The battle for democracy

The current scandal over MPs’ expenses builds on a long process of disaffection and disgust. Turnout in general elections has fallen from 78% in 1992 to 59% in 2001 and 61% in 2005. Labour won the last general election with the support of only 21% of the people entitled to vote (i.e. a 35% share of the 61% turnout).

The percentage of people saying in polls that they are “interested in politics” has remained about the same as far as records go back (60%, back to 1973), and young people are as likely as older people, or more so, to describe themselves as “interested in politics”. But confidence in our ability to affect politics by voting — or to affect it other than on very particular issues by any other means — has declined heavily.

The passive disaffection now widespread is dangerous. It makes it easier for governments to cut back democracy even further. The large pool of people who are “fed up with all politicians” form a rich fishing-ground for racist and fascist politicians.

Two hundred years ago in Britain, activists who batled for votes for all were certain that victory for that demand would mean a social overturn — making government serve the poor many rather than the rich few — and those who resisted them shared that certainty. Though MPs then were surely more corrupt than now, and voted in by narrow and arbitrarily-delimited electorates mostly of the well-off, Parliament really controlled the government. A debate in Parliament could really swing the policy of the state.

Bit by bit, from 1832 to 1928, the rich conceded the right to vote to the poor. Bit by bit, at the same time, they set up mechanisms which neutralised that right. Parliament was elected — but it was more and more dominated by the Government, which in turn operated in a frame more tightly set by an increasingly large unelected state machine, staffed at its higher levels by wealthy people tied by a thousand strings to the bosses and bankers.

The Blair and Brown governments have tilted the system even further against any real control for the voters. You vote for your MP. But it is hard for parties other than those with lots of money, and good connections to the media, to establish themselves as “known” options for you.

Those parties’ manifestos are written to emphasise attractive buzzwords (chosen by market research) and to minimise firm commitments. Even if the manifesto has a firm commitment, the MP is elected for five years.

Thus, and rationally, most people vote only on the general tone and “image” of the parties. Unless a lively and democratic party organisation controls them, MPs are tied by no “mandate” tighter than that.

Once elected, Parliament does not choose the government. The Queen does. Usually, of course, the Queen must choose the leader of the biggest party. But that leader, once chosen as Prime Minister, can then chose his own large “payroll vote”.

Today, 120 out of the 350 MPs of the majority party are ministers or deputies. They have to back the Prime Minister’s line, on pain of losing salary and career. Thus, for example, though 154 out of 230 non-payroll Labour MPs have signed an appeal against Royal Mail privatisation, the Government can press on with it. There is no provision for a vote among Labour MPs to decide Labour government policy.

The Government also sets the agenda for Parliament, largely deciding what can or cannot be debated. The current Parliament, elected in 2005, has the highest rate since 1945 of revolts by MPs of the majority party against the Government. Almost no revolts make any difference to Government policy. Revolts make little difference outside Parliament, too: research into the 2005 general election results shows that “rebel” and “loyalist” Labour MPs lost votes to almost exactly the same extent. Voters hadn’t monitored the revolts.

Until about 1994 the “serious” newspapers used to publish detailed, sometimes word-for-word, reports of Parliamentary debates every day. Now none of them bothers. A great number of laws are now “administrative law”, made by ministers without reference to Parliament on the authority of previous legislation. Even the ministers have little control. They are mostly in their jobs for short terms, and often with little prior knowledge of the area; and they work in a frame set by permanent unelected officials who control the flow of information.

Memoirs show that there was never even a proper debate in the Cabinet about Britain joining the USA in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, although at least two members of the Cabinet clearly opposed the invasion. The Prime Minister has power. But he or she exercises that power under pressures and influences among which pressure from MPs is a tiny factor as compared to the pressures and influences from top bosses, bankers, and officials — the ruling class.

How can we recover the radical meaning and logic which democracy had when campaigners first raised the call for “votes for all”? In 1871 Karl Marx analysed how the Paris Commune — the ordinary city council — had been able to become “a thoroughly expansive political form... essentially a working-class government” during a brief period when the bourgeois national government had abandoned Paris and the workers transformed the administration.

“The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally workers, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time... From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workers’ wages...”

In history, such democratic principles — right to recall representatives; the government, the executive, being elected (and subject to re-election) by the assembly, not appointed from above; all officials being accountable and on workers’ wages — have only ever been fully embodied in fresh political forms arising in times of revolution.

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