Some years ago I watched a fascinating TV programme that showed how the American authoritarians had deliberately - and successfully - set out to make "liberal" (in a social context) a dirty word. This involved first using it over-freely, usually with a sneer in the voice. Then adding negative associations such as "elitist liberals" and "liberal eggheads". This was then extended to start implying that social liberals (as opposed to right-wing economic free-marketers) were somehow unpatriotic and even dangerous. Old fears about communism were exploited shamelessly.

This barrage of guilt through verbal association was kept up relentlessly. The mud slowly stuck. Anyone in the US will know how effective this strategy was. Anyone in the UK who doubts it should just read the comments over here.

In the US today there are signs that the anti-liberal trend may be (very slowly) turning with the increasing unpopularity of Bush and his cronies. Which makes it all the more ironic that the anti-liberal campaign seems to be gathering pace over here.

Since 911 those of us who believe in civil liberties have been under attack - David Blunkett infamously used the term airy fairy libertarians the same month. We are now being labelled regularly as part of the "civil liberties industry" (I wish! I could do with the money...)

The right-wing press has picked up on the Human Rights Act (incorporation of which was one of the few good things Blair did). Any time this produces apparently lenient or counter-intuitive results the whole Act is slammed - even though in many cases the reports turn out to be false. So the whole concept of Human Rights is slowly undermined and presented as dangerous.

Then there's ID cards and the surveillance state. Here the authoritarians chant loudly the mantra "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear". So anyone who believes in privacy is automatically guilty of something.

This has been going on for years - why do I mention it now? Because I've noticed an increasing number of (mainly Labour) politicians refer to the Liberal Democrats as "the Liberals". Initially this was the occasional back bencher, but increasingly it's government and even cabinet members. The LibDems are referred to consistently as "the liberal party" - with a slight sneer in the voice. So "liberalism" is divorced from "democracy" and made to sound like an insult.

When this sort of thing is being done with increasing frequency by senior cabinet members then it can't be a simple mistake. Politicians understand the power of words. Maybe I'm being a paranoid conspiracy theorist but it strikes me as a deliberate attempt to take the UK down the US road of making "liberal" a dirty word.

Liberalism is not a dirty concept, we must not allow the authoritarians to hijack the word here the way they have in the US. So I feel the need to say it loud and clear:

I am a social liberal and will always remain so

What about you?

liberal liberalism UK politics ukpolitics