Human rights, equality, freedom of expression, privacy, the rule of law. These five ideas are vitally important to the way of life we enjoy today. The battle to establish them in law was long and difficult – as recently as 1970 two-hundred-thousand British Asians were almost stripped of their British citizenship as a result of racist legislation.From assaults on the EU Human Rights Act to the revelations about the NSA and GCHQ brought to light by Edward Snowden, our civil liberties are now under threat in ways they never have been before. Leading human rights lawyer Lord Anthony Lester provides an insider account of how political and legal reforms were achieved and demonstrates why we must act now to ensure they survive the next few decades.
