CML Doc 2: 18 Aug 2008 – First development of proposal
CML Doc 2: 18 Aug 2008 – First development of proposal
The Rowntree/Guardian/OurKingdom Teach-In
Modern Liberty
Freedom and Rights in the Era of Counter-Terrorism and the Database State
PARTNERS
Liberty/No2ID/Liberal Conspiracy/Democratic Audit/Policy Exchange*/Unlock Democracy/ openDemocracy/Amnesty UK*/CPS*/ ORG*/PEN*/Institute of Ideas*/ Demos*/ ippr*/Compass*/Fabians*/Young Foundation*/Runnymede Trust*/Ekklesia*/Spectator*/Total Politics* and more
(*=not yet asked)
25 October 2008
London & by webcast:
Bristol, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cambridge Exeter,
Modern Liberty
Practical overview
Suggested Day, Numbers, Partnerships, Webcasting, Organisation
Saturday 25 October
9 – 10 registration & coffee
10 – 11 1st Plenary
11 – 11.30 coffee
11.30 – 12.30 2nd plenary
12.30 – 1.30 lunch
1.30 – 2.45 First breakouts
2.45 – 3.15 Tea
3.15 – 4.30 Second breakouts
4.30 – 4.45 water
4. 45 – 6.00 Closing Plenary
Venue
The proposed venue is the Institute for Civil Engineers. This can take 650. Plenary sessions will be in a grand main room and a linked modern theatre. It has spacious facilities for tea and coffee and some stalls. The venue has space eight parallel sessions: four large (100+) and four smaller (approx 50).
Tickets and prices
At least a third of the 650 tickets will be for students. We are estimating ticket prices of £35 for full and £20 for students including sandwich lunch and 3 coffees.
Partnerships
Each of the 16 break-out sessions will be sponsored by partners who will organise their speakers representing a wide range of views. There will be no all male platforms. Liberty has already agreed to be a partner.
Webcasting and national meetings
No2ID will provide the stewards and run the day. They will also organise about six events across the country that will project a webcast of the plenary sessions and have their own discussions. We there will be an open invite to others to do the same. on the day or in the week that follows. We are seeking a webcast partner.
Website
There will be a conference website. Tickets will only be buyable from the website. The website will also provide links to teach-in videos. It will link to on and off-line media coverage and blogs. It will host feed-back and reports from associated meetings. We are seeking a partnership to host the website.
Blogs
We are partnering with Sunny Hundal’s blog nation started by Liberal Conspiracy and are seeking a conservative blog partner.
Videos
We are seeking a partner who could facilitate a dozen short (4 minute) videos by key speakers direct to camera setting out the main issues as they see them. Shami Chakrabati (who will be in New York on the 25th) has agreed to do one. There may also be longer interview format videos with partner organisations.
Publicity
We will plan with the Guardian editorial content through October in the run-up to the Teach-In with advertising for it to go up as soon as the web-site is ready. We will work with the Guardian to attract broadcast media to cover the Teach-In.
Management
A small executive committee will be formed and a larger ad hoc steering group to ensure that sponsors are informed of any proposed changes in advance and can input ideas and suggestions.
Funding
This is a draft document – the event has NOT yet been funded.
CML Doc 2 (Cont)
Draft programme
Modern Liberty
The Teach-In, Institute for Civil Engineers, London, 25 Oct 2008
DRAFT
NB: This is a draft. The suggested speakers have not been invited. The plenary themes are not fixed. The parallel sessions that follow are also only drafts for action. The aim here is to paint a sketch of what the day could be like, it is suggestive and more ideas and names are needed. Lots are proposed, the critical thing is to get a surprising mix in each panel and session, ideally with no more than five people per panel. As soon as we get go ahead, the partner organisations with expertise in their areas will take over the parallel sessions.
Plenary Sessions:
The immediate situation
Chair: Georgina Henry
Henry Porter
John le Carré
Diane Abbott
Dominic Grieve
Ed Miliband/Jacqui Smith
Andrew Dismore
Does the public care?
Chair: Iain Dale
David Davis
Helena Kennedy
David Lammy
Chris Huhne
Philip Pullman
Nick Sparrow
Claire Fox
The next ten years
Chair Sunny Hundal
Michael Gove
Chuka Umunna
Fraser Nelson
Plus, plus :Gove (41) will be the oldest member of this panel
POSSIBLE PARALLEL SESSIONS
What is the ‘database state’ & transformational Government?
Possibly two sessions. The UK government is embarking on a massive electronic unification of all the departments of state in a programme that will ‘transform,’ in it’s own words, the relationship between the state, the citizen and private enterprise. This programme has never been debated in the House of Commons or in a select committee. It goes much further than the national information register, which lies at the heart of the ID card programme, and includes local government surveillance . What are the implications if it works – and if it doesn’t? “You have zero privacy anyway, get over it.” Said Scott McNealy CEO of Sun Microsystems as Business gets Personal
Becky Hogge (ORG)
Phil Booth (No2ID)
Prof Ross Anderson, Cambridge
Simon Davies (Privacy International)
Jill Kirby (CPS)
Dizzy Thinks
Sir David Varney
Tony Curzon Price
Marlene Winfield (NHS patients)
Catherine Fieschi (Demos)
Richard Thomas (Information Commissioner)
Is ‘Human Security’ better than ‘War on Terror’?
Rights and freedoms are under pressure from the threat of terrorism and counter-terrorism. How big and how dangerous are the terrorist networks that are driven by fundamentalism in Britain? How dangerous are they relative to other issues of human security, such as, climate change; pandemics; global mafia?
Duncan Campbell (the Scottish one)
Sir David Omand
Rachel North (blogger and 7/7 victim)
Lord West
Clive Stafford Smith
Lord Lloyd
Prof Mary Kaldor (LSE)
Peter Neumann (KCL)
Paddy Ashdown
Philip Bobbitt
Is the media part of the problem?
The media now play an un questionably important role in politics, arguably undermining the role of mass political parties. But is the media part of an ‘overarching political class’? What is the future of traditional rights such as freedom of expression if a ‘media-political class’ stifle pluralist influence? What role does it play in creating a climate of fear that undermines freedom? Can the principles of human rights be secured without media support?
Peter Oborne
Alan Rusbridger
David Elstein
Polly Toynbee
Jeremy Paxman
Yvonne Roberts
Robert Harris
Matt d’Ancona
Human Rights and the ‘War on Terror’; the International Picture.
From the beginning, concern over Human Rights, as expressed by NGO’s like Amnesty have been expressed in international terms. Part of the argument over 42 days was whether the UK was proposing to breach international standards and set an example that dictatorships might emulate. At the same time, human rights and laws protecting civilians are being developed in terms of international law, legal institutions and NGO’s. Now the UN has just reported that UK anti-terror legislation and libel laws threatens free speech. What is the international picture? And how does the UK fit in?
Gara LaMarch
Mary Robinson
Geoffry Robinson
Aryeh Neier
Tim Garton Ash
Now that the freeborn Englishman is female and black, how does the Magna Carta relate to Human Rights?
What is the real history of liberty in the United Kingdom? Is it freedom from the state or is it based on a political equality that calls for collective action?
Paul Gilroy
Francesca Klug
Hari Kunzru
What is public opinion on these issues?
Opinion polls both suggested strong public backing for the extension of pre-charge detention to 42 days and then only minority support. Polls on the place of Muslims in British society and their commitment to this country are contradictory and often confused. How reliable are the polls as indicators of public opinion?
Stuart Weir
Prof. Helen Margetts (Oxford Internet Institute)
Tufyal Choudhury
Stephen Shakespeare (You gov)
Politicians and the Judges. Who best to decide on the National interest?
A series of landmark cases have seen the Judiciary clash with the executive over the powers of detention posing fundamental but little discussed questions.
Chair: John Jackson
Lord Bingham
Peter Goldsmith
Keith Ewing
Is Parliament a Busted Flush?
Bob Marshall-Andrews
Tony Benn
Shirley Williams
David Marquand
Robert Hazell
David Goodhart
Is liberty in the UK also a national question?
It is arguably the case that that while the Commons supported 42 Days none of the country’s nations would do so. In the Commons itself English MPs voted against 42 days by a majority of 19. Equally, the move towards an ID card, can be seen as an attempt to bind the devolved nations into a British Union database. This is the kind of issue which many would prefer was not raised but which also arouses intense interest.
Gareth Young
Mark Perryman
Alex Salmond
Bethan Jenkins
(Doc 2 cont)
Modern Liberty
Freedom and Rights in the Era of Counter-Terrorism and the Database State
Why this teach-in
In July 2007 Gordon Brown opened his premiership with a Green Paper on the Governance of Britain. Its theme was the restoration of public trust in Parliament; the establishment of a public culture of rights founded on the United Kingdom’s historic tradition of liberty; re-balancing power between the executive, MPs and local government; and an opening to new forms of participation – all motivated by an acknowledgement of a malaise in the country’s institutions and a growing divide between political authority and the people.
In May 2008, overriding widespread opposition in his own party and a united opposition, the Prime Minister forced ‘42 days’ through the Commons by a mere seven-vote majority obtained by swinging Northern Ireland’s DUP MPs. Then, to general astonishment, David Davis MP, the shadow Home Secretary, walked out of Parliament and forced a by-election. He did so saying that the Commons has been suborned; that Habeas Corpus is in jeopardy; that the ‘database state’ threatens our freedom; and that uncontrolled surveillance is an authoritarian menace.
These serious developments are not being reversed, he claimed, because politicians and the media believe the public is complacent and uninterested in such issues – and this has to be contested. The Modern Liberty teach-in takes up the David Davis challenge. It asks three questions:
- Are our freedoms and rights threatened by an over-powerful state and if so how do we defend ourselves from this?
- How large are the dangers to our security from terrorism and other threats, from climate change to pandemics, and how are they best combated?
- Can sustained public interest be aroused without alarmism or populism?
We are making Modern Liberty a teach-in, not a conference, as these issues do not have settled answers. They cut across party lines. They are international as well as intensely national. They are compounded by the revolutions of ‘globalisation’ in IT, travel, biology and the environment… and explosives. They pose issues of public fear and the media as well as traditional government. They demand democratic self-confidence, often strikingly lacking in the UK. In 1647 Rainsborough claimed that ‘the poorest he has a life to live as the greatest he’. He asserted none is bound to a government that ‘he has not had a voice to put himself under’. This was arguable the start of modern democracy. We are indeed the inheritors of an inspiring tradition of liberty. But this does not resolve the issues we face today. What are the prospects now, for liberty in the modern world?
