IF VOTING CHANGED ANYTHING THEY’D MAKE IT ILLEGAL!

I used to think this was a clever slogan. But if voting never changed anything what the heck happened with Brexit? And why do dictators make voting impossible by cancelling elections, sometimes for years at a time. Or else they hold rigged elections because they want to appear legitimate.

Even democracies are not immune. In the USA there is a long history of gerrymandering – fixing electoral boundaries so that popular candidates lose out to machine politicians. Then there is voter suppression, making it harder for some people, usually poor or black people, to register to vote or else being denied their vote if they do not have the right ID when they turn up at the polling station.

And we are not so brilliant in this country. For years the boundaries were fixed in Northern Ireland so that even in counties with a Catholic majority the Unionists always won a majority on the local council. It is easy to forget that the Troubles in Northern Ireland started with a campaign for civil rights by Catholics that including a demand to end gerrymandering. In Britain today some Tories are talking about electoral fraud and voter ID which could make it harder for poor people to vote.

So voting obviously matters to our rulers. And it matters to us as well. We remember the Chartists and the Suffragettes with pride. We look at countries where people finally get the vote after years of repression. You see them queuing for hours to exercise their rights and we compare that to voter apathy in the UK. And voter apathy is a problem in the UK. In the famous Labour landslide after WW2 over 72% of us voted. There were many ups and downs after that but the popular vote never went below 72% until 1997 when Tony Blair won another landslide victory with a turnout of only 71%. Since then the vote has never gone above 69% except for that Brexit referendum when it again topped 72%.

People don’t vote when they think their vote doesn’t matter. If you are in a safe labour seat or a safe Tory seat why bother? “Your” party is going to win, or lose, whatever you do. If you think both parties are the same or that voting wont change anything, why bother? And mainstream politicians in all the major parties don’t seem worried by the growth of apathy. They lead comfortable lives. Politics is a job for them, not a crusade. And if they lose they can look forward to a business career exploiting the contacts they made in office. For them the whole point is not to change the world. They want business as usual. And the media commentators and journalists, many of whom are paid more than the politicians, are the same.

So when people tell you that, “They are all in it for themselves, why bother?” we have to have an answer. I voted Remain but I have to say that the referendum showed us why it’s good to be bothered. People who had never voted before made a difference. Their votes mattered then and their votes matter now. Promises were made in the Brexit campaign. Have they been kept? If not, why not? I am not one of those smug Remainers who blames the voters. Our message should be that they voted in good faith and were betrayed. So vote again and punish the politicians who lied to you.

The choice before us is not very inspiring. “Johnson or Starmer? A plague on both your houses!” I get it. But there are millions of people who vote Labour because they know there is injustice in the world and want to do something about it. Do we put them off by telling them that votes don’t change anything? Or do we say, “Yes. We have to vote to get the Tories out. But that is not enough. What can we do between now and the next election to stop them doing even more damage?”

My last point is this. The most important difference that elections make is that they can be a mass demonstration that gives confidence to our side and puts the Tories on a warning. They welcome apathy. Socialists want people to get involved. We all feel down when the Tories win and take heart when they lose. I will continue to vote Labour and argue for others to vote Labour because I hate the Tories and I want people to feel the confidence to organise and fight back. So it’s “Vote Labour and Prepare to Fight” for me. And “Kick out the Tories. Then Keep on Kicking.” Paul Foot used to describe elections as shadow boxing. But even in a shadow contest he did not want to lose and neither do I.