Public Life: Values

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, I join in thanking the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for enabling us to talk about values, and it is a particular pleasure to follow the former vice-chancellor of my old university, especially as he was kind enough to give me an honorary degree—so I have to say that about him.

Among the vehicles for translating values for the public are the political parties. It is well known that I am not the greatest admirer of Nick Clegg’s leadership of my political party. However, just before the election he came to a dinner in London which was held for the 50th anniversary of my election to this place, and he made a magnificent speech on liberal values. During the rather dreary election campaign I sent a message to our campaign headquarters saying, “Please ask Nick to repeat that speech, because it would elevate things a bit more”. I do not know whether he ever got the message, but the next time I heard him talk on liberal values was in his very dignified resignation speech as leader. That certainly had an effect, because thousands of people have rushed to join the Liberal Democrats since our crushing election defeat, and that was largely due to his inspirational speech.

I was reminded of that when my friend Colin Eglin, who was leader of the Progressive Party in South Africa, said, after a totally disastrous election:

“There will be people who will ask ‘What’s the use?’ Let me make three comments in response to this cry of frustration. The first is that certain things are worth fighting for. Justice is worth fighting for. And freedom is worth fighting for. And decency is worth fighting for. The commitment to fight for these things should never depend on the perceived prospect of electoral success”.

That is true. Two of our parties are at the moment engaged in leadership elections. The Labour one certainly opens up the prospect of different sets of values being put before them. We will not know the result of that until September; personally, I rather hope that Jeremy Corbyn will win, not just because I rather like him but because that would open up the ground of politics in Britain for the Liberal Democrats. Our leadership election is going on today; the count is taking place as we speak. During the campaign I was a bit surprised that Tim Farron came under attack for being an evangelical Christian. I thought, “What have we come to, when somebody can be attacked for that?”. I may disagree with him on some things—I am sure I will—but the fact that he is an evangelical Christian means that he is somebody rooted in his own convictions, which is very important.

One of the people whom I met in South Africa many years ago, over a quiet little lunch, was the great Alan Paton, who wrote Cry the Beloved Country. He was leader of the Liberal Party and caused it to fold rather than accept the apartheid rules. He said,

“by Liberalism I do not mean the creed of any party or any century. I mean a generosity of spirit, a tolerance of others, a commitment to the rule of law, a high ideal of the worth and dignity of man, a repugnance of authoritarianism and a love of freedom”.

No one can better that, and I hope that our new leader will take those words to heart.