The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust has published a major report on the UK’s Database State. Read an introduction by Convention Co-Director Anthony Barnett and an executive summary of the report over at OurKingdom. The whole report (in pdf) is available on the Rowntree website.
Read →The Convention Blog
Campaign for “libertes publiques” launches in France
Cross-posted from the Belfast to Brussels blog
The French sister of the Labour Party, the opposition Parti Socialiste, has launched its Spring campaign, featuring public liberty as its theme. Following the recent ‘Convention on Modern Liberty‘, this is further sign that opposition to creeping attacks on liberty is an issue across Europe.
The approach is different and some of [...]
Petition to Brown for Magna Carta holiday
Via Gareth Young of the Campaign for an English Parliament comes this petition to Number 10 to “celebrate the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta with a national holiday in England.” This strikes me as a great idea – and not just because I fancy an extra holiday. One of the points that [...]
Read →Press Freedom – Q&A Transcript
Below is a transcript of the Question and Answer part of the ‘Press Freedom’ session
Joanne Cash: And now I’d like to open up to the floor – ok so I’m going to take questions from the gentleman there and followed by the gentleman here in the red shirt and then followed by the gentleman in [...]
New Videos!
Alice Dyke: We’ve posted a series of videos from the various Convention sessions – so if you were worried you missed out on the day, now you have the opportunity to see what else was happening!
The latest videos up include Quentin Skinner discussing the Leveller tradition in the Liberty, Sovereignty and Republicanism session, No2ID hosting a [...]
Epitaph for Molly
Over at OurKingdom, John Jackson posts a touching epitaph to his Scottish friend Molly, who passed away in early January aged 93 having spent her life in domestic service. The case of Molly, like so many others who become accustomed to labouring in the service of others, demonstrates why “we must not require people to ‘trade’ liberty, [...]
Read →Documented cases of Police and PCSO Harrassment of Photographers
This is a guest post by Matt Wardman of the Wardman Wire.
Matt Wardman: Chris Dillow wrote about the creation of an offense to photograph a policeman in response to the latest Terrorism Law. A commentator called “Jon” made this wholly remarkable assertion:
The s. 58 offence has been on the books since 19 February 2001, and yet we have not [...]
Philip Pullman Keynote Speech – Liberty and Virtue
Below is a transcript of Philip Pullman’s keynote speech
In my ten minutes I want to say something about this nation as it might be, and about the virtues that sustain a living and waking nation. I’m not going to spend much time on the vices that undermine it, although, as every storyteller knows, it’s easier [...]
The “golden age of liberty” – A reply to Rafael Behr
The Observer’s Rafael Behr has written a wonderfully ridiculous column today proclaiming that we live in the “golden age of liberty”. Perhaps he was jealous not to have been invited to the Convention. For he complains that “The story most often told about modern liberty is one of tragedy, not triumph.” Most often? I thought [...]
Read →Listen to sessions online or download them as MP3s
We now have the first set of sessions available to be listened to online or downloaded as MP3s. We’ll be adding the rest of the sessions and keynote speeches over the coming days as well as more videos.
Read →
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