Rights and wrongs

ON March 25, 1807 — just a month over 200 years ago — the royal assent was given to an act of parliament sought by William Wilberforce to end the slave trade.

This action marked the beginning of the end of the ‘right’ of one person to the ownership of another.

It is something of an irony that, 200 years later, the European Court of Human Rights should have chosen this particular moment to deliver its judgement endorsing the ‘right’ of one person to take the life of another.