I was a young teenager in 2004. I knew I was opposed to the Labour government - I was disgusted by their unthinking, casual authoritarianism and their disregard for due-process. I was casting around for someone who understood what mattered to me: a tolerant, open party that supported the individual. The Tory party was even worse - as shown by their closet-racist "Are you thinking what we're thinking" slogan for the 2005 General Election, and their desire to cut benefits for those who need them most. So I turned elsewhere. I turned to Charles Kennedy and the Liberal Democrats.
And whilst my initial support for the Liberal Democrats was born out of opposition to the Labour government from the liberal left, I found that the things that liberals prized most highly were things that I supported too. I was proud to join a party that was a keen member of the European project. I was proud to join a party that valued individuals and their worth to society. And I was proud to join a party that had such a wonderful preamble to its constitution.
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, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.
It's not every political party that places ignorance and the society's desire for the individual to conform as equal troubles to poverty. It's not every political party that gets that liberty, equality and community are three sides of an indispensable coin. (I've never seen a coin with three sides. But I accept if something so rare existed, it would be indispensable - ed.) To be liberal is to be outspoken - to be prepared to offer new solutions, breaking up the cosy old centres of power, and enabling the individual to take control of their own life. When Charles Kennedy and the Liberal Democrats proposed such solutions, I found that I agreed with them, because I agreed with the values they were based on.
I've since discovered that what I was most attracted to as a teenager was social liberalism: the belief that a state should enable, not control, its citizens. I'll name-check positive and negative freedoms here, but I'll try and summarise using an example or two.
We support the NHS. Our universal healthcare system and the welfare safety-net saves people's lives, and is a force for good in society. It does not control anyone. The state has a role to play to improve the lot of her citizens. The Tory desire to cut the welfare system is a great danger to the worst-off in the society. We reject the fallacy, as our liberal forebears once did, that poverty is the fault of an individual. A person's poverty is a sin from society, and not from the individual.
But we also reject ID cards and the database state. They do not guarantee safety, and instead give the state power to control the minute details of everyone's lives. We know that the statement "Only the guilty need fear" is clearly a harbinger of an authoritarian age. Labour's introduction of, and the subsequent abuse of, anti-terrorism legislation, is a case in point. The current Tory clamouring for the introduction of the snoopers' charter shows how the right also cannot be trusted on individual liberty.
Social liberals are different. We ask not what people can do for their country, but how the country can enable everyone. Social liberalism enables people, using the state as a champion for the individual, but with sufficient safeguards and checks and balances to reject Orwell's bleak authoritarian future. We should all support social liberalism: social liberalism is for everybody, precisely because it is for everybody.
This article details, in short, why I joined the Liberal Democrats. Up next - why I stayed.
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