INTRODUCTION

This paper will explore the case of prisoner disenfranchisement in the United Kingdom as a concrete example of political denialism and human rights. It will explore the basis of denialism and human rights, from two approaches, asking both how and why denialism is perpetrated and justified in the UK. Initially seeking to challenge how the blanket ban on prisoner voting is justified at a domestic level. The paper will then identify why political denialism is contentious within the concrete example that prisoner disenfranchisement provides, determining the conceptual and legal basis and subsequent political support for the prisoner voting ban.

In examining how political actors, such as the UK Government, justify continued denial of rights at the expense of their obligations under the ECHR, this paper highlights the prisoner voting rights case as concrete example of political or functional denialism in practice. It therefore affords an excellent example within which to address why denialism is committed and consequently how a state can justify continued human rights violations. In looking beyond the act of denialism and addressing the justifications themselves, this paper contributes to deepening understanding of situations where the state power is the main perpetrator of denialism.

DENIALISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS: POLITICAL DENIALISM

Scholars working within this field have largely drawn upon the works of Stanley Cohen in identifying the forms of denial. At the conference associated with this collection of papers, entitled ‘Denialism and Human Rights’, a number of forms of denialism where thus identified. The most notable of these was given by Prof. Eric Heinze who outlined the forms which denial has been recognised to take within the field of human rights. These were identified as factual, normative, justifiable and political denialism.

The first of these, factual denial, occurs where a series of events or conduct is questioned as to ever having existed. A key example of such would be Holocaust or more generally genocide denial. Secondly, denialism within human rights can be normative in form, where it is disputed whether a norm can be considered as a human right.