Freedom juxtaposition

One the day when The Queen announced the following bill during the opening of parliament:

Freedom (Great Repeal) Bill

Will limit the amount of time that DNA profiles of innocent people can be held on national database. Will tighten regulation on the use of CCTV cameras, remove limits on right to peaceful protest. The storage of DNA is a power devolved to the Scottish Parliament. The Bill would adopt the Scottish model.

The following happened:

Parliament Square anti-war protester Brian Haw arrested

Parliament Square protester Brian Haw has been arrested for obstructing police during searches of tents on the green.

Anti-war campaigner Mr Haw, who has been camping there since 2001, was held as police searched the "peace camp".

Another protester Barbara Tucker, who has also been camping outside the Houses of Parliament, was arrested.

Now is it just me, or does there seem to be a slightly odd juxtaposition going on here? The police going in and arresting people who are peacefully protesting on a piece of ground opposite the Houses of Parliament whilst almost at the same time the government is proclaiming it will improve civil liberties and remove limits on rights to peaceful protest seems a bit jarring.

I hope Brian, Barbara and anyone else arrested are released soon and allowed to go back to protesting their cause peacefully.

PS: I interviewed Barbara Tucker last year.

David Cameron will not keep the promises of David Davis

As I blogged about back in March, David Davis made an impassioned speech during The Convention on Modern Liberty where he pleaded with his own party to "keep my promises". There is an mp3 of his speech available here and a transcript of it here. A key section is:

Please look at every law you pass, every law you pass, and study it so that it gives freedom, privacy, and dignity back to the people even if it is at the price of taking power away from the government from time to time.

I wonder how that can be reconciled with David Cameron's pronouncement that he will attempt to remove Brian Haw's war protest in Parliament Square:

I am all in favour of free speech and the right to demonstrate and the right to protest. But I think there are moments when our Parliament Square does look like a pretty poor place, with shanty town tents and the rest of it. I am all for demonstrations, but my argument is `Enough is enough'.

So in principle Mr Cameron is in favour of free speech and protesting but as soon as a protest starts making somewhere look a little bit messy that principle goes out of the window. It seems his commitment to free speech is extremely flaky and arbitrary.

If Mr Davis was still in the shadow cabinet, at least he would be in a position to exert some influence on this sort of authoritarian posturing but of course he isn't. It looks like his plea has fallen on deaf ears and we can look forward to much more of the same in this area as we have had from the current government should the Tories form the next one.