A little knowledge is indeed a bad thing.

i assume Mr Allen is aware the ECHR was signed back in the mid 1950′s and that the setting up was largely led by the UK. In fact the committee that drew it up was chaired by a Brit (and a Tory to boot).

And of course the ECHR has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the EU.

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I agree that the letter writer seems to have confused two institutions, the EU and the Council of Europe, I would point out that many even those who should know better also make the same mistake.

Although the two institutions are different, it is somewhat confusing to state that the ECHR has absolutely nothing to do with the EU. Membership of the Council of Europe and recognition of the ECHR is a condition of EU Membership, further The Lisbon Treaty which Gordon Brown signed, establishes in Article 6, the legal basis for the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). That is the EU itself will accede to the ECHR thus making all its legislation subject to those rules and will also give EU citizens the right to take a case against EU law to the ECHR. Of course the same treaty also establishes the EU as a legal entity in its own right thus giving it the legal recognition of a state that has the authority to join international organisations.

The conflict is of course between the notion of rights based in the nation state and those applied externally and the further conflict of the differing basic conception of human rights between “English Common Law” and “Corpus Juris”

Our understanding of rights is basically a protection of the people against the power state, this has been built on over hundreds of years, and we all know the touchstones that we have learned to recognise and value; Trial by jury before penalty, the power of juries to find against the evidence, habeas corpus, the separation of state powers so that one part may not act against the public in isolation ect ect. In essence the state is not the provider of rights but is the protector of historically recognised rights and our rights protect us from government. If you look at both Magna Charta and the 1689 Bill of Rights they do not actually grant rights to the people but demand that the state recognise already existing rights.

Tony Blair and his ilk I understand disagree with this explanation and prefer to use a description where the state must intervene to protect us from ourselves; the fact that by doing so the state also removes our protections against it (the state) is not an important consideration in their view.

A glance at the EU Charta of Fundamental Rights show the difference, here we have the state ( in embryo form) actually granting us rights, such as the right to life, the right worship, the right to marry ect (it also introduces a series of social rights) but most importantly it also says very clearly that any and all of these rights may be removed if in the interest of the EU. Hence the EU by granting rights also reserves the power to remove them in its own interest, the hope must be that if ever the EU did take such drastic action someone would point out that our pre existing rights still applied.

The ECHR is problematic for the nation because it internationalises rights, we for instance might not want the state to have the power to lock us up without trial, but at the same time we expect our state to protect us and our state from undesirable foreign elements, under the ECHR these contrasting aims are impossible to accomplish.

We can expect many more such conflicts to arise in the future as we are in the process of moving from one type of law to another which is concurrent with the process of moving from a British nation state based citizenship to EU citizenship, as the EU gradually takes on the function of our new nation state.

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The problem is however you look at is that since the agreement by Tony Blair ,pushed by his wife (money in it for me )the human rights of many criminals has been put before the victims of the crimes .Like it or lump it that is how it is and will remain so until some amendments are made .The law or the administrators of the law must be made to see that and the politically correct do gooders put in their place .

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