Yes, Amnesty International is campaigning for the retention of the Human Rights Act

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a poster campaign I noted on London Underground, Act for the Act, a seemingly independent (though not exactly so, as I pointed out) campaign to retain the Human Rights Act. I ended my posting with the words:

My own suspicion that it will not be long before the likes of Amnesty, an NGO as well as a quango, become donors and participants in the campaign. At the very least they will start using it for their own purposes. In fact, their campaign has started already though the Amnesty name is in small letters at the bottom of the page. We must all look for those small letter at the bottom of the page in various supposedly charitable but actually political campaigns whether they are to save the HRA or affirm the UK's membership of the European Union.

I have written about Amnesty International before, pointing out, as have many other people that the organization that was founded for the purpose of helping "prisoners of conscience" long ago lost its way. Calling Guantanamo "the nearest thing we have to a Gulag today" and describing an Iranian film about the stoning of a young woman merely sensational shows that it has become what many of us in the seventies and eighties suspected, a completely left-wing organization. Its campaign against capital punishment, regardless of whether it follows a free and fair trial, is irrelevant to its original purpose and its recent campaign for abortion in Ireland is outrageous, regardless of one's views on abortion (no, I am not going to discuss it so don't bother). It's not as if there was a shortage of prisoners of conscience across the world.

Readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that Amnesty International, a soi-disant charity but, in fact, an NGO, has joined or, to be quite precise, started the fight for the retention of the Human Rights Act because, apparently, without it "universal freedoms turn into privileges for a chosen few". I assume Amnesty International and its "talented" research staff know nothing about the history of this country and have not bothered to read the various carefully argued articles on the subject such as this one by the eminent legal expert, Michael Pinto-Duschinsky. (Here is his own site.) Oh wait, the article was published in Standpoint, a right-wing monthly journal. Can't read that, if you work for Amnesty International.

Inevitably, the NGO in question conducted an opinion poll and found that there was "No appetite for scrapping Human Rights Act". Actually, what they found was that the overwhelming majority of those they asked did not think it should be top priority for the government, which is not quite the same thing. Also, we are not talking about an out-and-out scrapping, which implies an abolition of the fairly old concepts of freedom and human rights but a substitution by a separate Bill of Rights. It might work or it might not and that is something that needs discussing. But I do object to this dishonest political campaign by a taxpayer funded organization.,

On the other hand, I caught sight of a short article on the subject in today's morning freebie, the Metro, which told me that the ubiquitous Charlotte Church and the actress Juliet Stevenson are among celebrities who are opposing the "scrapping" of the HRA. That settles that, then, Michael Pinto-Duschinsky or Charlotte Church on the subject? You decide. Wait a minute. There is a name missing. Where is Benedict Cumberbtach? Don't tell me that he has not made a statement or given an interview yet. Panic over: just found this. Phew! And who better to speak up for the HRA than Vanessa Redgrave, life-long supporter of Trotskyites, left-wing tyrannies and terrorists?

"Act for the Act"

A couple of days ago I was going either up or down some escalator in some central London tube station and noticed a series of new posters. They were not advertising shows in the West End (often ones that have closed as the TfL rarely bothers to keep the advertising up to date) or the nearest McDonald's or Garfunkel's or, even, the need to have various health checks. No, these were posters summoning us all to the battle to Act for the Act - to save the Human Rights Act. Each poster had some "poster child" of different genders, races and ages whose lives were made better by the HRA. The Act, we are told, was there for them; now the Act needs us.

This intrigued me. Naturally, I do not think there is anything wrong with political advertising and though I dislike the simplification practically ad absurdum of a complex issue as well as the clear lack of historical knowledge that is behind such a campaign, I do accept that this is going to happen.

One question we do need to ask, though: exactly who is funding this campaign. As ever, I asked Mr Google and this was the reply:

From the Equality and Diversity Forum I learned that Act for the Act is " a Crowdfunder project calling for donations to fund a nationwide poster blitz to save the Human Rights Act".

The campaign organisers want to create a poster campaign across the national transport network so that ordinary, real people, can tell their stories of how the Human Rights Act helped them to RIGHT a serious WRONG in their lives. For example, bereaved parents Matt and Martina Baines used the Act after their only child, 17 year old Kesia, died, to hold the authorities to account and win changes in the law; Jan Sutton was able to force her local authority to provide her with the care she needs. Rape victims failed by the police have used the Act to hold the police to account and protect others in future.

This campaign is supported by Equally Ours and is being organised by a group of people who have seen first-hand just how important the Human Rights Act can be. We have a Steering Group of 10 people working together.

One wonders what the alternative to "ordinary, real people is" - unusual or unreal people, perhaps, or Martians.

Before we go any further, let us have a look at Equally Ours. A Human Rights campaign, that is a campaign in favour of lots of human rights organizations, that is partnered by a number of quangos and are "hosted and led by the Equality and Diversity Forum, where we started.

The Equality and Diversity Forum (EDF) is a network of national organisations committed to equal opportunities, social justice, good community relations, respect for human rights and an end to discrimination based on age, disability, gender and gender identity, race, religion or belief, and sexual orientation.

A super quango that is a network of other quangos and whose aim is to generate as much work as possible through the human rights industry, as its Report and Financial Statement makes clear. The various grants are undoubtedly from the taxpayer through one or other layer of government and quango donors. It is no wonder that there is a little anxiety there that the HRA might be repealed or some new version of the old Bill of Rights substituted for it. Would that work as well as the HRA does for all these organizations?

Nevertheless, the poster campaign is supposed to be Crowdfunded or, in other words, it can happen only if people out there contribute various sums of money. That one cannot object to. If people are stupid enough to Crowdfund a political poster campaign, that is entirely their business; taxpayers' money wasted on a pretend information campaign would be quite different.

So here we are: ActForTheAct, a Community Crowdfunding Project.

The project, we were told, could not do anything unless £50,000 was pledged by June 12, 2015. It was, in fact, overfunded with £55,870 pledged by the date specified and by now they, presumably, honoured their pledges and the campaign has gone live, which is why the posters in question have appeared in Underground stations.

Curiously enough, an earlier version of the news about the funding had a link to a list of those who pledged money or, at least some of them and certainly not the one who pledged £10,000 or the four who pledged £5,000. As far as I can see, the link has disappeared.

The actual website tells us little more than the previous Crowdfunding ones did with the various cases quoted without any detail but, presumably, if anybody asked those would be provided. Wouldn't they? And I don't mean just the actual "poster child's" story. Why the HRA was needed to help someone who quite illegally was not looked after properly by her carers or to show the police that it was wrong to hold a child for 11 hours without any access by a qualified adult remains unclear but one can hardly argue against that. Nor can one argue against voluntary donations or time given free because people believe in something.

My own suspicion that it will not be long before the likes of Amnesty, an NGO as well as a quango, become donors and participants in the campaign. At the very least they will start using it for their own purposes. In fact, their campaign has started already though the Amnesty name is in small letters at the bottom of the page. We must all look for those small letter at the bottom of the page in various supposedly charitable but actually political campaigns whether they are to save the HRA or affirm the UK's membership of the European Union.