12-04-2015, 07:52 PM
I read with interest your correspondents letter in the Newbury Weekly(30th April) expressing his anguished disappointment with the Libdems in West Berkshire prior to the national and local elections.
As it is my initial draft response has been over taken by an election result which has decimated what I presume
was their former party. Unfortunately your correspondent made the all too common mistake of
incorrectly calling his former party by the name Liberals, when there remains fundamental differences between the two parties.
When the Liberals and SDP voted to merge in 1988, they created a fresh party and registration with the electoral commission, initially as the Social and Liberal Democrats. Remember that?
In fact many members of the two parent parties resisted the merger, and my understanding is that within a year,
the Liberal Party had relaunched itself and we can claimed with considerable justification to be the continuation of that radical, centerist Liberal tradition.
The political experiment that is the LibDems, a compromise between Liberals and Social Democrats, now appears to be drawing towards its inevitable conclusion. It was a dead-end which seems to think it can re-invent itself by simply calling itself Liberal.
That is a name and philosophy the real Liberal Party will never surrender as we strive for a better society, and where our chief care is for the rights and opportunities of the individual and where in all spheres we set personal freedom first.
As it is my initial draft response has been over taken by an election result which has decimated what I presume
was their former party. Unfortunately your correspondent made the all too common mistake of
incorrectly calling his former party by the name Liberals, when there remains fundamental differences between the two parties.
When the Liberals and SDP voted to merge in 1988, they created a fresh party and registration with the electoral commission, initially as the Social and Liberal Democrats. Remember that?
In fact many members of the two parent parties resisted the merger, and my understanding is that within a year,
the Liberal Party had relaunched itself and we can claimed with considerable justification to be the continuation of that radical, centerist Liberal tradition.
The political experiment that is the LibDems, a compromise between Liberals and Social Democrats, now appears to be drawing towards its inevitable conclusion. It was a dead-end which seems to think it can re-invent itself by simply calling itself Liberal.
That is a name and philosophy the real Liberal Party will never surrender as we strive for a better society, and where our chief care is for the rights and opportunities of the individual and where in all spheres we set personal freedom first.