'Many people feel completely alienated from Britain's political system'. Discuss.

‘Many people feel completely alienated from Britain’s political system’. Discuss.

The British political system is one that is multi-faceted and slightly ambiguous, mainly due to a lack of a formal, written constitution. Yet it is clear upon closer examination that many people feel completely alienated from Britain’s political system.

One medium, through which many people have shown their feelings of alienation and diminishing attachments to the main parties, has been through increasing volatility as an electorate. The proportion of the registered electorate has fluctuated but the underlying trend is downwards. It has fallen from almost 84% in 1950 to 72% in 1997 (the lowest level since 1935). The poor turn-out in 1997 was quite unexpected due to the nature of the election campaign, the fine weather on polling day, and the large number of candidates standing. Since 1997 the turn-out rate at secondary elections has been exceptionally low. In the 1999 local elections it fell to 29%, the lowest on record, and in the European elections fewer than one in four electors (a mere 23%) bothered to vote.

Turn-out is particularly dismal in the inner city, council estates, and poverty-stricken areas i.e. normally solidly Labour territory. The main factors playing their part in this electoral disenchantment are a growing sense, particularly amongst Labour’s traditional supporters, that there is little to choose between New Labour and the Conservatives and thus little point in voting; the decline of the local Labour party in working-class areas; and a general feeling on the part of the public that politics and government cannot solve many of the major day-to-day problems (such as transport, crime, and drug abuse) that affect them.

Yet if we are to determine the extent to which it is justifiable to say that many people feel completely alienated from Britain’s political system, we should examine the different roles available to non-political factions of society, and then relate this to our original problem of poor electoral turn-out as an indication of disenchantment.

In November 1950, ministers from 15 European countries, including Britain, signed the European Convention on Human Rights in Rome. Born out of an era when even the most basic of human rights had been violated on an enormous scale by repressive governments such as Hitler’s, it set out to be an international declaration of human rights. Its guarantees included the right to life, fair administration of justice and respect for privacy. To enforce these rights, the Convention established the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg, in which cases of alleged violation of the Convention by governments can be heard, and the European Commission on Human Rights, which decides whether particular cases are eligible to be heard in the Court. A rising tide of the cases in the 1990s, led to calls to streamline the system and in 1994 33 countries signed Protocol No.11 to the convention, under which it was decided that a single full-time Court would replace all previously established systems from 1st November 1998. This was intended to simplify the procedure of bringing a case to court and to enable the Court to cope better with an increasing workload.

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Britain was heavily involved in drafting the Convention and became the first country to ratify the Convention in March 1951. However, unlike most European countries, Britain did not incorporate it into domestic law. Since then, there have been major landmarks in the case against this decision. In 1966, it became possible for British citizens to bring a case against the British Government in the European Court of Human Rights (previously it was only possible for another government to do so). However, this was a lengthy and costly process, which undoubtedly deterred potential complainants. By the late 1960s there was an increasingly active campaign in Britain for a Bill of Rights. Several Private Member Bills between 1968 and 1979 attempted unsuccessfully to introduce one. In March 1993, John Smith QC delivered a lecture in London entitled ‘A Citizen’s Democracy’, in which he argued that Britain was not alone in,

‘…not laying down in law the basic rights of its people, and in not giving its people a direct means of asserting those rights through the country’s courts…The quickest and simplest way of achieving democratic and legal recognition of a substantial package of human rights would be by incorporating into British law the European Convention of Human Rights’.

This quickly became an integral part of Labour policy and a commitment to incorporation was included in Labour’s 1997 election manifesto.

In October 1997, the Labour government published the Human Rights Bill, accompanied by a White Paper. Some of the main provisions of the Bill include the right for citizens to bring cases of alleged breaches of the Convention in British courts against the British government or other ‘public authorities’. The whole notion of the Human Rights Bill adds weight to the argument against saying that the public has become alienated from Britain’s political system. Contrarily, the Bill has brought people closer to a full, active role in the political system, and yet they have in part repaid this action with poor electoral turn-outs in recent elections.

Pressure groups play an important role in representing different sectional interests trying to influence the government. There are different types of pressure groups, each with its own level of influence. Some groups have been allowed to become insider groups, and some have been kept out. Insider groups are recognised as speaking for legitimate interests and have access to decision makers. Some are incorporated into official consultative bodies or consulted regularly. Most professional associations have an official status within policy-making bodies and some groups are legally entitled to be consulted, for example, the National Farmer’s Union in the annual farm prices review. Insider groups have a privileged status, but pay for this by playing by the rules of Whitehall and Westminster game, which means not being too critical of ministers and behaving ‘responsibly’. These groups are not elected, yet they wield enormous power in policy making. This has been more evident in recent years, particularly in the dispute over fox hunting, but also in the success of the fuel blockade during the dispute over the raising of fuel prices in October/November 2000.

Over the last few years, new social movements have been established. These are new political organisations broader than the average interest or cause group but more loosely knit than political parties. The most obvious ones like Greenpeace are concerned with saving the environment. They use direct action to promote themselves e.g. the arguments over ‘Right to Roam’ in the countryside. There is a huge variety and diversity of groups, covering almost every conceivable interest, and come in many forms. Some are local, others large and national or international. Some are small; others are impressively large and wealthy. There are 7 million Britons who are members of Trade Unions. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) employs 400 people, has an annual budget of six million pounds, and specialist research and public relations departments. The size and diversity of the group world means that the political arena is crowded with groups, and there are often rival groups on a given issue. The large number of groups affects their success rate as the government cannot take account of all of them, and so they become increasingly periphery to governmental decisions.

It is questionable as to the ideal target for blame over the public’s involvement in the British political system. There are three main theoretical models one can use to consider this. The pluralists, such as Dahl and Rose in the 1960s, believe political power in Britain to be dispersed and fragmented. They see this to be a positive element of our political system as competition between political parties is essential for dialectic. Pressure groups are also seen as an integral factor, as together they are able to slightly manipulate government to think or act in their favour.

Since the 1860s, Marx and all Marxists since have expounded the belief that power is concentrated in the hands of a capitalist class who exercise economic control within society. This dominant social class also has enormous political power in government and the state. They are great believers in the notion of ‘big government’ i.e. that high profile companies keep the government of the day in their pockets. They see this occurring with the rule of an ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’, in that capitalists get away with their dominance due to monopoly on ideology. Their argument also includes the concept that we can’t have political equality whilst there is economic inequality. This model has been put to good use in recent times at global industrial summits in places such as Seattle.

Yet another model is one based on elitism, as supported by Pareto, Mills, and Michels. Their belief is that elite groups control key social institutions; that these various elites form a single power elite; and that the power elite substantially controls the political process. They would therefore support the idea that many people could feel alienated from Britain’s political process, because there are not ‘many’ people involved in the political process.

Clive Gray (De Montfort University) cited recently in a book of collected political essays, ‘United Kingdom Governance’, that the state we live in presently is ‘hollow’ brought on by recent changes in the way it is governed. The tendency within the ‘hollow state’ is towards a belief that new managerial forms are required to overcome identifiable flaws in older forms of management and administration, and to create the boundaries for new forms of authoritative control over the provision of goods and services.

“This tendency has led towards the creation of not so much a ‘hollow’ as a ‘managerial’ state where new sets of relationships between ‘state and citizen…public and private…providers and recipients…and “management” and “politics” are being created (Clarke and Newman, 1997).”

This all leads to the conclusive belief that many people do feel alienated from Britain’s political system, as shown by poor attendances at recent ballots. However, this is not due to a lack of opportunity to be included in the ‘cogs’ of the system, as seen in the form of pressure groups, but due to the evolutionary nature of a politicised Britain. In the void left by a lack of a written constitution, many questions are left open to debate, and their outcome can therefore be viewed in a diminishing interest in electoral proceedings. My personal view is that there will never be a time when we live in a population free from disenchantment with the government of the day. Yet I feel that this mood is a healthy one as it leads to a check and balance system which is quite unlike that carried out by the Opposition party. There is none better to make sure the government stays along the correct lines than the general public. Voices are heard more frequently now, as was shown during the ‘Fuel Crisis’ at the end of last year. I feel confident that these sentiments in conjunction with the new Human Rights Laws will ensure that the many people who currently feel alienated from the political system will find themselves in a position where they cannot help but be an integral, reliant component in the composition of the system of the future.