The Convention Blog

Transcript: Cambridge Debate

David Howorth: This is a very important day because it is the start – I think – of a fightback of what we as a people believe to be important. Because it seems to me that the gravest threat of all to civil liberties comes not from the Government but from ourselves. If we forget [...]

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Partial transcript: Can Liberty Survive the Slump?

Vince Cable: I would like to start by echoing Kate’s welcome for this event. I think the challenge to us is, in a slump, which we are entering, it will increasingly be asked – implicitly or not – “Isn’t civil liberties a bit like the environment? Isn’t it one of those luxuries we can quietly [...]

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Partial transcript: Is there a Media-Political Class?

Below is a selection of talks from the Who Rules: Is there a Media-Political Class? session.
Liz Forgan: Lloyd George had breakfast, lunch, tea and supper with the great Guardian editor C.P.Scott throughout the time that he was prime minister. He told him absolutely everything – international negotiations, party in-fighting, military strategy during the Great War. The result [...]

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Partial transcript: Love and Liberty

Below is a selection of talks from the Love and Liberty session.
Mike Edwards: All of my work is based on what I think is a fairly simple assumption, that the health of our interior lives affects the success of our work for justice in the world, and conversely and just as importantly, that the shape of social [...]

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Partial transcript: Liberty, sovereignty and republicanism

Below is a selection of talks from the Liberty, Sovereignty and Republicanism session.
Quentin Skinner: Our topic is liberty in relation to republicanism and sovereignty and I want to address it in quite general terms rather than historically, because I think it is worth making a contrast which is a very strong historical contrast which people, if they [...]

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Partial transcript: Are Rights Universal?

Below is a selection of talks from the Are Rights Universal session.
Andrew Dismore MP: Geraldine mentioned she had been in South Africa. As part of our inquiry into the issue of the British Bill of Rights on the Joint Select Committtee on Humna Rights, we too visited South Africa, and Albie Sachs, the famous constitutional court judge, said [...]

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Partial transcript: The Left & Liberty

Below is a talk by Mike Rustin from the Left and Liberty session.
Mike Rustin: I agreed with most of the things that were being said on the platform this morning about the advance of surveillance, the intrusive state, ‘terror’ laws and so on, but I also have quite a lot of misgivings about the framing of liberty in [...]

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Partial transcript: Protecting Rights

Below is a selection of talks from the Protecting Rights session.
A.C.Grayling: Our session is about protecting rights and immediately of course that entails protecting the rights of individuals against sources of power, mainly of course state power. But one has to bear in mind the fact that there are other sources of power in society too – economic [...]

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Partial transcript: Parliament’s Role

Below is a selection of talks from the Parliament’s Role session.
Andrew Blick: In November 1882, Eddie Hamilton, Private Secretary to the then Prime Minister, William Gladstone, was sent what he described in his diary as “some extremely interesting papers about the secret societies.” They suggested the existence of two separate assassination committees in Dublin to which 900 members [...]

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Partial transcript: Freedom & Working People

Below is a talk by Jerry Hicks from the Freedom and Working People session.
Jerry Hicks: There are parallel conventions today in cities up and down the country including Bristol where I live, where in the former church in Trinity Road, there are going to be some fantastic discussions taking place there as well today. This church is in the shadow of [...]

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