Recently, at the peaceful protest by Occupy Democracy, in what we call Tarpaulin Square — formerly Parliament Square — I was arrested again while holding a banner stating “Arrest Nick Clegg for selling stolen peerages.”

My reasons for doing this go right back to the late ’90s. It is explicitly connected to the corporate capture of our democracy and the resultant destruction of ecological and social justice in our society.

I was then a member of the Liberal Democrat Federal Executive. I had become disturbed at how often rich corporate executives or lobbyists who had no visible party history were being given Lib Dem seats in the House of Lords by the party leader without any internal elections.

As the party’s policy was to create an elected second chamber in Westminster (a Senate), I thought it would make good ethical and political sense for the party to remove this corrupting power of patronage from the leader and to instead elect our nominees to the Lords.

With my colleagues in “new radicalism” after numerous efforts we managed to get a motion proposing this through the party’s federal conference in 1999, just as the Ashdown leadership was ending. The incoming new leader Charles Kennedy had promised in writing to respect the new democratic process.

An election for nominees to the Lords was duly held for the first time in the history of any of the major parties.

But Kennedy broke his promise. In his first list of eight nominees only two were elected — one of whom was the wife of his party treasurer. The rest were the usual list of rich donors and Establishment cronies that has turned the Lords into Britain’s biggest corporate feeding trough.

I formally complained to the party’s internal complaints panel at the theft of the peerages from those duly elected. Kennedy told the panel that as he had made the appointments in his role as an MP, it therefore had no jurisdiction.

I thus complained to the supposed Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards Sir Philip Mawer, but Kennedy told him that he had made the appointments in his role as leader of the party and so Mawer also ruled against my complaint.

With a lose-lose system like this for political accountability no wonder Britain is in the mess that it is in.

By the time Nick Clegg had become leader, my resignation had been demanded due to my actions to stop corrupt Lib Dem peers selling their services as corporate lobbyists and I had left the party.

However, despite the fact that it had continued to elect nominees to the Lords, Clegg has continued Kennedy’s tradition of stealing the peerages from those duly elected and giving them to rich donors, cronies and his personal aides.

In one list of 11 Clegg-nominated peers last year only one had been duly elected by the party.

In a November 2014 interview, senior Lib Dem peer, Channel Islands Corporate Tax Advice company director and long-time party treasurer Lord Razzall finally admitted: “In politics a lot of people particularly give big money because they want something.

“They either want to influence the party’s policies, or they want access to the leader, or in a lot of cases they want some sort of honour, which of course is a criminal offence.

“Unless you restrict the amount of money that can come into the political process, you will always have quasi-corruption,” he added.

As a result of this admission of corruption, on December 3 I wrote to Lord Paul Bew, head of the Commission on Standards in Public Life, demanding an inquiry into all the peerages awarded over the last 15 years by all the political parties.

He replied last Thursday, stating that he would give a full reply in the new year.

Despite the enormity of the crimes alleged to have been committed by the Lib Dem leadership, Britain’s billionaire-owned right-wing press have given zero coverage to the scandal to date.

I therefore resolved to create a banner calling for Clegg’s arrest and take it to the third peaceful monthly Occupy Democracy last weekend.

This followed yet more Lib Dem betrayals of their former ecological supporters as they join the Tories in forcing through the infamous Infrastructure Bill giving fracking corporations the right to drill under all our homes with no planning permission and to leave whatever toxic or radioactive materials that they like under our precious water-tables.

No wonder green-minded Lib Dems are fleeing to the Greens in droves.

On Saturday at the Occupy Democracy protest in “Tarpaulin Square,” while giving a talk to a Livestream Video Feed interviewer — shortly after the pro-democracy protesters opened a barrier and entered the square — I was arrested for having earlier helped protect a protester, who had entered the square, from being grabbed by one of Boris Johnson’s private security corporation guards.

I have now been arrested spuriously at all three monthly peaceful Occupy Democracy protests in the square as Boris Johnson throws enormous resources at denying our free speech.

The first time I was arrested for the high crime of being in possession of a folded plastic sheet while holding a sign stating “Free speech RIP,” and the second time for trying to stand in front of the barricaded off Nelson Mandela statue with a sign saying “Free Nelson Mandela.”

The fact that the House of Lords is corruptly packed with corporate mining, fossil fuel, big banks and right-wing media directors is one of the most shocking aspects of the corporate destruction of Britain’s supposed democracy.

I await Lord Paul’s letter — and hopefully also the dropping by the Metropolitan Police of the spurious charges against me in the New Year — with interest.

Donnachadh McCarthy FRSA is the author of The Prostitute State — How Britain’s Democracy Has Been Bought and is helping organise Occupy Rupert Murdoch Week from March 23-29. He is currently a member of no political party. www.theprostitutestate.co.uk Facebook: Occupy Rupert Murdoch Week www.occupydemocracy.org.uk