Lib Dems – 20th anniversary
It is said that the four most stressful events in a person’s life are marriage, divorce, a death in the family and moving house. When our new Party was founded we did all four. Our old Parties, the Liberals and the SDP died, as we united in the Lib Dems (or the Social and Liberal Democrats as we were then called), we had to divorce ourselves from those old colleagues who didn’t want to come with us and we move to a new home in Cowley Street.
It was not easy. Indeed, as the founding Leader of the new Party, there were many times when I though we wouldn’t make it. We had no money – the Inland Revenue Inspectors actually came to close us down for unpaid National Insurance, just hours before I was announced as the the Party’s first Leader on the steps of Cowley Street. Our membership was plummeting. Our opinion poll ratings were in low singe figures (they were soon to go lower still – I am the only Party Leader in Britain who has presided over an asterisk, signifying that the Party was within the margin of error of nothing in the Polls). And we were in a do or die fight with David Owen’s continuing SDP for our very existence. The overwhelming consensus opinion of commentators of the time was that we were done for.
They reminded us, I well recall, that there had been many attempts to set up new Parties in Britain, but none had survived since the founding of Labour – and we were about to go the same way.
But we did survive. And then we grew. And now we have become the strongest third Party in Britain for only a handful of years short of a century. And there is a reason for that. In fact there are many. Our members believed in the Lib Dems even when others didn’t and in the end that enabled us to begin winning again – starting at local level, but soon clocking up great by-election victories, beginning with Eastbourne.
Secondly, there was a space for us. Liberalism is the only political philosophy which makes any sense of the world in which we now live – it combines the internationalism we need if we are to solve our global problems and a belief in individual liberty and power which lies at the heart of this age of new technologies.
And lastly the public wanted us as an alternative to the tired old, corrupt old, failed old choices offered by Tory and Labour.
I often think that, at our best, we Lib Dems combine all the best of our two old parent Parties. The dedication to grass roots politics, the radicalism and the sheer bloody minded determination of the old Liberals. And the modernity, intellectual rigour and understanding of modern economics of the old SDP.
I am confident it remains a winning combination, clear that our rise and rise from those early days of near disaster can and will continue and certain that our country’s politics is better, safer and much more democratic because of the decision we took to risk all, come together and found the Lib Dems 20 years ago.
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