Ms Chakrabati was a guest speaker at the Tory conference
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Civil liberties campaigner Shami Chakrabati has called for an end to
the "pit bull posturing of home secretaries who would be king".
In what appeared to be an attack on John Reid, she also
criticised people willing to sacrifice civil liberties "on the high
altar of ambition".
The Liberty director was speaking at the Conservative Party conference.
Mr Reid's tough-talking speech at last week's Labour conference was widely interpreted as a party leadership bid.
Ms Chakrabati, one of a series of guest speakers
at the Tory conference in Bournemouth, said "fundamental rights and
freedoms" were not the preserve of any one party but belonged to all
the people.
Cautioning against abandoning hard fought-for civil
liberties in the so-called war on terror, she said: "Free speech and
fair trials were born in this country and rightly shared with the
continent and the commonwealth and the wider world."
Mr Reid told the Labour conference last week that people
needed to stand up to extremist bullies, pledging "we will never be
brow-beaten by bullies".
[source]
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