Shami Chakrabarti’s ‘Cultural Platform’ Lecture: An Eyewitness Account
On 27 February Shami Chakrabati,
the Director of Liberty (the National Council of Civil Liberties), gave an appropriately inspiring talk at Oxford Brookes University (where she is also the new Chancellor). Like many in the audience, I was a somewhat starstruck
fan of the charismatic person once described in the Sun as ‘the most dangerous woman in Britain’.
She spoke passionately about the relationship between our fundamental rights and freedoms and the arts, which both protect and celebrate ‘everything that makes us human’. She argued that the arts are capable of ‘transmitting messages’ and enabling us to ‘walk around in someone else’s shoes’ like nothing else. She herself was inspired to become a lawyer not by legal lectures or political speeches, but by a favourite book: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
A discussion of the natural affinity between the artistic community and the work of Liberty (celebrating its 75th anniversary this year) led to a spirited advocacy of the Human Rights Act, which among other things gave an articulated constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression for the first time in the UK. A lively question session could have continued indefinitely…
Written by David Attwooll
Rob Kessler's pollen samples 
