On Polling
Despite a late night last night, in an attempt to shift my body clock so that I could stay up for the election properly, I woke at half nine today. It was sunny, and my room was warm and bright through the thin curtains. I drifted in and out of sleep for a little over an hour before rising. I washed and put on clean clothes, topped by a bright red jumper. Seizing my polling card, which had sat expectantly on my table waiting for today, my journey had begun.
The polling station was in a local primary school next door to the local doctors' surgery. Local, local. Although this was a general election, local issues could never be entirely discounted - and indeed there was even a local election going on as well. The constituency, Islington South and Finsbury, was at the last election a Labour-Lib Dem marginal, squeaked by Labour. On a uniform swing in the polls, and given the continued gentrification of the area (rich people tend to vote Lib Dem), that ought to make it a Lib Dem cakewalk, but the extraordinary efforts of both sides suggest that neither thinks it will be as secure as that. Navigating my way through the maze of alleys in the school, mostly by following the stream of fellow constituents who were equally making their pilgrimage to this shrine of oligarchy, I came to the traditional sordid scrum of party hacks - one red, one orange, and one blue - bullying people into revealing who they were and how they were voting. "Do you have a number on your card, sir?" one asked. "Yes," I replied, "but I don't have to tell you what it is," and strode past. I felt slightly frustrated on seeing less aware people meekly hand over their polling card to these rosetta'd clowns, but put that to one side and forged ahead and into the voting hall.
The hall was small but airy and light, partly a reflection of the sunlight streaming in through the glass wall containing the doorway. I showed my card to one of the polling officers - no rosetta, he - who pointed me to the appropriate table for people from my part of the ward. I handed my card to the man at the table and awaited my polling slip. "Mumble mumble mumble?" he asked; I'm increasingly deaf at the moment, and could only muster a bewildered "Eh?" He discreetly moved his hand to cover my name on both my polling card and his list. "Can you confirm your name, please?" he said more crisply. I confirmed my name, wondered briefly if I should explain my hearing difficulty, decided not to bother and took my two sheets, one white, one yellow. After a few moments for the exact details to be explained to me (we were to vote for one constituency candidate and up to three local council candidates) I moved over to a polling booth.
The act of voting is a strange one, especially for someone who is not particularly enamoured of the electoral process and representative liberal democracy anyway. Elections are an excellent way for elites to keep the people pacified for five years while deluding them that they have some power. The cries of "You had your vote, now shut up" resound from politicians whenever they are criticised, as if staining our white paper with our pencilled cross paradoxically gives them carte blanche. However, the best is the enemy of the good, and in a system of parliamentary democracy which is broadly supported by the vast majority of the population, and in which there is still some difference between the tainted social democracy of Labour, the individualist neo-liberalism of the Lib Dems, and the plutocratic traditionalism of the Tories, refusing the franchise is a moral dead end, however tempting it may be at times. I looked at my white Parliamentary ballot paper. There were more candidates than I had expected, and my heart tugged at me when I saw a Green candidate listed. I had already decided the night before that I would definitely be voting Labour and not for the Lib Dems (I had been tempted in order to get PR so that a real leftist party would stand a chance), but the possibility of a moral stand tempted me. In the end I compromised and voted Labour for Parliament and all three Greens for the council.
"Have you voted?" I was just leaving the school's grounds when a small old man in a lovely trilby and a long woollen greatcoat shot me this question. I replied that I had, and he said that he was unsure whom to vote for because they were all crooks. There followed a delightful half hour conversation in which the octogenarian - Pat, his name was, and mind as sharp as anything - regaled me with tales of local politics and the expenses and refreshments budgets of the councillors; his struggles with the council as treasurer of the local Age Concern; his time as a barrow boy on Chapel Market; how he and some of his colleagues there hired private detectives to expose corruption around licences; how his wife Elsie, to whom he had been married for fifty-six years, was unable, at her eighty-seven years of age, to make it down to the polling booth by herself and would need a taxi later because they refused to be beholden to a party by accepting a lift. He had always voted Labour, he said, but didn't know what to do this time. A number of other elderly people stopped to talk to Pat as we chatted, and reminisced along with his anecdotes. One lady, who had always voted Conservative, said she didn't know what to do this time because she didn't trust any of them. Eventually Pat went off to the council offices to get their support for his complaint against a local housing provider, concluding before we parted that he would vote for the Greens, partly because some of their candidates were neighbours of his.
I got home and, after picking up my laundry from the dry cleaners, read some of the election coverage. After domestic coverage, from the Guardian and Independent, I suddenly wondered how prominently - and even whether - it was being reported abroad. The New York Times and Washington Post had the story as their second or third story, and La Monde was splashing with it prominently. But the most curious was the Süddeutschen Zeitung, whose lead article, entitled "Wind of Change" (yes, in English) started with the immortal words "Gordon Brown ist ein glückloser", a phrase which I suspect needs little translation. As for the rest of my day? I am going to treat myself to a nice lunch somewhere, I think, before heading over to Ian Vincent's for election coverage at around seven. We should be a mixed bag: Lib Dem Ian; rabid Tory Richard; Green ; me; and a couple of other odds and sods. Alas, however, I suspect that not even interesting company will prevent this from being an extremely depressing night.
The polling station was in a local primary school next door to the local doctors' surgery. Local, local. Although this was a general election, local issues could never be entirely discounted - and indeed there was even a local election going on as well. The constituency, Islington South and Finsbury, was at the last election a Labour-Lib Dem marginal, squeaked by Labour. On a uniform swing in the polls, and given the continued gentrification of the area (rich people tend to vote Lib Dem), that ought to make it a Lib Dem cakewalk, but the extraordinary efforts of both sides suggest that neither thinks it will be as secure as that. Navigating my way through the maze of alleys in the school, mostly by following the stream of fellow constituents who were equally making their pilgrimage to this shrine of oligarchy, I came to the traditional sordid scrum of party hacks - one red, one orange, and one blue - bullying people into revealing who they were and how they were voting. "Do you have a number on your card, sir?" one asked. "Yes," I replied, "but I don't have to tell you what it is," and strode past. I felt slightly frustrated on seeing less aware people meekly hand over their polling card to these rosetta'd clowns, but put that to one side and forged ahead and into the voting hall.
The hall was small but airy and light, partly a reflection of the sunlight streaming in through the glass wall containing the doorway. I showed my card to one of the polling officers - no rosetta, he - who pointed me to the appropriate table for people from my part of the ward. I handed my card to the man at the table and awaited my polling slip. "Mumble mumble mumble?" he asked; I'm increasingly deaf at the moment, and could only muster a bewildered "Eh?" He discreetly moved his hand to cover my name on both my polling card and his list. "Can you confirm your name, please?" he said more crisply. I confirmed my name, wondered briefly if I should explain my hearing difficulty, decided not to bother and took my two sheets, one white, one yellow. After a few moments for the exact details to be explained to me (we were to vote for one constituency candidate and up to three local council candidates) I moved over to a polling booth.
The act of voting is a strange one, especially for someone who is not particularly enamoured of the electoral process and representative liberal democracy anyway. Elections are an excellent way for elites to keep the people pacified for five years while deluding them that they have some power. The cries of "You had your vote, now shut up" resound from politicians whenever they are criticised, as if staining our white paper with our pencilled cross paradoxically gives them carte blanche. However, the best is the enemy of the good, and in a system of parliamentary democracy which is broadly supported by the vast majority of the population, and in which there is still some difference between the tainted social democracy of Labour, the individualist neo-liberalism of the Lib Dems, and the plutocratic traditionalism of the Tories, refusing the franchise is a moral dead end, however tempting it may be at times. I looked at my white Parliamentary ballot paper. There were more candidates than I had expected, and my heart tugged at me when I saw a Green candidate listed. I had already decided the night before that I would definitely be voting Labour and not for the Lib Dems (I had been tempted in order to get PR so that a real leftist party would stand a chance), but the possibility of a moral stand tempted me. In the end I compromised and voted Labour for Parliament and all three Greens for the council.
"Have you voted?" I was just leaving the school's grounds when a small old man in a lovely trilby and a long woollen greatcoat shot me this question. I replied that I had, and he said that he was unsure whom to vote for because they were all crooks. There followed a delightful half hour conversation in which the octogenarian - Pat, his name was, and mind as sharp as anything - regaled me with tales of local politics and the expenses and refreshments budgets of the councillors; his struggles with the council as treasurer of the local Age Concern; his time as a barrow boy on Chapel Market; how he and some of his colleagues there hired private detectives to expose corruption around licences; how his wife Elsie, to whom he had been married for fifty-six years, was unable, at her eighty-seven years of age, to make it down to the polling booth by herself and would need a taxi later because they refused to be beholden to a party by accepting a lift. He had always voted Labour, he said, but didn't know what to do this time. A number of other elderly people stopped to talk to Pat as we chatted, and reminisced along with his anecdotes. One lady, who had always voted Conservative, said she didn't know what to do this time because she didn't trust any of them. Eventually Pat went off to the council offices to get their support for his complaint against a local housing provider, concluding before we parted that he would vote for the Greens, partly because some of their candidates were neighbours of his.
I got home and, after picking up my laundry from the dry cleaners, read some of the election coverage. After domestic coverage, from the Guardian and Independent, I suddenly wondered how prominently - and even whether - it was being reported abroad. The New York Times and Washington Post had the story as their second or third story, and La Monde was splashing with it prominently. But the most curious was the Süddeutschen Zeitung, whose lead article, entitled "Wind of Change" (yes, in English) started with the immortal words "Gordon Brown ist ein glückloser", a phrase which I suspect needs little translation. As for the rest of my day? I am going to treat myself to a nice lunch somewhere, I think, before heading over to Ian Vincent's for election coverage at around seven. We should be a mixed bag: Lib Dem Ian; rabid Tory Richard; Green ; me; and a couple of other odds and sods. Alas, however, I suspect that not even interesting company will prevent this from being an extremely depressing night.