Fifty years ago today Dr Martin Luther King laid out his vision for a better future in front of hundreds of thousands of civil rights demonstrators. His ‘I have a dream’ speech still stands as one of the greatest ever calls for freedom and justice and his message remains strikingly relevant.
Given a moment to reflect, what might we dream today? We’ve surely come far since 1963. There’s a black President in the White House and there are black women MPs. Here in the UK, gay marriage has just been legalised. We’ve resisted ID cards, indefinite detention and indiscriminate DNA retention. And, since 1998, our rights and freedoms have been enshrined in law by our modern Bill of Rights - the Human Rights Act.
King calls the American constitution a ‘promissory note’ to every citizen. The Human Rights Act is ours. It promises liberty, equality, freedom from torture and the right to hold and voice our own beliefs. It promises respect for our privacy and protects our right to life.
We’ve still got much work to do to live up to these promises. This fight for justice will go on as long as young men face suspicion on our streets just for the colour of their skin and until our security services stop spying on the whole population. It will last until no one is priced out of our legal system and until every rapist, not one in thirty, is brought to justice. And it will continue until the final child is freed from a forgotten immigration prison cell; forgiven of the crime of being born behind the wrong border.
Our Human Rights Act gives us the tools to win this fight. To ensure, as King dreamt, that one day we will all be afforded equal dignity and respect.
Freedom can be fleeting and equality hard to secure in ever-shifting day-to-day difficulties. But on this ground we stand or fall together – our rights are only as strong as they are universal. The Convention on Human Rights, from which our Human Rights Act sprung, was paid for with the sacrifice and courage of everyone who fought and defeated Hitler, and next week is its 60th birthday. These two anniversaries are an inspiring reminder that we owe it to all those who’ve given their lives for our rights – King included – to honour their work with our own.
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