Harry’s Place

Does that mean they might also get rid of the SWP dickheads and animal rights idiots that litter the main drag here in Norwich on a Saturday? Hmm…

Ahem! David T

the Socialist Party is the short version of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and has been for 100 plus years. You really should point this out. Militant are trying to knick our name. The Election Commission have of course prohibited Militant from using “Socialist Party” satisfied by the evidence given.

It’s sad that the soap box is getting hit this way. Has lots of repercussions for all the fringe political views out there. It’s like “You cannot talk unless you have thousands of pounds to get on the telly”

I live in London, and cannot get to a tube station after 4pm without being assaulted by a barrage of people in purple and yellow jackets trying to force me to take their free commercial newspapers. I might pass ten or more of these in a single 5 minute walk. They have stacks of papers (literally) on the street near them, and try to obstruct you in an attempt to force you to take their paper - even if you’re already carrying and reading a copy!

If the Highways Act is being used against a couple of Millies handing out flyers, then it should certainly also be used to throw thelondonpaper and Londonlite into jail.

I appreciate your frustration SPGB.

In Liverpool, Militant used to call themselves ‘The Labour Party’, which was also confusing.

spgb gray,

leaving aside your party’s animus with the Millies, I hope that you and others will be support them in this conflict?

Isn’t there somewhere outside the shopping area where they can hand out their leaflets?

DT
I think you’re wrong there. They stood as the Real Labour Party in an election, following their expulsion, I think?

Mod
the SPGB has always stood for workers’ democratic rights. Democracy matters.

Tony is an old mate of mine. I first met him when he was one of the organisers for The Miltant in the mid 1980’s. He was one of the comrades expelled in the mid 80’s. He’s a really decent guy !

spgb gray,

a simpler: “yes we support” might have been more appropriate than a rather vague abstraction :)

BTW. Respect (before the split) tried to bring in The Soc Party into respect (when there was talk of Galloway standing against Louise Ellman). They didn’t succeed.

What really sticks in the craw is that this comes while Liverpool is “Capital Of Culture” - “Culture”, of course, now meaning officially-sanctioned events contained in ‘arts venues’ and crap like bodypopping lesson by Legs Akimbo style twats in leggings, not “culture” in the sense of “the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group”, which in Liverpudlians’ case very definitely includes pontificating in the streets on idiosyncratic topics.

I understood that this dispute goes back decades and is primarily aimed at the market stalls on Church Street

http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/articles/2004/11/08/message_streettraders11_feature.shtml

http://www.liverpool.gov.uk/News/archive/2006/newsdetail_1899.asp

How political groups have ended up being targetted is beyond me, every time I walk down there I have to fight off market researchers by the dozen.

Joe.
Don’t slag it all.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article4666717.ece

I think you’re wrong there. They stood as the Real Labour Party in an election, following their expulsion, I think?

This truly would be an ecumenical matter, no?

Quite a few demo’s there waving the palestinian flag and angry shouting through megaphones iirc. People always seemed to give them an extra wide berth.

Yeah, but if you didn’t have demos like that, you couldn’t have counterdemos!

And then where would we be?

It gets more parochial.When Eric Heffer died, Militant stood as Walton Real Labour.
With the support of the SWP, against the “witchfinder general” Kilfoyle.

Labour Peter Kilfoyle 21,317
Liberal Democrat Paul Clark 14,457
Walton Real Labour Lesley Mahmood 2,613

Cheers for the support, David. Much appreciated.

In general I would support the right of such groups to assemble and promote their cause. (Though I do not support any of the groups mentioned.) It should be easy to put in place a few common sense rules about prior use or tradition, and not obstructing the public, emergency vehicles, or businesses located there.

But that means all legally constituted political groups must be accorded the same access.

I too knew Tony Aitman back in the early eighties.

Believe me he wouldnt allow any freedoms to political rivals if he and his mates ever got into power. In fact he didnt back then when they controled the Liverpool labour party!

Having said that I support the principle . Just a shame its means defending someone like Aitman

Yeah the waves of market researchers and espcially the squadrons of ‘chuggers’ are a far worse irritation… That and the same person giving you the same sob story about needing the bus fare to hospital twice in half an hour.

What are the laws in England regarding public spaces and thoro- fares? Here in the US the right of peaceful assembly and free speech in public places (excepting roadways, etc., of course) is pretty much absolute. Although never under-estimate the extent to which whatever cause is out of favor with the PC elites to be successfully attacked by pressuring the legislature and the courts to bend the rules or look the other way. Case in point:

When neo-NAZI’s wanted to parade in uniform in Skokie, Ill., (a suburb of Chicago) in the 70’s the ACLU was all over the case in their support of their right to do so as those people were such a fringe operation that the ACLU thought it safe to polish it’s civil liberties bona fides by supporting them.(and they were allowed to march with police protection via court order.)

But when a REALLY serious movement, the right-to-lifers with their millions of adherents, sought to picket abortion clinics on public sidewalks, laws were quickly passed and restraining orders issued restricting such demonstrations to be carried out
outside of a protective “bubble” of x number of feet from the front entrance to the facility–in effect “privatizing” a section of a public thoroughfare paid for, in part, by the taxes of the picketers–the very people being denied use of what they paid for.

Moral? Never under-estimate the extent to which bureaucrats and the legislature can be buffaloed into restricting the rights of citizens espousing unpopular causes–especially if such groups are seen as a serious (as opposed to fringe) threat. Witness the fact that the ACLU didn’t lift a finger to help the conservative pro-life groups exercise their right of free speech, but instead were in court opposing them.

I am not so sure I do support them. This isn’t the miners’ strike where this was used to harass people collecting money in support of a strike the state wanted crushed. It’s just a bunch of trots annoying the hell out of people. Is someone telling me they’ll be arrested whereever they go, or just on the main thoroughfare?

By the way, I’d be fully in favour this law being used to sweep the scum unseen mentions off the street. Indeed I may soon have to take to hitting them with baseball bats because “NO, I DO NOT WANT YOUR FSCKING TRASHY PAPER THAT MAKES A RAG LIKE THE EVENING F*****G BORIS LOOK GOOD”.

Plus, I’ve met Aitman, and he’s a cnut.

Maybe if they promised to go on litter duty every week the local authorties would change their mind.

a mass picket at 12? At the same time as La Machine ‘wakes up’ (again), whilst contending with the horrible rain… good luck with that…

Joe Muggs;
Capital of Culture has been (for me as a Scouser) a way for more businesses to erect themselves all over Liverpool (and building over some important heritage/ archaeological grounds). While a large proportion of the workers are from outside the area.
They throw some token ‘cultural’ events; to keep the stupid masses happy. But, there have been some events which probably wouldn’t have come to Liverpool if it weren’t for Coc 08.
Bleueuh, im babbling… too much wine…

While a large proportion of the workers are from outside the area.

They come over here from Kirby. They take our jobs, our women and our beer and they’re all on the dole!

Isn’t this all to do with Grosvenor Estate, the Paradise Project and the desire to clear the streets and turn city centres into bland, homogenised, urban Bluewaters? True city dwellers enjoy a certain amount of chaos and disorder. Whinging about litter, lefties and chuggers is for suburbanites and readers of the Daily Mail.

What are the laws in England regarding public spaces and thoro- fares?

The legal position, as far as I remember it, is this.

Until the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force, the ‘constitution’, such as it was, did not consist of a set of positive specified rights. Instead, the governing notion was that liberty existed in the interstices of the law. In other words, you could do anything you wanted unless it was specifically illegal.

It was also arguable that a constitution and a bill of rights was impossible: because of the concept of parliamentary sovereignty, and the notion that no parliament could tie the hands of a future parliament. This mean, in theory, that no bill of rights was entrenchable, and could simply be legislated away by a single one line law repealing it.

The constitution, therefore, was an unwritten one. There was a Bill of Rights, and the Magna Carta, both of which were precursors and to some degree, models for the great 18th century statements of constitutional rights. But they were very limited, and only rarely came into play in ordinary every day judging. There were also procedural safeguards, like applications for habeus corpus, which has huge symbolic significance, which could be suspended only with controversy. However, again, this wasn’t the same thing as having a single full constitutional text or a proper bill of rights.

Occasionally, in the odd legal judgement, the caselaw of the European Court of Human Rights was looked at, or judges made vague statements about particular freedoms which a particular application of the law was said to be upholding. But mostly, if you wanted to argue human rights, you had to take the United Kingdom to the European Court of Human Rights.

As far as freedom of assembly goes, the position was this. In practice, the difficulty was that there were a whole series of laws which would be enforced in ways which were grossly inimical to civil liberties considerations, considerations of which played no part in the judgements on them. Public protest was particularly closely restrained. So, you had “breach of the peace” convictions, under medieval laws. Or offences about not blocking highways being used to close down protests. There were also public order acts, the first of which prohibited the wearing of paramilitary uniforms, and was introduced in order to supress Mosley’s Blackshirts, and the later few that, at least, were premised conceptually that such a thing as a lawful protest existed. Mostly, however, they simply prohibited certain specified forms of public assembly (including, famously, “pay parties” i.e. ‘raves’).

The three most important changes in the last 15 years were these. First, we had Maastricht, which created the concept of an EU citizen, and in effect, something approaching an EU constitution. We haven’t talked about the non-human rights-y aspects of the UK constitution. All you need to know is that they were similarly piecemeal. Maastricht, I think, created the foundations for a unified European constitutional order, and made it possible to talk about things like “citizenship”.

Then we had the Human Rights Act, which requires judges, in interpreting both statutes and the common law, to decide cases in a manner that achieves consistency with the European Convention, with regard to its caselaw.

Finally, we had devolution to Scotland, which created in effect the first major national constitutional settlement, and a semi-federal framework for national government in both England and Scotland.

So I think you can now say that we have something approaching a written constitution which sets out our positive rights: even though those rights are enshrined in an ordinary piece of legislation, and an interpretive sleight of hand, rather than an entrenched grand foundational statement of the limits of state authority. Specifically, there is now a positive right of freedom of expression (Article 10), and peaceful assembly (Article 11). And those are our rights.

Whether the old system was necessarily worse than the new one is a matter of debate. I think it was. We should have a set of broad, entrenched, and justiciable legal rights, and I’m pleased that we now do. I don’t think, as some do, that we are living in a ‘police state’.

There are problems with the present system: namely, that broad rights can encourage judges to go on nominally principle-led quasi-legislative jaunts of their own: which sometimes, they do. However, that’s still better than not being able to argue that there is a positive right to, say, freedom of expression and assembly in cases such as these.

Around 12 different organisations, including the Socialist Party, the CNWP, the Stop the War Coalition, CND, Animal Rights, the SWP, Cuba Solidarity, a cycling group, Merseyside Anarchists and the Fight ID Cards campaign
Surely comrades, bruvvers and sisters, if this campaign is going to succeed we must drop the “a cycling group” from the revolutionary struggle.

Comrades I move that “a cycling group” be branded as capitalist spies and removed from our organisation without further ado.

(I posted this over at Socialist Unity, partly out of mischief, and partly to see what their reaction would be, given how they’ve discussed me quite recently)

“I support the rights of individuals (such as Tony Aitman) or groups to congregate freely in the public sphere.

Even if I think the people involved and the views involved are scum (as I do in this particular case).

Freedom of assembly and freedom to propagate political views is paramount, regardless of political feelings.

So good luck to Tony Aitman.

Bet you weren’t expecting me to say that, eh?

*laughs*”

Naah, I did expect you to say that.

Comrades I move that “a cycling group” be branded as capitalist spies and removed from our organisation without further ado.

hahahahahahaha

Bravo Mr T - 5% of 5%.

In the fullness of time, these geographical zones will be supplanted, by the one we are using now. The website.

It is much more important to fight for freedom of speech on the web, than in the town centre. The website is the Hyde Park Corner of the future, which is why so many prodnosed politicians are desperately trying to control, and censor it.

not sure how accurate this is, but certainly makes a valid point:

http://dreaming-neon-black.blogspot.com/2008/07/streets-you-have-no-right-to-walk-down.html

“There are now thirty-five streets in this city’s centre that you have no formal right to walk down. All of the others, you are officially free to stroll at your leisure, providing you do not break any law. Though the legality has not yet been tested, you have no such freedom within the 42 acres – or 60,000 square feet – that comprise the Liverpool One development. Instead, you are effectively a guest of the Duke of Westminster – Britain’s third richest man. He owns the Grosvenor corporation, and they own those streets, on a 250-year lease!”

modernity:

In the US the Liverpool One development would equate to enclosed shopping malls which, until a decade or so ago were always thought to be strictly private property as they were erected by private developers on privately owned land. However, activist judges “legislating from the bench,” as it were, bought the argument that, as the public spaces of the privately owned mall had (in their opinion) surpassed the public town centers
as meeting places for the majority of citizens, the Supreme Court, (in a case the name of which escapes me) ruled that these open mall courts were the functional equivalent of the city public sidewalks and parks for the purposes of free speech. The case revolved around the right of organizations to pass out political flyers, as I remember. It would seem the tides are running slightly the other way in the U.K., or is this an isolated
anomaly over your way?

Back in my student days, some lefties of my acquaintance were protesting outside a Shell station (I really can’t remeber what it was that Shell had done to annoy them that time around) - so naturally I made a point of driving in to fill up. There were 4 or 5 of them, and they were walking a little loop with placards and not causing any inconvenience to anybody.

While I was filling up, a couple of cops showed up, and told them to bugger off. I wandered over, and told the cops the reason I had stopped to fill up, and also that I though that it was outrageous that the cops should be interfering with their right to protest. I was told to MYOB or they’d arrest me as well.

Top post David T. Spot on.

On the Human Rights Act - as I understand it, it’s basically the European Convention, in which case it’s pretty much useless as practically all the articles have a long list of get-outs, for example the following from article 10:

“may be subject to such formalities, conditions,
restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a
democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial
integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the
protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or
rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in
confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the
judiciary”

…any of which government lawyers can pull out of a hat when it suits - I’m sure that in this case they’ll cite “prevention of disorder”. Probably the most significant practical impact of the Human Rights act is that “yuman rites innit” has become police speak for “stop bothering us”.

Actually you’ll find that the legal situation is complicated because large tracts of town and city public spaces are now under private management. Then there is a vast increase in council wardens, community politice, and other nosey-parker riff-raff, have lots of powers to stop people doing..er whatever some by-law or private company wants them to stop doing.

In Ipswich the Corn Hill is now run, or market days by a private company whose minions have forced political-pressure group activists from the area (whose political history includes anti-slavery meetings in the 1790s, and mass Chartist rallies in the 1840s). They thus make way for a sparse sprinkling of higglers, tat-n’-cack merchants, some Black Country Barker, and the few decent stalls hanging on. Another achievement of the Liberal-Tory Junta that run the town.

After vigorous complaints (er, by me, for example) it is said that if we ask for permission from the relevant council officer we will be allowed to leaflet etc. No doubt in a special protest park.

Tim is right; this has been going on in Liverpool for a long time and has less to do with suppressing public, political activism than it does with Church Street looking like a bomb site after the stall traders have packed up and pissed off. Great Homer street market was no different: They’d pack up and leave the cleanup to someone else.

“It is much more important to fight for freedom of speech on the web, than in the town centre”

Not sure why one should be ‘more important’ than the other. They are both important. The freedom of speech of the press, once there was such as a thing as the press, did not supplant the need to have freedom of assembly and speech in town centres.

“Actually you’ll find that the legal situation is complicated because large tracts of town and city public spaces are now under private management”

The legal situation is no different, only the officiousness of little fascists. Those companies do not own the space, which is still owned by the corporation/council/what-have-you, hence public in the relevant legal sense. They have no more right to stop lawful public assembly than a company appointed to clean the M4 has a right to stop someone they dislike driving on it. I suggest that a legal challenge would be in order. The bad publicity, if nothing else, should be an incentive for the council/company to back down.

“any of which government lawyers can pull out of a hat when it suits - I’m sure that in this case they’ll cite “prevention of disorder”. ”

Indeed, but they can all be challenged in the courts.

One“Tony is an old mate of mine. I first met him when he was one of the organisers for The Miltant in the mid 1980’s. He was one of the comrades expelled in the mid 80’s. He’s a really decent guy ! Err I thought the RSL (aka THE MILLIES) had no organizers etc and were merely a “spontainous group suporting a crap news paper” ? Or were they lying then, and now ?

Two“Around 12 different organisations, including the Socialist Party, the CNWP, the Stop the War Coalition, CND, Animal Rights, the SWP, Cuba Solidarity, a cycling group, Merseyside Anarchists and the Fight ID Cards campaign With the possible exception of a cycling group and Cuba Solidarity, it sounds just the place to test Napalm, and that will deal with the litter problem as well.

Three Is my memory going with old age, or is it not a “Liberal Democrap” council trying to enforce this illiberal restriction. Why the next thing you know is that the local liberals will be denying that asbestos fiber kills - Like they did at Rochdale !

GW

Well, I just had to wade through Church St. It was the biggest free speech demo I’ve ever seen! They even managed to get a giant mechanical spider along.

Seriously though, there were some JFJFP and PSC among other groups up at the bombed out church earlier, maybe they decided to move there instead. Or are they always there (only been in Liverpool a week)?

Yes, I meant to comment on David T’s excellent post as well…
Pull that off the top of your head, did you David? A veritable fount of knowledge and a better man than I. (And I do not mean this sarcastically)

On the Human Rights Act - as I understand it, it’s basically the European Convention, in which case it’s pretty much useless as practically all the articles have a long list of get-outs

The HRA is a mechanism for giving people redress under the ECHR in the British courts so yes, the get outs in the ECHR still apply to the HRA. That doesn’t make it useless but it does have its limits and it certainly hasn’t prevented much of New Labour’s illiberal legislation. Personally I would be in favour of a more tightly drawn bill of rights, although I appreciate the constitutional difficulties which David mentions. If parliament could just amend it at will then it would rather defeat the object but neither could it be set in stone - there would have to be some kind of mechanism for making changes.

Oh, and good post David.

In the Manchester of the fifties, I remember a croft [as we called a bombed site then] that served as a Hyde park Corner , at least on Saturdays if not other days also. It was on - or should say immediately off - Deansgate where it met Lower Market Street, so quite central. It was not a throughway to anywhere so the only people taking up space on the croft were those there for the talk, so it never obstructed the normal to and fro on pavements. As a teenager, I thought it was great, the first and only public debating forum I had ever come across, although I remember hearing that there was another, perhaps bigger one, in Platt Fields, but that seemed quote remote at the time. Donald Soper was a regular.

I think every town or city should have a recognised forum of this kind, a space for people to freely set up their soap box, so I’m sorry that Liverpool Council seem bent on using the law to close theirs down. They should indstead recognise the idea and set aside a centrally situated space. With so many pedestrianised streets nowadays, the claim is that that everywhere must be an unobstructed pavement, even one 100 yards wide.

“I think every town or city should have a recognised forum of this kind”

Indeed - any where on public property that in doing so you’re not obstruction others.

Freedom of expression is an inaleinable right - it should be pervasive, and not relegated to some designated spot.

Great Post David T

Andrew Adams.

re elsaq’q fear that Swiftian lawyers will get to the qualification of the rights and tear them to shreds as in;

……“may be subject to such formalities, conditions,
restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a
democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial
integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the
protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or
rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in
confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the
judiciary”………….

No this won’t happen as judges are compelled to interpret the meanings of these article within the jurisprudence of the history of the European Court.

I.E they actually have to read all the cases that have come before the court and apply the interpretive line of reasoning (the precendents in our sense) no to apply prexisting freedom limiting cases from British precedents.

So the judges have to be on their toes and the early cases they tried to fiddle with a ECHR principle ‘the margin of appreciation’ which is intenede to allow a flexible margin for imple,enting a principle in respect of their legal system (where they may collect evidence through a prosecuting magistrate prior to charge etc).

On Law Lord thought hr had found sudicial-political wiggle room for fundge by domesticating this as the ‘judicial area of discretion’.

Well he got his wrists slapped as they don’t let you make up very English fudges like that.

Judges have to be on the ball as the ECHR convention rights have been incorporated into domestic law but they must still be applied in the same way as at ECHR,

A higher court hear must seek to give effect to a UK law in the broadest way to meet the purpose of the EC right.

If it cannot be done they cannot strike down a statute of parliament (as the US Supreme Court could) they can merely declare an incompatability and boot it back to parliament to change.

There still remains an appeal directly to ECHR Strasbourg if domestic avenues have expired.

The reason that we had so many adverse judgements against us at Strasbourg was not because we had such wretched rights in comparison but because our unwritten constitution with a notion of Parliament being the highest law making body without a bill of rights and constitution to frame and restrain it;

Simply meant that we did not have a good internal constitutional court to oversee these issues.

Now that we have seen the HRA running I would argue more strongly for a written constitution, as Scotland, N>Ireland and even Wales have a clearer constitutional framework.

Worse we do not have a conctitutional court to rule on the conflicts of laws that are arising between the Nations (I think by default it would fall on the Privy council selected bt Royal prerogative, and if my memeory serves me wesl from Tudour/Stewart England and Scotland the Privy councilealmost left us at permanent war.

So

We need

A constitutional settlement for;

the regions and nations (federated?) of the UK (and what the hell is the Isle of Mann and the Channel Islands?).

A written constitution and its methods of entrenchment requiring a quorum in both houses.;

Declaring all matters to be justiciable and not decided by the mandate of royal prerogative, absolute Kingship kindly left over for Gorden Brown by James i/IV

Setting out the duties of the prime minister, parliament and the executive and

the nature of the bicameral chamber (a unicameral chamber would be madness in a multi-nation state)

House of Representatives

House of Commons

A Bill of Rights (which would like other such instruments but crusty types can declare it a true English descedent of Magna and her carta)

A Conctitutional Court

A supreme court (they can have the same building different wigs or codpieces or whatever)

But we will just carry on the fudge drawing things up on doilys in the house common room until they get cleared away by the T ladies and they forget again Until one day they find even Wales is leaving on the 5 pm train.

Oh Well England I am sure the very sensible liberal C of E will hold us all together with a spot of Sharia and Immams and Gurus and Buddhist Abbots Lords spiritual and the listening to the interfaith dialogue on the interstate, initiative they will be planning.

Now once upon a time Liberty would have been defending the rights of British people to freely associate and to communicate their views freely , Shami Chakrabarthi said that on her watch rights would come home and would be understood as applying to everyone not just the seminars thay have held with the Muslim Initiative on ‘religious freedom’ and such.

Terrible show all this advertising malarkey at HP. Just noticed it; normally I use Adblocker on Firefox, but I checked out Chrome, and HP’s trying to flog me T shirts and all sorts.