Liberty groups unite to defend UK rights

[CHIMO]

Source: The Observer

The government and the courts are collaborating in slicing away freedoms and pushing Britain to the brink of becoming a "database" police state, a series of sold-out conferences in eight British cities heard yesterday.

In a day of speeches and discussions, academics, politicians, lawyers, writers, journalists and pop stars joined civil liberty campaigners yesterday to issue a call to arms for Britons to defend their democratic rights.

More than 1,500 people, paying £35 a ticket, attended the Convention on Modern Liberty in Bloomsbury, central London, which was linked by video to parallel events in Glasgow, Birmingham, Belfast, Bristol, Manchester, Cardiff and Cambridge. They heard from more than 80 speakers, including author Philip Pullman; musicians Brian Eno and Feargal Sharkey; journalists Fatima Bhutto, Andrew Gilligan, Nick Cohen and Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger; politicians Lord Bingham and Dominic Grieve; a former director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald; and human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy.

In her speech Kennedy said she felt that fear was being used as a weapon to break down civil liberties. "There is a general feeling that in creating a climate of fear people have been writing a blank cheque to government. People feel the fear of terrorism is being used to take away a lot of rights."


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/01/civil-liberties-conference

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Guess they want another Empire.

[JohnyCanuck]

1. You don't say!

"People feel the fear of terrorism is being used to take away a lot of rights."

[Lost in CT]

2. The really sad thing is that it is a lot of so-called progressives attacking

civil rights over there.

The Left leaning fascists are every bit as bad as the right leaning fascists.

[LeftishBrit]

4. Not really

It is a bunch of our equivalent of 'DINOs' following in the footsteps of Thatcher.

The right-wing press would like to portray it as all a function of the evil left-wing 'nanny state'. But we haven't had an evil left-wing nanny state in a very long time. Just a fairly evil centrist managerocracy following in the path of the Tories.

Google 'sus laws'. Thatcher was definitely no friend to civil liberties!

[Lost in CT]

5. I'm not pro-Thatcher by any means... but a lot of the criticism of

"Nanny" laws and law enforcement regulations are spot on...

[LeftishBrit]

6. Nanny state perhaps; left-wing nanny state, no

We haven't been left-wing since the 1970s, and the government was far less authoritarian then.

I'm not arguing about the civil liberties restrictions - only that they are not a consequence of being 'progressive'. Rather, it's a combination of over-reaction to the terra threat, and of a super-managerial style: imagine NCLB applied to virtually everything.

But, bad as Blairism is, it's nowhere near fascism or Stalinism, etc.

I support the protests and the Liberty movement - just not the right-wing idea that suppression of civil liberties some inevitable consequence of a welfare state or a progressive approach to politics.

I do think that we should have a formal Bill of Rights as you do.

[Joe Keegan]

3. No effective checks and balances to the inevitable abuse

Government is government no matter what side of the pond it sits and it will abuse civil liberties. We're not far behind the UK in a total Surveillance State; the British are just more outspoken. The Patriot Act(s)just "legalized" what the government had been doing for years. The pretext was the same: "to keep us safe from the terrorists" and fear was used to pass and expand it.
Joe

[ikri]

8. There are numerous checks & balances

The House of Lords for one, unelected they may be, but they don't have to pander to the lowest common denominator to win anyone's vote which leaves them a lot more effective as a counterbalance to Labour.

Then there's the High Court where the court can & does hear arguments against laws that Labour have passed.

There's also the EU & the European Court of Human Rights where Labour regularly gets their hands slapped for their overreaching laws.

The biggest problem is the amount of time wasted between Labour sneaking a law through & it being ruled as illegal by the courts.

[xchrom]

7. kick