Convention on Modern Liberty
Monday, March 2, 2009 
This isn't a review of the Convention on Modern Liberty because I only attended the satellite event in Cambridge, organised by NO2ID, and I didn't catch the video links to the main event in London - which included the main addresses. All I can offer is a small snapshot.
When we arrived at the venue - the Cambridge Union in Bridge Street - there were four parallel morning sessions to choose from. These included "Privacy and Digital Communication", "The Database State", and "Engaging with Government in the Digital Age". Speakers included Cambridge councillors Chris Howell (Conservative) and Neil McGovern (LibDem), Andrew Brown (Open Rights Group), Andrew Watson (The Big Opt-Out), and David Clouter (Leave Them Kids Alone).
I plumped for the session in the main chamber for the simple reason that it was the most impressive room in the building and the soft leather seats looked the most inviting. The subject was "Internet Censorship in the UK". There were four speakers - including blogger Frank Fisher and Sarah Robertson of the Internet Watch Foundation - but no more than 20 people in the chamber (which must hold at least 200).
Naively, perhaps, it didn't cross my mind that the discussion would focus on extreme pornography. This wouldn't have mattered had I been on my own. Thinking, however, that the convention might interest them, I had taken my 14-year-old son and the 16-year-old daughter of a friend. After squirming in my soft leather seat for several minutes, I whispered "I think this is a bit inappropriate", and ushered them towards the exit. (Liberty has its limits!)
After lunch at a local tapas bar, we returned to the Union chamber for the afternoon debate: "This House believes that its civil liberties are under grave threat". Proposing the motion were David Howarth MP, LibDem shadow secretary of state for Justice, and Prof Andrew Gamble, professor of politics at Cambridge University. Opposing the motion were Bill Rammell MP, minister of state for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and Tariq Sadiq, Labour parliamentary "spokesperson" for South Cambridgeshire.
Thankfully the afternoon session was reasonably well attended (the chamber was at least half full) and the atmosphere very much livelier. Rammell's contribution caught the eye - and ear - if only because he managed to alienate most of the audience within seconds of opening his mouth. (If I heard him correctly, he finds criticism of the government a bit, well, "irritating".)
Here's a flavour of the debate:
For the motion: "Definition of national security has changed ... today government wants to protect everyone from all risks ... Britain is sleepwalking into a surveillance society ... we're forever filling in forms ... obliged to share our data ... people are ignorant of the sort of society we're getting into ... as citizens we shut our eyes and don't think about it ..."
Against the motion: "Please don't distort, exaggerate or mislead ... ridiculous to talk about a police state ... no country is freer than Britain ... governments have a responsibility to protect its citizens ... CCTV makes people feel safer ..."
One of the opposing speakers (I think it was Tariq Sadiq) made the most outrageous claim that a lot of problems are caused by "over-zealous local authorities" who "misinterpret" national legislation with the result that minor issues are "improperly" dealt with.
In other words, nothing to do with this Labour government, m'lud. It's all those pesky local councils (Tory and LibDem-run councils being the worst).
The motion was passed (by a landslide) but no thanks to David Howarth who gave the longest, most boring summing up speech I have ever heard. Thankfully the actual debate was far livelier - although most of the better contributions came from the floor.
BTW, further to my post on Friday (which Iain Dale mentioned HERE), this was NOT an across-the-political-spectrum event, despite the presence of one or two Tories. At one point Bill Rammell even argued that the government had to fight terrorism because the likes of Al-Qaeda are targeting what he called the values of the "tolerant, liberal Left". There seemed to be an assumption (on his part) that the audience represented the "tolerant, liberal Left" and by saying this he hoped to win them over.
PS. The Observer, part of the Guardian newspaper group that co-sponsored the convention, reports on the event HERE. And journalist Henry Porter, a co-director of the convention, adds his bit HERE.
Reader Comments (2)
Oh dear. As chair of the internet session that caused the offence.... I can only agree with you.
I think the problem was as much the speaker list as anything else. We had the Internet Watch Foundation, whose aim and remit are almost wholly confined to the policing of child porn.
Then we had Frank Fisher, who has written at length about the IWF. And a couple more speakers with an interst in that area.
No. The debate was never really going to get out of the erotic rut, so to speak.
I'm not sure if that was strength or weakness. After over an horu focussing on just one highly select aspect of internet censorship, I felt we had only just scractched the surface.
Had we tried to take in the rest of the subject matter...the regulation of material as diverse as suicide sites and terror ...not to mention the possibly separate issue of online copyright...
...then we would have moved into superficiality squared territory.
John
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is a fake charity, like ASH. It is funded by the European Commission (EC). So this is how it works. ASH get funded by the DoH who, err, lobby the DoH for more restictions on smoking.
So the EC funds IWF to produce reports which show child pornography is endemic. Of course any sane person would believe that powers and the appropriate software is used to censor access. We all have a concensus. Then we move onto as John rightly points out, suicide, terror and copyright. Increasingly the cause seems good but a little more debatable. Then we end up censoring legitimate debate and probably any criticism of the EU.
Extreme? The European Parliament banned a pro choice smoking conference (TICAP) in February of this year and who thought that smoking in pubs would be banned?
The jackboots are being polished in Brussels, methinks.