Human rights and British foreign policy: case studies in middle power diplomacy

This Special Issue brings the broader history of ‘ethical’ foreign policymaking in the UK into conversation with more contemporary case studies. In doing so, it highlights key issues that have shaped, and will continue to impact, Britain’s ability to play a leading role in the advancement of human rights norms and institutions as a ‘middle power’ within a shifting global order (Cooper and Dal, 2016; Efstathopoulos 2018; Murray and Brianson 2019). For some time, scholarly engagement with the ethics of British foreign policy and human rights promotion was dominated by discussion of New Labour’s foreign policy outlook as articulated in Robin Cook’s ‘mission statement’ for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in May 1997. British foreign affairs, Cook asserted, must have an ‘ethical dimension’ and the Labour government would therefore put human rights ‘at the heart’ of its foreign policy – a line that morphed in the media into ‘ethical foreign policy’ (Guardian, 1997). While New Labour has been credited for breaking new ground in terms of British engagement with the international human rights regime, this Special Issue looks to examine periods either side of the Cook era, to gain a wider historical picture of how human rights have been incorporated into British foreign policy (Wheeler and Dunne 1998; Gaskarth 2006; Gilmore 2015). Thus, we have three articles dedicated to the 1970s, a key moment in the integration of human rights into foreign policy thinking. This decade saw the rapid proliferation of non-governmental organisations and transnational activist networks, the embedding of human rights discourse within the East-West dialogue through the Helsinki Process, and the rights-based approach to US foreign policy advanced by the administration of Jimmy Carter. In their wake, the UK duly amplified its international human rights commitments, albeit with mixed results and limited influence (Snyder 2011; Tulli 2021; Grealy 2023a). Although this is recognised as a ‘breakthrough’ moment by human rights historians, it was also a period of missed opportunity as far as British policymaking was concerned (Eckel and Moyn 2014). In this section, David Grealy examines David Owen’s tenure as Foreign Secretary (1977–79) and his foreign policy towards Iran during the twilight of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s autocratic rule. Thomas Lowman investigates the role of human rights discourse in reframing diplomatic relations between the UK and Uganda during Idi Amin’s dictatorship (1971–79). Then, Mark