Martin Pugh’s ‘Speak for Britain: A New History of the Labour Party’ (Bodley Head, 2010) generated significant controversy – not least its boycott by The Guardian. Yet perhaps its most worrying revelation is buried on its 398th page: that turnout is falling at differential rates among different social classes. Among what political scientists call classes ‘D and E’, the less well-off, turnout in 2005 was 54 per cent, as compared to 71 per cent for the wealthier A, B and C.
Declining turnout has been taken so often as a ‘given’ that talk of it is almost clichéd. At no postwar British general election has turnout been higher than in 1951. Despite concerns about holding the election during the motor show at Earl’s Court, the 25 October poll marks the postwar high, at 82.5 per cent. But it has not been a steady postwar decline. In 1992, turnout still reached 77.7 per cent. Since the record low of 2001 (59.4 per cent), turnout has been slowly climbing, to 61.4 per cent in 2005 and 65.1 per cent in 2010.
Turnout is not only related to socioeconomics: voting in 2010 was lowest among the age group, 18-24, at just 44 per cent (See here). There is, of course, a positive argument as to why this is the case: the citizens of Western democracies are relatively secure in their rights and freedoms, and so are less troubled by who their political masters are. The United States is the classic example of a democracy with historically low turnout. Despite all the sound and fury of a US presidential election – and the worldwide media coverage it generates – Kennedy’s narrow defeat of Nixon in 1960, with its turnout at just over 63 per cent, has not been bettered since. Clinton’s 1996 victory over Dole was achieved with just under half of the electorate voting.
This is not, however, a completely convincing argument. Any political activist who canvasses voters on a regular basis will have their own take on why people do not engage with politics. Utter contentment is rarely a sufficient explanation, as the heated doorstep debate or slammed door in the face sometimes show. More often though, the symptoms are less severe, but no less worrying – the shrug that reveals a complete lack of engagement, the uninterest that betrays a rejection of politics as a means of achieving social justice: ‘I’m not voting. It makes no difference.’
Yet it is not just that one in three people did not vote at the last general election. It is worse than that. If the long-term pattern in 21st century British general elections (and for elections for local and devolved bodies too) is that turnout is lowest among the least well-off, then not only should we be concerned about the income gap between rich and less well off, but that the voting strength of the least well-off through the ballot box is weakening. That is especially concerning given how hard won that voting power was, through the extension of the franchise that took place at glacial speed from the Great Reform Act of 1832, through to universal female suffrage in 1928.
There is no easy answer to this problem. The reasons for disillusionment are complex. The current buzzword in political fashion is ‘fairness’. Ed Miliband made the political weather on this: even Cameron and Clegg are now having to enter the debate. That zeitgeist stems from the perceived sense of unfairness that pervades from doorsteps everywhere. However, the evidence shows few signs of trust in politics as a means of redressing the fairness deficit. This is particularly the case among the lower socioeconomic groups who are bearing the brunt of the Tory-Lib Dem government’s austerity measures. Faith community leaders – including the Bishop of Leicester, Reverend Tim Stevens, who wrote to The Sunday Times on 22 January – have claimed that as many as 80,000 children could be made homeless by the proposed Conservative-Liberal Democrat ‘benefit cap’.
Yet it should concern any advocate of progressive politics that those under attack do not always consider fighting back politically to be an option. Their response to being disadvantaged by the government is often not to side with its opponents, and help kick it out, but to reject the political system as a whole. Of course, the government can still be sent a clear, strong message on low turnouts, as last week’s local election results showed. But the risk with falling turnout is that the government will not pay the price it deserves to pay – in votes against it at the next general election – for neglecting the poor, the vulnerable and those who feel powerless in our society. There is both an enormous opportunity and a challenge here: the Labour party can strive to change that dynamic, reconnect with the powerless and disconnected parts of our society and offer them hope that politics can make a difference. But to do so it must reverse the trend of half a century.
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Nick Thomas-Symonds is the author of Attlee: A Life in Politics published by IB Tauris (2010)
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