Launch of the Orpington Circle

Parliamentary by-elections have often been the lifeblood of the Liberal Democrats and the party’s predecessors. Had David Alton not won Liverpool Edge Hill in 1979, for example, the Liberal Pary might well have gone down the pan. That point was made (more elegantly) by (Lord) David Steel tonight, at a dinner at the National Liberal Club, to launch a new fund-raising network to bolster by-election campaigns. The idea was the brainwave of the current Chaiman of the NLC, Rev Paul Hunt, and it seemed obvious that the initiative would have to take its name from the famous Orpington by-election of 1962, when Eric Lubbock proved that Liberals could win outside their ‘traditional’ fringe territories. Eric — now Lord Avebury — was another of the speakers at the event, along with (Lord) Chris Rennard, the LibDems’ campaigns guru, and party president Simon Hughes. Simon scored a first by setting a spontaneous quiz, rather than making a speech as such. Thus all of us present — including five of us one-time parliamentary candidates for Orpington — learnt a lot of anarak statistics, which underlined just how numerous by-elections have been in British political history, as well as how significant they have been for our fortunes. When will the next one be, please?