The thing about human rights – as highlighted in the title of the first such international commitment to them, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 – is that they are, indeed, “universal”. They are for everyone and for all time.
The 1951 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) campaign, which Winston Churchill was a leading figure of, gave them, on our continent, some force in law. The Human Rights Act of 1998, passed by the Blair government, then made them more accessible through the British courts – British, not “foreign” judges, can adjudicate (albeit with the possibility of appeal to the multinational European Court).
