You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Students for Freedom' tag.
Last summer, Tarasyn and I were amongst some two-dozen young conservatives who travelled to the US for the Young Britons’ Foundation’s Summer Conference Programme. It’s a unique opportunity which will put the British movement into context.
The American movement is colossal, organised and immensely powerful. We can’t recommend training within it yourself highly enough. Every activist should. As a consequence of our trip, Students for Freedom was launched by Oliver Cooper, and we launched The Young Conservative. Here’s what you could be taking part in:
The Foundation for Economic Education Freedom University – based just outside New York, this is the foremost academic conference for libertarians who want to learn why the free market system remains the best guarantor of liberty.
The Leadership Institute International Leadership Seminar - the LI trains conservatives who want to win. Based just across the Potomac from Washington DC, this week-long seminar encompasses an intense media training workshop as well as developing activists’ campaigning skills. Time is also set aside for sightseeing.
The Young America’s Foundation National Conservative Student Conference – based at George Washington University, YAF’s annual CSC is a highlight for conservatives from across America. It is your chance to hear from the leading conservative thinkers, writers and political leaders in an informal setting – as well as bonding with our trans-Atlantic cousins.
YBF also leads a delegation to Santa Barbara, California, where activists get the chance to see the Young America’s Foundation Reagan Ranch Center (known as “the schoolhouse for Reaganism”), President Reagan’s Ranch (which was rescued for the nation by YAF) and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
To register your interest in being on the 2009 tour, and for more details, visit YBF now.
There are always plenty of opportunities to get involved with the issues you’re passionate about. Today alone these popped up on our radar:
- Young Countryside Alliance are currently looking for volunteers to set up ‘branches’ of the YCA countrywide. If you are interested in raising awareness of the countryside through fundraising events and social gatherings in your area, please do not hesitate to contact Chloe Finch.
- Students for Freedom are looking for people that wishes to contribute to the Students4Freedom.com, and air news and views from different perspectives. Fancy getting involved with Britain’s premier Libertarian youth organisation? Then email chairman@students4freedom.com.
- University of York Freedom Society recently launched. Does your campus have a pro-freedom student organisation campaigning for civil liberties and the rolling back of the state? It yes, are you involved? If not, what are you going to do about it? Perhaps you ought to contact the Freedom Association and offer your services.
- The Young Britons’ Foundation held a training workshop on Birmingham University’s campus for the Conservative Future branch. Have you arranged political technology training for your branch yet? After the workshop members took part in a candle-lit protest to highlight the cruelty of EU trade policies – did you know that according to the Centre for New Europe, the EU’s trade barriers are responsible for 275 deaths every hour in the third world. This means that a person dies every 13 seconds thanks to the EU’s protectionist economic policy – which prevents African and third world farmers from competing in the free market?
- Leicester University CF have just launched a blog. Blogging is a valuable contribution that anyone can make, promoting your work to a wider audience, spreading awareness, establishing contacts and building support. Would your organisation benefit from getting involved in blogging? Or how about you write something for an exisiting blog, such as Students for Freedom (above) or the CF NME blog, which is always looking for articles from members – just email Richard Jackson.
- The TaxPayers’ Alliance have just announced a protest this Thursday in central London in opposition to the EU’s disastrous fisheries policy. All materials are provided and there are free t-shirts for the keenest activists. All you have to do is turn up! Details on Facebook.
There are always opportunities to get involved, but the onus is on activists to make good on that title and get active.
Students for Freedom have just launched an interactive UK map marking all of the Libertarian groups which fall under their umbrella. Another excellent use of technology, as demonstrated by Conservative Future’s branch mapping a few days ago.
Check it out today to locate your nearest branch. If your branch isn’t marked, or you’re interested in setting a branch up, Students for Freedom look forward to hearing from you!
We all know how fond the Left is of branding anyone or thing they disagree with ‘Fascist’. Well over at Students for Freedom they’ve found an accurate use for the term. They note that it was the Nazi regime in Germany which pushed the first anti-smoking movement of modern times.
“Exorbitant tobacco tax? Bans on smoking inside buildings? Ban on smoking on public transport? Ban on tobacco advertising? Increasing the minimum age for smoking? Anti-smoking propaganda?”
Hold on a minute…that sounds awfully New Labour.
All of which is only fuel for the debate as to what the purpose of government is. Is it to impose a “national morality” and protect people from themselves; or simply to ensure national security and the conditions of liberty in which individuals are free make decisions for themselves and accept the consequences of those decisions? I think we know the answer…
Update for Johanna: I had actually intended to mention that the Third Reich were a bunch of eco-fascists, too. Brown shirts with green sleeves. I had this book in mind. From the back cover:
The Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to nature.
…
Environmentalists and conservationists in Germany welcomed the rise of the Nazi regime with open arms and hoped that it would bring about legal and institutional changes.
…
Based on prodigious archival research, and written by some of the most important scholars in the field of twentieth-century German history, How Green Were the Nazis? examines the overlap between Nazi ideology and conservationist agendas. This landmark book underscores the fact that the “green” policies of the Nazis were more than a mere episode or aberration in environmental history.
On November 9th, 1989 the lid was nailed down on Communism. Not so long before Ronald Reagan had called upon the Communists to tear down the Berlin Wall; in the days to come the people of Germany would rise up and do just that. The rusted Iron Curtain was rolled back and the pestilent ideology of Communism extinguished from Europe.
The Young America’s Foundation take November 9th as the starting point for Freedom Week. In their own words,
“One goal of Freedom Week is celebrate this victory over communism by educating students on this historical event. Another important aspect is to remind young people about the horrors committed by socialist/communist governments and question why many leftist students and professors at your school still advocate these ideas.”
YAF promote Freedom Week on campuses right across America; it’s a fixture in their conservative calendar. Whilst the defeat of Communism was American-led, and a global victory, it was a deeply European affair. So it seems almost perverse that Americans should celebrate a distinctively European act of freedom more than we do! Why isn’t November 9th a national holiday – Freedom Day or some such thing – forever marking our commitment to liberty and enlightenment values?
Veterans’ Day also falls within Freedom Week. In Britain we have the Festival of Remembrance, which whilst commemorated on a national scale, seems hardly to impact upon our campuses. Some young conservatives do involve themselves in honouring the sacrifices made by our forefathers to secure today’s freedoms – my own branch spent 138 hours fund raising for the Poppy Appeal.
And so it seems that whilst we have all the components for Freedom Week here in Britain – Communism was defeated on this continent by the determination of the Reagan-Thatcher leadership, and we have also mark the service of our armed forces in this period; and yet we still fail to host a British equivalent to Freedom Week.
Students4Freedom have this year pilotted their first Freedom 2008, which is certainly a step in the right direction, and we’ll be sharing some exclusive highlights of Freedom 2008 which you soon.
Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall – let’s hope the young British conservative movement spends the intervening twelve months planning a truly fitting way to commemorate it.
It still makes you shiver.
This weekend Freedom 2008, a two-day seminar on the return of freedom to Europe after the fall of communism, begins. Better yet, it’s absolutely FREE!
It’s in conjunction with the UCL Economics and Finance Society – location details etc on Facebook
Better yet, the seminar begins with a protest against socialism – with beer for all demonstrators!
Confirmed speakers include:
- Professor Anthony Evans: Asst. Professor of Economics at European School of Management
- Kristian Niemietz: Poverty Research Fellow, Institute for Economic Affairs
- Guy Herbert: General-Secretary of NO2ID
- Greg Hands MP: MP for Hammersmith and Fulham for Conservatives
- Gerard Batten MEP: London-wide MEP and London mayoral candidate for UKIP
There’s also a FREE public screening of the Oscar-winning film The Lives of Others, about the Stasi surveillance of East German civilians in the 1980s.
A drinks reception will be held in the Saturday evening, for which a minimum fee covering costs will be charged.
Students for Freedom have announced that they are to hold a conference at University College London on the weekend of the 8th and 9th November to mark the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
An exciting lineup of speakers, who will be announced over the coming week, will address the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the success of capitalism and freedom in central and eastern Europe since the end of communism.
The event will also include a screening of the Oscar-winning “The Lives of Others”, about Stasi surveillance, a drinks reception, and a protest against socialism - TYC is especially looking forward to this.
Attendance will be free for all.
The conference is being held on the same weekend as two socialist organisations hold their annual conferences at nearby universities. The Socialist Party is holding Socialism 2008 at the University of London Union, and Left Alternative’s annual conference is at the Marylebone campus of the University of Westminster.
“Students do not want socialist groups dominating their campuses,” said Students for Freedom chairman Oliver Cooper. “Of all dates, you would think that Remembrance Sunday and the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall would be a time to celebrate our values of freedom and prosperity, rather than the socialist ideology of captivity and repression. We cannot let them act with such impunity. We must make our stand.”
“That’s why Freedom 2008 is so important. We need students to be aware of an alternative movement. We need people in that movement to know that there are students on their side. We take our motto from Ronald Reagan, who said, ‘Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction’. It’s true, and we can’t let our generation be the one to have it taken away.”
We’ll be following the run-up to the conference; and further details will also be available at http://www.students4freedom.com and from Chairman Oliver Cooper – chairman@students4freedom.com
Students for Freedom bring word that Conservative Future is set to officially endorse the NO2ID campaign. Whilst this comes as no great surprise as the Conservative Party site has carried a protest against ID cards for some time, it is both a welcomed move and long overdue.
The event, to be held this Tuesday evening, will be hosted by UCL Conservatives on their campus, with speeches from:
Damian Green MP, (Shadow Minister for Immigration)
Guy Herbert, (NO2ID General Secretary)
Phil Booth, (NO2ID National Co-ordinator)
Becky Hogge, (Executive Director, Open Rights)
and with introductions by Michael Rock (CF National Chairman) and Eamonn Hurley-Flynn (UCL Conservatives President)
Further details of the event are on the UCL Conservatives’ Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=41543072504
For more on the NO2ID campaign see http://www.no2id.net
A new student organisation uniting all freedom-minded students in the United Kingdom was launched yesterday. Students for Freedom seeks to identify and bring together supporters of individual freedom, across borders of party allegiance or self-description.
The organisation has as its guiding principles the defence of civil liberties, the promotion of free market capitalism, and objective of world peace, and the principles of small, efficient, and democratically-accountable government. The foundation comes hot on the heel of a summer dominated by the David Davis for Freedom campaign in defence of civil liberties. Pro-liberty groups already exist at Cambridge, Imperial, LSE, Oxford, St Andrew’s, and UCL. Students for Freedom seeks to work with these and other unidentified individualists, and develop a broad-based movement across the country.
“Freedom is the guiding principle of British society, but it’s perilously close to being extinguished by this government”, said Students for Freedom Chairman Oliver Cooper.
“As the future, students have to stand up for the nation’s long-term interests, and that means uniting around our cherished ancient liberties. It’s no good trying to reach out to students with old party-only labels; we have to tap into the issues that affect students, that loom large in their consciousness, and that are likely to gain their support and trust. Only then can we change the way students are perceived by politicians – patronised at best and ignored at worst – and make a difference.”
Students for Freedom will be appearing at Freshers’ fayres throughout late September and October. They’re holding their first social on the 24th September, in central London.
Details of their events will be published through their Facebook group and website.
Those wishing to contact chairman Oliver Cooper should email him at oliver.h.cooper@hotmail.com
