Rights‐Restricting Rhetoric: The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021

Abstract

This article considers the role of rhetoric in British political discourse with a particular focus on how it aids the construction of legislation that restricts human rights. Using the parliamentary debates concerning the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021 as an extensive example, it demonstrates how the rhetorical theatrics of legislating in the Westminster parliament play a fundamental role in justifying restrictions on rights to the public. Rhetoric fulfils three functions in this process: persuasion of the need for rights-restricting legislation; obstruction of scrutiny of such plans, and the perpetuation of national myths and tropes upon which such policies are debated. Arguing that such rhetorical functions are immovable from British political discourse, the article concludes by proposing how they can best be diluted.

Closing the ranks: Bondedness, sense of self and moral injury during legacy case prosecutions

“…3 There is, though, a wider backdrop to this ‘identity non-verification’ that goes beyond the NI context. At the same time that former British soldiers are facing reinvestigation over their conduct in NI, evidence of systemic human rights abuse has cast a shadow over the British Army's record in post-NI deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq (Mallory, 2022). Persistent allegations of systemic human rights abuse spanning from Belfast in the last century to Basra this century is thus injurious to the moral self-superiority inherent in post-Brexit English nationalism and to the colonial mindset that ‘our boys’ have been dutiful peacekeepers while deployed overseas (Hearty, 2020; McGovern, 2019).…”

“…The historic and contemporary relevance of this can be seen in how UK politicians supported media-driven campaigns during the 1990s in support of James Fisher, Mark Wright and Lee Clegg who were convicted for unlawful killings in Belfast (Sanders, 2021) and more recently for Alexander Blackman who was convicted for an unlawful killing in Afghanistan (Hearty, 2020). The veterans issue is also electorally useful in the post-Brexit UK (Mallory, 2022), with the NIVM claiming 'we were influential in the last general election and were promised support' (NIVM, n.d.c). The group subsequently led a letter writing campaign encouraging MPs to oppose 'the continuing vexatious prosecutions of military veterans who served in Northern Ireland' (NIVM, n.d.f).…”

“…Introduced to parliament in May 2022 under the pretext of bringing closure and providing information to bereaved families, the move to close down further criminal prosecutions – as well as civil cases and inquests - has been seen as legally, politically and morally problematic by legal experts, human rights groups and victims across the board (Bryson, 2021; McEvoy, 2022). Here, the Bill insulates NI veterans from criminal prosecution in a similar way that the recent Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021 protects those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan will (Mallory, 2022). Even if it remains a matter of conjecture at the time of writing as to whether or not the UK Government will ultimately succeed in preventing future prosecutions of veterans, there are nonetheless valuable insights to be gained in critically examining veteran mobilisation that precipitated the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill's introduction to parliament.…”