Manchester Pride has grown to be a bright and gleeful reminder of the advances made in the struggle for the freedom of identity. The Pride parade has become a city-wide carnival celebration of the acceptance of difference (BBC, 2015).
Yet the liberty that the parade lauds is a fragile thing. It can only survive so long as the society around it is willing to support the capacity of its citizens to exercise that freedom. In the long run, that means support for more than free association. It means supporting the economic equalities and opportunities that makes the so-called 'luxury' of choice a realistic possibility.
The present political era has been described as a 'liberal age' (Payne, 2015). With the general paucity of success for liberal political parties, that might seem to be a bit of a grand statement. Yet it reflects the astounding success of social liberalism in society.
The liberties of the individual have been widely accepted - as Manchester Pride shows. When Ireland embraced equal marriage, in an emphatic plebiscite that was signed into law on Saturday (The Irish Times, 2015), it left only Italy as a hold out for the old ways in Western Europe (Kirchgaessner, 2015).
Yet, as touched upon in Nick Clegg's resignation speech, the advance of these freedoms is fragile in the face of 'fear and grievance' (Lindsay, 2015). These strong emotions follow an historical pattern, with tough times, caused by an economic crisis, leading to fraught social disputes and hearts turning inwards towards tribalism - just when a broader social solidarity is called for.
In the age of austerity, these problems are exacerbated by the inequalities that the austerian system promotes. Concentrations of wealth (Piketty, 2013; Naidu, 2014), the strains of globalised competition and the slashing of social security only reinforce these fears and tribalism (Rivera, 2014; Washington, 2013).
Few organisations epitomise this modern struggle and contradiction so fully as the European Union. It champions social liberalism, supporting the liberation of the individual from the ideological chains of the state, even as it is itself used by nationally conservative parties as a vehicle for the fiscally conservative policies of austerity.
On the one hand, in Italy there is pressure from European institutions for the country to meet the basic rights of its citizens over issues of identity and gender - against pretty stern resistance in places like Venice (The Guardian, 2015). Yet on the other hand, Greece has been struggling under heavy fiscal pressure applied by the European 'Troika' (Fazi, 2015) - largely against the democratic voice of Greek citizens (Monbiot, 2015).
The trouble for this liberal age is that it's happening side-by-side with an age of conservative economics - and all of the success won by social liberalism is under threat from it. Without strong social security safety nets, with people burdened by servitude as a way of life, they have little time to find, let alone make the most of, opportunities - and that takes away their capacity to make choices for themselves.
The Manchester Pride parade, with its lights, music and colour cheered on by the citizenry, is the symbol of a modern, progressive society - and a social solidarity stretching beyond simple tribalism. The spirit of solidarity symbolised by the Pride festival - even with it's imperfections (Amelia, 2015) - is needed now in the struggle against a conservative economic supremacy that, by taking away the social security, threatens the freedoms of all citizens.
References
'Sir Ian McKellen leads Manchester Pride Parade'; on the BBC; 29 August 2015.
Sebastian Payne's 'Norman Lamb interview: we are living in ‘the liberal age’'; in The Spectator; 14 July 2015.
'President signs same-sex marriage into Constitution'; The Irish Times; 29 August 2015.
Stephanie Kirchgaessner's 'Italy violates human rights of same-sex couples, court rules'; in 21 July 2015.
Caron Lindsay's 'Nick Clegg resigns as leader'; on LibDemVoice; 9 May 2015.
Thomas Piketty's 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century'; Éditions du Seuil, 2013; Harvard; 2014. [Buy Now]
Suresh Naidu's 'Capital Eats the World: Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century shows that not everything in mainstream economics is worthless'; in Jacobin Magazine; 30 May 2014.
Annamaria Rivera's 'Social Fracture and the Rise of Racism in France'; from Global Research; 2 April 2014.
Washington's 'Forecast: War, Economic Depression and Social Unrest'; from Global Research; 20 October 2013.
'Venice mayor refuses to allow city to host gay pride parade'; in The Guardian; 26 August 2015.
Thomas Fazi's 'The troika saved banks and creditors – not Greece'; on Open Democracy; 25 January 2015.
George Monbiot's 'Greece is the latest battleground in the financial elite’s war on democracy'; in The Guardian; 7 July 2015.
Amelia's 'Political Pride: Taking Pride Back to its Roots'; LGBT Youth North West; 8 July 2015.
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