The Convention Blog

Partial transcript: Democracy and Liberty

Below is a selection of talks from the Democracy and Liberty session.
Neil Jameson: If you are in an institution or an association in London, join us!  We are a membership organisation, and if you are not in London, or don’t want to join us – that’s OK – give us some money! Organised people and organised money is [...]

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Partial transcript: Liberty & the National Question

Below is a talk by Gerry Hassan from the Liberty and the National Question session.
Gerry Hassan: What is the UK? British political science says that the UK is a unitary state. But it is not: it is what’s called a union state. A union state is shaped by national and regional differentiation beginning with 1707 and the negotiation of Scots [...]

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Partial transcript: Press Freedom

Below is a selection of talks from the Press Freedom session.
Fatima Bhutto: Pakistan is a new country: 61 years young, and its history of resisting press censorship is a very brave one. The last dictator that we had in the 1980s – General Zia ul Haq – enforced strict censorship across the board with provincial censorship boards set [...]

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Partial transcript: Faiths and Freedoms

Below is a selection of talks from the Faiths and Freedoms session.
Simon Barrow: When you look at issues of faith and freedom, the agenda that most rapidly hits the headlines is constructed around the Government’s concern with two items in particular – cohesion and security. Very quickly you find yourself in a conversation about Muslim communities who [...]

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Partial transcript: Human Rights & Global Responses

Below is a selection of talks from the Human Rights and Global Responses session.
Jo Glanville: I am going to focus on just one human right: which is freedom of speech, perhaps the most vulnerable, partly because it is not absolute, and because of all the human rights it is most likely to become hostage to [...]

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Transcript: Xenophobia

Below is a transcript of the Xenophobia session. It is loosely edited.
Khadija Ali: I’ll start by just welcoming you all to this morning’s session on xenophobia, we’ve got an excellent panel of distinguished experts and speakers in this area who are here to share their ideas with us and their thoughts on this very pertinent subject [...]

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Transcript: Torture

Below is a transcript of the Torture session. It is loosely edited.

Introductions 
Victoria Brittain: Thank you all very much for coming. Sorry they didn’t give us a bigger room. As soon as I saw the number of the room, I knew they’d made a mistake and I’m sorry for those of you who are very uncomfortable, but [...]

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Transcript: The Police

Below is a transcript of the Police session. It is loosely edited.
Hilary Wainwright: Firstly, my name’s Hilary Wainwright, I edit the magazine Red Pepper and I’m really pleased to be here. I was thinking this morning about the importance of this session on the police for the whole purpose of the convention, – to sound the alarm [...]

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Transcript: Database State

Below is a transcript of the Database State session. It is loosely edited.
Guy Herbert: We claim that this is the most important session, so congratulations for coming to attend it. The Database State is the new threat to liberty. It’s not as new as all that, as I will cover in my introductory remarks, but it [...]

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Transcript: Child’s Play

Below is a transcript of the Child’s Play session. It is loosely edited.
Sabina Frediani: Firstly, thank you to everybody for coming along today. I know there’s lots of different sessions going on, so thank you for choosing this one. My name’s Sabina Frediani and I’m the campaigns coordinator for the human rights and civil liberties organisation Liberty [...]

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