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Why Should Britain keep its Human Rights Act?

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This post was contributed by Devin Frank Law (LLM) graduate. Devin attended Bianca Jagger’s speech at the School of Law’s annual Patrick McAuslan Lecture on Friday, November 6  

Bianca Jagger

Bianca Jagger

We all see the signs in the tube, listen to the debates in the evening news and read the contrasting opinions in the Daily Mail and The Guardian.

Should David Cameron’s majority government scrap the Human Rights Act? Should they lead us out of the Convention of Europe? Should the UK exit the European Union?

On Friday 6 November 2015 long-time human rights activist and the Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador Bianca Jagger spoke at Birkbeck to give an enlightened and informative perspective on the UK’s current human rights debate.

While Bianca’s talk did indeed have the emotion, humour and flair one might expect from a human rights rockstar (figuratively speaking) — her talk was also a well-researched and academically sound historical analysis of how Britain developed its long standing and legally robust human rights tradition.

From Magna Carta to migrant crisis

Bianca began her talk by reminding us that Britain was not always a democracy governed by the rule of law. For most of its existence England had a Monarch who answered neither to Parliament nor the people and governed with absolute authority. In the year 1215 this began to change when King John bound himself to the Magna Carta; however, and as Bianca persuasively argued, the principles emanating out of the Magna Carta took 800 years to root themselves in law culminating with the 1998 Act of Parliament — the Human Rights Act.

We were also reminded throughout Bianca’s talk that 730 years after the Magna Carta the people of Europe endured the worst abuse of authority and government power in the continent’s history. In the context of the current debate – should the UK leave the council of Europe – Bianca reminded us that following the horrors of the Second World War, the general consensus of ‘never again’ UK authorities led the way in drafting and establishing the 1950 European Convention of Human Rights.

In the context of the current migration crisis Bianca did state that 65 years after the ratification of the European convention of Human Rights, it’s odd and indeed counterintuitive that in the midst of yet another humanitarian catastrophe, British Politicians are looking to reduce and take away the rights of the people.

One might argue that British politicians are simply looking for political ways to reduce their moral, ethical and legal responsibilities; however, and through her talk, Bianca argued that ‘our’ human rights are the result of hard fought battles and elements of British Society that we the people must defend.

A weak UK Human Rights Act

Bianca JaggerThe underlining message and golden thread of Bianca’s talk was that human rights belong to the people and are there to protect the people. Everyday otherwise normal people rely on their human rights in housing and employment tribunals, in cases against their local councils and in situations where individual police officers attempt to overstep their authority. An important example is the relationship between our democratic duties as citizens and our right to protest when we feel that our political representatives have led us astray.

In closing this blog, I will attempt to leave you with a rather simplistic observation. Bianca’s argument is that we need our human rights and any attempt to weaken our legal rights is an attack on the society we have spent 800 years building.

However, I would point out the Britain’s Human Right’s legal framework is already weak. Compared to other similar countries, Germany or Canada for example, the UK’s Human Right’s Act is incapable of declaring a government decision or policy unconstitutional. If Parliament is truly intent on ignoring human rights, they can.

Perhaps than, what should be taken from Bianca’s talk and this simple observation is that it is as important now as ever before to not only defend the human rights that we do have, but to continue to build a society based on the rule of law and the individual rights of citizens i.e the battle has been hard fought but there is still work to be done.

The message should therefore be that instead of taking three steps backwards and abolishing the Human Rights Act, we should be taking five steps forward and not only protecting the Human Rights Act but actively working to strengthen it so as to ensure that our rights are truly and genuinely protected.

View the Patrick McAuslan lecture 2015 below:

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John McDonnell in conversation

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This post was contributed by Dr Ben Worthy of Birkbeck’s Department of Politics. It was first posted on the 10 Gower Street blog on Friday, November 6. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell spoke at an event at Birkbeck on Thursday, November 5.

John McDonnell MP

John McDonnell MP

John McDonnell, Shadow Chancellor and former Birkbeck student spoke to staff and students at an event organised by the politics department. He was questioned by Joni Lovenduski over gender representation and came out in support of legislative quotas for women and job shares, though he challenged the ‘19th century’ idea that the top Shadow Cabinet jobs such as Foreign secretary were still the most important. He acknowledged that the Parliamentary Labour party was not wholly in favour of its new leadership but promised that the party would remain a broad church and democratic, with space for dissent and different views. The new activists who had joined since September, he hoped, would radicalise the party.

In answering to Dermot Hodson’s questioning on political economy issues, he discusses the U-turn over George Osborne’s Fiscal Charter in terms of the time pressures of taking office and the urgency of repositioning Labour as the party of anti-austerity in spite of short-term costs to economic credibility. In answer to Hodson’s question about the EU referendum, McDonnell said that Labour would be entering the Brexit debate on its own terms, including through cooperation with other parties on the European left. When asked by Ben Worthy inspirational figures he name checked, unsurprisingly, the great 1940s Labour reformer Clement Attlee but, less expectedly, the artful balancer of the 1960s and 1970s Harold Wilson. He was less convinced when Alex Colas asked him for his most admired Conservative leader. He argued that, amid the political ‘insurgencies’ of Left and Right the rules of political leadership had now changed.

There were then searching crowd-sourced audience questions on a whole range of topics, from whether Labour could build a winning electoral coalition to dealing with rebels, press regulation and sacrificing principles for power. He argued that a winning coalition did exist among the majority of anti-conservative voters if the message was right, but felt the first round of elections in Scotland, London and local government in May 2016 may be tough. Party rebels [which McDonnell and Corbyn used to be] would face a barrage of ‘tea and sympathy’ and the public would be reached not through the mainstream press but on the stump and through social media. He suggested more change was coming, supporting a PR elected House of Lords of the regions and initiatives around national savings bank and a series of gender based policy reviews.

John McDonnell was an MSc student at Birkbeck between 1978 and 1981 under the great Bernard Crick, before entering politics and becoming Deputy Leader of the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone and standing for Parliament in 1997. Studying politics at Birkbeck had given him a rounded, deeper understanding of politics and, he said, a fear of essay deadlines.

To hear more listen to the podcast here

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Gender Equality in Entrepreneurship Policy: Looking to the Future

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This post was contributed by members of the Transforming Institutions by Gendering contents and Gaining Equality in Research (TRIGGER) team – a research project in Birkbeck’s Department of Management – following a workshop which they led at Dundalk Institute of Technology, Dundalk, Ireland on Thursday, October 22

Women at conference (pic credit: Ignite New Zealand under CC via Flickr.com)

Women at conference (pic credit: Ignite New Zealand under CC via Flickr.com)

The international panel at Dundalk Institute of Technology (DKIT), Ireland, was asked to reflect on the differences in the challenges that women entrepreneurs face compared to their male counterparts. Their responses would then shape their views as to whether the panel thought that different policies are needed to support them.

Professor Colette Henry, a member of the TRIGGER team and Head of Department of Business at DKIT introduced the panel. Professor Helen Lawton Smith – as the Birkbeck lead of the TRIGGER project – chaired the session, and began by asking the panellists to share their own perspectives and experiences of women’s enterprise policy. The panel brought together perspectives from both research and practice.

The panellists were:

  • Ms Sarita Johnston, Enterprise Ireland
  • Professor Barbara Orser, University of Ottawa, Canada
  • Professor Bill O’Gorman, Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland
  • Professor Lene Foss, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway
  • Ms Roseann Kelly, Women in Business Northern Ireland

Structural and contextual challenges

In response to the question of the different challenges faced by men and women entrepreneurs, Lene Foss suggested that women face both structural and contextual challenges. Roseann Kelly identified these as a difference in the kinds of networks they have as well as the existence of fewer role models. Lene Foss further highlighted the dual role that women play as both mothers and entrepreneurs, as well as national differences in women’s propensity to become entrepreneurs. In Norway for example, immigrant women are more likely to be entrepreneurs than Norwegian women.

On the question of whether support for improved networking opportunities for women was an appropriate policy response, Bill O’Gorman cited his recent experiences of women’s attitudes towards women-only networks. He gave an example from his own work where his team at Waterford had set up three networks in Ireland and Wales: male only, mixed and female only. Surprisingly, while women initially were reluctant to join women only-networks because they realised that gender diversity is important and a women-only network would segregate them from men, the women-only network appeared to perform best. While the other two networks folded, the women-only one continued and still exists.

Sarita Johnson, Manager of Female Entrepreneurship for Enterprise Ireland, cited research that has led to Enterprise Ireland to support women-only programmes including networks. This demonstrated that the challenges facing women entrepreneurs are different, specifically with regard to attitude towards risk-taking and raising finance. For example, Enterprise Ireland invests in 100 high potential start-ups (HPSUs) per year. The specific targeting of women has meant that the number of women entrepreneurs in this category being awarded grants has risen from 7% to 18%. She also found that women-only networks tend to perform best – for example, in raising export sales.

Need for better understanding of gender differences

Dundalk Institute of Technology (pic credit banlon1964 under CC via Flickr.com)

Dundalk Institute of Technology (pic credit banlon1964 under CC via Flickr.com)

Barbara Orser highlighted that it is not just social capital that contributes to women only-networks performing better – it is also technology adoption and financial capital. There needs to be better understanding of gender differences, for example, with regard to levels of confidence, in order to develop better policy. Three aspects were identified as important: women’s social circles; social capital in the form of information gathering networks, and fear of failure.

Roseann Kelly suggested that women are sometimes reluctant to benefit from women-only initiatives and prefer not to be labelled as ‘women entrepreneurs.’ This is a marketing issue – exemplar women are there by right and should celebrate their success. They should play by their own rules and not those set by men. Moreover, women should not have the equivalent of ‘old boys’ networks, because women are better at inclusivity than men.

When the Panel were asked how a hypothetical one million euros might be best spent to support women’s entrepreneurship, Sarita Johnston from Enterprise Ireland said that a programme which would give financial support to women entrepreneurs would offer the quickest and most tangible benefits. Blended support in the form of networking, accelerator programmes and role models is the best approach for supporting start-ups. Access to capital pulls through the development of other skills. Bill O’Gorman thought the money being spent on Ireland’s action plan for jobs is effective, and an emphasis on female entrepreneurship would yield benefits.

Roseann Kelly pointed out that Women in Business Northern Ireland has no public funding for enterprise support and has to be self-sustaining. Public funding would give a boost to their programmes. Barbara Orser suggested that public monies in Canada could be spent on encouraging more women to become entrepreneurs. A specific population that might benefit from funding is women university students; these are under-represented in Ireland’s women entrepreneurs.

Impacting on the entrepreneurial culture

The challenge for the TRIGGER team at Birkbeck is to build on the insights gained from academics’ and practitioners’ experiences to make an impact on the entrepreneurial culture within the college. This means encouraging more female students, as well as professional and academic staff, to share the lessons of the differences in challenges they face with other communities. This panel event shows that there is much to be gained by sharing perspectives from within different institutional and national contexts.

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Exploring the mind-body problem: An evening with Siri Hustvedt

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This post was contributed by Andrew Youngson, media and publicity officer for Birkbeck, University of London

“The truth is that people don’t agree on the mind. Confusion reigns. Scientists, philosophers and scholars frequently clash,” explained Siri Hustvedt to a gathered audience at Woburn House on Friday 23 October.

The American essayist, novelist and poet was in London to attend a daytime conference exploring academic responses to her work on her work hosted by Birkbeck’s Centre for Contemporary Literature. The event, which borrowed its name from Hustvedt’s 2012 collection of essays Living, Thinking, Looking was coordinated by Birkbeck English and Humanities PhD student, Alex Williamson, whose thesis examines the writing of Hustvedt and her husband, Paul Auster.

Siri Hustvedt (photo courtesy of Annabel-Clark-www.annabelclark.net)

Siri Hustvedt (photo courtesy of Annabel-Clark-www.annabelclark.net)

This particular event, however, was the associated evening seminar,– a public reading and open Q&A, comprising part of the Bloomsbury Festival, in which Hustvedt was tasked with laying out her thoughts on the ‘mind-body problem’.

Are the brain and mind different? What is the distinction between the mental and the physical? Such questions have fuelled the overarching mind-body debate which has been battered about for centuries within and between various spheres of academic pursuit. A debate, said Hustvedt, which is far from over.

“The unsolved problems of the mind and body are treated by the media, philosophers and science like they are behind us. But often the underlying assumptions are hidden. Much remains unknown about the mind and its relation to the world,” she continued.

This broad topic of discussion offered an illuminating window into Hustvedt’s portfolio of work, which for nearly four decades has spanned the realms of academia, art, fiction and non-fiction.

The Delusions of Certainty

(L-R) Siri Hustvedt and Dr Johanna Hartmann (pic: Dominic Mifsud, Birkbeck Media Services 2015)

(L-R) Siri Hustvedt and Dr Johanna Hartmann (pic: Dominic Mifsud, Birkbeck Media Services 2015)

The evening began with a reading from Hustvedt – an extract from her forthcoming 200-page essay, The Delusions of Certainty, in which she analyses the concepts of ‘the self’ and ‘consciousness’ and how they have been interpreted through the ages.

Philosophical luminaries including Alfred North Whitehead, Giambattista Vico, Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Rene Descartes and Thomas Hobbes have all been influential in how we view the mind-body divide, Hustvedt noted. However, grand theories which have been created by such thinkers — constructivist, dualist and absolutist as many are – often serve to stultify and stymie the opportunity for further debate.

“Part of the problem is that of expertise,” she said. “My issue is with knowledge that presents itself as a finished theory. That is pernicious.”

A pluralist by nature, Hustvedt made her case for being sceptical of “truisms”, “asking questions” rather than rushing to answer them, and “acknowledging the limitations” of our own knowledge. The world-renowned writer’s thoughts came to the fore in her reading and the Q&A sessions which followed – initially an on-stage interview with Dr Johanna Hartmann, a contributor to the collection of academic responses to Hustvedt’s work, Zones of Focused Ambiguity in Siri Hustvedt’s Work; and secondly in an open Q&A session with the audience.

The topics touched upon during the evening were wide ranging:

  • the reductionist ‘Computational’ and ‘Hardwired’ models of the brain: “They should be put to bed forever,” Hustvedt remarked
  • the underlying misogyny in theories of artificial intelligence: “It’s about hopping over women entirely”
  • the value of Eastern medicine and philosophies: “As a pluralist, I try to read as much as I can, and to see how they can work together”
  • the production of art: “All art is a relational reality”
  • her ease in writing about a mysterious series of seizures she experienced earlier in her life: “I didn’t consider it a moral failing or something that was shameful. When I was over it, I just thought ‘this is really interesting, I could use it in my writing’”

A connection to something out there

In many cases, it was in raising her own questions, rather than making assertions, that Hustvedt’s core take-home message was laid bare.

Siri Hustvedt at the Birkbeck evening event (pic: Dominic Mifsud, Birkbeck Media Services 2015)

Siri Hustvedt at the Birkbeck evening event (pic: Dominic Mifsud, Birkbeck Media Services 2015)

“It’s fascinating, because it asks questions like, ‘can the endochrine system think?’”, she said in response to an audience member’s question about the phenomenon of false pregnancy. “Now, I don’t know the answer, but I think it’s good to ask the question.”

This approach to knowledge and truth lies at the heart of her essay, The Delusions of Certainty, and indeed her writing in general. Hustvedt rallies against the forced certainties of dominant discourses. The arrogance of such “wrapped up” scientific writing as Steven Pinker’s How the Mind Works – the very publication which inspired Hustvedt to write her essay in the first place ­– distort debate.

That said, this doesn’t lessen her passion for the pursuit of knowledge, and the value of science.

“My aim here isn’t to ‘diss’ science,” she concluded. “It’s very important to assert something which is true. We’re all the beneficiaries of the models used in science that have power over the material world, such as antibiotics. But does it mean that the model is perfect? No, it just means it has some connection to something that’s out there.”

Hear Siri’s interview on the Birkbeck Voices podcast on iTunes or the Soundcloud link below.

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