In a letter published in The Daily Telegraph on 7 November, Alistair Lexden questioned whether Churchill would have approved of the strident way in which some ministers today are publicly demanding changes to the European Convention on Human Rights.
SIR – Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, was unwise to invoke Winston Churchill in support of his view that the European Convention on Human Rights needs “serious reform” to curb immigration (report, October 25).
Churchill had nothing but praise for this common European “charter of human rights, guarded by freedom and sustained by law”, as he put it in 1948. He would have approached reform cautiously, after careful private discussion with fellow signatories, instead of making wild public statements.
His own record on immigration policy was inglorious. As prime minister in October 1954 he said that "the problems arising from the immigration of people into the UK required urgent and serious attention”. He did nothing, however.
If a coherent, cross-party legal framework for the control of immigration had been established then, this country would have been spared many of the grave difficulties and social strains that have afflicted it since.
Lord Lexden
London SW1
