Cambridge Liberal Democrat Manifesto 1998 The Liberal Democrat Approach

Liberal Democrats are committed to local government. We believe in decentralisation, in local people making as many of the decisions that affect their lives as possible. We believe in local community action and local democracy. We want to create a new sense of community in which people work together for the common benefit.

But our commitment to community is built on an even more fundamental commitment to individual rights - most of all the right to participate as an equal in decision-making and the right to equal concern and respect as an individual. We utterly oppose discrimination, as we reject all ideologies that treat people as members of groups or categories and not as individuals. The community spirit we want to see is one based on tolerance, inclusion and mutual respect.

We see the role of the local politician as bringing people together so that they can work out solutions to their problems for themselves. This often means compromise and forbearance. It always means hard work by local representatives to find out what people want to do and to create an atmosphere of tolerant and rational debate.

Liberal Democrats are committed to environmental sustainability, to prosperity through enterprise and innovation, to universal access to high quality education and health care, to effective and efficient public services, to decent housing and to a general sense of public safety and security.

It is a set of policies and values that makes sense nationally. And it also makes sense locally. Local government has an important role to play in environmental protection, economic development, education, health and policing, along with the other services, such as housing, which it delivers directly.

Leadership is important. Liberal Democrat values and policies are well known, and Liberal Democrat councillors make decisions in the light of those values and policies. But it is not, in our view, the role of councillors to impose on local people clever answers thought up by experts. We do not believe that, simply by virtue of their election, councillors have the right to impose their views without further discussion and debate with people at large. As Paddy Ashdown has said, "Politicians consistently underestimate the understanding and sense of common purpose of those whom they seek to lead."

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