Liberty Alone

I was just thinking about my time at Uni and how I first voted LibDem which prompted me to think about when I first heard about the LibDems.

The first thing ever was an election leaflet in 1992. It was a leaflet for the Liberal Party (continuing) which was attacking the Liberal Democrats. It had a caricature of Libby, depicting her as a ‘Tory snake in the grass’ (ironic that…). It didn’t leave much impression on 12 year old me as to what the LibDems stood for, but it stuck in my mind. (I’d also love to know who in Chingford and Woodford Green was responsible for that… are they now LibDems?)

Later I remember jokes from a Tory friend about ‘Paddy Pantsdown’ (which he thought was a really funny joke - again, it didn’t make me think anything of the party, or Paddy).

Being too young to vote in the ‘97 election I didn’t take that much interest. I do however remember that in the school’s mock election, my year (the Lower 6th) voted LibDem (the U6 voted Labour, the rest Tory).

My move towards actually noticing the LibDems and voting LibDem came at university, it must have been 2001. Being allowed to vote by now I became interested in politics a little. I voted LibDem almost by default, simply because they were the only party who seemed to bother trying to attract the student vote (in Cambridge that seems a little stupid…). I liked what the Focus leaflets said so instead of writing ‘Who are you then?’ on the ballot paper, I voted LibDem. I even travelled to Cambridge to vote, being temporarily back in London at the time.
I suspect I may have voted LibDem in the 2000 Mayoral elections too, but I honestly can’t remember. I have recollections of a friend urging me to vote for Susan Kramer though.

After that, it was the Iraq war which got me even more involved. The LibDems made an impact on my political radar through the very sensible position they took (and I loved the supporting our troops, but not the war stance - it made perfect sense to me, I never understood why the media didn’t get it).
I grew ever more dissatisfied with the left with whom I’d been vaguely flirting after they led a protest in Cambridge which tried to incorporate anti-Israeli protest into an anti-war protest (and then the Socialist Worker twats were being idiotic).

The moment I really took notice of the LibDems and liberalism was hearing Ming Campbell on Desert Island Discs explaining why he never joined the Labour Party. His brief exposition of some of the main points of liberalism struck a great chord and I started looking up more about the party.
I then found Quaequamblog and Richard Allan’s blog and started to get into blogging a little.
Reading those two blogs persuaded me to join the LibDems and that, as they say, was that.

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