To vote or not to vote...

Chumbawamba Musings - That Thing I Seem to End Up Writing Every Five Years

So here’s the discussion again; or at least my side of it. My defence against being burnt at the stake for not voting. And my defence is basically that whether or not I vote isn’t, in most cases, important; what’s important is what I do the rest of the time, in that five-year gap between polling days. 

First though, I’ll cover myself. If you live in an area where there’s a genuine chance of your vote ousting the Tories or the BNP, or if you genuinely feel better for having voted, or if you use your vote as a springboard to getting involved in real community politics, or if you just feel like a walk down to the polling booth will do you good and stretch your legs, then it makes sense to vote. 

But if your vote is the expression of your political view, if it’s the focus of your politics, then it ridicules the people who lobbied, chained themselves to railings, spent time in prisons, marched and campaigned for the vote in the first place. Those people were activists, not politicians. They believed in the politics of community action, striking, debating, leafleting, singing, direct action, changing the world around them. If they thought for a minute that the eventual extent of our political power would be making a cross on a ballot paper, they might have some sympathy with the half-arsed deadbeats like me. 

Don’t be satisfied with your vote against the Tories or BNP; get involved in actively working to stop them gaining ground in your area – I’m talking about every day other than the day of the General Election, here – by talking to people, writing, organising, whatever it is you feel you can do. Because the bigger problem than the right-wing bigots getting Parliamentary seats is right-wing bigots taking over our cultural and social lives, because that’s where people really get hurt. On a day-to-day level.