I had to go to Camidoc (the local GP out of hours service) the other night as I was having an asthma attack. An Asian doctor was on duty there who was extremely kind and saw me immediately. He could clearly see I couldn’t breathe. Anyway – he put me on a nebuliser (a machine that you breathe through that dispenses relieving drugs).

When I was recovering (I was the only patient), he sat chatting to me and I was telling him about my daughters. And he asked if I was married. No, I answered. And then he said that that life is difficult for women on their own and that children need discipline and need a father’s firm hand etc etc.

I was a bit gob-smacked. I think, being a Member of Parliament and pretty assertive as women go, I sometimes forget that out there is a world that still believes that men are the authority figure in the family and that no woman should want to be on her own. At the same time, I was wondering about the gap between Asian culture and my life – which is the totemic opposite of the traditional view of woman and family. Don’t get me wrong. This man was just being kind and thoughtful – but there was a genuine belief that women had a place and that children need a father in situ. He must have seen the look on my face, because he said – well every situation is different and perhaps he was wrong.

And of course, there are many, many non-Asian men who also believe the same thing as he did. But it did strike me as a bit of a cultural difference.

It’s like when I am out knocking on doors in elections; I am always struck by the number of Asian women who open the door and say that they will vote for whomever their husband votes for (and often that the whole extended family will vote also vote that way). I always feel like saying ‘can’t you think for yourself?’ You do sometimes get a white woman expressing similar views, but in my experience it is much, much more common amongst Asian communities.

Of course I don’t say, ‘can’t you think for yourself?’ because it would be plain rude and because different cultures are different. That is the whole point about tolerance: tolerating and being tolerated for things we do not do or believe ourselves. It has to work both ways! Yet there is always a sense of tension when the differences touch on values that are seen to be fundamental to one of the cultures.

So I often wonder – particularly now, following the bungled Forrest Gate intelligence/police operation and when the Muslim community is feeling targeted – just how much we have in common or how much we have apart.

There is a great story about trying to integrate white and Asian women in a town in the north of England. They don’t mix at first and sit on opposite sides of the community room. Some weeks later – the women are all the best of friends and having a wonderful time. And what had broken the ice? They all thought their daughters-in-law were not good enough for their sons.

Some things transcend cultural differences! At this time, we also need to work hard to focus on other values – such as decency, respect for life and opposition to indiscriminate violence – that do also transcend boundaries. We have got to find a way of joining hands across all our communities in these desperately difficult times. And you can help me – in my job as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for policing – to get the message across to the police.

So I want people to write directly to me and tell me. Not just the leaders of communities, albeit that is welcome – but the wives, the daughters and the sons and the fathers. You can contact me via my website or write to me at House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA.

This column originally appeared in Asian Voice.

I am definitely over-excited! I’ve bought my flag AND managed to attach it successfully to my car window. They clearly make the merchandise woman-friendly these days. I did go through minor agonies wondering if flying the England flag on my car was a) suitable b) jingoistic or c) not the sort of thing a responsible Member of Parliament should be doing. And then I thought – who cares? I love the World Cup. I love sport. I have a team taking part. Hurrah!

I’d watched other cars proudly show off any number of wind-whipped flags over recent weeks – and as the fever mounted could resist no longer. My eldest daughter had also been nagging about getting a flag. Football does kind of go to the heart of even my family. My ex-husband always said he could have played for West Ham. It was a good line. My younger daughter tried out for Arsenal Girls.

Anyway – during last week when Parliament was in recess and I wrote articles, caught up on the difficult bits of work that somehow, mysteriously always work their way to the bottom of the pile and gave both myself and my house an MOT. It’s impossible to get things done when House is sitting – so plumbing (mine and the house’s), dentist, cleaning, tidying and a host of other ‘must do when I have a minute’ tasks have been the order of the day – along with plenty of radio listening.

Not surprisingly, the World Cup featured a lot. There were some interviews with Scottish fans (allegedly including tennis star Andy Murray) who basically would rather support Paraguay or anyone rather than support England. Of course, the World Cup is soooooo much more exciting when your own team is in it. But whenever we have not made the tournament – or we have been knocked out – I have always, always transferred my affection to whichever other British team still remains if there is one.

Of course, once this had been broadcast across the capital – lots and lots and lots of Scots living here phoned up to say they didn’t feel like that and were ashamed of their countrymen. But it didn’t quite remove the undercurrent of resentment which had been vocalised – and which doubtless partly reflected that England is so often the dominant – even domineering – partner in the UK. Of course – hopefully this badinage is just at a relatively playful level. But there is a real issue of intolerance in Scotland that does sometimes have a bit of an unpleasant edge. English nationalism is by no means 100% pure either – just look at what the BNP do in its perverted name. Actually – that’s another reason for happily flying the English flag. We shouldn’t just leave it to the thugs and racists to claim it as their symbol.

All this did make me ponder (as one of the articles I am writing is about race and asylum) how easy it is to fan the flames of differences and how important it is to continually to work to bring people together. Football has had huge problems with racism in the past, by no means all of which have gone. But it is interesting how important seeing black and other minority players playing for their team has been in changing fans’ attitudes. Familiarity breads understanding. A lesson there perhaps for other public services such as education in the importance of bringing together different parts of society?

So – I’m flying the flag with pride. I’m all set and currently desperately hoping that there are no public engagements at local summer fetes and street parties – it’s that time of year – that will clash with England matches. And no – it’s not just self interest (although that figures) – it’s also always a great shame for any organisation or society or residents’ association or people getting married or whatever – who find that their big day or event clashes with England’s matches as they advance through the rounds.

And I think they will get through the rounds – to the final of course!

I’ve become a political pundit!

Having watched pundits pund on election night over many years, I always wondered how those poor sods who have to sit up all night manage to find such interesting (not) things to say for the hours before the results come in. And how they manage to say it was a wonderful night for their party – whatever the result!

On election night, I was booked to be on the outside broadcast from a pub in Liverpool Street with Emily Maitlis. The BBC heavy mob was in the studio with Dimbleby – and we in the pub were the light entertainment in between the heavier pontificating in the studio.

It had been a long, hard, day – starting at 4am. Why we deserved a one day heat wave as we slogged the streets I am not sure – but numerous interesting tan marks and somewhat burnt bits indicated quite clearly who had been out in the midday sun – delivering leaflets and knocking on doors to see whether supporters had voted. The polls closed at 10pm – and as my colleagues made a dash for Ally Pally for the Haringey count, I went off to do my media duty.

Arriving at the pub around midnight, chaos is reigning – organised chaos however. Little vignettes of ‘real’ people talking to Emily who would then come to a panel of experts made up from any combination of: Michael Portillo, Oona King, Ed Vasey, Tony Travers, Trevor Phillips, Rod Liddle – the list was endless (and me of course). There was no sound feed to the huge TV monitors for most of the time – so none of us could hear the results coming through – which made commentating a bit tricky.

I guess it makes good television – but after my nano-second interview I was not too sad to have to leave for my second booking which was at BBC London radio from 2.00am to 4.00am. Much more civilised! On panel with me were my old GLA opponents – Bob Neill for the Tories and Jeanette Arnold for Labour – plus Peter Kellner (YouGov) and Jules interviewing.

The results started to dribble in and were a mixed bag. We all kind of agreed that the main thrust of the voters seemed to be against the incumbent – whichever political party it was. Labour took the worst hit both from Lib Dems and from the Tories. Lib Dems in Camden, Haringey, Lewisham and Brent made substantive gains. However, Lib Dem Islington didn’t fare so well – suffering the consequences of tough decisions they had had to make. Tories took a hit and lost Richmond to the Lib Dems – but did better in the suburbs, but we saw them off in Kingston and the Tory leader there lost his seat.

And so it went. Just as we were finishing at 4am – the Haringey result came through. So we stayed on a bit longer so that I could comment on my own neck of the woods. We didn’t quite take the Council – cutting Labour’s majority to just three as we gained 11 seats from Labour. Thanks to the quirks of the voting system, there are actually Lib Dem councillors in a majority of the wards in Haringey now – and we topped the vote across the borough. So much for Haringey being a Labour borough any more! Particularly pleasing were our first two councillors in Tottenham.

And the Tories – who had been working to try and get back onto Haringey Council – failed to get a single seat back. So good for us in Haringey – but all in all – a mixed bag of a night.

I suppose that the conclusion that I came to was that London is angry. The incumbency kickings seem to be about a frustration with local government. Powers have been stripped from local authorities. What power they do have is so controlled by Government that local authorities frequently have to jump through hoops specified by the Labour Government to bid for funding to do what the Government wants – not necessarily what local people want.

I leave the radio station around 4.20am and head for the Three Compasses pub in Hornsey where we are privately celebrating our results in Haringey. Seeing a room full of Lib Dem Haringey councillors, it’s pretty amazing to think it is only eight years since I – along with June and Julia – won our first seat.

The real secret is engagement with local residents. It’s not just about political persuasion – it’s keeping it real and caring about the everyday world we all meet when we step out of our front door.

Bits of information find their way to my door.

And a letter fell into my hands which has sent alarm bells ringing – loud and clear. They are ringing because I’ve seen the pattern before. Haringey are short of funding. Special Needs budget is in trouble. Haringey see a way to cut costs. Haringey don’t want to be seen to be closing a good school for deaf children.

So – Haringey make out that the school isn’t viable – in this case that that the pupil numbers aren’t there – by fair means or foul. And then – of course – if pupil levels are dropping the school is not financially viable. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy!

It reminds me of when we had to fight to save Muswell Hill library. The Council reduced the hours it was open. So book borrowing fell because it was never open. Then they pointed to lack of use as a reason to close it. That’s the methodology. Happily saved by volte-face in the face of campaigning by local users, friends of the library and a fortuitous Muswell Hill ward by-election.

Let’s just set the scene briefly. Blanche Nevile school is a great model for educating deaf kids. Deaf children are taught both on their own – so that their special needs can be catered for – but also alongside children in mainstream schools. This is managed because the 26 Blanche Nevile primary children are on the same site as Highgate Primary and the 40 Blanche Nevile secondary school age children are educated on the Fortismere Secondary School site.

I went to Highgate Primary recently and saw this in action myself. I was talking to the children on the Schools Council about recycling and global warming etc – and it was a mix of Blanche Nevile and Highgate Primary children. And they were just children. The hearing were completely at ease with the non-hearing and vice-versa. Because there wasn’t just one deaf child – but lots – it was not so unusual and there was genuine and heart-warming inclusion. Good not just for the deaf kids, but also I suspect for the non-deaf too – giving them a much better understanding of how life is full of all sorts of variety – and an understanding that people who are different are still people too.

Blanche Nevile achieves both special education and inclusion.And the children work together on subjects such as art and drama, etc but separately for maths, English and so on. It works really well because if you are a deaf child being on your own in a mainstream class can be lonely and isolating- and not being able to hear means you have to have special support in each class you attend.

So you need both to be with other deafchildren for the difficult and special learning bits and to not feel alone and also the inclusion bits – because the world is full of people not like you. Blanche Nevile was achieving this happy mix – a ‘model of good practice’ according to the Department for Education.

Yet whenthe school was left without a Head, instead of the Council supporting the school and the children and the staff, it had a string of temporary heads without experience of working with the deaf. Parents were constantly told the school was under review – with storm clouds and doubt hanging over its future. With all this – and with Blanche Nevile school not being clearly signposted on the Council website and not listed in the "Children with Disabilities" section – and on top of that with Haringey stopping testing for deaf infants for some time – pupil numbers did drop. Quel surprise!

So – I have written to Haringey Council to ask what on earth is going on. As far as I can ascertain the Council letter that crossed my path contains extremely questionable justification for the department’s actions. I want to challenge the statements in the letter.

And the really important thing in all of this are the children. The question we need to really ask is – will they be better off than they are now if Blanche Nevile is closed?

The high value-added nature of London’s economy makes a skilled workforce critical, not only to individual prosperity but also to the economic success of the UK as a whole. It is impressive that the region’s economic output per person is the highest in the country and produces 18% of UK wealth with only 13.5% of the country’s workers.

However, greater overall productivity and competitiveness rely on London’s businesses being able to draw from a workforce equipped with good basic skills in numeracy, literacy and IT. For this to happen, and for London to continue to be a premier world city and be recognised as one of the most vibrant and diverse cities in the world, there are several challenges we must face up to.

We have more people qualified to degree level than in any other UK region, but there are also far too few opportunities for those with poor skills or low skills. We have the highest rates of business start ups and overseas investment compared to other regions, but we also have the highest regional unemployment rate and the highest failure rate of new companies. London is one of the most expensive environments to live, work and do business in, but it is also one of the few locations in the world you can earn over £1 million working for someone else.

So how can we respond and step up to these challenges? The Liberal Democrats believe that to deliver world-class skills, world-class facilities are needed. It is essential that London’s current and future workforce are both invested in. The Liberal Democrats champion closing the funding gap between London’s schools and colleges, starting by providing equal funding for equivalent courses, wherever they are taught.Investing in the modern, high-quality college facilities needed to deliver high-quality skills training in London would help create the climate for improving the skills of London’s workforce.

There is much more that employers could do – for compared with other English regions, London has a relatively low proportion who actually provide training to their employees.

Furthermore, the approach taken must actually lead to people being able to gain employment. Issues such as racial, sexual and disability-based discrimination within recruitment and employment and other barriers to work – for example, the cost of child-care – need to be addressed. Improving the skill-set of the workforce will only benefit London if it applied to all of London.

London’s businesses and economy will never be able to thrive simply by trying to out-bid other countries in cutting costs and turning the capital into one large sweatshop.

But with the right outlook and the right skills, we can match and exceed those other areas based on high productivity and high value-added work. It makes both moral and economic sense to ensure that everyone has a fair chance to participate and make the most of their own skills and interests.

I am writing this ahead of the vote in Parliament on Labour’s Education Bill, the outcome of which still seems in the balance – which makes picking words that will make sense when read after the result interesting! But regardless of the outcome of that vote, it will mark a missed opportunity – for so much of the debate has been around Labour party politics (“will the Bill pass?”, “will Tony need Tory support to get the Bill through?”, “have the Labour rebels got any more concessions?” and so on and on) rather than about what is needed to make schools as good as possible.

For there is no doubt, that some urgent improvements in our education systems are needed. Here in Haringey, there are two major challenges – raising standards, especially in the east of the borough, and providing more school places, especially in the west of the borough. The latest figures dug out from Haringey Council by my colleague Cllr Gail Engert (Lib Dem, Muswell Hill) show that 189 children have not been offered a place at any of the up to six secondary schools their parents have applied for. That is a massive crisis in the applications system – and makes a mockery of Labour’s mantra of providing parent choice. It is no choice when 189 children do not even get the bottom option asked for.

This is but one aspect of the bigger problems with the use of choice as Labour’s preferred tool for improving schools. First, for choice to be meaningful there have to be enough places available – and in Haringey, as in many other places, there clearly are not. Second, “enough places” actually means a surplus of places – because if there is to be real choice, there need to be enough spaces to accommodate different choices. This all would require a massive investment in building up a large surplus of extra school places – yet would this really be the best way of spending money?

Moreover, it is not just an issue as regards money. Top quality, talented staff for schools are often in short supply -as with maths teachers and head teachers. For many schools it is hard enough to get enough such people, let alone what would be required to build up an extra surplus of capacity to make real choice meaningful.

What of course happens instead is that without enough places to go around to really service choice, there are those lucky parents who manage to work the system best and get their children in the schools they want, leaving other parents out in the colds. Of course parents are going to try to do the best for their children but what sort of choice is it where the schools children end up depends in large part on how good their parents are at filling forms, working bureaucracy or able to pay for a home in the right catchment area or a place at a private school? I make no apologies for doing all I could to get the best education for my own two daughters, but I know the real answer is not just for me to be able to look after my own daughters, but for all parents to be able to get the best deal too.

After all, what is meant to happen to those who don’t get the choices they seek? You don’t get to rewind your kid’s body clock and try his or her school years again. So, whilst giving parents choice over schools is important, to me the key is raising the standards of all schools. We need to do that by giving teachers the resources they need, cutting back on bureaucracy and form filling and by giving real accountability to the local community, not standards-obsessed Whitehall people.

There’s rather a tendency in our culture to latch on to American phrases and fads at the drop of a hat, but I do particularly like the phrase given to one education act – “No child left behind.” As it was a measure pushed by George W Bush, I don’t agree with all its contents (!), but the phrase has just the right message to it – and one we should all aspire to here. As long as Labour sticks to choice as its main policy for improving schools, that aim won’t be achieved.

Carrying out an “estates portfolio review” sounds a rather boring, technical thing – perhaps something done by accountants or estate agents. But don’t snooze off quite yet, for what it means for the Metropolitan Police is that the future of many police stations in Haringey, neighbouring Camden and other boroughs is uncertain.

Some of this is good news – there are police stations that are in old, inadequate buildings. But what will the response be? Will it be to refurbish them? Will it be to move to a new building in the same community? Or will it be to close stations and concentrate services in central “super-stations”?

The latter was in fashion for a long with the Met Police, shutting local services and centralising resources in distant, out of touch mega-buildings. In recent years, the Met started putting more emphasis on delivering local policing through local services – but that is up for grabs again.

Sir John Stevens, when he headed up the Met, had even started to turn the tide a bit with some stations reopening to the public – as we saw in Muswell Hill, where my long campaign with residents finally persuaded him and his colleagues to reopen the doors to the public.

And this was so great – and so popular with people in Muswell Hill – because local police stations are liked and needed by their communities. So, any desire to remove them had bettered be matched by an offer of something not only equal or better – but also agreed upon by local people after proper consultation. Because policing works best where it works with the community.

We are only just now rebuilding the relationship between community and the force that polices them. Only now are people even beginning to feel our voices, which for so many years called for street policing, are at last acknowledged as Safer Neighbourhood Teams roll out into every ward or neighbourhood. And the scheme is beginning to deliver reductions in crime – as we, the people, always knew it would.

I have already met with Sir Ian Blair, London’s top policeman, on this. I was heartened by his promise that no police station would close without a new one opening “as nearby as possible”. However we need to ensure that really means in our community – not a distant, far-off station. “As possible” could be open to a host of different interpretations!

There may well be an argument for a modern office block to house administrative functions. There may well be a valid argument for a cellblock – as we are desperately short of cell space and the police spend hours and hours just trying to find somewhere to hold criminal suspects.

But the real debate has to come about where police are stationed and where they patrol from and where the public can access our police when they need them – and I emphasize ‘our’ police. Of course, what most people most want is police out on the streets patrolling – but where those police are based matters. There is clearly a debate to be had about how to get police more integrated and where they can be accessed by the public: in supermarkets or with front counters in shops on high streets or in a police kiosk – although the one in Wood Green was hardly ever open – so people never really had any confidence in it and now it faces demolition. Much better would be to keep the Wood Green kiosk, base more services at it and have it open for longer.

Sir Ian is going to come and meet me and the local police chief for an early discussion so that he can work on his ‘vision’ for the future of police placement in the borough. He said at our meeting that he wants to know what people think. I want to make sure he hears as many opinions as possible – so please do write to me with your views at House of Commons, London, SW1A 1AA or via my website, www.lynnefeatherstone.org/contact.htm

Let’s act early, act local and be vocal.

If I look back at my journey to the House of Commons, actually it began long before I took any formal steps on the political road.

I was never able to keep my mouth shut or refrain from interfering when I saw or heard something going on that I thought was wrong, or unfair or cruel. If I saw a big child bullying a small child – up I would pop to tell the bully to stop – whatever their size!

When I was in any gathering of people and someone would say something derogatory about others who were gay or black or Jewish – I would always confront them – never letting casual collusion hold sway.

And I was always trying to help people – whether they wanted help or not. As a young teenager I visited old people in their homes. I progressed to volunteering once a week with a hospital radio station – sometimes doing programmes from the wards and then later I worked as a volunteer in a big London hospital taking menus around the wards and sitting as company with those patients who were terribly and often terminally ill – but who had no family.

Now put all that together with my student days at Oxford Brookes (it used to be OxPoly) – where to be anything other than revolutionary ruined your social life. It was there that I marched against Maggie Thatcher (in those days Education Minister trying to take power away from student unions) and threw flour-bags at her effigy.

It was also there that I led my first campaign. It wasn’t political per se – but the powers that be wanted to turn it into a university and have all degree courses instead of (in my view) continuing the phenomenal Shirley Williams’ vision of polytechnics where all skills – whether academic or trades – are together. My own course – an art and design course – was one of those under threat. So the ‘Save Art’ campaign was my first. It was magnificent. We did delay the termination – but as with all student days – they come to an end and as you can see – after my era there it did eventually become a university.

Anyway – that campaign politicised me – and I looked at the three options then. Back then in around 1974 the Tories had brought the country to ruin with the three-day week. When they fell and Wilson and the Labour government came in – they were equally dreadful. And in those days there were only six Liberal MPs and the Liberals were not really an option for me.

So I went away for twenty years and lived my life, had a career (designer), marriage, two children and divorced! When my children were about two and seven, Maggie Thatcher was Prime Minister and I thought she was creating a terrible, selfish, me first world. It was then that I decided to throw my hat in the political ring and fight for the sort of world I wanted to bring my children up in. All the volunteering I had done had been personally rewarding – but it didn’t change the big picture of what was wrong. Only the political process could really deliver that sort of change – so politics it would be.

Back then, I had a hard time choosing between Labour and Liberal Democrats (what was the old Liberal Party had grown up, joined with the Social Democrats and become a properly rounded political philosophy). In the end I chose the Lib Dems because of their values and beliefs about equality and justice, fairness, the individual and community, their commitment to the environment and their internationalist perspective. And I couldn’t stomach the authoritarianism and centralist controlling structures of the Labour Party.

So – the rest is mostly have mouth will travel! I joined the Liberal Democrats – and politics and I found each other. From when I first stood to be MP for Hornsey & Wood Green in 1997 – finishing 26,000 votes behind Labour – to winning in May 2005 took eight years (and three general elections in total). I also spent eight years as a councillor on Haringey where we went 0 to 25 councillors and are now hoping to take the Council next time – and on route I spent five years on the London Assembly.

So – it was never about ‘becoming’ an MP. It was always about driving forward a political agenda about all the things I hold important. Just as now I am here in the Commons – it’s not about ‘being’ an MP – it’s about what you can do whilst you are here!

This piece first appeared in Politick! – a cross-party political magazine for young people aged 16-35.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008

These days, being a liberal is cool. It’s the in thing. Just two quick examples. In The Guardian we’ve had Martin Kettle urging Labour to be more liberal. And on the other side, even that nice Mr Cameron says he wants to be liberal too.

With all these men wanting to be liberal, what’s a good liberal girl like me to do? Well, I want to talk about both what a liberal society should be like – but also what we – you – can do to help bring it about. I don’t just want you to just go away thinking, “that was an interesting speech” (though I’d prefer that to you falling asleep!), but also “I’m now going to go off and do X, Y, Z.” Because society is what we make it.

We first need a clear picture of what makes for a more liberal society. Only if we put such a picture in people’s minds, so that they know instinctively what we stand for – without having to be shown a list of nice, but apparently unconnected policy proposals – will we succeed in making a substantial leap forward in numbers of seats and political power.

Chris Rennard put it very well at the Meeting the Challenge policy conference earlier this year, when he said that our “10 reasons to vote Liberal Democrat” message in 2005 was a bit like telling people all the ingredients for a recipe without actually telling them was the recipe was for.

For me, the recipe is a fairer society. And what I really mean by that is a more equal society. Because more equality – not absolute equality, but more equality – is needed for society to be fairer – and better.

Under two and a half decades of Thatcherite and New Labour governments, Britain has steadily become a less equal and a less fair society.

Under Blair, rates of social mobility have actually fallen. If you are born into a poor family now you are more likely to remain poor throughout your adult life than you were 30 years ago. And your educational chances are strongly correlated to your social class – setting the prospects for children even before they reach school.

In health too, inequalities are still increasing. Ever since the publication of the Black Report twenty-five years ago, it’s been well known that inequalities in people’s health are directly related to inequalities in income and wealth. That’s why Greece, with half the average wealth per person of the US, actually has a longer average life expectancy.

And in Iraq – after ten years of sanctions, with war ravaged infrastructure and continuing violence – has an average male life expectancy that is 8 years higher than that of the Calton area of Glasgow. The explanation? Inequalities in wealth again.

In fact, a whole host of studies across different countries have consistently shown that not just in terms of education and health, but also in terms of crime, social respect, trust and participation – the outcomes are linked to the degrees of inequality in wealth and income.

Take my own area – crime. More than fifty studies in recent years show a clear tendency for violence to be more common in societies where income differences are larger. About half the variation in homicide rates between different states or provinces in the US and Canada is accounted for by differences in levels of equality.

Levels of imprisonment in all developed countries are related to income inequality and levels of literacy and mathematical ability – which are themselves closely linked to inequality.

This link between violence and inequality shows not just in murder rates, but in strife too. One British survey in the 1990s showed that families living on less than £10,000 a year were more than twice as likely to have daily arguments as those living on more than £20,000.

Perhaps most striking of all for liberals, the extent to which communities work as communities is also closely related to levels of equality. Studies show that levels of trust between individuals -the essential underpinning of any functioning community – are higher the more equal the community.

So – what’s going on here? There are some immediate obvious explanations, such as the links between inequality, envy and levels of theft and robbery.

But the underlying reason for such a pervasive relationship between inequality and social outcomes, I believe, is the stress caused by living at the bottom of the pecking order, on the lowest rung – with its issues of status, disrespect and exclusion.

We’re social animals, and the quality of the social relations we experience matters enormously. Feelings of shame and embarrassment are powerful, and in extreme cases can lead to violence. Questions of “respect” – or disrespect – and status are central to the behaviour of chronically violent men. It’s a large part of knife culture in our big cities for example – having a knife equals having status. With a knife – so the twisted logic goes – you’re somebody and who’s going to diss you now?

Drawing out the links between inequality and social problems isn’t being soft on crime – it actually gives us far more scope for action to tackle crime than just wringing our hands muttering, “they’re so evil”. It’s not being soft on crime – it’s tackling crime.

What governments of both the other parties have done in our country is to allow a society to develop where inequality, exclusion, stress and low-level tension is the norm. As a recent report by the Young Foundation put it, looking at east London, “mutual support and neighbourliness have declined; isolation is increasing; mental illness is more prevalent than it was half a century ago; the signs of day-to-day anger and tension are everywhere”.

So as a party we should be looking at policies to reduce stress and inequality, with less emphasis on status and more on cooperation and friendship.

Status and friendship have their roots in fundamentally different ways of resolving the problem of competition for scarce resources. Status is based on pecking order, coercion and privileged access to resources, while friendship is based on a more egalitarian basis of social obligations and reciprocity.

So I want Liberal Democrats to be the party of fairness, which means the party of equality – including a more redistributive tax system, public services geared to the needs of the poor and inarticulate, industrial democracy, so that workers have a genuine say, and a government framework that supports, rather than undermines, community coherence.

I also want us to do more than thinking the government or – even worse, that staple of policy motions, “the independent inquiry” – is the sole route to making a liberal society.

For the other part of greater equality and fairness is that good liberal traditional instinct of finding the sources of power and inequality and wrongdoing and taking them on.

Let me give you one example. His name is Nigel Roberts. Before moving to the Channel Islands he was a Lib Dem parliamentary candidate and – coincidentally – hosts my website.

Faced with large number of spam emails in his inbox – sound familiar? – he didn’t just rail against the world. He took power into his own hands – picked on one of the culprits, found a law to use and sued. The small claims court mind – this is not a tale of huge financial resources. And he won, with damages awarded.

His court victory won’t put stop to spam overnight. But Nigel has shown how you can have success if your answer to seeing something wrong is to ask, “and what can I do about it?”

Cumulatively the impact of lots of little actions carries weight even with the mightiest of multi-national megaliths.

It’s the power of the nagging nanny, using political office as a bully pulpit and using our communities as a resource to work with for liberal ends. Use the press, the public meeting, the petition, the website, the law – not just for electoral campaigning but also to embarrass the quango, shame the company, persuade the decision maker.

If have a run down site that’s blighting your community, don’t just walk past. But don’t either just take a photo and stick i
t in a leaflet. Do that, but embarrass the owners in the press, get up the petition, organise the public meeting – and get Section 215 of the 1990 Town and Country Planning Act on the case.

I assume of course you all know what that says!

But if not, go and look it up when you get back from conference – that’s section 215 – it’s a treasure trove of legal powers that can be used to improve our communities – if you want action, if you want change, if you want a better society.

It would certainly make conference debates interesting if at the end of each speech the chair asked the speaker, “and what have you done about it?”!

And it’s also important that we don’t just turn away when liberal values are under threat. It’s so easy to ignore a tabloid rant on crime, wish it didn’t exist and turn to the comfort zone of The Independent or Guardian instead.

But instead of turning the other cheek to the hang ’em, flog ’em brigade, we should take them on. Make them justify why they think prison works. Face up to them with the re-offending rates of released criminals and ask them what they’re going to do about it – make all jail sentences for every offence life sentences? And make them justify the huge costs of prisons. Is that money really not better spent on the police and society to reduce the crime rate in the first place?

We must argue our case and our ground. For, to quote Isaac Foot’s famous 1947 lecture, “Liberty is never something achieved; it is always something that is being achieved … Although the fight for liberty never ceases, the battle-ground changes in every generation.”

It’s our task – your task when you return home – to do what it takes to ensure it keep on shifting towards, not away from, a liberal, fair and more equal society.

A reporter from the Today program came to The Three Compasses pub in Hornsey High Street (my HQ is upstairs) to interview me last Friday on why Haringey – a key Labour heartland – was now one of the councils reckoned likely to fall to the Liberal Democrats in May. The program aired on Saturday.

Following on from the mega-outstanding win for the LibDems in the Dunfermline by-election (a Labour ‘safe’ seat) and my own massive swing victory here in Hornsey and Wood Green in last May’s General Election, he wanted to understand what was at the root of Labour’s decline in its heartlands?

Where to begin! The most fundamental reason for both what is happening here and for the stunning result in Scotland last week is that Labour have been taking people in their ‘heartlands’ for granted. And there always comes the day when the worm turns – when the people have just had enough.

At the local level, I know when I started asking people in Muswell Hill ward back in ’97 if they had any problems I could help with – they certainly had lots. The streets were dirty, street lights weren’t repaired, no one responded from the council if you reported anything, paving stones were uneven and potholes abounded. Local residents felt that the Labour-run council didn’t care, didn’t listen and that they were simply expected to pay higher and higher Council Tax for less and less service.

I also remember the first – and very dismissive – reply I got from the council to the first batch of casework I sent in after doing a residents’ survey. It basically and briefly said everything I had raised had been sorted, and all was fine. Not having been born yesterday – a rather sceptical colleague and I went to check out the broken pavements, dumped rubbish etc that I had reported. And what did we find – that lots of things that hadn’t been sorted after all! As ever – fine words from the council, just a shame the answer was a brush-off and the truth was rather different. Local residents were sick of it.

Haringey Council was a Labour fiefdom where the administration clearly believed that they ruled by divine right and therefore had no need to heed the residents. So it was easy in a way. When I came along saying I do care about you and your problems and I will fight for your streets to be clean, for your rubbish to be collected properly and for door to door recycling and so on – residents were very responsive. I got things done. And despite many, many attacks on me for being ‘trivial’ and caring about mundane issues – my view has always been and remains that if you can’t keep a street clean – how can you run the country?

Combine that sort of profligate local Labour attitude with the bigger picture – where the war on Iraq began huge disenchantment with Labour nationally – and the goodwill that had heralded New Labour’s new dawn in ’97 began to seep away. All the more so as the assault on our national civil liberties intensified and the authoritarian and controlling nature of New Labour tightened its strictures. The result – people who have trusted Labour for life – who say to me ‘if you cut me I bleed Labour’ – have been forced to sever their lifetime allegiance to the Labour party in favour of Liberal Democrats.

And the arrogance continues – as with the education bill where the Government keeps on saying that it just has to explain its plans better. Heaven forefend that maybe the rest of us do understand the plans – but just don’t agree with them! Much of Labour’s concept of “choice” is a fraud – as with here in Muswell Hill or Crouch End where many children don’t have a local school place, let alone a choice.

So add all that together – and you can see exactly why Labour is losing heart and losing its heartlands.