Book contents
- Amnesty International and Human Rights Activismin Postwar Britain, 1945–1977
- Human Rights in History
- Amnesty International and Human Rights Activism in Postwar Britain, 1945–1977
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Dawn: 1934–1950
- 2 Africa, Decolonisation and Human Rightsin the 1950s
- 3 Political Imprisonment and Human Rights, 1945–1964
- 4 The Early Years of Amnesty International, 1961–1964
- 5 ‘The Crisis of Growth’: Amnesty International 1964–1968
- 6 1968: the UN Year for Human Rights
- 7 Torture States: 1967–1975
- 8 ‘All Things Come to Those Who Wait’: the Later 1970s
- Conclusion: the Winds of History
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Political Imprisonment and Human Rights, 1945–1964
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 April 2020
- Amnesty International and Human Rights Activismin Postwar Britain, 1945–1977
- Human Rights in History
- Amnesty International and Human Rights Activism in Postwar Britain, 1945–1977
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Dawn: 1934–1950
- 2 Africa, Decolonisation and Human Rightsin the 1950s
- 3 Political Imprisonment and Human Rights, 1945–1964
- 4 The Early Years of Amnesty International, 1961–1964
- 5 ‘The Crisis of Growth’: Amnesty International 1964–1968
- 6 1968: the UN Year for Human Rights
- 7 Torture States: 1967–1975
- 8 ‘All Things Come to Those Who Wait’: the Later 1970s
- Conclusion: the Winds of History
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Chapter 3 looks at how far questions of human rights contributed to the campaigns against political imprisonment during the 1950s. The Cold War forms the inescapable context: the left campaigned for left-wing prisoners, and the right for right-wing prisoners. Peter Benenson challenged this binary distinction when he set up the cross-party lawyers’ organisation Justice in 1956. The chapter discusses Benenson’s early career, as well as that of Eric Baker, who would work closely with him in Amnesty. The two men first worked together in Cyprus during the Emergency of 1955-1959. Baker’s Quaker heritage is explored, as well as his support for the influential Italian social activist Danilo Dolci. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the various campaigns that were launched in the late 1950s and early 1960s for an amnesty for political prisoners in Spain, Portugal and Greece. These were essentially left-wing campaigns, but it is argued that they had much in common with later ‘human rights‘ campaigns and are worthy of serious study.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020