Monday, February 25, 2013
Eastleigh Memories – Time To Go There and Make New Ones!
Liberal Democrats! Have you been to Eastleigh yet? There’s still time, for the most hotly-contested by-election of the decade. Remember their last by-election? The incumbents (Conservative) was pushed into third place, while the main challengers (Lib Dems) won – now Lib Dem and Tory starting points are reversed, will they meet those same expectations? Labour leapt up from third place to second with 28%, showing Tony Blair was headed to government – where is Ed Miliband headed from his third place? I spent weeks there when I was younger and fitter, and remember a few things that might encourage you…
This time round, the Liberal Democrats have an excellent local councillor as candidate, from an excellent Lib Dem local council. Mike Thornton is the candidate with the best local record – as well as fighting on national issues, field-testing the new Lib Dem slogan “Stronger Economy, Fairer Society” and committed to being the 401st MP to support equal marriage. Whereas the bigots are spoilt for choice, with not just mouth-foaming minor candidates but the Tory (who disagrees on every single issue with her Prime Minister, except that they both know both their political futures depend on her winning) and, obviously, the bigot UKIP candidate threatening her are both making homophobic and xenophobic bigotry their top campaign priorities.
It’s a remarkable by-election, in that the Lib Dems have a strong local candidate, strong local issues, strong national issues (we believe in fairer taxes – the Tories don’t), and a bloody awful week of national publicity. The Tories and Labour, on the other hand, are simultaneously competing for the title of ‘Worst mainstream party candidate in a by-election since 1996’ (Jeanette Davy, South-East Staffs. She was a Lib Dem, so it’s about time one of the others won the wooden ballot paper). The Tory is an appalling snob who brays that no local school can possibly be good enough for her child, then demonstrates that no local voter is good enough for her to talk to by refusing to bother showing up for the BBC hustings. The Labour candidate is a minor comedian who says Labour supporters should “Go for it” and vote tactically for Lib Dems in seats like this – except, er, if he’s standing – and embodies the Labour Party’s Two-Minute (Thirty-Year) Hate by wishing Margaret Thatcher had been killed by terrorists.
At least George Galloway isn’t standing, having already won one by-election this Parliament and so not due to flip over to his 56th different constituency until 2015. That vile, bullying racist apologist for rapists and dictators is living proof that you can fool a lot of the people some of the time… But, after they get to know him, never more than once. UKIP with a beard and a red carpetbag.
So if you can get to Eastleigh and help (or make phone calls from your area), or donate if you can’t do either, do it today. I’m twice the age and weight I was in 1994, and have been particularly ill in the last week – but if I’m up to going out the door tomorrow or Wednesday, I aim to make it. You can read Lib Dem Voice’s or Mark Pack’s continuing reports from the campaign, and I personally recommend Liberal Youth’s “Today I Made A Difference” EastLY campaign to inspire you!
The 1992-97 Parliament was the period when I was young and healthy enough to spend more time helping out at Parliamentary by-elections than in the rest of my life put together – sixteen out of the eighteen that were held, in the days before parties took to tapping their older MPs to retire out of fear of lost seats. It was also the time when the largest number of policy motions I’d written got through Conference, for those foolish Lib Dems who believe campaigners and policy wonks can never mix (and are one Focus short of a delivery route). For some of the crucial ones, I spent weeks sleeping on people’s floors, or freezing to death hitch-hiking, or not being highly regarded by university tutors whose courses I was unaccountably absent from. Eastleigh was one of the friendliest, happiest, and didn’t have much rain. For all those reasons, I recommend going there yourself. And there was one more big attraction…
The bakery in town is my most indelible memory, which is odd, because though the smell of a bakery is one of the most wonderful in the world, I like pies and cream cakes, but have never cared for doughnuts. And yet, one morning I strode in and uttered the unusual but satisfying line, “Could I have two hundred doughnuts, please?” They offered ridiculous discounts for multiple buys, so that, say, one doughnut might be 85p, but you’d get three for £2, or ten for £5, with escalating discounts the more you bought. These were for the cheery campaign HQ and all the hundreds of volunteers rather than personal consumption, but the huge stack of boxes had the advantage of obscuring the rosette that might have put off an opinion pollster on the street. “Oh no,” I remember saying, “I wouldn’t like that Tony Blair as Labour Leader. Margaret Beckett’s the one you want, she’ll be very popular, and John Prescott, he’s a sensible man.” Since then, I’ve always taken opinion polls with just a pinch of icing sugar. Can any 2013 volunteers enlighten me as to if that baker is still there?
Eastleigh was also an excellent town for outspoken residents – much more exciting for a canvasser than shrinking violets. Last week, Boris Johnson failed to find a single Tory voter when knocking up the most Tory street in the constituency. I did rather better with Lib Dems last time I was there, but here are three canvassing experiences that stayed with me:
And finally, one word of memorial to Chris Huhne. He’s probably not a good man, and may not be a nice one. But I’m grateful to him for two things that he was good at. He was a bloody good minister – as I’ve written before, even his Tory enemies found him (far too) effective, and we should all be grateful for the hard work he did for the country and the planet as Secretary of State For Energy and Climate Change. And before then, within the Liberal Democrats, he did more than any other individual to make raising allowances and taking the lowest-paid out of tax altogether into what became our biggest priority in the last election, our biggest priority in government, and now our biggest priority in the by-election. It was briefly a Lib Dem policy in the 1990s, swiftly dropped because it cost too much. For much of the early 2000s, I was literally the lone voice on the Federal Committee calling for it – as the bit in italics in this piece forlornly demonstrates. It took a far more powerful policy wonk than me to get it on the Lib Dem agenda, and as the bits not in italics demonstrates, that was Chris. Lib Dems with gritted teeth and freezing delivery rounds will feel they have little to thank Chris for this by-election. Millions of the lowest-paid who now pay no income tax won’t know it, but they have quite a bit to thank Chris for, actually.
The 2013 Choices
This time round, the Liberal Democrats have an excellent local councillor as candidate, from an excellent Lib Dem local council. Mike Thornton is the candidate with the best local record – as well as fighting on national issues, field-testing the new Lib Dem slogan “Stronger Economy, Fairer Society” and committed to being the 401st MP to support equal marriage. Whereas the bigots are spoilt for choice, with not just mouth-foaming minor candidates but the Tory (who disagrees on every single issue with her Prime Minister, except that they both know both their political futures depend on her winning) and, obviously, the bigot UKIP candidate threatening her are both making homophobic and xenophobic bigotry their top campaign priorities.
It’s a remarkable by-election, in that the Lib Dems have a strong local candidate, strong local issues, strong national issues (we believe in fairer taxes – the Tories don’t), and a bloody awful week of national publicity. The Tories and Labour, on the other hand, are simultaneously competing for the title of ‘Worst mainstream party candidate in a by-election since 1996’ (Jeanette Davy, South-East Staffs. She was a Lib Dem, so it’s about time one of the others won the wooden ballot paper). The Tory is an appalling snob who brays that no local school can possibly be good enough for her child, then demonstrates that no local voter is good enough for her to talk to by refusing to bother showing up for the BBC hustings. The Labour candidate is a minor comedian who says Labour supporters should “Go for it” and vote tactically for Lib Dems in seats like this – except, er, if he’s standing – and embodies the Labour Party’s Two-Minute (Thirty-Year) Hate by wishing Margaret Thatcher had been killed by terrorists.
At least George Galloway isn’t standing, having already won one by-election this Parliament and so not due to flip over to his 56th different constituency until 2015. That vile, bullying racist apologist for rapists and dictators is living proof that you can fool a lot of the people some of the time… But, after they get to know him, never more than once. UKIP with a beard and a red carpetbag.
So if you can get to Eastleigh and help (or make phone calls from your area), or donate if you can’t do either, do it today. I’m twice the age and weight I was in 1994, and have been particularly ill in the last week – but if I’m up to going out the door tomorrow or Wednesday, I aim to make it. You can read Lib Dem Voice’s or Mark Pack’s continuing reports from the campaign, and I personally recommend Liberal Youth’s “Today I Made A Difference” EastLY campaign to inspire you!
Eastleigh Memories of 1994
The 1992-97 Parliament was the period when I was young and healthy enough to spend more time helping out at Parliamentary by-elections than in the rest of my life put together – sixteen out of the eighteen that were held, in the days before parties took to tapping their older MPs to retire out of fear of lost seats. It was also the time when the largest number of policy motions I’d written got through Conference, for those foolish Lib Dems who believe campaigners and policy wonks can never mix (and are one Focus short of a delivery route). For some of the crucial ones, I spent weeks sleeping on people’s floors, or freezing to death hitch-hiking, or not being highly regarded by university tutors whose courses I was unaccountably absent from. Eastleigh was one of the friendliest, happiest, and didn’t have much rain. For all those reasons, I recommend going there yourself. And there was one more big attraction…
The bakery in town is my most indelible memory, which is odd, because though the smell of a bakery is one of the most wonderful in the world, I like pies and cream cakes, but have never cared for doughnuts. And yet, one morning I strode in and uttered the unusual but satisfying line, “Could I have two hundred doughnuts, please?” They offered ridiculous discounts for multiple buys, so that, say, one doughnut might be 85p, but you’d get three for £2, or ten for £5, with escalating discounts the more you bought. These were for the cheery campaign HQ and all the hundreds of volunteers rather than personal consumption, but the huge stack of boxes had the advantage of obscuring the rosette that might have put off an opinion pollster on the street. “Oh no,” I remember saying, “I wouldn’t like that Tony Blair as Labour Leader. Margaret Beckett’s the one you want, she’ll be very popular, and John Prescott, he’s a sensible man.” Since then, I’ve always taken opinion polls with just a pinch of icing sugar. Can any 2013 volunteers enlighten me as to if that baker is still there?
Eastleigh was also an excellent town for outspoken residents – much more exciting for a canvasser than shrinking violets. Last week, Boris Johnson failed to find a single Tory voter when knocking up the most Tory street in the constituency. I did rather better with Lib Dems last time I was there, but here are three canvassing experiences that stayed with me:
- The man who growled at the Lib Dems and refused to let me talk to his wife when I politely enquired, because she voted the way she was told. Canvassers, never treat a house as monolithic (even if there’s an opposition poster there – a Labour poster-bearer at a different by-election told me quietly that he was a member and had to, but was voting tactically). The second he slammed the door, the upper window sprang open, and she quickly confided: “I always tell him that for a quiet life. But I always vote for you lot.”
- The Labour voter on the next doorstep along from me who thought government should tell the workers what was good for them and hand out what they decreed when Tony Blair got in, because Labour and the unions knew best. And the Lib Dem canvasser I was tag-teaming with stoutly telling him that, no, workers should be involved in management rather than everything being from the top down, and the Labour man’s incredulous cry of “You can’t let workers make their own decisions!”
- The man one sunny day in a suburban crescent who got more and more heated about immigration while the other two canvassers did the whole rest of the street and all the neighbours stayed out one by one to listen. Never have I delivered so many calm “That isn’t true, sirs” or “I must disagree with you, sirs” at such increasing volume as the voter went from slightly racist to shouting conspiracy theories. After my final “I don’t believe we’re going to agree, sir, so I shall say good day,” he opened his gate and lumbered after me to the corner, screaming “Chidgey’s not an English name!!”
Chris Huhne
And finally, one word of memorial to Chris Huhne. He’s probably not a good man, and may not be a nice one. But I’m grateful to him for two things that he was good at. He was a bloody good minister – as I’ve written before, even his Tory enemies found him (far too) effective, and we should all be grateful for the hard work he did for the country and the planet as Secretary of State For Energy and Climate Change. And before then, within the Liberal Democrats, he did more than any other individual to make raising allowances and taking the lowest-paid out of tax altogether into what became our biggest priority in the last election, our biggest priority in government, and now our biggest priority in the by-election. It was briefly a Lib Dem policy in the 1990s, swiftly dropped because it cost too much. For much of the early 2000s, I was literally the lone voice on the Federal Committee calling for it – as the bit in italics in this piece forlornly demonstrates. It took a far more powerful policy wonk than me to get it on the Lib Dem agenda, and as the bits not in italics demonstrates, that was Chris. Lib Dems with gritted teeth and freezing delivery rounds will feel they have little to thank Chris for this by-election. Millions of the lowest-paid who now pay no income tax won’t know it, but they have quite a bit to thank Chris for, actually.
Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, By-elections, Conservatives, Gay, History, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Liberal Youth, Personal, Polls, Tax
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Atrocity In Norway
I don’t think I’ve ever written a piece expressing my feelings about a great tragedy. It seems almost intrusive, and what good can words do? But today I feel the need to say something.
I’ve just got back from a week away, in which I was all the usual things (wet, tired, ill) and was doing my best to avoid news broadcasts – I was born in Stepping Hill Hospital and spent the first half of my life living five minutes’ walk away, and the wall-to-wall coverage of it as a murder scene made me queasy. Then this morning I woke up to the news of the massacre in Norway, and had to struggle not to be physically sick while we were packing.
I’ve never been to Norway, but I went to more political youth events – Liberal Democrat Youth and Students and others – in my teens and twenties than I can count, or even remember. To say there was a low security presence would be an understatement. Hearing about the murder of over eighty young political activists this morning, I couldn’t help but think of so many of my friends being gunned down. I can’t remember any atrocity that’s felt so close to home – even when South Quay was bombed, just up the road from our flat. It’s beyond words.
So my heart goes out to all members of the Norwegian Labour Party’s youth wing, and all those who know them. Political assassination is a despicable act – but attacking not the people in power but young people just starting to get involved, getting off their arses to change the world, that’s unimaginable horror.
The Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s promise, though, that the country won’t be bombed into silence or have its faith in democracy, freedom and openness destroyed made me tear up this morning. And I have to say he struck a much better note than some other world leaders, including sadly David Cameron, who talked up the terror threat – here from a far right Christian theocrat – to make us all scared, rather than Mr Stoltenberg’s determination to hang onto their traditions of tolerance. When evil bastards literally attack your values, he made exactly the right response: you prize your values more dearly and practise them more passionately, not throw them out.
I hope that, if it had happened here and I’d survived, I wouldn’t have been scared off being involved. Being a part of the Lib Dem Youth and Students changed my life and, I hope, changed a few bigger things as well (so if you feel like contributing to Liberal Youth today…). Whatever party you’re in, whatever tradition you come from, whatever philosophy you believe in, now’s the time to encourage young people to stand up and be counted, not to tell them what a terrible place the world is and that all they can do is cower under batons and battier laws.
I recommend the moving insights from Stephen Glenn, Niklas Smith and Anders Hanson, too.
I’ve just got back from a week away, in which I was all the usual things (wet, tired, ill) and was doing my best to avoid news broadcasts – I was born in Stepping Hill Hospital and spent the first half of my life living five minutes’ walk away, and the wall-to-wall coverage of it as a murder scene made me queasy. Then this morning I woke up to the news of the massacre in Norway, and had to struggle not to be physically sick while we were packing.
I’ve never been to Norway, but I went to more political youth events – Liberal Democrat Youth and Students and others – in my teens and twenties than I can count, or even remember. To say there was a low security presence would be an understatement. Hearing about the murder of over eighty young political activists this morning, I couldn’t help but think of so many of my friends being gunned down. I can’t remember any atrocity that’s felt so close to home – even when South Quay was bombed, just up the road from our flat. It’s beyond words.
So my heart goes out to all members of the Norwegian Labour Party’s youth wing, and all those who know them. Political assassination is a despicable act – but attacking not the people in power but young people just starting to get involved, getting off their arses to change the world, that’s unimaginable horror.
The Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s promise, though, that the country won’t be bombed into silence or have its faith in democracy, freedom and openness destroyed made me tear up this morning. And I have to say he struck a much better note than some other world leaders, including sadly David Cameron, who talked up the terror threat – here from a far right Christian theocrat – to make us all scared, rather than Mr Stoltenberg’s determination to hang onto their traditions of tolerance. When evil bastards literally attack your values, he made exactly the right response: you prize your values more dearly and practise them more passionately, not throw them out.
I hope that, if it had happened here and I’d survived, I wouldn’t have been scared off being involved. Being a part of the Lib Dem Youth and Students changed my life and, I hope, changed a few bigger things as well (so if you feel like contributing to Liberal Youth today…). Whatever party you’re in, whatever tradition you come from, whatever philosophy you believe in, now’s the time to encourage young people to stand up and be counted, not to tell them what a terrible place the world is and that all they can do is cower under batons and battier laws.
I recommend the moving insights from Stephen Glenn, Niklas Smith and Anders Hanson, too.
Labels: Bigotry, European Politics, Liberal Youth, Personal
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Love and Liberty I – Introduction (#LibDemHeart #LibDemValues 1.1)
Ever tried to sum up ‘What the Liberal Democrats stand for’ in a sentence? And make it exciting? With – probably – 99 days until the General Election, many Lib Dems are already hard into their ‘ground war’, pounding the streets and delivering leaflets, but there’s more to politics than being a good local campaigner. Where other parties work hard (or, perish the thought, local Lib Dems don’t), what’s the difference that makes you think, ‘Yes, I’m still sure I’m a Lib Dem’? Nick Clegg uses one word: Fairness. I’ll look at that later, but first, what would I say? You’ll not be surprised that it’s more than one word…
Actually, when I had a good think about it eleven years ago, I started with two. You know what they are.
Back in the early ’90s, when I was heavily involved with the Liberal Democrat Youth and Students, I wrote a lot of letters. Other Lib Dems often used their own particular sign-offs, “Yours liberally” being an obvious favourite. One day, I decided to adopt my own, and – being a huggy sort of chap and a definite Liberal – “Love and liberty” were the two words that instantly sprang to mind. One of the people I wrote to most often was LDYS’ first Chair, Kiron Reid. For trivia buffs, he was also (separately) the Young Liberal Democrats’ last Chair; these days they’re called Liberal Youth, and I understand there’s a vacancy. If Kiron can sign himself up as a mature student, do you think he fancies the triple? Anyway, a few years later, the two of us having long become friends, activists, LDYS ex-Chairs and enraptured by Liberalism, he asked me to expand that instinctive tag into a philosophy.
From 1998 onwards, Kiron Reid and Bill le Breton edited a series of booklets from Liberator Publications, each usually consisting of two essays (the first of which was Kiron’s own highly recommended Rough Guide to Liberalism). The series was called Passports To Liberty, and in March 1999 I stayed up a few nights to write my contribution, then dashed up to Liverpool so that Kiron and I could format and print it just in time to flog at that weekend’s Liberal Democrat Spring Conference. The A-essay in Passports To Liberty 3 was Jackie Ballard’s The Politics of Community, so it’s worth hunting down a copy for that. You can read my B-essay here over the next few days, split into more digestible parts by its original sub-headings.
So, if there’s one short book or long essay you should read about Liberalism, it’s without a doubt – well, there are two. John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor’s On Liberty, which you can find free online, and Conrad Russell’s An Intelligent Person’s Guide To Liberalism, which was published like mine in 1999, to rather greater fanfare and not run off on an illicit photocopier in the dead of night. If you can find a copy, grab it, particularly as it’s criminally out of print and going for £50 second-hand. I can find things to disagree with in both, but they’re still brilliant.
I wouldn’t put my Love and Liberty in a top fifty, but it is the one that I can republish as much as I like. Besides, I intend this to be the first in a series of articles looking at my and many other people’s ideas of ‘What the Liberal Democrats stand for’, and as I’m not going to agree with all of them it’s only fair that I stick my own beliefs on the block first. Bring your own tomatoes.
Modestly subtitled “Alex Wilcock on Social Liberalism,” I’m not sure that my definition of Social Liberalism was one with which Mr Hobhouse would entirely agree, but it tied in with what Conrad called a “rhetorical flourish” (I wonder if I still have the very kind review he wrote – was it in Liberator, or in Liberal Democrat News? I had some unkind reviews, too, but you can look for those yourself). As you might guess, I argued that for Liberalism to work it needed to stand for both love and liberty – each having limitations on their own. How well did I knit them together?
Click on the as-yet-unfinished links to read each section in turn, and follow me on my journey through a definitive essay I wrote eleven years ago to discover with me whether I still agree with it, just how dated my knocking copy on the other parties is from a day when New Labour was new, and Iraq was as yet uninvaded (will I be as eerily prescient as the conclusion to Conrad’s book?), and how desperately I tried to shoehorn in lines I thought really ought to be in there somewhere but couldn’t really find a place for. The last is my main memory of what was dodgy about it at the time, but no doubt today I’ll find much more.
Twitter
I’ve been thinking about this series on what the Liberal Democrats are about (“This is what KLF is about!” has just belted out behind me) for a couple of months, seeing quite a few other people write about the same sort of thing along the way. So this introduction seemed an appropriate way to celebrate my 500th blog post on Love and Liberty. Thanks for reading so far, if you have!
It’s with rather more trepidation that I’ve also celebrated by joining Twitter. You might very well think that starting to micro-blog just as I set out on a series of maxi-blogs is an incongruous move, but… My shivering hand was held by Her Highness of Hashtags herself, Helen Duffett, so thank you, Helen, for the starting advice, and the nonsense I tweet is entirely my own.
Obviously, I need to amend my links to add my Twitter account, but as the whole sidebar’s not been updated for about a year, it’s almost as terrifying to contemplate redoing the whole thing as it is to think about tidying the spare room…
Forward to II
‹Older
Actually, when I had a good think about it eleven years ago, I started with two. You know what they are.
Back in the early ’90s, when I was heavily involved with the Liberal Democrat Youth and Students, I wrote a lot of letters. Other Lib Dems often used their own particular sign-offs, “Yours liberally” being an obvious favourite. One day, I decided to adopt my own, and – being a huggy sort of chap and a definite Liberal – “Love and liberty” were the two words that instantly sprang to mind. One of the people I wrote to most often was LDYS’ first Chair, Kiron Reid. For trivia buffs, he was also (separately) the Young Liberal Democrats’ last Chair; these days they’re called Liberal Youth, and I understand there’s a vacancy. If Kiron can sign himself up as a mature student, do you think he fancies the triple? Anyway, a few years later, the two of us having long become friends, activists, LDYS ex-Chairs and enraptured by Liberalism, he asked me to expand that instinctive tag into a philosophy.
From 1998 onwards, Kiron Reid and Bill le Breton edited a series of booklets from Liberator Publications, each usually consisting of two essays (the first of which was Kiron’s own highly recommended Rough Guide to Liberalism). The series was called Passports To Liberty, and in March 1999 I stayed up a few nights to write my contribution, then dashed up to Liverpool so that Kiron and I could format and print it just in time to flog at that weekend’s Liberal Democrat Spring Conference. The A-essay in Passports To Liberty 3 was Jackie Ballard’s The Politics of Community, so it’s worth hunting down a copy for that. You can read my B-essay here over the next few days, split into more digestible parts by its original sub-headings.
The Best Book On Liberalism Ever Written (Before Moving On To The One For Which I Hold The Copyright)
So, if there’s one short book or long essay you should read about Liberalism, it’s without a doubt – well, there are two. John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor’s On Liberty, which you can find free online, and Conrad Russell’s An Intelligent Person’s Guide To Liberalism, which was published like mine in 1999, to rather greater fanfare and not run off on an illicit photocopier in the dead of night. If you can find a copy, grab it, particularly as it’s criminally out of print and going for £50 second-hand. I can find things to disagree with in both, but they’re still brilliant.
I wouldn’t put my Love and Liberty in a top fifty, but it is the one that I can republish as much as I like. Besides, I intend this to be the first in a series of articles looking at my and many other people’s ideas of ‘What the Liberal Democrats stand for’, and as I’m not going to agree with all of them it’s only fair that I stick my own beliefs on the block first. Bring your own tomatoes.
Modestly subtitled “Alex Wilcock on Social Liberalism,” I’m not sure that my definition of Social Liberalism was one with which Mr Hobhouse would entirely agree, but it tied in with what Conrad called a “rhetorical flourish” (I wonder if I still have the very kind review he wrote – was it in Liberator, or in Liberal Democrat News? I had some unkind reviews, too, but you can look for those yourself). As you might guess, I argued that for Liberalism to work it needed to stand for both love and liberty – each having limitations on their own. How well did I knit them together?
Love and Liberty
Alex Wilcock on Social Liberalism
“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world… All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10.12.1948
Part One: Love
One Person, One Value
Liberal Individualism
Liberal Internationalism
Green Liberalism
Part Two: Liberty
Equal Voices, Different Choices
Freedom from Poverty
Freedom from Ignorance
Freedom from Conformity
Conclusion: Love and Liberty
Click on the as-yet-unfinished links to read each section in turn, and follow me on my journey through a definitive essay I wrote eleven years ago to discover with me whether I still agree with it, just how dated my knocking copy on the other parties is from a day when New Labour was new, and Iraq was as yet uninvaded (will I be as eerily prescient as the conclusion to Conrad’s book?), and how desperately I tried to shoehorn in lines I thought really ought to be in there somewhere but couldn’t really find a place for. The last is my main memory of what was dodgy about it at the time, but no doubt today I’ll find much more.
I’ve been thinking about this series on what the Liberal Democrats are about (“This is what KLF is about!” has just belted out behind me) for a couple of months, seeing quite a few other people write about the same sort of thing along the way. So this introduction seemed an appropriate way to celebrate my 500th blog post on Love and Liberty. Thanks for reading so far, if you have!
It’s with rather more trepidation that I’ve also celebrated by joining Twitter. You might very well think that starting to micro-blog just as I set out on a series of maxi-blogs is an incongruous move, but… My shivering hand was held by Her Highness of Hashtags herself, Helen Duffett, so thank you, Helen, for the starting advice, and the nonsense I tweet is entirely my own.
Obviously, I need to amend my links to add my Twitter account, but as the whole sidebar’s not been updated for about a year, it’s almost as terrifying to contemplate redoing the whole thing as it is to think about tidying the spare room…
Forward to II
Labels: Blogs, Books, Conrad Russell, Ideas, Liberal Democrats, Liberal Youth, Liberalism, Personal, Twitter, What the Lib Dems Stand For
