ISJ October 2019: Book Review: Marco Duranti (2017) The Conservative Human Rights Revolution: European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention.

James Cambridge

International politics during the period of economic, social and political reconstruction of Europe in the wake of the Second World War took a turn towards the promotion of Human Rights. Out of office because of the landslide victory of the Labour party under Clement Attlee in the 1945 UK General Election, the erstwhile wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill took a leading role in this development. While this might be considered unremarkable from the point of view that politicians who have served in high office frequently appear to find prominent international jobs during their enforced ‘retirement’ from government, it may nevertheless also be considered remarkable that Churchill, who was a Conservative nationalist and imperialist, should have expended such effort on promoting the pooled sovereignty of nation states leading to the establishment of a European Court of Human Rights.