[ALBSA-Info] The Express

[Agron Alibali]

The Express 
May 7, 2001 
LEADER; Pg. 12 

 LEADER - BRITISH LAW SHOULD NOT BE UNDERMINED BY THESE EURO OUTSIDERS; HUMAN RIGHTS RULING DESTROYS OUR FREEDOM 

JOHN LAUGHLAND 


IT IS very appropriate that, on Friday, the European Court of Human Rights should have ruled in favour of IRA terrorists who were trying to destroy our society. For the effect of incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into British law is to strip British society of its rights. 

Labour defended the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British law by saying that, henceforth, British judges would rule on human rights cases brought by British subjects. The Government wanted to avoid a repetition of the notorious ruling in 1995 when the Strasbourg court ruled that the SAS had unlawfully killed three IRA terrorists in Gibraltar in 1988. 

Friday's ruling shows that this argument was a complete sham. 

Instead, the legal and political procedures by which British people deal with terrorism on British soil are subject to adjudication by people who do not know our laws and who do not live in our country. 

Every year our Parliament, elected by us, votes a renewal of special powers under the Prevention of Terrorism Act: soldiers and police operate under the rule of law and according to its provisions. No doubt these procedures are sometimes inadequate; no doubt sometimes offences are committed. But why should the people who are directly affected by this terrorism, the British themselves, be subordinate to outsiders when it comes to assessing whether our judicial and political processes are adequate? 

To add insult to injury, one of the seven judges who handed down this particular ruling is from Albania. A big mafia stronghold, Albania is one of the most lawless and crime-ridden countries in the world. But it belongs to the Council of Europe and thus gets to appoint judges to the European Court of Human Rights. 

The Albanian judge, Kristaq Traja, worked as a state prosecutor under the Stalinist tyrant, Enver Hoxha, who was himself an enthusiastic supporter of the IRA. Judge Traja also works for the Soros Foundation in Albania, an organisation which campaigned against the anticommunist Democratic government of Albania until it was overthrown in a violent armed uprising in 1997. That revolt brought the former communists back to power and now Traja works for the new government, which by the way is notorious for its links to the Albanian mafia. By what right does someone like this sit in judgment over British laws and British democracy? 

But the same problems would remain whoever was sitting in the court in Strasbourg for the simple reason that the Human Rights Act detaches the law-making process from the democratic process. 

Thanks to the Act, laws are no longer made by our elected representatives in Parliament, where the competing claims within society are represented, but are instead subject to the say so of judges. 

The divorce between law-making and democracy encourages people to think they can enjoy their "rights" without considering the cost to society. This in turn makes them resentful when they do not get what they want and prevents them from being grateful for what society gives them. 

In reality, all our rights come at a cost to someone else. The judicial and political process is all about balancing these competing claims in accordance with the rules which define society. The philosophy of the Human Rights Act does not take society's rights into account. Human rights ideology is literally anti-social. 

In one notorious case, a man who had illegally built a house in the New Forest successfully appealed against its demolition in the name of his "right to a family life". But the whole point of having planning regulations is so that the right to a family life can be enjoyed in a manner which is in harmony with other people's rights as well. 

Similarly, one chief constable has written that cannabis will inevitably be legalised by the Human Rights Act. If it is, this means that society as a whole will no longer have the collective right to decide what kind of a society it wants to be. It will depend instead on a few judges to rule whether or not we become a nation of dope heads. 

THIS is why the Human Rights Act is probably the most elitist piece of legislation ever to hit the statute book. Laws are no longer made by us, the voters, acting through our elected representatives. Instead, they are made by about 150 High Court judges who are in turn subject to seven so called judges sitting in Strasbourg. 

Our right as British subjects to have some influence through Parliament over which laws are made in the United Kingdom is thus removed. It has been replaced instead with the right to cringe below the Bench and to say: "Thank you, my Lord" if a favourable judgment is handed down. 

And if the judgment is unfavourable then there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. 

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