Pubs, suburbia and gay liberation - Letters on Liberty are back

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Mar 29, 2024

It’s not always easy to defend freedom. Open debate is often suffocated by today’s censorious climate, and there is little cultural support for freedom as a foundational value. What we need is rowdy, good-natured disagreement and people prepared to experiment with what freedom might mean today.

Back in 2020, when the world decided to lock down social interactions - putting a stop to public life as we knew it - we began publishing Letters on Liberty. These pocket-sized pamphlets with big ideas about freedom kept us sane during the years of insanity, and lots of you seemed to agree. Since then, we’ve published over 36 essays and manifestos on everything from race and free speech to the radical history of folk. Our writers have published defences of boxing, driving, smoking, abortion and drag. We’ve interrogated anti-Semitism, new teaching practices, mental-health provision and intimacy and much, much more.

Human beings have been musing on, and fighting for, freedom for millennia. We stand on the shoulders of giants, but we know that we can’t be complacent. We can’t simply rely on the thinkers of the past to work out what liberty means today, and how to argue for it.

With this in mind, and drawing on the tradition of radical pamphlets from the seventeenth century onwards – designed to be argued over in the pub as much as parliament – each Letter on Liberty stakes a claim for how to forge a freer society in the here and now.

Edited and commissioned by me, Ella Whelan, our unique cover illustrations are the creation of artist Jan Bowman. See her work at janbow.com

You can find and buy copies of our back catalogue on our website academyofideas.org.uk/letters-on-liberty

Our latest three editions will be available next week - but paid subscribers can access theirs today.

TOLERATION AND GAY LIBERATION

Writer and debate enthusiast Ryan Hoey interrogates the differences between the gay-rights movement of the past and contemporary LGBT activism. What has changed, he argues, is not just the addition of the T, but a lack of commitment to tolerance. Both morally and practically, tolerance serves as a guiding principle for creating a society that values people as individuals and not as members of identity groups, he writes. It is time for LGBT activists to rediscover tolerance and, in doing so, once again be proponents of individual liberty.

IN DEFENCE OF SUBURBIA

Councillor and housing expert Simon Cooke writes a defence of suburbia, challenging the sneering elitism of NIMBYs and city dwellers alike. Suburbia represented the triumph of the middle-class - a place built in their image, containing the things that made their lives good, he argues. A good suburb has soft edges - it provides for community and allows space for football, dog walks and throwing frisbees. If we are to sort out our housing crisis and provide the homes people want, he argues, we need to win the argument for why suburbia isn’t simply second best to city living, but the sought-after ideal for most families in search of freedom.

PUBS: DEFENDING THE FREE HOUSE

Sociology teacher and critic Neil Davenport challenges us to stand up for the pub. Today, society tends to view people getting close to one another as a source of multiple risks, he writes, and if pubs are to survive, we need to get up close and personal. From plotting working-class political movements to hosting some of the great artists of our time, pubs are central to a lively, active public square. The future of rowdy locals relies on us, the punters, rediscovering and reshaping the public square as a place of freedom, he writes. We should not be ready to heed last orders so easily.

Want to catch up on previous Letters on Liberty? All our previous publications are available to read and purchase online and in print - click on the below images to find out more or head to academyofideas.org.uk/letters-on-liberty.

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