For the third year in a row, I was invited to be a judge in a schools’ debating competition organised by the Shaftesbury branch of Rotary and held in Shaftesbury School. Rotarians deserve a vote of thanks for organising this event. As always, the quality of debate was high and the judging difficult as a result. Students of Blandford and Shaftesbury schools now progress to the next round and I wish them luck.
As I journeyed home I turned my mind to what had happened earlier. It is good indeed that young people have the talent and skills to choose, research and advocate a point of view in a debate against someone taking an entirely alternative stance. We sometimes think that our younger generations are not interested in the world around them. That is not the case and I find that encouraging. But I reflected on a wider point – the liberties we enjoy in our country. One of my Ministerial roles is as Elections Minister. I am responsible for ensuring that our electoral laws are fit for purpose and in place to deliver the elections of this year and for the future. My overarching principle is to ensure that our elections will be open and above challenge. Not for us hanging chads or stormings of the US Capitol. The Government of the day (of whichever Party) is the temporary custodian and defender our democratic liberties. But all of us, and this was my thinking post the debate competition, must daily remind ourselves of the value of that liberty and our rights. We are able to speak and write freely on whatever topic we wish without fear of incarceration or worse. No secret police stalk our streets listening at keyholes. We can critique our Leaders, we can vote, we can speak our minds, love who we wish, enjoy racial, religious and sexual equality under the law, and in all we are defended by an advanced Parliamentary system and independent judiciary.
When so much of the world remains under the jackboot of suppression and where Habeas Corpus is alien, I sometimes fear that we take what we have for granted; that somehow, because of our evolution of Rights rooted in Magna Carta and running like a golden thread through our history, they are underappreciated, taken for granted and therefore often devalued in esteem. It is easy to sometimes feel glum; that not everything is as we would like it BUT we do well to remind ourselves, I am tempted to say daily, of the glory of our rights and privileges. We continue to stand for a set of values and freedoms of which too many of our fellow men and women across the world look on with green eyed envy and their oppressors with suspicion. Let us never forget the value of democratic freedom.
