A war on the marginalised : The legitimisation and inevitability of the protection of privilege through an analysis of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (PCSC), the Nationality and Borders Bill (NB), and the institutions that enable them

Sammanfattning

This article explores the declining state of and increasing threat to human rights in the UK, through an analysis of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (PCSC) and the Nationality and Borders Bill (NB). It focusses on the ostracisation, demonisation and criminalisation of marginalised groups, and how this has been achieved through a regime of right-wing populism, capitalising on crises within the elite to direct public anger at economic suffering and perceived erosion of social values towards the most marginalised in society by proposing that they are favoured by the elite over 'the people'. This has created an ‘other’ of many minorities, allowing them to be more easily dehumanised and their human rights to be more easily eroded, legitimised by exploiting or manufacturing crises such as austerity, an immigration crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Victims include asylum seekers, refugees, protesters, human rights defenders, black communities, Gypsies, Roma and Travellers. The article argues that due to the intersectionality of oppression, other marginalised groups are indirectly impacted, as the bills are part of a wider aim to transfer power from marginalised to privileged groups, a move that impacts most citizens negatively by further concentrating power at the top. The creation of an ‘other’ has succeeded in dividing groups oppressed by the same systems and pitting them against each other to ensure that the systems and institutions that oppress flourish, while simultaneously reducing government accountability. An analysis of the media and police will reveal how they uphold and enable institutional discrimination, how they have legitimised these bills, and how the failure of successive governments to reform these institutions has resulted in the inevitability of these bills with media functioning as an enabler and the police as an enforcer of institutional oppression. The transferral of powers to the police, while simultaneously delegitimising regulators, ensures human rights are threatened on multiple levels through legislation, implementation, and accountability.