BY GEORGE SIMM DCM

The Unseen Struggle: Soldiers, Sovereignty, and Human Rights in the Fight Against Extremism

Unlike police officers, who benefit from representative bodies, soldiers have no such representation or protection. This disparity carries significant consequences. Late last year, the Metropolitan Police’s armed officers effectively withdrew their services in response to the legal handling of the Chris Kaba case. The result was a severe weakening of London’s defence against serious and organised crime, as well as terrorism.

For obvious reasons, this disturbing situation attracted little media attention. During this short period, it meant that the only people bearing arms in the capital were criminals.

This crisis stemmed directly from the increasing reinterpretation of human rights legislation from Strasbourg, the main effect of which is for our government to go to extremes to protect criminals and murdering terrorists, while concurrently putting those tasked with enforcing our laws through the legal wringer, looking for any contrived fault that has the effect of criminalising armed police and soldiers operating in defence of the public and very much in harm’s way. Current interpretations of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in the courts and reported in the left-wing media are quick to give the impression of state agents as “gun-toting thugs” based solely upon accusations rather than any actual evidence.

The current socialist government’s apparent prioritisation of foreign and supranational interests over those of the UK is becoming ever more evident. No one should be surprised by this. If the track records of those currently in government were researched, it would be abundantly clear that this behaviour should not have been unexpected. They say one thing and do the opposite; on the evidence, they simply do not believe in the UK’s national interest—the government is on a different script to the majority of voters. Groups such as the IRA, our very own ISIS bride, various jihadi groups from across the Islamic world, or any other faction with a grievance against the UK, often find eager champions within certain elements of the legal profession to defend their human rights against those of the indigenous population. The Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporated the ECHR into UK law, has effectively shifted power from parliament to the judiciary, impacting every area of governance. And our politicians are left to explain the inexplicable to an increasingly angry public.

The claim that parliament is sovereign is misleading. Under the UK’s constitutional framework, sovereignty resides with the people, and parliament represents that sovereignty. No authority should surpass that of an elected parliament. Yet, through the 1998 Human Rights Act, judges in the Supreme Court have gained considerable control over parliamentary decisions. The Supreme Court was created by Blair to ensure compliance with European laws and the ECHR, and in the process, destroyed the established parliamentary legal framework that had operated for centuries. The Left calls that progressive. Post-Brexit, we are now left with a Supreme Court that principally enforces the ECHR’s laws. The constitutional problem is that these ECHR laws are not rooted in our parliamentary process, are therefore not properly scrutinised, and are not accountable to the voters. These ECHR laws originate from outside the UK and solely within the minds of lawyers and judges who constantly reinterpret the Treaty’s Articles. It is clearly an undemocratic process.

Such a shift in power would once have been deemed unacceptable. However, under a socialist government closely aligned with human rights ideologies, and to a degree under the previous semi-socialist, apparently conservative governments, the situation has become precarious. Blind adherence to the doctrine of human rights, without critical examination, erodes both democratic governance, and in its lopsided application in favour of those who would do us harm, it directly impacts national security.

Richard Hermer, the current Attorney General, exemplifies these concerns. Elevated from relative obscurity, Hermer wields immense influence as the enforcer of a legal framework designed to ensure compliance with the ECHR. In practical terms, this makes him the most powerful figure in the cabinet. Given his history of representing individuals often perceived as enemies of the state, his rise to such prominence should alarm anyone concerned with national security.

Hermer’s October 2024 Bingham Lecture, titled “The Rule of Law in an Age of Populism,” outlined his philosophical direction while in government. He criticised populism—what many would simply regard as democracy—as a threat to human rights. Instead, he advocated for a society underpinned by human dignity, as defined by the human rights framework introduced during Blair’s Labour government. His call to “popularise the rule of law and human rights” masks a deeper rejection of democratic parliamentary process in favour of a technocratic approach—controlled solely by lawyers.

For soldiers, this skewed legal environment and what appears to be a total absence of representation within government leaves them without any effective protection. And when our government obsesses with the human rights of our enemies, prioritising those over the security forces defending the state, it compounds an already unacceptable situation. The endless hounding and attempted prosecutions of armed police and soldiers in what are effectively ECHR courts for actions taken in defence of the UK public, and latterly in jurisdictions where the ECHR has no reasonable place, merely serves to prove the point. It is ECHR mission creep on steroids.

The disconnect between our ECHR-worshipping government—particularly within the Ministry of Defence—and soldiers is profound and deeply concerning. Many senior officers, aware of this growing divide over recent decades, have chosen not to act, preferring to preserve their positions rather than address this developing military calamity. Where are the principled, decisive leaders of the past when they are most needed to fight the threat from behind our backs?

The military is constitutionally bound to remain apolitical, yet in the current environment of legal madness, soldiers must be questioning their role when their employer, the UK government, fails to safeguard them, and by extension, its citizens. As of 2020, and according to the UK terrorist watch list, there were 40,000 Islamists listed. That equates to four military divisions of Islamist fighters. The British Army today will struggle to muster one fighting division. In the event that civil disorder breaks down and overwhelms police capacity, would this detached government turn to the military to bail them out, having created a catastrophe in the first instance? And if it did, would the military respond after decades of politically motivated abuse and legal harassment?

It is a reasonable, if uncomfortable, question that I fear will remain unanswered until the wheel finally comes off. At that point, we will all discover what the real impact of this undemocratic abuse of our people and its security mechanisms has really created.

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George Simm DCM was Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) of the 22 Special Air Service (SAS).