Amidst the party’s recent problems, a lot of people have been talking about the party’s principles, and in particular, the preamble to the constitution.
As a statement of principles, it’s fine – I would imagine that most Liberal Democrats can sit through it, nodding in broad agreement. It speaks to my head – but not my heart.
And we mustn’t imagine that it’s set in stone. I recently dug up this beauty: the Preamble to the Constitution of the old Liberal Party, from 1980. It’s stirring stuff, and is really worth a read.
The original preamble was written in 1936 by Elliott Dodds and Ramsay Muir, two of the sharpest minds the Liberal Party ever produced, who were responsible for vast swathes of long-standing, distinctive Liberal policies. As you can tell from the 1980 text, it had been periodically amended by Liberal Assemblies, to bring it up to date. But in all its many forms, it’s a beautiful, moving, poetic vision of what a Liberal society would look like. It’s certainly far more moving than today’s preamble, which is almost pedestrian by comparison.
What’s striking about the 1980 text is just how radical it is – clear commitments to the principles of global federalism, private property ownership, redistribution of property by the state to make that happen, multilateral disarmament, the breaking down of monopolies, land value taxation, and the waging of war on poverty and hunger worldwide. Some of these are topics which we as a party haven’t discussed in decades, yet which have never been more relevant. It says far more than the new preamble, with its vague generalisations. Indeed, the only really memorable phrase of the new preamble – that “none shall not be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity” – is a direct lift from the old text.
The current text was really a compromise created out of convenience; a late 1980s fudge generated by the SDP refusing to commit to many of the more radical components of Liberal policy. This is ironic, given that the loudest voices now calling for a return to such radical liberal themes are often those with a social democratic cut to their jib.
The 1988 merger talks were so traumatic, that throughout the 1990s and 2000s, no-one really wanted to revisit the preamble text, and the wrangling around its phrasing. As a result, it has gone unamended for 26 years. I think it will soon be high time to look again at this fundamental declaration of our principles.
I am not arguing that we should resurrect a decades-old text verbatim and unamended. But beyond 2015, the time would be right to re-examine our values, and revisit some of the fine ideas and themes of the preamble, in old and new form – and this fine, admirable, principled old text from our Liberal heritage offers some good pointers on the direction we could take.
* Dr Seth Thévoz is an academic historian, and former member of the Social Liberal Forum’s Council. He writes here in a personal capacity.
102 Comments
Er….isn’t this the current constitution of the UK Liberal Party?
Matt: No, they have an amended, updated and revised version of the old Liberal constitution – just like the Liberal Democrats do. But they’ve taken it in a different direction.
Wow. I see what you mean about the old one. While I have nothing against any of the content in the current preamble it doesn’t really lift me or sound radical and bold in the way the old one does.
Not so sure about a World Authority or abolition of national armies though.
I loved the bit about World Government & the need for everyone to have significant Personal Property but for a preamble its a bit long.
Paul: The 1980 preamble I’ve linked to is 459 words long. The present preamble is 799 words long.
It’s just a little bit over a month until the 50th anniversary of the 1964 general election, which happened on October 15th, 1964. The Liberal manifesto in that election was called “Think For Yourself” (would any party dare to use a title like that any more?). Here is a link: http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/man/lib64.htm
It is an excellent manifesto that even after 50 years looks fresh and forward-thinking. For example “The age of automation could be an age when the individual is trampled on and power is dangerously concentrated in the hands of big business and the state. Change must be humanised so that the new wealth within our reach is used to give the individual a richer life and protect the weak.”
The tone in this reflects Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 speech in which he warned about the dangers of the rise of the military-industrial complex.
The manifesto is optimistic, internationalist, progressive and challenging. What a contrast to the dreary focus-group led pap that so often passes for political discourse today.
Now perhaps you can see why some of us were unhappy about the merger at the time, and also just how offensive it is when people today use the word “liberal” to mean “extreme free market economics” and move from that to assuming that the pre-merger Liberal Party was mainly about pushing free market economics and talk about the division in the Liberal Democrats today as if the free market fanatics that are trying to take it over are the descendants of pre-merge Liberal Party thinking.
To that end, recently uncovered my grandfather’s election leaflet from 1945. Quite apart from the fact that is titled “Blackburn Backs Beveridge”, it’s full of solid social liberal content on education, pensions, the NHI and even a minimum wage! This unfettered free market revisionism needs to be challenged every time it rears its ugly head.
Nice reminder of the constitution of the party I first joined!
But Seth (the author rather than the subsequent contributor), although many excellent free-thinking social democrats did stay with the Owen-free Liberal Democrats, I must take exception with your comment that “This is ironic, given that the loudest voices now calling for a return to such radical liberal themes are often those with a social democratic cut to their jib.” I don’t think this would stand up to proper scrutiny if you ran a straw poll here!
@Matthew Huntbach 10th Sep ’14 – 8:36pm – Couldn’t agree more … and would also add the abuse of the term radical/radicalisation which has been corrupted so that it now covers some pretty nasty illiberal ideologies rather than it standard European political usage. Oh the blessings of a free media (free at the point of misuse?).
Thanks for the above comments.
Stephen: I should perhaps make clear that I *am* the original author! You’re quite right that a great many social democrats differed from the Owenite “social market”/free-market ideology. In their excellent study of the SDP, Ivor Crewe and Anthony King nicely tease out the differences between Owen’s idiosyncratic (almost Thatcherite) views from the more recognisably social democratic ideas extolled by Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers.
I also take your point about a straw poll perhaps not showing a majority of people now sympathetic to these views being ex-SDP. Indeed, given how few SDP members actually made the crossover into the merged party (about a third of the old SDP, compared to about two thirds of the old Liberal Party, with both being about the same size), it’s often misleading to talk of a Liberal/SDP divide in today’s Liberal Democrats. What I was more trying to get at – perhaps clumsily, within the constraints of the word count – was that people of a social democratic persuasion may well have reassessed these positions in the last 25 years. Context is everything. In the 1980s, the SDP can (perhaps unfairly?) be characterised as the right of the old Labour Party, keen to put some clear blue water between themselves, and the worst excesses of the far left of the 1980s Labour Party. It’s not surprising that they shuddered at the mention of the redistribution of property, just as it’s not surprising that their merger negotiation team vetoed such references in the merged party constitution. But today’s social democrats would be well to the left of the current party leadership. Whereas they would have been opponents of these kinds of policy moves from liberals in the 1980s, today they can be viewed as allies, and arguably, a renewed emphasis on some of these key themes could provide a unifying – not to mention, refreshingly principles and appealing – platform.
*principled*, not ‘principles’ – pardon my stubby fingers on my keyboard!
Hi Seth, thank you for the added context. 🙂 … in that case I think we pretty much agree – although as the sometime ‘Preamble Liberal’, I must say that had the present leadership paid more than petty lip service to the present constitution, we wouldn’t be in the dire situation in which we find ourselves today.
Economically, the Clegg-Laws-Browne strand of Orange Bookery probably has more in common with Owenism than it does with our present constitution.
I am not adverse to revisiting the preamble but we must not lose sight of the main problem – that is those attempts to turn us into a party of sub-Thatcherite economics while otherwise being ‘anchored firmly to the centre’.
3. At home its goal is a country in which the powers of the State will be used to establish social justice, to wage war against poverty, to spread wealth and power, to ensure that the country’s resources are wisely and fully developed for the benefit of the whole community, and to create the positive conditions which will make a full and free life possible for all regardless of colour, creed, race or sex; a country in which, under the protection of law, all citizens shall have the right to think freely, to speak freely, to write freely, and to vote freely;
Not exactly an endorsement of the Orange Book revisionists is it?
“Using the power of the state … to wage war against poverty”— I always liked that bit.
How typical that this thread would naturally be reduced into the simplistic social liberal v. the free-market dichotomy. The usual suspects at work, I see… Such a shame as this document is so much more complex, a nuance quickly lost on this thread!
What I think the original constitution demonstrates, and what I believe the author is trying to demonstrate, is how uniquely *Liberal* the old constitution is. The modern constitution is a big wet fish. It can be interpreted however one would wish and like most things designed to please everyone – it pleases no one! It would be hard to interpret the pre-merger as socialist or even as socially democratic. Let me explain…
It contains commitments to the individual (“Its chief care is for the rights and opportunities of the individual”) that would/could never be found in a socialist/communist party constitution. It contains commitments to private property explicitly as a bulwark against state power (“as a safeguard of independence, the personal ownership of property by all citizens.”) that would never be welcome in a socialist/communist or even some socially democratic party constitutions.
It also contains commitments to markets (“the free movement of ideas, of people and of goods is guaranteed to the benefit of all,” “liberty to buy, sell, and produce in circumstances which secure for the consumer real freedom of choice”) which include immigration, something Conservatives don’t often like to admit is a feature of freer markets. It excludes patriotism and is bold enough to call for the abolishion of armies, a feature which would alienate anyone of a bullish outlook on foreign policy. It’s pro-internationalism. What party today is as explicitly pro-internationalism? It’s almost aggressively pro-peace which is a rather nice quirk.
What is incredulous is that the majority of this threat is waxing lyrical about the old constitution whilst seemingly ignoring its commitments to markets that are, for the most part, free. I suppose that’s to be expected as many of the commentators on LDV like to lump all free-marketers together failing to realise there are different strains just like there are different strains of liberal. Thatcherite economics isn’t what many would consider typical of free-market economics. But again that’s an issue of comprehending complexity…
The original constitution’s beauty is in it’s clarity and lack of ambiguity. It very explicitly alienates anyone of a socialist or conservative bent. It is direct, succinct and it doesn’t try to be all things to all people – which has seemingly been the cause of the Liberal Democrats mediocrtiy since the merger.
at Sara Scarlett – let me explain, you are not a Liberal, your organisation is not Liberal. Liberals have had a commitment to free trade – that is not the same as ‘free markets’. Liberals have always been in favour of redistribution of Wealth, Power and Income – Liberals have supported redistribution of power as the mechanism to allow redistribution of wealth and income. That is why the have supported a Land Tax ( a wealth tax), that is why they introduced Old Age Pensions – taking money from the rich and redistributing it, not on the basis of contribution – no drivel about it being a “nanny state” but plain straight forward politics of envy. Liberals understand that redistribution can be done by the state but can to individuals rather than by state provision – hence Liberals have a long tradition of not being for ‘bosses’ or ‘workers’ but profit sharing. Liberals would want to see wealth redistributed so people need less state support but they do not see the state as inherently controlling, bossy or undesirable – they se it as enabling, efficient and co-operative.
Your misnamed pressure group ignores all Liberal thought from mid-victorian times (which in any case it misunderstands) and comes up with a mishmash of Libertarian Utopias.
Sara Scarlett of the Far Right Liberal Vision with its links to Big Tobacco ( see –http://www.tobaccotactics.org/index.php/Liberal_Vision )
clearly does not understand or has chosen to misrepresent the 1930s Preamble.
It does not worship the markets like some Thatcherite enthusiast for letting Big Business rip at the expense of the masses. Quite the opposite.
Sara Scarlet, you specifically quote — “” “liberty to buy, sell, and produce in circumstances which secure for the consumer real freedom of choice”.
Tell us Sara, how does the marketing of cigarettes to children to get them addicted to smoking before the age of sixteen”secure the consumer real freedom of choice” ???
Thank you Seth for raising this.
The Liberal Party preamble expressed what I believed, felt and thought when I joined as a student in the 1960s, and it still does. After its first 42 words, the Liberal Democrat preamble dribbles away into a muddy puddle, a properly dull reflection of the Liberal/SDP Alliance in practice at all levels, not simply an end-stage failure of negotiation.
Working as a Liberal foot soldier in the mid-80s among the newly ‘politicised’ SDP foot soldiers, and social gatherings, and workplace conversations, brought home to me the apolitical, anti-ideological nature of many adherents of the new party. At least the Liberal Party’s negotiators ultimately suppressed the SDP proposal to turn commitment to NATO into a constitutional principle included in the preamble!
Revision of the preamble after the general election is a must. The ideology and elegant expression of the Liberal Party preamble is the place to start (‘reculer pour mieux sauter’). But when we do this, we need to take into account its critical omissions – freedom of association, for example. Others would be the need to fight inequality, not only poverty, and the values we see embodied in community politics.
If only we could go back a bit further still. Here’s Sir William Harcourt from 1872. And rousing stuff it is:
“If there be any party which is most pledged to resist a policy of restrictive legislation, having for its object social coercion, that party is the Liberal party. (Cheers.) But liberty does not consist in making others do what you think right, (Hear, hear.) The difference between a free Government and a Government which is not free is principally this—that a Government which is not free interferes with everything it can, and a free Government interferes with nothing except what it must. A despotic Government tries to make everybody do what it wishes; a Liberal Government tries, as far as the safety of society will permit, to allow everybody to do as he wishes. It has been the tradition of the Liberal party consistently to maintain the doctrine of individual liberty. It is because they have done so that England is the place where people can do more what they please than in any other country in the world…It is this practice of allowing one set of people to dictate to another set of people what they shall do, what they shall think, what they shall drink, when they shall go to bed, what they shall buy, and where they shall buy it, what wages they shall get and how they shall spend them, against which the Liberal party have always protested.”
Not that I have anything against a good bit of social liberalism. But too often parties these days seem to think that government is justified in interfering with everything and anything with some of the thinnest justifications.
I’ll tell you how somebody becomes an economic liberal: being in debt and customers wanting to buy a service from you, but the government saying “no”. The government doesn’t always know best and its authoritarian power can be oppressive. They also look at things like how minorities are treated and see more state oppression.
I’m not an economic liberal any more, but the moral case of taxing and regulating micro businesses in order to support a big public sector is dubious. This week we’ve had it announced that Steve Webb is expanding the state’s role in private sector pensions, harming small financial services companies across the board. This is why people sometimes lean to the right.
When it comes to the article: I think the future is the liberal centre ground, which isn’t just pandering to public opinion.
Regards
But Caractatus and John Tilley, ad homs aside, do you agree with Sarah that the old preamble is anti-socialist and anti many interpretations of social democracy?
The preamble was written for the new constitution of the party in 1936 following the party reorganisation of that year.when the party changed from being the “National Liberal Federation” to the “Liberal Party Organisation.”
It was written by Ramsay Muir (who was the last President of the NLF, 1933-35) with Elliott Dodds (the then President of the National League of Young Liberals). The elegant style would support this!
If you look at pages 193 to 200 of the July 1936 edition of The Liberal Party Magazine you will find a report of the “Convention” at which the report of the Liberal Party Reorganisation Commission was debated . Pages 196 and 197 deal with the preamble, which was proposed to the Convention by Ramsay Muir and seconded by Elliott Dodds!
In an essay on Muir following the autobiogrpahical section of Ramsay Muir – An Autobiography and Some Essays, Lord Meston writes on the Reorganisation Commission, inter alia:
“…. the driving spirit was Muir’s. It was he who worked out that impressive confession of Liberal faith which is now the preamble to the constitution.”
It was tweaked slightly in 1969, when the Liberal Commission, chaired by Donald Wade, proposed some amendments to the whole constitution, including the preamble. The story of the writing of the preamble to the Liberal Democrats constitution, and the different drafts, in December 1987, is told in Merger – The Inside Story, by Rachael Pitchford and Tony Greaves.
Ramsay Muir was a remarkable and dedicated Liberal academic and historian. He urgently needs a proper biography!
Michael Meadowcroft
Joe Otten — of ourse it is anti- socialist.
As for Social Democracy, I have since the early 1980s held to the Ralf Dahrendorf view that social democracy only offers “a better yesterday”.
If you had been around at the time of the merger of the two parties you would be under no illusion about my views on social democracy.
Now that I have answered your question could you return the favour and explain why you think the Green Party has become “the hard left” of UK politics? They seem a bit social democratic to me. 🙂
“1. The Liberal Party exists to build a Liberal Society in which every citizen shall possess liberty, property, and security and none shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. ITS CHIEF CARE IS FOR THE RIGHTS AND OPPORTUNITIES OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND IN ALL SPHERES IT SETS FREEDOM FIRST.”
Thank you, Seth for that very timely reminder . Those ares precisely the words. which have anchored me to the Liberal cause through thick and thin for (dare I say ?) now seventy years.
It’is a very radical statement so you can well understand why I squirm every time Nick Clegg speaks of us being “anchored firmly in the middle ground.” What has that to do with anything (other than a dead duck)?
Let’s put Paragraph One back where it belongs – in our constitution.
That should read ” of course”.
John Probert, if Clegg looks like a dead duck, walks like a dead duck and sounds like a dead duck he is probably not a beautiful swan.
You can’t read the old preamble and not feel inspired. A revival in the vain of what the 1980 Liberal Party stood for would certainly have my support. Although I feel the comments need to be toned down a tad. There is no need for us to be at each others throats like this!
@ Joe Otten – No I don’t agree. The days of socialists proposing mass nationalisation have long gone – the document is clearly pro-social democracy – “At home its goal is a country in which the powers of the State will be used to establish social justice, to wage war against poverty, to spread wealth and power, to ensure that the country’s resources are wisely and fully developed for the benefit of the whole community,”
That is rather incompatible with ‘Liberal Vision’ but then they believe in a fictional Gladstonian Liberalism.
We also have to put in context what phrases like “A despotic Government tries to make everybody do what it wishes; a Liberal Government tries, as far as the safety of society will permit, to allow everybody to do as he wishes” was aimed at – a time when Governments really did try to impose religion for example onto people – hence the strong Liberal tradition of supporting Catholic emancipation, support for an end to discrimination against non-church of England Christians etc Similarly the other comments quoted by Stephen W – made a at a time when serfdom existed in Russia, when most European Governments censured the press, when Jews were persecuted, where factory ownership protested a 12 hour day would ruin them and paid workers in tokens in lieu of money etc
It was not a plea fortrickle down economics and Abramovich owning Chelsea football club. Incidentally – on a £256 million turnover, Chelsea lost £51 million – what does that say about ‘free markets?’
Caracatus
I am not sure that Joe Otten is fully aware of the difference between socialist, social democrat and “hard left”.
I guess things look different in Otten’s Sheffield, where the Conservatives stand down in local elections to give the Liberal Demorats a free run against Labour.
BTW – Caracatus
As today is the eleventh of September (or 9/11 as the Americans would hve us say) I thought you might like this —
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2012/may/01/caractacus-britains-osama-bin-laden
Yeah, the Tories fail to get their papers in in 5 seats, only 2 of which we are fighting, and one which went UKIP, and its a conspiracy. Come on. You’re crediting the Tories with a much less tribalist attitude to politics than Lib Dems or anybody else!
Caractatus – I was careful to say some interpretations of social democracy – lets not get into an argument about what social democracy really means . I would argue that liberalism holds “At home its goal is a country in which the powers of the State will be used to establish social justice, to wage war against poverty, to spread wealth and power, to ensure that the country’s resources are wisely and fully developed for the benefit of the whole community” – but if somebody else wants to call themselves a social democrat for believing that, that’s not a problem. The difference between the social democrat and the liberal lie not in that clause but in the others that Sarah Scarlett refers to.
I hope nobody is suggesting there is a conflict between the free market sentiments and the social justice sentiments in the old preamble.
Joe Otten
Obviously you know more about the Sheffield Conservatives than I would pretend to. I live in a borough where both Labour and Conservatives have put up up a full slate of candidates at every election in living memory. Conservatives not standing in 5 of your wards must have made things easier for you ??
I am still waiting for your definition of “hard left” — why are you so reluctant to give it?
Is it perhaps “anyone to the left of Margaret Thatcher” ???
“A free Government interferes with nothing except what it must” (Harcourt)
I fear that many people from the Liberal tradition pay an excessive respect to the glorious past, and are not willing enough to learn from more recent history.
Simply “not interfering” is not good enough. When workers form unions and strike for higher wages, does a classic Liberal government defend the workers’ freedom of association, or does it defend the employer’s freedom from “industrial blackmail”? Classic liberalism has no answer. Right-wing ideologues like Sara Scarlett certainly take a partial view when they argue that liberalism must mean market freedom from all constraints against burgeoning social inequality. However, classic liberalism is at fault for failing to resolve the issue and failing to recognise that governments cannot just duck out of necessary choices. One man’s “freedom” is another man’s enslavement.
One of the reasons I joined the SDP was that, whilst its leaders came with a lot of political baggage which I did not share, they were (largely!) people with the intelligence and humility to recognise the need to look critically at that baggage, throw away what was no longer suitable, and adapt to changing times. They also seemed – Jenkins and Williams, anyway – to be better grounded, to know which side they were on. The Liberals did not. For example, Grimond’s idea that workers should replace wages with share dividends, implying considerable insecurity, struck me as more appealing to academic theorists than to working class families trying to keep afloat.
On the question of knowing which side you are on, the ultimate scoreline between Liberal and SDP was a very goalless draw. To their chagrin, the SDP discovered that it harboured a coterie of right-wing Owenites who staged a showy coup, flickered briefly, and then self-destructed. To their chagrin, the Liberals later discovered that they harboured a coterie of right-wing Cleggites who staged a showy coup, flickered briefly, and are now in the process of self-destruction.
Sara Scarlett
How typical that this thread would naturally be reduced into the simplistic social liberal v. the free-market dichotomy. The usual suspects at work, I see… Such a shame as this document is so much more complex, a nuance quickly lost on this thread!
Well that just shows how it must be you who are obsessed with that issue, since the point of my post was to use this pre-amble to argue AGAINST the line that the differences between the Liberal Party and the SDP before the merger were on a simplistic social liberal v. the free-market dichotomy. A line I come across quite often now in Liberal Democrat Voice, and even in national media commentary, writes up the division that exists now in the Liberal Democrats between those who are very favourable to free-market solutions (I know Michael Meadowcroft doesn’t like it, because it misses some of the nuances in that book, but “Orange Booker” is the least judgmental name I can call them) and those who are sceptical as originating from the party’s formation as a merger between the Liberal Party and the SDP. This line is always from people who weren’t around at the time, and I find it shocking not just because it is completely untrue, but also because the fact that many just accept it as fact indicates some serious work has been done by forces I regard as malevolent to get people to believe this untruth.
This pre-amble DOES give what I regard as a reasonable summary of what the Liberal Party that I first joined was about. It is a long way removed from the shrieking “the state is evil, we must cut taxes and government services, and privatise everything” line that is now being pushed using words like “authentic liberal” with a hint that it is just a return to what the pre-merger Liberal Party was all about. Wrong. In those days we used to call that sort of thing “Thatcherism”, and many of us who were keen members of the Liberal Party were very much opposed to it.
Excellent comment by Matthew Huntbach who remembers the truth of what happened in the 1980s and as he has done money times before sets it out clearly and unambiguously.
I really wish others, especially the conspirators and entryists involved in the Clegg Coup, could occasionally get their facts right.
Sara Scarlett
What is incredulous is that the majority of this threat is waxing lyrical about the old constitution whilst seemingly ignoring its commitments to markets that are, for the most part, free. I suppose that’s to be expected as many of the commentators on LDV like to lump all free-marketers together failing to realise there are different strains just like there are different strains of liberal.
Again, that says more about you than about those you are arguing with.
The lines is that old pre-amble about the use of the free market put it in its context as flowing FROM a more general principle of freedom. This is very different from those today who love to call themselves “authentic liberals” or “classical liberals” or similar such terms, but who seem to start off from the idea that the use of free markets is the most basic liberal principle and all other aspects of liberalism hang from that. The biggest problem from that is that if you believe that free cash market are the most basic aspect of liberalism, it blinds you to all the possibility that they don’t work as well to enhance freedom as those who most energetically push them claim. Note that those pushing this “free markets and liberalism are the same thing” line tend to be those who benefit the most from the current free market system, or those who are paid from the large amounts of money that big finance is giving to push that line.
I’m not ignoring at all, and never have, the idea that there is a link between free markets and liberalism. Just because I am not part of the shrieking ” the state is evil, democracy is evil, we must abolish power exerted through by the ballot box and instead have power exerted through choosing how to spend” crowd does not mean I am opposed to any existence or use of markets, which is what you seem to be suggesting. Rather, I am concerned with questioning the assumptions that have dominated politics since New Labour came to accept much of what was previously called “Thatcherism” and the “Orange Book” seemed to be pushing the Liberal Democrats in the same direction. I accept that the use of the market is appropriate in many circumstances, as it does come down to people being free to trade goods and services as they like. And that is how the wording in that pre-amble, quite rightly, puts it.
However, it seems to me to be very clear that many people in this country have NOT experienced the push towards market-oriented policies that has been continuous since the days of Margaret Thatcher as enhancing their freedom, in fact, quite the opposite. A truly authentic liberal would be able to see this, and be able and willing to investigate why free market economics has not quite delivered the personal freedom its enthusiastic promotes promise. And I think the wording of this pre-amble gets it right in this. Those words about enslavement by “poverty, ignorance and conformity” just capture so neatly those aspects of liberalism which are ignored by those who think that liberalism and free market economics are one and the same thing.
Thanks for the very lively comments.
David Allen: “Grimond’s idea that workers should replace wages with share dividends, implying considerable insecurity, struck me as more appealing to academic theorists than to working class families trying to keep afloat.”
Two points on this: firstly, Grimond did not argue that wages should be replaced by shares altogether; but that a standard employment package should include a share component. That crucial difference cancels out the insecurity you mention, while giving workers a much more direct incentive to see their employers’ interests as their own. It’s no different to a company director being guaranteed a minimum level of income through a direct wage, and then a bonus beyond that; indeed, if shareholder dividends were spread out across more of the workforce like this, it would severely curtail the phenomenon of “fat cat pay”, but in a rather more nuanced and coherent way than “let’s just punish the rich for being rich”, and actually directly address wealth creation, wealth distribution an inequality in society. I find this a very appealing idea, and one that tended to unite the left and right of the old Liberal Party. After all, it is a fundamentally left-wing proposal, spreading the ownership of capital among the workers; and yet some of its greatest advocates have been on the right (Keith Joseph famously supported it, asking “Why would workers ever strike if they were their own shareholders?”).
Secondly, it wasn’t Grimond who came up with the policy, he was just a very persuasive advocate for it. Profit-sharing in this way was actually first adopted as Liberal policy in 1938, and remained in place (sometimes to the embarrassment of the leadership) until merger in 1988.
Thanks in particular to Matthew Huntbach for a very elegantly-written defence of the liberalism that I recognise.
To be fair to the “Orange Bookers” (or whatever we wish to call them), they argue that their “authentic” liberalism predates the New Liberalism which this preamble is clearly derived from, and they base their own views far more on a mythical nineteenth-century form of laissez-faire free market economics, based around a selective (mis)reading of the Manchester School.
There are many problems with such a misreading.
Firstly, it’s highly doubtful whether it ever held true of the hotch-potch of local alliances that made up the nineteenth-century Liberal Party (I could just as easily construct a case for “true” liberalism being about the aristocratic Whiggery of the 1830s, and the entrusting of the country to a dozen or so of the country’s largest landowners – I’d be guilty of terrible misrepresentation, just as the Orange Bookers are). The Manchester School was never considered the Liberal mainstream.
Secondly, it ignores the enormous stress placed by Classicalal Liberals on civil and religious liberty (indeed, before them, such an emphasis was being placed by what we might now call proto-Liberals, going back to at least the seventeenth century), a context which means much less now that religion is far less central to our conception of the state.
Thirdly, as Simon Radford persuausively argued in the recent blog post below, Classical Liberals embraced free market economics as a means to an end, not as an end in itself – namely, in an early nineteenth century economy which was still laced with large pockets of monopoly and protection, free market economics were to be embraced because they broke down power and challenged monopoly. New Liberalism departs from Classical Liberalism in its means, but not in its ends – they both revile monopoly and entrenched power, New Liberals merely recognise that if left unchecked, the free market can just as readily be a source of monopoly and entrenched power as the state, and that the state has a role to play in checking and regulating markets (and vice-versa).
http://leftfootforward.org/2014/05/the-not-so-strange-death-of-liberal-england/
Seth,
Fair enough, the proposal was that workers should earn a mixture of wages and dividends. However, if the dividend proportion of the total package is large, then the worker struggling to make ends meet still faces considerable insecurity. You say “It’s no different to a company director being guaranteed a minimum level of income through a direct wage, and then a bonus beyond that” – but the crucial difference is that the company director won’t starve if he doesn’t get his bonus! And if on the other hand the dividend proportion of the total package is small, then it wouldn’t be enough either to achieve a major impact on inequality, or to achieve Keith Joseph’s aim of preventing strikes.
Profit sharing isn’t a bad idea, but it isn’t the industrial panacea that Grimond thought it was. To make a big thing of it now would be to hark back to the past.
John, I responded to your demand for a definition in this thread https://www.libdemvoice.org/the-independent-view-liberal-democrats-back-industrial-action-by-midwives-42334.html – that Tony Benn at his worst is a decent benchmark of hard left.
It is not at all clear why this is so important to you, or why on earth you would impute a definition of it to me that would include the whole party and almost the whole population.
Constantly demanding that other people define their terms rarely makes for a useful discussion. And there’s no guarantee that another commenter will revisit a thread, so why don’t you concentrate on offering your own views. Contrasting, by all means, with those that have gone before.
David: “the crucial difference is that the company director won’t starve if he doesn’t get his bonus!”
I agree – I’m strongly in favour profit-sharing, and I don’t think it does “hark back to the past.” Certainly, it’s not a panacea for everything, but it would be a direct response to many of the grievances of Generation X and Generation Y; an increasing sense of powerlessness as a generation of renters feel increasingly marginalised and disempowered. The devil is, of course, in the detail, and it would be important to ensure that the wage without the share component is adequate; but then, with minimum wage legislation, that’s not an issue. Indeed, it wasn’t an issue in Grimond’s era either, as the New Labour propaganda which has become conventional wisdom usually overlooks that prior to 1998, we already had a minimum wage in Britain between 1907 and 1985. As such, saying that you have a “top-up” element to your wage in non-transferable company shares ensures that you have a chance at a bonus, which is more than most employees have now; no-one is talking about your earning less than the minimum wage, let alone starving.
There are at least two clear benefits to employee shareholding: an annual dividend when trading has been profitable, and industrial democracy – the right of employees to vote for their own board of directors, as shareholders. I think both offer compelling solutions to current problems.
But I concede that, as you say, these things aren’t a panacea. I’d just like to point to two employers by way of an example.
1) The John Lewis Partnership are considered the gold standard of every high street; every town wants one, as a status symbol of success.
2) The Co-Op Bank is frankly, an absolute basketcase.
Both are founded upon (and still practice) profit-sharing. One does it well, the other does it badly. Profit-sharing offers a strong business model in many cases, but it’s by no means universally applicable, and it would be needlessly doctrinal to pretend that this is the case. That’s a different position from saying it might be a preferred business model.
Seth, you say
‘To be fair to the “Orange Bookers” (or whatever we wish to call them), they argue that their “authentic” liberalism predates the New Liberalism which this preamble is clearly derived from, and they base their own views far more on a mythical nineteenth-century form of laissez-faire free market economics, based around a selective (mis)reading of the Manchester School. ‘
Can you give me an example of the Orange Bookers arguing this? It seems to me to be what the opponents of the Orange Book argue.
The Orange Book is clearly in favour of 4-cornered liberalism (i.e. personal, social, political and economic) and in these terms its opponents could mostly probably be described as 3-cornered (i.e. missing the economic).
The old liberal preamble is also clearly 4 cornered because it contains the points that Sara referred to, and no amount of whataboutery regarding other points can diminish that.
Joe Otten
You make a fair point about revisiting old threads and ask to concentrate on giving my own views.
But I did exactly that in response to your suggestion that “herd left” equates to Tony Benn at his worst.
I expressed my view that Tony Benn was at his worst in the 1970s when he was Secretary of State for nuclear power stations. I pointed out that Ed Davey is carrying on the same policies as Tony Benn at his worst.
You see my point ?
Well, if I ever revisit that thread we can continue that discussion.
Meanwhile, back to this topic (or perhaps what this topic has turned into)
Matthew wrote:
“This pre-amble DOES give what I regard as a reasonable summary of what the Liberal Party that I first joined was about. It is a long way removed from the shrieking “the state is evil, we must cut taxes and government services, and privatise everything” line that is now being pushed using words like “authentic liberal” with a hint that it is just a return to what the pre-merger Liberal Party was all about.”
Can you give me an example of this shrieking? Looks like a straw man to me.
Joe Otten: “Can you give me an example of the Orange Bookers arguing this? It seems to me to be what the opponents of the Orange Book argue. ”
Yes, David Laws, Paul Mardshall and Mark Oaten (remember him?) were all quite explicit on this point at the press launch of the Orange Book in 2004 (I was in the audience), with Laws and Marshall both stressing that this was why they chose the book’s subtitle “Reclaiming Liberalism”, as emphasising a perceived imbalance between the social liberalism we’ve always upheld, and what they saw as a neglect of economic liberalism. Back then, I just had a rather shaky undergraduate grasp of Gladstonian Liberalism, but even then I could tell a certain rewriting of history was going on.
The issue with the current preamble is that all the other parties could equally sign up to it – and it’s too long.
We need something that differentates the Lib Dems from the other parties, plus far shorter so people will read it to the end.
I am disappointed that a number of colleagues have succumbed to the media’s caricature of the Orange Book as some sort of coherent body of essays aimed at pulling the Liberal Democrats to the Right. It was no such thing. As such books usually are, it was in fact a varied set of essays of which only a couple could be held to be embracing “economic liberalism.” Others were by colleagues, such as Vince Cable and Steve Webb, who are invariably regarded as on the opposite end of the party to David Laws and Paul Marshall, the book’s editors. It has been the success of the latter in promoting their desired slant on the essays that has managed to get itself embedded in the media’s heads.
The rival set of essays, Reinventing the State , published as a reply, actually contained contributions by four Orange Book contributors. Nor should it be assumed that David Laws was necessarily predisposed to coalition with the Conservatives. In fact he was the party’s staffer who more than anyone skilfully engineered the coalition with Labour in the Scottish parliament in 1999!
The fact is that the Liberal party always had a number of economic Liberals active within it. I recall well such members as S W Alexander, Oliver Smedley and Arthur Seldon, amongst others, passionately debating their point of view – and losing the vote. No-one suggested that their brand of Liberalism was illegitimate, but only that it was obsolescent. We should take the same relaxed view today.
Social democracy is a very different issue. My argument has always been that, whereas economic liberalism is legitimately a strand within the liberal family, social democracy is not, being at base a strand of the socialist family. It for such reasons that I wrote the four pamphlets in 1981-83, starting with the party document, Liberal Values for a New Decade. (They are all available on my website, see: http://www.bramley.demon.co.uk/liberal.html – under “publications”).
Those who suggest that Nick Clegg falls into the economic Liberal category really should read his excellent 2009 booklet, The Liberal Moment – “The time has come for a new alignment of progressive politics”, published by Demos.
Finally – for now – I’m sorry to disappoint those who believe that a reference to NATO was not in the first Liberal Democrat preamble. It was – see pages 155 and 156 of Merger – The Inside Story, by Rachael Pitchford and Tony Greaves, where the finally agreed document is set out. NATO was deleted later.
Michael Meadowcroft
Michael Meadowcroft said:
“The fact is that the Liberal party always had a number of economic Liberals active within it. I recall well such members as S W Alexander, Oliver Smedley and Arthur Seldon, amongst others, passionately debating their point of view – and losing the vote. No-one suggested that their brand of Liberalism was illegitimate, but only that it was obsolescent. We should take the same relaxed view today.”
We can’t! The b*ggers aren’t “losing the vote” any more. They are implementing a Thatcherite brand of liberalism in government! And I’m sorry, I don’t want to read a booklet Clegg wrote in 2009, I can judge him by his deeds.
A very valid reminder from Michael Meadowcroft about the lack of coherence of the “Orange Book” as a whole, and indeed the distinctly left-leaning direction of some of its essays, not only of Steve Webb’s chapter, but also of Nick Clegg’s chapter on EU reform.
However, I would respond that if the “Orange Book” label is a caricature, it is a self-defining one, which was invited upon the book by its editors. Indeed, a number of authors of chapters of the Orange Book – including Cable, Clegg, Davey, Huhne and Webb – have subsequently sought to distance themselves from the “Orange Book” label, and the point about several of them writing for “Reinventing the State” is well-taken. As I mentioned above, the “Orange Book” term was coined by the book’s two co-editors and Mark Oaten, and always had very limited traction in Liberal Democrat circles beyond the personal entourages of those three; although it gained a certain measure of respectability through Charles Kennedy’s tacit patronage of it, through his cautiously non-commital (and suspiciously short) foreword to the book, which should be viewed in the context of other Oaten-inspire efforts to woo former Conservative voters, such as the short-lived Peel Group.
Do I think Nick Clegg is an Orange Book Liberal? No, not really. I don’t think he’s particularly ideologically rooted in any faction of the party, which is one of the reasons why he’s been so susceptible to “Orange Book” arguments in government (which certainly hold sway among a number of key individuals in his entourage). Similarly, I don’t think “The Liberal Moment” offers a particularly perceptive insight into his political outlook, as although he certainly signed off the final document, I don’t believe he was the author of that in 2009 any more than David Steel was the author of 1975’s “The Liberal Way Forward” or 1986’s “Sharing Profits: The Partnership Path to Economic Recovery”.
I’m glad to see Michael linking in to his earlier pamphlets which visited some very relevant themes over 30 years ago; there’s a tremendous body of literature on liberal ideas (both in theory and in practice) if only we care to look for it, and I think our current-day policy-making risks being made in a vacuum if we ignore what’s come before, which still contains some very powerful ideas.
Anything written by Michael Meadowcroft is always worth reading.
I still have my copies of his four pamphlets mentioned above.
He is also correct in his reminder that NATO was in the Liberal Democrts preamble. I remember only too well because as a member of the conference committee it was my job to assist Viv Bingham who chaired the debate that concluded with a significant majority to remove all mention of NATO.
II think Michael is quite wrong in his assessment of Clegg. The Clegg who is lauded in the book ‘The Clegg Coup’ seems to be a different one from the one who wrote ‘The Liberal Moment’. But we all know which one has been an abysmal failure as leader of this party.
The acknowledgements on page 7 of 2009’s “The Liberal Moment” (page 9 of the pdf) make it fairly clear who had a hand in the document. I know of one other “ghost” who worked on it, and who is now a member of the Labour Party.
http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Liberal_moment_-_EMBARGOED_18.09.09.pdf?1253118265
Wow. Some pretty nasty ad homs there… (Liberals have had a commitment to free trade – that is not the same as ‘free markets’. < ??? I was using the term interchangebly, I don't exactly know you're on about with that one. ) Although, Liberal Vision are proud to support the rights of adults to use to tobacco and we receive no funding from the tobacco industry. I did get bought a drink once from a guy from Imperial Tobacco though… If you have a problem with the way tobacco companies market their products don't whine to me about it.
Look, as Seth rightly pointed out free-markets are not the natural states of economies. For the largest part of history economic liberalism has been opposed by the land-owning classes e.g. corn laws. Freeing markets has overwhelmingly been a tool of breaking monopolies private and public and redistributing power from the landed classes to the working classes.
The fact of the matter is there is no definition of of Liberal that includes markets that are not predominently free. Markets create wealth and if you want to redistribute wealth, wealth has to exist in the first place. I'm not opposed to wealth redistribution but in many instances wealth redistribution affects the behaviour of wealth creation and for that reason it should be used sparingly. That's not to say I'm against it being used at all.
“Now perhaps you can see why some of us were unhappy about the merger at the time, and also just how offensive it is when people today use the word “liberal” to mean “extreme free market.” < Matthew Huntbach – I don't have time to read your goddamn essays but the only person who thinks this is you.
Michael Meadowcroft – Your view, separating Social Democrats and Liberals into “two families” Socialist and Liberal seems extraordinarily sectarian. I am afraid I didn’t read your essays at the time (or since), and I think I might have made my mind up about merger more quickly (ie to vote for it) if I had. It is fairly clear, however, that there is plenty of overlap between the “two families”, and if you consider over the years how much fissuring there has been between people and groups within both these “families”, I think it is even more obvious that the distinction is not that clear.
Sara Scarlett12th Sep ’14 – 2:10am / Sara Scarlett12th Sep ’14 – 2:22am
Sara, it is somewhat rich of you to complain of ad homs after dismissing many of us out of hand – in your very first post – as being “the usual suspects”!
Re Matthew Huntbach’s “…and also just how offensive it is when people today use the word ‘liberal’ to mean “extreme free market.” and your “but the only person who thinks this is you”.
Sara, I can categorically state that you are wrong in this assertion; Matthew is far from being alone in his discomfort upon hearing reference to the present global corporate/banking economic free for all being described as liberal.
The neo-Conservatives realised this and chose to hide beneath the cloak of ‘neo-liberalism’ … and are now seeking to complete the metamorphosis and acceptability by simply referring to it as ‘liberal’.
It is anything but Liberal.
Sara Scarlett 12th Sep ’14 – 2:10am
Liberal Vision …. …..receive no funding from the tobacco industry.
Sara Scarlet
It is not an ad hominem attack to reveal the truth about someone and how their organisation is funded. In my earlier comment I provided this link Liberal Vision with its close connections twith Big Tobacco
tobaccotactics.org/index.php/Liberal_Vision
But people do not have to believe me to see where you are coming from and whose interests you represent, because you reveal it all on your own website —
Sara Scarlett – Contributor
Born and raised in the Middle East, Sara joined the LibDems in 2008 before reading Politics & International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London. Since that time she has completed internships at the Cato Institute, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. She has also worked alongside organisations such as Students For Liberty and the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Sara is a member of the Board of Advisors of Liberty League UK.
Your personal connection with right wing so- called ‘libertarian’ organisations mainly based in the USA makes me wonder why you joined the Liberal Democrats in 2008. Can you confirm that you are no longer a member of the Liberal Democrats ?
Joe Otten
Can you give me an example of this shrieking? Looks like a straw man to me.
Please go and look back at many of the arguments I’ve had on this newsgroup with you, as an example.
Sara Scarlett
Matthew Huntbach – I don’t have time to read your goddamn essays but the only person who thinks this is you.
Really? Is it really true that I am the only person who exists, or the only member of the Liberal Democrats, at least, who is unhappy about the way the party seems to have moved, with a lot of push from people who seem mysteriously to appear at its top, towards a position which is what we would have called “Thatcherite” when I joined it? Am I the ONLY person who disliked Jeremy Browne’s recent book, and particularly disliked the way he insisted that his ideas were “authentic liberalism”? Did every other member of the Liberal Democrats cheer him on over this? When Richard Reeves wrote his New Statesman article, urging those who were unhappy about the Liberal Democrats moving to a position which interpreted “liberalism” as meaning tax cuts and government services to join the Labour Party, was he addressing those remarks exclusively to me?
@ Stephen Hesketh,
This is not the first time that I have seen the term ‘usual suspects’ used on Liberal Democrat Voice.
As a tactic for undermining the validity of opinions and arguments of those one disagrees with, I am unsure of its effectiveness. It”s a bit like starting an argument with the words , ‘Naturally’, ‘Obviously’ etc., when there is nothing natural or obvious about what follows.
Hurrah for the ‘usual suspects’ for refusing to let their arguments be undermined by such dismissive language. and for continuing to speak out.
Seth
Thirdly, as Simon Radford persuasively argued in the recent blog post below, Classical Liberals embraced free market economics as a means to an end, not as an end in itself
Yes, that’s the point I’ve been making. I think it comes across well in this old pre-amble, which uses language which is very different from that we tend to hear from those who like to call themselves “classical liberals” today and use that to mean endorsing a sort of politics in which everything is handed over to big business to run. I fully accept that there is an aspect of liberalism which quite rightly does not want unnecessary state power, so would prefer goods and services to be made available through free trade. However, to DEFINE liberalism as meaning that and nothing else is to ignore the way that state services are needed to balance the illiberalism that comes when some own so much more than others. Note also that today’s people who are keen to call themselves “classical liberal” often push the free market as about “competition driving up quality”, which is a different argument from the freedom one.
The big factor you’ve missed, however, is the huge difference in scale of business organisations in the 19th century and now. Back then, private business was mostly locally based, and it was far easier for people with modest means to start up a business. It sees to me to be ridiculous to use language and thinking and ideas from those days as if nothing has changed, taking no account of how business is now dominated by global companies, and complex technology means much of it has of necessity to be on a large scale.
A fascinating thread by the way, and much needed by those of use who are plagued by uncertainty in the run up to the next election.
Michael Meadowcroft
I am disappointed that a number of colleagues have succumbed to the media’s caricature of the Orange Book as some sort of coherent body of essays aimed at pulling the Liberal Democrats to the Right. It was no such thing.
Michael, I know you’ve made this point many times, and I see what you mean by it. However, I think there can be no doubt that our party HAS moved in a way that has become far more accepting of the idea that privatisation and markets or pseudo-markets are the ways things should be run than it was in the past, and that it seems to have been pushed in that way not by its members democratically deciding they want it to go in that direction, but by powerful forces at the top. I’m sorry, but the Orange Book WAS very much part of that. Sure, it was, as you say, very much a mixed bag of essays, but it was interpreted by commentators as an indication that the party wanted to move rightwards on economics, and the line in some of those essays that liberals should not dismiss the liberal aspect of market economics HAS been taken by some to push further this notion that liberalism means primarily the idea of running down the state and turning over the power that used to be exercised through local and national government to private corporations.
Perhaps the term “Orange Booker” is a bit of codeword for this, but people know what we mean when we use it in that way, and it seems to me to be the term that has least in value judgment. I’d be happy to stop using it if you could suggest an alternative that is neutral. I don’t like “classical liberalism” because I think to use that means an acceptance of the dubious claims of modern free-market extremists that they alone are the natural heirs to 19th century liberalism. I certainly don’t like Jeremy Browne’s “authentic liberalism” for the same reason. I’ve sometimes used “Thatcherism”, but I think that’s a bit unfair, because authentic Thatcherism did mix a great deal of social conservatism with the free market ideas, which is another issue.
Michael Meadowcroft
The fact is that the Liberal party always had a number of economic Liberals active within it. I recall well such members as S W Alexander, Oliver Smedley and Arthur Seldon, amongst others, passionately debating their point of view – and losing the vote. No-one suggested that their brand of Liberalism was illegitimate, but only that it was obsolescent. We should take the same relaxed view today.
No, sorry, I certainly can’t be relaxed about it today. If it was still just a small group pushing interesting ideas that were worth discussing, if only to see why they wouldn’t work as well as their promoters supposed, that would be fine. But it isn’t. This has now become the dominant political ideology. It is the ideology endorsed by most of the national press. It is an ideology being aggressively pushed by many well-funded think tanks. It is the predominant ideology of the Conservative Party, it has seeped into Labour through “New Labour” and into the Liberal Democrats through it being endorsed by those strange people who rise effortlessly to the top, and underneath it is what UKIP is all about, however much they may fool their gullible supporters into thinking they are purely about social conservatism.
The FACT is that the aggressive pushing of this ideology by ALL recent governments has caused many people in this country, perhaps most people, to feel more miserable and less free than they used to. I could say more and explain more, but I no-one would pay me to do so. If, however, I were arguing the opposite way, I could probably find plenty of big business funds willing to pay for me to do it.
It’s this imbalance that concerns me above all.
The other thing about the Orange Book, or at least the interpretation of it as being a set of essays suggesting liberals should pay more attention to free market thinking is that it came along at the time when that was least needed. When it came, those ideas were ALREADY being very aggressively pushed. It wasn’t like the early 1980s when, though I may have disagreed with them, they at least had a freshness and I enjoyed reading Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and thinking about it, and essays about that sort of thing in places like the Spectator. No, by the time the Orange Book came out, these ideas were already old hat, established orthodoxy, where politics had been going. To me, the interesting question now, and already by the time the Orange Book came out, is just why these ideas haven’t delivered what they promised.
JohnTilley (re Sara Scarlett)
Since that time she has completed internships at the Cato Institute, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.
In other words, she has been handsomely paid to develop and push her ideas. Whereas I have to find time to develop and push my ideas on my own, and no-one is going to pay me to do it while employed as an intern. What I write in criticism of this is squeezed in between my paid work, and relies a lot on what I hear from friends and relatives about how horrible life has become after marketization has been pushed on us.
Matthew:
“The big factor you’ve missed, however, is the huge difference in scale of business organisations in the 19th century and now. Back then, private business was mostly locally based, and it was far easier for people with modest means to start up a business. It sees to me to be ridiculous to use language and thinking and ideas from those days as if nothing has changed, taking no account of how business is now dominated by global companies, and complex technology means much of it has of necessity to be on a large scale.”
I completely agree. Some of these debates were touched upon in the United States, around the era of the anti-Trust movement in the late 19th/early 20th C, but you’re quite right that 19th C Liberals (particularly in Britain) didn’t foresee the sheer complexity and influence of business today; for instance a rather fascinating recent piece at http://blog.opencorporates.com/2014/09/03/how-complex-is-bp-1180-companies-across-84-jurisdictions-going-12-layers-deep/ highlights the complexity of BP’s global set-up across 84 different jurisdiction. Quite how such business models can be meaningfully regulated is a major issue when we are looking at the accountability of power today.
@Tim13 12th Sep ’14 – 8:22am
Tim, I am in full agreement with your post.
My core personal values as an older green egalitarian Liberal are probably not that different to the pre-1980 young man who until then had considered himself to be an environmental libertarian Socialist.
Setting aside theoretical political science, they are merely the labels we use in our attempts to make sense of, and position ourselves within, the political environment in which we find ourselves. Liberal, social democrat, socialist (to which I might add Radical) traditions are somewhat interwoven, particularly in Britain, particularly when one considers the development of the parties, the movement of those such as the Foots and Benns and some of the key the Liberal policies adopted by Labour.
I must say though, reading the inspiring Liberal Party preamble (the topic of Seth’s post) and the radical, Liberal, alternative to the huge contradictions and conservativism of the class inspired Labour Party (which I had never joined) was a genuinely liberating experience I recall.
I think your point: “It is fairly clear, however, that there is plenty of overlap between the ‘two families’, and if you consider over the years how much fissuring there has been between people and groups within both these “families”, I think it is even more obvious that the distinction is not that clear.” is very valid and that, as individuals, we would all be able to find varying levels of philosophical agreement with others both inside and outside the Liberal Democrats.
With a nod to Michael Meadowcroft though, I must admit to letting my membership lapse during the ‘social and liberal democrat’ period! I am glad to say however that these days our original entry philosophies are seldom, if ever, possible to determine on the ground.
@David Allen11th Sep ’14 – 5:31pm
“We can’t! The b*ggers aren’t “losing the vote” any more. They are implementing a Thatcherite brand of liberalism in government!”
I think the biggest problem Dave is that we never did actually lose the vote – we were hijacked by a small band of centrist and economically neo-conservative MPs.
Sorry – David – a slipped reference to your less famous namesake!
John Tilley, I am a fully paid up member of Liberal Democrats and was a fully paid up member whilst I was employed as an Intern in the USA as an intern on a temporary visa.
“In other words, she has been handsomely paid to develop and push her ideas.” < This has now descended into farce.
An intern at Cato is paid $1000 a month for three months. Which in a city like Washington, DC is a pittance. For the six month stint I did at Atlas and CEI, I was paid $3000 a month. Which in a city like Washington, DC is still pittance.
Sara Scarlet, why do you remain a member of the Liberal Democrats?
You are a very active participant in many right-wing groups which are quite clearly opposed to the values and aims of the Liberal,Democrats as set out in the existing Preamble to the constitution, let alone the more radical Preamble to the Liberal Party Constution beimg discussed in this thread.
So-called ‘libertarian’ groups funded by Big Business including BigTobacco promoting a world view and policies further to the right than Thatcherism are not compatible with Liberal Democrat values.
So why do you not resign your membership and join UKIP or the wilder fringes of the Tories?
I don’t need to justify myself to the likes of you John Tilley. When you pull up someone’s bio with the express intention of attacking them on a personal basis you’re not the type of person I wish to converse with any longer.
Stephen Hesketh 12th Sep ’14 – 12:55pm
I think the biggest problem Dave is that we never did actually lose the vote – we were hijacked by a small band of centrist and economically neo-conservative MPs.
Stephen, not just neo-conservative MPs. The sorts of organisations listed in Sara Scarlet’s resume on the Liberal Vision website ( see my post above ) are clearly set up to promote political objectives that are alien to what we stand for. They are very well funded and despite their carefully honed claims to be interested in freedom, are in reality only interested in the freedoms of the rich, the oligarchs and the large corporations who fund them.
Just google any of these organisations and you will see some of the players in what Jasper Gerrard described as the 50 year progress that ended in the Clegg Coup. These Hayek inspired right wingers would be at home in the Tory party, indeed there is a lot of overlap between these groups and far right Tories.
Mr Tilley, please be more polite. Some people could say that your politics are incompatible with the Lib Dems. People use whatever vehicles they can.
By the way, I did wonder how someone who often sounds as angry and intolerant as me could ask someone else to be more polite, but it’s how I feel on this issue. Mainstream libertarianism, i.e. not the extreme stuff, can’t be put in the same box as centre-right conservatism.
Best wishes
Matthew Huntbach 12th Sep ’14 – 11:08am
Yes that’s right Matthew. The support from these right wing groups also goes well beyond bursaries and direct payments to interns.
For example the so-calledLiberty League UK at their Freedom Forum earlier this year were able to advertise as follows — ” Food and drink are provided for all, and accommodation tickets are available for for people coming from outside of London between the ages of 18 and 30, with hostel accommodation provided for Friday and Saturday nights only.”
Free food and accommodation for a political conference for anyone under30 living outside London. !!! So different from LiberalDemocrat confernces where people pay their own way.
Eddie
It is not impolite to tell the truth.
It may be confrontational but speaking the truth to power often is.
@Sara – Tilley has a track record of doing this – he recently took something from my FB page (about a deceased friend) to make a malicious point. He’s just rather bitter and sad .
Simon McGrath, I have no idea what specific topic you are referring to. But what you’re accusing John Tilley of “having a track record of doing” is using the Internet, finding out information, drawing conclusions, and posting those on the Internet. Hey, I do that all the time, so do you, and it doesn’t mean we are bitter or sad!
@JohnTilley 12th Sep ’14 – 6:18pm.
I too had clicked on Sara’s blue name to see where the link led. Obviously this indicates me also to be of a malicious rather than curious disposition!
Some interesting aims and links.
All I will say is that my brand of Liberal Democracy takes its inspiration from somewhat closer to home, does not see a democratic state as being inherently bad and does not have any delusions regarding something euphemistically promoted therein as the free market.
What an interesting discussion Seth’s fine post has inspired! Some quick points:
1) Four-cornered liberalism! Wow! Who knew? Well, I will do one better. I want foreign policy liberalism. That makes five-cornered liberalism!! That means whatever I say is now the new objective truth of the party… I am sorry to pick on Joe Otten, but his banal comment is symptomatic of the rather tiring lack of any hinterland showed by the current leadership. Rather than repeating Westminster Bubble nonsense, perhaps we can turn our brains on?
2) I’m sorry for the rather personal tone aimed at Sara Scarlett. We don’t agree on everything, but I prefer to drown libertarians in kindness!
3) Markets are a legal fiction. They don’t exist naturally. It’s time we made Karl Polanyi’s ‘The Great Transformation’ compulsory in schools! http://www2.dse.unibo.it/ardeni/papers_development/KarlPolanyi_The-Great-Transformation_book.pdf
4) So, let’s start by asking the right question. As philosophers would say, let’s talk ontology before we obsess over epistemology. What are the aims of liberal politics? A golden thread of liberal thinking all point towards something that defines who is a liberal and who is not: liberals want to endow individuals with the power and capabilities to exercise power and control over the surroundings and destiny. This is true from J.S. Mill to Amartya Sen. The ways to achieve this end are secondary.
5) How do we best do this? The pupil premium and raising the tax limit a little isn’t exactly old-age pensions or Beveridge’s NHS. Clegg’s performance is rather thin gruel for those trying to divine what liberalism is all about. What are the major enemies to a liberal vision of freedom? faceless, chainstore high streets, the undermining of local community, frightening levels of adult illiteracy, the cult of shareholder value that has led to share buybacks taking precedence over rising wages, the frankly immoral levels of social mobility in the UK that means class is destiny, a failure to integrate immigrants into British society, sky-high house prices etc etc etc So much to talk about. Some will need government to reset incentives for ‘markets’ to work. Others will need government to regulate, tax, control. So be it if it serves liberal ends.
6) Does anyone know how we can make six-cornered liberalism?? Roffle.
The problem with the Orange Book is that it really isn’t very good! Objectively anyone would admit that Reinventing the State is a far more interesting read.
Simon McGrath 12th Sep ’14 – 6:43pm
….– he recently took something from my FB page (about a deceased friend) to make a malicious point.
Simon McGrath
That is imply untrue and you have chosen to misrepresent one comment in afairly lengthy exchange between you and me on the Liberator Facebook page. Anyone who has access to that can read the exchange. I took nothing from your FB page as you claim. I made no reference to a deceased friend,. You have made accusations here that are incorrect. This is not the place to carry on what appears to be something personal but I could not let your misrepresentation go unanswered. Fortunately the Liberator Facebook page has the evidence and there enough people with access to that to know that what you have posted here is untrue,
David Allen
Thank you for that supportive comment. As you say, I used the Internet and included relevant information in my comments here in LDV.
I was not expecting the vehement response it attracted. I was simply passing on relevant information published elsewhere to provide context to the discussion.
Seth
Thank you for the link to The Liberal Moment. On page eleven at the end of the introduction is the following —
“…… In much the same way that Labour was on the right side of events over a century ago when the Liberal party was not, I will argue that a reverse ‘switch’ in which the Liberal Democrats can become the dominant progressive force in British politics is now more possible than ever before…..”
After 8 years with Clegg as leader it would be difficult for anyone to claim that we have become the dominant progressive force in British politics.
“The problem with the Orange Book is that it really isn’t very good!” < So very, very true! As political manifestos go it is the wettest pile of bilge I've ever read. It's timid and needlessly verbose.
Why thank you, Simon @ 8:57pm! I also think something worth noting is that the Cato Institute is one of the only pro-peace think tanks in Washington, DC! The Randolph Bourne Institute isn't DC based but they're the only other 'big time' think tank that is overtly anti-war. None of the large so called Liberal [Democrat] think thanks in DC are as anit-war as Cato. For this reason alone I will be forever proud to be a Cato Institute Intern Aluma!
It is intelletually dishonest to use this preamble as a vindication of present day social liberalism which is obviously the way it’s being used by the original author and the majority of those in this thread. If anything it represents a broader and more complex spectrum of distinctly liberal ideas. It is inclusive to wider liberalism which is it’s strength (and what a liberal political parties ought to be…) and it is being used in a narrow and exlusive way which is sickening and makes me think less highly of those who would use it in this way. If you look for enemies; you find enemies. If you look for friends; you find friends.
Stephen Hesketh, thank you for your comment that you too–” …had clicked on Sara’s blue name to see where the link led.”
I guess that qualifies you as one of the people Sara Scarlet calls “the usual suspects” or “the ikes of you JohnTilley” when she is not accusing others of ad hominem attacks.
Incidentally, the last major look at the Preamble was in 1992, as part of the constitutional review held after the first general election fought by the LibDems. I remember much discussion (I was administrator) but not what the changes were. If there has been one since, my attention was elsewhere.
Hi Sara, reading your website I did indeed note your pro-peace credentials but also your belief that low taxes, small government and the free market are able to answer the problems facing Britain today.
Besides this philosophy already having two British parties pushing it (Conservatives and UKIP), I, and obviously almost everyone else on the broad libertarian left, including our own natural constituency, see this highly flawed philosophy as being alien to us, as having been tried and found wanting and finally to be part of the present problem and absolutely not part of the solution we see for a free and more egalitarian and democratic society.
The free for all envisaged by your small non-interventionist state taking minimal taxes from the victors in a monopolistic corporate world may be seen by some as being ‘libertarian’ but in fact it is the liberty of the few over the many and its outcome would be as Libertarian as full blown statist communism but with shareholder replacing party member.
Economic liberal thought is one thing but the ultimate outcome of unfettered ‘free’ markets is not empowered individuals and communities, an upsurge in sustainable and job-creating small businesses and freedom from poverty and conformity but a world dominated by all-powerful global corporations using the earth and its resources for their own short term profit. It is the very antipathy of Liberal Democracy. It is for this reason that such views attract our total rejection.
I look forward to you writing a piece for LDV explaining the benefits less regulated markets.
By Seth Thevoz | Wed 10th September 2014 – 3:00 pm
… And we mustn’t imagine that it’s set in stone. I recently dug up this beauty: the Preamble to the Constitution of the old Liberal Party, from 1980. It’s stirring stuff, and is really worth a read.
Indeed it is … I believe the wording of certain elements have been improved since 1980 but I would love to see a reinstatement of:
3. At home its goal is a country in which the powers of the State will be used to establish social justice, to wage war against poverty, to spread wealth and power, to ensure that the country’s resources are wisely and fully developed for the benefit of the whole community, and to create the positive conditions which will make a full and free life possible for all regardless of colour, creed, race or sex; a country in which, under the protection of law, all citizens shall have the right to think freely, to speak freely, to write freely, and to vote freely; power through a just electoral system to shape the laws which they are called upon to obey; autonomous institutions ensuring genuine self-government; an effective voice in deciding conditions in which they live and work; liberty to buy, sell, and produce in circumstances which secure for the consumer real freedom of choice; guarantees against the abuse of monopoly, whether private or public; opportunity to work at a fair wage; decent homes in a varied and attractive environment; good education and facilities for the full cultivation of the human personality; an assurance that the community shall enjoy the full benefits of publicly created land values; and, as a safeguard of independence, the personal ownership of property by all citizens. These are the conditions of liberty, which it is the function of the State to protect and enlarge.
Stirring stuff indeed!
Stephen, I have written many pieces explaining so on this site and others. I don’t want to sound like a broken record but if you want the poor to be at the mercy of the regulators and the establishment by all mean let’s keep what we have now; a corrupted, cronyistic, perverted market and semi-state controlled industries that favours those who already have power and property and disenfranchises those who don’t. Freeing markets is the true proletariat revolution and if you think this has already been tried you are sadly mistaken.
Sara Scarlett
Freeing markets is the true proletariat revolution and if you think this has already been tried you are sadly mistaken.
Just like the Trots of old. When the political remedy you are pushing works in the opposite way you said it would, your excuse is that it wasn’t done properly, and just needs to be done in a more extreme way. The Trots used to say that every failed socialist experiment (i.e. every attempt to implement socialism) was just “state capitalism”. So now you write off the way that the privatization you push inevitably makes the rich richer and the poor poorer as it just being “private market socialism”.
“When the political remedy you are pushing works in the opposite way you said it would, your excuse is that it wasn’t done properly.” < Wrong. The remedy I'm pushing hasn't been tried yet and in circumstances where it is being tried it's working very well indeed.
You can attack me all you want, Matthew Huntbach, but in the countries where it’s being tried it’s working and I’m sorry that doesn’t vindicate your own world view but that’s something you’re just going to have to live with.
Sara Scarlett
I’m sorry that doesn’t vindicate your own world view
My “world view” is based on what real people have experienced, what they say and how they feel, and I am not paid by anyone to push it. But I don’t have some big over-arching answer to everything “world view” anyway, I am pragmatic. I look at what works and what doesn’t work, and try to see it from a human point of view. I am capable of seeing both sides of an argument, and capable of being self-critical – that is, with any policy idea I think is good, I also look at possible bad aspects of it, those ways in which it may go wrong. I think this is essential, I don;t like one-track ideologues whatever their ideology.
@Sara Scarlett 14th Sep ’14 – 3:24am
“When the political remedy you are pushing works in the opposite way you said it would, your excuse is that it wasn’t done properly.” < Wrong. The remedy I'm pushing hasn't been tried yet and in circumstances where it is being tried it's working very well indeed."
Really?
Please could you give me an example of where deregulated free markets have benefitted the many rather than the few? The small local business over the multi-National or the environment over its significant degradation and the little more than 'appropriation' of its resources.
I rather suspect that, just as with the similarly 'not-properly tried' communism, in the real world there are far more negatives than positives and that given the spread of human response to 'opportunity' we are far better with the imperfect but workable system of spreading wealth and power (along with its checks and balances) as envisaged by our 1980 and current preambles!
Matthew Huntbach
You hit the nail on the head in your sentence — “My “world view” is based on what real people have experienced, what they say and how they feel, and I am not paid by anyone to push it. ”
Sara Scarlet is part of the inaccurately named “Liberal Vision” and has received money and employment from other equally dubious organisations whose origins are in far right Libertarian groups in the USA.
I only know this because of the link that she provided in her ‘blue name link’ in this thread and what she said herself in a comment aout how she was funded to live in Washington DC.
The main item on her organisation’s website is a complaint regarding a Government “quit smoking” advert. The advert stated:
“When you smoke, the chemicals you inhale cause mutations in your body and mutations are how cancer starts. Every 15 cigarettes you smoke will cause a mutation.”
Why would undermining public health campaigns, which are designed to encourage people to quit smoking be a principle objective for an organisation which claims to be all about freedom?
Why would an organisation which claims to be Liberal and have freedom as their main objective be happy for children to be targeted by advertisers so that them become addicted to a product that kills half of those that become addicted?
Could it be that the organisations that Sara Scarlet receives money from are funded by tobacco companies?
“Please could you give me an example of where deregulated free markets have benefitted the many rather than the few? ” Yes. I can provide many but let’s save them for another day, shall we? This thread’s gotten a little scary…
Thank you. Don’t forget the environment and small businesses as well.
Perhaps a brief explanation as to how additional deregulation of international banking might have enabled ordinary people world-wide to avoid bailing out the banks might also be enlightening.
Yes, there’s some great stuff there but the current preamble with its “liberty, equality and community” and “none shall be enslaved by…” speaks to my heart – and as for everyone nodding it through, I can see certain elements trying to change “equality” to “equality of opportunity” – just a clarifying amendment, of course.
Sara Scarlett
“The remedy I’m pushing hasn’t been tried yet and in circumstances where it is being tried it’s working very well indeed.”
Um. Colour me confused. Has it been tried or hasn’t it?
“Um. Colour me confused. Has it been tried or hasn’t it?” < Sorry, that wasn't clear. In this country, it's not been tried in a wholesome sense, in my humble opinion. In some markets it's been tried and worked. In other countries it's been tried to a larger extent. There are very view countries where most markets are largely free. There is a strong undeniable correlation between freer markets, increased wealth and more personal freedom.
Sara Scarlet
You claim that –“There is a strong undeniable correlation between freer markets, increased wealth and more personal freedom.”
But throughout this thread have refused to respond to the point about a freemarket in tobacco products.
Are you happy for children to be targeted by advertisers so that them become addicted to cigarettes, a product that kills half of those that become addicted?
The Libertarian organisations that you are involved with are constantly trying toundermine public health campaigns and act as defenders of Big Tobacco. It is therefore a perfectly reasonable question to ask you.
Once someone is addicted to cigarettes in childhood is there a free market, or is the child enslaved to the addiction?
Are you only there to promote the freedom to exploit, the freedom to profit, the freedom of large corporations as opposed to the freedom of individuals to enjoy a healthy life?
This is all so navel gazing, guys. Yawn yawn yawn. No-one cares.
Your party is in a desperate struggle for its very existence. The electorate are deserting you in droves , you speak for no-one any more.
We are currently witnessing the most exciting period in our national politics since the second world war. In some ways for centuries, since the very nation state is at risk. Even if it survives, a big if, the whole political landscape will be changed by a no vote. It is extraordinary, politically captivating, exciting beyond measure.
And you concern yourself with insular trivialities such as this. Yes there are other threads on the momentous issues of the day, but nothing that is remotely in keeping with the seriousness of events.
If you want an explanation, in microcosm of why you are fading into irrelevance this pointless, earnest, self congratulatory, totally off the pace thread is it.
Get with the programme guys, no-one in the rest of the country cares about this nonsense. Can none of you see this???