However, there are some gaps in these legislations. There is still a gender pay gap, with men earning on average more than women. Jobs in areas such as law and finance have a lack of female workers, with many of the major players in business being men, perhaps because it is seen as male-dominated and intimidates women. There is still institutional racism in the police force, with more black people having to partake in stop-and-searches than any other ethnicity and cases such as the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, in which no-one could be blamed. While the education system is supposedly equal, richer people can afford to send their children to private schools, and in state schools some teachers still negatively label children from ethnic minorities, meaning some children have better life chances than others.
Another key feature of a democracy is the freedom of speech, including freedom of the press and the freedom of political association. This means that, whatever opinions we hold, we can express them without fear of being persecuted. This is, of course, true in Britain. The media can say what they like, within reason, without being censored. Also, we can vote for whichever political party we choose and freely support them unlike Zimbabwe, in which, while there was an election, there was no opposition to the president Robert Mugabe and armed militiamen forced voters to support his government.
Unfortunately, there are some flaws to having the freedom of speech. Cases such as the Sun newspaper misreporting the events of Hillsborough in 1989 mean that people do not always have favourable opinions – the newspaper wrote that Liverpool fans were causing riots and stealing from the dead at a football game in which 96 people were crushed and killed. Also, political parties such as the BNP use racist propaganda and paint a picture of Britain as a country that is overrun by asylum seekers. While it is positive that we have the freedom of speech, it means that people with racist and discriminatory views can sometimes escape persecution. The government can sometimes actually suppress information, as with the matter of the Hutton Inquiry and the death of Dr David Kelly.
Finally, a democracy rests on a free and fair electoral system. Britain has a “first past the post” system, which means that if a party has the majority of votes, it is elected into government. The problem is, some MPs are voted into government while more people did not vote for them than those who did. A fairer system would be proportional representation, in which a party gains seats according to how many votes it gains in Britain as a whole. This would work to the advantage of smaller parties whose support is spread out geographically. Also, not all people in Britain can vote. Young people do not have a say as a person can vote from aged 18, though this may be lowered to 16 soon, and people in prison cannot vote.
In conclusion, I believe that Britain is a democratic country on the whole. While there are flaws in the legal system, we are far away from the situation of a dictatorship such as in Zimbabwe, Burma and previously Iraq. We do have a general sense of freedom despite improvements that can be made.
