High Peak Liberal Democrats

“I’m not sure we can do anything about it anymore.”

This is something I read in a conversation online. The political climate in both Britain and the world at large is, I suspect, something a great many people are worried about at the moment. 2016 has been hard. Tragedies like Berlin and Orlando, the pure horror of Aleppo, the deaths of so many of our heroes, aggressive and violent political discourse in multiple countries. If you have this disturbing suspicion that 2016 was sent by some wrathful God, specifically to beat you down into submission, then believe me, you are not alone.

It feels as though the world is coming undone. The progress made in Britain in the last 40 years may be undone by Brexit, whether as a direct result of the decision, or by the fallout that comes with the process separating our country from the EU. The progress of the Obama administration may come unstitched, thread by thread, by an unchecked Trump administration. It feels as though this aggressive new wave of populist politics is here to stay. Fighting against it, in favour of rational, cooperative politics, may be a pointless fight, that we cannot hope to win.

I'm not writing this to dismiss this feeling. It is real, and there is nothing wrong with feeling afraid of what 2017 and beyond may hold. What I want to do here, is consider our history;

The workers of one hundred years ago or more, working in inhospitable conditions for basically no pay at all. The rights we take for granted today must have seemed an unreachable dream for them.

LGBT people, who were once considered insane or criminal, routinely attacked in the streets and in their homes. Now we have 35 LGBT MP's in Parliament - more than any other country in the world - proudly representing the needs of LGBT citizens and all British people.

Emily Davison who, a hundred years ago, hid in a cupboard at Westminster, and was killed in an attempted protest, all to bring attention to the plight of British women. Now we have our second female Prime Minister.

People of minority races, religions, ethnicities, creeds - once enslaved or hunted down and slaughtered for the 'crime' of their very birth. Now we have fine actors like Idris Elba, influential businesspeople like Alan Sugar, and last year, a young Muslim mother won the heart of the entire nation, via a baking competition, of all things.

All these battles are still ongoing, and I don't present these things in order to say 'look how hard they had it' as a dismissal of our current problems. What I want to say is this; the good fight is always hard, and there's nothing wrong with feeling hopeless, but don't let that feeling consume you. If those that came before us had let it consume them, we would not be here today, and we owe it to those who come after us to keep up the fight.

The success of the Stop Funding Hate campaign, the start of More United, the election of Sarah Olney in Richmond. These things have motivated me to keep fighting, to keep standing up for the things I believe in. 2016 has been hard, but it is over now. 2017 may be easier, or it may be harder - we'll find out soon enough. But one thing is clear, and that is that we must continue fighting the good fight, for our country, for people all over the world, for our ancestors, for our children, and for ourselves.

* Nathan Sinclair is a Liberal Democrat in Lewisham

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