The biggest threat to our rights and liberties at the moment is the transfer of power from the individual to the centre (the state). This is done in largely one way, which is the state’s ability to monitor the individual’s movements, communications and every important transaction in his or her life without allowing the individual access to that data. The secondary matter here is that our parliament has failed its duty to guard the liberties and privacy of people in this nation. The UCLSHRP Report: The Abolition of Freedom Act 2009 is instructive on these failings. The crisis of rights and liberty has come about because Parliament has been so negligent and has failed in its constitutional duty to protect the rights of the individual.

The aim of the Convention on Modern Liberty is to spark a movement: to inspire people to think that we are in a very diffi cult situation and only have two or three years to save our democracy and our free society – it is to say that we need the people to organise and create a climate of political opinion and a political movement which changes policy at Westminster.

The crucial thing for students to do is actually to promote debate and actually have a discussion in these much more serious times that we live in, on how we will run our lives and our government. It is crucial for people to have these big moral questions sorted out in their heads. It’s not enough to say “I’m a language student and I will work abroad.” Everybody should get involved in what is happening in their society – it is a very important part of our society for people to take a view. Get involved.