coherent.

We may illustrate the danger of a wholly secular approach with reference to the Enlightenment. Towards the end of the 18th century, the philosophers, Hegel and Weber, took the view that all had been prepared in universal history so that, in Hegel’s words, Europe was,

“the end and centre of world history”.

There is little doubt that such a view led not only to European expansionism and superiority but to exploitation and, ultimately, the godless totalitarianism of the 20th century.

The aim of human rights is to treat human beings as ends and not means. One of the dangers of a liberal democracy and market economies is to reduce the human person to certain activities, units of labour, consumers and voters, and when human beings are treated as ends, unscrupulous Governments and regimes open the possibility of the torture chamber and holocausts of ultimate meaninglessness.

Equally, however, we cannot regard human rights as simply a list of just entitlements dropped into the cradle. If we ask what it means to be a human being in today’s world, we may conclude that there are the time-honoured material essentials of food and drink, shelter and a safe, healthy and hopeful environment, but these are hardly sufficient in themselves. Humanity requires an environment in which to experience the benefits of the virtues of dignity, love, freedom, justice and relationship. In the African concept of ubuntu—I am because you are, because you are, I am—my rights and my humanity and yours are inextricably linked. People who are dignified through human rights also have the responsibility for others.

No system of human law is infallible. In relative terms, the European Convention on Human Rights is short. Undoubtedly there is much to be improved upon. Reform may well be necessary in certain circumstances, and there is probably some baggage to be discarded. There is certainly the need for a better understanding of what it is to be human. It has been said that we are not human beings on a spiritual journey, but spiritual beings on a human journey. Such a journey should include the disappearance of hate and violence, and the clamour for justice. I continue to believe that in some small but very significant way, the European Convention on Human Rights offers a positive contribution to it.