Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements page xi

List of Abbreviations xvi

Introduction 1
A Community of Conscience 1
Activists 5
Activist Environments 10
Inspirations and Antecedents 14
Parameters 22

1 Dawn: 1934–1950 28
1.1 Civil Liberties and the State: 1934–1941 28
1.2 Wartime 34
1.3 Human Rights in the Postwar World 40
1.4 Towards Human Rights Activism? 44
1.5 Michael Scott: Towards the Human Rights Activist 50

2 Africa, Decolonisation and Human Rights in the 1950s 55

2.1 African Challenges and British Responses 55
2.2 Kenya, Mau Mau and Eileen Fletcher’s ‘Concern’ 64
2.3 South Africa 71
2.4 Ghana and the Problems of Decolonisation 77

3 Political Imprisonment and Human Rights, 1945–1964 81

3.1 Political Prisoners: Known and Unknown 81
3.2 Peter Benenson and the Formation of Justice 86
3.3 Eric Baker and Danilo Dolci 92
3.4 Baker, Benenson and Cyprus 95
3.5 The ‘Amnesty’ Campaigns, 1959–1968 99

4 The Early Years of Amnesty International, 1961–1964 104

4.1 ‘Bright Idea’: Benenson and Baker Launch the Appeal
for Amnesty, 1961 104
4.2 Amnesty’s Emerging Practice, 1961–1964 113
4.3 Amnesty and Religion 119
4.4 Amnesty Goes International 123

ix

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5 ‘The Crisis of Growth’: Amnesty International 1964–1968 128

5.1 Amnesty’s Crisis, 1966–1967 128
5.2 ‘Cloak and Dagger’: Amnesty, the Labour Government and the State 135
5.3 ‘Private Initiative’? Benenson, Amnesty and Southern Africa 142
5.4 ‘Towards Stability and Security’: 1967–1968 150

6 1968: the UN Year for Human Rights 153

6.1 The International Context 153
6.2 The National Context 155
6.3 The National Committee 160
6.4 Participants: Organisations and Localities 165
6.5 Northern Ireland’s Year of Human Rights 171
6.6 Legacies: the British Institute of Human Rights 175

7 Torture States: 1967–1975 182

7.1 ‘The Recrudescence of Torture’ 182
7.2 Greece, Chile and Spain 184
7.3 ‘You Really Started Something’: Eric Baker and the Campaign
for the Abolition of Torture 192
7.4 ‘Dissent as Disease’: Human Rights in the Soviet Union and the
Abuse of Psychiatry 197

8 ‘All Things Come to Those Who Wait’: the Later 1970s 204
8.1 Amnesty’s Prize 204
8.2 Contexts 206
8.3 Does Size Matter? Amnesty International 211
8.4 Echoes of Amnesty 217
8.5 Fields and Networks 222

Conclusion: the Winds of History 227

Notes 235
Bibliography 309
Index 328

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