Communique #1 Why I don't vote
[This is the text of something
I wrote before the UK general election of 7th May 2015. It outlined
some of the reasons I do not vote.]
In an election I have to vote for
one party even though l probably disagree with many of their policies. I will
not back any political party because I find at least some of the policies of
each party utterly repugnant. In any case, all of the parties with any hope of
getting elected have become so similar that it is often difficult to
distinguish between them. Even if I was to vote, ALL of the 4 main parties
support policies I find utterly abhorrent e.g. varying levels of privatisation
of the NHS, HS2, Trident etc. and they have no care at all for environmental
issues etc. To vote for someone or some party that supports policies I
personally find absolutely immoral is irrational and illogical.
The Conservative Party managed to
head a government by simply getting 36.6% of the people who could be bothered
to vote, just 24% of the electorate. I cannot see how that is representative,
fair or democratic.
The general election is a vote
for someone to represent your interests in Parliament; it is not about local
issues despite what many people voting often seem to think. The person elected
will probably be a member of a major political party and their loyalty will be
as much to the party as to the area they serve. In a debate or vote in
Parliament, they are much more likely to toe the party line than represent the
best interests of their constituency and the constituents who voted for them.
Do not forget that MPs have
allowed themselves a 9% pay rise. How many other people got anything like that?
These people have cheated, stolen, lied and abused their outrageous expenses
system … and still they say they are not paid enough! I suspect that many
people who do not vote are not apathetic, they are just utterly disillusioned
in the political process of electing representatives.
Private business and global trade
are far more powerful than politicians now, and their vested interests will
always win. So much of our society has been privatised that the real power lies
in the hands of these private companies and a handful of individuals, who are
mostly mates of the politicians, and we certainly will not be allowed to vote
for or against them!
Professional politicians are just
seeking a career and power, and power usually corrupts as we have seen in case
after case. Yet politicians just say that it won’t happen again … and still we
see that Parliament is full of thieves and scoundrels, and may have played an
intrinsic role in covering up systematic child abuse and even murder etc. I
simply do not trust anyone who wants to be an MP.
Politicians are only interested
in us every 5 years when they want our vote. How many times has any politician
come to ask if I need anything or am happy with them? I actually had to
research who my MP was as I have never seen them mentioned; in fact her
greatest claim to fame seems to be that, somewhat incredibly, she did not know
the difference between the National Debt and the National Deficit!
I have the opportunity to vote for
an MP for Devizes. In the 2015 general election the Conservative won with a
whopping majority of 20,751. The MP, Claire Perry, got 57.7% of the vote. UKIP
came 2nd with 15.4%; Labour came 3rd with 13%; Liberal DEmocrats came 4th with 8.1%;
Green Party came 5th with 5.8%. I just fail to see the point of voting when it
is a forgone conclusion what the outcome will be.
It is much more important to
actively take part in politics through community or campaigning groups rather
than delegating your individual political will to a careerist politician.
No-one can represent you better than yourself. No person is good enough to
represent another – anyone who thinks that they are should be treated with the
deepest suspicion. The mentality of anyone who thinks they are in a position to
represent anyone else has always intrigued me.
Voting legitimises the system. If
you take part in this sham, you have to accept that the party with the most
votes deserves to win and accept all of their policies. This is absurd. Many
people say that if you do not vote then you have no right to criticise the
decisions made by politicians; I utterly disagree with this interpretation and
firmly believe that if you do take part in the electoral process then you
should abide by the outcome and actually have less of a legitimate case to
criticise the politicians that you voted in.
Democracy is the tyranny of the
majority. Most people just vote for their own vested interest, not what is best
for their community or even the country. This is why the Conservative Party
remain in control – there are too many people who have made a tidy profit in
shares in sold off companies that belonged to all of us and the government had
no right to sell.
You may vote for a party on their
policies, but there is absolutely no guarantee that those policies will be
fulfilled. Politicians will lie, cajole and cheat to get your vote - it is
their raison d’etre. You may vote also for a party and suddenly see it in a
coalition with another party you despise … how many people voted Liberal
Democrat and were aghast to see they had created a Conservative government in
2010?
I am told to vote for someone I
have never even met.
Parliamentary democracy is the
politics of compromise. It is a safety valve to stop people making real change.
The system wants you to keep voting to give you an illusion that you are
actually meaningfully participating in society so will accept the status quo.
We have no option to vote for real change – to get the butchers out of
parliament.
If I elect an MP in London
they can easily get to Parliament every day if needed, but what if my MP is in
Cumbria where they are expected to deal with local issues as well as represent
people in Parliament. How is that fair?
I have one vote – the same as
everyone else, but I or anyone else may have differing levels of political
ignorance, yet all get the same say. The person who has read up on all the
parties and studies the political system gets the same say as some redneck or
religious bigot. A person who works hard and contributes to making their
community a better place has that same one vote as a person who does nothing.
In all likelihood your vote will
simply be cancelled out by someone voting for another party – this is the
inertia of voting. If your choice does not win, the whole vote was a waste of
time anyway as it will not count towards anything else in the prevailing first
past the post system. In most cases, more people will vote AGAINST the winning
candidate than FOR them.
The voting system is so open to
abuse it makes voting worthless – postal votes can be completed by anyone; to
vote at a polling station you just need the polling card which could easily
have been fraudulently obtained.
Some say that people struggled
and died so that we all have the vote. I believe those people fought to make a
real change, not just for some half-hearted right to vote every 5 years and an
allocation of about a dozen crosses in their lifetime. If they really did make
all those sacrifices just so that they could have a choice of who rules and
controlled their lives then they were sadly misguided. Some people also say
that it is our civic duty to vote, but the politicians are decimating our civic
communities. We all have a civic duty but that is to support our families,
friends, neighbours and community, while respecting other people and the
environment we all share.
The non-voters watch as the
politicians’ lies and promises mount and the government good-news machine rolls
into action, while quietly repeating the anarchist slogans ‘If voting changed
anything they’d make it illegal’ and ‘Whoever you vote for, the Government
always gets in’.
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