Subjects:

Human Rights and Civil Liberties

Contents:

1: Human Rights, Fundamental Freedoms, and the World of the Common Law

2: The Mechanisms for the Repression of Liberty

3: International Protection of Human Rights before 1939

4: War Aims and Human Rights

5: Human Rights and the Brave New World

6: The Burdens of Empire

7: The Foreign Office Establishes a Policy

8: Beckett's Bill and the Loss of the Initiative

9: Conflict at Home and Abroad

10: The Growing Disillusion

11: Britain and the Western Option

12: From the Brussels Treaty to the Council of Europe

13: A Convention, but on the Right Lines

14: An Unqualified Misfortune: the Rearguard Action Against the Convention

15: Even More Rights: The First Protocol

16: The Consequences of Ratification and the Conversion of the Colonial Office

17: Emergencies and Derogations

18: Britain in the Dock

19: Allegations of Torture in Cyprus

20: Individual Petition and the Court

21: Fifty Years On

Appendix of Selected Bills on Human Rights.

The European Convention on Human Rights, which came into force in 1953 after signature in 1950, established the most effective system for the international protection of human rights which has yet come into existence anywhere in the world. Since the collapse of communism it has come to be extended to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and some seven hundred million people now, at least in principle, live under its protection.

It remains far and away the most significant achievement of the Council of Europe, which was established in 1949, and was the first product of the post-war movement for European integration. It has now at last been incorporated into British domestic law. Nothing remotely resembling the surrender of sovereignty required by accession to the Convention had ever previously been accepted by governments.

There exists no published account which relates the signature and ratification of the Convention to the political history of the period, or which gives an account of the processes of negotiation which produced it. This book, which is based on extensive use of archival material, therefore aims to break entirely new ground.