Release Date: Thursday 12th July 2007
Release Time: Immediate

Contact Details:
Dr Sean Gabb (Director), 07956 472 199, sean@libertarian.co.uk

For other contact and link details, see the foot of this message
Release url: http://www.libertarian.co.uk/news/nr054.htm

STATEMENT BY THE LIBERTARIAN ALLIANCE ON TORY "SOCIAL JUSTICE" REPORT

The Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties policy institute, today issues the following statement on the Report of the Conservative Party Social Justice Policy Group. The statement is prompted by the resulting proposals to use the power of the State to "strengthen families". These proposals include a tax allowance of £20 a week to married couples, and higher taxes on alcohol.

Libertarian Alliance Director, Dr Sean Gabb, says:

"The Conservatives are half right and half wrong.

"They are right when they admit that fifty years of social engineering by Conservative and Labour Governments have been a miserable failure. We have been taxed. We have been subsidised. We have been regulated. We have been endlessly preached at. And, after two generations of all this, we have, as a nation, been made neither happier nor more virtuous. There is more illegitimacy, more divorce, more drunkenness, more crime.

"But the Conservatives are wrong when they believe that the harms of social engineering can be cured by different social engineering.

"Above all, this Report shows the usual Tory obsession with sex. These people seem to believe that, without laws to restrain us, most people would be copulating in the street. This is probably true for some Conservative politicians. Most ordinary people, however, are naturally inclined to join in stable, heterosexual unions and to produce children. Some people are not inclined to this, and libertarians respect their choice. But most people are so inclined. They do not need to be bribed with their own money into getting married. They do not need "help" from politicians.

"If the Conservative Party were really interested in improving the quality of family life, it should promise:

• To abolish income tax and reduce all other taxes, thereby allowing one partner in each marriage to stay at home and look after children;
• To abolish inheritance tax, thereby allowing the thrifty to leave property to their children;
• To abolish all new regulations made since 1987 on the setting up and running of small businesses, thereby better enabling the ambitious to start family businesses, rather than work as salaried hirelings for big business and the State;
• To repeal all new criminal offences created since 1987, thereby giving families the renewed sense of living in a free country;
• To repeal the European Communities Act 1972, thereby giving families the renewed sense of living in an independent country;
• To repeal all compulsory attendance laws at schools that are at best academies of ruling class propaganda, and at worst a form of child abuse;
• To dismiss all social workers and close down all child and family welfare agencies, thereby ending a petty inquisition over family life.

"But, of course, the Conservative Party is not interested in reviving family life by trusting the people and giving them a renewed sense of personal and national pride. This whole report is nothing more than a public relations exercise to hide the increasingly obvious fact that there is no difference between the Conservative and Labour Parties on any issue of importance.

"The Libertarian Alliance believes that all social problems can be solved by keeping politicians from doing anything about them."

END OF STATEMENT

Note(s) to Editors

Dr Sean Gabb is the Director of the Libertarian Alliance. His new book, Cultural Revolution, Culture War: How Conservatives Lost England, and How to Get It Back, is published on the 25th July 2007 and may be downloaded for free from http://tinyurl.com/34e2o3. His other books are available from Hampden Press at http://www.hampdenpress.co.uk.

He can be contacted for further comment on 07956 472 199 or by email at sean@libertarian.co.uk

Extended Contact Details:

The Libertarian Alliance is Britain's most radical free market and civil liberties policy institute. It has published over 700 articles, pamphlets and books in support of freedom and against statism in all its forms. These are freely available at http://www.libertarian.co.uk

Our postal address is

The Libertarian Alliance
Suite 35
2 Lansdowne Row
Mayfair
London
W1J 6HL
Tel: 07956 472 199

Associated Organisations

The Libertarian International - http://www.libertarian.to - is a sister organisation to the Libertarian Alliance. Its mission is to coordinate various initiatives in the defence of individual liberty throughout the world.

Sean Gabb's personal website - http://www.seangabb.co.uk - contains about a million words of writings on themes interesting to libertarians and conservatives.

Hampden Press - http://www.hampdenpress.co.uk.- the publishing house of the Libertarian Alliance.

Liberalia - http://www.liberalia.com - maintained by by LA Executive member Christian Michel, Liberalia publishes in-depth papers in French and English on libertarianism and free enterprise. It is a prime source of documentation on these issues for students and scholars.