What's Liberal about this coalition ?

Don't tell me the usual shopping list which begins with increasing the personal allowance. So far in government we have abandoned Keynesian economics, our opposition to nuclear power, our commitment to higher education available on merit not wealth, our historic identification with Beveridge's welfare state and our long-held support for a united Europe but we're still the party that loves liberty, aren't we ? Well, actually, no. Today the coalition government publishes its plan, the draft Brighton declaration, to "reform" the European Convention of Human Rights or rather to re-nationalise it and undermine its ability to protect human rights. The BBC says "There is also the question of the Liberal Democrats. Many are very reluctant to question the role of the Strasbourg court and some may find these proposals hard to stomach."

Let's measure the government's performance against the declaration on my membership card.

The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of
liberty (see ECHR above),
equality (err, really ?)
and community ( The Localism Bill perhaps, the Big Society maybe ?)
and in which none shall be enslaved
by poverty (welfare cuts, public service cuts),
ignorance (tuition fees)
or conformity (Any ideas ? Anybody ?)

I am a Liberal so where else should I go ?

Striking a balance - duh ?

I have heard the hackneyed phrase about striking a balance between security and liberty before - from Tony Blair, from John Reid, from David Blunkett, always in the name of some new restriction on fundamental freedoms which we as Liberals have opposed over the years. I do not take my stand against police accreditation on the inevitable inefficiency of this process. I would oppose it if it was executed with finesse and subtlety and grace. Search us, scan us, check our luggage by all means but never admit the possibility that the state in any of its myriad guises can decide who shall attend a party conference.

Done badly or done well, accreditation is wrong !

Much recent discussion about accreditation has been about the inefficient operation of the process. I wouldn’t care if the process was the smoothest I had ever experienced. It is simply wrong that an organ of the state has any say in who attends a political party’s conference. No Liberal should have any difficulty understanding this principle. It is also wrong if the party's Federal Conference Committee (FCC) or any other committee, office-holder or panjandrum can decide who attends. Does anyone really think that a party committee should be able to interfere with a local party’s choice of representative ? Even if you do think that, it’s not what our party constitution provides. I am bitterly disappointed that members of FCC either didn’t know this or didn’t care.

Liberals in literature and films (13)

I am very grateful to Malcolm Baines for the following information.


"Despite being a Tory MP from 1927 to 1935, Buchan has sympathetic portraits of Liberals in quite a few of his books and short stories. In "Castle Gay" for example, published in 1930, there is a thinly disguised Lloyd George renamed as Foss Jones. In "The Gap in the Curtain" from 1932, the 5 major characters are all able to look a year ahead to the then copy of "The Times". Whilst two of them see their own obituaries, another, a leading Labour politician, sees that the leader of the small Liberal Party has become PM. He spends the next year working out how this could happen and getting it spectacularly wrong, leading in the process to the ruin of his own political career. The Liberal leader combines some of the characteristics of Gladstone, Grey and Campbell-Bannerman - not always the most appealing ones!"

Will the Liberal Democrats disappear ? NO !

Someone asked me: "Do you think that the Liberal Democrats are being drawn into things they do not want but have to accept in order to continue to have a say in what is being proposed. Are they being sucked so far in that they will disappear?"

The difference between government and opposition is this. In opposition as the third party we could only propose amendments to proposals by the government. Sometimes the Speaker did not call our amendments and they were not even debated. If debated, they were nearly always defeated. In government, actually with fewer MPs, we help to write the proposals which then are passed by parliament. Each proposal is of course a compromise. I accept that. It's what happens in coalition. I think that Nick Clegg has been too keen to present the government as united so the public believes the compromises are what Lib Dems wanted all along. At Spring Conference in Sheffield, Nick and other ministers repeatedly said, "We didn't win the election. This is the policy we wanted. That is the policy we got." Nick even said that a Lib Dem majority government would cut tuition fees. I want the public to get this message and reward us for the changes we have made instead of punishing us for the changes we could not stop. We may have bad council results in May. We may even lose the referendum but the Liberal Democrats will never disappear. Liberals survived a party split in the '30s. We survived the'50s when we had only 4 MPs. We must stand for Liberal ideas in government or out. With apologies to Tennyson, "For men may come and men may go, but we go on for ever."

Liberals in literature and films (12)

Crichton-Potter shuddered. Larry Boot-Heath had once talked to him for three and a half hours about land taxation. Admittedly the party was in favour of land taxation, but Crichton-Potter had never had the faintest idea what it was or where he stood on the issue He knew exactly where he stood, however, on the question of people who talked to him for three and a half hours about any aspect of policy.

Thus Mark Tavener described the views of the leader of the Reform Party (for which read Liberal Party) in his first novel "In the Red" later produced as a serial on BBC. Mark himself had worked for the BBC, oh let's be honest, "worked" is too strong a word, spent days at Broadcasting House or at least in a pub nearby.

Liberals in literature and films (10)

Liberal: "I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honour"

So said Matt Santos in the final series of the West Wing. It turns out that Martin Sheen who played Josiah Bartlett is a real-life liberal too. Listen to him on Desert Island Discs.

Liberals in literature and films (9)

Quiz No.2:
Which play has the following exchange and who wrote it ?

DOTTY:Archie says it was a coup d'etat not a general election.
GEORGE: Glib nonsense. It is unthinkable that the Radical Liberal Party could manipulate the democratic process...Furthermore I had a vote.
DOTTY:It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.

Liberals in literature and film (8)

The Old Liberals
by John Betjeman (Picture shows statue outside St. Pancras)

Pale green of the English Hymnal! Yattendon hymns
Played on the hautbois by a lady dress'd in blue
Her white-hair'd father accompanying her thereto
On tenor or bass-recorder. Daylight swims
On sectional bookcase, delicate cup and plate
And William de Morgan tiles around the grate
And many the silver birches the pearly light shines through.

I think such a running together of woodwind sound,
Such painstaking piping high on a Berkshire hill,
Is sad as an English autumn heavy and still,
Sad as a country silence, tractor-drowned;
For deep in the hearts of the man and the woman playing
The rose of a world that was not has withered away.
Where are the wains with garlanded swathes a-swaying?
Where are the swains to wend through the lanes a-maying?
Where are the blithe and jocund to ted the hay?
Where are the free folk of England? Where are they?

Ask of the Abingdon bus with full load creeping
Down into denser suburbs. The birch lets go
But one brown leaf upon browner bracken below.
Ask of the cinema manager. Night airs die
To still, ripe scent of the fungus and wet woods weeping.
Ask at the fish and chips in the Market Square.
Here amid firs and a final sunset flare
Recorder and hautbois only moan at a mouldering sky.

Liberals in literature and films (7)

Firstly, the answer to Liberals in literature and films (6) was "Trouble with Lichen" by John Wyndham.

Now the new one. "He was Asquith's new blood in the Home Office"..."A man by the name of Strafford. But that's literally all I know of him - a few years of office, then nothing..." I hope that phrase won't be heard again.

This comes from the opening pages of Robert Goddard's "Past Caring", the first novel by John Major's favourite author, which goes on to explore what happened to Strafford.

Liberals in literature and films (5)

In the film of "The Hireling" chauffeur Ledbetter (Robert Shaw)invites his employer Lady Helen Franklin (Sarah Miles) to come to his boxing club where she will meet Captain Hugh Cantrip (Peter Egan). She asks, "Isn't he a Liberal ?". Ledbetter replies "Well, his politics may be a bit funny but he's a good bloke" or words to that effect. I don't have L.P.Hartley's book so I can't say if this is the original dialogue.

Liberals in literature and films (3)

"It must have been a week or so after the departure of Claude and Eustace that I ran into young Bingo Little in the smoking-room of the Senior Liberal Club. He was lying back in an armchair with his mouth open and a goofy expression in his eyes, while a grey-bearded cove in the middle distance watched him with so much dislike that I concluded that Bingo had pinched his favourite seat. That's the worst of being in a strange club -- absolutely without intending it, you find yourself constantly trampling upon the vested interests of the Oldest Inhabitants.

'Hello, face,' I said.

'Cheerio, ugly,' said young Bingo, and we settled down to have a small one before lunch.

Once a year the committee of the Drones decides that the old club could do with a wash and brush-up, so they shoo us out and dump us down for a few weeks at some other institution. This time we were roosting at the Senior Liberal, and personally I had found the strain pretty fearful. I mean, when you have got used to a club where everything's nice and cheery, and where, if you want to attract a chappie's attention, you heave a bit of bread at him, it kind of damps you to come to a place where the youngest member is about eighty-seven and it isn't considered good form to talk to anyone unless you and he were through the Peninsula War together."

"This club," I said, "is the limit."

"It is the eel's eyebrows" agreed young Bingo.

The Inimitable Jeeves, Chapter 17.

Liberals in literature and films (2)

"There was never a by-election like it, Tom, there was never any election like it. We are born, we get married, we divorce, we die. But somewhere along the way, if we get the chance, we should also stand as Liberal Candidate for...Gulworth North..."

Thus begins Chapter 11 of John le Carré's A Perfect Spy. As far as I recollect the BBC version with Ray McAnally as Rick Pym, the candidate, based upon le Carré's own father does not mention his political allegiance.

Liberals in literature and films (1)

Those of us who have spoken on behalf of the Liberals from time to time may have some sympathy with Richard Hannay on the run in John Buchan's 39 Steps, when he finds himself unexpectedly addressing a Liberal meeting in the Highlands. The book makes it clear that it's a Liberal meeting but Hitchcock's film (1m 25s in) does not whereas the BBC's recent version does. Whilst one can see that the Czech stage version does indeed feature the candidate Mr Macorquodale, whether or not it makes clear that he's a Liberal I cannot tell as I don't speak Czech.

Prisoners' Right to Vote: Roll of Honour

Most MPs should hang their heads in shame for yesterday's display of scorn for human rights, ignorance of their meaning and sheer zenophobia. Let them all from Jack Straw downwards (Can one go lower than Jack Straw ?) go and work for Murdoch and the gutter press. I honour the 26 who voted against the resolution including Alan Beith, Tom Brake, Lorely Burt, Don Foster, Duncan Hames, Simon Hughes, Julian Huppert, Tessa Munt, Alan Reid, Stephen Williams. I honour especially Tom Brake, Lorely Burt and Kate Green for their unpopular but principled speeches.

I ask Mike Hancock, John Pugh and Bob Russell who supported the motion what they think they are doing in a Liberal party ? I ask the majority of MPs especially amongst them my MP David Laws, our party leader Nick Clegg and many other Liberal Democrats why they could not even be bothered to attend or vote in this debate on a question which should be meat and drink to a Liberal. There is always room for argument on economic policies but if we can't get these questions right, we serve no purpose in the British political scene.

I suppose I should not be surprised by the stupidity and ignorance of the majority of MPs on this subject. Some still confuse the European Court of Human Rights with the EU, perhaps deliberately. There is nothing undemocratic about accepting its judgements any more than those of any other court. The court derives its power in the UK from a treaty voluntarily signed by the UK government and ratified by the UK parliament. This case is about honouring our commitments. If we wish to resile from the European Convention, there are procedures for doing so but it would be a great loss to our country and our freedoms. Removing the right to vote has no value in penal policy. It neither punishes nor deters nor rehabilitates.

Mr Gladstone travelling on a bus

A request from my old friend Jonathan sends me to the bookshelf to check "The Liberal Party" in the Britain in Pictures series. The link takes you to the whole book on-line but I cannot resist quoting Lord Woolton at Birmingham, in March 1947, who said, "There is a great liberal sentiment in this country. There is now no major issue between Liberalism and Conservatism. They are both expressions of the same political philosophy, and those old battles that used to enliven political life in the days gone by, between Liberals and Tories, are now just ancient and meaningless feuds."

How sad ! How, I declare, untrue. Perhaps some of our Liberal Democrat ministers should take a ride in a bus occasionally.

Votes for prisoners

Listening to the radio today is getting very bad for my blood pressure. Is there anyone left in the leadership of the Liberal Democrats who actually understands Liberalism ? I waited in vain for a Liberal view on this question on Any Questions. Stupid of me to expect it from Michael Moore. Shami Chakrabarti gave it on Question Time on Thursday, not Jeremy Browne. Even the callers on Any Answers expressed more Liberal views !

Voting is NOT a privilege but a fundamental right. Removing the vote is akin to the mediaeval practice of declaring a person an outlaw, someone who loses their legal rights. We want to reform criminals. It isn't easy but why stop someone from showing a modest degree of social responsibility by voting ?

Removing the vote has NO deterrent or punitive value whatever. Who is going to say, "Oh, I don't think I'll murder my wife, I might lose the vote if I do that".

Some panellists tried to argue that you shouldn't lose the vote for certain crimes, e.g."crimes of conscience". What the hell does that mean ? Protesting at a nuclear base may be seen as a crime of conscience. What about the girl who tried to kill an MP because he voted for the Iraq War ? The action was worse but the motive was a matter of conscience. Who would decide what counts ? You couldn't let that be decided by politicians.

Microcosmographica Academica

I am delighted that F.M.Cornford's guide to academic politics Microcosmographica Academica is out of copyright and available on-line. It also applies to national politics. It explains the principle of the thin end of the wedge and the difference between Conservative-Liberals and Liberal-Conservatives.

A Conservative Liberal is a broad-minded man, who thinks that something ought to be done, only not anything that anyone now desires, but something which was not done in 1881-82.

A Liberal Conservative is a broad-minded man, who thinks that something ought to be done, only not anything that anyone now desires; and that most things which were done in 1881-82 ought to be undone.

The men of both of these parties are alike in being open to conviction; but so many convictions have already got inside, that it is very difficult to find the openings. They dwell in the Valley of Indecision.

Real Liberal not Fake Tory

Bad news about Fraser Nelson’s interview with Nick Clegg in the Spectator Daniel Hannan and others have spun it to link Nick with Thatcher. In the interview Nick was claiming that Liberalism requires standing up to vested interests and that just as Thatcher stood up to the Trade Unions, so he will stand up to the banks. I can see that the comparison may have appeal to older Middle England Tory voters but of course it will be spun all over the place by hostile journalists in the mass media while few of the Spectator’s rather small readership will vote anything but Tory, so perhaps not the best strategy. Anyway I well remember Margaret Thatcher borrowing Liberal rhetoric on the economy but her government’s conduct of the economy was not genuinely Liberal as she only stood up to vested interests which opposed her and did nothing about those which supported her like the defence industry (notably BAe) and the brewers. I fear that Nick’s trying to sound tough again. As Liberator has often said, “Give people a choice between a real Tory and an imitation Tory and they will always chose the real one.” Much better to offer a real Liberal, which I believe Nick is.

Tea at Betty's !

Himmelgarten Cafe posts about the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference in Harrogate, but forgets to draw attention to the ever popular Constitutional Amendments. This year we'll be adding to 6.10(c): "(State Parties may appoint a substitute member should the elected member be unable to attend a specific meeting of the FCC)". Should be a lively debate !

At university there was this man called Rosenstiel who forever popped up at general meetings moving amendments making the Cambridge Union Society's constitution longer than the United States'. When I joined the Liberals back in the Neolithic Era, imagine my delight to find the very same man popping up to do the same job for the party. The mantle has now passed to Duncan Brack and at least he doesn't try to stop ambulances with his bare hands.

If all this isn't enough to wet the Liberal appetite, there's always tea at Betty's, although their website warns: "Our Veranda and Spindler Cafés at Bettys in Harrogate will be closed temporarily. From 5th January until Easter. Why not try our elegant Imperial Room? Or for our full café menu please visit Bettys at RHS Gardens Harlow Carr."