The Liberal Party I joined in 1964 was not a timid party. Under Grimond’s leadership, it wanted major changes to the UK. It wanted devolution, voting and parliamentary reform, sexual and racial equality, supported joining the EEC, wanted nuclear disarmament and wanted more cooperatives amongst many other things. And it wasn’t afraid to say so.
Fast forward to today and we seem afraid of our own shadow. We say little or nothing on controversial issues for fear of offending anybody. Dig a little deeper and you find we probably support the same things that we did before but you’d never know. We are criticising Starner for being too cautious, whilst doing exactly the same ourselves.
Often our leadership wrings its hands about a perceived problem but makes no proposals to change them. Take the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of sex. We all know that the right thing to do is to change the law to make the equality act mean what we thought it did, but our leadership’s silence has helped the growth of anti-trans sentiment and made the lives of trans people more difficult. We have gained nothing but contempt for our stance and lost the support of many in the trans community.
We continue with the pretence that the answer to Brexit is to join a custom’s union, when the real problem is not being in the single marker. Obviously, some focus group has been telling the party that support for the SM or joining the EU will upset voters in some undefined demographic.
Instead of tackling the real issues, we come up with bizarre ‘new’ policies, as if we don’t have enough to begin with. A new Magna Carta. A department of growth, that ignores or sidesteps the problems of climate change.
I have news for our leaders. You can’t be a radical party seeking to change the world and not upset some people, most probably the ones who will lose out financially from higher taxation or loss of power. If you don’t tell voters, then if by some miracle we get into power, how are we going to be able to do anything?
We need to speak out and tell voters about our radical policies to change the UK. Otherwise, our populist opponents will do so and win instead of us.
* Dr Michael Taylor has been a party member since 1964. He is currently living in Greece.
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8 Comments
Well said, Mick. It’s time for the Lib Dems to get a backbone and to give the electorate something to vote for both in terms of personnel and policy.
Fantastic article, Michael, I completely agree with you!
Well said, but I would add that as well as the economy we need to tackle inequality. Without that latter, the benefits of joining the EU and improving public services will not be felt by enough of the less well off people.
Well said.
Could it be that the leadership is scared to make definite promises because of the damage we did to ourselves over tuition fees? If not that, I don’t understand their approach…and it certainly isn’t working.
“You can’t be a radical party seeking to change the world and not upset some people, most probably the ones who will lose out financially from higher taxation or loss of power.” Those who lose power would certainly be upset but the well off seem more upset about a country that’s not working than their tax bills.
“The Liberal Party I joined in 1964 was not a timid party. Under Grimond’s leadership, it wanted major changes to the UK. It wanted devolution, voting and parliamentary reform, sexual and racial equality, supported joining the EEC, wanted nuclear disarmament ”
This is nonsense. Here a link to the 1964 GE manifesto. Most of that is not in there http://www.libdemmanifesto.com/1964/1964-liberal-manifesto.shtml
Well, Simon McGrath. I was there. I remember the Assembly passing resolutions on these subjects. I was at the 1968 Assembly where the former leader Grimond was defeated in his attempt to foist an English Parliament on the party and we adopted a wide ranging devolution policy to the nations of the UK and the regions of England. I was a member of the Liberal Commission on equality, chaired by Russell Johnston, which brought forward wide ranging policies on racial, sexual and gender equality. In 1964 these were all in train though may not have been party policy until a few years later. The main thrust of my arguement is that the Liberal Party I joined wasn’t afraid to proclaim its radical agenda, but the Liberal Democrats of today are hiding their light under a bushel, for fear of offending people from the Conservative Party who might, possibly, maybe vote for us.
I am saying that we need to proclaim our radical policies to give voters desperate for change, something to vote Liberal Democrat for.
Simon McGrath: I joined the Liberal Party in 1970 and here is the party manifesto for Feb 1974; http://www.libdemmanifesto.com/1974/feb/february-1974-liberal-manifesto.shtml and everything Michael Taylor mentions is there, with the sole omission of nuclear disarmament (and I can remember ferocious arguments about that within the party at the time). Also in there is a strong commitment to environmental issues, of which we at the time we in the vanguard. We have in recent years foolishly let the Green Party become the lead in these matters. I do not agree with everything they say, but it is sad that Ed Davey did not mention the environment once in his post local election speech in Guildford. He mentioned many things we stand for, but not the state of the environment and did so in the same week that the leader of the WHO said “The climate crisis may not be a pandemic, but it’s still a public health emergency that threatens humanity’s very health and survival.
Michael Taylor is right that we are afraid to say anything vaguely controversial, for fear, apparently, of spoiling our chances with the southern well-off electors. Our whole strategy seems to be not to upset anyone, becoming at the same time in the eyes of many voters, a sort of ‘Tory Lite’ party. In the 1970s, 80s and 90s we used to win seats in the former strong Labour areas – is it any wonder that we are slowly being overlooked, apart from in the leafy south.