If there is anything that any political establishment does not like, it is an unflinching unwillingness to compromise. If you won't deal with the establishment and its priorities, you will find yourself frozen out to the fringes.
Considering the fact that politics demands so much of those who take part - expecting them to leave idealism at the door - it isn't too much of a surprise that people's interest in the political arena drifts away. Nor that others encourage people to walk away (Brand, 2013).
Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are only the most well known to have been faced with this difficult dilemma.
Clegg and the Lib Dems, by choosing a tawdry compromise - compromise itself being a virtue, not a vice, when attempting to achieve all of the best things without any of the worst - and accepting a coalition with the Conservatives, made a pragmatic choice: to get things done, within the system presently in place, and risk the ire of their slighted support on the left. That choice has so far only burned them.
Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are only the most well known to have been faced with this difficult dilemma.
Clegg and the Lib Dems, by choosing a tawdry compromise - compromise itself being a virtue, not a vice, when attempting to achieve all of the best things without any of the worst - and accepting a coalition with the Conservatives, made a pragmatic choice: to get things done, within the system presently in place, and risk the ire of their slighted support on the left. That choice has so far only burned them.
In 2010, with a potential coalition looming, more than one comparison was made between Clegg's situation and that of the former Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.
Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister in the 1920s and 30s, chose to defy his party and form a multi-party national government to deal with the Great Depression - following the stock market crash of 1929. MacDonald and Labour found that, restricted as they were in their views to a classical economic approach and balanced budgets, they were unable to respond to the crisis.
MacDonald would not listen to the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, who suggested that the country aught to engage in deficit spending - using the cheap credit available to nation-states - in order to cover financial commitments and stimulate a recovery. As unemployment rose drastically the Labour Party split, unable to resolve their differences.
The King encouraged MacDonald to form a National Government - a coalition between all three major parties, in the national interest - to manage the crisis. By forming a government with the Conservatives, however, MacDonald was labelled a traitor and expelled from the Labour Party.
MacDonald paid the price in infamy for making practical compromises with the establishment, in order to achieve his aims. Other have instead paid a price for refusing to compromise their principles.
Louis-Joseph Papineau was the Speaker of the Assembly for Lower Canada, the French-speaking predecessor to the French-Canadian province of Quebec. He would not deal with the British Empire's unelected, and unaccountable, colonial governors, who he felt were allowed to run rampant and ruled through their Chateau Clique.
Papineau was amongst the leaders of Parti canadien, and the founders of its successor Parti patriote, combining Canadians of many backgrounds form French and Irish, to English. He was opposed to British commercial exploitation of Canada and Canadians, led boycotts against British goods and campaigned for responsible government in Canada - government and economic policy accountable to the people.
His resistance ultimately led to open rebellion, which he had opposed at the Assemblée des six-comtés when other had spoken of revolution. Despite not taking part in the rebellion, his arrest was nonetheless ordered, and was forced to flee into exile. By the time his name was cleared, and he was able to return, the country had already changed drastically. The Canadian provinces had been unified, as part of attempts to assimilate the French-speaking population, and the issues of the day had moved on.
Carlo Cattaneo was another who found himself frozen out. Cattaneo - a writer, as well as founder and editor of Il Poletecnico, a journal committed to the positive sciences, to interdisciplinary work and to practical applications - was a federalist and republican in 19th century Italy.
Cattaneo supported the Italian states in their fight for an unified Italy, against the various interfering outside forces. However, when the campaign was brought in line with the ambitions of King Vittorio Emanuele II of Piedmont-Sardinia to become King of Italy, Cattaneo would not go against his federalist and republican principles, by supporting a monarchy, and so withdrew.
By doing so he maintained his principles, but was not involved directly in the shaping of the new Italy. The game of politics does not always, however, reward you any better for trying to work within the bounds of the system than working outside of them.
Millicent Fawcett, leader of the Suffragists, discovered this in her long campaign for women's right to vote. Her long association with the Liberal Party, even with adamant support from many of its most learned members and thinkers, did not manage to advance her cause.
Fawcett, and her Liberal MP husband, were considered to be Radicals and supporters of individualism, trade unionism and other liberal causes, and were active in the Liberal Party. With her husband's death she withdrew for a while, before returning to public life in the role of the leader of the NUWSS (National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies).
Despite her personal connections to the Liberal Party, the Liberals persistently avoided dealing with the issue of women's suffrage. Much as the Liberals managed to drive away the Trade Unions by failing to address the causes close to them, they drove away Fawcett's Suffragists by failing to listen and act.
She ultimately resorted to switching their support to the Labour Party, in protest at having campaigned for and supported a party, within the system, and not received their wishes for reform in return. While ultimately successful, it took extraordinary circumstances for the establishment to listen, let alone to grant reform, even where it was sensible, just and supported by members of the establishment itself.
In the face of reason and progress being stifled in the defence of a status quo that crudely bundles progress together with extremist forms of change - from the chaotic, to the militant, to the reactionary, the fascist, and the totalitarian - is it really any wonder that people are disaffected by politics?
Is it much of a wonder that they feel voting to be only an endorsement of a broken and corrupt system (Brand, 2013), and that they promote resistance to it?
Political systems need to be adapted to end these kinds of crude resistance to reason and progress. There have to be a better ways of resisting tyranny than to stifle campaigns for social justice and social welfare. If, within our present political systems, we cannot move forward and make our world better, then our next step has to be reform - lest our brightest minds and best ideas are suppressed in the name of an institutional mediocrity.
==========
References:
==========
+ Russell Brand's 'Russell Brand: we deserve more from our democratic system'; in The Guardian; 5 November 2013.
+ Tom Clark's 'Nick Clegg and the ghost of Ramsay MacDonald'; in The Guardian; 9 May 2010.
+ Will Straw's 'Lib-Con coalition? Only if Clegg does a Ramsay Mac'; on Left Foot Forward; 26 April 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment