A Kinder, Gentler, Kind of Libertarianism:
Reflections on the Past Two Decades
Paul Staines

My parents sold the former family home recently and asked me, not unreasonably, to clear out my books from their attic. I found my copy of Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies, from Plato to Marx, inside the cover my name was scrawled together with the date 1980. I date my conversion to Libertarianism from the day I put down that book.

I joined the Young Conservatives because they were the only people around who were anti-Socialist or at least anti-Soviet. This was the era of CND and I saw the key battle in terms of the West versus Soviet expansionism. Simon Salzedo was chairman of the local YCs and a Maggie-loving-Wet-hating typical young Tory. He was bemused by this zealous anti-Communist in his midst paraphrasing Popper and Hayek at cheese and wine evenings B it would be a few years before he would lead the charge at Oxford to dry out OUCA on a principled Libertarian platform. He was elitist and it rubbed off on me, by the time I got to sixth form I had revived the double barreled family name that my father had let wither as a sixties Young Fabian. My Anglo-Indian father obviously despaired of me hanging out with Tory crypto-racists whom he loathed (although later he would vote with his wallet for tax cuts and privatization giveaways).

By the time I was an undergraduate in the mid-eighties, having joined the Federation of Conservative Students, and somehow affecting to wear fake bow-ties and cheap suits (whilst endlessly debating the merits of Anarcho-Capitalism versus Minimal Statism), I had at last found a small number of like minded souls. Marc Henri Glendenning the then national chairman of FCS spoke a language I could understand - Thatcher on drugs. Still it was right-wing anti-Communist, anti-Wet and mainly reactionary. Battling in Student Unions to rename the "Mandela Bar" the "Bruce Forsyth Bar", arguing with CND feminists and generally opposing the left wing campus establishment whilst in the real world the Conservatives won elections by landslides and the war of ideas. Only on campus were we a radical minority and intentionally antagonistic, in fact so obnoxious that the Conservative Party decided to close down its youth wings.

That antagonistic, sod you attitude continued after I failed to get a degree (I was thrown out for being a right-wing pain in the butt who was more interested in student politics than essays) when I went to work in the various right-wing pressure groups and think tanks that proliferated in the late eighties. The deliberately provocative attitude still maintained B I never wore a "Hang Mandela" badge but I hung out with people who did. Why? What did we gain from doing so? Did we make ourselves more popular by calling for the death of a man who was fighting injustice by the only means available to him? Did this "shift the parameters of debate" in our direction?

Did the over the top aggressiveness of the ultra-sound cadres put people off the broader ideas and positive agenda of Libertarianism? Clearly it galvanised our enemies against us in much the same way that the crude jingoism of many Little Englanders puts people off supporting a more liberal European ideal.

I am the first to admit that in the past when challenged on issues I have been provocative - "What will Libertarianism do for the homeless?" "Nothing". Not a way to win friends and influence people. I think its time for a more effective, kinder, gentler kind of Libertarianism. Principled, but pragmatic. Selling out B no, but better salesmanship certainly. A lot of us who came to Libertarianism via FCS and student unions as well as battling in the Conservative Party factions, have a take-no-prisoners attitude that does not play out well to wider audiences. We are unsympathetic and uncompromising, we are "Sound" but little heard. What profiteth an idealogue if his ideology is ignored? Or even if it is just rendered unpalatable.

Now there is a role for martyrs, who will brook no compromise. Our editor is foremost amongst them, his voice can be heard in the wind and on Radio 4, Radio 5, Talk Radio, Local Radio, Daytime TV and innumerable late night discussion programmes as well as Panorama, not counting a gross of websites, a million e-mails and this journal. All power to his >puter.

Nevertheless Sean would never claim to be a politician or a pragmatist B he is a prophet, a prophet of doom. The British live in one of the richest and most free nations on earth, the way Sean tells it we are about to be marked with the number of the beast before Big Brother Blair carts us off to a New Education Facility for a Better Britain. Sean believes that if we give them a millimeter they will give us the kilometer.

I prefer to listen to Prodigy whilst Sean listens to Elgar but we do both march to the same drumbeat. I prefer to focus on the future and our successes. For instance the internet was developed by avowed Libertarians and brought to you by free enterprise, the EU by statists and bureaucrats. We believe in lower taxes, our opponents want your money, free enterprise brought you the Lotus sports car, bureaucrats brought you London Underground. What do you want?

Mere spin? It's optimism versus pessimism. If pessimism prevailed than we would still be sat shivering round a fire in a cave, but an optimist went out and slaughtered a wooly mammoth. People want prosperity, we offer a path to prosperity, whereas our opponents offer only reduced equality. Californian Libertarians offer an optimistic manifesto of capitalist success for all, some British Libertarians preach a fire and brimstone hell for all those who don't repent .

The glass is half full, so with liberty in our hearts let's focus on pragmatic politics and progress. Don't whinge, win.