Erosion of Liberty
Due to FAIL circumstances I was unable to attend the Convention on Modern Liberty in Manchester yesterday. Instead I listened to the day’s events via videocast. It has not been twenty-four hours before I see the following report in the BBC:
Town centre ban on groups meeting
[…]
The order, which came into force on Sunday and expires on 31 August, allows police to disperse two or more people who gather in Walsall town centre.
They are then banned from returning for 24 hours.
[…]
If people do not comply with the order police can arrest the individual without a warrant.
I am not aware of the particular problems in Walsall that this order is trying to address, but it struck me as being completely at odds with yesterday’s closing speech by David Davis. In those ten minutes he agreed with Jack Straw that the United Kingdom has not yet become a police state and one of the reasons cited was that the police do not yet break up congregations. Were that to be the case, CoML would have been unable to happen and we would have an entirely different challenge to regain our liberties.
A more facile example from the last twenty-four hours strikes many as “the police” versus “people trying to have some fun”; an event on Facebook; Manchester Piccadilly Station Silent Rave:
SORRY, DUE TO POLICE INVOLVEMENT THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED
— the group’s “Recent News”
The silent rave is in a public building so maybe it is a health and safety issue and the police maybe right that it can’t take place in the station but if we have it where it isn’t a building, the police can’t stop it happening at, mmm lets say the fountains in Piccadilly Gardens where there are 1000’s of people every sat afternoon…. anyone else with me??
— wall post by “R”
iv tryed at the piccadilly gardens
soon as i put up the event the police told me to take it down lol— wall post by “D”
I can well understand the police wanting to keep large groups from congregating where there is a risk of damage, such as was the case with the waterfight in Leeds which the council claimed ruined the Millenium Square garden. It remains a little unclear to me is what a few hundred people dancing to the music on their iPods in a train station or Piccadilly Gardens is going to threaten? This event cannot even approach the UEFA Cup Final in 2008 which left the city in a disgusting state?
You need wellingtons to walk around Manchester. The whole place smells of beer, sweat, testosterone, and the delicate hues of piss and vomit are starting to fragrance the air.
— quote from a personal email written during the afternoon before the match
I have a hazy memory of walking into Piccadilly Station the following morning and finding the escalators didn’t work because they were two inches deep in vomit. Of course, large organised events which are likely to involve some confrontation pay local police forces to help keep order.
To me, and to many of those who attended or commented on the CoML, it seems that we need to take action to prevent the gradual erosion of rights from turning into a much more serious matter.