Convention on Modern Liberty set up to protect civil liberties in Britain

A new coalition has been set up to fight for civil liberties in Britain.

The Convention on Modern Liberty,as reported in today's Observer by Henry Porter, has been set up to debate our civil liberties and to campaign for our rights.

Partners are No2ID, which campaigns against identity cards, political magazine blog Liberal Conspiracy, Unlock Democracy,Amnesty International UK, the Countryside Alliance and OpenDemocracy's UK blog OurKingdom.

The Convention on Modern Liberties' first meeting is on 28 February 2009, which will take place in London, Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Cambridge, Glasgow and Manchester.

Details of some of these events have yet to be confirmed, but the London event will take place at the Institute of Education in Bloomsbury, central London from 8:30am to 7pm,and speakers will include David Davis MP, Iain Dale, Michael Wills MP from the Ministry of Justice, Sabina Frediani (the campaigns co-ordinator of Liberty) and author Phillip Pullman.

Sessions will include "Business gets personal - can privacy have a future?" and "Judges and Politicians - who should decide?".

There will also be a Bloggers’ summit hosted by Liberal Conspiracy and Comment is Free

In Belfast, the event will take place in Room 212, the Peter Froggatt Centre at Queen’s University Belfast from 9am to 5:15pm.

There will be a live linkup with the London event as well as sessions on freedom of assembly, parading and protest and The "war on terror" in "the Obama era".

The Cambridge session will take place at the Cambridge Union, 9a Bridge Street, CB2 1UB. Speakers and times will be confirmed.

Glasgow's session will take place at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Strathclyde, James Weir Building, 75 Montrose Street, Glasgow.

There will be a live linkup with the London event, and talks on Scottish Government information management and CCTV. Speakers to be confirmed.

The Bristol, Cardiff and Manchester events have to confirm their location, speakers or time.

Tickets are £35 and £20 concession (this includes sandwich lunch and refreshments). They are on sale for the London event here.

Registration has not yet opened for the other conventions, but there are contact details under the event pages, accessible via the "Across the UK" link.

In the meantime, you can subscribe to the convention's mailing list or follow it on Twitter and Facebook, as well as its Youtube page.

The site also recommends a number of readings for the topics discussed at the convention.

Given the Government's obession with pushing forward costly and counterproductive identity cards and their recent desire to set up a database of everyone's correspondence, I'm glad this convention is being set up.