Shayler says don't vote
Lemming | 25.05.2001 18:54
David Shayler says "don't vote, it only encourages them". David, if you're interested the Anarchist Federation has printed a whole bunch of stickers with that slogan. In fact I've got a pile right here.
Why I'm abstaining
David Shayler, former MI5 officer
Guardian
Friday May 25, 2001
www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4192475,00.html
In this election, much has been said about what could be the lowest turnout since working class men gained the vote in 1867. But it is disillusionment, not apathy, which keeps the average voter away.
Even Labour luminaries like barrister and writer John Mortimer, comedy writer Lawrence Marks and record producer Alan McGee are shouting their disillusionment from the rooftops. Many others watch in disbelief as new Labour has not so much drifted as marched rightwards to the tune of the Tory press. Few though have found themselves vilified in that press, persecuted across Europe and thrown in prison as a result of standing up to the government.
I have. I know first hand how Blair's contempt for basic democracy and human rights, combined with a control freakery of which Margaret Thatcher could only dream, has allowed the British state to become a sponsor of international terrorism. When I disclosed that two MI6 officers had conspired to murder Colonel Gaddafi, the government told lies, yet no one in the media seems remotely interested.
It's not just me. There are many others on both the right and the left who share my sense of anger and frustration at cover-up after cover-up. Despite the Human Rights Act, Britons still have fewer rights over their government than citizens in other western countries.
At the same time, institutions which could notionally hold the executive to account, like the House of Lords with its unelected but occasionally independent-minded peers, have been weakened. Is Tony Blair the only person in Britain who could have abolished the traditional Lords and come up with a system which makes hereditary peerage look like a meritocratic wonder? Yet, none of the major parties are properly addressing these constitutional issues.
In 1987, I travelled 500 miles just to record a vote against Margaret Thatcher in Conservative Beaconsfield. Now I can't actually vote against Blair because the alternatives are so dire. But we shouldn't laugh at the failure and feeble-mindedness at the heart of our democratic system. We should act. It will only change if we all stay at home this time or put a line through our ballot papers.
Just don't vote. It only encourages them.
David Shayler, former MI5 officer
Guardian
Friday May 25, 2001
www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4192475,00.html
In this election, much has been said about what could be the lowest turnout since working class men gained the vote in 1867. But it is disillusionment, not apathy, which keeps the average voter away.
Even Labour luminaries like barrister and writer John Mortimer, comedy writer Lawrence Marks and record producer Alan McGee are shouting their disillusionment from the rooftops. Many others watch in disbelief as new Labour has not so much drifted as marched rightwards to the tune of the Tory press. Few though have found themselves vilified in that press, persecuted across Europe and thrown in prison as a result of standing up to the government.
I have. I know first hand how Blair's contempt for basic democracy and human rights, combined with a control freakery of which Margaret Thatcher could only dream, has allowed the British state to become a sponsor of international terrorism. When I disclosed that two MI6 officers had conspired to murder Colonel Gaddafi, the government told lies, yet no one in the media seems remotely interested.
It's not just me. There are many others on both the right and the left who share my sense of anger and frustration at cover-up after cover-up. Despite the Human Rights Act, Britons still have fewer rights over their government than citizens in other western countries.
At the same time, institutions which could notionally hold the executive to account, like the House of Lords with its unelected but occasionally independent-minded peers, have been weakened. Is Tony Blair the only person in Britain who could have abolished the traditional Lords and come up with a system which makes hereditary peerage look like a meritocratic wonder? Yet, none of the major parties are properly addressing these constitutional issues.
In 1987, I travelled 500 miles just to record a vote against Margaret Thatcher in Conservative Beaconsfield. Now I can't actually vote against Blair because the alternatives are so dire. But we shouldn't laugh at the failure and feeble-mindedness at the heart of our democratic system. We should act. It will only change if we all stay at home this time or put a line through our ballot papers.
Just don't vote. It only encourages them.
Lemming
e-mail:
lemming@grandtheftcyber.com
Homepage:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4192475,00.html
Comments
Hide the following 7 comments
anarcho-shayler
25.05.2001 19:12
Cheers comrade!
leon
Defend Your Children
25.05.2001 22:57
Mum
er, wrong...
26.05.2001 13:55
h p sauce
Elections - what elections?
27.05.2001 13:14
NOBODY will remember you or your anger.
Don't forsake your right to vote!
When it comes to ballot time, write:-
NONE OF THE ABOVE - X
or just vote NOBODY - X
-------------------------------
>Don't vote, it only encourages them.
I just cannot see any logic or future in this statement whatsoever. Without 'one person one vote' (almost useless as it has admittedly proven to be over the last 20 or so years) we return to forms of feudalism - entirely helpless rather than 'just' relatively so.
Agreed that the present devalued corporate-run state of two party 'democracy' is of no help or use to the majority of unrepresented ordinary folk and mostly damages their health,
liberty and long-term well-being:
Agreed that we are now teetering daily between oligarchy and totalitarianism - mainly due to wall-to-wall corpspeak disinformation and an undiscerning apathetic mass of people who have forgotten that a real democracy has to be worked at by each individual:
Agreed that we seem helpless in the face of a two-and-a-half party kleptocracy intent on selling off all the hard won common wealth financed over the decades by our taxes (GATS
being the latest piratical scam) to the highest bidder:
Agreed that nothing we do seems capable of halting the rising tide of gross govt criminality, spinelessness and negligence (DU, NMD, Climate change, BSE, TA2000, GM and related biopiracy, PFI/PPP, etc etc ad inf):
BUT ignoring our right to vote just plays directly to corporate aims and elitist hands with vested interests, like Stelzer, Krebs, Sainsbury, the megalomaniac oil men and all the shadowy bankers and other sharks with selfish unreasonable appetites who never dare show their true faces in public. Read 'Captive State' by George Monbiot or the Lugano Report by Susan George if you think I am overstating the case.
Given the above, can any of us really afford NOT to vote, if only to exercise one of the very few rights left to those of us with less than a couple of million to throw at politicians to do our bidding?
Voting at the next General Selection (see sig lines) would seem to be the only viable route towards eventual direct democracy left to us in the face of almost certain corporate global hegemony, bar voting for our often wise but largely
ineffective and far too low profile Green Party
[
How much is a half page advert in the Sun? Contributors please? [¦-/
Enough ~registered~ disgust CAN tumble this repressive, venal and morally bankrupt system.
Spread the word.
mango
NOBODY cares if you boycott the election.
NOBODY will remember you or your anger.
Don't forsake your right to vote!
When it comes to ballot time, write:-
NONE OF THE ABOVE - X
or just vote NOBODY - X
mango
Is there another way
27.05.2001 15:52
Chris Body
e-mail:
potpourri@disinfo.net
also...
27.05.2001 17:10
Don't forget Foot and mouth! 8 million bodies and rising! Thats 7,600 farms, a third of hotels losing more than 25% as a result of the crisis, and endless broken hearts.
Anything else we would like to add onto the list?
townie
e-mail:
cant_cope@hotmail.com
townie
27.05.2001 23:55
Ah well, I suppose the tube strikes will be a counter-spanner in the works :)
AOK