Yesterday, parliament asserted its supremacy before the European Court of Human
Rights. As Ross Clark explains, it has been a long time coming.
The Final Indignity, 10th November 2001 by Ross Clark
It wasn’t so long ago that the very mention of the words ‘European Convention on Human Rights’ in conservative circles was enough to provoke frothing at the mouth. Of all the horrors to emanate from the Continent, here was the final humiliation: British ministers ordered around by the bigwigs of European justice. No longer would we be able to beat our children or tell them that they can’t wear earrings and Motorhead T-shirts to their Latin lessons. Murderers, rapists and all would be let loose on the streets, their incarceration ruled illegal on some technicality. The indomitable spirit of the British forces would be broken by gay commandos buggering on the beaches.
On the day in 1997 that Jack Straw announced that the European Convention was to be incorporated into domestic law, the then shadow home secretary, Sir Brian Mawhinney, summed up the Conservative outrage.
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