Nick Denys

12th Mar 2011

I have just been reading through a bunch of stuff related to the Government’s Free Schools project and came across this.

“The Secretary of State will consider each proposal on its merits. And take into account all matters relevant to that proposal… and will reject any proposers who advocate violence, intolerance, hatred or whose ideology runs counter to the UK’s democratic values.”

The last part of the statement leapt off the page at me, mainly because it is not often I see an official document talking about British democracy as being a set of important values. Our democratic values are something we should be proud of and actively promote.

The requirement is essentially logical. If you reject the system then why should you be allowed to take advantage of the opportunities created by it? How the system operates and the opportunities that exist are inextricably linked. The freedom everyone has to express themselves leads to creativity, which leads to opportunity, thus helps Britain to achieve its high levels of prosperity. UK democratic values allow for systems to be change and adapted through debate and elections. I would be happy for the language to be toughened up slightly – so that any proposal that didn’t promote these values is rejected – and for this principle to be applied to everything the state does.

If you want to know what British democratic values are and why it is important for them to be promoted David Cameron’s speech on multi-culturalism to the Munich Security Conference is a good place to start.

“…we must build stronger societies and stronger identities at home.  Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism.  A passively tolerant society says to its citizens, as long as you obey the law we will just leave you alone.  It stands neutral between different values. But I believe a genuinely liberal country does much more; it believes in certain values and actively promotes them.  Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, democracy, the rule of law, equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality.  It says to its citizens, this is what defines us as a society: to belong here is to believe in these things.”