Author Archives: Cllr Jenni Clutten

To hear someone talk down a youth organisation purely because it is being run by young people and therefore ‘set to fail’ is offensive to my ears. I have long witnessed and experienced the importance of young people being able to make decisions for themselves and to be involved in the production and implementation of the services they access. It is along these lines that I must defend Liberal Youth and the young people that it represents.

I have fallen in and out of love with LDYS, now Liberal Youth, various times but I would never proclaim that it should not exist. To state that it should not have the freedom it currently enjoys is misguided. There are so many ways that young people can offer an amazing and refreshing way of dealing with problems and really carve out a place for themselves by being given the freedom to experiment.

Yet it is important that as young people we are not expected to get things right all the time and that we should not be overtly punished for getting things wrong. Whether or not we like to forget it, LDYS gave a lot to the party, including a number of MPs and good strong campaign messages with the ability to mobilise a large amount of energetic support. Liberal Youth will be the same and has already shown encouraging signs of engaging young people with the party, including two of this years executive becoming Liberal Democrat Councillors and the success of the recruitment at Reading University branch leading to the leaders award for membership.

I wonder what is the point in life if we are not allowed to make mistakes? I know we as a party are concerned about reputation and media perception but it is important we allow young people the space to practise, to engage and to enjoy being both young and politically active. Much of the problems that arise within Liberal Youth centre around the reputations that people build. I have always found that we as a party tend to expect a lot from a small number of people, this seems to be a natural development which we could all try our best to break away from. The fact remains that decisions are best made by the people that they directly affect and as far as youth provision is concerned it should be coordinated and developed by young people of a variety of ages and backgrounds.

There are several problems that it is possible to identify in regard to Liberal Youth which I think cause problems in the long term.