On "Rights"

There is something faintly depressing hearing people talk about rights. And it is happening more and more – “I’ve got a right to work”, “I’ve got a right to a university education” and so on. And this tedious tendency to talk in political absolutes is one of the many reasons why political debate in this country has descended into repetitive, pointless bickering over the same old issues.

I’ve got two main problems with this talk of rights. Firstly, having a right to something is often totally meaningless in reality. You might say you have a right to life – but what does that count for when the man next to you on the bus blows his rucksack, himself and you into little pieces? Or when the feral chav you pass on the street slots with a stolen kitchen knife you because he doesn’t like your face? Yes, you have a right to life; that doesn’t mean people will respect that right or any others you might claim to have.

And what happens when your rights clash with someone else’s? Take university education – a protestor might claim to have a right to higher education, but that right might clash with another individual’s right not to be taxed to the hilt in order to pay for the education of others. This sort of conflict can be seen in its extremes in the “debate” over abortion in the US – the right to life and the right to choose clash fundamentally, and there’s no way around that. So what do we do? Well, as the likes of John Gray have persuasively argued, we need to do something other than stick the to discourse of “rights” when they fundamentally clash – because such talk gets us nowhere fast.

Some debates will always rage, and when we have to make hard choices someone will always lose out. But if we start seeing these difficult choices as a compromise rather than a battle between conflicting rights, we’re more likely to get to a settlement that, even if it doesn’t please everyone, can be lived with by all.

Which has got to be better than the level of debate around tuition fees; it has ceased to be a convincing argument when it consists of people whacking the shit out of each other on the streets.