Human Rights -- Equality -- Free Speech -- Privacy -- The Rule of Law

These five ideas are vitally important to the way of life we enjoy today. The battle to establish them in law was long and difficult, and Anthony Lester was at the heart of the thirty-year campaign that resulted in the Human Rights Act, as well as the struggle for race and gender equality that culminated in the Equality Act of 2010.

Today, however, our society is at risk of becoming less equal. From Snowden's revelations about our own intelligence agencies spying on us to the treatment of British Muslims, our civil...