9 July 2025

Churchill would be no cheerleader for the modern ECHR

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We have much to thank Winston Churchill for. Not only did he save us from fascist tyranny, but evoking his memory now is always guaranteed to incense left-wingers. One thing you might never have thought of crediting Churchill for, however, is laying the foundations for the creation, and our membership of, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Yet according to a version of history told by those who view our membership of the ECHR positively – including Keir Starmer and his Attorney General Richard Hermer – Churchill was a huge fan, and that means we should be too. The story goes that Churchill, embodying the nation’s trauma following the Second World War, advocated for a supranational ‘Charter of Human Rights’, to be enforced by a European court, to ensure that future atrocities do not go unpunished. After the ECHR was formed in 1950, Clement Attlee ratified it into British law.

Yet as a Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) report authored by Peter Lilley points out, this amounts to a creation myth. In actuality, concerns about the body’s potential for judicial overreach were voiced from the start. A Foreign Office internal briefing following a 1948 meeting between Churchill, Attlee and Ernest Bevin to discuss the idea read as follows:

It seems inconceivable that any Government, when faced with the realities of this proposal would take the risk of entrusting these unprecedented powers to an international court, legislative powers which Parliament would never agree to entrust to the courts of this country.

When it came to Attlee signing us up to the ECHR, it was done reluctantly, and only under the proviso that it had no jurisdiction in the UK. This position was upheld by Churchill when he returned to government in October 1951. Unfortunately, it isn’t just left-wing fetishists for international law who parrot bogus justifications for the ECHR, Tories do too. Jesse Norman and Peter Oborne had this to say in 2009:

The European Convention of Human Rights, which the Human Rights Act incorporates into British law, is an impeccably Conservative document… based on ancient conservative beliefs… the HRA is a charter against socialism and state interference.

These imagined histories of the ECHR have proved influential in propping up our continued membership, and Britain has suffered as a result. The most significant impact of the Strasbourg judges on our politics has fallen on our ability to deport foreign criminals and rejected asylum claimants.

In its ongoing campaign to raise awareness about this, The Daily Telegraph has done God’s work in exposing cases where the ECHR has prevented us from getting rid of crooks. The examples are innumerate and often absurd, but one that comes to mind was the case of an Albanian criminal who was not able to be deported in part due to his 10-year-old son’s distaste for foreign chicken nuggets. An immigration tribunal ruled that, given his gustatory sensitivity, forcing the boy to move to Albania with his father would be ‘unduly harsh’ and breach his right to a family life as guaranteed by the ECHR.

As Lilley’s research highlights, the consequences of joining the ECHR on our ability to send foreign criminals back to their countries of origin were not given due consideration:

The ‘Travaux Preparatoires’ for the ECHR show that there was little discussion of how it would affect deportation of criminals or return of migrants… the ECHR did require signatories to ‘secure to everyone within their jurisdiction’ the rights and freedoms defined in the Convention without discrimination on the basis of ‘national or social origin’. ECHR rights, therefore, apply to anyone in a country not just to citizens of that state.

Stories about chicken nuggets obstructing the proper course of justice aren’t just good headlines, they are testaments to an administrative decline that is corroding the public’s trust in our institutions. Our inability to robustly control who is allowed to remain in Britain is not a reflection of our commitment to not repeating the tragedies of the Second World War, but rather a failure to update our constitution to adapt to the challenges of modernity. 

The ECHR was established to ensure that its signatories respected fundamental freedoms: from torture, slavery, unlawful detention and a host of other abuses. The notion that withdrawing from the ECHR would suddenly plunge Britain into despotism is obviously for the birds. Australia, Canada and New Zealand – all of which share common-law legal systems similar to ours – have no obligations to international courts, and the last I checked, state-backed heavies weren’t terrorising the streets of Canberra, Calgary or Christchurch.

What to do about this? Reform UK are clear: they’d take us out of the ECHR on day one of Nigel Farage’s administration. The Conservatives have signalled that the subject is up for debate. Kemi Badenoch has launched a review into the ECHR, but also rightly pointed out that exiting without a plan to bolster our institutions independently would be a fool’s errand. On this issue, as with so many others, Labour are the continuity candidates – no chance of leaving, more outsourcing to unaccountable foreign judges, more impotence.

What is apparent is this: the spin isn’t cutting it anymore. The evidence against the traditional, internationalist narrative on Britain’s role in the foundation of the ECHR – helpfully codified in the CPS paper – is resounding. The case for remaining a member of the body for fear of our basic rights withering away in the event of our exit is hysterical – as Lilley pointed out at the launch event for the report, if Britain elected a dictator, it’s unlikely their terror would be stemmed by the ECHR. 

We are at a constitutional turning point. It’s time to reject the rule of foreign courts in favour of one of our most treasured principles – the sovereignty of parliament.

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Joseph Dinnage is Deputy Editor of CapX.