International liberalism loses a personality of towering stature
ELDR President Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroeck MEP
With Lord Ralf Dahrendorf’s demise, international liberalism loses yet another personality of exceptional and towering stature. German born, he spent most of his life in the United Kingdom whose nationality he came to adopt. He presided successfully over the prestigious London School of Economics, and contributed to many newspapers and magazines. The Libdems proposed him for a life peerage and so a foreign born intellectual came to grace the House of Lords, this most British of institutions.
He participated in many congresses and meetings of Liberal International, often sharing his mostly unconventional thoughts with the audience. Listening to him was always an exquisite pleasure.
So was reading his works. I vividly remember a booklet titled “Letters to a young friend on the Revolution in Europe”. The letters were mostly about the great changes in Poland after communism. In one of them he explains to his imaginary young friend that there is no cause to deplore the dwindling of opera audiences.
Under communism, he remarks drily, Poles had nowhere else to go but the opera. It is a while since I read the booklet, but I seem to remember that he also predicted that some dissident intellectuals and artists might find it difficult to have lost most of their motives for dissent.
Lord Dahrendorf never took anything for granted, and would always question conventional wisdom, including on liberalism, Europe and much else. Almost a year after the loss of Bronislav Geremek, another great liberal disappears. His work remains with us, but we will sorely miss him.
By Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroeck MEP, President of ELDR
Tags: freedom, liberalism, unconvential thoughts, wisdom