Your Liberal Britain

Last night around two dozen Liberal Democrats from City and London East gathered at the View Tube in Stratford’s Olympic Park for a pilot event of Your Liberal Britain — a new format of relatively informal get-togethers at which party members, old and new, can thrash out how they would see a truly Liberal Britain, as well as identifying how the UK currently falls short of those ideals. Four speakers — Elaine Bagshaw, Mark Pack, Emily Tester and myself — were asked to prepare five minute presentations highlighting one particular issue or perspective, with questions and discussion following each. Everyone was then invited to fill in a pro forma sheet identifying their own priorities. Preceded by good food from the View Tube café, for those who wanted it, it was a lively and enjoyable occasion and the organisers will be at the Liberal Democrat Spring conference in York encouraging other local parties to try the model for themselves, with the end results contributing to an ongoing policy review.
In my presentation, I focussed on Celebrating Diversity, arguing that Britain needed to move beyond tolerating different groups (ethnic, religious, sexual or whatever) to active engagement. In Tower Hamlets, where I live, and 40 per cent of the electorate is Bangladeshi, how many local none-Bangladeshis have bothered to learn even a few words of Bengali, for example? I also said that we need to widen our concept of diversity to include issues such as age and class; too often we socialise in a comfort zone of people just like ourselves. Liberals have long championed the claim that if you are Liberal you are International and the Liberal Democrats, like the Liberal Party before, have a fine record in inernatinalism and in support of Britain’s membership of the European Union. The EU itself officially celebrates diversity as one of its core principles — unsurprisingly fo a grouping of 28 countries, most of which have their own distinct language(s) and culture — but here in Britain we need to turn that aspiration into reality.

Your Liberal Britain website link: http://www.liberalbritain.org/