It’s Hallowe’en, so we’ll start with the witches. The 15th to 17th centuries saw Europe in the grip of a witch-hunting frenzy. In England and Scotland alone, around 3000 people were executed as witches. The belief in witchcraft was genuine and terrifying. Witches were believed to be in league with the Devil; and women, being weak-minded, lustful creatures, were more easily entrapped by him.
The Church’s position was that anyone entrapped by the Devil did not pray hard enough or, with sufficiently pure heart, follow the teachings of the Church and local priest. The State also benefitted: not only was the ever-present threat of witchcraft accusations used to enforce social, political and religious conformity, but having witches as a common enemy fostered a sense of shared purpose. Hence, both Church and State sanctioned the witch hunts.
Those accused of witchcraft were subjected to sleep deprivation, physical restraint, and possibly stretching, burning, or various instruments of torture. In How to Kill a Witch, Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi write of Allison Balfour who was forced to witness the torture of her husband, the mutilation of her young son’s legs and the crushing of her small daughter’s fingers until finally she ‘confessed’.
Often, confession would include naming other local ‘witches’. Ultimately, if found guilty, the accused would be hanged, or sometimes in Scotland, burnt to death.
This was never really about witchcraft
Of course, those who were accused and murdered were not witches. They were simply people, mostly women, who were falsely accused of convening with the Devil, and who had the terrible fortune to be alive at a time when the horrifying consequences described above were sanctioned by the State. Perhaps the accused had spoken sharply to someone whose child died shortly thereafter, or whose cattle stopped producing milk. Or maybe the starting point was simply jealousy or vengeance.
Today we recognise the witch craze as scapegoating rooted in misogyny, yet throughout history we see many other examples. Simply substitute another group for ‘witch’. Regarded as sub-human, Jews in Nazi Germany and later in occupied territories were isolated, persecuted and ultimately rounded up and murdered. Yet the Nazi goal of an Aryan master-race did not stop with eliminating the Jews. Roma and black people, people with disabilities, homosexual men, Poles and political opponents were among the groups targeted for premeditated industrial-scale murder.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR)
In December 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly. The Declaration represented mutual horror and determination that the atrocities of World War II must never again be permitted. Since then, the recognition of an interrelationship between human rights and democracy has emerged.
Democracy provides a framework for the protection and implementation of human rights, while true democracy without human rights is not possible. Equally, human rights must be universal: if they are available to some individuals and groups but not to others, this core principle is not met.
In Europe, the UNDHR was brought into effect by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Since 1998 the incorporation of its articles directly into UK law by the Human Rights Act (HRA), makes them directly enforceable in UK courts.
International Human Rights obligations under threat
In August 2025 Nigel Farage pledged that a Reform UK government would withdraw the UK from the ECHR and repeal the HRA, replacing those internationally agreed standards with ‘British Rights’. These will make no mention of ‘human rights’ and will apply only to British citizens and those with residency rights. In October 2025, Kemi Badenoch announced that leaving the ECHR would also be a key policy of the next Conservative government.
One of the reasons given for these pledges is the reliance on human rights obligations to block deportations of asylum seekers, although since 1980 this has happened only thirteen times.
Another oft-stated reason is that the authority of an external court diminishes UK sovereignty. Yet the ECHR is a mutually agreed set of standards, and the UK was heavily involved in their development. Where oversight of the European Court of Human Rights has challenged UK practice, that additional layer of protection has benefited British citizens.
Examples are a 1975 ruling concerning a prisoner’s right to access a lawyer during a trial; and a 2002 finding that resulted in a change of law to provide widowers with the same bereavement benefits as widows.
The potential danger is from a nation’s own government
It is clear that the real danger for human rights is not from ‘outside interference’, but from individual governments inadvertently or intentionally causing human rights to be violated. In committing to internationally agreed obligations, a fair and responsible government accepts the input of related courts as an additional check and balance on their policies and legislation.
But what about a government intent on authoritarian power and control? Reports of human rights violations in the United States this year make for sobering reading:
- masked and armed ICE officers with no visible agency affiliations and driving unmarked vehicles as they carry out raids;
- ICE racial profiling resulting in arrests of Native American people;
- the deportation of almost 300 people without due process to El Salvador’s ’CECOT’, deemed one of the worst prisons in the world;
- and the disappearance from ICE’s online database of hundreds of immigrants formerly held at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’, leaving families unaware of their whereabouts.
Alongside this, President Trump’s rhetoric consistently defines political opponents as worthless people; and astonishingly, accusations of witchcraft by women have started to resurface amongst evangelical MAGA Christian groups. In 2024 Kamala Harris was accused of using witchcraft to dominate Trump during a televised presidential debate; while in 2022 a Tennessee-based pastor accused six women in his congregation of being witches:
“We ain’t afraid of you, you stinkin’ witch, you devil-worshipping Satanist witch.
We cast you out in the name of Jesus Christ!”
Something wicked… is already here
Shockingly, public accusations of witchcraft directed at women seem to be gaining ground. Earlier this week Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, attacked UN Special Raporteur Francesca Albanese following the publication of her report Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime. Rather than simply refute Ms Albanese’s findings, Mr Danon accused her of “cursing Israel with lies and hatred.” “You are a witch” he said, “and this report is another page in your spell book.”
For the UK, developments in the US are all the more concerning because announcements so far from Reform UK, including most recently the appointment of an anti-abortion right-wing Christian as senior adviser, are in step with the Trump administration’s direction of travel; and the Conservative Party is following Reform UK’s lead.
The question now is – what purpose it would serve for the entire population of the United Kingdom to lose internationally agreed protections covering torture, slavery, the right to life, dignity, liberty, fair trial, peaceful assembly, marriage and family life, and freedom of thought, conscience, religion and expression?
We must recognise that the intention to remove or water down human rights is often born of mal-intent; and that small attacks on human rights can be a slippery slope. How far is too far?
And finally we must acknowledge the flaws in human nature, such that greed, self-interest and the desire for power and control can still, four hundred years after the witch-hunting frenzy, trump life and human dignity.
We MUST remain in the ECHR.
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