It’s not foreignness they hate. It’s fairness

If we’re being fair, fairness itself has always been foreign to Britain.

That’s the awkward truth. Human rights don’t trip them up because they’re alien concepts from abroad – they trip them up because they demand something Britain has never practised consistently at home or abroad.

And once fairness is treated as foreign, anyone from elsewhere gets tarred with the same brush.

Rights Demanded, Rights Denied

1960s: The Northern Struggle

• 1967: The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) is formed.
• Demands: one person, one vote; fair housing; jobs on merit; an end to gerrymandering and sectarian policing.

Hardly radical. Just fairness.

The response? In October 1968, civil rights marchers in Derry were batoned off the streets by the RUC.

In January 1969, People’s Democracy marched from Belfast to Derry, echoing Selma to Montgomery.

At Burntollet Bridge, they were ambushed by loyalists, cheered on by off-duty police.

“Britain didn’t hate marches because they were foreign. It hated them because they were fair.”

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1970s: Security Over Rights

• 1971: Internment without trial. Thousands lifted, mostly Catholic, no charges.
• 1972: Bloody Sunday. Fourteen unarmed civil rights marchers shot dead in Derry.

The 70s brought Diplock courts without juries, strip searches, shoot-to-kill policies, and open collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.

The “five techniques” of torture – hooding, stress positions, white noise, sleep deprivation, food deprivation – were ruled “inhuman and degrading” by the European Court of Human Rights.

Britain carried on anyway.

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1980s: Hunger for Rights

The hunger strikes were about recognition, not theatre. Prisoners demanded their political status be acknowledged. Britain refused, let ten men die, and doubled down on the criminalisation line.

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1990s: A Promise of Rights

The Good Friday Agreement (1998) wove human rights and equality into its fabric. It promised a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.

Twenty-five years later, that Bill still hasn’t been delivered. Communities remain divided. Rights remain negotiable.

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The Empire’s Blueprint

Ireland was not an anomaly. It was a template.

• India: massacres, censorship, famine as policy.
• Kenya: detention camps and torture during the Mau Mau uprising.
• Palestine: curfews, collective punishment, early blueprints for occupation.
• Cyprus: internment without trial, executions, censorship.

“The colonial playbook was simple: rights for the rulers, repression for the ruled.”

Britain didn’t avoid rights out of ignorance.

It avoided them because fairness would collapse colonialism itself.

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The Present: Brexit and the ECHR

Now the fight is with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). British Ministers dress it up as “sovereignty” and “foreign interference.”

But again — it’s not foreignness they hate. It’s fairness.

The ECHR has:

• Exposed Britain’s torture in Northern Ireland.
• Forced prison and policing reforms.
• Blocked deportation flights to Rwanda.
• Protected asylum seekers from government overreach.

That’s why the hard right want out.

Not to take back control. To escape accountability.

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Rights and Wrongs

So what is wrong with human rights? Nothing.

The problem is not rights. The problem is rulers who treat them as optional. For centuries, Britain has seen rights not as universal but as privileges – to be suspended or denied whenever they threaten power.

• When fairness is demanded, Britain answers with force.
• When fairness is enforced, Britain heads for the exit.

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The Last Word

“It’s not foreignness they hate. It’s fairness.”

Fairness makes gerrymandering impossible. Fairness makes internment illegal. Fairness blocks torture, discrimination, and deportation schemes.

Fairness, applied without exception, would unravel the whole British edifice – from empire to partition to today’s border obsessions.

And that is why Britain has always feared human rights.

Not because they’re foreign. But because they’re fair.