ON the morning of the EU referendum result, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), a south Belfast human rights organisation, issued a distraught press release.
Blaming the Leave vote on “nationalist sentiment, xenophobia and thinly veiled racism” it warned “we may expect racism in its many forms, including sectarianism here, to become more shameless and attempts to divide people to become more open.”
After some further chuntering about “austerity”, which the UK has entirely avoided, plus “economic and social rights”, which are merely a left-wing notion, it ended with commiserations to “all those concerned about the welfare of people and solidarity amongst human beings” - a ludicrous dehumanising of its political opponents.
This statement is still at the top of CAJ’s website, like an angry break-up text it cannot bear to delete. Its sentiments clearly still stand because CAJ has now joined with other human rights groups and political figures to threaten the UK government with a legal challenge over Brexit.
CAJ’s prospective co-appellants in this action include the leaders of the SDLP, Alliance and Greens, former Sinn Féin minister John O’Dowd, former Equality Commission member Monica Wilson and north Belfast human rights group the Participation and Practice of Rights (PPR).
CAJ has believed some pretty strange and contradictory things in its time - for example, that every workplace should be integrated according to Northern Ireland’s overall population, yet public housing should be segregated according to local population (which apparently does not ‘divide people’.)
However, this legal challenge is in a different league. It has put prime minister Theresa May and secretary of state James Brokenshire on notice that the UK government must not trigger Article 50 to leave the EU without a vote in Westminster and a consent motion from the Northern Ireland assembly. In addition, the UK government must show it will consider all alternatives to Brexit without giving undue weight to the referendum result, while the Northern Ireland Office must conduct a Brexit equality impact assessment.
The only one of these arguments that cannot be shot down in seconds is the first - that triggering Article 50 might require a Westminster vote. This is above a Belfast court’s pay grade and is already the subject of a judicial review granted by the London High Court for October. So the case being brought in Northern Ireland is just redundant grandstanding. In particular, there is no question whatsoever of the UK government needing a Stormont consent motion.
Since the referendum result, there has been much talk of the shock to political elites and their dangerous disconnection from the public. But at least most elites have begun to accept this. The problem for the rights sector is that it cannot see itself as part of an arrogant establishment, even as it continues the pompous crusading that drives even mild-mannered people up the wall. As revealed by CAJ’s statement, the rights guys are the good guys so anyone who differs from their world view can only be a fool or a monster. This is how advocates of the European Convention on Human Rights, a charter to underpin democracy, can start muttering about giving a referendum result ‘undue weight’.
Northern Ireland did vote to remain in the EU, of course. However, as our rights sector has spent its entire existence up to this point challenging regional majoritarianism, it sounds amusingly strangulated trying to proclaim it now. Perhaps the DUP can lend it an Ulster Says No banner.
A sense of not delivering for ordinary people lies at the heart of the backlash that Brexit represents. This applies as much to the rights industry as to globalisation, deregulation and immigration. What has legalistic human rights empire-building achieved, beyond undermining the concept of fundamental rights? PPR provides an excellent example. For years it has insisted that a legally meaningless UN ‘right to housing’ can get public housing built in north Belfast. It has brought people on the waiting list to a UN committee in Geneva, where the British government has not even bothered turning up to hear their complaints. PPR can keep going to Switzerland until the Alps wear away and it will not put one brick on top of another in Ardoyne. Other approaches are needed and there are plenty to consider.
Brexit is a final challenge to the rights sector to change its ways or become irrelevant. Like 1980s coalminers it cannot believe the Tories have shut its pit. But they have and it is time to stop digging.
newton@irishnews.com
