Fifty years ago, I was starting at City University. It was my second attempt: I had spent an unhappy term at Southampton several years earlier, and as part of my plan to enjoy university more, I decided to join a society at the Freshers’ Fair. I wasn’t a Tory and definitely not a socialist, but I liked the Liberal Party’s views on apartheid and gay rights (not that I had ever consciously met a gay person). I joined the Liberal Society and went along to a meeting, where I remember being very impressed by a postgrad, David Heath, who later became leader of Somerset County Council and an MP. Little did I know this would spark 50 years (so far) of involvement in the Liberal Party and the Lib Dems.

I accepted an invitation to become the Liberal Society Press Officer, which meant writing pieces for the student newspaper and led to my first foray into public speaking at student union meetings. My appetite whetted, I stood in my first election—for the NUS delegation—where to my surprise (and that of the more hardened hacks), I topped the poll. My hustings speech arguing that the NUS should keep out of national politics went down a storm!

In those days, there were separate organisations for students (the Union of Liberal Students) and young people more generally (the Young Liberals). I became Treasurer of ULS and co-founded the Weybridge YL branch alongside future MP Richard Younger-Ross.

I spent an awful lot of time on politics, and it even shaped my career. I joined BT as a graduate trainee after a friend pointed out that they gave staff four weeks’ paid leave to fight a parliamentary election. At BT, I became a trade union member and branch secretary, taking part in a nine-week strike. The high point was persuading the driver of a vehicle who had come to clean the drains at BT HQ to turn away while I was on picket duty. With some Liberal friends, I helped organise a coup in the Association of Liberal Trade Unionists, becoming its Chair, and stood as the PPC for the Liberal/SDP Alliance in Holborn and St Pancras in 1987.

I was not a fan of the merger with the SDP and voted against it. As I got busier at work, married, and had a son, I drifted away from activism, though I stayed in touch with friends, read the gossip in Liberator, and remained a member.

Fast forward to 2009, when I started attending local meetings in Wimbledon. I went to the Special Conference in 2010 to endorse the Coalition (it was striking how many old acquaintances  I hadn’t seen in decades were in the hall) and gradually re-immersed myself. Over the years, I’ve served on the Federal Board in various roles—I suspect I may be the last person to have sat on both the old Liberal Party Executive and the Lib Dem Board—as well as the Conference Committee, and since January have been a member of the Federal Policy Committee.

In August 2017, I retired and my retirement project was to win a seat on Merton Council. I was elected in 2018 alongside five colleagues, and re-elected in 2022 and again this May. Wimbledon has been one of the Party’s successes culminating in 2024 with the election of Paul Kohler—the first time I have ever lived in a constituency represented by a Lib Dem MP!   I help out in Paul’s office from time to time and it has been eye opening to see the vast range and volume of problems MPs  help their constituents with.

The Party has changed enormously since I joined, as has the world. In 1976, no one foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Britain’s chief economic anxieties were double-digit inflation and the balance of payments.

Today, our Party has become far more trusting of the state to solve problems (perhaps lingering effect of the  SDP), with vastly more focus on identity politics and the environment and much less on foreign affairs ( apart from the EU of course). We spend much more time calling for increased public spending as a  cure-all, and far less time discussing industrial democracy and the management of business, as the bitter union/management battles of the 1960s and 70s have receded. On the other hand at the Margate Assembly in 1979 (a truly awful venue), we passed a motion declaring economic growth neither “achievable nor desirable,” whereas today motions backing growth pass without debate.

Some principles taken for granted back then, like robust support for free speech, feel much more contested today (perhaps we should resurrect the tradition of presenting Party Presidents with a copy of Mill’s On Liberty). On other civil liberties issues though, like defending jury trials, we remain as resolute as ever. But the biggest shift is that 50 years ago we shared an instinctive suspicion of the state—and I am not convinced that remains part of our core DNA.

Have I achieved anything in half a century? I have certainly helped residents. I still treasure a letter from a resident in West Ham who had spent years trying to get a council issue resolved; I managed to sort it out  in weeks (in those days, a confident manner and middle-class accent got  one further with council officers than they do now). I am also deeply proud of our long campaign to make Merton Council an accredited London Living Wage employer. We were told repeatedly it was impossible, yet today it is reality.

Did I make the right choice at that City University Freshers’ Fair? I believe so—and not just for the lifelong friendships it gave me. While I have often been frustrated by our Leaders and disagreed profoundly with some  Conference motions, the Liberal Democrats remain the natural home for someone like me who believes individuals should live free as far as possible from state interference, and that a dynamic market economy is what funds the public goods we care about.

This isn’t a valedictory address. I still have leaflets to bundle, council casework to answer, and a report for the Board of Liberal Britain to draft. The Lib Dems are still the party for me.

* Simon McGrath is a councillor in the London Borough of Merton, a member of the Federal Policy Committee, and serves on the Board of Liberal Britain (formerly Liberal Reform).