I went along to the Civic Hall in Crawley to see how the meeting on civil liberties organised by NO2ID went.  It had been advertised as featuring candidates from all the parties but since then the Labour candidate stood down and a new one has not been selected yet, so there was no Labour candidate.  The stage was still overcrowded though, with six other candidates.I had been asked to stand in for Laura, but declined for several reasons.  The main reason was that this was effectively a hustings-type event for people to see what their candidates think about various topics and so my own opinions would be irrelevant.  We don’t know who our candidate will be, but it is quite possible their opinions on CCTV, ID cards and databases would be different to mine.  The same would have been true if Crawley Labour sent along the chair or some other speaker.

Of course, it could be argued that the party should have had someone there to present the party’s position – but that would have been quite difficult.  I don’t know anybody in any local party branch that really knows why the government is so keen on ID cards or shares that enthusiasm.

An added benefit of declining the invitation was not having to share a platform with the BNP.   Despite being involved with the UAF I have doubts about the usefulness of the ‘no platform’ policy personally, and I know that if they are present at public meetings in Horsham I will have no choice, but it really didn’t seem right at a meeting on civil liberties, since their whole ideology depends on supressing the civil liberties of entire sections of society.

The organisers said that they have an obligation to invite all known candidates to meetings, but the electoral commission’s guidance on this is not so clear-cut.  When an election has not been called it is even more muddy.  Anybody could claim that they intend to stand, and as far as I know, the Monster Raving Loony party were not invited – they probably have more members than the Justice party and the last time they stood in Crawley they got more votes than them/him.

In the end I am glad that I didn’t go in any sort of official capacity.   Maybe I don’t have the right politician’s mindset – passing over an opportunity to give my opinons to a room full of people who more or less have to listen to them…

One of the speakers was Arshad Khan, a serial candidate in Crawley elections.  He was billed as representing the Justice party, even though it is widely believed he is the only member of that party, and his own ideas have even less compatibility with civil liberties than the BNP – including the idea that juries should made up of professional jurors, CCTV cameras should be trained on defence lawyers and phone-tapping should be used more.

Still, it was good to see somebody so dedicated to making up statistics as he goes along, especially when all the others then used those same statistics themselves.  I think the only number he didn’t make up was the one about 80% of British laws being made in Brussels and that is only because somebody else made it up first and he believed them.

There was much rubbish talked but a couple of sensible ideas, like the Lib Dem’s unsurprising promotion of proportional representation and the Green candidate’s comments on the Human Rights act.  He is a very low-key speaker, but seemed less inclined towards hyperbole than the others. He is also a Smith, which will make the ballot papers a little interesting.

My own opinion is that the meeting was flawed because it tried to concentrate on one topic, even though nobody really agreed on what it meant.  One member of the audience did ask what I thought was an excellent question, about what the difference is between human rights and civil liberties, which did help to define things a bit, but then the debate moved on to freedom of speech, with nobody really saying what they think that means.

The BNP wanted to say that they oppose restrictions on freedom of speech but couldn’t say why without saying the things that are restricted.

The whole concept of freedom of speech is difficult though.  We do not have it, and quite rightly so.  Do we want everybody to be able to slander anybody they want to with impunity?  Do we want to remove any penalties for perjury?  I’m sure we don’t, but having decided that there must be some restrictions for the greater good it is then a question of where to draw the line.

A limited-duration public meeting is probably not the ideal venue for such philosophical musings though.

The UKIP silver bullet and answer to every other question is to hold ‘binding’ local referenda on anything that can get 5% of the electorate to support it.  Not really sure how that would work.  Wouldn’t we end up with a situation where every village had a major acute hospital and there was not a single waste disposal facility in the country?

Despite the shortcomings of the event it was good to get a feel for how such things proceed before all the invites for similar hustings in Horsham start arriving.