IF Boris Johnson is not directly involved in the attack on the Scottish Parliament’s historic decision to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law, then you can bet he is right behind his lapdog Scottish Secretary Alister Jack’s decision to refer the legislation to the UK Supreme Court.
The Scottish Parliament passed the law unanimously and several Tory MSPs played a laudable part in getting it through Holyrood. But no, Boris can’t have those pesky Scots doing something he doesn’t like, and he has form when it comes to human rights.
He has described the European Convention on Human Rights as “a fine thing”, but as recently as last September was proposing that the UK should opt out of human right laws only to find that the EU actually believes in human rights and applies them. Cue humiliating withdrawal by Johnson.
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So Scotland’s attempt to give children the human rights they deserve is clearly an easy target for him – or so he thinks. The Supreme Court will probably give him another chastisement as happened with his unlawful attempt to prorogue parliament.
Such a pity that human rights should be such an issue for Boris. His great hero Sir Winston Churchill was one of the first to promote the idea of a convention and it was a tremendous Scottish lawyer, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe who was largely responsible for drafting it.
Another great British lawyer Sir James Fawcett, a war hero turned international barrister, was a hugely influential proponent of human rights.
The Dictionary of National Biography states: “Fawcett, Sir James Edmund Sandford (1913–1991), lawyer and jurist, was born on 16 April 1913 at the parsonage, North Hagbourne, Wallingford, Berkshire, the son of the Revd Joseph Fawcett, Church of England clergyman, and his wife, Edith Annie, née Scattergood.”
Educated at Rugby School and Oxford, Fawcett’s commitment to human rights was long and unswerving, serving on the European Commission of Human Rights from 1962 to 1984, and being the Commission’s President from 1972 to 1982.
Sir James passed away at the age of 78 in 1991, and thankfully did not live long enough to see a British Prime Minister be so nasty about children’s human rights. For he would have been humiliated by the activities of his own grandson. Yes, that’s right, Boris Johnson really is a blot on his own family’s escutcheon.
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