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2 - From Civil Liberties to Human Rights: British Civil Liberties Activism and Universal Human Rights

from Part I - Civil Liberties in the Age of the Popular Front

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2017

Chris Moores
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Summary

This chapter discusses organizations efforts to move ‘popular front’ style civil liberties activism into a human rights politics during and after the Second World War. With the Charter of the United Nations (1945), and the UDHR (1948) asserting human rights in the global political world order, British organizations south to engage. A potentially coherent conceptualization of political, social and economic rights existed within British left't thinking, yet organizations were unable to mobilize accordingly. This reflected the collapse of 1930s alliances, the pressures and controversies generated by civil liberties work during the war-effort, and the difficulty articulating political positions distinct from Cold War polarization. Tensions between new global understanding of rights and national traditions of rights and liberties emerged, highlighting divisions in the National Council for Civil Liberties. Moreover, universal human rights politics appeared out of context with civil liberties narratives locating the emergence of rights through British constitutional developments or radical national discourses associated with the history of the ‘freeborn Englishman’.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2017

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