GUEST POST Why have the Lib Dems given up fighting most parliamentary by-elections?

Lib Dem HQ has decided to stop making an effort in unpromising Westminster by-elections. Regular guest poster Augustus Carp argues that they've got it wrong.

Today I want us to think about a rather unusual chap called Ian Stuart – he was the "area manager" or whatever it was called of the Liberal Party in the Home Counties in the 1980s. On our rare meetings I found him to be a rather genial cove, although I gather he was not always popular with the party hierarchy. Anyway, it was his lot to be the Liberal Party candidate in the long-forgotten Uxbridge by election of 1972.

Long forgotten because, on the very same day (7 December) the Liberal Party won a Famous Victory in Sutton and Cheam. Graham Tope triumphed, Liberal hearts were gladdened, and progress suddenly seemed a little bit more inevitable. 

Ian Stuart told me that the only instructions he received from party HQ regarding his campaign were given to him by Jeremy Thorpe himself: 

"Go to Uxbridge and make a nuisance of yourself. You are going to fight a futile campaign, but in a good cause. You are a diversionary tactic from the main battle in Sutton & Cheam. If you don’t come back with at least two writs issued against you, then you haven’t been doing your job!"

I don’t think any writs were issued, but Ian certainly did his job. As he was the Convenor of Shop Stewards at Heathrow Airport at the time he was fully acquainted with the intricacies of the largest employer in the area, and was indeed able to stir up mischief. He certainly generated enough press releases, silly stunts and outrageous quotes to distract from Sutton and Cheam and keep Conservative and Labour activists away from the target seat. And he went down to a heroic defeat.

Bit here’s the thing – at least he tried. He knew what was needed of him – to fight as good a good campaign as he possibly could, with no money, half a dozen members, and no prospect of any external help. 

Now compare that with the situation today. The Liberal Democrats are infinitely richer in terms of money, activists, experience, MPs and councillors – but the national party seems to have given up on the idea of fighting elections, even as diversionary tactics. 

Why has the national party made so little effort recently, in Rochdale, Gorton, Makerfield, South Aberdeen? No doubt we could name others as well. I have no doubt that the candidates and local parties were doing their best, but where was the support for those campaigns? There wasn’t even an email asking for money. 

My local party is amazing. There’s perhaps only a dozen or so of them, but they are always coaxing me to deliver a few more leaflets, come out canvassing, give them some idea for Focuses etc. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and I am happy to help them – so much so that I probably don’t even qualify as an armchair member anymore. They deserve all the support I can give them. 

But why do I continue to pay my subscriptions to the national party (index-linked since the merger!) when I see so little bang for my buck? Why doesn’t the national party seem to want to put up a fight any more? I wouldn’t want to join a football club that wasn’t particularly interested in playing (or winning) football matches. As a member of a political party, I want to see it – and help it - fight elections. 

I heard the explanation given that the party doesn’t want to spend £50,000 just to save a £500 deposit. That might make economic sense, but it doesn’t make political sense anymore. Getting 2 per cent in a parliamentary by election is actively harming us. It makes us look irrelevant, even to voters in places where we are successful. 

The current political environment needs us to spend the £50,000 just to make sure that we retain some sort of credibility – not just in the relevant constituency, but nationally as well. We might at least try to come third, assuming that the first two places are out of reach – that might get us an honourable mention in news broadcasts. 

If that’s too much to ask, at least we might try to save our deposit. We cannot choose where by elections will fall, so we just have to make the best of a bad job. At least when they do happen, we should fight the good fight, and do the best we can.

Ian Stuart's other great observation to me was that every member of the Liberal Party, with the obvious exception of the two of us, was too bloody clever by half – always overanalysing problems and reinventing the wheel, rather than just getting on with the basics. Perhaps that’s the problem we have in the Liberal Democrats at the moment.

Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.

Ruth Shaw (1937-2024): Doyenne of Liberalism in Sutton

Mourning the death of Adrian Slade the other day, I initially wrote that he was the Liberal Party's first councillor on the Greater London Council.

I should have known that Stanley Rundle had been the member for Richmond upon Thames before him, because I heard many tales of the contribution he made to local politics when I lived there in the early Eighties.

But I had not heard of Ruth Shaw, who represented Sutton and Cheam between 1973 and 1977.

Ruth died in 2024, and Sutton Liberal Democrats have a page celebrating her life - I have borrowed the photo here from it.

The page lists her lifetime of work for the Liberals and then Liberal Democrats:

Ruth was one of a small group of people who kept the Liberal Party alive in Sutton & Cheam through the lean years of the 1950s. She: 

• was a founder member of Sutton & Cheam Young Liberals in 1950; 

• was the first ever Liberal councillor on Sutton & Cheam Borough Council in 1961 (finally winning a seat on her seventh attempt); 

• was elected to the GLC in 1973 to represent Sutton and Cheam, one of only two Liberals on the council. She put her victory down to "community politics" and the party's opposition to the Ringway 3 project. She was given a place on the GLC's transport committee; 

• was the first (and last!) Liberal Greater London Councillor for Sutton & Cheam 1973-77; 

• was Sutton councillor for Worcester Park North 1986 to 1990 and North Cheam 1990 to 2002; 

• was named an Honorary Alderman by Sutton Council in 2011; 

• held most Local Party offices, including Chair and President.

The page also records what Ruth said to the Sutton Guardian when she was awarded and OBE for her services to politics:

"I didn't see this coming at all.I was  absolutely astonished and obviously very pleased. To get this recognition is wonderful although I don't even feel like I've done all that much - although I must have been doing something right. 

"I just believed liberalism was the right way to go. In the '50s people on the doorstep told me it had no future but I couldn't see it that way. Now the Liberal Democrats have been in power here for more than 25 years."

It's obvious that Ruth's early work in Sutton and Cheam did much to make Graham Tope's victory in the 1973 Westminster by-election there possible.

Jean Calder (1931-2022)

Embed from Getty Images

Years ago, Graham Tope came to Market Harborough to help us in the local elections. It happened that one of the doors he knocked on belonged to my mother, and she introduced herself to him as "the Dowager Lady Bonkers".

Sadly, the Dowager Lady B. died this morning at the age of 90.

It was peaceful, as people always hope deaths will be, and we had been given the time to say the things to each other that needed to be said. For that reason, among many others, I am grateful for the increasing time I have spent caring for her in recent years.

I owe my mother everything for keeping the show on the road after my father walked out on us. And, whether through genetics or influence, I get my wit (such as it is), my romantic notions about England and my belief in education for its own sake from her too.

Her surname after her second marriage (to a much better man than my father) was Mattey, but when she had her writing published she wrote as Jean Calder, so I have used that name in my headline.

Blogging seems distinctly old fashioned now, but I still have an affection for it and intend to keep Liberal England going. Thanks for sticking with it as posts became rarer.

It occurs to me that I am now an orphan, but I would not claim to be Well-Behaved.