Sheridan: Goodnight, my love… the brightest star in my sky. Delenn: Goodnight, you who were my sky, and my sun, and my moon.

Shown again today at the end of Pick TV's UK run of Babylon 5 <sob> <sniffle>

Liberal Democrats Believe… 49 – Conrad Russell

Utopianism is at all times a threat to freedom, and a party concerned with liberty must be concerned not to impose a single ideal but to hold the ring between different ideals.

The only thing which checks a power is another power. We have no problem with the idea that some powers may be in one place and some in the other. Socialists want to change the holders of power – we want to change the character and relations of power itself. They want to ‘put the boot on the other foot’. For someone with a hatred of jackboots, this is no improvement.

Libertarians believe that ‘anything goes’; Liberals believe that we should enjoy liberty while doing no harm to others. This is a bigger limitation than is often realised… Libertarians are for minimum government; Liberals are for minimum oppression. We want to see all power subject to control; not just the power of the state but also that of Monsanto, a bent copper, or a violent husband.

Attempts to defend the editorial independence of the BBC, or to secure equal rights for gay people, come out of the same wellspring which led my great-grandfather in twelve consecutive sessions to introduce a bill to allow Jews by religion to sit in Parliament. He got it through, even though he had to become Prime Minister to do so.

 Conrad Russell was the nearest thing to an intellectual guru the Liberal Democrats had in the 1990s. He was a huge influence on me, and on the party’s policymaking, and if I could wish for one Liberal book to suddenly be published, it would be a collection of Conrad’s many speeches, letters and articles for newspapers, magazines and policy debates. His era was just before the ubiquity of the Internet, and far too much of his wisdom is far too difficult to track down. His celebrated turn of phrase about jackboots, for example, is one I conscientiously copied down a couple of decades ago, but didn’t as conscientiously note its source. Conrad was also an eminent Professor of History and an outrageous name-dropping gossip, so he’d probably have chided me for inadequate bibliography and told me which famous Liberals were worse. At the very least, Liberals could do with a new edition of his inspiring 1999 work An Intelligent Person’s Guide To Liberalism. There’s not time on the eve of the election to cover it in depth; you can read here what I’ve written about his booklet The Liberal Cause.

Conrad was, by a quirk of the lengthy stages involved in becoming a peer and by a quirk of history around the merger of two parties in 1988, both the last Liberal Peer created and the first Liberal Democrat Peer, as the Earl Russell. From his historian’s perspective, he often observed that Liberals’ democracy is based on what he called “the ascending theory of power,” based not on absolute sovereignty but on consent – from 1679, our party has been about checking arbitrary power and the centralised state, with the Liberals a British pluralist party to the Tories’ English unitary party. You must bind power by rules, by law, and most importantly by not letting it be the only source of power.

Perhaps Conrad’s most simple and memorable way to describe what Liberalism is for is to stand up to bullies. It doesn’t matter who you are or who the bully is, we won’t stand by and see you pushed about.

He was my friend, and I miss him.

I have An Intelligent Person's Guide To Liberalism on my book shelf

LEGO Babylon 5 by Brick Runner

Dear Babylon 5,

I (and I hope I’m not alone) would love it if the comics that were issued in the 90s were made available as ecomics on as many online retailers as possible (it will give everyone a chance to buy them).

I really want “The Psi Corps and You” on my tablet…

"That’s your flight. I suggest you board quickly."

1x05 - The Parliament of Dreams

Just saw this episode in the UK this week. Season 1 is much better than I remember

priddyisaspriddydoes:

After 18 years, my dad is hanging up his hat and calling it a day.

He doesn’t have Facebook anymore so I want to take it upon myself (because I am a managing, domineering sort of female) to thank all of you who have put so much time and effort in over the years.

Whether it be campaigning,…

Sad to hear that a proper Liberal, David Heath MP is standing down at the next election. He is one the few MPs who inspires me to be a Liberal almost every time he speaks.

DM can stand for Direct Messages in Twitter or the Daily Mail out there in the big bad world. I don’t read either, and all my friends know that I never read British newspapers of any kind.

Nonetheless there are always those that like to sympathise: today I’ve had plenty of, “Ooh you seem to have...

The Daily Mail: a loathsome rag

Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Labour Party, writes in Tuesday’s edition of the Daily Mail:

It was June 1944 and the Allies were landing in Normandy. A 20-year old man, who had arrived in Britain as a refugee just four years earlier, was part of that fight. He was my father. Fighting the Nazis and...

Well, you know what The Daily Mail can do....

Reblog if you're in the Babylon 5 fandom

I’m curious.

Yes. That's me.