By Carrie Hynds
| Mon 3rd September 2018 - 4:35 pm
The Liberal Democrats have a great policy on assisted dying, detailed in the Medically Assisted Dying motion moved by Chris Davies MEP in 2012. Yet it is buried in the depths of Conference papers past on our party website (see page 20, Conference Report Brighton 2012) and in the last general election manifesto there was only a bland half-line to show we support extending end-of-life choices at all.
As Davies’ motion notes, good assisted dying models already exist in several European countries, and having control over one’s own life is at the heart of liberalism. So why let this …
The author, broadcaster and campaigner Sir Ludovic Kennedy has died aged 89. A former BBC Panorama journalist, Sir Ludovic spent decades investigating miscarriages of justice, including the case of the Birmingham Six. He contributed to the abolition of the death penalty and was also president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.
Nick Clegg has joined in the tributes to Sir Ludovic, a member of the Liberal party and later the Lib Dems, for most of his life:
Ludovic Kennedy was one of the great thinkers of his generation. His pursuit of justice and his championing of sometimes unpopular and controversial causes marked him out as a true liberal. He will be greatly missed.”
Sir Ludovic was the Liberal candidate and runner-up in the 1958 Rochdale by-election, propelling the party to its highest vote in the constituency since the 1920s, with the Tories pushed from first to third place. It was the first UK election to feature televised debates between the candidates, with Granada also broadcasting the count – another first.
He quit the Lib Dems in 2001 in protest at Charles Kennedy’s refusal to countenance legalised euthanasia, even standing as an independent candidate for the cause in Devizes, Wiltshire, polling just over 1,000 votes. He later re-joined the party.
During the 1980s and ’90s, Sir Ludovic gained fame among a new generation (such as myself) through his appearances as himself in the superior BBC comedy programme, Yes, Minister, as well as his interviews with Peter Cook, playing Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, for A Life in Pieces. Here’s the first programme from that fantastic series, first broadcast in December 1990:
Chris Cory While I agree with every word, I am at the same time, more than a little discombobulated. If we believe all this fine "power to the people" stuff, then isn't...
Ian The way the party runs itself is hardly an exemplar for putting our values into practice, is it? Nor evidence that senior people in the party have much interes...
David Allen British politics since the 2008 crash has been a contest between establishment Governments and insurgent opponents. The Tory and Labour establishment parties h...
Kevin Hawkins I have frequently commented on Lib Dem Voice that we should not take one week’s by-election results (or even several week’s results) seriously. We have goo...
Dan Falchikov Well said:
"David Howarth’s Being Liberal explores the Liberal disposition: open-minded, suspicious of abuses of power, uncomfortable with hierarchy, treatin...
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