I’ve just read an interesting article from the Journal of Liberal History about Arthur Seldon, a founding member of the IEA and at the time Liberal activist. In those days, the IEA was seen as a Liberal Party front by some sectors, the Liberals embracing economic liberalism which was at the party’s core from the very beginning.
Its a funny twist that the party which kept economic liberalism alive throughout the 20th century, when both the Conservatives and Labour parties favoured the corporate state now treats any talk of economic liberalism as dangerous Tory-talk, despite the fact that the Tories never embraced economic liberalism and have now fallen back to their default state of corporatism and entrenchment of privilege.
Interesting snippets concern the fact that there was a debate in the 1960s within the Liberal Party about education and health vouchers, and Beveredge being concerned about the way the welfare state was starting to take over the non-governmental means of support which had developed.
Its sad now that vouchers are a taboo subject in the mainstream of the party, being used as a slur in the recent leadership election, and the consensus is to try and keep the governmental near-monopoly (a real monopoly for the poor) on welfare.
We could learn a lot from looking back beyond the 1970s and 80s when it comes to the party’s economic position. I wonder whether the party as a whole actually still supports free trade, let alone the more radical proposals from the party’s past.
Economic liberalism should be central to any liberal program, it originates as an attack on privilege, we need to rediscover those aspects and promote them, recovering economic liberalism from the other parties who have perverted it to try and entrench privilege or give favours to their preferred supporters.
I hope the party will rediscover the Liberal heritage in economic liberalism, there’s some signs that things will move in this direction, at least the debate is starting to be had.
