Human Wrongs | Book and Movie Reviews |Axisoflogic.com

It seems spooky that just as I was finishing my review of this book, the United States walked away from the United Nations’ Human Rights Council (UNHRC) because, according to the US, the fact that most countries see Israel for the brutal nation it is simply doesn’t sit well in Washington. This is another in a long list of examples of where the US pouts and walks off in a huff every time it doesn’t get its own way.

But enough of that. This article is a review of Human Wrongs: British Social Policy and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is the latest effort by writer T.J. Coles whose work has appeared on the Axis of Logic website many times. We are grateful for the opportunity to review this book.

Rather than reinvent an appropriate opening, let me quote directly from the book’s introduction:

In 2018, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) will celebrate its 70th birthday. In principle, it is the most comprehensive set of rights and protections ever committed to paper. But in reality, it is only a piece of paper. Britain is legally bound to follow some of the articles of the UDHR; the ones absorbed into the legally-binding UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 1966, which Britain ratified in 1976. There is no enforcement mechanism for the UDHR, even within the ICCPR. The UDHR’s main signatory and champion, Eleanor Roosevelt, explained at the time: the UDHR is ‘not a treaty; it is not an international agreement. It is not and does not purport to be a statement of law or of legal obligation. It is a declaration of basic principles of human rights and freedoms to serve as a common standard of achievement for all peoples of all nations’.

The UN explains that ‘the UDHR has inspired a rich body of legally-binding international human rights treaties’. Notice that it does not say that the UDHR itself is legally binding; it is only binding through the ICCPR. Had an enforcement mechanism been included and had the UDHR been incorporated into domestic laws around the world, the declaration would have lifted millions out of oppression and abuses at the hands of their own nation-states, especially in those which strongly championed the UDHR: Britain and America.

[For context, you can find the UDHR online here - prh, ed]

As a resident of England, Coles is well attuned to the evidence of just how seriously or carefully Britain has addressed the lofty ideals of the UDHR. And he finds it wanting. Seriously wanting. In fact, his Introduction points to the fact that Britain has been condemned repeatedly by various agencies of the United Nations as successive UK governments have, time and again, violated much of what Britain claims as its implementation of human rights. Naturally, the government’s response to such criticism has been scornful denial

The UDHR itself opens with a Preamble to state its purpose and is followed by 30 clear and easily understood Articles. So it should be obvious that any nation that abrogates the clear responsibility of those articles does so willfully, and almost certainly with malevolence.

Coles lays out his book to mirror the 30 Articles, demonstrating how Britain’s adherence – or rather lack of adherence – to each of the UDHR articles belies its claims to be a democratic and humanistic nation. It is nothing of the sort and Coles skillfully picks through the historic data and documentation to demonstrate the folly of thinking Britain is, well, civilized [my word, not his].

To give an example, the first chapter deals with Article 1 and the problem of Diego Garcia. From the text:

Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Britain’s national status is Constitutional Monarchy and Parliamentary Democracy. Consequently, one may assume that British citizens are actually subjects of the crown, not ‘free and equal’ citizens. Part 1(1) of the British Nationality Act 1948, adopted in the year of the UDHR, states: ‘Every person who under this Act is a citizen of the British United Kingdom and Colonies or…(has) the status of a British subject’ for persons living in the Commonwealth. In other words, English, Welsh and Scots as former subjects were granted formal citizenship, but Irish and Commonwealth subjects remained subjects ....

All of this is irrelevant in a Constitutional Monarchy by virtue of an obscure veto the reigning monarch holds over legislation, known as the Royal Prerogative (also known as Crown Prerogative).

Subsection 2 of the British Nationality Act 1948 states: ‘the expression “British subject” and the expression “Commonwealth citizen” shall have the same meaning’. This is important for the people of Diego Garcia, which makes for a tragic test-case examined in this chapter, because future Acts granted them citizenship, yet the Royal Prerogative reduced them to the status of subjects. Her Majesty’s Government website states that if one of numerous criteria were met, ‘You became a British overseas territories citizen on 1 January 1983 if both of these apply (1) you were a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies on 31 December 1982 (2) you had connections with a British overseas territory because you, your parents or your grandparents were born, registered or naturalised in that British overseas territory’. This should apply to the people of Diego Garcia.

Sounds good in theory. The problem arises when you choose to suddenly withdraw the rights of those people so that you can rent out their home island to the US military. So you boot them off the island, all the while maintaining that they never had any rights to it in the first place.

From the text:

From 1968 to 1973, the islanders were forcibly removed by the British military and deported to the slums of the Seychelles, Mauritius and London, where they have remained ever since.

Depopulation was necessitated by UN regulations regarding decolonization. It would have been contrary to international law for the US to take over a populated territory (colonialism), so the solution was to depopulate Diego Garcia. Britain’s act of forcible exile prevented the US from being scrutinized by the UN Special Committee on the Situation with Regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.

The British Colonial Office made this perfectly clear in secret, internal records. For the colonial officials:

to recognise that there are any permanent inhabitants will imply that there is a population whose democratic rights will have to be safeguarded and which will therefore be deemed by the UN to come within its purlieu. The solution proposed is to issue them with documents making it clear that they are ‘belongers’ of Mauritius and the Seychelles and only temporary residents of BIOT [British India Ocean Territory]. This devise, although rather transparent, would at least give us a defensible position to take up (at the UN).

There is much more to the Diego Garcia story. As has been the case with all the previous books by this author, the research is exhaustive and impeccable. Each chapter of the book deals with an Article of the UDHR and demonstrates the repeated failure of the UK to adhere to the Declaration's prinicples

If you are like me, the fact of the UHDR being nothing more than a piece of paper might have come as a bit of a surprise. We should all be quite accustomed to the fact that nations often sign treaties they never had any intention to honour or later find inconvenient. But the fact that the UDHR started out – and remains – nothing more than a homily to ‘wouldn’t-if-be-nice-if’ was new to me and the fact it is not an enforceable Declaration goes a long way to making clear just how useless United Nations membership can be, and just how much chicanery nations claiming to be honourable and decent are willing to use to avoid actually having to treat humans with simple decency.

I recommend this book without hesitation. Although Coles has written this book as a critique of his own country’s malfeasance, it’s easy to see the same issues apply to Canada, France, and the United States among many others.

As I noted at the outset, the United States has officially withdrawn from any pretense of understanding the concept of human rights. While its absence from the UNHRC is unfortunate, everything worthwhile to ever come out of that Council has been shot down by US intransigence. So at least we won’t have to tolerate listening any further to the blather of the US delegate to the Council, Nikki Haley.

Human Wrongs
British Social Policy and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

First published by iff Books, 2018

Text copyright: T.J. Coles 2017
ISBN: 978 1 78535 864 7
78 1 78535 865 4 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017953224

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