Can you believe how much the State is closing in on each of us? Anthony Barnett with Ten reasons to feel uneasy.

I went to launch this evening of Keith Ewing's important new book Bonfire of the Liberties and the Institute of Employment Rights new booklet Ruined Lives on blacklisting in the UK construction industry, also written by Ewing. I was expecting the usual drinks party. But no, it was a serious meeting of trade unionists at the NUJ headquarters. We heard from Henry Porter, who I find it hard to disagree with. He talked about the expansion of what he called "State patrolled space" and how each one of us is being made to feel that both we and everyone else are persons who may "harbour bad intentions". (Or, as John Berger wrote in Meanwhile, we find ourselves living as prisoners.)

Then the photo journalist Marc Vallée spoke about how he discovered the police were storing a private photo-database of everyone then can get pictures of at demostrations, while initimidating us from taking pictures in public.

Then Pennie Quinton spoke about how the police used section 44 of the anti-terrorism act to stop her photographing a demonstration outside a London arms fair, even though she was an accredited photographer, and how the House of Lords supported the police and how Liberty helped her and her colleague go to the European Court to get a ruling that the police action was illegal.

Then we heard from Dave Smith of the Blacklist Support Group about how he was blacklisted in the construction industry as a 'troublemaker'. He waved his 30-plus page file. Afterwards he told me that the Home Office has helped to fund a National Dismissal Register which will become another database for employers. I couldn't believe it.

via opendemocracy.net

Click on link to read Anthony Barnett's article

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