Human Rights Relativity

In a week which has seen all kinds of positive and negative comment about bishops, the Pope and Human Rights legislation stumbling through the House of Lords just now, I think we need to stand back and consider what human rights are and what they aren’t.

Civilised people need to have some way of measuring standards of behaviour that translates across culture from one context to another, indicating possible abuse. Clear Human Rights legislation is a good way for civil society to express some shared values, and measure where behaviour falls short. Pulling the whole ragbag of legislation from the past forty years together into a coherent whole is obviously a Good Thing Too. So far, so good.

But which Human Rights? How? More partcularly, how do you balance them? Human Rights are usually framed in terms of a Big Social Good, and this makes them seem like absolutes, which of course they can never really be.

Translating high ideals into the down and dirty world of Monday morning, where stuff happens, is an inexact science.

All Human Rights however idealistically framed, always need to be qualified, both by the constraints of reality, and other human rights. This is the nature of freedom arguments — my freedom to express who I am by practising my Euphonium is qualified by your right to a good night’s sleep. However excellent each notional right may be in the abstract, either, pushed to its logical extreme in the real world would cancel out the other.

So to current concerns. Equality and Diversity are both really good things, in the abstract. That means Discrimination and Homogenization are really bad things, in the abstract. Now try and apply that lot, and make laws to universalise the deal, and you will need to make a few cute calls. Doesn't mean it shouldn’t be done, just that it’ll be messy. Discussion along the way to deciding how to word equality legislation needs to be robust and realistic, not knee-jerk and generalised.

Every position has to be proofed against some other positive right, or the result will almost certainly be abusive.

That being the case slanging matches about whether Human Rights are a Good Thing or a Bad Thing are futile and childish. The Pope, left wing right wing, whatever, anyone has as much right as anyone else to express a serious point of view about the way the balance between Equality and Liberty looks as though it’s being struck in the UK.

The liberty of the individual to believe or not as they judge right, like the liberty of the individual to be treated fairly, are both precious things that can only be preserved if we are willing to give serous attention to working out how they relate to each other. One lot may have to swallow the uncongenial truth that the extent to which any of its people accepts any organisation’s dogma is ultimately voluntary not legally enforceable, and the other the equally uncongenial truth that illiberal liberalism is an Oxymoron.

Clergy HR: Eat your shorts, B P Richfield

We use Claire Pedrick of 3-D Coaching, regularly and increasingly, to help and counsel clergy with a variety of professional developmental needs. I met Claire yesterday, among other things, to scope some generic trends affecting clergy welfare, including the impact of new diversity and equality legislation next year.

As laid out by Harriet Harman there are four threads to a bill for the next session of parliament. The current complex raft of equality and diversity legislation (107 statutes, I’m told) is insanely spread out, and driven entirely by giving individuals rights which they are not always willing or able to enforce. The government’s thinking is that this is a systemic problem, and calls for a systemic solution. They intend to pull things together and take positive action in four areas, rather than simply relying on employment tribunals:

1. Greater Transparency
2. Enforcement
3. Public procurement
4. Preventative systemic action — training etc.

This sounds really good, though the devil is always in the detail. There is, of course, work to do about genuine occupational requirements — ensuring the Pope’s a Catholic, and you don’t get The Deerhunter as director of Greenpeace. I don’t imagine it’s beyond human wit to work that stuff out. For common or garden purposes, I see this as a really positive way forward for everyone. As work continues on our own Committee for Racial Justice (which I chair) on developing our own rigorous diversity agenda, to turn it from a motherhood-and-apple-pie aspiration into a way of life based on Biblical and Moral values, I can see benefits in all four of these areas.

Just spare a thought for poor old B. P Richfield. Dinosaurs ran for a few years in the early nineties until Disney inexplicably pulled the plug on what was, IMHO, the best TV they ever did. B. P. Richfield was the ultimate boss from hell, a Palaeolithic Alan Sugar, CEO of the Wesayso Corporation. B. P. ran on high octane Theory-X, and was, of course, the first great mentor and management guru of a generation of bishops. Here’s the kind of workplace encounter he used to initiate:

B.P. Richfield:	SINCLAIR!. I oughta kill you and your whole family, but I'd probably get in trouble with the union. As it is, there's only one thing I can do to you: you're fired, Sinclair, fired, fired, FIRED!!!.
Earl:	Fired? That means I don't have to come to work anymore. Oh, this is the happiest day of my life.

I was delighted to come across evidence, however, that even BP had mellow moments, especially after chewing the Happy Plant: