If company or social values are well considered and clearly articulated then they should last a century. Updates are sometimes required. This can be for a number of reasons, for instance:  technology drives a fundamental change in the way business is conducted; words can change their meaning and new ambiguities need clarifying; changing social attitudes can also affect the way Values are expressed. 
 
So it is interesting to look back and review values that were stated nearly a century ago and see how well they have stood the test of time. Winston Churchill, in his History of the Second World War, recalled how he advised the nascent Italian government in  August 1944, as it was struggling to re-establish democracy after the fall of Musolini. At that time, he wrote down a check list that could be used by anyone who wanted to find out whether a society was free. This is what he wrote:
 
"...It has been said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilence. The question arises, What is freedom? there are one or two quite simple, practical tests by which it can be known in the modern world in peace conditions, namely:
 
Is there a right to free expression of opinion and of opposition and criticism of the Government of the day?
 
Have the people the right to turn out a Government of which they disapprove? and are the constitutional means provided by which they can make their will apparent?
 
Are the courts of justice free from violence by the Executive and from threats of mob violence, and free of all associations with particular political parties?
 
Will these courts administer open and well-established laws, which are associated in th human mind with the broad principles of decency and justice?
 
Will there be fair play for poor as well as rich, for private persons as well as Government officials?
 
Will the rights of the individual, suibject to his duties to the State, be maintained and asserted and exalted?
 
Is the ordinary peasant or workman, who is earning a living by daily toil and striving to bring up a family, free from the fear that some grim police organsiation under the control of a single party, like the Gestapo, started by the Nazi and Fascist parties, will tap him on the shoulder and pack him off  without fair and open trial to bondage and ill-treatment?
 
These simple practical tests are some of the title-deeds on which new Italy could be founded......"
 
It is a list that has stood the test of time and can still be used today to test whether a government or political system is    
            enabling people to live in freedom. 

Jerry Timmins, Managing Director GMT Media Ltd