IT was with some dismay that I read that some Conservative MPs want Boris Johnson to front a campaign to abolish the European Convention on Human Rights. When I first read it on the internet, I assumed that it was just one of those internet stories that you instantly laugh at and dismiss as a crazy piece without substance.
I’m not a historian by any means, but history does have a bad habit of repeating bad doctrines and even bad leaders on a regular basis. It makes me wonder then how much Boris and Gove are bedfellows in taking the UK down the road to a dictatorship along with their cronies in the Conservative Party.
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We all know that the Conservative Party is a right-of-centre party but in recent years it has moved further and further to the extreme right. That means that we need to be more vigilant because the next step would be some form of dictatorship, and how does Scotland escape that? After all, we are already in a form of dictatorship as we can’t leave the (English) Union of 1707, and the English Supreme Court has decreed that Westminster has jurisdiction over us.
Am I right in believing that a certain Herr Adolf Hitler was first elected to power and then introduced draconian laws to prevent Poland, Czechoslovakia and a number of other European countries doing what they wanted? That of course doesn’t take into account the Gestapo and SS who enforced those laws. Gove’s plans to outlaw “extremism” that doesn’t fit with the UK democracy would effectively create a department within the police to determine what actions are non-compliant within the Conservative Party’s doctrine. Then what?
If there are no human rights and we break “Conservative Party” doctrine, we will be arrested and held pending some “court” decision. In a short time period, the prisons will be overcrowded – and by all accounts they are already – and the next step will to get rid of the prisons or the prisoners awaiting trial and I will leave that to your imagination as to how they go about that.
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In a dictatorship, any opposition parties opposed to the government’s doctrine are effectively banned and eliminated. As such, no SNP or Alba parties, Scottish Greens, or any other party wanting independence. You wouldn’t need to be in favour of independence, as the Labour Party and the LibDems would also be banned. The leader/Prime Minister would of course be elected, but nobody else would be allowed to stand against him. Do we see any similarities with any other country past or present here?
After the Second World War, many of those responsible for the crimes that were committed were put on trial. This also caused the then fledgling United Nations to bring forward a Charter on Human Rights which was introduced by Elenor Roosevelt.
When the Conservative Party under Sir Winston Churchill returned to power, the then Solicitor General, David Maxwell Fyfe – who had been the UK’s chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials – was instructed to bring forward a similar Charter to prevent Europe going down the same road again. David Maxwell Fyfe later became the 1st Earl of Kilmuir and served under two prime ministers, later becoming the home secretary, and was Scottish, having been born in Edinburgh in 1900. We are of course told by the right-wing English media that one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson looks upon Sir Winston Churchill as his hero.
When you look upon somebody as your hero, you try and emulate them. You do not take their lasting legacy and try to destroy it as if it were some piece of dog’s dirt. Unfortunately, this would be what the present Conservative Party would do.
If Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were to get their way, where would that leave the UK in the eyes of the world?
Alexander Potts
Kilmarnock
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