Paul Foot on New Labour

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Bribery, forgery and tyranny

Paul Foot
Wednesday June 25, 2003
The Guardian

One of the most pathetic noises in British politics today is the perpetual
whine of elected politicians complaining about low turnouts at elections. On
June 4 there was yet another debate in the House of Commons on the subject -
the third in six months. Bill Tynan, Labour MP for Hamilton South, said this
was a "matter we must address if we are to convince the electorate that low
turnout is bad for democracy".

He was shocked at the turnout in the recent elections for the parliament in
Scotland (down from 58% to 49%) and for the assembly in Wales (down from 46%
to 38%). He went through the many alleged solutions to this dreadful
problem: combining different elections on the same day, voting on Saturday
or Sunday, voting by post, voting in colleges, voting on the internet, more
glamorous electoral advertising, citizenship courses in schools. He admitted
that not many of these had been very effective, and so moved on to more
drastic measures.

Perhaps, he suggested, people could be bribed to vote by offering them
reductions in their council tax, or forced to vote by law, as in Luxembourg,
Cyprus and Australia. The minister who answered the debate, Yvette Cooper,
was also terribly concerned about the low turnout. She wasn't very keen on
compulsory voting or bribing people to vote, but she was impressed by the
marginal success of postal voting.

All these earnest arguments miss the point. The fall in the number of people
voting has very little to do with inconvenience, apathy or laziness in the
electorate. Its real cause is the continual convergence of the political
parties around policies which most people know won't improve their lives.
When Labour, for all its faults, offered something different to the Tories
and Liberals - public ownership, for instance, or comprehensive education -
huge numbers of people, especially young people and poor people, voted in
elections.

Indeed, the more Labour seemed to challenge Tory policies, the more people
voted. New Labour on the other hand, on all the big issues, is increasingly
indistinguishable from its opponents. As in the US, lots of people,
especially the young and the poor, don't see the point in voting. In these
circumstances, low turnout is not "bad for democracy". It is democracy: the
democratic expression of people's indifference, if not hostility, to the
main parties. Any move to bribe people to vote is corrupt and any move to
force them to do so is tyrannical.

· The Christian Science Monitor, a hugely rich and influential rightwing
paper in the US, announces that its sensational article "proving" that
George Galloway MP took millions from Saddam Hussein was based on forged
documents. The paper, renowned for its "fact checking", apologises for
deceiving its readers. This further exposes the disgraceful and arbitrary
decision of the Labour party's general secretary to suspend Galloway from
the party.

This decision came up at last month's meeting of the Labour party's national
executive, which includes several representatives of trade unions. Some of
these unions oppose Galloway's suspension. Tony Woodley, for instance,
recently elected general secretary of the TGWU, has pledged his union to
campaign against the suspension. But at the national executive meeting, the
discussion on Galloway was abruptly cut short by a "next business" motion
carried with only four votes against.

What happened to the trade union representatives? Jimmy Elsby, Labour party
treasurer and a member of the TGWU, could not make the meeting. Nor could
Mick Cash of the RMT, a union that has strongly supported Galloway's
reinstatement. Nor could John Keggie, representing the CWU, whose annual
conference voted unanimously to support Galloway's campaign. The "next
business" motion was moved by Sir Jeremy Beecham, champion of the local
government employers in the recent firefighters' dispute. His motion was
supported by the two representatives on the national executive from Unison,
the local government workers' union. Whatever the arguments for and against
union participation in the Labour party, surely the representatives on
Labour's executive from affiliated unions should stand up for union policy
and vote for it.

· Blair's Britain 2003. The Financial Times reports that the big bank HSBC,
described as "famous for its parsimonious culture", has circulated all staff
with a memorandum complaining about "unnecessary and expensive personal
telephone calls" and ordering underlings to reimburse the cost of these
calls to the bank. The bank is recovering from an onslaught by shareholders
last month complaining about a pay package for its new head of US
operations, Bill Aldinger. The package is worth $37m over three years. As
part of the deal, Mr Aldinger is obliged to travel by private company jet.
He sat in silence through the shareholders' meeting, and was escorted to and
from it by a posse of bodyguards.