Conclusions

  Over the last 200 years there have been great changes in the electoral system.   Thus a severely limited franchise has developed to one based on the egalitarian principle of one man, one vote.   In addition single member constituencies have been introduced.

           Democracy depends upon a willingness to reach decisions after discussion based on a degree of respect for different beliefs and a tolerant attitude, without which democracy would collapse.   It can only survive within the framework of good order.   The maintenance of democracy is dependent, not only upon people having the opportunity to participate, but also upon their willingness to do so.   To those who cherish democratic freedoms, “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

          Perhaps the purest form of democracy is the direct democracy that we inherited from the Athenian city-state.   It is decidedly out of fashion today.   For most of those, who study and engage in politics, any notion of direct democracy is a dangerously utopian one that easily slides into demagoguery and populist intolerance.  

             But can we realistically expect active citizenship without at least some experience of direct democracy?   Indeed in the associations of civil society beyond the state ordinary people are engaged in making directly democratic decisions.   They decide rules, define membership, vote on budgets, and argue over policy.   Literally millions of people around the world are thus engaged.

          Without their participation it is scarcely possible to imagine how society would run at all.   If it were left to a class of politicians directing a professional bureaucracy to run all social organisations – the inefficiencies and the cost would be unimaginable.   Citizens also engage in direct action as a form of political participation.   This is often the means chosen by the young and the marginalised.   Their attempts to influence the course of events from the streets are often treated by the political class as unfortunate disruptions to orderly decision-making or even as terrorist threats to the very idea of democracy.   In fact new issues – minority rights or environmental protection – can often only enter the political arena through direct action and demonstrations.   A complacent political class has at best a lukewarm interest in new issues and significant changes.

        Lord Hailsham has in the past variously described the conditions under which a majority government governs as “an elective dictatorship” when commenting about our unwritten constitution.   Under most present circumstances our “representatives” are only answerable to us in a very general sense.   Once they have been elected any number of factors may weigh more heavily for them than the wishes of their constituents; their own views, Party discipline, personal ambition or the influence of powerful lobbies.   Voters do not get to hold them accountable until the next general election.   In the meantime they form a virtual dictatorship – particularly if they are part of a majority government.   Even this meagre exercise of the popular will implied by elections must overcome a multiplicity of unrepresentative forms (The House of Lords) which are designed to provide a buffer against unpredictable public opinion.

           Certainly more direct democracy would act as a popular check.   There are a plethora of ideas for greater empowerment of and participation by ordinary citizens.   These take a variety of forms.   Referenda on key questions, variations of the voting system, decentralisation, town hall meetings, term limits to prevent a political class from entrenching itself, etc.   The thread that runs through all such proposals is to put the people back in the democratic picture.
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But what about our politicians?

The one-belief they all share is that they are plenipotentiary.   They believe their job is to set Britain, even the world, to rights.   They will not admit that others, even if publicly elected, might do the job better.   The ghost of the old “ruling classes” hovers over them.   Only the French have their equal in arrogance.   This attitude has slowly removed British government from the bedrock of public consent.   Britain’s democratic deficit is not cliché but real. "Big Bang Localism" by S. Jenkins.

Two million people demonstrated against going to war with Iraq watched by Prime Minister Tony Blair and Lord Falconer.   Later, Lord Falconer said it did not matter whether there were twenty million demonstrating – their mind was made up.

 Today we are really ruled in the main by unelected oligarchies, be they in Europe or at Westminster.   Parliamentary democracy is no match for them.

In 2004 the proportion of the population that thought our existing system of government needed improvement was 63%.   Only 3% thought that it worked extremely well.   A MORI poll in 1999 showed that only 20% of the people trusted a government of any party to put the national interest above party interest.   In 2002 only a third of those polled trusted the government to tell the truth.

Over the centuries the United Kingdom has slowly and often painfully moved towards democracy.   From Alfred the Great to 2008 we have moved along the road to democracy, sometimes in small steps, at other times with big steps such as the Reform Acts, but are we there yet?   I fear not, and worse, over the last fifty years we have become less democratic.   Over 70% of our legislation now emanates from Europe for which we have little if any control.   The House of Lords is almost wholly appointed.   Our First Past The Post system of election is wholly discredited.   Devolution has created unsolved anomalies.   Unless we take action now this acceleration towards the dark ages will increase.   We have to reverse the flow and keep to the path towards democracy.

We have seen central government become more powerful.   42% of the nation’s expenditure is spent by government.   The political classes have taken a life of their own.   Powers which were in the process of being devolved to the people are being clawed back into the hands of the politicians.   If we want to pursue democracy the first thing we will have to do is to reverse this trend.   More powers must be devolved back from the European Union to our National Parliament.   Westminster must devolve more power to local government, and local government must devolve more power to the people.
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  Let us remind ourselves of our definition of democracy which we set out at the beginning:

 Democracy is a system of government of the people in which the people of the nation exercise power directly, or indirectly through their representatives, by a process in which the will of the majority is determined.   In determining the will of the majority, all people, regardless of sex, race or creed, are able to participate - each person having a vote of equal value and the vote is exercised by way of a secret ballot without fear of intimidation or violence.   In a democratic society the majority will take into account the views of the minority when exercising their will and so govern for all the people.

 The United Kingdom, uniquely allows the citizens of a foreign nation (Republic of Ireland) to participate in the process of determining the representatives of the people in the House of Commons, so it is not only the people of the nation exercising power but the people of another nation as well.   This is not right and should be changed.

  There is very little direct power exercised by the people of the United Kingdom.   We have had the occasional referendum, notably after we joined the Common Market and on devolution in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.   With the development of technology such as the Internet there is clearly scope for an expansion of direct democracy.   We could and should have more referendums, particularly when there are changes to the way we are governed.   The country, which most has a culture of referendums, is Switzerland, which researchers tell us, also happens to be the happiest country in the World.   Perhaps control of one’s own destiny is the prime ingredient of happiness.

  Power in the United Kingdom is mainly exercised indirectly through the representatives of the people, but just how representative are our politicians?   At a European level the people cannot choose nor get rid of their representative because of the closed Party list system of election to the European Parliament.   At Westminster the House of Commons is elected on the First Past The Post system.   It is in effect a lottery as we have shown in the results of General Elections throughout our history.   The % of votes cast bears no relationship to the % of seats obtained in the House of Commons.   In addition to this lottery for the House of Commons we have a wholly unelected House of Lords.   Together this is our legislature.   It cannot be said to be representative of the people, or reflect the will of the majority.

Major steps forward have been made in democratic terms by eliminating discrimination on the grounds of sex or race and income, but we still have a some way to go to eliminate discrimination on the grounds of religion.   The Church of England is the established Church of the Nation, yet it only represents a part of the Nation.   The Churches of Scotland, Wales and Ireland are not included.   By right the Church of England has Bishops in the House of Lords.   By the Act of Settlement the Monarch has to be a Protestant and it is the duty of the Monarch to “Defend the Faith”, i.e. the faith of the Church of England.   For the sake of democracy the Monarch should be allowed to be of any faith or no faith and their duty should be to “Defend all Faiths”.
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  When we look at the question as to whether all votes have an equal value we see that the value of a vote in Wales has a higher value than a vote in the rest of the United Kingdom, due to the size of the electorate in a constituency in Wales being deliberately kept smaller that the size of the electorate in a constituency in the rest of the United Kingdom.   Not only is there this discrepancy but the size of constituencies varies enormously within the United Kingdom.   In spite of having standing Boundaries' Commissions a constituency can have an electorate anywhere between 25,000 and 110,000 people.   When it comes to voting for Members of the European Parliament once again we see huge discrepancies between the values of a vote in the different Nations making up the European Union.   The value of a vote in Luxembourg is vastly higher than a vote in the United Kingdom.

We have achieved the secret ballot, but it is under threat from the increased use of untested, untried electronic voting which raises a number of issues.   How do you have a recount is one?   Computers can be tampered with and results altered without any audit trail.   Equally the increased use of postal voting raises some serious issues, particularly relating to fraud and impersonation.   Its use by particular ethnic groups where the head of the family decides who everybody in the family should vote for is another concern.

 Generally our General Elections take place without violence, so we can be thankful for that.

 Finally, have we developed a culture within our society that protects the views of the minority?   This is perhaps one of the most difficult areas to be resolved.   Just as soon as we recognise the rights of a majority we ignore the rights of a minority.   We have continuous battles to reach a consensus.   Should smokers be allowed to smoke in their local pub?   Should people be able to demonstrate outside the House of Commons?   Far too often the tyranny of the majority is exercised in an authoritarian way.

Because of a decline of the direct influence of citizens over crucial governmental decisions, and also in the influence of their elected representatives, democracy in the United Kingdom is in danger of sliding into soft despotism in the near future.   Our politicians do not like democracy.   Richard Crossman wrote in his diary in 1966:

democracy consists of giving people a chance to decide for themselves.

This philosophy is extremely unpopular, I find, with most members of the Cabinet.   They believe in getting power, making decisions and getting people to agree with the decisions after they have been made.   They have the routine politician’s attitude to public opinion that the politician must take the decisions and then get the public to acquiesce.   The notion of creating the extra burden of a live and articulate public opinion able to criticise actively and make its own choices is something which most socialist politicians keenly resent. The Diaries of a cabinet Minister by R. Crossman
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Today in the United Kingdom and in Europe political consultants are an industry hoping and presumably influencing our politicians.   There has been a steep rise in the number of government appointed bodies, which are unaccountable to the people.   There is a huge democratic deficit.

In short we have much to do to create a democratic country.   There is one final irony in looking at the history of democracy in the United Kingdom.   We started by electing monarchs, monarchs then became all powerful and parliament was created as a check on that power.   Parliament then became all powerful and the people began to campaign to restrain Parliament, but today between 70 and 80% of legislation affecting the United Kingdom emanates from the European Union, so even if we achieve democracy in the United Kingdom we will have to start all over again with achieving democracy within the European Union.  

On one issue it is said that the British electorate are victims of what Plato termed “the Noble Lie”; that while being encouraged to believe they were part of a self-governing democracy, they were in effect, the dupes of government by oligarchy.   As Anthony Howard was to write in his introduction to The Crossman Diaries, this was “the guilty secret at the heart of the British governmental system.”