Author Archives: Edis Bevan

Agenda 2020 Essay #20: What it means to be a Liberal Democrat today

By Edis Bevan | Thu 5th November 2015 - 12:37 pm

Wars, family experience and deafness helped me be a Liberal.

For me, to be a Liberal Democrat today means making sure we don’t go back to the world that scarred my parents generation. We do have reasons for hope. We need to gather all our strengths to give life to that hope.

My parents lives gave me a lot to think about. They had to deal with terrible events, as best they could. To make a positive difference however small and futile it may seem.

My mother was Lithuanian. She experienced life under both Stalin and Hitler. Active in the anti-Nazi resistance, then a refugee fleeing the Soviet advance. In the last months of WW2 she was a slave labourer on a German farm. When my dad met her she still had the marks of whippings visible on her back.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged agenda 2020 essay competition | 2 Comments

Poetry for harassed Liberal Democrats

By Edis Bevan | Tue 28th February 2012 - 4:17 pm

Call us quirky, but a touch of culture, and a moment to reflect never does any harm. So, when Liberal Democrat Voice received this contribution, we wondered where it fitted. But then, why should a political website be entirely serious?…

In a mad world, remember Denmark’s Piet Hein. Theoretical physicist, poet, wartime resistance activist, mathematician and simply a human being in all its warmest glory. His short poems (Grooks) have a haiku-like quality, reflecting on the simple complexities of life, and as a consequence of real politics as it hits real people. I have cherished these gems for a long time, …