The EHRC suffered from some complacent mismanagement, but that does not negate the importance of human rights and equality. However a regime of neoliberal austerity cannot proceed if it is hampered by commitments human rights and equality so it was only a matter of time before the Liberal & Conservative parties dismantled this thorn in the Coalition’s side, it also confirms the historic animosity of establishment liberals towards that mysterious netherworld beyond their middle class world.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has been stripped of its duty to promote a society with equal opportunity for all and had its budget and workforce halved, the government has announced.
The move comes days after the watchdog chided ministers for failing to consider how crucial policies would affect women, disabled people and ethnic minorities.
In part the changes aim to dismantle a legacy left by the previous government. Featherstone said the government would repeal the obligation to assess whether policies affect the poor, which when introduced by Labour was characterised as “socialism in one clause”. The minister said instead the “socio-economic duty” would be repealed.
Gaspar Tamas noted the advent of similar shock doctrine in his native Hungary
Well the whole Hungarian political development over the last-year-and-a-half has been very much worrying. The new government has installed a new regime. This is not just a change of government; it’s a very deep transformation of the whole country with hundreds of new laws changing the whole legal makeup of the country – changing back from a very flawed but still existent liberal democratic order into a very modern, very contemporary authoritarianism, which is very carefully thought out and very coherent. It consists of a number of measures that I can’t list in a short interview, which is curtailing people’s freedoms from press, freedom of assembly, right to strike and all that stuff, while slashing most institutions that enjoyed some kind of autonomy, from media outlets, to universities, to schools, to art institutions, to unions, to whatever.
But all this is based on a very intellectually interesting development in constitutional law that also has some symbolic changes – for example, Hungary is no longer designated a republic as of the January 1. It’s just Hungary. And where there are articles from the old constitution disappearing, such as equal pay for equal work – that’s not any longer in the constitution. Old welfare statist prescriptions are not there any longer. But what is most important is that rights are not defined as they are normally – like in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the beginning of your Constitution – but they are made dependent on the satisfactory delivery of duties – delivery of public functions and observance of duties. And there are other articles of the Constitution wherein its partially hidden, partially declared openly, that only citizens with a community spirit, and honest work, and appropriate makeup of a citizen can really count on the plenitude of all rights. The state is not obliging itself any longer to the performance of obligations on the side of the state toward citizens. So, for example, whenever the old constitution said that the government must guarantee housing or health or whatever, it said now that the government must do its best to insure fairness, health, housing, welfare, et cetera. So both the welfare state remnants in the old constitution are wiped out completely, and also the absoluteness of rights on which liberal democracies are based in most places have disappeared, which of course enables the authorities to deny various things to citizens in need.
That would also apply to the NHS and Legal Aid changes whereby the state has removed itself from a role in enabling access to health and justice while protecting finance capital & govt higher management personnel from its own tax office. This post at My Crippled Eagle is excellent on Tamas and how this also relates to what could be termed the triage of society now being undertaken, where the sick, disabled & unemployed are suffering under eliminationist abandonment.
And Labour’s response? To engage in a polite social democratic policy review (though at least the conservative pro-war Blairites are in retreat) while leaving in place Liam Byrne which sends a big signal that yes, all 3 parties have identified the sacrificial sectors of society to be the scapegoat and target of elimination- the sick, disabled and unemployed. That’s called a political consensus, and woe betide us who fall into the target range. Meanwhile the wealthiest saw their fortunes increase, austerity clearly doing the job it was designed to do. Now then let’s just check to see what the markets think, because duh, who do you think runs this Democracy Zero brand? And Greece, whose corrupt establishment nurtured by military dictatorship then ensured it ruined the country in such a way that the flaws of the EU’s structure could be hidden with the help of ingenious bankers until it was way too late. Is there hope? Background on SYRIZA by Paul Mason here, who are a lot more programmatic than panicked corporate media will have you believe. The EU should save itself, but that depends on some politicians and bankers seeing the inside of jail cells and major reform of the banking and corporate structure. So good luck with that, I’m sure they won’t just go the easy route of vilifying nations and pouring public capital into private banks. Again. Again.
