Is Britain still liberal?

Liberalism is under threat from the coalition, the economic crisis and inequality

by David Marquand / July 19, 2012 / Leave a comment

Published in August 2012 issue of Prospect Magazine

In many ways, Britain is a more tolerant society today than 50 years ago—but liberalism is under threat

The Oxford political theorist Michael Freeden has called Britain “a beacon of liberalism.” TS Eliot thought it was “rotten with liberalism.” Friedrich Hayek insisted that it had jettisoned the liberal values of its great days and taken the “road to serfdom.” As these diverse verdicts show, liberalism has many dimensions. Three stand out. The most obvious is the political liberalism embodied in the Liberal party from the 1860s to the 1980s and then in today’s Liberal Democrat party. But liberalism is also a creed; and, not least, it is a way of life as well. These three dimensions overlap in puzzling and sometimes contradictory ways, but on all fronts, Britain’s liberal tradition is under threat.

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Comments

Herman Kloeti
July 25, 2012 at 22:27
Liberal? Never been, never will be.
Reply
Gabriel Bonnar
July 30, 2012 at 11:25
Liberalism has changed meaning a few times since the early 19th century. Economic liberalism involved support for free trade and the rule of the market not weighed down by too much state intervention. That meaning reasserted itself during the Reagan-Thatcher years when privatisation and deregulation became operative words. Liberalism as a social philosophy of fairness in the 19th century pushed for social welfare, the protection of children and women, and the rights of organised workers. Freedom of expression was a major agenda. Liberal attitudes to alcohol abuse and extramarital sex were puritan: individuals were urged to control their impulses in order to control their lives and work for progress. The sex and drugs revolution of the 60s went to the opposite extreme, and affected the arts and cultural norms generally. Political correctness began to rope in public discourse. The freedom of traditionalist individuals and groups to dissent openly from current pc orthodoxy has been deeply curtailed. So when people today consider themselves to be liberals, exactly what kind of liberalism do they espouse?
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David Marquand is a writer, historian and former Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford. He was Labour MP for Ashfield between 1966 and 1977.