Agents of Their Own Abuse

Jacqueline Rose: The Treatment of Migrant Women, 10 October 2019

... which also happens to be the period after which deportation is automatic, which means they may just as well have been turned around at the port of entry. The Cambridge report records the story of one victim of trafficking who was sentenced to two consecutive periods of 12 months for using a false document with intent and making a false statement for ...

So Close to the Monster

Gilberto Perez: The Trouble with Being Cuban, 22 June 2000

On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality and Culture 
by Louis Pérez Jr..
North Carolina, 579 pp., £31.95, October 1999, 0 8078 2487 9
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... memory of another but of a nation stooping under the power of its looming next-door neighbour. It may be appropriate for the state capitols of California or Mississippi to defer to the shape of the US Capitol, but Cuba is not a state of the Union. On the cover of my mother’s civics book, the Cuban Capitolio represented an ideal of democracy modelled on the ...

The Moral Solipsism of Global Ethics Inc

Alex de Waal: Human rights, democracy and Amnesty International, 23 August 2001

Like Water on Stone: The Story of Amnesty International 
by Jonathan Power.
Allen Lane, 332 pp., £12.99, May 2001, 0 7139 9319 7
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Future Positive: International Co-operation in the 21st Century 
by Michael Edwards.
Earthscan, 292 pp., £12.99, September 2000, 1 85383 740 7
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East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia 
by Daniel Bell.
Princeton, 369 pp., £12.50, May 2000, 0 691 00508 7
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... and speeches, which he skilfully edits into a debate with an imaginary American interlocutor.) Lee may have an insalubrious human rights record, but the point he makes needs to be taken seriously. As do the voices of Lee’s victims and critics. Human rights is an activity as well as a theory; it is an exercise in power. It’s not possible to do more than ...

Unlike a Scotch Egg

Glen Newey: Hate Speech, 5 December 2013

The Harm in Hate Speech 
by Jeremy Waldron.
Harvard, 292 pp., £19.95, June 2012, 978 0 674 06589 5
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... doesn’t, even though an obvious reason for wanting to gag people is the fear that not doing so may cause harm? Clearly, the prospect of such harm can be exploited to squelch opinions one doesn’t care to hear. But the fact that some people cite harm disingenuously doesn’t show that the preponderance of harm arises from a regime of gagging rather than ...

Terms of Art

Conor Gearty: Human Rights Law, 11 March 2010

The Law of Human Rights 
by Richard Clayton and Hugh Tomlinson.
Oxford, 2443 pp., £295, March 2009, 978 0 19 926357 8
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Human Rights Law and Practice 
edited by Anthony Lester, David Pannick and Javan Herberg.
Lexis Nexis, 974 pp., £237, April 2009, 978 1 4057 3686 2
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Human Rights: Judicial Protection in the United Kingdom 
by Jack Beatson, Stephen Grosz, Tom Hickman, Rabinder Singh and Stephanie Palmer.
Sweet and Maxwell, 905 pp., £124, September 2008, 978 0 421 90250 3
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... under any other act, then the coroner must hold an inquest as soon as it is practicable. A jury may or may not be summoned, but either way the inquest must decide, first, who the deceased was; and second, how, when and where they came by their death. In the past, inquests used to engage with far wider questions, often ...

No Ordinary Law

Stephen Sedley: Constitution-Makers, 5 June 2008

... is also the right of another, and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess,’ he may have overlooked the fact that Paine was making the point in order to demonstrate the shortsightedness of members of the French National Assembly who had demanded that the Declaration of the Rights of Man be accompanied by a declaration of duties. There was no ...

Resurrection Man

Danny Karlin: Browning and His Readers, 23 May 2002

The Ring and the Book 
by Robert Browning, edited by Richard Altick and Thomas Collins.
Broadview, 700 pp., £12.99, August 2001, 1 55111 372 4
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The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. Vol. VIII: The Ring and the Book, Books V-VIII 
edited by Stefan Hawlin and Tim Burnett.
Oxford, £75, February 2001, 0 19 818647 9
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... But even Melville might have blenched at Browning’s final exordium: So, British Public, who may like me yet, (Marry and amen!) learn one lesson hence Of many which whatever lives should teach: This lesson, that our human speech is naught, Our human testimony false, our fame And human estimation words and wind. So that’s it. The British Public might ...

Eat Your Spinach

Tony Wood: Russia and the West, 2 March 2017

Return to Cold War 
by Robert Legvold.
Polity, 208 pp., £14.99, February 2016, 978 1 5095 0189 2
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Should We Fear Russia? 
by Dmitri Trenin.
Polity, 144 pp., £9.99, November 2016, 978 1 5095 1091 7
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Who Lost Russia? How the World Entered a New Cold War 
by Peter Conradi.
Oneworld, 384 pp., £18.99, February 2017, 978 1 78607 041 8
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... the 21st century’s new challenges’, from terrorism to climate change to cyber warfare. Legvold may be right that the rhetoric coming from either side could have material effects. The notion of a ‘cold war’ is a kind of geopolitical speech act: if enough people in power decide they are in one, it will materialise. But there are decisive differences ...

Diary

Stephen Sedley: On the Guildford Four, 9 November 1989

... on the Guildford documents. It’s still not good enough, however. Why should the victim of what may be fabricated evidence have to rely on the authorities themselves to investigate it? Why should they not be entitled to have their own lawyers scrutinise and challenge not only what is presented in court but where and how it originates? Other developed ...

Careful Mismanagement

J.L. Heilbron, 11 January 1990

Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age 
by Catherine Caufield.
Secker, 304 pp., £12.95, January 1989, 0 436 09478 9
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The Demise of Nuclear Energy? Lessons for Democratic Control of Technology 
by Joseph Morone and Edward Woodhouse.
Yale, 172 pp., £20, May 1989, 0 300 04448 8
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... Are your teeth false? The uranium in each of them may brighten your smile with about ten times the radiation you get from the natural background, from cosmic rays attacking from above and radon and its decay products attacking from below. Do you wear corrective lenses? They may add to the flash of your eye a radiation five times the natural background level ...

Sunday Mornings

Frank Kermode, 19 July 1984

Desmond MacCarthy: The Man and his Writings 
by David Cecil.
Constable, 313 pp., £9.95, May 1984, 9780094656109
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... Asquith, whom he knew well and admired deeply, at least as deeply as he detested Lloyd George. It may be that the expression of antipathy is a better test of style and temper than eulogy. MacCarthy has a piece on Disraeli that would surely have been impermissible in a dedicated Liberal of a later generation. He finds it absurd that anybody should place a ...

Dignity and Impudence

Oliver Whitley, 6 October 1983

A Variety of Lives: A Biography of Sir Hugh Greene 
by Michael Tracey.
Bodley Head, 344 pp., £15, September 1983, 0 370 30026 2
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... Attenborough as like Rommel taking command of the Eighth Army. The truth of this whole matter may, I suppose, be indefinitely hidden among rival conjectures, for it is evident from Tracey’s account that at least one person who should know how and why Wilson did what he did has had a lapse of memory. My conjecture is that the versions of Lords Bowden and ...

After Hillhead

David Marquand, 15 April 1982

... Whatever else it may or may not have been, Hillhead was unquestionably a personal triumph for Roy Jenkins. The crowds which packed the silent, thoughtful meetings were drawn by him. The old ladies who switched tremulously and belatedly from the Tories switched to him. The clever-silly London journalists who explained why the SDP bubble was going to burst made their jokes at his expense ...

Prize Poems

Donald Davie, 1 July 1982

Arvon Foundation Poetry Competion: 1980 Anthology 
by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney.
Kilnhurst Publishing Company, 173 pp., £3, April 1982, 9780950807805
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Burn this 
by Tom Disch.
Hutchinson, 63 pp., £7.50, April 1982, 0 09 146960 0
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... Social Democrat parties as to the liking of the Tories. If it has any socio-political value (which may well be doubted), that value is just there – in saying what nobody, of any political party, wants to hear. It follows that worth in poetry cannot be determined by that favoured device of egalitarian politics, the committee: not even when the committee is ...

Dead Cats and Fungi

Robert Taubman, 20 March 1980

Puffball 
by Fay Weldon.
Hodder, 255 pp., £5.95, February 1980, 0 340 24565 4
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The Mirror of the Giant 
by Penelope Shuttle.
Marion Boyars, 165 pp., £5.95, January 1980, 0 7145 2679 7
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Another Part of the Wood 
by Beryl Bainbridge.
Duckworth, 176 pp., £4.95, November 1979, 0 7156 1458 4
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Wild Oats 
by Jacob Epstein.
Alison Press/Secker, 267 pp., £5.95, February 1980, 0 436 14826 9
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In the Secret State 
by Robert McCrum.
Hamish Hamilton, 250 pp., £5.95, February 1980, 0 241 10322 3
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... is from you the knowledge will come.’ Since the ghost is that of Theron’s first wife, whom he may or may not have murdered, one suspects the influence of an Eliot theme. Although Penelope Shuttle’s poetic prose is often baffling, a pattern of meaning becomes tolerably clear as Beth moves from the idea of acceptance of ...