Something happened last year that reminded me that freedom couldn’t matter more. I went to Tunisia, for a conference, where I met a group of young people from across the Middle East, all of whom were involved in the Arab Spring.
The word freedom was never far from their lips, or from their thoughts. A teenage girl whose family had disowned her for getting involved in politics, a young man whose friends had been killed in protest. It was less the hope that freedom would come that kept them going, more the certain knowledge of what life was like without it.
It reminded me that now, every bit as much as during the French Revolution, freedom is and remains a rallying cry across the world.
But look closer to home, with the debate over Scottish Independence raging, with passion and anger, whichever side you’re on. And with the future of the left hanging in the balance, it’s impossible to argue that this doesn’t matter here.
It made me stop and wonder, why then don’t we talk about it more?
Because the right does. And here’s the problem. Because the right has captured the concept of liberty it’s allowed them to define and debate freedom on their own terms.But their freedom isn’t just limited; it’s a bleak version of liberty that says as long as I am left alone, as long as nobody inhibits me from action, I am free.…
Longish exploration of freedom from a left POV.
Nothing left to lose? Liberty and the Left
Lisa Nandy
