This page contains a selection of correspondence regarding the formation of a party of human rights. Thanks to the Jacksons for their kind permission to reproduce their email.

From: Howard and Jo Jackson
To: Peace and Progress

Hi,

Thanks for the invitation to attend the founding conference of Peace and Progress as a political party. We have serious misgivings about this course of action. We are happy to support GHRC as a pressure group but the record of single issue parties is not a happy one. Whilst we must agree with you that currently our civil liberties are under attack by neo-conservatives, who are portraying Islam as the new menace, however we don't feel that setting up a new party is the way to tackle the problem.

Currently the Left is in disarray due to Blair converting the LP to a right-of-centre party, but our feeling is that with the slewed voting system in the UK, more parties can only fragment the Left even more. Against whom are you going to stand, surely not people like Jeremy Corbin or Caroline Lucas? In our undemocratic electoral system the only way forward is to vote tactically. For Example in the recent by-election in Hartlepool 60% of the voters didn't want a Labour MP, but they got one. Our feeling is that the Respect, Socialist Labour Party and Green candidates, took votes from the Liberal candidate. If the Liberal had been elected it's possible that a back bench revolt in the LP could have removed Blair. We realise that this is a complex issue that is why, after considering your proposals we have decided to respond to you this way.

However we remain to be convinced and we would welcome your comments.

Best wishes,
Howard & Jo Jackson

From: Corin Redgrave on behalf of Peace and Progree
To: Howard and Jo Jackson

Dear Howard and Jo,

Thank you for your letter. Maybe one of the benefits of our proposal to launch a party of human rights will be to stimulate a discussion on how best to defend them when they are mortally endangered.

As you say, there are some members of parliament with an excellent record for defending human rights. Usually, they have forfeited the chance of promotion by doing so. In some cases they have been sacked (Jenny Tonge, the Liberal Democrat MP, was one such). Peace & Progress will certaily not compete for votes with such MPs. On the contrary, we shall recommend them. However, although there are such principled MPs, and scores of thousands of people in almost all parties who share their views, there is no party which has for its agenda the defence of human rights. And now we need such a party. To suggest that we should safely leave this task to NGOs and their supporters in parliament flies in the face of recent history. Successive acts of parliament on criminal justice, asylum and immigration, and terrorism, have trampled on human rights, to such a point that our Court of Appeal now rules that evidence obtained under torture is admissible, something which would have been unthinkable even five years ago. A political party for human rights will, we believe, enhance the attention paid to the work of Amnesty, Liberty, Human Rights Watch and others, and strengthen their support. It will enhance the standing of parliamentarians who respect human rights. It will encourage others to follow their example, and turn a spotlight on those who don't.

We welcome further contributions on this question.

Best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Corin Redgrave

On behalf of the Steering Committee:
Azmat Begg, Chris Cooper, Corin Redgrave and Vivian Yates