The Chinese say it is a curse to live interesting times but for the politically minded it is a curse to live in uninterested times. Apathy towards politics and political parties is widespread and we all know it; the question of how we deal with it recently prompted a debate on the Liberal Democrats Facebook group.
First, we have to start by absolutely asserting that we live in times of unprecedented apathy. It is easy sometimes for those caught-up in politics and the world around them to lose sight of that but in this election season the indicators are all around us; bigger symptoms of the disease exist, this government being one of them. It was elected in 2005 with a workable majority of seats on just 35% of the vote. It could also reasonably be argued that the trend of the last 20 or so years for one party to enjoy long periods of electoral dominance only to be replaced when inevitable weariness sets in is also a sign of a trend towards gradual disengagement by the electorate from party politics. Also, do not mistake this weariness for engagement. A disturbed sleeper will shrug off a bug that crawls into the wrong spot and agitates their sleep, but still remain asleep.
Of course, there are exceptions to prove the rule. There always are, but in general people are becoming ever more disengaged from politics. This is an issue that should not just concern us as political activists but also as passionate believers in democracy. The Iraq war showed us the dangers of disengagement. Despite the scepticism and in many quarters outright opposition to it, the government was still able to launch the war and live to serve another term. So, having identified a problem, the question then becomes what can we do about it?
Let’s start with what not to do. The way the government sells its citizenship classes for young people, you would think that they have the power to miraculously turn a set of apathetic teens into God, King and Country lovers in the time it takes to sing Rule Britannia. This however, was not exactly how Hannah Keal, an AS level student, experienced them. She said:
The format was disappointing: an unimpressive hand-out, followed by a vague attempt at a debate, met with ‘whoever we vote for, nothing changes,’ a pathetic quiz, which ended up on the floor. Stressed teacher exit stage left.
Engaging with people means starting without a preconceived notion of knowing what they want to talk about and what is important to them. They have to speak with their own voice and be encouraged to do so without fear of ‘getting it wrong’. We should not throw out the baby with the bath water; through better planning and… yes, that abysmal word, modernising citizenship lessons so they could have some value. The way to get young people interested is to start with issues relevant to them, and then broaden out into the bigger picture and how THEY can change it. But citizenship lessons alone will not help: we need first for politicians to win back the trust they once held to the public, otherwise voting risks being relegated to a pastime for the eccentric.
Trust is also eroded by a media that is more interested in the sometimes outrageous and sometimes downright bizarre sexual practices of MPs. Witness the recent intense interest in the number of women Nick Clegg has allegedly had relations with – harmless fun on one level, but on another not so harmless. People however have to manage their expectations of politicians, they remain human and flawed just as the rest of us do. Britain’s media has a role to play in both managing those expectations and framing the debate over what should really matter in political discourse.
Also, we have to consider how we start to do ‘the vision thing’ again. Barack Obama’s campaign, so admired by progressives the world over, has built its success on that; in practice, Iraq aside, the policy difference between him and Hillary Clinton is small but by his ability to incorporate his vision into a powerful message of broader scope change he makes it appear that there is a world of difference. People have responded to that because people want to have hope that things can be better for themselves but also for those around them at the same time. They start wanting their own lot to be improved and to be secured but start looking beyond that in ever-increasing circles starting with their own backyard moving onto their street then their neighbourhood then their town/city/village then their country then finally the world. Of course some people travel in reverse; wanting to improve the world and then their country, city etc. Our ideal should always be for a better world than the one we already have and to try and iron out flaws in how things are after all it is in our aspirations, our hopes and dreams, that the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Progressive politics has abandoned this approach which has seized upon by a buoyant right which now holds that it is the cutting edge force of progress and that can be seen in policy areas as diverse as foreign policy and education. The roots of this abandonment lay in a complicated past of fragmentation and defeat which it is not the purpose of this article to tackle. The important thing is it is there; it’s about time we said that yes things can be better, they need to be better; what we have has its pluses and its minuses but it is not something we are ever content with and we recognise the virtue of the constant struggle to improve.
In this regard we start leading and shaping as well as engaging and above all drawing people into the process of shaping their own lives and those of them around them. Every policy we make has to be measured against the following criteria;
- How is this policy addressing people’s concerns and engaging with them at their level?
- How is this policy drawing people into taking an active role in its formation and implementation?
- How is this policy encouraging people towards betterment and seeking the betterment of those around them?
- How does this policy fit into a wider vision for a society which is better than it is and how does that square with defence of the fundamental principles that we hold to be progressive ones?
As Liberal Democrats we have some of the tools already to hand to make those leaps and to start drawing people into activity by uniting them around a coherent vision and common purpose. For example, our consistent partisanship on serious voting reform is a major strength; it opens a dialogue about what is wrong with our democracy and how we can improve it while combating the smugness that says our established system is the best and only way, its own end of history as it were. We need not see apathy as a curse but as a challenge that can and must be overcome.
Darrell Goodliffe is a party member from Peterborough; Hannah Keal is a party member and member of the local executive in Malton and Thirsk.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Michael Meadowcroft (1942-2026) - A Liberal to His Core
The Joy of Six 1529
Labour deputy claims that Farage is a threat to democracy
Jason Connor
Mick Taylor
Chloe
theakes
Kira Collins
8 Comments
An excellent article which I hope will provoke a lot of discussion – but probably most people won’t bother to respond! I think that there is a fundamental problem in that politics is no longer ‘owned’ by the people. Of course, on one level you could argue that the ruling class operated in all three parties and the fact that the parties had mass memberships of people who had a strong identification with their chosen party had little effect upon political outcomes, but on the other hand the progressive social changes of the twentieth century did coincide with periods when the Liberal Party, and subsequently the Labour Party, had mass support in the country. Since the Wilson Governments of the 60s and 70s there has been a steady erosion of amateurism (or involvement of the man in the street) as first of all ‘Short Money’ went into the parties and then MPs began to get substantial amounts of money for research help and constituency offices, councillors began to be paid, political assistants began to be employed by local council groups funded by the the ratepayers, and pressure groups, lobbyists and think-tanks created a further large group of people who were on the inside of what has become a political world removed from the majority of the population. Politics is now a career choice: you can decide in the sixth form that you want to ‘go into politics’, and you probably won’t have too much difficulty spending your whole life doing it. As a small example of how things have changed: the first parliamentary by-election I took part in was in 1968 and when I arrived the agent sent me out to scavenge around the back of the local shops for cardboard to paste the canvass cards up on!
Thanks for your comment Tony, yes I would agree and one of the symptoms me and Hannah leave out above is the decline in party membership. Perhaps there is room for a sequel article on how to make parties more appealing but the key to that is really there policies and how they connect at the end of the day. I would just like to extend thanks to my co-author of this article, step forward and take a bow!
So I was right about no one bothering to respond! I think this is an important subject though so I hope I’ll be forgiven for doing a Laurence Boyce.
I don’t think it is just about policy, important though that is: it is also about style. The Liberal Party of the 60s and 70s was in many respects a radical anti-establishment party. While Assembly was not quite the place where people could walk off the street to vote against Trident (as the pernicious myth has it) it did attract people with all sorts of strange ideas which made it a lively and often unpredictable event. One of my lasting memories is seeing Oliver Smedley, many times a Liberal candidate (though by that stage running a proto UKIP party), who must by then have been in his late 60s and who had just been released from prison after doing time for manslaughter, bopping away like a teenager to Hawkwind playing live in a Quaker Hall. Perhaps we are still not quite as managerialist as the other two parties, but we have certainly lost that exciting slightly anarchic spark.
Well I’ll pop my head in then…
I disagree with the basic idea that there is ever an uninteresting time when it comes to politics – thre are always clouds just over the horizon, it’s just there isn’t always wind in our sails.
A trend of disengagement is one of the first signs of disillusion, which itself is the necessary precursor to conscious resolve.
I don’t agree that we live in an age of unprecedented apathy – there are more people doing more things than ever before – what we have is a surfeit of one-sided choices and no means to navigate out of the dizzying vortex this is sucking us into.
One of my favorite stirrings is to mention the real possibilities of a third world war. Or tell them that on any road they walk down in this and every country there will be people who live in third-world conditions in some regard.
There are plenty of reasons to be ‘not-apathetic’, but finding the conduit, time and resources to channel them into needs some direction. Lot’s of people (by most accounts) either don’t have it or enough of it, some never find it, many are mis-guided.
Ask them: which is worse?
I think that the reason a lot of people don’t vote is that it doesn’t really matter very much to them, because they are generally doing all right anyway. Labour have done fairly well for vocal minorities over the past decade, and the economy has kept going okay. I can totally see why a lot of people think that there is nothing politics can give them right now.
Thanks for your replies…just quickly to respond…
Oranjepan…
You might have a point in some regards but again it is a question of how people are doing things…and how people are engaging…i would contend that if people are engaging at all (and alot arent) then it is through essentially single issue campaigns not directly through the political process which is seen by these people are irrelevant and inconsequential…i have to say in general though the stats dont back you up, there was a poll last week where barely over 50% said they would definatly vote and significant numbers never talked about or discussed politics…..
sanbinkorian…again you may have a point but the test of that point will come in the coming years then because there are distinctive signs that things are definatly not going to be ok in the next few years…and people do care about the world at large as has been shown numerous times, i think there are a minority of people who dont engage because of the ‘im alright jack’ mentality but that is not the reason a majority wont…
Good article – thanks.
I’m not sure too much can be read into GE turnout: it may have a lot more to do with how close an election is perceived to be than how politically active the population are (the highest turnouts in recent decades were the close elections of 1992 and 1974).
There’s also the argument that people are as political as ever, but express it by joining pressure groups rather than political parties (remember that in the mass membership days, political parties were as much hotbeds of socalising as politicking).
So I’m not entirely convinced that a once radicalised people have become slack-jawed, ignorant and disinterested.
But that’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement. I would:
a) Challenge the common wisdom that “they’re all the same”, “they’re all a bunch of crooks” and “it doesn’t make any difference who you vote for.” None of that stands up to scrutiny, but it’s challenged far too little.
b) Show how policies can emerge from philosophies and how, whether you agree with them or not, all the common political philosophies make sense in their difference ways. This is important in understanding that people who disagree with you aren’t necessarily stupid idiots.
c) Give some guidance on how to figure out the facts. Explain why a spate of murder stories in the papers, or everyone down the pub saying how many murders there are, doesn’t actually prove that lots more people are being murdered. Explain how you *would* prove that.
d) Using these lessons, show how individuals and small groups can make a difference. Explain that some problems are genuinely hard (e.g. world peace) and that others are tough because you can’t please everyone, but show how it’s far from impossible for individuals willing to put a bit of effort into lobbying their local council or MP to get something done locally (skateboard park built, road repaired, cycle facilities installed etc.). Perhaps take a local area and look at was *has* changed in the last decade or two.
e) Look at some of the real challenges facing politicians trying to “do the right thing”. Is majority opinion always correct? What compromises would you make as a politician to win power (no prizes for coming second)? Representative vs. direct democracy. Decentralised government vs. the evil postcode lottery.
f) Take the age-old question “what would you do if you were Prime Minister” and ask others to play devil’s advocate. Who would that action harm? Why might some people not like it? How much would it cost?
I think people don’t vote because they don’t see the point. It’s not that they are uninterested in politics, it’s that they are uninterested in Westminster politics because whoever you vote for, you end up being shafted. You vote Tory, you get shafted in favour of the rich. You vote labour, you get shated in favour of the mythical “hard working family”. You vote Lib dem and you get either Tory or Labour anyway.
We don’t need to engage people with politics, they care deeply about political matters. We need to show them that they can make a difference by voting and/or acting. Unfortunately, I think that’s a very uphill struggle.