In the South East we took a bit of battering, just like the rest of the country. On Thursday, 18th June 2015 Kent Liberal Youth held a #liberalpint event in Maidstone. Considering everyone is saying that the Lib Dems are slowly dying out, it’s not the case for Kent Liberal Youth. We had over eleven new members who were under the age of eighteen, plus another five who were over eighteen.
We had a great discussion on what issues we were passionate about, we had members say they were passionate about drug reform, education, civil liberties, campaigning against secret courts and being liberal.
We also asked members why they joined the party. Here’s a new member, Isabelle Cherry from Medway, who recently joined the party:
I joined the party because I studied politics in sixth form, and one unit was political parties. I discovered my views align mostly with the Lib Dems, and on all the other units, such as constitutions, my teacher pointed out I always had a liberal stance.
I officially joined the Lib Dems as a response to the disastrous Rochester & Strood by-election, deciding more people need to stand up for liberalism in this constituency. My hopes for the party are that Lib Dems are rebuilt in Medway and nationally, as no other party stands up as enthusiastically for our rights and freedoms as we do.
Our fight back is important because our core values are important to the general public. The general public will soon realise this as the Tories start to dismantle freedoms, undo fairness and take people for granted – the very people that Liberal Democrats feel should not be enslaved by ignorance, poverty or conformity.
So the youth wing of the party is stronger than ever before and we are ready for the #libdemfightback.
* Luke Chapman is Chair of South East Liberal Youth
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3 Comments
Glad to see the enthusiasm of young people campaigning for liberal values and against the unfairness of our politics.
I wish you well.
That’s great Luke and so encouraging for those of us who are getting on a bit.
It would seem to me that housing and jobs are the biggest issues for young people. If you are forced to live with your parents because the high cost of housing makes it impossible to get a place of your own, isn’t that a big imposition on your freedom? If you scrape by with no spare money beyond subsistence level because you can’t get a job, isn’t that a big imposition on your freedom?
Yet these issues are not even mentioned here. When I was involved in starting a Young Liberals branch in the south-east, housing was one of our big issues, because already young people were suffering from high prices locally, and we felt it was very much in the interest of young people to oppose the message “Hurrah, house prices are rising” which was being put across, one which of course is good only for those who already have houses.