How To Be A Liberal: The Story of Freedom and the Fight for its Survival

by Ian Dunt

Laissez-faire failed. And it failed for a reason. It did not speak to people’s lives. It did not offer them protections. It did not provide real freedom, because the restrictions they faced – discrimination, insecure work, educational disadvantage, lack of social respect, absence of representation – were not addressed or even recognised. It was cold, distant and ineffective. It was a form of liberalism with nothing to say. Its approach to economics left struggling communities behind. Its approach to society trapped marginalised groups in a state of oppression. Many of the people discarded by this form of liberalism then abandoned liberalism in turn – not just laissez-faire, but as a whole. And in its place, other voices emerged, with an age old story to tell, in which people could find meaning through an authentic collective consciousness – by placing the group identity over that of the individual.