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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
—Declaration of Independence, 1776

The above might well be some of the most famous words ever uttered about human rights. Behind this ringing endorsement of the universality and inalienability of human rights however, lay a far uglier reality. Noble sentiments aside, rights were the privilege of ‘active citizens’, a group that excluded the most disadvantaged within society.  Women, slaves, the’ unpropertied’, indigenous peoples and children were denied access to their fundamental rights.

With this in mind, we approach the idea of a ‘British Bill of Rights for the British People’ cautiously. A Bill of Rights serves several functions. It sets out the fundamental rights of individuals which are legally protected and symbolically expresses the fundamental principles of a democracy and the values of the state in question. Thus the debate about a Bill of Rights for the UK raises two major issues: first, whose rights would it protect and second which rights it will include?

One cannot answer the first question without first understanding what ‘human rights’ really is and how it came about. The idea that people might enjoy certain basic rights by virtue of being human is neither a new one nor a culturally specific one; having been raised by Asian and Greek philosophers alike. The Enlightenment however, is credited with presenting this idea of human rights in a secular manner. Human rights were natural rights, endowed equally by nature regardless of race, religion or nationality; rights inalienable from the individual.

The language of rights is bandied about today so frequently that we cannot appreciate how the idea of universal rights inherent to the individual was revolutionary to say the least. It was a courageous challenge on the authority of the sovereign and the feudalism that existed then. Fundamental rights could no longer be seen as a privilege granted by the good graces of the sovereign and then removed at whim. In tandem, the philosopher John Locke lay down the theoretical foundations of his critique of social hierarchy, developing the idea of the ‘social contract’. It entailed the transfer of power and sovereignty to the state on the condition that the natural rights of the people are protected and maintained. The sovereign’s power must be justified. Thus, while human rights are still to a great extent linked to and protected by the state, they are not a privilege of citizenship. Rather they are a universal privilege of being human. 

It is thus imperative that a British Bill of Rights does not detract from the core notion of universality which underpins human rights. Some of the most vulnerable members of our society today are not ‘British’ so to speak; they are asylum seeker, refugees and migrants. The Human Rights Act 1998 currently protects everyone living under United Kingdom jurisdiction regardless of their citizenship status. A Bill of Rights should surely do the same and more, perhaps by increasing rights protection for the politically silent or unpopular minorities.

What then are the universal rights that will form the content of the Bill of Rights? Here, a clear distinction should be made between universal rights and rights contingent on citizenship. Political rights like the right to vote in elections are exclusive to citizens and do not affect the universal application of core rights like the right to life. As mentioned earlier however, there is a strong notion that Bills of Rights do not only set out the fundamental rights of individuals that are legally protected. They should also somehow symbolically express the values of the state or society they are being prepared for, thus the continual agonising over the ‘Britishness’ of the Bill and calls for a national debate (or in a more genteel manner, ‘conversation’) on what should be put in the Bill of Rights. 

Earlier on in the essay, some mention was made of the Bill going further than the current scope of the Human Rights Act. This raises the question if the scope of rights in the Bill should be expanded to include ‘second generation’ socio-economic rights or even ‘third generation’ “group” rights? This in turn raises more questions. Are these universal rights or aspirations? Can they even be legally enforceable, thus forcing the government to take positive action where previously rights acted only as a constraint on the state’s power? The answer to these difficult questions will indeed define the scope and progressiveness of this Bill of Rights.

The debate will rages on, but I leave you with a note that highlights the hold that human rights has and will continue to have on our collective imaginations.

“Human rights are foreign to no culture and intrinsic to all nations. They belong not to a chosen few, but to all people. It is this universality that endows human rights with the power to cross any border and defy any force.”
-- Kofi A. Annan,
Foreword, in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Fifty Years and Beyond v (Yael Danieli, Elsa Stamatopoulou and Clarence J. Dias eds., 1999)