The Origins of the Human Rights Act: A ‘British Bill of Rights’ the First Time Around

Abstract This article reconstructs the first initiatives for a British Bill of Rights from the late 1960s to the mid‐1980s and argues that their failure shaped the eventual form of the Human Rights Act. Proposals for a Bill of Rights emerged across the political spectrum, but commanded most support on the right as a means of restraining trade unions and socialist legislation. While some advocates supported the entrenchment of a distinctively British instrument, others advanced the more modest alternative of incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law. These disputes hinged above all on concerns over the preservation of parliamentary sovereignty and the expansion of judicial power. Over this period, entrenchment became regarded by the Conservative and Labour leaderships as unacceptable or unfeasible, leaving incorporation as the only viable option. The Human Rights Act thus represented not a constitutional rupture, but the outcome of earlier debates that had already narrowed the field of possibilities.