Civil Liberties Forum with Shami Chakrabarti, Brian Paddick et. al

Export to Calendar

Export to Calendar

You can either download this event as an iCalendar file, which is supported by most calendar applications (Windows Calender, Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal, Facebook etc), or export directly to your Google Calendar:

The Cambridge Union presents a forum on policing and democracy. Panellists are Shami Chakrabarti, Brian Paddick, Sir Ken MacDonald, David Howarth MP and Robert Reiner

Shami Chakrabarti:

Shami Chakrabarti has been Director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties) since September 2003. Since then, she has become one of Britain's most iconic political figures, participating in numerous high profile debates regarding civil liberties in Britain. A regular contributor to Radio 4, Question Time and the national press, she has played an instrumental role in the opposition to several government initiatives, perhaps most noticeably the recent push for an extension of pre-charge detention.

Shami first joined Liberty as In-House Counsel on 10 September 2001. She became heavily involved in its engagement with the "War on Terror" and with the defence and promotion of human rights values in Parliament, the Courts and wider society.

Brian Paddick:

Brian was the Liberal Democrat candidate for London mayor in 2008, finishing third behind Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone. A star of 'I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!', Brian originally rose to prominence as the controversial and outspoken Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, at the time their most senior openly gay officer. He hit the headlines in 2001 due to his key role in a pilot scheme which instructed officers to neither arrest nor charge those found in possession of cannabis.

Paddick was the senior Metropolitan Police Spokesmen for many key events, including the July 2005 London bombings, and he took over management of Territorial Policing across all 32 London boroughs in April 2005. Following the controversy over the shooting of Charles De Menezes Brian moved away from the police.

Sir Ken MacDonald:

Sir Ken QC was Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales from 2003 - 2008. In the late nineties he co-founded Matrix Chambers with Cherie Blair, a set of barrister chambers which specialises in human rights cases. His appointment as DPP was controversial due to this association with the prime ministers wife, as was his tendency to enter into the arena of political debate. However, he had wide support throughout the legal profession, and at the end of his term was generally considered to have maintained an appropriate balance between adapting British Law to modern threats, and warning against government excess. In his last months in office he warned against the threat posed by new surveillance legislation.

David Howarth MP:

Shadow Secretary of State of Justice, David has been the Cambridge MP since 2005 following a long career on the city council. Formerly the Liberal Democrat Shadow Solicitor General for two years, Howarth took an active role in the G20 demonstrations last April after what he perceived as heavy-handed policing at the Kingsnorth Climate Camp. A vocal figure in the ensuing controversy over police tactics, Howarth originally came to public attention over his successful lobbying for significant changes to the 'Abolition of Parliament Act', which threatened at one stage to give government ministers effectively unlimited powers.

A fellow of Clare College and a lecturer in economics and law for 17 years, Howarth specialized in tort and constitutional law and is also an active supporter of No2ID, Friends of the Earth and Amnesty International.

Robert Reiner

Robert Reiner is the Professor of Criminology at the LSE. He has published over 100 papers on criminological topics in journals and books.

He was President of the British Society of Criminology from 1993-6; Director of the LSE Mannheim Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice 1995-8; and Convenor of the Law Department 2001-4. He has also written several books, including The Politics of Policing and Law and Order: An Honest Citizen's Guide to Crime and Control, as well as co-writing the Oxford Handbook of Criminology. He is also a semi regular contributor to debates concerning policing in the national press.

Venue: 'Chamber'

Date: Mon 9th November, 2009 at 7:30pm

<<Previous Long Vacation, 2010 Next>>