Lib Dem conference fiasco has left few members smiling

[T_i_B]

This sort of nonsense reminds me how grateful I am not to have anything to do with any political party.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/07/lib-dem-conference-fiasco

Given the kicking the party has taken over the past year, you might think Liberal Democrat leaders would be delighted their members are still smiling. But among the conditions placed on representatives attending the party's annual conference, which opens in Birmingham on 17 September, are complex rules about the photographs they submit for their badges. These must display "a neutral expression, with your mouth closed, eyes open and clearly visible".

Those representatives may have worn a very different expression when they learned they also had to send in their passport numbers. So much so, that a motion critical of the new rules will be moved at the conference by Stephen Gilbert MP. The reason the party gives for these new arrangements, imposed on police advice, is "the safety of everyone attending conference, as well as the residents and employees surrounding the venue". Some will see them as the price the Lib Dems pay for becoming a party of government. Others will secretly welcome them because they make us look important.

But Lib Dems have long campaigned against the "database state". In October 2007 Nick Clegg, then the party's home affairs spokesman, even vowed to go to prison rather than carry an ID card. Besides, the argument from security does not convince. The party's conference, with its bag checks, stewards and police presence, is the last place to choose if you have taken it into your head to assault a Lib Dem minister. And if terrorism is the concern, then exclusion from the conference is hardly sufficient punishment. Terrorists should be imprisoned, not barred from participating in worthy debates on the reform of local government finance.

The new rules for registration have caused uproar in the party, with rumours that prominent activists had been refused accreditation. While it is hard to believe the Lib Dems will ultimately behave like a demented headteacher and exclude people because of their expression or hairstyle, the new regulations have still done harm. Two weeks before the conference, many representatives still do not know if their applications have been accepted. This may be because the vetting for all the main party conferences has been put in the hands of the Greater Manchester police. Following the summer's riots, they may have had better things to do than leaf through photographs of Lib Dem activists to make sure their mouths are closed.

[fedsron2us]

1. Pathetic

Party conferences are a microcosm of the sick nature of British democracy. Only politicians who have genuine reason to fear their own people need these sorts of goon shows. Sadly the only place left where voters can address their elected representatives as equals is on your local parish council

[T_i_B]

2. Oddly enough....

I can remember when Labour first started using Manchester as a conference venue a fried who attended said he liked it precisely because of the security and because it was in effect being held in a little bubble.

And then politicans wonder why they fail to conect with the electorate when they go out of their way to avoid contact with them at their flagship events!

[LeftishBrit]

3. This reminds me of an experience that friends of mine had many years ago...

This would have been in the early or mid-80s. They made an appointment to visit their MP, Sir Michael Havers (Conservative, Wimbledon) to lobby him about government plans to increase fees for overseas students - definitely as it has turned out, the thin end of the wedge! They arrived to find, to their surprise, mounted police outside his surgery, and a stipulation that only three people could visit him at a time (about 10 had arranged to do so). It turned out that the local paper had misreported that they were planning to demonstrate outside the surgery, and that his staff got scared that his student visitors might be terrorists. This was due to the fact that he was an IRA target, and his home had been damaged by an IRA bomb not that long before.

A reminder that neither terrorism nor exaggerated paranoia about terrorism is a new phenomenon.

[fedsron2us]

4. I can recount a similar story from the 1980s

when a visit by the then Chancellor Nigel Lawson to a major Inland Revenue Accounts Office in Shipley was preceded by a visit by a large detachment of plod with sniffer dogs. The joke was that this Civil Service building was not open to the public and was already protected by a barricade of security including a barbed wire perimeter fence, a manned gatehouse and an internal reception desk. In addition even back then staff had to produce photo passes with electronic swipes to get in the building. Quite who they thought was going to get Lawson apart from his disgruntled employees was never made clear.