Liberty Alone

Much of what Mrs Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph say and do is in the mainstream of liberal philosophy.

Jo Grimond - The Future of Liberalism

Tom Clougherty over at the ASI blog has a comment on Simon Jenkins’ s book ‘Thatcher and Sons’.

The key comment he makes was that there were two revolutions, the good and the bad (from a liberal view anyway).
The good is her liberalisation of the economy (I know Thatcher is public enemy number one for many LibDems, but she saved this country’s economy from the miasma of the 1970s and set the foundations for the economic well being we have today). This was something desperately needed.

The second revolution was the centralisation of power in Whitehall, which has been pursued with great vigour by Blair and now Brown. This is the illiberal revolution.

Jenkins rightly calls for a third revolution, a localism revolution. Tom Clougherty agrees, as do most LibDems. We should make it central to our party to promote localism, to create the conditions for experiments in government and services which the US States originally provided in the US.

Thatcher’s worst legacy to me was to associate economic liberalism with Toryism.
Too often, sound economics and measures designed to increase liberty are rejected out of hand as ‘Thatcherite’ or ‘right wing’ despite being founded in liberal tradition and having been demonstrated to have worked.
I see this most explicitly in the pages of Liberator where Radical Bulletin often makes couched references to ‘Orange bookers’ or some perceived orange menace. This is ridiculous, if you disagree with policies, argue on their merits, not with ad-hominem attacks like that.

Thatcher was no liberal, her party was not (and is not) liberal, or libertarian for that matter, but she brought some aspects of liberalism to her party. Should we reject such ideas because they were adopted by the Tories? Of course not, we should celebrate that at least some liberal thinking has made it to other parties.

Thatcher’s legacy should not be one of rejection of all her ideas, we should accept what she did get right and condemn the authoritarianism of some of her actions and the intolerance which appears endemic in the Tory party.

There’s quite a few fairly liberal people out there who often call themselves libertarians. They like to talk about individual freedom, free trade, free markets, all good liberal stuff.

They then throw all that out of the window by talking about the great threat of immigration. Perhaps only people in the country they live in are allowed the freedom to make the best of their lives? The only libertarian view I can see is that free movement of people should be allowed. If the state’s job is to protect those people in the state from violence then they can still do that whilst allowing people into the country. To assume that the immigrant is intent on violence against those already in the country is quite frankly racist.

This is the case with UKIP who are generally a small government liberal party but throw it all out when it comes to nationalism and immigration where they tend towards the nationalist and xenophobic.

This puts me in mind of the clash which brought about Thatcherism. Thatcher was heavily influenced by liberals like Hayek and Friedman, but was also a conservative and a nationalist. She sought to free people economically but failed to accept liberalism in the social and international sphere. She therefore created a strange hybrid which worked both for and against freedom. She privatised state monopolies and freed up the economy a huge amount, but also centralised power and encouraged jingoism and nationalism.

This has had the unfortunate effect of tainting the free market ideas of liberalism for many, a process which has continued with New Labour’s pretense of free market reforms whilst garnering more power to the centre.
It also means that many look towards the Tories for liberal ideas, and with Cameron’s rise and increased statism they look towards UKIP. The Liberal Democrats are dismissed as nannying, high taxing statist meddlers (a reputation we sometimes deserve it must be said).