Voting and Elections

I was going to post about EUVAT and the mess that’s about to cost 750,000 British jobs due to a leftover of Brown’s government that Cameron’s done little about, or possibly a vaguely comical post on the local election campaign. Then I saw this video by Helen Pankhurst.

http://t.co/htpeluSBO8

This annoys me. This bloody well annoys me.

1. The suffragettes and suffragists fought for the right for women to vote, not to make voting compulsory, just as women in the 70’s fought for the right to choose a career, not to make work compulsory.
2. My gender does not give you the right to demand what I do, even if you are another woman.
3. This argument could as well be made for every group that now has the vote:
   1. Every man who owns property worth £10 or more should thank Lord Grey and the Whig government of 1832 for going against Arthur Wellesley Duke of Wellington to secure middle class sufferage.
   2. Male lodgers should thank the Chartist Movement and the reform act of 1868. The Chartists were arrested, opposed (the word "crushed" was used) by the authorities, and spent 30 years fighting for the right to vote.
   3. All other men should be grateful for the 1880’s acts.

It is worth remembering that the right to vote was fought for not just by women, but by the ancestors of every voter in the country at some point or another. Electoral reform was not a peaceful process, with riots, uprisings and more in a process that went from wealthy landowners only in the 1820's to universal sufferage in the 1920s. The suffragettes were force-fed in the 1900's. The Chartists, fifty years earlier, were tried for treason and transported.

The right to vote was won by the people and then protected by those who fought the second world war, those who stood on the front lines through the cold war and those be hind them who guarded that right from attacks at home.

Thanks to them, the long chain of campaign and sacrifice, you have the right to vote in Britain. You also have the right to choose not to, which is just as important.

I intend to vote. You don't have to.

My reasoning basically goes that it’s the only time for four years you get to have a direct say in government, so vote if you can find someone to support. If you want to protest, spoil your ballet paper, vote for a minority candidate, or tear up the sheet, but consider at least taking the time to stand in the ballot box. Because if you aren’t there, the people in charge just think you’re happy with the status quo.

But whether you decide to vote tomorrow, or whether you decide not to, make sure it is something you decide. Because if you don’t speak up for your future, someone else will.

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This blog has now moved to http://www.rablogs.co.uk/tirial, where the original article can be found.  Voting and Elections - http://rablogs.co.uk/tirial/2015/05/06/voting-and-elections/ was published on May 6, 2015 at 8:16 am.