He said he would come, but he didn't

... but it was really interesting, so though I missed him it was definitely worth going. "It" was a speaker event at Transport House about Trades Unions and Civil Rights, one of the speakers being Tony Benn. It was one of the events listed on an email CMCC sent to the members of the Green Party last week, but I didn't expect anyone else would turn up. I did think he would though- it was the way he said he'd definitely be there on Saturday that gave me that impression :-) Not that it matters!

Instead of the lecture theatre or hall type place I'd been expecting, the event was in a conference room type thing, with a big oblong ring of tables and chairs and a couple of short rows of chairs behind that, next to the door, where I elected to sit, as the less scary option, when I finally sat down- it took a while to get to this point as I was buttonholed by a woman promoting a conference about similar topics almost as soon as I got through the door (I was quite scared about going in by myself and missed CMCC most at that point- his confidence and his knowledge of what to do and whether it was really open to anyone and if you needed a ticket and so on would have helped a lot); I was genuinely considering going and had signed my name to an emailing list, before realising in the middle of the event that of course I am going home this weekend- partly for a dentist's appointment so I can't really change it. I was slightly relieved in a way though- without endorsement from any LSE society I wasn't quite sure whether it'd be a genuinely interesting and usefull experience or something a little extreme and worrying to be steered clear of. As I left at the end, she said 'See you next week!' so lying through my teeth I smiled and agreed. Almost everyone there was a trades union member or activist so I felt a little out of place.

The first speaker was a man from Liberty, who talked about ID cards; some of it was all pretty familiar, such as pointing out how the justification that has been given for them keeps changing, and touching on the ridiculousness of the idea that they could prevent crime and terrorism*, but some was at least vaguely new to me: for example, he said that though they claim that it won't be legally required to produce one's ID card on the spot if asked by a policeman (they will just give you a piece of paper asking you to bring it into a police station, like with a driving license), in reality it's inevitable that it will become so, since anyone with anything to hide will simply ignore the piece of paper so that system will be found unworkable**. He also talked about curtailing of freedoms to protest- including legislation ostensibly intended to protect women from being harrassed by stalkers being used by businesses involved with animal testing, for example, to protect themselves from activists (actually I didn't see too much of a problem with that) and mentioned though it used to be, till the early nineties, that only protests of 20 people or more could have conditions imposed on them by police and some other things that I forget, now it's 2 or more- and then the 2003 legislation (which I'd dimly heard of before reading quite a detailed piece on it in G2 yesterday, where a journalist got permission to carry out a record number (21) of solo protests in one day in order to make a point) made it obligatory to give at least 24 hours and usually 7 days notice, and get permission from the police (who can't refuse but can make conditions) to carry out even a one man protest, not just in Parliament Square but for about a kilometre around it; it was introduced to get rid of Brian Haw who had a very long running one man continuous protest (with a tent and everything, I think) against the Iraq war and for peace in general opposite the Houses of Parliament. What the Guardian piece didn't mention was that apparently this has also now been extended to every American air base, and the area round the fence, in the country. He also talked about the use of ASBOs to enable anybody breaking the law a second time (and given an ASBO the first time) to be imprisoned- and since he gave the example of someone giving another person a lift to take a picture of Big Ben (which could be used in planning a terrorist attack) as an example of something that technically counts as terrorism under the terrorism act, it's not that hard to inadvertantly break it.

Tony Benn was also a very interesting speaker- I'd never heard him before though and was surprised (though of course I shouldn't have been) that such a left wing campaigner had a very Home Counties accent. He did talk down to the audience a little; but filled what he was saying with anecdotes and personal details such as telling us about his granddaughter's school. I can't actually remember what he was talking about- though I do recall him mentioning someone who had been denied a government job because his wife read the Morning Star. He had to leave for another event, so took questions right after his speech instead of at the end like the others.

The final speaker- an MP who had planned to come couldn't in the end make it due to being busy campaigning in Cardiff (and at this point I was glad CMCC wasn't there because the chair made a joke against Cardiff (though not a very good one): she said she couldn't imagine why he'd rather be in Cardiff than London. Cardiff being where CMCC is from)- was the founder (I think) of the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities, as well as being a member of the Green Party, and again it has slipped my mind just what he was talking about, though I'm sure bits of it will occur to me again as my memory is jogged by the random and often trivial happenings of life- I just remember that he too was interesting. In the questions, he also referred to ID cards- he disagreed with the first speaker about it being inevitable that one would have to produce them, since he said that they would just scan your finger and be able to call up your database entry.

There were questions on institutional racism (twice by the same guy: once to Tony Benn and once to the other two) and the niqab, among other things, but some of the questioners went on a bit and were clearly much more interested in making a point than asking anything- though there were less event/ organisation promoters than at the George Monbiot event.

Tonight I made some lasagne- but it didn't turn out very well at all. Nothing like the perfect example I made for my family when we were on holiday in Portugal. Ah well, better luck next time. Sadly though I still have half to eat tomorrow. There was no room for it in the fridge so I put the dish in my cupboard inside my washing up bowl and underneath my chopping board...

*I totally agree- if a policeman is psychic enough to realise a crime is about to be committed, or an act of terrorism, and so ask to see the ID cards of the about-to-be-criminals, then he's psychic enough to know their names without needing to ask. And even if everyone was routinely made to show ID before boarding the tube, say, then that would still tell the authorities precisely nothing, since a suicide bomber's name is not going to be known from him having committed the same crime in the past... If they are suspicious of an individual because they believe he/she has attended a training camp in Pakistan, and associated with terrorists, I still don't see that that would help: they can't surely stop someone from taking the tube just on suspiscion, without them yet having committed a crime. (Anyway I hope not). So what I wonder is: has all this just not occurred to the ministers who want ID cards, or do they know all that perfectly well but find that stopping terrorism is a convenient excuse for them. In which case, I completely fail to understand what their genuine motivation is: why would it make them so happy to have all of us carry a card around? More than one of the speakers made the point that it isn't the card so much as it's the database that goes with it- but I still fail to see what they could want with that. Maybe it's just as well- it can't be good. Incidentally, even if ID cards could reduce terrorism, I wouldn't think they were a good thing. Of course incidents like the July bombings are very sad. Of course it would be better if they didn't happen. But at the same time, when you compare the number of deaths even in that case, let alone the average number of deaths by terrorism each year in this country, with the number of deaths in road accidents, you realise that if preventing that number is worth the burden of ID cards, then preventing the much greater number of road deaths must be worth the inconvenience of living in a country where cars are banned... but I don't see anyone proposing that we should outlaw cars, funnily enough. It goes against intuition, but we really are prepared to have some preventable deaths for a more convenient world. And though put like that it does feel rather bad, I don't disagree with that. In any case, you can never completely get rid of terrorism- all you can do is reduce it as much as possible, which I believe is the current state of affairs. Beyond that, it's not worth the loss of civil liberties. Even though any loss of life is still tragic.

**And this would not be good- I remember being stopped by a policeman in Japan. It was shortly before I came home (not having been stopped once in the entire time I'd been there), and I'd taken my successor into the nearest sizable town to do some shopping; we were just coming through the station concourse to get the train home when we were stopped. I had my passport on me, but it had completely slipped my mind to tell my successor to take his everywhere (in any case, I would have thought he'd have been told at orientation) and he didn't have it on him. He spoke no Japanese so I was trying to explain to the policeman that it was my fault for not telling him (mostly true and probably culturally appropriate), and ask him to let him off, but the policeman even insisted at one point that he speak for himself- though when this didn't get anyone very far, what with my successor's Japanese stretching to "How do you do?" pronounced almost incomprehensibly badly, and the policeman's English evidently not being up to the job, he consented to let me translate, and I eventually slipped back into just speaking for him again. He was asking us where we lived, and what our jobs were, and saying that the law said that if my successor didn't have his passport, he could be arrested. I explained how far away (2 hours on the train) we lived and that we were language teachers; he seemed to have trouble grasping the concept that I was being replaced by my companion in my job (probably due to my Japanese), and the difference in how long we'd been in Japan. He wanted to know the phone number of our supervisor, so he could ring and ask him to come with the passport (I think I explained that the train schedules were such that I couldn't get there and back again in the time left that evening (whilst my successor remained with the policeman)- though I can't remember if that was an option); I really really did not want to bother the supervisor on a Sunday evening and make him come all that way- anyway I'm not sure if he had a spare key to the flat- so I lied and said I didn't have his phone number, when I actually thought initially I probably didn't but could possibly have it on me, and then became more certain that I did have it written down on a piece of paper I carried around with me. At some point in the proceedings he'd already taken down our names and addresses. The policeman asked to search our bags. This was pretty scary because the last place we'd been to was the kitchen section of SATY department store- so I could buy my successor a new knife to replace the one I'd broken on a particularly tough pumpkin early on in my stay but not thought I'd use enough to be in a hurry to replace it. I was really worried what would happen if the policeman found it in his bag. He was taking out his things one by one for the policeman, so that by the time he came to the knife (in a carrier bag) there'd been enough stuff that the policeman was less inclined to be bothered to ask to see inside it (I'm not sure if this was deliberate conscious strategy on my successor's part, but that's how I explained it to myself). Luckily, soon after the carrier bag came out- at a point when it was still conceivable the policeman might ask to see in it as it was still kind of under consideration, the next few things having come out quite fast- my successor happened to bring out, of all things, the programme for the local elementary schools' swimming competition we'd attended a couple of days before in the tiny village where we were based- and the policeman decided this counted as proof that we were indeed living there. Though it's possible it may have been an excuse to enable him to give up on us without losing face rather than actually convincing him suddenly that we were ok. With a few more stern injunctions never to let this happen again, and some sincere (or at least sincere sounding) apologies and promises on my part, he let us hurry off to catch our train- though I don't remember if we were actually in time still.

~Incidentally, the title of the post, I'd better explain, otherwise it looks accusatory rather than whimsical, is a quote from Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett- who may possibly have been quoting it from somewhere else; it's one of the lines that particularly sticks in my mind~