Hello from Haltemprice and Howden, well what a couple of days it has been! The campaigning has been relentless and amazing. We have today had Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling and Jeremy Hunt up from London for a full day of campaigning. CF have been hitting the ground running again delivering thousands of leaflets and making sure that the public are totally aware of the campaign and the issues at stake. We have had brilliant feedback for David, with people who have previously voted LibDem and Labour now coming out for David in his campaign against the Governments neglect of our civil liberties.

On our travels we have also seen the “Socialist Equality Party”, yet another splinter Socialist group who tried to convert a number of us to their strange ways and interesting views. After this interesting event a good pub lunch was had and then we were on our way again in the hot summer’s day which has helped us so much today, another two boxes done and it was time for a coke and sit down.

Messyrs Duncan-Smith, Grayling and Hunt headed back to London-town this evening; tanned and slightly worn out after a full day of it, but I think it would be fair to say fairly pleased with a hard days work. It was great to see them and it is going to be an exciting week as we see more front line Tory MP’s come to support D.D. in this campaign.

Well, I say a new week, it has sort of blended into last week. I have done some more leafletting, put up some more posters and sent off my report to National CF. It is an interesting campaign as we have Conservatives saying they won’t vote for David, but staunch Lib Dems who have said they definately would. The next days will, I suspect, get even more interesting.

Well I have been here for 36 hours now. I have experienced a number of emotions, some of which are not publishable. I was at the launch this morning (now yesterday morning but for all intents and purposes) which saw gubbins here along with some CFers from Hull dressed up in the most ridiculous T-shirts and made to do a “hip hip horray” thing about 4 time for the photographers. Needless to say I felt like a fool, but nevermind, as this afternoon I have cut and helped paste over 40 poster boards and learned some intestering thigns about where I am staying. I would at this point like to thank Cllr. Paul Robinson and his wife Nicky and Daughter Katy for putting up with me for a second night. Without their kind hospitality I would either be on a floor in an office somewhere or else just not in the constituency at all.

Anyway after a long day it’s bed for me. Night all. 

I have just tried to post a response on D.D.’s campaign website, for some reason it won’t let me, so I’ll post it here.

I agree with Mr Davis on a number of points. Firstly, the government is trying to Salami Slice our liberties away. I know they deny it but what else is introducing four weeks detention without charge, attempted introduction of Identity cards and an ever increasing fascination with CCTV culture. It is a disturbing development which should really have the full attention of the British people. That is why I wholeheartedly support Mr Davis’ bid to take this to a national debate through forcing a by-election.

Secondly, if the authorities already have enough to charge, but perhaps not enough to convict on then it is surely only right to allow post-charge questioning, I see no issue with this just as I see no issue with using intercept evidence. These two things are tools which can be used to convict, this is not an issue as if the evidence is not there then the defendant will have the chance to defeat the proscecution,  this is a non-starter for suspects being held without charge, chiefly because the suspect cannot defend him/herself against unknown charges.

I do however not agree with Mr Davis on the point of 28 days. For me, 28 days is as repulsive as 42 and the arguements against it are the same. Four weeks behind bars, without knowing the nature of the charges against you is far too long. I note that in the United States Authorities can detain persons for up to 24 hours and then have to appeal to the courts for a 24 hour extention if needs be. Some may say that this increases the risk of attack from “terrorists” or whatever it is you would call them, I disagree, you would see an increase in attacks if you did not fund the security services properly, the Americans however do and consequently have some of the best technologies and expertise in the world for gathering evidence. Funding therefore is a much better option than cutting costs and putting the Liberty of human beings at risk, is this really too much to expect?

Detention without charge, for any extended period will alienate those who suffer at its hands. Surely Irish internment and Guantanimo Bay have shown how dangerous this act can be, it not only offends the detainee but also those around him/her and could easily alienate yet more young people against the British State just when we dont need to.

I will be going up to Haltemprice on Wednesday to help out on the campaign until Polling day, so blogging will be sporadic, but hopefully fairly interesting.

Today David Davis launched his website www.daviddavisforfreedom.com to help highlight the issues he will be campaigning on and the issues which he stands firm to. Many Members of Parliament would not have dared take the chance of stepping down from their seat to force a by-election, nevermind quit a senior post in the next Conservative Government. He has been hailed from all sides of the house and from all over Great Britain, Gordon Brown must contest this by-election, if not to win it, to prove he has the courage to defend his policies. If he believes so fervently in this legislation then the Prime Minister should field a candidate. If he cannot sum the political backbone to field a candidate he will leave Rupert Murdoch to do so. What sort of message would this send out to the general public? Nobody has asked the Prime Minister to step down as Member of Parliament on a point of principle and nobody really expects Labour to take the seat off David Davis, this is not the issue, he must defend his policy because they propose to force it through Parliament and for this same Government not to stand for the self same legislation, we must ask the question, what will this Government stand for?

David Davis has today written an article on ConservativeHome, seeking to explain his reasons behind his resignation from his job as Shadow Home Secretary and as Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden, in order to force a by-election. I have simply cut and pasted the article into this post:

The Austrian Chancellor Metternich was once told of the death of a rival. “I wonder what did he mean by that?” was his response.

If Metternich were alive today he might have enjoyed a second career as a Westminster commentator. He would certainly have been able to give full rein to his thirst for the conspiracy theory, rumour, gossip and wild speculation. No story need be constrained by the dreary recitation of the facts. Instead, it can be spiced up spectacularly by all manner of guesses, intrigues and sinister motives. Welcome to the Westminster Village circa 2008.

Now I haven’t died. I have simply resigned from the Shadow Cabinet and as an MP to fight a by-election on what I regard as the most important issue facing the country: as I put it in my resignation statement, the “slow strangulation” by this Labour Government of British fundamental freedoms and liberties, stretching back 800 years.

My conduct may seem eccentric in the eyes of some - but my motive is plain and simple. I have deliberately embarked upon an unorthodox course of action to dramatise the damage being done to the country I love, the mother of democracies, by the Government’s cavalier disregard for the liberties we have fought for down the centuries.

Plans to lock up terrorist suspects for up to 42 days without charge are but the latest in a long line of repressive and intrusive measures visited on this country by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. To take one example, there are now 266 state powers allowing officials to force their way into your home. Six hundred public bodies have the authority to bug phones and emails and intercept the post. And God help you if you put out the wrong kind of rubbish or attempt to get you child into one of the few schools not ruined by a decade of Labour government. Gordon’s neighbourhood spies are watching.

My hostility to the Government’s bloated and unworkable £19 billion ID card scheme and my dismay at its creation of the largest DNA database on earth stuffed with the details of a million innocent people are well known.

But this is not how some of Metternich’s latter-day disciples in the parliamentary lobby have generally chosen to report my words and deeds. Some have even called it a “moment of madness”. Well I think it is madness that, when someone takes a principled stance on a matter of vital national interest, it sparks such a bewildered response from certain quarters of the Westminster village. In truth, I thought carefully about my decision to force a by-election on a national issue.

Fortunately, the Westminster Village does not have a monopoly on political comment and reporting. In marked contrast to some rumour-mongering in the media, the blogosphere rapidly is becoming the real forum of popular debate and it offered a very different take. Frankly, I was surprised and humbled to find that this this site’s survey of Conservatives found that 65 per cent were inspired by my decision.

Meanwhile, I was conducting my own admittedly unscientific survey - my postbag, email traffic and telephone calls. I was astonished and overwhelmed by the public’s response. I have had literally thousands of messages of support.

These individual messages of support appear to be reflected in wider opinion. An ICM poll for the Mail on Sunday in my constituency found that 69 per cent of people believed I was acting out of principle and 57 per cent thought that I was right to resign over 42 days and put my anxieties about Brown’s database state and surveillance society to the test of the ballot box. Far from damaging the Tory cause, our massive poll lead over Labour has jumped again – by two points.

So what happens next and how can readers of ConservativeHome support my campaign? By the end of this week, I will have resigned from Parliament and by early next week I will have launched my by-election campaign in Haltemprice and Howden on the single and vital issue of this government’s assault on British freedom.

Tomorrow, I launch my website www.daviddavisforfreedom.com to act as a sounding board for the debate I am determined to generate about the threat to our liberties. You can follow the debate there and put your views forward by emailing me at dd@daviddavisforfreedom.com).

Gordon Brown’s cowardly refusal to field a candidate against me is all too predictable. This after all, is a man who schemed for a decade to become the unelected leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister, who ducked a general election last autumn, who still refuses a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, and who long ago nicknamed McCavity for his tendency to slip away into the shadows at the first hint of trouble.

But we don’t need Gordon Brown for a campaign or for a debate across the country about our slide towards an authoritarianism that is both petty and alarming at the same time. Outside speakers, both for and against my views, will be given a platform to lead that debate. Colonel Tim Collins, the hero of the Iraq war, has promised to campaign with me and talk about the right way to combat terror. From the world of music, Nigel Kennedy has kindly offered to come up to show his support. And this is just the start.

I want a serious debate on these issues. But I also want the campaign to be fun - to engage and reach people who have grown weary of conventional politics. I want you to come to Haltemprice and Howden and join my campaign - if only for a day or two - irrespective of party allegiances. David Cameron, members of the Shadow Cabinet and numerous other Tory MPs will be up in East Yorkshire on the campaign trail. But, as Bob Marshall-Andrews, Ian Gibson and Nick Clegg have also reminded us, MPs across the political spectrum are appalled by the slow erosion of those freedoms our forebears fought to defend over centuries.

Our British freedoms are precious - far more precious than the career of any single politician.

Find the original post with comments here at ConservativeHome.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States of America.

I opened today’s Yorkshire Post to find my letter has been published. I wrote to the paper to defend the actions of David Davis. I am it seems one of few who wrote a letter supporting him, the majority castigate his intentions and his beliefs. I never thought Briton’s would be so quick to give up their fundamental rights of Liberty.

Perhaps a reminder from our cousins across the pond might help.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

In passing the repressive legislation which this Government has in past days and does continually seek to achieve, our nation is being led to a situation where our population is becoming increasingly injured, persecuted and oppressed. This can sustain for only so long, there will come a time where the illegal actions of this Government will come to bear and we will relive the dark days of Civil War. If you believe for a moment I am exaggerating, think to the causes of the greatest conflicts in our history; The English Civil Wars, The American War of Independence, the wars against France under Revolutionary Government and the subsequent wars against Napoleon Bonaparte. The Second World War, the Cold War. All wars against oppression and tyranny.

We should have learnt a lot from the disaster that was Internment in Ireland and we should not be repeating our mistakes. We are and it appears that few are willing to stand up for Liberty. David Davis is and his doing so transcends politics, it is an issue of man’s humanity to man. Why are the British people so willing to throw off the Liberty’s afforded them through war, torture and rebellion just to feel safe. Democracy is not safe, that is the price we pay to Govern ourselves. Would we prefer a Tyrant to provide total safety to a proportion of us, or would we prefer a limited security for all by electing our representatives and affording our citizens the rights which are set out in a 800 year old document?

Tonight I have had to clear up vomit, some absolute c*nt threw up all over the carpet, I have dealt with beggars trying to get money off customers and I have helped train a lovely girl from Eastern Europe how to run a bar. Fun enough for one night!

Having stayed behind and had a good number of pints I missed the last train and ended up sharing a taxi back with a friend who often drinks at our bar. On the journey back we agreed on a number of things, despite him being a pinko, David Davis is an honourable and principled man who believes what he says. Drugs should be decimalised, the current legislation is ridiculous, and Yorkshire is one of the best, most friendly and wonderful places in the world.

Oh yes, and he would vote for a Conservative party under my leadership. Now there’s something to brighten the day, a socialist voting for me!

It’s looking ever increasingly like the Irish have come through for all of us who support Democracy and independence in throwing the Lisbon treaty out.

What will Gordon do now. Doubtless he will try to push ahead with forcing it upon the British people. I will be interested to see how the EU try to carry on with the project and how they intend to override the Irish “No” vote. Perhaps they will simply send them back to vote again and again until they have the answer the EU wants. Don’t discount this possibility, they did it with the treaty of Nice.