Human rights and the end of empire

"The European Convention on Human Rights, which came into force in 1953 after signature, in 1950, established the most effective system for the international protection of human rights which has bet come into existence anywhere in the world. It has now at last been incorporated into British domestic law. The British government, working through the Foreign Office, played a central role in the postwar human rights movement, first of all in the United Nations, and then in the Council of Europe. The context in which the negotiations took place was affected both by the cold war and by conflicts with the anti-colonial movement, as well as by serious conflicts within the British governmental machine. The book tells the story of the Convention up to 1966, the date at which Britain finally accepted the right of individual petition and the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights. It explores in detail the significance of the Convention for Britain as a major colonial power in the declining years of Empire, and provides a full account of the first cases brought under the Convention, which were initiated by Greece against Britain over the insurrection in Cyprus in the 1950s. It also provides the first account based on archival materials of the use of the Convention in the independence constitutions of colonial territories."--BOOK JACKET.