ESSEX PENSIONER The journal of the Pensioner’s Action Association-Essex Region

APATHY OR DISILLUSIONMENT by Chris Thompson

Why many of today’s pensioners do not vote.

It has often been said that of all the voter age-groups the highest turn-out for general elections is amongst the over-60s. Nevertheless, if one looks at the statistics for the recent May 2005 elections and those held in 2001 it is clear that there are many pensioners who are deciding not to vote at all. It is very relevant, therefore, to ask why this is, particularly amongst a class of voters who have usually been more politically motivated than many of their younger counterparts.

One answer may be that politics today has become less polarised, or perceived to be so. When one has to choose between centre-right and centre-left politically, it is hard to get passionate about the choices in the same way as we did when the two parties differed widely in their approach to the redistribution of wealth; the provision of public services; the nationalisation of industry; and the democratisation of society generally. There is perhaps little room for idealists in a modern Britain. We have to settle for what we have offered to us; a sort of amalgam between right and left that leaves the extremists of either party out in the cold. The issues facing the electorate to day are not the broad-brush issues of the past, but have become reduced to minor squabbles about things such as the degree of privatisation allowed within the health service, the extent to which we should be involved in the European Union, and how we should deal with certain aspects of crime on our streets. I am not saying that these things are not important, but they are mere shadows of the great political issues of the past. The imposition upon Britain of a reduced working week by the European Parliament may be significance to many, but it is not likely to get the workers rushing to the barricades, or to send retired colonels in Cheltenham into apoplectic fits.

Political pundits may say that the two parties are further apart than many perceive them to be. It is this perception, however, that keeps many from voting at all.

Leaving party politics aside, the whole game has become too sanitised for many to work up great feeling for the personality of the candidates themselves. It is far more important for candidates to appear self-controlled and bland in their television appearances, than for them to deliver masterly speeches and to work upon massed audiences in a way that distinguished the great public speakers of our youth. The occasional outburst of human emotion, delivered in an unguarded moment “à la John Prescott”, is quickly stifled by the spin doctors before it can move us into anything like enthusiasm.

There is also a deepening feeling amongst the elderly that voting may change some things, but it won’t change very much. The anti-Poll Tax riots of the 1990s, in which the author participated, did far more to overturn the Thatcher government, and the then- existing order of things, than a dozen general elections would have done. The fact that British pensioners as a group are more militant than in the past may in fact be linked in many ways to the decline in pensioner voting during election time. Blocking the traffic around the House of Commons once or twice a year might be seen by many as being far more effective than toddling up to the ballot box once every four years. Indeed some MPs have stated as much. If every pensioner family withheld their Council Tax in protest against a grossly unfair and regressive form of extracting money from the elderly, the w hole shambolic edifice that is local finance would come tumbling down overnight without the need for complicated electoral campaigning. This gives us food for thought.

Be that as it may, it is very unrealistic to decry all non-voters as apathetic. Although there is without doubt a large number of potential voters all through the age-ranges who simply cannot be bothered to vote, much withholding of votes is done by people who, looking at the various alternatives put to them, do not feel that any party represents what they truly feel. This is not apathy, it is merely disillusion taken to the ‘n’th degree – a sort of tactical non-voting which says “because I do not like anything on the menu I reserve my right to walk away from the table”.