Tristan of Liberty Alone wrote an excellent post today in which he describes his first political stirrings and why he joined the Lib Dems.

 

My own political history is somewhat less well defined than Tristan’s. I have memories but they are much more gentle and certainly I do not remember the detail of the earlier years.

 

I vaguely remember accompanying my father to a polling station and watching him cast his vote. He wouldn’t tell me who he cast it for at the time, emphasising the importance of the secret ballot. When we returned home he explained that he was voting for the Liberal Democrat and I nodded sagely, pretending that I knew what that meant. In fact he had taken my question the wrong way – like most children my meaning was “why”, not “which”.

 

I have vague memories of political events – I remember Chris Patten being appointed to the Education brief, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Margaret Thatcher crying. All of those memories are frustratingly faint and pale in comparison to other important events like the first football match I went to or the first time I went to school.

 

In short – none of those events changed my life. They happened and I took them in, but my family never really talked much about politics. All of them were Liberal Democrats but I never really knew until I asked and I wouldn’t do that for some years to come.

 

My time in secondary school was political, only in the sense that I was strongly opposed to the prevailing mood of my class who were generally Tory-thinking. Debates were had on why we should leave the European Union (I was the only dissenter), abolish the NHS (I was the only dissenter) or not have a minimum wage (I was the only dissenter).

 

I am not sure whether at that point it was genuine conviction or sheer bloody-mindedness, but I felt badly out of place. People would refer to me as “the socialist” so I would use the term about myself. After a few years I researched it, found out more about the doctrine behind it and decided it didn’t fit.

 

By my late teens I was delivering Lib Dem leaflets for my father (who was too busy working to hit the streets) and I had signed up to a class on politics at college. I studied politics not out of any interest but simply as a sixth A level. It was the only humanities subject that worked with my timetable.

 

The first sixty minutes were electric. We did not discuss a single issue, structure or personality but I was fascinated. Politics was all around us and we did it all the time. I was an unrepentant geek, joining the Association of Political Science and devouring journal after journal.

 

And then it was the 2001 General Election.

 

I had long considered joining the Lib Dems – mainly because I was delivering the leaflets anyway and wanted to feel like I was part of what was going on. What tipped my hand was the tone of the 2001 Conservative Campaign which took as a key theme a seeming terror of the Euro and the European Union.

 

My strongest instinct politically, long before I became passionate about liberalism, protection of minorities and preserving individual choice, had always been that I was a passionate pro-European. I did not necessarily agree with everything the Union did but I felt that there was a principle behind it that was worth fighting for and adhering to. It is an imperfect structure but one that could change if there was political will for it to do so.

 

I joined the party and realised what I had done shortly afterwards when I received three rounds rather than the customary one I had always delivered. Shit. Still, it was good healthy exercise!

 

I went to University to study politics and suddenly I was in a different realm. I had used to be the socialist when discussing the welfare state or the European Union – now when discussing Latin America or the Middle East I was the “Tory” or the “Conservative” and on a couple of occasions I was even labelled a “fascist” for criticising Hugo Chavez’s dictatorial style of leadership and for voicing some support for nuclear energy.

 

I left the party for a while – considering the local party’s priorities to be wrong. I dabbled in Green politics but decided that it was too radical and unfocused for my tastes. Supermarket action days and placards were not my thing. I scurried back to the Lib Dems and was blogging shortly before the 2006 Leadership election kicked off.

 

As I get older (I’m nearing my first quarter century) I feel decidedly more liberal than in my earlier days. I become passionate talking about individual freedoms and limited government. I am, in short, turning into a libertarian, albeit one who still thinks that it is society’s duty to support those most in need of a fair chance.

 

I am more active in the Lib Dems than I have been at any stage in my life and am proud to belong to an organisation that has taken courageous stands on key issues. Although I will not be in the United Kingdom for that much longer (if all goes well), I will always feel immensely tied to the party and look forward to seeing it go from strength to strength.

 

Now, if you haven’t already done so, go read Tristan’s blog post. It’s much more interesting than mine!