Why NI Needs a Bill of Rights

Fifty years later, it is particularly disheartening are still at the “consultation” stage, after the people of Northern Ireland have been subjected to state and paramilitary violence, sectarian terror and economic and social deprivation, given that the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement indicated that a Bill of Rights should form part of a lasting settlement, and after the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission conducted a lengthy consultation and made recommendations to Government on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland, that the citizens of Northern Ireland are still waiting.

Relationship between citizens and the state

The Workers Party’s attachment to the concept of a Bill of Rights is not based on sentiment or on some abstract philosophical position. We believe that the purpose of a Bill of Rights is to establish and guarantee the relationship between citizens and the state and must form the basis for democratic rights as the guarantor of the civil liberties of all citizens and of the political rights of all political parties, groups and individuals and expressly guarantee that everyone in Northern Ireland is equal before the law and has equal rights. Such a Bill must enshrine fundamental principles constituting a clear statement about the nature of any political institutions established and operated in Northern Ireland. 

The Bill of Rights would operate as a mechanism to permit political life to flourish and would act as a solid foundation for the democratic process. To that end a Bill of Rights must provide a positive statement of the rights which each citizen can expect and demand of the state and it must provide the means whereby those rights will be protected and enforced if they are infringed. 

Social and economic construction

The Workers Party has previously expressed concerns that the inclusion of social and economic rights in a Bill of Rights in the context of an increasingly market oriented economy may constitute a mere sop by formulating those rights on a minimalist basis requiring only that the State uses its best efforts within the resources available or which leaves the interpretation of what is “adequate” to the bourgeois state, its agencies and its courts. We believe that the protection of civil and political rights cannot be effectively guaranteed in any meaningful fashion without a full programme of social and economic construction. 

While the Workers Party is fundamentally and unequivocally committed to establishing social and economic rights, we believe that this can only be achieved by the implementation of a radical and progressive socialist programme. If, however, a robust framework of economic, social and environmental rights which advances such demands for the working class can be articulated in a manner which addresses its concerns the Workers Party would support the inclusion of these rights in a Bill of Rights. 

“The two communities”

The Workers Party has historically resisted and has serious reservations about the language and content of any proposal to which might entrench an electoral system to provide for “both main communities” in Northern Ireland. The Workers Party has consistently objected to the concept of “the two communities” in Northern Ireland. This language consolidates and promotes sectarian division and to place such a concept at the heart of Bill of Rights diminishes the concept of citizenship on which rights should be based and institutionalises the sectarian division in perpetuity. The architecture of the GFA has already contributed to the consolidation of sectarianism at the heart of government. 

A commitment to anti-sectarian politics is fundamental to the political programme of the Workers Party. We supported the Belfast Agreement at the time but with serious reservations given the sectarian edifice upon which it was to be constructed. 

The Workers Party challenges the institutionalised architecture of sectarianism reproduced in the Belfast Agreement and given flesh in the current devolved administration through its all-class tribal alliances. We are committed to a political system where the majority of the population, the working class, regardless of communal background, is properly and fairly represented in all aspects of political life. A Bill of Rights should reflect and underpin that ambition. 

The Workers Party, while content with a requirement in a Bill of Rights to take effective measures to promote mutual respect and understanding (or “parity of esteem”) wishes to make clear that is not taken as an opportunity to promote and celebrate sectarian division rather than encouraging that which unites. Opinions which espouse fascism, sectarian, gender, or race hate or homophobia should not be protected.

The Workers Party believes that in relation to language rights, public authorities must, as a minimum, act compatibly with the obligations undertaken by the UK Government under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect of the support and development of Irish and Ulster-Scots.