An unconventional weekend

On Friday afternoon, I drove down to London with david. He spent Saturday with his Grandma, whilst I went to the Liberty Convention. This isn’t a review, just a cursory summary of the day.

Getting up early (for a weekend) I was out of the house by 7am and down to Ealing Broadway for the Central line to Holborn, changing to the Piccadilly Line for one stop to Russell Square. Just to the north of the square was the Institute of Education, part of the University of London.

On arrival at the venue I didn’t seem to be on the list, but as I had a printout receipt with me the registration girl said she’d add my name to the bottom in pencil. I was then given a goody bag which had the substantial 64 page programme as well as flyers from the various sponsors. There was also the all important wristband to get into the main hall. (If you had a green one you could get into the Green Room as a speaker but mine was red, an attendee).

The registration took place in a large hall with coffee being served and various stalls around the perimeter. Many of them were for things I hadn’t heard of like Red Pepper, unlock democracy and the Open Rights Group. (The first two seemed overly socialistic for my tastes but I talked to the latter at length).

Noting lots of people heading towards the main venue and wanting to get a decent seat I followed the throng into a large lecture theatre and picked a seat in row two on the side seating block reasonably close to the main lectern. I later found that this was a slight tactical mistake when I found out that the morning keynote speaker Shami Chakrabati from Liberty was so diminutive that she had to peer over the lectern to make eye contact with the front row.

Shami did a rallying speech in support of Liberty which went down well and she certainly seems to be a media superstar. My opinion of her and Liberty has diminished somewhat in recent weeks though, when it became apparent that freedom of speech doesn’t apply to those who discuss taboo topics, like visiting Dutch MPs…

There then followed a plenary entitled the Crisis of Liberty. Three QCs made strong cases of the increasing erosion, whilst Sir David Varney was not particularly popular for having advocated databases for Nu Labour (although he wasn’t actually booed and didn’t actually say anything to be despised for).

After a break, there were eleven parallel sessions spread around the building (many on the 8th floor) and I dithered which one to go to. The press freedom one was already full when I looked in and I got the last seat at the back (briefly) for Conservatives for Civil Liberties but I only really went in there to hear Iain Dales introduction and then went along the corridor to the Police session. Here I saw the silliest T shirt of the day by a Red Pepper girl- “Never kissed a Tory (Never will)”.

I grabbed a quick plate of sandwiches and then went to the Bloggers Forum for thirty minutes or so. This was chaired by Liberal Conspiracy’s Sunny Hundai and mainly talked about investigative journalism.

The afternoon resumed with parallel sessions and I went to one called protecting rights, unlocking democracy. Again, I had been slightly spoiled for choice but wanted to see Douglas Carswell in action. (He was very good). I was also im pressed by Historian/Philosopher Prof. A.C. Grayling deftly setting fire to all the straw men raised by David Willis MP (and subsequently blogging about it on CIF).

Returning to the main hall after the break, I bagged the equivalent seat on the opposite side of the hall in row two next to the aisle in front of the main table. Philip Pullman gave the first keynote and I have to say that I hadn’t a clue who he was beforehand but his speech is over on CIF (with some odd comments/commenters as well, but that seems to be par for the course over there).

This was followed by the second plenary called How do we secure modern liberty? Lib Dem Chris Huhne took the opportunity to push their Freedom Bill, Will Hutton was heckled for daring to suggest that the Religion of Peace wasn’t entirely conducive to liberty and Musician Brian Eno rambled about many things, even bringing climate change into it.

The session concluded after votes of thanks with David Davis MP who went down a storm, even if he was a Conservative. (I wonder if the red pepper T shirt girl was wavering?)

There was another informal session afterwards, but I had met up with various LPUK people by then and we retired to the Alternative Convention on Modern liberty at the Friend in Hand.

Here are a few snaps…

You can aslso see me make a brief video appearance here one hour nine minutes in, seated behind the man with the PC on the table.

Conclusions? Well, there seemed to be rather  a lot more about freedoms and rights being confused with entitlements and obligations  rather than liberty in the libertarian sense. There was much tribalism with vested interests raising their pet topics, along with anti-war protesters and 911 truthers (getting Section 44 Stop noticed outside). There was much talk of a constitutional settlement but I don’t think I’d trust anyone to write a British Constitution that had the simplicity and clarity of the American one (now much maligned and distorted of course). It was an interesting day certainly and most people who spoke did so with clarity. I imagine this is something like a party conference with all the quirky stands & fringe meetings (Peter Tatchell was discussing abolition of Royalty in Speakers Corner upstairs over lunch) and the tracking down rooms & meetings around the University reminded me of my British Association Young Scientist conference days in my teens.

However, I found the most interesting speaker of the day to be the larger than life Tom Paine, although I struggled to hear some of his anecdotes as it was noisy and the Rugby was on.