Human Rights Culture: Solidarity, Diversity and the Right to be Different

Abstract

The concept of a human rights culture has been crucial to the incorporation of the European Convention of Human Rights into UK law. In this paper media and activist representations of human rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender human rights are considered as indicative of an emerging human rights culture, especially around the Civil Partnerships Act 2004. A typology of representations of rights is developed and discussed. It is concluded that insofar as there is an emerging human rights culture, it is one that is concerned above all with creating and maintaining civic relationships rather than with the assertion of individual liberty, and as inviting political compromise rather than a principled stance on universal human rights.

Keywords:

• Lesbian
• gay
• bisexual and transgender rights
• activists
• media representations
• law
• UK Human Rights Act

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Suki Ali, Kirsten Campbell, Anne-Marie Fortier, Clare Hemmings, Paul Stenner and Neil Washbourne for comments on a previous draft of this article and for discussion of the research. (See also Notes 1 and 2 below.)

Notes

¹ The significance of the CPA (and also the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which unfortunately there was not room to cover here) was suggested by an advisory group set up to make recommendations for a longer-term research project, of which this study is a part. It consisted of Raza Husain, human rights lawyer at Matrix Chambers, David Bausor, legal advisor at the Lewisham Law Centre, Janet Hague, campaign director at Amnesty International UK, and Mark Littlewood, campaigns director at Liberty. I would like to thank them for all their help. I would also like to thank Professor Francesca Klug and Clare O'Brien of the Human Rights Centre at the LSE for preliminary discussion of the research. It goes without saying that responsibility for the research and its conclusions rests entirely with the author.

² The interviews were carried out with Helen Marsh, the communications officer of Stonewall, and Angela Mason, Stonewall's director 1999–2003; David Allison, a founder member of Outrage!; Mark Littlewood, communications officer, and James Welch, legal director of Liberty, and John Wadham, director of Liberty 1995–2003. I would like to thank them for taking time out of their busy schedules to contribute to the research.

³ The analysis was carried out on representations of human rights around significant dates in relation to the Sexual Offences Act (SOA) 2000 and the CPA 2004; in each case, analysis of the newspapers was made five working days either side of significant dates. In the case of the SOA, these included two test cases in the European Court, that of Wilde, Parry and Greenhaulgh in 1993, which was granted permission to proceed, but which didn't actually go to court, and that of Sutherland and Morris v UK 1996; the readings of Edwina Currie's amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill 1994 and Anne Keen's amendment to Crime and Disorder Bill 1998; and readings of the Sexual Offences Bill as it made its way through both Houses, to the Parliament Act in 2000. In the case of the CPA, the analysis began with Lord Lester's Private Members Bill in 2002, and included the whole of the three-month consultation period before the CP Bill was announced, and readings of CP Bills in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, to the Royal Assent in November 2004.