The videos of all the London sessions are now up. To watch them simply go to the Programme and click through to the Session you want to see. Many thanks to our fantastic team of volunteers who did the filming and editing, especially Ellen Vellacott and Robin Lough. There are also sessions and speeches to watch [...]
Read →The Convention Blog
The first European Civil Liberties Day on April 15th
A new civil liberties campaign is being launched in the European Parliament tomorrow by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE). Graham Watson, the Lib Dem MEP who leads the ALDE grouping, will open the first Civil Liberties Day which will feature contributions from organisations across Member States. This from their website:
The Alliance [...]
Rowntree report on The Database State challenged
There’s a very interesting discussion taking place of the recent JRRT report on The Database State (pdf) over at Bill Dutton’s blog at the Oxford University Internet Institute. Dutton argues that the report “does not explain its methodology or the nature of the evidence on which the authors draw their conclusions.” There is, he argues, no [...]
Read →The Convention under attack!
It’s said that if you’re being attacked in politics you must be doing something right (presumably because it means you’re not being ignored!). Since its launch the Convention on Modern Liberty has drawn attacks from a number of sources, including senior figures in government. Here we reproduce just a few of the many exchanges that [...]
Read →A Great Repeal Bill?
There’s a lively discussion taking place over at Liberal Conspiracy in response to Anthony Barnett’s proposals for what next after the Convention. The Lib Dems have done a fantastic job with the Freedom Bill which would repeal all the illiberal legislation passed in the last decade. The question is how do we take the issues [...]
Read →Challenging the UK’s absurd libel laws
Britain’s absurdly unjust libel laws represent the biggest daily chill on free speech in the UK, says Jo Glanville ,editor of Index on Censorship and organiser of the Human Rights and Global Responses session at the Convention, in an important piece in today’s Guardian. The mere threat of legal action by wealthy individuals concerned about their privacy and [...]
Read →The Politics of Liberty in the Age of “Liquid Democracy”
How can progressive organisations operating at the margins of mainstream politics make themselves effective post-crash? In a fascinating essay for openDemocracy, Gerry Hassan argues that they should nurture their “practice and ideas to the requirements of ‘liquid democracy’”.
What would ‘liquid democratic’ organisations look like? They would:
Have a sense of inhabiting spaces which both engage with the [...]
Read →Major report released on the “database state”
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 →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 →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, [...]
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