With a week to go until the Lib Dems starts arriving in Sheffield for the party’s spring conference, Fraser Bayes explains why it’s important to make your views known.
The Liberal Democrat roller coaster rolls into Sheffield from Friday March 11-13, with their spring conference taking place at City Hall, as well as two protests planned for the Friday and the Saturday, with the latter meeting at 11am at Devonshire Green.
It is a bold move from the party, which has faced vociferous criticism in some quarters of the city for not being honest with the electorate before the election about its apparent support for the worst cuts in public spending since the 1920s and the trebling of tuition fees.
Leaked documents from the Liberal Democrats negotiating team, published in the Guardian and dated March 2010, showed that the party would in the event of coalition talks readily abandon its much vaunted pledge to vote against any rise in tuition fees. Senior Lib Dems have stated that the pledge was not legally binding. Statements like this strike right at the heart of the wild beast that is parliamentary democracy in this country and weaken it with an almost a mortal blow.
Numerous academic studies have shown that first time voters who suffer a bad experience are significantly more likely to turn their backs on politics as a result. You only need to look at all the youths who have straddled our nation’s great cities to protest the rise in tuition fees and abolition of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) to see that something is seriously wrong with this country. When no-one speaks for the youth, a dangerous vacuum is left and the ugly face of anarchism raises its head. What damage has been done to this generation, only time will tell. All I know is that when Nick Clegg promised a generation of first time voters a ‘new politics’, only to balefully renege on this, something broke in the great avarice of political apathy. Although young people may feel that none of the political parties speak for them, they are now rising up to speak for themselves and they must be heard, or this country will be rent asunder.
Nick Clegg’s interpretation of a coalition is based on the Dutch model of ‘shared responsibility’. What a wonderful notion that is. Dear readers, don’t forget that “we’re all in this together!†Well quite, as long as you happen to be one of the 23 out of 28 cabinet ministers who are millionaires. I dare say the rest aren’t too bad off. Vince Cable used to be high up in venerable gubernatorial oil monster Shell, so don’t shed a tear.
The Dutch model is a system in which the parties involved share out the roles within the same department, such as how Danny Alexander is Boy George’s number two in the treasury, and Nick Clegg is deputy to “call me Daveâ€. A more insouciant paradigm would be to follow the German example, in which parties and politicians are given distinct briefs to follow, be it foreign policy, the economy etc.
Following the Dutch on drug policy would be a truly progressive notion that I could support, but following their politics is fraught with electoral problems for the Lib Dems.
If they were serious about showing the British public what they could do in office, Nick Clegg himself should become Home Secretary and show the country his vision of Liberalism in the 21st century. By using the Dutch model, Clegg lays bare the contradiction that has existed at the heart of the Liberal Democrats for over twenty years. In the leafy Home Counties they portray themselves as a viable alternative to the Conservatives, with economically liberal positions and dubious comments on immigration, while in the North the spectre of the Social Democrat Party lays at the heart of the message that they exhibit as they posit themselves on the left. They cannot have it both ways now they are in government; they must define what they stand for.
Over the past decade the Liberal Democrats have built a reputation on the following three issues (not exclusively, but these things have resonated most with voters); Iraq, civil liberties and tuition fees. The latter has been blown out of the water, and while it is true to say that a significant number of people have not forgiven the Labour party for the Iraq war (myself among them), what the Lib Dems are doing now with their radical Orange Book free market ideology not only aims to fundamentally undermine the welfare state, but seeks to replace it with a system where the market dictates and is all-powerful. They are also facilitating the worst of Tory excess. With this in mind, it is conceivable that the Lib Dems could lose over two million votes. This is based on how Lib Dem party members say they align; one third state they are on the right (classic liberals if you will) and two thirds are on the left (Social democrats who are inherently sympathetic to Labour). If you consider that nearly seven million people voted for the Lib Dems at the last election, they stand to lose a significant proportion of their vote. It is hard to see how anyone on the left could support this party now, irrespective of wherever Labour is, because the Liberal Democrats have been guilty, despite Nick Clegg’s assertion otherwise at the election, of the worst sort of old politics. He is culpable for the oldest political trick in the book, which is saying you are going to do one thing and then doing the other. It should be interesting to see how all this plays out both inside and outside the conference.
A word of advice to anyone who hasn’t been to a protest before, or has not been on one for a while:
Do not let media stories about police brutality stop you from attending. Protesting is one of the purest forms of political action and without it there wouldn’t be much democracy in the world. When democracy is debased, we must defend it.
Go in a group. If you do go on your own try and befriend a group in case the police get carried away. Strength in numbers.
Wrap up warm. Even though it has appeared sunny of late, you need to look after yourself on the off chance that the police cordon you or your group off.
Know your rights. There is currently a ruling pending at the European Court of Justice which could well declare kettling illegal. Even in this country there was a Law Lords ruling which stated that it should only be used as a last resort and not as a pre-emptive measure. You also do not have to give your name to a police officer.
The main protest meets at Devonshire Green at 11am on Saturday March 12th, and will then make its way through the city centre. There is a secondary protest the day before, which meets at the Town Hall at 4pm and runs till 10pm.
Join the Rage Against the Lib Dems Facebook group to be kept up to date about next weekend’s goings on.
