Love and Liberty

Happy thirty-first birthday, Liberal Democrats?

Liberalism is desperately needed today. Liberal Democrats are sometimes powerful voices, but sometimes tongue-tied.

We must demand better.

Last year I chose six words (three positive values, one urgent priority) for a short video on ‘Why the Lib Dems’:

Exit From Brexit

If our MPs would even pick six such words and sound like they meant them, that would be a start.

Our Leadership seems to think ‘Why can’t we all get along?’ is good enough. It isn’t. It’s a cry of helplessness, and they have no answer to their own question.

I don’t have all the answers. But the least the Lib Dem Leadership can do is answer why we shouldn’t all pack up and go home. The slogan “Demand Better” is a headline to get attention, but with absolutely no idea what to say if anyone then looks our way and asks, ‘Yes, what?’

It’s a cliché to say a Liberal won’t take their own side in an argument, but even after years of singularly failing to put any passion into Liberalism I didn’t expect our own Leadership’s answer to ‘Demand a better Centre Party’ to be ‘Oh, perhaps they have a point’. After a year of navel-gazing about ‘Registered Supporters’, now our Leadership doesn’t even seem to have the energy to ask potential supporters to register with this party in particular. Rather than assuming people would rally if we tinkered with the mechanics, perhaps the Liberal Democrats should have considered that the way to get people to support us is to articulate something worth supporting.

Some time ago, I wrote about “What It Means To Be A Liberal Democrat”. I made the case for the values I believe in and the positive difference Liberal Democrats should make.

Liberal Democrats can certainly demand better than what I publish here. But first we need our Leadership to stop standing frozen in the headlights in the middle of the road. To go anywhere, we must set out a direction of travel.

What It Means To Be A Liberal Democrat

To be a Liberal Democrat is to believe in freedom.

Freedom grounded in real life, starting with people as they are. Not ‘The People’. Not ‘Our People’. Freedom based on the unique worth and potential of every individual person, and the reality that the person who knows best how to live their life is themselves.

To be a Liberal Democrat is to demand better. Government shouldn’t just protect the interests of those who are already well-off, and sneer at and push down people working hard to make a life for themselves, or those who aren’t able to support themselves. Liberal Democrats demand freedom from poverty. Government shouldn’t assume it can do everything, control everyone, as long as you take what you’re given and don’t ask awkward questions of those in charge. Liberal Democrats demand freedom from ignorance. Government shouldn’t tell you that your nation is the only thing that matters about you, drive out ‘outsiders’ and call anyone who doesn’t want their flag cut smaller, narrower and meaner ‘traitors’. Liberal Democrats demand freedom from conformity.

Liberal Democrats feel in our guts that everyone should be free to live their own life, that pushing people about and telling them what to do or who to be is wrong. We feel in our guts that everyone should have a fair chance, that prejudice and lack of opportunity are wrong. We feel in our guts the need for a better future, that piling up today’s problems for our kids to deal with tomorrow is wrong. But politics isn’t just about gut feelings and protesting when things aren’t right. We must face up to how things really are to work out how to change them, and change our own methods if experience shows us better ways to achieve our ideals. So Liberal Democrats are principle-led, but evidence-based.

An open, fairer society and a greener, stronger economy are interdependent. Liberal Democrats champion opportunity, fairness and economic responsibility. An economy that works, that encourages enterprise, that’s environmentally and financially sustainable, and where everyone pays their fair share. All thriving within an outward-looking, optimistic society that’s open-minded, open-hearted and open to co-operating with other countries to tackle climate change, promote peace and increase prosperity for our whole planet’s future.

Liberal Democrats believe freedom needs both positive help to make it real for everyone, and action to break down barriers to freedom such as poverty, ignorance and conformity. Education is the single most crucial way to combine both. A great education ensures everyone has the opportunity to realise their potential, whatever their background, whatever their choices. Every child getting the best education is central to them growing up with the freedom to live their own lives, getting a fair start and building for the future. If you’re for every person, and you want every person to have the ability to ask the important questions and make their own informed decisions in realising their own dreams, education is where it starts. If you want an economy growing and succeeding with innovation and creativity and where the most talented get ahead instead of just the most wealthy, education, training and apprenticeships are where it starts.

From the foundation that society should be for everyone and that everyone should be free, Liberal Democrats understand that individual people choose to come together in any number of complementary ways – families, jobs, mutual interests, neighbourhoods, nations, the whole human family – and that decisions can be made at any of those levels without giving up the others. That’s why we’ve always been both the most localist and the most internationalist party. Any political party denying diversity, defining itself by just one single identity or community and telling each individual that your birth or your faith or your cash or your class or your country is the only thing that counts doesn’t just diminish people’s lives and hopes, doesn’t just make society more fearful, hateful and divided, but is the mark of a party so stuck in its own prejudices that it has no idea how real people’s real lives work.

One vivid, simple answer to what Liberalism is for has always stuck with me: Liberalism is about standing up to bullies. That’s why a Liberal’s gut instinct is to side with the underdog – whoever the bully is and whoever the underdog is at any one time. Any sort of power can threaten liberty, but any sort of power can defend it, too. Whether it’s the state, or big business or big unions, or just other people, any of them can boss you around and anyone can help stop you being bossed around. So Liberals wouldn’t label any of them ‘the enemy’ or do away with any of them – just as we won’t say any of them are right all the time. When government acts fairly it can be the biggest force to restrain bullies, from crooks and murderers to stifling communities and bad employers; but a government that bosses you around or that only protects one special interest or only picks on another is just a bigger bully. The closer anyone has to a monopoly of power, the more it’s abused. Liberals challenge power and privilege, break up monopolies, set the same rules for everyone and make the starting point for any decisions the people that they affect.

When the starting point is people, what’s the end point? Get real! If you start with people you never say ‘that’s it.’ Whether it’s a grandiose utopia that you’ll never finish building or a thousand mean little targets to tick, imaginary end points have two things in common. Believing the ‘ends’ justify the means, they throw real people under the bus, seeing individuals only as statistics or as problems. And they never work. A Liberal society isn’t a perfect society, because there aren’t any perfect people or perfect politicians – but an open, untidy society that develops constantly in response to the individuals who form it has the advantage of being about real life. Liberals don’t say ‘We know best’, because everyone’s best is different.

To be a Liberal Democrat is to be wary of grand plans and little prejudices. To say of human nature, ‘It’s complicated’. Anyone might be kind or selfish, creative or lazy, successful or failing. Other parties see that as a reason to control people, because they believe people who disagree with them can’t be trusted with freedom, and they think ‘their people’ will want to do what they tell them anyway. Other parties fear pluralism, diversity, flexibility and individuality. Liberal Democrats might give an instinctive two-word answer to that ending in “—off”, but we have a better answer, too, countering fear with hope. Our fear is more that if a government makes a mistake in its giant one-life-fits-all authoritarianism, it’s going to be a doozy. And our hope, based on realism, is that the more different ideas run free, the more brilliant, practical ones will succeed. Believe in people, enable people, and unlock everyone’s potential.

To be a Liberal Democrat is to embrace the contradictions – because people are contradictory. Because only one idea has room for how messy, contradictory and wonderful real life and real people are. Freedom.

The Story Since 2016

I’ve never published this before, but for a couple of years it was on the Liberal Democrat main website as one of nine shortlisted essays chosen in early 2016. The competition was part of a consultation on “What It Means To Be A Liberal Democrat In 2015”. I re-read it a couple of weeks ago and was surprised how relevant it still seemed (even the ‘traitors’ line was in there back then). I aimed to make our Liberalism instinctive and accessible, and that stands. My video above is much more politically punchy for our immediate priorities and better to show someone who’s not interested in philosophy. Comparing this essay to my 2017 General Election post “A Liberal Britain. A Brighter Future. My Hope”, that takes a very different approach and that, too, has some punchy lines confronting issues I didn’t mention at all here (though in trying to find hope post-Brexit I was a little too shell-shocked to do more than wish it would all go away).

You’d think British politics has changed a lot since 2016. As the Prime Minister might say, nothing has changed, and yet everything has. Back when I wrote my “What It Means To Be A Liberal Democrat”, I was concerned that I’d leaned a bit too hard on vigilance about the state rather than its power to help – giving emphasis to education, but not health or infrastructure. After two years of Theresa May in charge, I didn’t go nearly far enough in warning against the might of government to be a heartless bully, an unmitigated f— up, or both at the same time. Back then, Brexit was a looming threat, not yet a tectonic shift. Since then, British politics has been frozen while Britain itself has become far worse – all because of the worst decision ever made in British democracy, and a slither of decisions and non-decisions ever since that have only made the worst decision worse still.

In the face of this titanic catastrophe, the Liberal Democrat Leadership has been more frozen than most. Much of the time their only message has been ‘Why can’t we all get along?’ when the answer is ‘Because an awful lot of people made a decision based on hating other people’, and wishing and hoping that they didn’t really mean it and that the clock would turn back has failed to make any impact as a political strategy because it has no political appeal and no political reality. Liberalism is worth fighting for. Bullies must be stood up to. Looking hand-wringingly heavenward and wishing that the bully and the bullied would just get along simply does not cut it.

If I’d started writing this today, stopping Brexit would have been the angry focus and I would have been far more pugnacious against Theresa May and her fascistic Hostile Environment or Jeremy Corbyn and his sub-BNP attacks on immigrants stealing British jobs. I’ve written quite a few times on what the Lib Dems stand for, and I may well write again. But I realised that what I’d written was something positive – and that wasn’t afraid to take a side. I’ve decided to publish pretty much what I entered, with a couple of small polishes. The competition set a limit of a thousand words. I’ve reintroduced a sentence or two that I’d originally cut for space, but mainly I’ve put back one whole paragraph. The reason I removed that one at the time was that I liked what it was aiming for but it just didn’t quite flow. Ironically, I found the Lib Dems’ “Demand Better” gave me the edge I was looking for, so that one paragraph has been rewritten today and restored to set the tone at the top.

You see? You can get something out of demanding better – but you have to give people some idea of what you’re demanding.

Labels: Brexit, Bullies, Economy, Education, Environment, Ideas, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, What the Lib Dems Stand For

The BBC has once again shown its unquestionable political neutrality with tonight’s fair and balanced Question Time line-up. A BBC Spokesperson said:

‘No right-thinking person could disagree with the security industry having absolute power over every corner of our lives, so two panellists from the Snoopers’ Charter-supporting Labour Party and two from the Snoopers’ Charter-supporting Conservative Party, with UKIP for balance, reflects the views of all right-thinking people from neo-fascist to fascist. No Liberal view is possible (so we’ve refused to invite any). Any disagreement means you’re clearly a terrorist and, with our detector vans, we know where you live.’

With the biggest story of the week being the authoritarian Labour Party teaming up with the authoritarian Conservative Party to say they must go much further right – again – the BBC’s decision to exclude the Liberal Democrats from yet another Question Time beggars belief. By pretending that only the traditional party of the right, the party that’s urging them to be more right-wing, and the party that’s scaring them to death by being amazingly right-wing have anything to say about the Snoopers’ Charter they are gravely unbalanced.

This isn’t just about excluding the Liberal Democrats – again – who the BBC used to ignore because ‘They’d never get into government’ and now ignore because ‘They’re in government’. It’s about giving a completely one-sided view on major issues on which all the other parties range from deeply authoritarian to would-be totalitarian.

Labour’s former Home Secretary Alan Johnson called on Sunday for the Conservatives to reintroduce the Snoopers’ Charter with Labour support, clambering eagerly onto a soldier’s dead body to use as a platform. He is, of course, one of the guests tonight. And if you think “totalitarian” is hyperbole, he explicitly told Nick Robinson on The Andrew Marr Show that “these things are so much easier in China”. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether Mr Johnson’s eye-boggling totalitarianism is because he’s a former communist or a former associate of Mr Blair. Perhaps even his heavy-breathing desire to pry into the e-mails of every single person in the land comes from his time as a postman and a frustrated desire to open up everyone else’s post, now grown to maniacal proportions. Who can say? But whatever inspired his twisted psychological desire for control-freakery, that it’s there is a proven fact from his own mouth.

As Millennium Dome, Elephant said the other day about Mr Johnson’s disgusting opportunism in using a murdered soldier to feed his own neo-fascist wet dreams, he is not only wildly irresponsible to call for new powers before anyone’s been able to fully investigate what happened – but the security services themselves have admitted that they knew the suspects were suspicious and already had all the powers they needed to monitor them but didn’t have the person-hours to make them a priority:

“WHY, if the security services seem like they're saying that monitoring the THOUSANDS of people they ALREADY have powers to monitor is TOO DIFFICULT, WHY is the solution to monitor MILLIONS of people?!”

The Conservatives are desperate to move to the right because they’re terrified of UKIP. The Labour Party have a long and disgusting record of being far to the authoritarian right in government, and are now calling in Opposition for government to be far more illiberal still. But then, everyone should remember what the Labour Party did with thirteen years of war-mongering, evidence-sexing, amnesia-promising, freedom-crushing, LGBT-hypocrisising, rich-brownnosing, poor-taxing, crony-bribe-swallowing shameless absolute power.

Only the Liberal Democrats opposed the Snoopers’ Charter and the sticky-fingered urges of securocrats to peek into and keep every electronic communication, followed naturally by every phone call, every item of post and ultimately every telescreened bedroom in Britain. The only thing that stopped it was that Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg directly vetoed the Snoopers’ Charter. The Conservatives wanted it. The Labour Party is gagging for it. By silencing the only voice that is not identically securocrat, the BBC is not merely being ‘unfair to the Lib Dems’ but simply not doing their job for the public.


Fossilised relics of previous completely fair and balanced Question Time line-ups can be found here , here and here.

The BBC complaints form can be found here. For viewers who aren’t Daleks, if you want to complain directly to the BBC about their consistent and outrageous political bias, obviously they’re frightened of their viewers being able to get in touch, you can’t do so by e-mail – though if anyone wishes to supply me with the personal e-mails of, say, the director and producer of Question Time, the head of BBC1, the Director-General or the BBC Trust, I will very happily republish them here – and must instead jump through five pages of hoops on their website.

Labels: BBC, British Politics, Conservatives, Daleks, Labour, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Pictures, Questionable Time, The Golden Dozen, Things To Remember About Labour

Today’s Liberal Monday celebrates the 207th birthday of Liberal philosopher and politician John Stuart Mill. With Harriet Taylor, he wrote arguably Liberalism’s most influential text of all: On Liberty, the book that created the Harm Principle, from which I’ve picked two key quotations. For many Liberal Democrats, this crystallises the party’s essential belief, and I’ve already touched on it in both previous Liberal Mondays in freedom from conformity and from other restraints… But, though you can see On Liberty’s influence right through to today’s Equal Marriage bill, it still challenges Lib Dems – has it really influenced our policies enough?

“The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”

This principle is so widely known and debated that this time I won’t analyse it at length. However, even if not every Liberal reads On Liberty once a year (as former Leader Jo Grimond suggested), and if you only read those two points from it, in campaigning Lib Dem style I’d suggest three things to remember – and one thing to think about.

Three Things To Remember

• Between them, these two statements for me sum up the heart of On Liberty, and start off modern Liberalism. I treasure the first, because it’s a positive statement that’s a simple principle to understand but with enormous consequences. It’s greatly influenced a great many Liberals and me, too, not least in my own What the Lib Dems Stand For.
  

• And I always remember the second, because this time it expresses the same rallying cry as a warning: ordering people about ‘For your own good’ is the most superficially tempting, the most difficult to stand against and the most widely practised by every government of all threats to liberty. It’s greatly influenced the Lib Dems, not least in the Preamble that sets our party’s creed uniquely as “No-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.”
  

• Though John Stuart Mill wrote a great many books and essays, this is his most famous, his most lasting and still his most controversial (or influential). And he wrote it with his friend and later wife Harriet Taylor, who never gets the credit – except every time Mr Mill himself talked about who wrote it. So when you think about “Mill’s Harm Principle,” remember that it’s not just about the Great Victorian Man. His publishers may not have given Ms Taylor credit, but you can. So try to ignore the Victorian language that only says “he”; unlike many politicians of the age, Mr Mill was an early advocate of equality.

One Thing To Think About

But for all that the Liberal Democrats think of ourselves as inspired by On Liberty – it’s even the book handed down to each Party President on their election – how much do we practise what it preaches?

I sometimes feel a strange kinship with Evelyn Waugh’s lament that:

“The Conservative Party have never put the clock back a single second.”

How many laws have the Liberal Democrats put back? And how many have we acquiesced in or cheer-led? After Labour’s smothering record more than 4,000 new laws when in power, we proposed a Great Repeal Bill, or Freedom Bill; we formed a Coalition with the Conservatives in part on a promise of enacting that Bill, with principles of freedom and personal responsibility. And yet when it came down to it, it was watered down in government to a Small Repeal Bill, or a Freedom That Won’t Frighten the Daily Mail Bill – putting authoritarianism back only a few seconds, and then it starts ticking forward again. That’s the trouble with legislation by shopping list rather than principle: it’s too easy to say you’ll take just the more difficult things out of the cart, and find you’ve got very little left in it.

I’m not even talking about the more egregious government-by-securocrat proposals that rang enough danger signals for Liberal Democrats to block – or ostentatiously fail to – such as the Snooper’s Charter or Secret Courts. It’s more the insidious danger of legislation and regulation in favour of nice things, because nice people could only ever want nice things, and so no right-thinking person could ever want nasty things, whether the wrong type of food or the wrong type of fun… And yet, if it’s so self-evident that everyone must agree, how come government needs to enforce it? Because people should be able to make their own choices, even if they’re not for their own good. Freedom means taking responsibility. And sometimes that means even insisting people have the freedom to do things that the Daily Mail does like and the Guardian doesn’t – let alone things that both scream against. Because making crimes of personal actions that other people or press puritans merely disagree means creating criminals to punish where there aren’t actually any victims. And to a Liberal, shouldn’t a “Victimless crime” be no crime at all?

So here’s something to think about, if the Liberal Democrats really are a party influenced by John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor. Of course we should look at the little things – removing some enforced conformities, resisting the temptation to ban things we don’t think are very nice but which are actually none of our business. Applying our Harm Principle consistently would be a revelation. But we shouldn’t get stuck in only reacting to every individual problem or proposal that comes our way. If we’re really a party of On Liberty-based Liberalism, how about thinking about where we’d actually start? How would we put that principle into practice? What if we get into government again – is it enough just to blunt the edges of government-as-it-always-is-by-authoritarian-inertia? Isn’t it time to start planning for something better? Even if it means challenging the whole legal system (and a potential coalition partner) to go back to first principles?

When are we going to stand up for freedom and personal responsibility by showing some responsibility ourselves – and freeing ourselves from the conformity of politicians who always take the safe route and order everyone else to do the same?

Labels: British Politics, Harriet Taylor, Ideas, John Stuart Mill, Liberal Democrats, Liberal Mondays, Liberalism, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, What the Lib Dems Stand For

The Government yesterday erected a consultation page about online porn. It’s down now. A spokesperson said, ‘Look… This is really embarrassing… It’s never happened before*. Try again later?’ I’d rather they didn’t, but if they do get it up again, steel yourself, look at the horrid thing, and insert your… contribution.

This bloody stupid idea, cooked up like so many others ‘For the sake of the children’ by bullying social conservatives – it’s like the Labour Party were still in Government – is to automatically block porn through everyone’s ISPs and treat every adult as if they were a child, including the two-thirds of households that don’t have children in them.

What do they think the Internet is for, anyway?

I can’t help thinking that this is a sop from Mr Cameron to his raving right-wing backbenchers who weren’t happy with the last consultation, on same-sex marriage. ‘No, we’re still frothing conservatives who like sticking our grubby fingers into people’s bedrooms, honestly!’ is the message. ‘Let’s turn the PC clocks back to when everyone just had floppies!’ Never mind personal responsibility for parents; never mind that we’re having to put up with a lot of horrible things the Tories are doing because there’s much, much less than no money and we have to live with some cuts; there’s just no excuse for this. It’s illiberal, it’s bureaucratic, and it costs a lot more money. And, today, when the Government wants to get its jollies by costing a lot more money, it had better have a bloody good excuse.

Instead, this proposal is a proven car-crash less than a day into the consultation period – long before any law might come into force. Yes, shockingly, they launched the consultation just yesterday. And now they’ve had to suspend it because the online questionnaire has blown open the Data Protection Act by publishing people’s names, contact details and replies.

Why A Porn Filter Would Harm People (Kids Included)

Yes, astonishingly, this cock-up has already proved why having a Government register of porn users is a terrible idea (even if you’re stupid enough not to read that sentence and work it out from first principles). There are already so many, many reasons why getting ISPs to hold everyone’s “Porn filter” records on their databases is wrong, whether it’s forcing every Internet user – or, rather, bill-payer – in the land to opt in in order to view porn. Such filters are a grotesque state-run invasion of privacy, when whether you look at consenting adults’ porn or not is nobody else’s business. Such filters are well-known for blocking medical sites, or helplines – so, far from child protection, they do genuine and provable harm. And just imagine going into your local mobile phone emporium to sign a new contract:

‘Jan-ice! Pass me the porn register! This one looks like he’s not getting any…’

But, as today’s security disaster has proven beyond doubt before the filter databases themselves are created, they are insecure. I can’t even say ‘An accident waiting to happen’ because, well, it’s just happened. They present a danger to people. A danger of being embarrassed for no good reason. A danger of being excluded from, say, your religious membership if they preach against pornography and – heavens! – your name is found to be on the list. A danger of being bombarded with unwanted ‘offers’ from the sex industry. Even the real physical danger of being targeted by extremist religious or other groups. These lists are by nature insecure and dangerous, whether the danger is simply of being forced into social conformity when in your own home for fear that your name will ‘get out’, or that people who want to market to you or do you harm will pay good money to get hold of such records.

At this very moment forty-three years ago, the Stonewall riots – that’s proper Stonewall, not the Labour-licking corporate lobbyists – were into their second day. They were the start of modern lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender radicalism, and I’ve been listening to the Tom Robinson Band’s excellent Long Hot Summer in celebration. I don’t think there’ll be riots if the Government starts fiddling with people’s porn, though I’d be tempted, but it would certainly harm LGBT people, from LGBT kids unable to look up helpful sites to leaked information being of help to queerbashers. These proposals are simply wrong.

Government – Get Your Hands Off Our… Hands!

I have previously suggested as our core message: “Liberal Democrats – The Party That Thinks Sex Is All Right”. We should very much leave micro-management of people’s lives to the Tories (who want to boss you about because you’re bad) and Labour (who want to boss you about because it’s good for you). And Lib Dem Ministers, you should tell the Tories how daft they’re being.

I have a simple, cost-saving alternative.

If the government wants a list of masturbators in the UK, one already exists: the census. It’s guaranteed to be a far more accurate list than any wildly expensive new self-‘incriminating’ infrastructure would be.

Whereas if they want a list of wankers, just look at the register of MPs supporting this new censorship idea.


*Except for every single time any UK Government ever puts confidential information into a new IT system. You’d think they’d have learned by now.

Labels: Coalition, Conservatives, Gay, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Sex, Stupid Ideas, Technology, What the Lib Dems Stand For

The Coalition Government’s consultation on making marriage more equal closes today. If you’ve not supplied your own response, don’t leave it to the massive vested interests of the bigots, their money and their lawyers to enforce discrimination on everyone else. Back equality before the law and personal and religious freedom instead.

You can respond to the consultation here until later today (either 5pm or midnight according to different sources, so better make it 5); here are the consultation paper and the impact assessment; if the Home Office website crashes, email your answers to equalcivilmarriage@geo.gsi.gov.uk before the deadline. Here are mine.

Question 1: Do you agree or disagree with enabling all couples, regardless of their gender to have a civil marriage ceremony?

Agree

Question 2: Please explain the reasons for your answer. Please respond within 1,225 characters (approx 200 words).

In 21st Century Britain there’s simply no justification for the law discriminating against people – it should treat everyone the same. It’s wrong for the state to decide that some citizens are second class and must be forced to use separate facilities (no-one who talks about “separate but equal” in order to exclude people ever wants to be on the “separate” side). We wouldn’t countenance banning mixed-race marriages today; same-sex marriages are exactly the same case.

Marriage – and civil partnerships – should be based on the principle of equality before the law. That makes the law simpler as well as fairer, and stops such awful ‘anomalies’ as forcing transsexual people to divorce in order to be pushed into the right ‘category’, or UK law not recognising people married in other countries.

It should be up to any couple (same-sex, mixed-sex, same-race or mixed-race) to decide how to celebrate and protect their relationship, and the law simply to recognise that. Both marriage and civil partnerships should be open to all, on the same basis, and there should be simple legal procedures to convert either into the other.

Put simply, it’s no-one else’s business but a couple’s to decide if they get married.

Question 3: If you identify as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual would you wish to have a civil marriage ceremony?

Yes

Question 4: If you represent a group of individuals who identify as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual would those you represent wish to have a civil marriage ceremony?

This question doesn’t apply to me

Question 5: The Government does not propose to open up religious marriage to same-sex couples. Do you agree or disagree?

Disagree – religious marriage should be opened up to same-sex couples

Question 6: Do you agree or disagree with keeping the option of civil partnerships once civil marriage is available to same-sex couples?

Agree

Question 7: If you identify as being lesbian, gay, bisexual and were considering making a legal commitment to your partner would you prefer to have a civil partnership or a civil marriage?

Civil marriage

Question 8: The Government is not considering opening up civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples. Do you agree or disagree with this proposal?

Disagree – civil partnerships should be opened up to opposite-sex couples

Question 9: If you are in a civil partnership would you wish to take advantage of this policy and convert your civil partnership into a marriage?

This question doesn’t apply to me

Question 10. We would not propose introducing a time limit on the ability to convert a civil partnership into a marriage.

Agree – there shouldn't be a time limit
(This question and answer was contradictorily worded in the paper, but has been clarified on the site).

Question 11: Do you agree or disagree that there should be the choice to have a civil ceremony on conversion of a civil partnership into a marriage?

Yes, there should be an option

Question 12: If you are a married transsexual person, would you want to take advantage of this policy and remain in your marriage while obtaining a full Gender Recognition Certificate?

This question doesn’t apply to me

Question 13: If you are the spouse of a transsexual person, would you want to take advantage of this policy and remain in your marriage whilst your spouse obtained a full Gender Recognition Certificate?

This question doesn’t apply to me

Question 14: Do you have any comments on the assumptions or issues outlined in this chapter on consequential impacts? Please respond within 1,225 characters (approx 200 words).

Rules for pensions should be equalised between marriages and civil partnerships, men and women.

In particular, the law should recognise a continuing relationship for pensions and other benefits any civil partnership that converts to a marriage (or vice versa – both should be made simple), and provide recompense for the financial harm added to the emotional harm in forcing trans people to divorce because of the current discriminatory marriage laws.

Question 15: Are you aware of any costs or benefits that exist to either the public or private sector, or individuals that we have not accounted for? Please respond within 1,225 characters (approx 200 words).

Your own quoted research suggests that more LGBT people would wish to marry than currently take up civil partnerships; many civil-partnered couples would wish to change their status to a marriage; if civil partnership, too, was made gender-neutral, many mixed-sex couples who do not wish to marry might still want the legal security of a formal partnership. All of this implies a significant gain to the Exchequer and to the many industries which make money out of marriage ceremonies, particularly in the first few years after a change in the law.

I do not agree with setting a time limit on conversion from civil partnership to marriage (or vice versa) – how can the law set a clock on people’s changing feelings? – but there should be a major discount on registration fees for people currently in civil partnerships converting to marriage within, say, the first year, as they were previously denied the right to marry and paid for the only option legally available.

Question 16: Do you have any other comments on the proposals within this consultation? Please respond within 1,225 characters (approx 200 words).

The proposals do not go far enough, and are unnecessarily complicated – likely to lead to further changes in the law in future. Why not take the opportunity now to simply enact equality before the law?

Let every couple choose for themselves whether to enter a civil marriage or a civil partnership, without the state laying down extra gender-limited rules.

Further, the state should be neutral on religious marriage. Many large religious bodies wish to enshrine discrimination. Well, that’s their business for their own churches, but not for everyone’s. All churches should be given religious freedom to marry people or not on their own doctrines. The proposals would stop religious freedom for denominations (such as Quakers or Reform Judaism) who wish to recognise equal marriage, and allow bigger religious special interests to bully them. It’s religious discrimination by the law. That can’t be right.

Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, Coalition, Gay, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Religion

Have you voted yet? The ballot boxes are open until ten for local councils up and down Britain and, where I voted this morning, for the combined London Mayor / Police and Crime Commissioner and for all the London Assembly Members to hold him to account. I’m proud to have voted positively for the Liberal Democrats and Brian Paddick – a Liberal London, fairer, greener, and safer, a serious team and a Mayor with thirty years of police experience. Both in London and nationally, Lib Dems get tough on real crime by stopping wasting police time on petty political targets. In London, Mayor / Commissioner Brian would stop police chasing people for cannabis possession; nationally, the Lib Dems in Government have just made The Protection of Freedoms Act law, rolling back some of Labour’s petty, intrusive, unnecessary powers. Both have the same idea: tackle real crime; don’t waste resources; more freedom. All reversing Labour’s authoritarian, far-right but useless posturing of a new pointless law every day that only caught headlines, not criminals.


I might well go further than Brian, or than the Lib Dems can in London. But I cheered when I saw Brian’s poster – at last, a politician with real life experience and with the guts to say that the thousands of Londoners using cannabis shouldn’t be encouraged but shouldn’t be criminalised, and that the police should get on with catching the real crooks and getting gangsters off the streets. I only wish the Lib Dem campaign had the cash to put that poster on every street – not least because it might make the indistinguishably authoritarian Labour and Tory posers who pretend one joint is the end of civilisation’s heads explode, and then we’d have a clear run for campaigning. Predictably, Labour and Tory politicians have screamed and attacked Brian for it – while bigot UKIP, obviously, have been busy complaining of bigotphobia, saying gays are all insane and should be locked up, and marching through Soho burning pictures of Brian (so much for the mainstream).

Vote Positively for Brian and the Lib Dems – and To Stop the Others, Too

There are negative reasons to vote, too. Because I’m proud that Brian and the Lib Dem team for the London Assembly would do good, but I also want to stop Labour the Tories doing wrong.

It’s a deep-rooted Labour instinct to say ‘Lock people up!’ without thinking – without thinking if it’s possible, or if it’s right, as long as it’s right-wing. I’m very proud of Brian for making a stand on a Liberal policing that doesn’t waste police time when times are tough. I’m proud of his ‘You break it, you fix it’ campaign, championing community service for criminals to pay back, not just disappear into the system to become career criminals.

I don’t trust the Tories an inch when they talk about ‘freedom’ but only for themselves and their mates: remember laid-back Boris’ first Mayoral campaign? Remember his live-and-let live feel? But remember how he attacked Brian over cannabis policing and said coppers should always arrest cannabis users, who are more likely to be poor or black, even though Boris Johnson himself and his mates got away with using cocaine, a much harder drug – but, hey, what’s the point of being privileged if you can’t exercise your privileges and get away with things ordinary people can’t? And I remember how the first thing laid-back Boris did, within hours of becoming Mayor, without ever saying a word about it in the campaign, was to ban alcohol on London Transport – prohibition for the proles, less freedom and just more wasting police time.

I don’t trust Ken Livingstone an inch for the way he and the Labour Government corrupted the police, always getting their cronies to do their bidding to the extent that even some old cronies can’t stomach him any more, worst of all crooked political poodle Ian Blair, supposedly London’s chief copper. And I remember, too, of all the many things to remember about Labour, how the rotten, bullying Labour Government we threw out two years ago inflicted 4,400 new laws on the UK – more than any other government in British history – and how the Lib Dems in Government have pushed against Tory instincts to do the same by putting through the The Protection of Freedoms Act, something we said we’d do in Opposition, and now in Government cutting away snooping powers, state DNA records on innocent people, fingerprinting schoolkids, and clearing the names of people criminalised long ago for consensual same-sex sex. There’s a long way to go, but the Lib Dems are making Britain a more Liberal society, not giving the state more and more power to bully every bit of our lives.

Priorities for a Liberal Democrat Mayor and Assembly

In Government, even with Labour blowing the economy to bits and leaving an incredible debt to repay, and even having to compromise with the Tories over what they want to do, the Liberal Democrats have still achieved the top four General Election pledges on the front of our Manifesto and more: raising the income tax threshold and cutting taxes for 23 million ordinary working people; the Pupil Premium to help out poorer schoolkids; a fairer economy, tackling the banks, record numbers of apprenticeships, green jobs and the new Green Investment Bank open for business; more open politics; delivering the ‘triple lock’ guarantee for pensions.

You can read Brian Paddick and the Liberal Democrat team for the London Assembly’s Manifesto, too, packed with sensible solutions for London, but here are their five priorities before you vote this evening:

• A fairer London, with realistic fare cuts targeted at those who need them most: a One Hour Bus Ticket; Early Bird discounts; and Part-Time season tickets.

• A greener London, with electric buses, taxis and vans by 2020.

• A safer London, with police who listen to the concerns of local people and work with them against the criminals.

• Serious solutions to London’s biggest problems, such as tackling the housing crisis by building 360,000 new homes.

• Creating a network of Youth Hubs to give young people a positive alternative to gangs.

As for Brian Paddick himself – I know his record, I know him, and I trust him. Thirty years of London policing, from the street to the top, showing his abilities and not afraid to stand up for what’s right – even when his bosses tried to shut him up. The UK’s highest-ranking out gay police officer. Someone who pushed the Met to act on police racism, when they pretended there was no problem. Someone who reduced crime by focusing his officers on hard drugs and dealing instead of cannabis possession while commander in Lambeth. Someone who told the truth about the shooting of the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, which ultimately cost him his job. Someone who’s shown he can and does build trust in the police across all communities, both to make policing fairer and to make sure the police can police more effectively, and who above all will make London a more equal, more united city.

And what about Boris and Ken? Well, they might talk the talk about equality of opportunity, but they’ve never walked the beat. Boris, laid-back Boris, didn’t bother turning up for the riots last year – when it’s Brian who’s been critical of the police commanders who followed their Mayor’s lead and just sat it out, somewhere else, letting it get worse. And Boris, foot in mouth Boris, well, he says things that offend people, but he doesn’t really mean it – he’s just like that. He just doesn’t give a toss. Then there’s Ken, Ken the tax-dodging hypocrite who does know what he’s doing, Ken who’ll say anything to anyone, anything to get elected, anything to put Ken first. Ken who says rich people shouldn’t be allowed to vote – but then dodges millions of pounds in taxes because, like all rich tax-dodgers, he says he can spend the money better and let all the rest of us ordinary people pay more for everything. Ken who uses the shield of actions against discrimination in the past to excuse his nasty dog-whistles to try and appeal to the homophobic vote and the anti-Semitic vote. Who, me, he says – yes, Ken, you. Always ready to divide London just as long as it gets you on top of it.

If you live outside London but have yet to vote for your local councillor, of course, remember that Lib Dems have always run the greenest local councils; that Lib Dem councils have frozen council tax to help you cope, and that the independent Local Government Chronicle says Lib Dem councils are twice as likely to give pay rises for the lowest paid council workers; and that while Tory and Labour councils are closing libraries all over the place, no Lib Dem council has closed a library. Or you could just vote on national issues, and ask: ‘What have the Lib Dems ever done for us?’ [Click to enlarge]


Quite a lot, you know. Hat-tip to Mark Pack, who shows it all much bigger.

For more, Millennium Dome, Elephant is proud of Brian, too, while Cicero remembers how the Labour Party crawled to Rupert Murdoch for nearly twenty years and only ever criticised him once they were out of power and he’d dumped them. How the Tories crawled to Rupert Murdoch and did his bidding, too (and now, shockingly the Tories on the Culture Select Committee still do). And how the SNP crawled to Rupert Murdoch… In fact, only one political party ever showed any integrity or any balls around Rupert Murdoch: he tried to bribe us, he tried to threaten us, he told Vince Cable he’d bring down the wrath of god on us if we tried to stand up to him… And, guess what? Only the Lib Dems ever – and always – stood up to Rupert Murdoch before he suddenly fell, after which it took no balls at all to jump on the bandwagon.

Labels: British Politics, Conservatives, Corruption, Gay, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Local Government, London, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own

It looks today like Lib Dem Ministers have learnt the wrong lesson from history. Recent history is of the vast majority of Lib Dems supporting the Coalition even when some things it’s done have been sickening, not just because of the give-and-take of agreeing to some revolting Toryism to get good Lib-Demmery through, but because most of the nasty stuff has had a simple justification: there’s no money left, so we’re forced into it. But plans to attack civil liberties aren’t like that. They’re not forced. They’re actively choosing to do something illiberal, wrong and against all our Liberal history. So wake up, Minister, or you’ll suddenly discover the point at which every party member outside Westminster tells the Coalition to fuck right off. This is your most dangerous moment, so stop being so bloody complacent and going with the flow.

Many Lib Dems, rightly, think it’s important when in Coalition to communicate more clearly what we stand for, so we’re not submerged at elections. Well, it’s even more important to remember what we stand for for the people inside the Coalition, and Lib Dem Ministers should take a moment to think about our history as their civil servants urge them to just act like “the Government” always acts. We all knew that the Tories’ discovery of civil liberties in Opposition would melt away once they had all the goodies of power back in their hands and all the whisperers of the security state back in their ears. We all know that one day it would be up to you, Minister. Today, Lib Dem Ministers, remember that you’re Liberals and what the fucking point of being there is.

The latest news on Government plans for new cyber-snooping powers are virtually indistinguishable from anything Labour came up with, or any other securocrat-written authoritarian rubbish that’s always put forward by “the Government”. Yes, Labour would have done all this instantly and it took the Coalition two years to go native. That’s not good enough. It’s not worth all the pain of being in Coalition to mildly delay being just like Labour. You’re even trampling the Coalition Agreement on which this Government was founded, signed in the heady days when the Tories still said they believed in freedom.

Hearing on the news that the Liberal Democrats may have some concerns but “support the plans in principle” is exactly the sort of thing that makes me wonder – for the first time – if we ought to vote down the Coalition. There’s a lot it’s done that I don’t like, and I daily feel personally scared by the approach to benefits (because I’m still waiting for my next ATOS summons). But there’s a difference between every choice being a nasty choice, every cut a painful cut, because Labour destroyed the economy, and signing off on something that isn’t forced on you by financial necessity but deliberately turning the Coalition into an authoritarian force for evil (and not saving but wasting more money to feed the securocrats’ wet dreams!).

I’ve often wondered what my own “Red Lines” would be. I’m not grateful to Lib Dem Ministers for drawing them for me.

A fortnight ago, Minister, Liberal Democrat Conference said exactly what we thought about governments thrashing civil liberties and spying on our privacy (and one of the key movers of that motion, Julian Huppert MP, is worried today). You were there, Minister. Had you already seen your briefings? Did you decide it was wiser not to hear the Conference pre-emptively tell you, “No, Minister”? Or did you simply nod, applaud, and then flush it out of your brain as you went back to your desk at the Department of Doing Things the Way Governments Always Do Them?

Today, some Lib Dems are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. We like you. We’re glad you’re in Government. But it’s difficult for most of us not to start shouting when you say stupid things like “the Liberal Democrats support the plans in principle”. We do not. Millennium Dome, Elephant does not. Richard Morris does not. Jennie Rigg does not. Neil Monnery does not. Zoe O’Connell does not. Charlotte Henry does not. Mark Valladares does not. With every minute of this ticking time bomb, more Lib Dems will not. These are not just the usual suspects. If you want a party to come back to when you return to your constituency at the weekend, stop this thing now.

Freedom isn’t always popular. The securocrats are already shouting ‘Look – terrorists!’ and ‘Look – paedophiles!’ as if that answers every question. The papers and the Labour Party will be foaming at the mouth for more, more, more. But there is absolutely no fucking point in being Liberals if we don’t stand up for freedom.

Before the last General Election, I stood up and told Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander that I was deeply worried when they’d written a draft Manifesto in our name that stopped talking about “Freedom” and replaced it with “Safety” and “Strength”. You can watch my speech in which I pointed out just who that sounded like (you might think ironically, in hindsight). And, afterwards, I was told I had a point, and they’d listened, and the real Manifesto would be better – and it was, a bit, though I might have hoped that when it came to the first Manifesto since 1992 that I hadn’t been on the Policy Committee to write bits of it, I wouldn’t be proved to be the only member of the FPC who remembered to put in a little thing like “Freedom”.

Remembering Liberal Democrat history isn’t just about learning from the triumphs, avoiding repeats of the disasters and celebrating our tribe. It’s about remembering that the only reason we’re still here: the only reason Liberals survived after nearly a century of splits, near-oblivion, faltering revivals and then near-oblivion again is that we stood for something no-one else can ever be trusted with. Freedom.

Minister, don’t betray that trust, or you might just destroy your party.


Just a few weeks ago, Mark Park came to me with the idea of an article about Party history, one that would let people know that the arguments we have today are ones we’ve had before, that principles we hold today are ones we’ve held before, that splits we’ve had today are… As yet, nothing like as bad as we’ve had before. We threw around some ideas and – horrors – constrained by a tight word limit we wrote six bullet points for the party newspaper, Liberal Democrat News a week and a half ago. Last week, Mark republished it on Lib Dem Voice. But before I republish it myself below, today it seems appropriate to remember a seventh moment from our history – not from an MP, not from a Minister, but simply from an ordinary party member who threw back for a time what “the Government” always does.

Stopped by a securocrat and told to do what he was told for no reason other than that’s what securocrats always do, Clarence Henry Willcock (no, no relation) said

“I am a Liberal and I am against this sort of thing.”

And freedom prevailed.

Nick, you once said he was one of your heroes. Let him be again. Remember your history. Remember what you stand for. Listen, again, to Lib Dems telling you that freedom is more important than strength and safety. Say “No,” Deputy Prime Minister.

Some Thought-Provoking Reminders of Our Liberal History

Paddy Ashdown once admitted to under-estimating the importance of a party’s history:

“A political party is about more than plans and priorities and policies… It also has a heart and a history and a soul”.

Yet there is no “history of the party” training session for the keen Conference representative nor history briefings for new members. So here are six snippets from the party’s history to entertain, elucidate and illustrate our heart and soul in ways that should still strike a note today.

1. Impressive Firsts

The first Jewish Member of Parliament was Liberal Lionel de Rothschild, elected in 1847 but not able to take his seat until 1858. The first atheist MP was Liberal Charles Bradlaugh, elected in 1880 and finally able to take his seat in 1886. Both fought in Parliament and in multiple elections in order to establish their rights. Also, Robert Throckmorton, elected MP for Berkshire in 1831 as a Whig and then Liberal, was the first Catholic in Parliament for more than 300 years, following the Relief Act of 1829.

The first Asian MP was Liberal Dadabhai Naoroji in 1892. The first female Liberal MP was Margaret Wintringham in 1921, when she succeeded her deceased husband in a by-election. The first female Liberal MP without such a family route to Parliament was Vera Woodhouse in 1923. The first out gay Liberal Democrat MP was Stephen Williams in 2005.

2. Left/Right Confusion

Wanting to make deals with Labour isn’t historically associated with being left-wing. It used to be people seen as being on the party’s Liberal Party’s right (such as Richard Holme) who were keenest on deals with Labour. Conversely, being pro-market forces has not historically been associated with being pro-Conservative. During his time as Leader, Paddy Ashdown both pushed for a much more hard-edged free market attitude and also saw the Liberal Democrats as being part of a common centre-left political mission with Labour.

3. Disputes We’d Rather Forget

The longest and most bitter row after the Liberal Party and the SDP merged to form the Liberal Democrats in 1988 was not over philosophy, policy or even personalities – simply over the word “Liberal” (with no distinction between ‘social’ and ‘economic’). For a while, the new party was named the Social and Liberal Democrats; a mouthful, this was officially shortened to “the Democrats”. Most of the party rebelled and insisted on “Liberal Democrats”. It took several years, an all-member referendum and a constitutional amendment before the name simply became “Liberal Democrats”. Then everyone could get on with shortening it to “Lib Dems”…

4. Heroics We’re Happy To Remember

In 1989, with the new-ish party badly split, a very distant fourth in the European Elections and described by Leader Paddy Ashdown as within the margin of error of nothing in the opinion polls, the most unifying issue the party became known for was a liberal policy on immigration. With Hong Kong about to return to Chinese rule, the Lib Dems were united in saying that Hong Kong residents were entitled to British passports. In contrast, the Conservative Government said only the richest could buy their way in; the Labour Party voted with rebels on the Conservative far right to keep every single one out.

5. Policies That Have Gone From ‘Eccentric’ To Conventional Wisdom

In 1992, the three issues Jeremy Paxman threw against Paddy Ashdown in interviews repeatedly as proof that the Liberal Democrats were extreme and out of touch were Hong Kong passports, green taxes and (what were then called) gay rights. One issue passed; the others are now the mainstream.

6. Avoiding A Coalition Didn’t Work Last Time

The Liberal Party for a short time kept the Labour Party in office in the late 1970s after it lost its majority in the House of Commons. The so-called Lib/Lab Pact was seen by most in the party as at best a missed opportunity and at worst a failure as it did not contain a list of significant policy promises. PR for the European Parliament was lost as the deal only promised a free vote, not the support of Labour MPs.


* Yes, the Liberal Democrat tradition is lists of three things to remember. But there are two of us, OK?

Thanks to Mark Pack for the idea and the drafting, and to Oranjepan for reminding us about Robert Throckmorton.

Labels: Coalition, History, Liberal Democrat Conferences, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Nick Clegg, Paddy Ashdown, Speeches, Stupid Ideas

With his big beard, Rowan Williams looks the ideal Archbishop of Canterbury.

Well, that’s the nice bit over with.

I’ve never been a member of the Church of England – both my youthful Christian tribes rather looked down on it as something wishy-washy in between – but I’ve always taken an interest in its politics, not least because the House of Lords is stuffed with unelected bishops who boss the rest of us around and seem mainly to come out of the woodwork to hate the gays.

I remember when Dr Williams was appointed, to the joy of ‘liberal’ Anglicans and those who expected a thoughtful academic. I’ve watched the disappointment as he’s given in to every conservative demand and pushed his church further into homophobia and against modernity. And his kindly, otherworldy bufferish image, looking exactly like the Church of England as so many imagine it, has been a handy screen for the hate and bigotry that’s increasingly animated its public pronouncements.

So I’m glad he’s going. I’d rather have a sneering bigot that doesn’t make a pretence of reasonableness (though I’d rather have a bigot of any stripe not get an automatic place in Parliament, and free the Church of England to make its own decisions by disestablishing the lot. But that’s another story).

But I snorted at his going back to academia. Because everyone always says what a wise and thoughtful intellectual he is.

Bollocks.

Perhaps he is, when actually an academic and held to peer-reviewed standards. But I’ll always remember his ‘intellectual’ pronouncements as Archbishop of Canterbury, giving long speeches full of mendacious empire-building and supported by covering fire from vicious spin-doctors.

Always remember that Rowan Williams was a politician, sitting in the Lords, making political pronouncements, and advancing his own agenda through lies and spin.

Next time someone gives him reverential deference because of how otherworldly but wise he is, please have a read of my in-depth fisking of one of his most infamous speeches, in which he tried to wind back centuries of the Rule of Law and pile up his tribal privileges: Rowan Williams In Detail: Deceitful, Demented or Naïve to the Point of Idiocy?. I think it’s still one of my best articles. And I think it shows him up for the devious, rotten authoritarian he is.


And, obviously, no-one with my name would wish childishly that the “smart money” is right and the Bishop of Coventry gets the nod, so that his name is constantly put on screen as the country’s main cheerleader for homophobic medievalism.

Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, Gay, Lords, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Religion, Speeches

In thirteen years of authoritarian government, the Labour Party inflicted 4,400 new laws on the UK – more than any other government in British history.

Though Labour is all over the place on almost every policy in Opposition – alternating between Tory and Trot – there’s one thing in which they’re consistent.

Labour is still determined to be to the far right of the Libera-Tory Coalition on law and order, immigration, civil liberties… Basically, they’ll say anything to please a Tory or a Trot, but the one thing that keeps them together is that they’re never, ever Liberal.

Labels: British Politics, Labour, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Things To Remember About Labour

Education, freedom of information and children’s rights are today’s issues in my ongoing republication of Love and Liberty, the booklet on Liberalism I originally wrote back in 1999. It’s part of my contribution to exploring what the Liberal Democrats stand for, as the coalition continues and Conference looms. I’ve added a few more notes and polished up a few sentences today, while stopping short of a temptingly total rewrite; I still mostly agree with myself, but if any of the instalments have dated, it’s this. Spot the one written just a year after discovering the Internet…

Liberty: Freedom from Ignorance

Setting out the aim that “no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity” doesn’t mean that these three giants have to be tackled entirely separately. All three stop freedom – all three are often linked. And perhaps the biggest link from one of them to another is, as I mentioned yesterday, that creating opportunities for people to free themselves from poverty leads directly into the Liberal fight for freedom from ignorance. Education, in its many forms, is at the heart of Liberal tools for people to take up their own power and opportunities – and much of building a Liberal society is based on involving people in decisions, which can only really be done with free information.

Practical Freedom of Information

Liberalism aims to increase the power and responsibility of every individual, yet the political system we have now often seems designed to have the opposite effect – something that’s not just counterproductive for unleashing the power of individuals, but of government as well. Making freedom of information a practical reality isn’t just about stopping all levels of government getting in the way and holding it to account, but making it work better, too. Individuals who are responsible, equipped with skills and information to take and use power need a co-operative, open political system, but equally the political system needs to be open to those individuals to work properly. Think about it – if the government orders people to implement difficult proposals like cutting energy use (or spending, for that matter), all they’ll get is resistance; give people the information and power to develop their own solutions, and everyone’s better off. Top-down, standardised solutions can never work as well as those where the people affected are involved in developing and delivering them – for example, redesigning estates through “Planning for Real”, giving those who live there control over their own space and pride in their own housing. This makes freedom of information essential to democracy, for the government as much as the ‘governed’.

Secrecy is used by governments to dominate and to reduce power and choice for anyone else. The British government has always been immensely secretive, shored up over centuries by a monarchy and now the practical exercise of prerogative powers whose lack of accountability is legitimised by tradition. By contrast, democracy is based on openness and on informed choice. No wonder that our undemocratic un-constitution makes corruption so easy, or that Labour have fallen prey to the temptation not to deliver on effective freedom of information. Choice isn’t a real choice if it’s a choice denied access to the facts, still less a deliberately misleading choice. The same is true of economic choices. Surely if you want as ‘free’ a market as possible, that depends on informed choices to work in an ‘undistorted’ way, yet Thatcherites in power – Tory or Labour – have seemed strangely unconvinced of its benefits, preferring to let the big businesses that coincidentally give them so much money give as little information as they like. I wonder what a really aggressive implementation of freedom of information might do to make markets more open (imagine the effect of ‘original cost price’ labels on mark-ups, or ‘longevity estimates’ on planned obsolescence or shoddy work)? It might even reduce demand and consumption (with better-made products more labour-intensive), and have even greater environmental effects than labels indicating non-renewables, artificial chemicals or genetic modification.

So how do you get hold of ‘free’ information? It must be available, easily and cheaply, to be of worth. It’s dispiriting that the last couple of decades of disastrously illiberal governments have presided over the crippling of public libraries, whether through central policy or through dictating local government spending by imposing capping and ring-fencing. And yet libraries are on the front line of freedom of information and education throughout life, a resource that should be there for all to use, the absence of which hits the financially disadvantaged worst. Librarian numbers, skills and conditions have been savaged in a way that no government would dare for, say, teachers; many services buy virtually no new books; opening hours are shrinking; and, increasingly, services other than books on the shelf are made available only to individuals willing and able to pay. What expansion libraries might have in the immediate future is as centres for Internet access, a massive tool that needs to be open to all and is much cheaper to provide than books – and probably the invention that most utterly undermines censorship since printing. Censorship strikes both at self-expression and access to information, stopping people speaking up or finding things out for themselves.

Education

There are few duties of government – local and national – more important, though, than education itself. And while giving people the knowledge and skills for work has to be a vital part of that, it can’t be everything: if you’re ever to grow up to hold government to account rather than let it be in charge of you, school’s where that instinct has to start. The more governments bleat that schools need to be more about discipline, the more you wonder if it’s not because they’re scared that schools might be too much about asking questions, when I’m worried that the target culture means it doesn’t do nearly enough of that. Make education about equipping people with knowledge, skills and self-confidence, make it about how to understand and fulfil your rights, make it the opposite of exclusion and discrimination. Above all, make it about giving you the opportunity to discover and develop your own potential. Education is the most powerful way for people to pull out of poverty, to shape their own future by developing their skills and enhancing their strengths for the benefit of themselves and for others. It should give, and to break down ignorance and give people the tools to make their own way. It is essential for equal opportunities, freedom and adaptation.

I’m sure all that’s something that most teachers want to do. And yet all that politicians ever seem to say about schools is that ‘standards’ are too low – then set targets to prove that they aren’t. It’s as if the priority is to pretend that everyone’s the same, rather than encouraging questioning individuals. Many teachers try; many pupils end up that way; but the basic system doesn’t seem to encourage it. One of the principal differences between most children and most adults is that children approach life with curiosity tempered by trust, while too many adults display only dull submission, tempered by suspicion. To talk of education purely in terms of economic investment and job training, rather than treating this aspect as only a part of wider development, is missing too much of the point.

The structure of the school system, too, seems to be all about the economy, with governments shouting, ‘private bad! Public good’ – or, much more often, the other way round – and being more interested in diversity of ‘providers’ than diversity of ideas or different backgrounds. If you want to build a society of integrated individuals, constructing a system that means even children only mix with ‘their own sort’ can’t be the right way to do about it. Wouldn’t it be better to look at ways for kids of different races, religions, classes and house prices to mix freely, so that by being encouraged to think for themselves, education breaks down prejudice and encourages different points of view through different experience, rather than hindering all that by splitting off children into schools based on money, background or the latest government ideology rather than diversity.

For the Sake of the Children

How should society enable the rights of children, when the media portray them either as ‘angels’ or ‘monsters’, one set too innocent to have rights and the other not deserving of any? Particularly for adolescents, as society drives both to ‘look after children for longer’ and to make them more ‘responsible’ earlier, which together are unlikely to inspire the development of real responsibility. Throw in this age’s biggest tabloid fear, of paedophiles lurking everywhere, and how to protect without losing childhood’s freedom or creating a climate of fear and persecution is a terrible dilemma. There’s no more tempting or dangerous line in politics than ‘For the sake of the children’ – and it’s not just children that are affected, with them touted as excuses by authoritarians whose real aim is to control adults like children, ‘for their own good’ (two-thirds of households don’t contain children; every censor appeals to ‘but what if children see this?’).

This is symptomatic of the areas where Liberalism has the most trouble: those where it’s difficult to apply democracy or informed choice. I’ve said that’s the problem with international action, which lacks appropriate institutions for informed consent, while children are simply unable to take up most rights. At what stage can they make their own informed choices? There is no reliable answer, as individuals develop at different ages. Set an age of ‘independence’ too high, and you suppress individual development. Set it too low, and you risk exploitation. Yet with most rights and responsibilities in society an either / or choice, it seems too often that children have to be cossetted away from the right to any decision about themselves (‘angels’) until, if they step out of line, suddenly they have absolute moral culpability (‘monsters’). Perhaps it’s not just by encouraging children to ask questions that schools might help bridge the gap, but by pupil governors and school councils coming back into fashion so that young individuals get used to finding more responsibility and more involvement in decisions that affect them.

If you want a real clash over the idea of rights for children, just ask a parent, more so than ever these days when every newspaper sees bigger sales in making every parent scared to death of any child that’s not wrapped up in cotton wool. I’m suspicious of the concept of ‘parents’ rights’, as if children are merely extensions of their parents until they hit sixteen and turn to adults with one bound. It clearly impedes children’s development and information to make their own decisions if parents are able to excuse them from sex or religious education; schools can be a bulwark against bigotry at home, or simply a chance to learn something new that isn’t primarily academic. Yet look at the alternative. I’m even more suspicious of the state deciding it knows best about parenting. Kids’ rights to decent facilities, learning, hearing different views and meeting different people must be balanced against their need for decent, loving families, however they decide to live; when governments use their power not to set minimum standards but to tell everyone how to live, things go disastrously wrong, whether in failed top-down solutions such as bussing children around in the States to get more socially and racially mixed schools, or setting too-eager targets to take children from their parents because ‘we know best’. Even when looking out for children, Liberalism still has to be the enemy of authoritarianism – however tempting it is to ‘do good’. Treating adults as children is surely not the answer.

I can see why I was having a crisis of confidence after reading these last three main instalments again last year; while a lot of today’s is still on the right lines, a lot of this one felt like a mixture of clichés strung together, topical policy ideas that I liked the sound of and wanted to cram in, and bits that have dated terribly (yes, what a good idea it was to deal with the whole subjects of the Internet and of censorship in two lines at the end of a paragraph about something completely different). But, again, I’ve only rewritten some of my more clunking prose here, though this was the one on which I most felt like starting from scratch. If I ever do that, it’ll have to be the whole thing, not just one piece. It does, at least, tie in quite neatly to what I had to say about Liberal Intervention and the sorts of issues where Liberalism’s philosophical basis of informed consent has nowhere settled to stand, as in my thoughtful and understated article, “When Liberals Attack!”

You can find the evolving links to the whole of Love and Liberty with an introduction here. Over the following days, I’ll be expanding on the liberty at the heart of my Liberalism – check back to that contents list and watch for those links to spring into life.

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Labels: Books, Education, Environment, Ideas, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, What the Lib Dems Stand For

Many people feel, now we’re in coalition, that they don’t know what the Liberal Democrats stand for. Answering that question has never been more important – but it’s not a new problem. For many of us, Liberalism is the clearest, most consistent philosophy among Britain’s political parties… But not a lot of other people see it that way! Back in 1999, the Passports To Liberty series published my own idea of Liberalism, Love and Liberty. I’ve previously republished some of it here, adding new notes. Tonight I set out why freedom from poverty is one of our three great aims.

I actually started republishing Love and Liberty split across a series of ten more manageable posts early last year, inspired by the forthcoming General Election. I read the whole thing again; I decided not to rewrite it from scratch, though there were plenty of bits that might have been better that way, deciding that I still agreed with myself – mostly – and so it wasn’t worth trying to reinvent it; I made the odd change or addition, largely to clean up some of the clumsier passages, add appropriate links or insert more up-to-date quotes from Lib Dem politicians and knocking copy against the others (being at the fag-end of a terrible Labour Government instead of just past the fag-end of a terrible Tory one). It was going to add up to the first – or first ten – in a mammoth series of articles looking at my and many other people’s ideas of ‘What the Liberal Democrats stand for’. And, 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?

I wasn’t expecting it all to unravel, but suddenly it did. After polishing and publishing six of the ten parts, I came to a grinding halt, and I still can’t say precisely why.

In part, it was because I became rather ill – which I very often am. In part, because after being very ill, my flow was broken (and before long I became much more ill, and stayed that way for most of last year). But it was also, I think, a crisis of confidence. Sections seven to nine were different to the rest of the essay. Where the rest of it follows a clear philosophical thread, these were basically bundles of loosely linked policies. They didn’t flow as naturally; they weren’t as well-written; they seemed a jarring change from the rest of what I’d written; they had enormous gaps where I really should have expanded into other issues, or where what I said was far too skimpy (probably because at the time I first wrote it, I’d seen something I needed to raise, but couldn’t think of anything interesting to say and just mentioned it in passing). And they seemed a bit pompous as a result. I’d really liked the previous bit I’d published, too, which as it turned out didn't help – after I’d felt uplifted by re-reading section VI, Equal Voices, Different Choices, nodding along and feeling it came from the heart (or from Conrad), suddenly the rest just felt like a cobbled-together manifesto. And once I lost confidence in myself, it was very difficult to go back.

Well, I’m back. I’ve read it all over again; I still mostly agree with it. And I do feel now that, more than ever, we need to set out what the Liberal Democrats stand for – so I should finish setting out what I thought about Liberalism, so I’ve got something to build on.

Of course, if you want to read the best book on Liberalism published in 1999, you should read Conrad Russell’s An Intelligent Person’s Guide To Liberalism, obviously. But mine’s free.

You don’t need to have read any of the other sections before starting on the latest one, but none of the individual pieces are very long (fortunately), so if you want to catch up, here’s the story so far. And, hopefully, the rest will be along in rather less than eighteen months.

Introduction and Contents

Part One: Love

One Person, One Value
Liberal Individualism
Liberal Internationalism
Green Liberalism

Part Two: Liberty

Equal Voices, Different Choices

And now, at last…

Liberty: Freedom from Poverty

The three most important challenges for Liberals set out in the Preamble to the Liberal Democrat Constitution are to ensure that that “no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity” – because those three are the three biggest roadblocks standing in the way of people’s freedoms. And by putting freedom from poverty even before freedom from ignorance and conformity, the Liberal Democrats make a bold statement that for Liberalism to mean anything, it must be social Liberalism.

Poverty Stands in the Way of Freedom

“To have a little freedom, you must have a little money”

said occasional Liberal Winston Churchill, rarely today regarded as having been on the fierily anti-Conservative wing of the party. He was pointing out the material baseline to equality of opportunity – but it isn’t an end in itself, maximising choices and chances goes deeper than elementary social justice. Liberalism doesn’t fall into the trap of assuming that possessing ever-increasing amounts of money is always the same as enjoying ever-expanding freedom, nor into the trap of enforcing equality of outcomes to give everyone equal wealth and assume that the work of liberation for all has miraculously completed. Material well-being is an essential base on which to build, not the only end in itself. Happiness, self-discovery and self-fulfilment are not just material, but also come from unleashing individuality and imagination – whatever the tunnel vision of materialists from ‘left’ and ‘right’ alike might think. By treating every individual as uniquely precious through their simple humanity, whatever their choices in life, Liberalism makes equality of opportunity central.

When you recognise every individual as equally valid, important, unique and precious, no-one can be just dismissed as a ‘failure’ and tossed on the scrapheap, or left forever trapped by poverty. Equal access to the essentials for making choices is a precondition for choice. For people to have a fair chance to exercise freedom to think and act, Liberals must fight for freedom from poverty and all the disadvantages associated with it. Uniting freedom from poverty and ignorance from the start of his Leadership, Nick Clegg raised the issue of the comparative wealth, health and death rates in his home city of Sheffield (where a child born in a poor part of the city is likely to die fourteen years before a child born up the road), leading to setting extra money for early years education as the most powerful way out of poverty and to tackle the high stress, poor health, susceptibility to infection, and earlier deaths that all follow for too many trapped in low income areas. While Liberal Democrats have long argued for more such ladders out of poverty, too many institutions instead pull them away, denying people living in poorer areas essential services for anything from banking to entertainment to crime prevention. Freedom from poverty is a means to reach many other freedoms.

Liberal internationalism also demands action to assist members of the human family who suffer in utter, absolute poverty; for huge numbers of the world’s citizens, ‘economic liberty’ would have to start with freedom from economic insecurity and privation. Countries with the power, money and resources to help have a duty to do so, most clearly through overseas aid, while guarding against over-prescriptive strings attached to that ‘aid’; at home and abroad, programmes to reduce poverty must create opportunities and self-reliance, rather than making people jump through ‘moral’ hoops and denying dignity by meting out crumbs as if to children who’ll never be allowed to grow up. And once again, it’s not just love but pragmatism that calls for action – global environmental degradation and pollution, the flow of refugees and the hope of security are all intimately tied to how well we help our fellow humans to build themselves up.

Success Needs Freedom

Not just poverty itself, but the fear of it through desperate insecurity must also be challenged. In the words of William Beveridge, perhaps the Twentieth Century’s most influential British Liberal in fighting poverty:

“A starving man is not free, because till he is fed, he cannot have a thought for anything but how to meet his urgent physical needs… a man who dare not resent what he feels to be an injustice from an employer or a foreman, lest this condemn him to chronic unemployment, is not free.”

Liberals support fairness at work, so employers can’t bully their employees; for practical reasons, involving a business’ own workers in decision-making not only makes them more secure, but by introducing more ideas, makes the work more successful. Freedom from poverty needs economic success – and with small businesses usually the bedrock of a successful economy, Liberals have long advocated small-scale, imaginative solutions to boost financial autonomy, security and creativity, such as co-operative enterprises. If you want to unlock people from poverty, unleashing creativity to succeed has to be a major part of it. As Nick Clegg said:

“A Liberal believes in the raucous, unpredictable capacity of people to take decisions about their own lives.”

Labour in power have seen poverty as something to be levered out of, ticking boxes to make sure that you’ve moved by exactly the prescribed increment so as to meet exactly the right target. ‘Freedom’ has nothing to do with it. It’s no surprise that they’ve failed their own targets as a result, with the gap between rich and poor wider than at the height of Mrs Thatcher’s government. Perhaps doubling the rate of income tax paid by the lowest earners, while giving massive tax breaks for the rich by slashing Capital Gains Tax, wasn’t such a great idea after all? Which is why the Liberal Democrats would raise the income tax threshold to let people on low incomes earn more of their own money – without having to pay it to the Labour Government, fill out a hundred forms, feed it through a tortuous bureaucracy, then if they’re lucky have a bit of it dribble out back to them if the Labour Party thinks they’re ‘deserving’. And paid for in part by reversing Labour’s tax loopholes for the rich that have allowed that gap to grow so wildly, reducing poverty and increasing fairness.

The Conservatives say they want tax cuts too, of course. But of a very different kind. Cut services to the poor; give the money to dead millionaires. But then poverty has never been a major Tory concern. Where Labour’s regimented approach to poverty had nothing to do with freedom, Conservative ‘freedoms’ have tended to create limited ‘choice’ while destroying opportunity. This is just the ‘freedom’ to exploit, not real liberty that can be gained and shared by all. Creating opportunity is necessary to enable many people to exercise real choices, but making choices for people is an abuse of power.

Freedom from poverty doesn’t mean doing everything for everyone, or putting up material ‘progress’ as a panacea, or forcing people through conditional hoops to win their basic dignity. It means simply removing a massive barrier in order that people can develop along their own line, so long as they don’t harm others, and unleashing talents which would otherwise have no opportunity to flourish for themselves, or to benefit anyone else.

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Labels: Books, Ideas, Liberal Democrats, Liberalism, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, Personal, Tax, What the Lib Dems Stand For