What we’re fighting for today

Lib Dems winning hereIf you’re a Liberal Democrat activist, the chances are you’re already pretty knackered. Your feet will be sore from walking or your voice hoarse from phoning or canvassing on the doorstep. If you’re running a committee room, you will no doubt have already sworn many times at the technology.

Elections are a long, brutal slog. As I walked past loads of people sitting outside the pub drinking cold beer on the way to phone bank last night, I did wonder why we all put ourselves through it. It’s simple really. We really do want to change the world. We want to see a peaceful, tolerant, fair society where everyone is valued and celebrated as an individual.

Our Lord Roger Roberts summed up what liberalism means on Facebook this morning and I reproduce his comments with his permission.

Alan Paton’s message – very appropriate today – “This is Liberalism. It is the enshrinement of those ideals and beliefs and attitudes that are inseparable from truly human life. …a tolerance of others, an attempt to understand otherness, a championship of the rights of others….a reverence for the rule of law, a high ideal of the worth and dignity of man, a love of liberty and equality before the law. If Liberalism died, then freedom would perish from the earth. Humanity wouldn’t be human any more ” A million thanks to all those who in so many different ways share this vision.Every success.

Let those words inspire you and let the post-good morning leaflet bacon butties and cup of tea nourish you and go and walk those extra miles. It’s worth it.

To all Liberal Democrats standing for election today, and to all these many people who are supporting them on the doorsteps and the phones, you have our support and very best wishes.

I want to pick out two examples, who symbolise thousands of others. There’s Sara Bedford, in Liberal Democrat run Three Rivers, a long standing, caring, conscientious councillor and in Bristol, Andrew Brown, fighting his first election and who would be a wonderful, enthusiastic, listening public servant.

For all the Saras and Andrews out there, and our MEPs too, we’re right behind you.

Keep going through the pain. We can do this.

 

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings

Read more by .
This entry was posted in News.
Advert

42 Comments

  • Robert Wootton 22nd May '14 - 9:50am

    I hope the voters understand that a vote for UKIP is a vote for people who will not fight for British interests in the European Parliament.

  • Caron Lindsay Caron Lindsay 22nd May '14 - 9:59am

    Agree absolutely.

  • Strictly speaking MEPs aren’t there to fight for national interests: that’s the Council’s job. I want more Lib Dem MEPs because I want a large Liberal bloc in the European Parliament, fighting for liberal values.

  • Caron Lindsay Caron Lindsay 22nd May '14 - 10:31am

    That works, too, Alex.

  • Matthew Huntbach 22nd May '14 - 10:54am


    If you’re a Liberal Democrat activist, the chances are you’re already pretty knackered.

    Nope. I’m on strike. I’ve not knocked on a single door, made a single phone-call or delivered a single leaflet. I will not do anything for the party until its leadership stops undermining the sort of defence I would be willing to give it. How can I go out and work for the party when everything that comes out from its leadership damages the line I would want to put in support of the party?

    We must STOP this disastrous line of going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about being “a party in government” etc. To our voters this sounds like us saying we are fully responsible for this government, it is our government, we agree with everything its is doing. But is is NOT our government. It is a government which is five-sixths Conservative. I would very much hope that a government which IS our government, which would truly mean the Liberal Democrats being “in government” as that phrase is generally understood – i.e. in complete control of the government or at least in the lead position, would look VERY different to the one we have now. Otherwise, what’s the point?

    I’ve always accepted that the way the people voted in 2010 and the way that was distorted by the electoral system they backed by two-to-one in 2011 meant we had to agree to this Tory-dominated government. But we did not have to make out it was our ideal, the end-point of what we had been campaigning for over the years, a wonderful thing. It’s a Tory government with a bit of fringe LibDem influence. If we had a party leadership that would go out and make that clear, I’d go back to being active in promoting the party, and I would be tired out at this stage in an election campaign.

  • Caron Lindsay Caron Lindsay 22nd May '14 - 11:09am

    Well, Matthew, if we don’t have a great result, it will be partly your fault. There are plenty people who feel as you do but who are still out there working hard. I have so much respect for them.

  • Jenny Barnes 22nd May '14 - 11:23am

    ” if we don’t have a great result, it will be partly your fault”
    Who is “we”? If we is the orange bookers and those who support them, why would someone who strongly disagrees with that work for a result that actually contradicts what they believe in? On-strike activists may care deeply about the party, but strongly dislike what the “leadership” is doing to it. So if there is blame to be cast, I think it should be more accurately directed than at Matthew.

  • @ Caron

    Telling the truth seems a quality not held in any great esteem by the Party. How can anyone who is left of centre knock on doors and encourage voters to vote for a party that has played a large role in making the gap between rich and poor so much wider?

    If you have any integrity you either stay in the Party and remain inactive – or leave.

  • Caron at the moment it is a lost cause. Time to change leadership and direction. We need to be realistic and stop issuing stupid statements like 0 – 2 MEPS is to be expected at this time of a parliament. We are 12 months from a general and at the moment have no credibility as a national party and a leader so tainted in the public eye as to be beyond recovery. Sorry but it has to be said as it is, not how some might want to ignore.
    I am on the center right of the party and have believed in coalition, Indeed I think the government has done a damn good job, but that does not change the position, we are a party without credibility and a leader well beyond sell by date.
    Please get Paddy to tell him.

  • Lions led by donkeys.

  • Richard Dean 22nd May '14 - 12:06pm

    Real lions never allow themselves to be led by donkeys!

  • I have not received a single piece of campaign literature from any of the parties on Europe.

    It is crazy that on such an important issue, none of the parties have tried to reach me and inform me what their polices are on Europe. What they will do if they are elected, what I can expect of them , and set out a clear and coherent argument on whether they are for or against closer ties to the European Union and what it means for people like me.

    I ended up voting UKIP

  • @ Richard Dean

    Panthers?

  • Matthew Huntbach 22nd May '14 - 1:06pm

    Caron Lindsay

    Well, Matthew, if we don’t have a great result, it will be partly your fault.

    Tough, I don’t care. I’m not a slave of Clegg and co, and I’m not a Leninist who holds to the idea that he’ll do whatever is the party line this week, and continue doing it next week if it changes completely so long as it’s what the Dear Leader orders him to do.

    I have spelt out again and again and again just what I think Clegg and co have been doing wrong and what I feel, from my own campaigning experience, is what they should be doing to maintain our vote and win more. They are almost always doing the exact opposite. As I’ve said, I feel that undermines what I would do to keep the party going, so I’ve stopped doing it.

    To this day I’ve been defending the party going in to the coalition, see my long series of contributions here for example. So if the Cleggies want to play the game that I’m an unrealistic fantasist who can’t stand political reality, they are wrong. They love to put across this notion that there is no difference between accepting the formation of the coalition and believing everything our Dear Leader has done while under that coalition is wonderful and the best thing to do. That’s a dirty trick, it is quite possible to accept the formation of the coalition, accept that Clegg was dealt a difficult hand to play, and yet still believe he has played it very, very badly.

    If you and Clegg and co want me back working for the party, you will have to make it a party I feel happy working for. It’s in your hands, don’t blame me. Or, if you think it’s good riddance to people like me as there’s plenty of big money to fund the party if old lefties like me go, and a big pool of “economic liberals” who’ll vote for it if people like me go (a line some have used, latest being Jeremy Browne MP), well, there you go – I’ve gone – let’s see how you and your big money economic liberal funders do today.

  • Matthew Huntbach 22nd May '14 - 1:08pm

    matt

    I have not received a single piece of campaign literature from any of the parties on Europe

    Yes, and there are people in the roads I would have delivered to who are the same. This is the cost of Clegg and co running the party so badly that they drive out people like me who were once hard-working activists.

  • Matthew Huntbach 22nd May '14 - 1:24pm

    theakes

    Caron at the moment it is a lost cause. Time to change leadership and direction. We need to be realistic and stop issuing stupid statements like 0 – 2 MEPS is to be expected at this time of a parliament.

    The actual words used were “at this time in the cycle of government”. That is, Clegg and the Cleggies are putting out the line that the current government is OUR government, a Liberal Democrat government, so of course we’re losing votes because parties which run the government always lose votes.

    But is is NOT our government. It is NOT a Liberal Democrat government. It is a government which is five-sixths Conservative and doing what such a government might be expected to do. We shouldn’t be identifying with it in the way constant use of such phrases does, because that gives the impression that this five-sixths Conservative government is a Liberal Democrat government, is doing just what a Liberal Democrat government would do, so it’s what you would get if you voted Liberal Democrat, even if enough people voted Liberal Democrat to give a Liberal Democrat majority. That’s CRAZY. If people wanted this sort of government, they’d vote Conservative. Most of our seats we win where we’re the main opposition to the Conservatives, and people vote for us because they don’t want the Conservatives. That’s why going on and on about being “in government”, “suffering from mid-term blues” etc is do damaging as it is telling the people who voted for us that we are the opposite of what they thought we were.

    We should have been MUCH more clear that we were accepting this government as the only stable government that could have emerged from the Parliament the people elected in May 2010, but we are not happy about it, given that we have only a minor influence in it due to the people and the distortion of the electoral system giving the Tories five times as many MPs as we have, though they only got one and a half as many votes. We should have shouted out and should be doing that NOW that if you want a more Liberal Democrat government, you need to VOTE LIBERAL DEMOCRAT. But we aren’t, or at least our leader and those surrounding him aren’t. And that’s why I’ve been sitting on my bum in the past few weeks rather than knocking on doors and delivering leaflets. Is that really too much to ask for? A leader of the Liberal Democrats who says “Vote Liberal Democrat” rather than one who says “I’m so proud to be supporting the Tories, and especially pleased to have a nicely paid job working under them, it’s what I’ve wanted all my life”? Because that’s what boasting about being “in government” all the time and going on about this being what the Liberal Democrats always wanted comes across as saying.

  • I am a party member who lives in Greenwich. I haven’t received a single election communication from my own party except requests for a donation which I have declined having given one several months ago which wasn’t even acknowledged. My partner lives in Pitsea and hasn’t received a single election communication from the Lib Dems, all the others did so she has gone and voted Ukip, says it all really. Nick Clegg couldn’t care less about communicating with the electorate and the sooner he is gone the better.

  • I agree with Matthew, in many ways I wish I’d stood as a social liberal. I think the party is taking its own members for granted in a government many of us are against and Orange Bookers who are taking the party further to the right and away from its progressive radicalism under Charles Kennedy. Are you in Lewisham Matthew?

  • Matthew, Caron may not respect you for your stand but I do.

    I imagine the support of a semi-anonymous internet denizen will be of great comfort to you.

  • Matthew Huntbach 22nd May '14 - 2:54pm

    Me

    to this day

    Yes, here I am defending the party’s action in the coalition today. See, I keep my pledges, I wrote this today, this day.

  • Judging from Caron’s comments there is a clear failure to understand just how much the party has been decimated. The Express and Star in the West Midlands has been forced to ask “Are the Lliberal Democrats a national party anymore?(this is based on the inability to field candidates in so many places).

  • “Caron Lindsay 22nd May ’14 – 11:09am
    Well, Matthew, if we don’t have a great result, it will be partly your fault. There are plenty people who feel as you do but who are still out there working hard. I have so much respect for them.”

    Caron Lindsay, that is an outrageous thing to say. Of course it won’t be Matthew’s fault at all, how can it be if he disagrees with the actions of the leadership and the direction they are taking the Party – a direction which has led to the loss of so much support among natural Lib Dem voters. It is a perfectly principled stand and Lib Dems used to be known and respected as people of principle. There is nothing to respect about people who plug away day after day whilst disagreeing with the very thing they are plugging. That’s just blind followership! No, Matthew is not to be attacked but respected for standing by his principles and I wish a lot more Lib Dems would do that and wrestle their Party back from the Orangers. Have you forgotten how the MPs have continually ignored the membership and voted on Secret Courts etc? At what point do people of principle stand up and say ‘This far and no more!’

  • Theakes “Judging from Caron’s comments there is a clear failure to understand just how much the party has been decimated. ”

    It’s partly Matthew Huntbach’s fault, don’t you know ?! Sheesh, that must be the most ludicrous statement on this thread!

  • daft ha'p'orth 22nd May '14 - 4:22pm

    @Phyllis
    The remark wasn’t up to Caron’s usual standards. Stressful day for all involved, but still a bit wtf.

  • Steve Griffiths 22nd May '14 - 4:56pm

    Caron.

    Rather than pointing fingers and blaming others, I think all at Lib Dem Towers and LDV should maybe reflect a little on what has made many previously long serving and loyal party activists simply down tools, where once they would have been tramping the streets electioneering. People like myself who still have a strong emotional attachment to the party in which they have been very active for decades, but who after much real soul-searching and deliberation, just cannot bring themselves to as much as deliver a leaflet.

    At least not until the party remotely resembles the one they joined.

  • Steve – exactly. It’s all very patronising. As a life long member of the Party since my teenage years I’ve never felt so betrayed by Clegg and his OB policies on the bedroom tax, tuition fees, abolition of the AWB, privatisation of the Royal Mail. The only issue I can agree on is the EU but the damage has been done as the party drifts further and further to the right and those of us who care about social issues, public services, the environment and not building on green belt land are being marginalised. This is supposed to be Liberal Democrat Voice but where is our Voice?

  • Nick Collins 22nd May '14 - 5:51pm

    Is the above thread typical of the current membership? Sounds like morale is a bit low. I guess there was a time when most of the contributors above would have been far too busy trying to get the vote out to post billets doux on this site on polling day. That’s certainly true in my case.

  • My partner has just voted Green after voting lib dem at every election for the last 40 years. I voted Lib Dem out of loyalty to friends.But even though I am one of the few remaining Lib Dem Councillors I just can’t carry on supporting the inept leadership of Clegg. I feel so sorry for those who have slogged for so long to see it destroyed by a bunch of out of touch careerists. please please will one of our MP,s say enough is enough….in the name of the Liberal Democrats go!,,

  • “a reverence for the rule of law”
    Sometimes the law is itself wrong and thus I cannot endorse this principle.
    A compelling example is the actions of Snowden in exposing the lies of the establishment.

  • Matthew Huntbach 22nd May '14 - 7:16pm

    david

    Are you in Lewisham Matthew?

    No, I used to live in the London Borough of Lewisham, but I now live in the London Borough of Greenwich.

    If the party has no members willing to go out and deliver leaflets for it, people won’t get leaflets from it.

    I do get rather fed up of people who complain “I’ve received nothing from the parties in the election” as if the parties have a legal obligation to deliver literature. They don’t. They are voluntary bodies, they exist and do things only so long as they have enough volunteers to do it.

    That is why it is no light matter for me to drop out of doing it, because I have always felt it is part of ones duty as a citizen to keep democracy going by volunteering in this way. This is what I have always told people – one should be active in whichever of the parties one feels closest to, democracy relies on people doing that, if no-one did it, democracy would die. I have no interest in any of the other parties, it is devastating to me that Clegg and the Cleggies have taken away the one party I did feel for and want to succeed.

  • Matthew Huntbach 22nd May '14 - 7:30pm

    theakes

    this is based on the inability to field candidates in so many places

    Yes, I was asked by my local party to stand as a token candidate in one the the wards, but refused. In the last local elections I was very happy to stand in order to make sure there was a full slate of Liberal Democrats across the borough. But now I just feel I cannot do even that when Clegg’s disastrous leadership of this party is so undermining all that motivated me to be active in it.

    As I have explained elsewhere this is NOT due to the coalition. I’m not happy about the coalition, but I accept that circumstances forced us into it, and I even accept it left us with very limited influence, so I’m not one of those moaning about “Liberal Democrats rolled over and gave in to the Tories”. I’m unhappy specifically with Clegg’s leadership and those surrounding him, and the way they have used this necessity of the coalition to try and push the party permanently to the right, and have abused long-standing activists like myself by claiming that we were just after a “protest vote” and had no deep principles. Clegg’s former adviser actually wrote an article in the New Statesman telling people like me we should leave and Clegg never disassociated himself from it. Liberal Democrat MP Jeremy Browne has similarly said we should throw away all the votes that people like me spent so much of our time and money building up, and go instead for some new bunch of economic right-wingers they claim is out there to vote for us.

    Well, this is the consequence. A missing Liberal Democrat space on the ballot paper where my name once would have been. No leaflets delivered in the streets I once would have delivered then to. If we activists are of little value, if the party would rather rely in rich right-wing donors pushing what they call “authentic liberalism”, let them do it. Where are all those people who’ve been preaching that line, not least here in opinion pieces in Liberal Democrat Voice? You lot have pushed me out, so now you do the work.

  • Maybe I am wrong but isn’t it the case all parties can deliver a free election communication by royal mail or has that changed now. If that is the case it’s even more important that parties do deliver literature so that people can read what they stand for and how they would improve the lives of people on an everyday basis and make their communities better. This is something the Lib Dems used to do really well with the Focus leaflets and you can’t expect everyone to go on the internet to look it all up. Even I read the leaflets from other parties and some people vote locally on the basis of what a Party will do for them locally. In Basildon where my partner lives this could be not building on green belt land, but no Lib Dem leaflet put out, all the other parties including the far right did so what does that say about the state of the Party nationally.

    In Greenwich, as you know there are no Lib Dem councillors. I did volunteer to help out with leafleting in a target ward and would’ve even done this on a weekday when others weren’t able to deliver but nothing materialised. I was though very disappointed with the negative campaigning which concentrated on attacking labour on the local paper which I read and enjoy reading as it keeps residents up-to-date with local issues and didn’t seem to offer any positive reasons for voting Lib Dem. There are people willing to go out and deliver but we don’t all want to deliver negative material or material which defends coalition austerity cuts either.

    Peter I really feel for you as a hard working Lib Dem councillor only to see your vote eroded by other parties thanks to the actions of the Leadership and particularly Nick Clegg in government. The sooner we can get him out and a change of leader the better and I hope it’s a Social Liberal and not one of the conservative Orange Booker clones then we can get the party back to its for radicalism under Charles Kennedy. Tim Farron would be a good choice and I’ve been impressed by Nick Harvey when I’ve heard him speak but Nick Clegg must go and I urge Party Members to request a leadership election after the results which will show how badly the Party is being decimated by their disastrous stewardship of it.

  • Nick Collins 22nd May '14 - 8:11pm

    @ Helen Tadcastle. Sigh. Let me explain in words that , perhaps, you will understand. I have time to put comments on this site today, precisely because I am no longer a member and, therefore, not involved in campaigning. Four years ago that would not have been the case. I’m glad you find that hilarious.

    By the way, are you not involved in campaigning? If you are, what’s your excuse for wasting time on this site today?

  • David Allen 22nd May '14 - 8:20pm

    Like Matthew, I’m on strike. I did deliver an entirely personal vote for Bill Newton-Dunn, who has been a good Lib Dem MEP and deserves to get back. However, I was very tempted to vote otherwise, and very much because of attitudes like Caron Lindsay’s.

    The greatest danger to our party is rose-tinted spectacles. Desperately trying to pretend that things are going well, desperately trying to squeeze the last deposit-saving vote all the time, desperately attempting to minimise the impact of all our leadership’s mistakes, is what will kill us. Admitting we need to change is what could rescue us. A vote against the Lib Dems is a vote for our party to change.

  • I just wish they would admit it but they seem to rise above it and even have their own excuses for why the campaign has gone so badly and why the voters are deserting the Party in droves. I will do my best to get on Call Clegg and have a real go at how party members have been abandoned under his leadership and how he has let so many of us down and must go.

  • What I’m puzzled by is, when those MPs voted to increase Tuition Fees contrary to their personal pledge and then ignored the decision of Conference in relation to Secret Courts etc, why did the local parties not deselect them? Do the local activists have no control over the MPs whose success is largely down to them, except to ‘go on strike’ ??

  • Caron Lindsay Caron Lindsay 23rd May '14 - 10:26am

    Suzanne: That’s brilliant! A by-election result that you can take a big share of the credit for. Well done to all the team. And I echo your sentiments absolutely. Our people are always going to serve their communities well and deserve the time and effort of every Lib Dem member.

    I’m wondering if a headset and tablet might help with the RSI from phone canvassing. I had been evicted from the lounge so I ended up sitting in bed with my iPad ringing complete strangers:-).

  • Caron, seeing as you’ve decided to poke your head back into this thread, could you respond to this comment by Steve Griffiths please?

    “Rather than pointing fingers and blaming others, I think all at Lib Dem Towers and LDV should maybe reflect a little on what has made many previously long serving and loyal party activists simply down tools, where once they would have been tramping the streets electioneering. People like myself who still have a strong emotional attachment to the party in which they have been very active for decades, but who after much real soul-searching and deliberation, just cannot bring themselves to as much as deliver a leaflet.”

    I ask, as an occassional reader of this blog, because I thought your comment to Matthew Huntbach and subsequent failure to either apologise or respond in any meaningful way was pretty disgusting.

  • Matthew Huntbach 24th May '14 - 10:50am

    Caron Lindsay

    Well, Matthew, if we don’t have a great result, it will be partly your fault.

    Well, now we see, Caron. The party has not done well in Greenwich where I now live, and in neighbouring Lewisham where I was a councillor for 12 years, and Leader of the Opposition during its period of growth. LB Lewisham is next door to LB Greenwich, so when I was actively campaigning for the party I split my work between the two, still doing my old Focus round in the ward I used to represent in LB Lewisham.

    I dropped out of activity because I just could not carry on while everything I was doing was being undermined by the party’s national leader, and his rigid control of how the party was publicised nationally. See, for example, how the party political broadcasts for these elections were dominated by him, not by our councillors and MEPs. It was as if he wanted to make it the Nick Clegg Party, not the Liberal Democrats, so how could we locally win votes when that is how we were seen?

    I kept myself quite locally in the run-up to the elections when there were times I was so angry with what the national leadership of the party was saying or doing that I felt like putting a message out in the local press calling on people I had managed to attract over to the party in the past not to vote for it this time. However, I did not want to undermine my former colleagues in that way. Perhaps it was noticed that unlike in 2010 I was not even standing as paper candidate, even though in LB Greenwich they needed more of them as they were not able to have candidates up for every seat.

    I think you can see that it was not just in LB Greenwich and LB Lewisham where the party did not do well. Are you going to say that’s all the fault of people like me? We’re rotten people whose refusal to do unpaid work for the party is what is damaging it?

    I will do unpaid work for a cause I believe in, and I will do unpaid work if I think it will get anywhere. I’ve defended the formation of the coalition and the sad compromises that have had to be made because of it. However, I’ve been appalled at the way a small unrepresentative bunch of people at the top of the party seem to have used the fact of the coalition to try and push it permanently to the economic right, and have given the impression that long-standing members of the party like me aren’t really welcome in it.

    I’ve also been appalled at the many, many tactical mistakes in presentation, things said or done by the national leadership that from my practical experience of campaigning have been less than helpful. Over the years of Mr Clegg’s leadership, I’ve been pointing these things out here in Liberal Democrat Voice. During the years I was Leader of the Opposition in LB Lewisham, I always ran a “constructive opposition” policy, which meant that before making any criticism of the Borough’s leaders, I would consider what I would have done if I were in their place, if I realised I would have no choice but to do the same I wouldn’t bad-mouth them, if I did criticise then I always tried to do so by saying what I would have done that would be different. I’ve adopted the same approach here in my criticisms of Mr Clegg.

    Even if I was not unhappy with the political tone coming from the national leadership, the tactical and presentational mistakes would have been enough to convince me it was not worth wasting my time campaigning for it locally. Why go out and knock on doors and deliver leaflets when your own national leader undermines what you are trying to say? As it was put in a slightly different context, it was like going to the crease only to find your bat has been broken by the team captain.

    Please place the blame where it lies, Caron.

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • Mohammed Amin
    I fail to understand the basis for Samuel Jackson's objections. He clearly believes in local democracy. Calderdale Council is the elected body with responsib...
  • John Marriott
    Yes, I have to agree that some people in Israel and on the US evangelical right appear to be getting what they want. Sadly, in their opposition to the creation ...
  • Cllr Donna Harris
    Huge congratulations, Roderick, on all your efforts, success and for working cross-party on this important issue! As Leader of the Opposition in Lambeth, we ...
  • John Marriott
    @Samuel Jackson They missed a trick there then. Where are the barricades?!...
  • Samuel James Jackson
    Hi John Marriot, I would like to clarify that proposals for the Sowerby Bridge incinerator does not include plans for electricity generation....