Why I'm a Lib Dem

[cosmolinguist]

I got a strange e-mail today. It was from a name I didn't recognize and what I could see of the subject line was "Four days to make Clegg act on..."

I clicked, and read "In less than four days the Liberal Democrats will be voting on whether to demand a fairer benefits system. Email your local representative now..."

Oh, bah. I thought. I don't need to click on that link to find out who Rethink (a mental health charity for whom I signed up as an Activist, which means I get occasional e-mails) think my local representatives are. I don't have to imagine personally convincing Nick Clegg of anything.

Because I have friends who are voting representatives at the Lib Dem federal conference starting this weekend. I know people who don't need to be told about the unfair, counterproductive system for claiming benefits when they cannot work. A few I know might have tried to access this themselves, or had a partner or family member or even a friend like me* who has personal horror stories to tell about mistreatment, unfairness, an increase in symptoms (even people dying soon after they are declared fit for work), and more thanks to Atos and the DWP.

I don't need Rethink to tell me there's a policy motion to be debated on this subject. I've read the text of it myself. I've rejoiced in it, it being closer to my heart than anything else debated at this Conference.

If I had the money to pay for my registration, I'd be able to vote on it myself (as it is, I've got a stallholder pass, which gets me in without the fee, but means I'm not allowed to be a voting rep). As it is....I know people who are voting. I don't have to convince Nick Clegg of anything. He has no more voting power than I would, or than some of my friends do.

Not only that, but the motions can be written and proposed by anyone (assuming they do so in a way that gets it approved for inclusion and so on). Liberal Youth is doing this one on ESA and Atos. And anyone can ask to speak in the debates about these things, even non-voting representatives.

So I don't have to try to convince Nick Clegg of anything. My party isn't run like the other two; our Conference is not a leadership rally. I could conceivably ask to speak; I could add my voice to the, no doubt, many others with impassioned stories to tell of stressful, terrifying, inhumane treatment at the hands of this process. I could try and convince all the Liberal Democrats, not just the leader. Anybody could.

The leader is not the party, and he's not really what I think of as the party. Despite all the Radio 4 I listen to, where not only are they more likely to ask him than, say, miss_s_b or Millennium -- more's the pity! -- but also of course because the media expects him to be the important person, dragging his party around with him. I don't really see it that way.

I think of the party as its blogs (though I don't read most of these!) and Twitter...very democratic themselves (although it still assumes internet access, time and ability to write/tweet, and (hopefully) some measure of thoughtfulness and things to say), in that anyone can join in and have as good a platform as any recognized name.

I think of the party as the work LGBT Lib Dems are doing (I'm an officer in the exec, and it's their stall I'll be looking after at Conference). Not only are we prodding bottom, getting stuff Lib Dems have been working at for years or decades put into policy and into effect, but we can do this partly because, as our website says, "Unlike the big two parties, the Liberal Democrats' LGBT equality body is an official part of the party. We aren't an external body trying to lobby Lib Dem MPs to support LGBT equality - we have powers to put Liberal Democrat policy ideas on the Conference floor, and have them supported by the party's ordinary membership, without relying on the good graces or whims of a bigwig."

We haven't proposed any motions this Conference, but we did offer a lot of suggestions to the one about ending the blood ban on men who have sex with men (adding, for one thing, that they may also have partners who are not men who are also affected by this!), and it's a crazy thing to see words I remember us talking over turning up in the Conference agenda, debated on in a couple of days (it's actually the second policy motion that'll be heard, after one about reforming the House of Lords).

People tell me politics and politicians are all the same. I'm hardly starry-eyed about this, but I can't believe it when I, an immigrant, a person with disabilities, someone with no job and no qualifications, can be made to feel at all like I'm important, like things that happen to me matter, and that what I think matters. That's why I'm a Lib Dem.



* I'm in the middle of writing a complaint letter about the several layers of neglect, inconsistent answers, blatant untruths, unhelpfulness, and many other flaws that have contributed to me reaching two whole years of attempts to claim benefits without having seen a penny. It's the hardest job I've ever worked. The notes for my letter, the baldest facts, take up three-quarters of a typed page already.

Comments

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

The really scary bit is when motions you've helped shape, as "a person with an interest" not a shouty name from a union or a figurehead of a national charity or whatever... suddenly appear as ACTUAL BLOODY UK LAW.

Yeah. Liberals. Politics from the ground up.

[spinningtoofast.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt that a lot of Liberal Democrats are against the benefit cuts, and many other Tory policies.

And yet.

The NHS has been opened to private companies.

There has been an 80% cut to funding for undergraduate teaching and the Higher Education sector is now going to be organised according to private principles (I admit to being particularly bitter about this one, because I am half-way through a PhD where my funding only covers my tuition, James' salary means we are just living at the poverty line, I have a one-year old daughter, and I don't qualify for any assistance with childcare - and now thanks to the government, it will be next to impossible for me to get a job in academia).

The Conservative mayor of London has raised more objections to the cut in housing benefit than the Liberal-Democrat leadership

Vince Cable gave a speech threatening that if unions went on strike, the government would pass laws restricting the right to strike (thus managing to take both the Liberal and Democrat out of Liberal Democrat)

The government continues to put asylum-seeking children in detention.

A few days ago, as two asylum seeker activists in Manchester were threatened with deportation, I emailed Nick Clegg to ask for help. The email I got back basically said "Nick Clegg doesn't have the power to ask Teresa May not to deport people".

Yes, the party is in a coalition government - but that means that the leadership is therefore complicit with all Tory policies passed by the government. I understand there were concerns about political stability, but Canada has had several periods of minority government where the opposition parties supported the government on a bill-by-bill basis, and the political apocalypse has not occurred.

So what's the disconnect between the base and the leadership?

Two possibilities - 1) that actually, there is no disconnect. While many lib-dems oppose the above policies, more agree with them. I think this is a definite possibility, and is why I didn't vote Lib-Dem in the last election (though I had in previous elections). A party that can't decide whether or not to tax income over £150 000 is not a social democratic party.

or 2) that, as is the case in every other major party in the UK, many major parties throughout the West, and almost all governments throughout the west, the structures of democracy are there, but the political class still can and will ignore the masses. In support of this theory is the fact that, according to the Guardian "The Liberal Democrats will debate their stance on NHS reform next week at their conference but will not be allowed to consider or vote on any specific motion regarding the bill due before the Lords later this autumn"

I admit I am probably spoiled by being in the New Democratic Party of Canada, which is both internally democratic and actually left-wing.