ABSTRACT
It is all too obvious to us today that we cannot debate issues of exclusion and inclusion without introducing and emphasising rights. After all, we now live in a rights-conscious culture, the most striking evidence of which is the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into United Kingdom law in 1998. But it was not always thus. I can think of no rights that adults enjoy today that were ‘given’ to them: all were fought for and often bitterly contested. We have also become increasingly conscious of the wrongs of discrimination, with protection and rights now accorded (or at least mooted) to disabled people, to gay people and even to such an unlikely group as transsexuals.
