Fraud at the polls
An easy majority of the electorate, however, voted for nobody. How agreeable life would be if in some proportionally representative system of the future the abstainers could be represented by an enormous block of empty seats in Parliament. In every division, these empty seats would count as votes against any and every measure proposed, by whichever party. With Newcastle Central as our national model, nothing would ever be done: new and ingenious ways would be discovered for evading the harmful effects of existing legislation and slowly our poor, battered country would return to useful work, concordia ordinunt and economic sanity.
Even in Workington, where a scandalously high 74.2 per cent of the electorate allegedly turned out to cast their votes in last week's mini-election, the 25.8 per cent who showed by their abstention that none of the candidates was to their liking repre sented 13,977 voters whose wishes or lack of them—are cynically disregarded by the present system. I, for instance, might have been prepared to vote for the late Duke of Norfolk, if I had been offered the choice. Others might prefer George Best.
But of course there is no chance whatever that politicians will take cognisance of nonvoters. It is too much for their self-esteem even to think about such people while they are talking about their programmes and their mandates. The gigantic fact remains that however much we may vaunt our representative democracy, no government has ever received the assent of anything approaching a majority of the electorate. But it is only now, when both of the two choices available can be seen as equally disastrous, that resentment might usefully be focused on our electoral system. We nonvoters may hold the key to all that is wisest and best in the land-1 have numbered myself among them in four of the last five general elections—but we are not, by our beautiful natures, people naturally given to great political initiatives. No, the best way to examine the likely pattern of a future system based on proportional representation is by studying votes cast rather than votes not cast. And on votes cast, the Newcastle by-election gives us the following composition for the House of Commons if it is repeated on a national scale:
Seats
Labour 302 Liberal 184 Conservative 125 Socialist Worker 12 National Front 12 Total 635 This line-up has the agreeable aspect that no 'coalition of moderates' is possible. Although the Liberal-Conservative total of 309 votes outguns Labour's 302, as soon as the twelve Socialist Workers add their votes to Labour, as they undoubtedly will on any contentious issue, the Conservative-Liberal faction will have to rely on the National Front to stay in office. Very humbling, I should say, and good for their characters.
Now let us look at the sort of parliament which would be returned if the Workington proportions were repeated nationally: Here, the position is much less exciting. Labour would need an alliance with the Liberals in order to keep the Conservatives out, and it is exactly this sort of arrangement that constitutional reformers have in mind when they talk about the advantages of proportional representation. Never mind whether we see a Lib-Lab alliance or a Lib-Con alliance, the important thing is to have moderates permanently in the saddle.
But I wonder whether Workington is more likely to provide a model than Walsall North, where the result would give us an altogether more interesting parliament : Here, Labour's only chance of prevailing would appear to depend on the goodwill of somebody called S. Wright. Obviously, one cannot expect S. Wright to return seventyfour members to Parliament. Few people in Taunton have ever heard of him. His equivalent, in the system envisaged, might be some ephemeral craze like the Poujade movement in France, although there would plainly be a proliferation of small parties whose fortunes would vary with every election.
The question whether such a House of Commons could ever form an instrurrient for governing the country may seem unimportant beside the beautiful symmetry of the idea which inspires it. Every politician ill business will tell you it is out of the question. Never mind that nearly every other country in Western Europe has a multi-party system. The most important fact tO bear in mind Is that our present two-party system can't and doesn't govern the country properly. The reason for the failure is inherent in the two" party choice: we do not vote (if we vote at all) for a tendency in government or an elegant preference; we vote for the government itself with its whole programme 0i action. Inevitably, this system leads the competing parties to make rash promises. What has ruined the country has been their attempts to keep these promises and secure re-election.
We are familiar with the whines of the Liberals on the subject of proportional representation, but I find it no less scandalous that there should be no Socialist Worker or National Fronter in Parliament• Mr Heath, as I remember, once made a solemn declaration on the subject of the Liberals, pointing out with many walrus' like tears that although nobody was more concerned than he with the rights of minor'. ties, among them was not the right to decide policy through holding the balance. Withal months, this wretched man was grovelling In front of Jeremy Thorpe and begging for an opportunity to prolong his disastrous government. But the important point which this attitude ignores is that all the parties are minority parties with some slightly less 10 the minority than others. In the three by' elections we have just seen, there was a combined electorate of 150,824. Tories secured a total of 37,553 votes, or just under 25 per cent of the electorate, and two Members of Parliament, while Labour secured 34,856 votes or just over 23 per cent of the electorate and one Member of Parliament. The 52 per cent of the electorate, or 72,395 voters, who showed themselves hostile or indifferent to both these parties, are not'represented at all. So long as National, Front and Inter national Socialists are excluded from Parliament they will have a jrstification for anY revolutionary stance they choose to adopt' At present these two bodies footle a: ound on the fringes of elections—neck an neck In Newcastle, Fascists ahead in Walsall, in the certain knowledge that the system gives them no hope of 4 voice in Parliament. Inevitably, they are seen as the alternative to our parliamentary system. For myself, I believe our politicians are too stupid and too complacent to reform the existing system, and we shall have to wait until they are carried kicking and screaming into the Thames. Then the difference between 184 votes for the International Socialist in Newcastle and 181 for the National, Front, maY suddenly become more relevant.
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