The United Kingdom and Human Rights - College of Social ...

78 Human Rights, Values and Choice
watchful Press and involvement of various professions in
the development and application of human legal rights,
have rendered cliched calls for vigilance less necessary.
Magnification of Press and public awareness of human
rights issues owes much to legal academia, professional
pressure groups and the constructive comments of nongovernmental
organisations such as Justice, the Howard
League, MIND, Amnesty and the Child Poverty Action
Group. Admittedly sweet reason does not always prevail
against complacency, but demonisation, attacks on the
good faith of those who disagree, and claims to
infallibility, will, by strengthening the spirit of faction,
delay incremental, let alone institutional, change. Some
will sneer at this attitude, but idealist politicians and
wholesale reformers should prudently advert to Adam
Smith's 1790 comments:
"Some general, and even systematical, idea of the
perfection of policy and law, may no doubt be
necessary for directing the views of the statesman. But
to insist upon establishing, and upon establishing all
at once, and in spite of all opposition, everything
which that idea may seem to require, must often be
the highest degree of arrogance. It is to erect his own
judgment into the supreme standard of right and
wrong." 26
Values and their Meaning
Smith, it must be noted, was speaking about personal
"judgment" and standards of what is "right" and
"wrong." This brings me directly to what is meant by
speaking of "values." In so doing, I hope to avoid the
philosophical minefield of debate about the relationships