I don’t believe in human rights — fundamental, inalienable or basic. I do believe in being nice to people, but I’ve never seen a useful definition of a basic human right, nor ever encountered a supposed example that did not fast dissolve into a blur of conditional clauses.
Havelock Ellis once remarked that “the whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum”. I might add that the whole industry of human rights is due to the absence from the dictionary of a serviceable word for what we must call “desiderata”. Human experience presents a vast range of things to be desired, promoted and protected, some of them — such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — more prominent and precious than others; but never at all costs and never in all circumstances.
A fundamental right would be a claim that trumped all other claims, otherwise it would just be a claim. It follows that the term “clash of rights” is an oxymoron, like the collision of an “irresistible” force with an “immovable” object. All we can ever do is rank civilisation’s many goals in some sort of order of importance; but this is poetry, not law. Courts (European or otherwise) genuflect to the poetry before proceeding to treat their business as a conflict of claims, which is what it is.
So I was able to tell the audience that they needn’t worry about the new British government’s mildly disreputable pledge to “scrap” the Human Rights Act. It will simply be replaced with another act. They’ll remove an acronym, add “responsibilities” to the label and declare victory. Mansfield and The Guardian will assist by embracing the roles of wailing Greek chorus and offstage thunderclap machine, thus encouraging the only audience the government needs to care about — the readership of The Sun and The Daily Mail — to think something big is happening. It isn’t.
As a story this is anyway too complicated to fly, what with the Supreme Court, the acronym ECHR (the C can stand for Court, Commissioner or the 1950 Convention) the ECJ, the EU and the Council of Europe. My researcher and I have found ourselves able to hold the myriad necessary acronyms and arguments in the head only for about 10 minutes at a time and rarely simultaneously, one of us needing to rest while the other tries to keep remembering. Within hours we have both forgotten and have to go back to 1950 and start again.
Save yourself the trouble. Anything about human rights that has Russia in it can’t really have teeth anyway.
Little more needs to be said about the great “Tories to send European Court packing” row that will start with the Queen’s Speech tomorrow. Ignore the Tory whoops and liberal howls. Remember only that the objects for which human rights lawyers aim — justice, openness and mercy — are good ones, but that attempts to conduct the argument in terms of absolutes only get in the way. The dissolving on examination of these claimed absolutes has set me on a more ambitious trail. I wonder whether some of the most intractable Great Debates — such as disputes over the difference between consubstantiation and transubstantiation, or whether animals have souls — are disputes about the nature of something that can never be settled by inspection because the thing whose nature is disputed does not exist. One side declares it to be one thing; the other side declares it to be another; but both implicitly agree that there’s something there to describe. And there’s nothing.
Here are three more candidates to add to the fabled but never encountered fundamental human right: subjects of sixth-form, Cambridge Union, parliamentary and Moral Maze debates. The following do not exist: the will of the people; happiness; and life.
Since there is no such thing as the will of the people, the possibilities for debating what voting system represents it best become endless because no system can. Proportional representation? Ah, but how then do we get a mayor of London or a referendum result? And how do you vote for a coalition? The alternative vote system? Ah, but is it really the people’s will that everybody’s second choice should trump a lot of people’s first choice? First past the post? Ah, but can it be right that four million Ukip voters are virtually unrepresented in parliament? Stop torturing yourself, however: there is no people’s will; just a swirling fog of many wills, shifting and conflicting, of varying seriousness, permanence and intensity. No system of voting can “represent” the fog.
What is happiness? Many things and so nothing. How can you lump together the evanescent pleasure of a chocolate melting on the tongue, with the delirium of anticipating meeting a lover, with the surprised relief of good news, with sinking into bed after a good day’s work, with the profound but unconscious contentment of absorption in an all-consuming task? These are all quite distinct. We can therefore debate the pursuit of happiness until the cows come home. We pursue a will-o’-the-wisp.
And finally, life. What is it? Does a sperm or egg have it? A foetus? Amoeba? Tomato? A terminally comatose patient? Does it reside in a heartbeat? Consciousness? Choice? Where is the flame? Once we understand that there is no flame, but instead a whole raft of attributes, a coinciding assortment of which some will choose to call life, we can debate contraception, abortion, euthanasia and “clinical” death without the aggravation of absolutes, because no sacred spark will ever be found present or can ever be declared absent. There is no spark.
Indeed what (without God) is “sacred”? Another meaningless word. We burble about life being sacred then vote to maintain weapons of mass destruction, curtail the availability of life-saving but costly drugs on the NHS, or arm the police.
Which brings us full circle to “fundamental human rights” of which the “right” to life evidently cannot be one. As for myself I disclaim any right so much as to the next breath of air I draw: a disclaimer which one day (and, given my age, perhaps soon) my Maker (or, since He too does not exist, my readers) will greet with a hearty cheer.
