The Libertarian Alliance
By coincidence, the annual conference of the Libertarian Alliance was in London on the last weekend of November, and I was invited to attend so happily did so. The Libertarian Alliance “is a non-partisan group fighting statism in all its forms and working for the creation of a truly free society”. They don’t stand for Parliament themselves, and are very inclusive – welcoming all strands of libertarianism.
The conference was in the ancient halls of the National Liberal Club.
A young Winston Churchill – one of the more famous former Liberal MPs.
One of the lounges.
I really enjoyed the two-day conference. The range of speakers and topics was fascinating – from Space Entrepreneurship to Radical Islam to Sex Freedom.
The session I found the best was the one on whether Radical Islam and the West are in a culture war, and that very rare thing happened – my views changed somewhat, or refocused anyway, as a result of it.
One of the speakers was Claire Fox, who incidentally was a long-standing member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. She made an excellent case that much of the hatred young Muslims are showing towards the West doesn’t come from reading the Koran, but they are reflecting the self-loathing that is so common in the West – as exemplified by Michael Moore and almost any university faculty in Europe. She said you can’t label Islam as being anti-Science when Greenpeace are far worse offenders with their unscientific opposition to GE etc.
I thought I would come out of the session more firmly convinced that radical Islam (or Islamism) was incompatible with western values of a secular liberal democracy. But Fox convinced me that the situation is not that dire – that much of the problem comes from Western political leaders kowtowing as they did with the Danish cartoons etc.
The session on sexual freedom was great also. The key speaker was John Pendal from the Spanner Trust. John was Mr Leather International 2003!!
The Spanner Trust was formed after a group of gay men were prosecuted for having consensual sadomasochistic sex. Under UK law, any marks or injuries which are more than transient and trifling can be prosecuted – even if consensual. Technically a hickey is an assault. In 1990 16 men were sentenced to up to 4.5 years jail as the result of a 4 million pound investigation into consensual SM behaviour.
Amazing to think one could get sent to jail for consensual activities. It led to a good discussion about laws restricting consensual sexual activities in a number of countries.
So all in all was a fascinating two days. Also was great to meet up with so many libertarians or classical liberals from Europe and the UK, plus renew some old friendships. Europe now has 140 broadly classical liberal think-tanks and the like.
Wasn’t the reason I came over to the UK, but was very glad the timing worked out and I attended.