Jon Bright (London, OK): Mike Garnett was at the ippr yesterday to discuss and promote his new book - From Anger to Apathy: The British Experience since 1975. The problem of 'disengagement' in our current political system seems central to a number of things we publish on OurKingdom, and it was interesting to get a bit of historical perspective on it.
The first thing he said was that people were complaining about apathy in the 1970s as well. The left were complaining about a lack of radicalism, the right were complaining about a lack of anger, and the centre were wondering why they couldn't dominate politics, despite being in the majority; all this despite high turnout in elections and a high turnout in the 1975 referendum. Garnett argues that people then held their democracy to much higher standards: they wanted a motivated, educated and empowered electorate, who could demand the radical social change they wanted.
Now we are in, in Garnett's own words, a fairly dismal situation. 2001 saw the lowest turnout ever - and more than that party membership is falling, parties are becoming increasingly hard to distinguish from each other. What's happened?
Garnett locates the 70s as the source of the problem, a decade which helped develop an individualistic, consumerist philosophy as the foundational basis of British living. He's not particularly impressed with the current state of our popular culture or the type of politicians our system is producing, and he made various rather vague insinuations that it was only "the wrong sort of people" who were voting at the moment. Any book covering a large swathe of the author's own life always risks being semi-autobiographical, and at the event Garnett himself was a subtle blend of anger and apathy himself - disgusted by the state of our society but very pessimistic about the chances of changing anything. Much of the book appeared to be informed by his own personal journey.
PR was floated as a part of a possible solution - it would at least remove the problem of the 'wasted vote'. But a couple of people there noted that participation is falling too in countries which already practice this electoral system. Are we lacking in ideas - lacking an inspiring politics of modern times? Someone in the audience pointed out that the disappearance of the communist party from intellectual life had left an absence of genuine options for young people wanting to get involved in politics. Or does disengagement reflect widespread contentment? It's time consuming to get properly involved in the democratic system unless your job already requires you to - are people really going to do so unless they are genuinely unhappy with the current system?
One thing that strikes me about our current political environment - compard, perhaps, with the 1970s - is that the big problems most frequently referred to (the environment, rising inequality and the state of the global economy, the amorphous threat of terrorism and war in the middle east - add to the list if you want) are large scale, global ones that nevertheless do not manifest themselves in an impact on people's daily lives (though any coming credit crunch may prove an exception). These problems still require large scale buy in from the public for effective solutions to be implemented - but can the required level of engagement still be generated in an otherwise comparatively affluent society?
