Roger Smith explores opposition to the Human Rights Act
The Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA 1998) is surely the most vilified piece of recent legislation, certainly among Britain’s now tarnished popular press. At the risk of oversimplification, this third piece in a series of four on HRA 1998 seeks to identify the different strands of hostility that coalesce to the effect that the British public has yet to take human rights to its heart.
Press vilification
The red tops were always going to be hostile. HRA 1998, with its recognition of privacy rights, threatens their commercial interest. Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, objected to developments in a well publicised speech to the Society of Editors: “The British Press is having a privacy law imposed on it, which is…undermining the ability of mass-circulation newspapers to sell newspapers in an ever more difficult market.”
In those innocent days, Dacre praised the News of the World as having “broken many significant stories about corruption and sexual wrong-doing…If the News of the
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