politics for people who care about more than politics

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At the Wardman Wire, we have teamed up with Charon QC to do a continuing series of political podcasts.

This is a conversation with Carl Gardner, a former government lawyer in Tony Blair’s administration and author of the Head of Legal blog, about the legality of the War in Iraq.

The legal analysis turns on United Nations Special Resolution 1441. Yesterday Sir Michael Wood, Legal Adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, was quite specific in his view that war would be unlawful without a second resolution. The Foreign secretary, Jack Straw, rejected Sir Michael’s advice. Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a deputy legal adviser at the FCO, was of the same view as Sir Michael Wood and, indeed resigned, so strong was her conviction that the war was unlawful.

Philippe Sands QC of Matrix Chambers and Professor of International Law at University College London has long been of the view that the war in Iraq was illegal and published a book to that effect some time ago. There are few supporters of the revivalist theory put forward by Lord Goldsmith at the Iraq Inquiry hearing today – but Carl Gardner is one lawyer who does. The podcast is a discussion between us rather than a traditional interview style podcast.

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We have teamed up with Charon QC to do a series of political podcasts for the Wardman Wire. This is an interview with Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty.

The podcast is part of a series done in association with the College of Law, called Inside Track, where you can read the full transcript .

Shami Chakrabarti gives her thoughts on why the Human Rights Act is so important and outlines Liberty’s key role in the successful campaign to defeat proposals to increase the period that terror suspects could be held without charge to 42 days. She also discusses the role of the judiciary in upholding democratic values and gives advice to young lawyers interested in working within the field of human rights and civil liberties.

[audio:http://politalks.co.uk/pod/shami-chakrabarti-director-of-liberty-the-human-rights-act.mp3]

1. Shami Chakrabarti Biography
2. Wardman Wire

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We have teamed up with Charon QC to do a series of political podcasts. This podcast is an interview with Lib Dem Blogger Mark Thompson.

Mark is a relatively new blogger, who has quickly come to a reasonable level of prominence in the blogosphere. In this interview Mark talks about himself, and how his blog has developed. We also talk about how blogs, and particularly Twitter, have made the national media more “permeable” – and what happens to nuances when blog stories are covered in the media.

We also think about choosing names for blogs, and why it’s a bad idea to try and compete in the search engines with the Head of the BBC. I also explain why I chose the name Matt Wardman when I started writing my own blog in early 2007.

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I have previously reported that a negotiated settlement had been reached and now implemented in the Employment Tribunal action between 32 ex-employees of the former-SPCK bookshop chain, and the Society of Saint Stephen the Great, now controlled by the Charity Commission through an Interim Manager.

I have done a podcast interview with Christine Peacock of the USDAW Legal Department, who has handled the employee cases (and the cases of paperwork) for the last couple of years. This interview aims to show some of the complexity of the case, and to give an inside view of the process. Here it is:

For people who are new to this story, the background to this interview is that I’ve been involved with others in a campaign to place a spotlight on the mismanagement and asset-stripping of the chain of 25 bookshops which used to go under the name of SPCK, by the brothers J Mark and Philip Brewer. This blog has a very detailed account.

A community of campaigning bloggers, and a wider international network based mainly on Facebook and other social media sites, has had a role in this over a period of more than 2 years – gathering information, helping to expose a fraudulent bankruptcy attempt, keeping the Charity Commission on the case, and maintaining a spotlight on the case.

But this still has a long way to run – notably because there are still many small businesses who were simply never paid, and because compensation payments still have to be made – though that can be expected now that the Brewer Brothers no longer control the charity. There are more complex aspects such as what happened to pension and national insurance contributions which the Brewer Brothers never passed to the correct recipients.

And then there is the matter of bring Mark and Philip Brewer to some sort of justice, and making sure that those who need to learn the lessons from this debacle do just that. It is one more signifcant step forward, however.

The two Facebook groups are We Support Dave Walker (who was “Cease and Desisted” after 18 months of objective reporting; his blog is here), and A group for all those people who mourn the tragic demise of SPCK Bookshops, which still have a combined membership of well over 500 activists and supporters.