"Free speech, exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free."

Liberty's Human Rights Page contains the following  

 

The right to freedom of expression and the right to protest are crucial in a democracy – information and ideas help to inform political debate and are essential to public accountability and transparency in Government.

Free speech, exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free.

- Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

Freedom of speech and freedom to protest are closely linked – free speech would mean nothing if there was no right to use public spaces to make your views known.

The rights to free speech and protest, along with the right to form and join associations or groups, are found in Articles 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act.

These rights can be limited by law to protect the interests of others, but only when the limitation is proportionate and necessary in a democratic society.

So, for example:

• the right to free speech will not protect a person who tries to spread hateful lies against another but it will protect fair comment;
• the right to protest won’t protect violent gatherings but it will protect peaceful protest.

In recent years we have seen a variety of measures introduced that undermine the right to protest and freedom of speech.

• Laws intended to combat anti-social behaviour, terrorism and serious crime are routinely used against legitimate protesters.

• Broadly drafted anti-terrorism offences of 'encouragement' and 'glorification' of terrorism threaten to make careless talk a crime.

• Membership of certain organisations can be banned under anti-terror laws even if the organisation is non-violent and political.

• Hate speech laws have been extended in a piecemeal way to ban ever-expanding categories of speech.

• Broad anti-terrorism powers of stop and search have been used to harass and stifle peaceful protesters.

• Protest around Parliament has been severely restricted by laws limiting and overly regulating the right to assemble and protest around Parliament.

Oddly I can see no mention of the plans to implememt the Leveson proposals on the Press. Not a word, odd? Come on Shami Chakrabarti have you opinion?

More on Shami Chakrabarti and the BBC

I have received an email:

'Member of Parliament and campaign group call for LSE Council resignations

Contact: Raheem Kassam, Director of Student Rights, 07872833322, Raheem.Kassam@studentrights.org.uk

Following recent pressure applied to the London School of Economics regarding their links to the Gaddafi regime and the subsequent resignation of the Director, Sir Howard Davies – Robert Halfon MP and Student Rights are calling for other LSE Council members to consider their positions.

Raheem Kassam, Director of Student Rights has said, “We are making a public call for LSE Council members to stand down if they were involved. It is hypocritical and incongruous for someone like Shami Chakrabarti to serve as the Director of a human rights group while legitimising murderous regimes.”

Robert Halfon MP today said, “Just who are the guilty men - and women? Antony Giddens, author of the Third Way, who wrote a paean of praise to Gaddafi in the Guardian. Professor David Held, who went out of his way to compliment the Gaddafi family. Lord Desai, who is alleged to have supervised Said Gadaffi's PHD. Most astonishing and disappointing of all is Shami Chakrabarti - who was on the LSE Council which agreed to the Gaddafi blood money. No doubt more of this will emerge in the coming days.”

##ends

Contact: Raheem Kassam, Director of Student Rights, 07872833322, Raheem.Kassam@studentrights.org.uk
'

Anything to say Shami Chakrabarti? Will the BBC report this story and/or ask the questions of Shami Chakrabarti?

The BBC have actually put up an interview with Shami Chakrabartibut but it is hardly a probing interview and there is no mention at all of Libya. You can watch it here apparently she thinks that there are no problems with the Human Rights Act. Nothing interesting to ask Shami Chakrabarti about Libya?

Have the BBC lost Shami Chakrabarti's telephone number?

Shami Chakrabarti is a regular guest on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, I would hazard a guess that she may even be the most regular guest. Oddly she has not been asked on the programme this week to explain why she sat on the London School of Economics' Council whilst the LSE happily took money from the Libyan regime of Colonel Gaddafi. Have the BBC asked Shami Chakrabarti to explain this position and how she reconciled it with her usual standpoints on human rights and civil liberties? Why are Libyans not deserving of the same human rights and civil liberties as the British?

Liberty  partly describe Shami Chakrabarti thus:

'Since becoming Liberty’s Director she has written, spoken and broadcast widely on the importance of the post-WW2 human rights framework as an essential component of democratic society.'

If human rights are that essential a component  of democratic society why was she happy for the LSE to take money from Colonel Gaddafi's Libya and allow Saif Gaddafi to speak at the LSE? Was Shami Chakrabarti ignorant of the state of human rights in Libya or did she not care?

An unbiased news organisation would ask these questions of one of its frequent guests, that the BBC have not done so speaks volumes.

Why are Conservatives so mean?

Andrew Klavan on culture with a message to American graduates and others.

"Liberty is harder than slavery, it's full of risk and unequal outcomes. It require you to stand on your own and suffer the consequences of your choices. But in the end it's the only way of life worth living. The only way you might one day graduate from academic fantasies of a state run utopia and grow to be men and women instead of sheep."

Do read up on Alexis de Tocqueville



Thanks to Theo Spark for the spot.

Why you should care about ISOs and Clause 152

No2ID have all the details here, read the whole two page article, but here is the summary:

"Buried among the numerous complicated and controversial provisions of this legislation is a single clause, clause 152 in the first draft of the Bill, which is a profound threat to privacy, liberty and the rule of law. It is enabling legislation that converts the Data Protection Act into a machine for massively increasing the dealing by government in information of all kinds. It is designed to allow ministers to use a fast-track regulatory procedure to sweep away data protection, human-rights considerations, confidentiality, legal privilege, and ultra vires when they would stand in the way of any use, acquisition or dissemination of information in pursuit of departmental policy.
The availability of broad data-sharing along these lines would be a profound change in the way the country is governed, potentially altering the function of almost all other legislation. It should not be introduced at all, but certainly not without proper public debate. There has been no such debate.
It would be a disaster if the “information sharing order” (ISO in what follows) were to be successfully smuggled through parliament in this manner."

Enabling legislation, how that phrase is redolent of days long gone.


This is the piece of legislation to turn the UK into a "database state", you must protest against this piece of legislation that Parliament may not even be given the time to vote on. If you don't have the time or the stomach for protesting then just write to your MP now, you can do so bu visiting Write to Them and tell your MP that you

"*refuse your consent* to the arbitrary sharing of your information under any ‘Information Sharing Order’ and that you want him or her to vote to have Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill (currently being debated in Parliament) *completely removed* from the Bill."

Pass the word and pass it quickly, this Labour government need to be stopped from turning a once free Country into something even more unpleasant than most of us can imagine.


If you are a social networker then you may want to sign up to the Stop Clause 152! facebook group.