In his blog today Henry Porter has published a petition launched by retired senior police officer David Gilbertson, who has spoken of his concern regarding the police powers to ‘arrest any person for any offence’. Mr Gilbertson became concerned with the introduction of section 110 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, which has since allowed [...]
Read →The Convention Blog
The HRA is too fundamental to be used as a political football
This is the talk given by Professor Francesca Klug of LSE at the session on ‘How do we stop rights and freedoms being a political football?’
Sometimes it feels like the current climate is more like a wrestling, than a football match!
As all academics tend to do, I will try to deconstruct this question and address [...]
Frog Spawn – What next? by John Jackson
John Jackson: Spring is here and the frogs in my garden pond are spawning. As I watch the randy little males croaking with excitement and clambering over each other to clasp the strangely passive females and let down their fertilising milt as they, the females, exude their transparent tapioca-like eggs, I [...]
Read →Carnival on Modern Liberty. 7
The latest and seventh edition of the Carnival on Modern Liberty is brought to you by Jonathon Calder’s Liberal England. The blog has a series of excellent links to pieces before, during and after the Convention – both on the day and more generally on liberty. It also discusses the Convention events outside of London, and [...]
Read →Human Rights and Global Responses
Evelyn Wong (The UCL Student Human Rights Programme)
Wars, climate change, the credit crunch and their fallout present a historic window of opportunity to raise the bar in human rights development. Equally, however, they present the danger of human rights being swamped by exaggerated and paranoid political rhetoric. It was thus with a mixture of hope and [...]
How liberal is Labour?
Inspired by the Convention on Modern Liberty, nextleft.org has been discussing the pertinent question: how liberal is Labour?
Ed Wallis feels that Gordon Brown missed a trick when he failed to follow through on his ‘on liberty’ speech and constitutional reform paper, but concludes that he “can’t see a meaningful – and successful – new agenda [...]
Jack Straw attacks the convention (again)
Matt Brian: The Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, has continued his argument against the Convention and its supporters in his constituency blog. After initially issuing a response to the Convention in a piece in the Guardian on 27 Feb, Straw claims that the rise of the database state is actually providing people with [...]
Read →Liberty as a social value – Lessons from the Levellers
Melissa Lane, of King’s College Cambridge, has provided us with the notes to her talk for the session on Liberty, sovereignty and republicanism – Can the Leveller tradition be revived in the 21st century?
Melissa Lane: The panel has already brought to light many of the major themes connected with the Levellers: freedom of religion and [...]
The Database State
Nasia Hadjigeorgiou (The UCL Student Human Rights Programme):
The database state, which has been described as the new threat to our liberty, is anything but new; the plans for its creation have been around (at least on a European level) for about a decade. Unlike the usual governmental projects however, involving a lot of talk and no action, [...]
Read →Press Freedom
Nasia Hadjigeorgiou (The UCL Student Human Rights Programme):
It seems that the media, a vital tool in keeping the public informed and encouraging debate, has been going through a massive crisis of its own; only this one is sneakier: it has been going on without us realizing for more than a decade and it is about to bring [...]
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