We are asking general election candidates to sign up to our three flagship campaigns against the hyperregulation of everyday life.
We campaign on these issues because we believe that state intervention into informal and civic relationships is the most worrying development of our times. We also believe that these are flashpoint freedom issues for the twenty-first century, and the starting point for a new civic alliance.
Email your candidates and ask them to support this manifesto. Do tell us if they say yes.
LATEST: Suzanne Moore, independent candidate for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, has signed up to our Civic Freedom List. If you live in this area and support freedom, she is your candidate! Other candidates who have signed up to our Civic Freedom list include: Alan Bullion, Lib Dems, Sevenoaks; Jill Weston, Welwyn Hatfield Green Party; Loic Rich, Mebyon Kernow (The Party for Cornwall), Truro and Falmouth constituency; Shane Collins, Green Party candidate for Dulwich and West Norwood; Polly Lane, Green Party Candidate for Hackney South and Shoreditch.
1. ABOLISH THE VETTING DATABASE
This is arguably the key civil liberties issue in this election. The vetting database will be enacted at the end of July: it would be one of the first major responsibilities for a new government.
With the vetting database, 10 million adults will be registered on a database run by the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), and subject to constant criminal records vetting. After November 2010, it will be a crime for someone to volunteer with children once a week without having ISA clearance.
This database represents an unprecedented degree of state interference into the most informal parts of civic life: the football run, the school trip, the volunteer rota at the local nursery. Everyday contact with children becomes a high-security, state-licensed activity. This will strangle the spontaneous ways in which adults help and look after children in their neighbourhoods.
We call for the ISA and the vetting database to be scrapped. Overturning this database would greatly free up the millions of adults and voluntary organisations who work with children. It would also question the assumption that every adult is an abuser until proven otherwise - and that it is the business of the state to micromanage relationships between adults and children.
2. ABOLISH ALCOHOL CONFISCATION ZONES
There are now 780 alcohol confiscation zones across the UK, where police and other officials have powers to confiscate alcohol from members of the public – powers that they can employ at any time, for any reason. These laws mean a perfectly legal activity is now subject to arbitrary policing, with officials able to dictate where we are allowed to do what in public space.
Thousands of people have their alcohol confiscated every year, and these laws have transformed the look and feel of many town centres. Having a summer picnic or drink in a park with friends has become impossible in some parts of the UK.
Overturning these powers would mean a freer public space this summer. It would also send a dramatic message that we should not have to ask permission before we act in public space - and that the public, not officials, should set the rules for what is acceptable behaviour.
Free international exchange...
3. ABOLISH THE POINTS-BASED VISA SYSTEM
The points-based visa system subjects international visitors to the UK to an expensive and arduous set of procedures, including fingerprinting and submission of bank statements. Informal international collaborations – from a pastor coming to give a sermon, an artist opening an exhibition, or an academic giving a temporary lecture – are treated as if they were major threats to national security.
These visa rules have caused chaos for UK civic institutions, including universities, churches, art galleries and English language colleges. Worse, the new rules effectively turn institutions into arms of the UK Border Agency (UKBA): organisations can be inspected by the UKBA at any time, and agree to monitor their visitors for signs of ‘suspicious behaviour’.
Opposing this system takes on our suspicious box-ticking bureaucracy, and supports spontaneous collaborations between citizens of all nations. It is not for the Home Office to vet our visitors, or to allot them points for their suitability. A single collaborative project between citizens is worth more than all the UKBA points in the world.
