In a letter (attached) in The Daily Telegraph on October 6, he recalled Churchill's strong conviction expressed in a speech in 1949 that individual countries should always decide how judgments of the European Court of Human Rights should be put into effect. Europe must go back to that original Churchillian vision, he stressed.
Dear SirThe European Convention on Human Rights was drafted in 1949-50 by David Maxwell- Fyfe, subsequently Home Secretary in Churchill's post-war government. Its principal purpose,he said, was to provide "a beacon to the peoples behind the Iron Curtain, and a passport for their return to the midst of the free countries".
The Convention set out "the minimum standard of democratic government" which they would need to meet in order to rejoin the European family of nations.No one then envisaged major legal changes within democratic western European countries .
It was on that basis that Churchill expressed strong support for the Convention in a speech in Strasbourg in 1949. He endorsed the establishment of a court on the strict understanding that it " would depend for the enforcement of its judgments on the individual decisions of the States now banded together".
To this original Churchillian vision the whole of Europe now needs to return.
Yours faithfully
Lord Lexden
London SW1