GUEST POST Let next week's online summer school rekindle your Radical Liberal fire

William Lane invites you to an exciting online event being organised by the John Stuart Mill Institute and the Social Liberal Forum.

As Liberals, it is easy to feel despondent in the current political moment. The last few decades have told a tale of retreat from Liberal values globally, with rising authoritarianism across the world and a growing cynicism gnawing at the heart of established liberal democracies.

Our horizons are shrinking as the world grows ever smaller and more insular, riven with fear and mistrust, and it feels like many of our cherished values are facingpushback across the globe. The far right rises on the back of political hopelessness, states and businesses monitor us ever more closely, and people feel more and more disconnected from each other and their communities.

Yeats’s famous lines will resonate with many of us:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

But we must not give in to despair. Our political tendency, the tendency that has ushered in an age of unparalleled prosperity across the globe, is capable of astonishing regrowth and renewal.

Liberalism did not become the dominant global ideology overnight, it had to fight hard and fast against entrenched political and social interests, while also contending with the ideological threats of absolute monarchy, fascism and state communism. 

In our age of rising political tension, economic stagnation and growing authoritarian threat, we need to rediscover the social and political dynamism that made Liberal thought and politics so incisive in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The John Stuart Mill Institute and Social Liberal Forum are leading that charge, by launching an online Radical Liberal Summer School that is taking place from the 11-13 August. Through lectures, Q&As and panel discussions we hope to rekindle some of that old Liberal fire, and contribute to an as yet small but growing spirit of Liberal revivalism.

Join us next week for fascinating discussions on individual freedom, economic empowerment, foreign policy and workplace democracy. We will be hosting prominent politicians, philosophers and academics including Bobby Dean MP, Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, Cllr Carl Cashman and Frances Foley.

For full details and to book your place, go the the event's webpage. We look forward to seeing you next week.

William Lane is senior researcher at the John Stuart Mill Institute.