at-heart-a-gentleman:

enchantedinmywildestdreams:

This is the UK Human Rights Act; this is the stuff that matters. These are the very basic things one can expect.

Our new government want to abolish it. As in they have actually said they want to repeal it. 

If this happens we will have no rights, and no one can help us because it is the government which is doing it. Why would they want to do it? Well it gives them the right to discriminate based on gender, sexuality, race, class or hair colour if they want to. This would give them a legal basis on which to establish a capitalist dictatorship if they want to.

People aren’t being made aware and they need to be aware. This is not just ‘dull politics’ this is actually terrifying. If you are in the UK, join the fightback, if you aren’t then stay aware of what is happening here, please, because we might need you to help us.

yes, the potential repeal of the Human Rights Act is horrifying and you should be angry.

no, it would not give the government the “right” to discriminate, because the HRA does not exist in a vacuum. it’s derived from the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR for short) and there is a court that sits in Strasbourg. individuals can take cases to that court once they have exhausted national remedies. it’s not a perfect system, and it’s pretty fucking slow, but it’s very much there.

the EU is itself a signatory to the ECHR, but the two are actually separate (it’s a common misconception, and one that right-wing politicians love to exploit, so fight it whenever you see it). so even if the UK were to leave the EU, that would not mean opting out of the ECHR. ie Strasbourg stays.

(now they could opt out of the ECHR, but the UK was actually pretty instrumental in writing it way back in 1953, and the reputational damage of quitting would be pretty high. it would be tantamount to announcing to the world “we don’t think we can comply”. for some comparison, Russia is not a signatory, but Turkey is. the UK probably doesn’t want to broadcast the message that its human rights standard could fall below that of Turkey and that it’s in the same club as Russia.)