Op-Ed: Authors, politicians & activists gather to discuss modern liberty

Yesterday's convention on Modern Liberty included keynote speeches from Shami Chakrabarti director of Liberty, Philip Pullman well known author and David Davis MP.

The convention on Modern Liberty which took place in London, Glasgow, Belfast and 5 other cities around the UK, has received disturbingly little coverage in the mainstream media, despite the involvement of big names such as the award winning author Philip Pullman, crusading Conservative MP David Davis and the director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti. Oddly the speech that has hit the headlines following yesterday's convention on Modern Liberty was that by Philip Pullman, as can be seen in the Times. This is odd purely because an article written by Mr Pullman for the Times the previous day, has disappeared from both the Times website and the google cache. The piece, entitled Malevolent voices that despise our freedoms is now travelling the Internet, popping up on blogs all over the place, with people speculating as to why the original has disappeared. Could it be a publicity stunt by the convention? Has someone pressured Mr Pullman into retracting? Is it misattribution and he didn't write it in the first place - reminiscent of the Wear sunscreen fiasco where Mary Schmich's article was misattributed to Kurt Vonnegut. If this article reaches that level of publicity it can only be a good thing for a society that is sleepwalking into a police state.