It is a year today since Tony died.  I have been talking with other friends and his family about how best to remember him in a way which captures both the essence of the man and the extent of his contribution to Liberalism and his party over 60 years of activism.  I finish by asking how we to remember Tony and build on the massive legacy of his life in Liberalism.

Tony had the most secure moral compass for Liberalism of anyone I have known.  Time and again, his reaction to events demonstrated an instinctively Liberal mind.  He applied Liberalism as a profound value to challenges, believing that deep, Liberal values would offer the best solutions.  His immediate responses often offered a clear analysis and understanding which showed the natural direction for Liberal political action.  One reason why he was dismissive and angry at times at people with power in his Party and beyond was simply that they didn’t have that instinctive grasp of a Liberal response.  He could be difficult at times, but it would be worth thinking as well about how often he was actually right on the substance of matters.

Tony was the single most important contributor to the growth of the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats between 1970 and 1997.  By-election victories built on the ideas and campaigning methods of community politics as did the growth of local parties and council groups from wards to towns to counties to regions to success in Parliamentary elections.  The Association of Liberal Councillors led that work and Tony led the ALC during those formative years.  Those successes were based, more than on any other single element, on Tony’s painstaking, committed, patient work with activists, campaigners and Council Groups to help them, often one by one, to learn about campaigning and winning; always emphasising the need to find an activist’s personal voice that was securely founded in Liberal ideas, along with a commitment to making a Liberal difference in the life of a community or a person.

That’s why he found it difficult to understand those who see liberalism as being defined by a long process of producing disconnected policies.  For him, the policy was the Liberal value, applied to a circumstance.  He wanted those deep, Liberal values to drive every single response, from potholes through to global relations.  What unites us as Liberals is not loads of policies, it’s one approach to everything.