THE DANGER OF APATHY

Tony Benn

8th March 2002

Apathy is now one of the main talking points of the political classes, who write and broadcast about it all the time, laying the blame on those, especially young people, who just will not turn up to vote as responsible citizens should blaming them for the problem.

Certainly the vote is an important right won by earlier generations many of whom gave their lives to win what we now take for granted, and in very recent times the Africans fought like tigers to gain that right against their previous exclusion from the democratic process by the Apartheid regime.

But why are people disinterested in politics - as many are -for we must understand why the vote seems to have lost so much of its appeal and there are two reasons why this is happening.

First, that whereas the political problems facing this generation are challenging, difficult and interesting, the practice and coverage of politics is shallow, abusive and personalized and that alone is enough to switch us off, since exchanges of insults in parliament, the control freakery of the Millbank Tower apparatchiks and the organized punch ups masterminded on Newsnight simply do not satisfy our desire to know what is going on, why and what we can do about it.

The second reason is much deeper and it is the widely held suspicion that the government itself is apathetic about many of the concerns of those who voted Labour in the last two general elections, a view shared by pensioners facing a cut back in their retirement income and students who cannot understand why they are being asked to pay for their education at college.

People are told that we have to be careful about public expenditure to avoid endangering our economy but there is always plenty of money about to pay for wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and for the Board of Directors in British business who seem to find plenty of cash for their salary boosts, share options and golden handshakes when they fail, living happily in the knowledge that they are not going to be asked to pay a penny more on tax at the top rate.

The government is also believed to be apathetic about the ever-widening gap between rich and poor both here and worldwide where that gap can be clearly attributable to the injustices that flow from globalization which New Labour supports uncritically.

And the government is clearly apathetic about the Charter of the United Nations, following Washington into any war they want to wage whatever that Charter says about international law.

Post office workers feel that the government is apathetic about the 30,000 jobs that may be lost if the privatization plans for the GPO go ahead, the police feel the same when they face worsened conditions under the plans the Home Secretary is introducing and the teachers cannot understand why they have been singled out for an attack by the Education Secretary.

Labour members feel the government is apathetic about the party and their policy role at Conference, while special advisers with no connection with the party are hired to invent policies for No 10 to consider and decide - a process that has led the BBC to decide that it will no longer televise our Conference because they know it has no power.

Many cabinet ministers too must now being feeling that the prime minister is apathetic about them and loyal Labour MPs are beginning to wonder exactly what role they now play in the business of government since the key parliamentary committees are not even allowed to cross examine the government's top advisers.

In short the government has consciously decided to cut itself off from those it was elected to represent but still demands that they vote loyally when the time comes without expecting to play any role in policy making at any other time.

These are very serious weaknesses that we have to correct if we are ever to reclaim the democratic rights which the pioneers fought so hard to give us, and which, quite plainly are being systematically withdrawn in the guise of modernization, but which are in fact a throwback to a monarchical style of government when the courtiers picked by the king hovered round the throne and had a contempt for the common people.

The question we have to ask ourselves is how do we respond to all this and there are many alternatives on offer including the dream of a new pure socialist party to replace Labour and remedy all the faults that I have described and there are many honest, decent and sincere people who are working to bring that about, but we cannot wait for our political system to be completely restructured, though it could possibly happen at some time in the future, and, if it does, New Labour will be the catalyst that brought it about.

What we have to do now is to build public support for radical policies that meet the needs of all those who feel the government is apathetic about them and that points to huge national campaigns like the one on Peace which brought 20,000 to Hyde park and Trafalgar Square last Saturday which was absolutely ignored by the Media, except of course the Morning Star, proving to my satisfaction that the press proprietors and broadcasting bosses are quite happy to see us apathetic about politicians so long as we listen to their pundits and believe what they are told.

That is why we must rediscover our right to participate in our future and not accept the role allocated of us - as mere spectators of the activities of our leaders who claim the right take all the decisions and expect us to obey them.