You WILL vote because the government will MAKE you (oh really?)

Monday, March 24th, 2008

In our democracy we have always had the right not to vote if we don’t want to, or, more likely these days, don’t wish to support candidates and parties standing for election. But now the government proposes to deal with voter apathy not by addressing our lack of faith, but by forcing us to vote.

How can they do this and avoid spoiled ballot papers, what will be done to us if we refuse, and since when did coercion become an aid to democracy? I’d argue if this becomes law, it’s time for another round of nationwide civil disobedience.

We could start by not voting in the next General Election. The very idea of forcing us to vote is absurd as well as anti-democratic. Imagine you’re confronted at the ballot box by candidates from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. You don’t want to vote for any of them. You maybe have some leanings towards the Greens but they aren’t standing a candidate in your area. Under the proposals you would have to vote, irrespective of whether the candidates and parties have your support.

The government isn’t proposing that ballot papers have a box you can tick marked ‘none of the above’. Your only option will be to spoil the ballot paper but no doubt our glorious leaders intend to legislate to make that long-established form of protest a criminal act marking you out as a subversive enemy of the state.

The proposals are about sweeping crumbs under the carpet so that it looks nice and clean without involving the effort of getting the carpet actually, really clean. But of course the stench, growing fruitier and more disgusting over time, will betray the folly of this behaviour.

The plan to drag us all in chains to the voting booths reveals just how much our democracy has been, and continues to be, abused by the political class ruling over us. Labour and the Tories have run rough-shod over democracy going back at least as far as Thatcher’s first term in office, and what we see happening in the 21st Century with regard to the destruction of our civil liberties has its roots in the class struggles of the 1980s, which saw the effective neutering and dismemberment of the working classes, and the reinforcement and expansion of a generally unthinking and mostly passive middle class.

But little has been written so far about the new political class which emerged over the past twenty-odd years. The allegiances of those belonging to the political class are no longer distinguishable from one another. All are indebted to their big business supporters, chained to lobbyists seeking favours in return for donations and less obvious help. The suited-and-booted fascist mouthpieces of industries such as oil, gas, fast food, pharmaceuticals, and banking promise assistance in maintaining at least the outward symbols of political power in office, even if true power some time ago was handed over by our leaders to the stock exchange.

I believe in democracy. But that which we call democracy today is diseased. Freedom cannot be defended by coercion. It is our duty, if this latest madness becomes law, to defy the political class by refusing to attend the voting stations or spoil our ballot papers.

Could we really see an election held in the UK where millions did not vote as part of a quiet revolution? Well, yes. As with so many of the problems we face today, the only way to deal with them is as individuals. Accept what is done to you, in your name, with your assumed authority, and you should also accept that you are more sheep than human. But if you don’t accept, if you won’t submit, be prepared to take non-violent, peaceful, but—if others do the same—incredibly effective action.

When the ballot box no longer produces positive results, it is indeed time to overhaul the system. But the people who should do the job aren’t those who gained power by treating democracy as a tool and a toy, rather than an honourable system that should be defended at all costs.

Anyone who has read V For Vendetta or 1984 will understand me when I say, with dread, that those times are upon us right here, right now. Don’t doubt it. What are we to do when, for the most part, our politicians work against us instead of for and with us?

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