Week 20.10

Tendring Topics……..on Line

We can’t have Democracy ‘on the cheap’

Events since the general election have been so newsworthy and have moved so swiftly that shameful situations that arose during that election appear to have been all-but-forgotten. Have we all, except for those directly involved, forgotten that scores of our fellow citizens were denied their right to vote for no other reason than that the local authorities whose duty it is the organise the poll hadn’t made adequate provision for the numbers who turned up at the polling stations on election day?

For years those concerned with the democratic electoral process have bemoaned the apathy of the public and the low turnout at elections. This time, crowds did turn out to vote and, in at least two large cities, they were turned away!

During some three decades of local government service I have, on occasion, performed every task there is, in both local and national elections. I have helped prepare the electoral register. I have counted the votes and have acted as both a poll clerk and as a presiding officer at a polling station. I have even, on just one occasion, performed as Acting Returning Officer, announcing the result of a parish council election to a ‘cheering crowd’ of perhaps half a dozen passers-by! Never once was any registered elector denied the right to vote. Nor did I ever hear of such a thing happening elsewhere.

What was so different about the election of 2010? Simply, I think, that economy has become local authorities’ top priority; cost effectiveness and productivity their main objectives. During previous elections it had been noted that there had been occasions during the day when presiding officer and poll clerks had been idle, perhaps for as long as an hour at a time! Dozens of ballot papers had been unused; wasted manpower! Wasted paper!

The techniques of direction of human resources (we used to call it ‘personnel management’) will have been brought into operation. Take the average number of voters voting at each polling station. Reduce these figures by the expected number of postal voters. Add say ten percent to allow for emergencies. Calculate how long it takes the average elector to register his or her vote and you can calculate the cost- effective requirement of human resources (presiding officers and poll clerks) at each polling station. A similar calculation will reveal how many voting papers should be needed at each station.

Such calculations are valueless because electors are humans, not machines – nor even sheep. The number of people turning out to vote depends upon the weather, the local and national news headlines on Election Day, and on such local issues as the threatened closure of a school or hospital. Polling is not spread evenly throughout the day. Last minute decisions bring in voters at the last minute. There is usually a surge during the final hours of polling.

We need to decide whether our top priority is a cost-effective election, or one that truly reveals the will of the electorate. It is unlikely that we can have both.

Hung Parliaments, Coalition Governments

Today we have a ‘hung parliament’ and a coalition government. I think that we shall be better governed as a result, just as I thought (and the national Audit Commission agreed with me) that Tendring District Council performed better with the Tendring First coalition administration than under single-party – any single-party – rule. During the general election campaign, most of the national press and a great many of the contending politicians assured us that ‘hung parliaments’ and coalition governments were a recipe for national disaster.

One of the comments on government that I have heard most frequently in recent years from ordinary people (as distinct from political zealots) is, ‘Why on earth can’t those politicians stop slanging each other off, and get together to solve the nation’s problems’. How could that possibly happen except in a coalition government?

It is, in fact, precisely what politicians do when they are convinced that our country is in real and immediate peril. Have we so soon forgotten the coalition government, headed by Conservative Winston Churchill with Labour Clement Attlee as his deputy that we had in World War II; Britain’s ‘finest hour’? There were, of course, strong, decisive one-party governments existing at that time – in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy for instance!

Did you realize that modern Germany, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries, probably the most stable and prosperous countries in Europe, customarily have coalition governments? Greece, Portugal and Spain, like us, struggle along with single-party ones – and are in an even worse financial muddle than we are!

Recently I watched a tv programme about New Zealand’s political system. There, it seems, they replaced their archaic and discredited first-past-the-post electoral system with proportional representation in 1996. Since then they have had nothing but coalition governments. Throughout that time they have surely set an example of stability and civilised democracy to the whole of the southern hemisphere.

Proportional representation works! Coalition government works! Don’t let self-interested politicians who would like a free hand to carry out their own hare-brained schemes (like introducing poll tax! like invading Iraq!) persuade you otherwise

How about the current Conservative/Lib.Dem Coalition?

I wish it well – though it is a somewhat unexpected marriage of convenience. In so far as ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ still have any meaning in politics the Liberal Democrats were to the ‘Left’ of the Labour Party, which has moved steadily towards the ‘Right’ since World War II. It is fair to add though that David Cameron’s views seem well to the ‘Left’ of a great many Conservatives – of our own Clacton MP for instance.

David Cameron is said to be a great admirer of Benjamin Disraeli (founder of the modern Conservative Party) who, in his early years at least, had some very radical ideas. His description of the squalor and poverty of the working classes in his political novel ‘Sybil, or the Two Nations’ bears remarkable similarities to that in ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844’ by Frederic Engels, friend and collaborator of Karl Marx. Both books were published in 1845. The secondary title of Disraeli’s novel is the origin of the phrase ‘One Nation Conservatism’ meaning a Conservatism that hopes to appeal to every class in our Society. Some years ago I was amused to hear a very right-wing Tory announce that he was a ‘one nation Conservative’ because he was opposed to Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism!

I had hoped to see a rather stronger Lib.Dem Party emerge from the election so that they could have retained more of their policies (their opposition to Trident for example) in any coalition that they entered. I had feared though that the Conservatives would have an overall majority. I think that most ordinary people will welcome the new coalition government, while watching it somewhat warily.

Strongest opposition is likely come from the right. I can’t imagine the ‘Withdraw from the European Union now! Stop all immigration now! Stop all this alternative energy nonsense! Britain for the true Brits! Brigade being satisfied with what they’ll get. I certainly hope that they won’t be.

I don’t imagine that they’re very happy about Ken Clarke, a Tory Europhile, being made Lord Chancellor. Nor will they be happy about the number of Lib.Dems becoming Ministers and Cabinet Members. It must be remembered that for every Lib.Dem who gets such an office, there will be an ambitious Conservative MP who had been considering it to be his (or her) job.

The watchword of Lord Asquith, a Liberal Prime Minister of the past, was ‘Wait and see’. I am content to follow that advice.

A Weekend ‘up North’

On Friday, 7th May, while the results of the previous day’s General Election were still unfolding, Andy and Marilyn, my younger son and daughter-in-law whisked me away to Sheffield to spend a politics-free few days with my grand-daughter Jo and her partner Siobhan. It was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend.

We went to Sheffield’s Lyceum Theatre, a beautifully restored (though I thought the seats needed a little extra padding!) ‘Old-time music hall’ type theatre, to see the musical ‘Oh what a lovely war!’ a sometimes savagely satirical musical on the theme of World War I. I had seen the film version many years earlier, but on the stage the proximity of the action (in the theatre steel helmeted German soldiers walked through the audience to meet the British squaddies in no-mans-land for the unofficial Christmas truce of 1914) gave an added immediacy to the performance.

Andy and Marilyn at a restaurant in Eyam

On Sunday we visited Eyam. The Derbyshire village where, when stricken by plague in the 17th Century, the villagers cut themselves off from the rest of the world. While village folk died all round them they remained in isolation to prevent the plague from spreading further.

We also visited the Parish Church of St John the Baptist in Tideswell, which has been called ‘The Cathedral of the Peak’. It certainly is a remarkable church, dating from the 14th Century, with a magnificent stained-glass windows, choir stalls embellished with figures carved by Suffolk craftsmen in 1800, and some very noteworthy tombs.

One placed squarely in the middle of the chancel was that of a locally very important person indeed. Sir Sampson Meverill, who died in 1462, had been a famous warrior in the Hundred Years War against France. Known to have been in battle against Joan of Arc he was probably one of the ‘ band of brothers’ who fought with King Henry V at Agincourt.

Siobhan (left) and Jo

One of the carvings by Suffolk Craftsmen, on the choir stalls

I found the life of Bishop Robert Pursglove, whose burial Brass is to be found outside the Sanctuary, of particular interest. I'm inclined to think that it is only folk of my generation who are likely to be familiar with the ballad of the Vicar of Bray – to be found in every Community Singing songbook in the ‘20s and ‘30s. He was a 17th Century vicar who had changed his faith a number of times, to match the faith of succeding rulers. The chorus went:

And this is the law that I’ll maintain until my dying day sir
That whatsoever king may reign I’ll be the Vicar of Bray sir!

Bishop Pursglove seems to have been an earlier Episcopal equivalent of that vicar. Originally a priest of the old Undivided and Unreformed Church, in 1538 at the age of 38, as Suffragen Bishop of Hull and Prior of Gisbourne, he embraced the Reformed Faith and assisted Henry VIII in his dissolution of some of the northern monasteries. For this he was awarded a pension. He continued in office from 1548 to 1552 under the strongly reformist King Edward VI. When Henry VIII’s fanatically Roman Catholic daughter Mary came to the throne, he had no intention of following his fellow-bishops Latimer and Ridley, and Archbishop Cranmer to martyrdom (and who can blame him!) He reverted to his former unreformed (Roman Catholic) faith and continued to prosper. When Elizabeth came to the throne in 1552 he decided that to revert again to the Reformed Church would be a change too far. He retired, using his considerable wealth to found Grammar Schools in Tideswell and Gisbourne. His brass memorial shows him in all his pre-Reformation Eucharistic Vestments, with his Bishop’s mitre and staff.