Tuesday 2 July 2013

I can't get no referendum

Thus sang the aged rockers at Glasto on Saturday, the night of the living dead. I well remember in 1972 Heath was repeatedly challenged to put the Common Market entry decision and as he knew he would lose such a vote he always refused saying in the UK such decisions were for MPs not us common plebs. The closest he got to telling the truth was when he said if you put such decisions to the people what was the point of being an MP. True then and true now as the Tories referendistas are about to find out.

What is going on up in Falkirk shows just how unrepresentative British democracy really is. The choice of Labour party candidate in the safest of Labour seats is seen to be in the gift of the Unite trade union Baron Len McCluskey. The great reform Acts of the 1830s were designed to stop the aristos doing this in the rotten boroughs they owned. All we have achieved in the last 200 years is to swap one corrupt controling political elite for another.

The only way is for the people to take to the streets as they have in Cairo. Such protest inevitably lead to violence but if a few poltical elite heads get cracked it at least concentrates the minds of the remainder on the peoples needs.

I remember when the murderous IRA campaign was at its height it was after they killed Airey Neave in the palace of Westminster in 1979  and Ian Gow in his drive outside his house in Sussex in 1990 bioth with car bombs things changed. Both were close associates of Thatcher who the IRA came very close to assassinating in 1984. John Major very quickly opened clandestine communications with the IRA when he became PM.

As the EU's failures become bigger and more apparent I expect to see street violence on the Continent and despite it not being the 'British' way as Mr Heath put it this will inevitably spread to the streets of our cities. Our political elite like Nero will continue to fiddle their expenses while the UK burns.

2 comments:

ALAN WOOD said...

Re: Democracy.

As the UKIP Nominating Officer at the time I received a report by the Electoral Reform Society on a recent election in which they declared that the current system of FPTP was deliberately set up to give one party clear control as a governing party (it didn't work last time though!).

There have always been sinecures but the members of the major protagonist parties for the past 100 years (LAB v CON)have been uncaring (or unknowing) about their candidate.

It gives the public something to do every 5 years and shuts them up.

The poor everywhere are seemingly in rebellion - and its no surprise when they see the amount of corporate and public looting of their money when so many do not even have a job.

50 years ago being a millionaire was unheard of. Now there are billionaires. These people do not realise that if they do not share their wealth willingly it will cause public disorder.

"Let them eat cake" caused the French Revolution.

I agree with you that chaos is looming.

Eric Edmond said...

I agree totally with your analysis of our non-representative democracy. Only the Swiss model can save us from real blood on the streets. The right to assassinate despotic rulers is the ultimate safeguard of the people's freedom!