Why I wont be voting today

(The belligerence of Arthur Seaton lives on)

Growing up in Sutton In Ashfield, daughter of a Nottinghamshire Striking miner, and a trade union officer for the Knitwear, Hosiery and Apparel Workers Union – Dad down the pit and Mum in the factory both called themselves socialists and both believed in the trade union movement, and the Labour Party. My mum taught me about party politics at a very young age it was May 4th1979 my younger sisters birthday and the most important general Election in our history as we were then told had just taken place and The Conservatives had won, Margaret Thatcher was the first woman Prime Minister, and the first woman my mum admitted to be being afraid of. My sister, and me had been helping my mum make my sisters birthday cake the rest of my family would arrive later for a birthday tea, the tinned salmon was out, signalling the special occasion. We talked about the election – yes at such small ages she talked and taught us about politics – and she showed us with my sisters birthday the economics of neo-liberalism.

(My sons second birthday- we had fuck all then as did our parents)

Showing us that if the wealth in the country was the cake we – working class people who had made the cake would get the tiniest slice to share amongst us all, and the rich would get most of the cake – despite our hard work in making it.

Sutton- in- Ashfield was a mining community men worked down the pit, women in the factories, we had that strong traditional working class identity that the Labour Party had been born out of. As a community we knew the Labour Party was part of us, and we were part of it, there was no doubt that at every election the Labour candidates local and national would win – I suspect the Labour votes would have weighed rather than counted. The only Conservative voters I knew was our family GP he always stood in the general election always got a few hundred votes, no one seemed to mind. My deputy head master was another Tory voter, he was a nasty man always wore a Conservative Tie to work and a small badge on his lapel, and appeared to hate his students and our families. My mum would purposefully put Coal Not Dole and Labour Party stickers on our Blazers to piss him off. This is how working class resilience works. We don’t have power but we never let them forget we are still there.

I voted for the first time in 1986 with my mum, we went together and we were both really proud of each other, of course we voted Labour. We hated Margaret Thatcher – when I say hated I mean hated- we were gutted that the IRA missed her, and laughed when she was ousted out of Downing Street crying. And when she died I put out the bunting and had a drink In honour of my mum she didn’t live to see Thatcher’s final event.

New Labour were getting ready to take power from about 1992 and my mum was out everyday leafleting and campaigning for our new prarchuted in MP Geoff Hoon – privately educated, Oxbridge academic and lawyer later to become the defence secretary during the Iraq War. Clearly he was the right choice to represent Sutton- Ashfield????

The last time I voted was in 1997 – Tony Blair and New Labour offered us so much hope, we had a generation of a Conservative Government, our communities were on their knees, to be honest I think it was only our counter and sub culture that kept us going- the music, the drink and the drugs – as a young person the rave scene was part of our resistance. Our industries were closing and we were out of work, the country was moving on but those of us in the old manufacturing areas were being left out. We believed New Labour would help us. I voted for Tony Blair and the hope quickly faded away. The Sure Start Centres, the Social Exclusion Policies all of them aimed at diminishing working class people, forcing us to ‘be different’ because who we were was not good enough. The Iraq War showed us that this Government was just another Government. I had been grown and raised in a political family, in a community and through a time that was highly political, and yet I don’t vote.

Not voting is my politically informed choice in how I engage with the political system. I went to University after my mum died in because of a car accident on the M1 driving from a union meeting to get to the girls at the factory to feedback what was being discussed they were going on strike their factory like many others was facing closure, it was cheaper to make tights in the far east.

I’m a sociologist I understand how power works, I’m also a working class woman and understand how power works against me personally. I use my academic understanding of powder and connect that with experience, our Party political system exploits that tiny bit of power each one of us have by begging us to use it once every 5 years, and then the political partys retreat to Westminster or to the Town Hall and they rarely seen again until the next time they need your vote. I decide to not allow them to use my power, therefore I spoil vote. And I have done for over 20 years. Until the political system truly represents working class people with deeds not words I will not vote.

I know and have known since 1979 that every single election is the most important election with the most at stake until the next one.

Yet in my 51 years of life I have seen inequality rise,

poverty rise, housing being used as assets rather than homes, good jobs in the media, politics, the arts, law and medicine going to people because of who they know and whether they can afford to live in London rather than offering a fair chance to all. Despite Sutton In Ashfield having a Labour MP since 1955 when the ward was created, the people who live there are still some of the poorest people in the country, they are more likely to be working in one of the new Warehousing industries like Amazon, or Sports Direct that to get into higher education and especially Oxbridge.

In a Party Political System the only winners of that particular game of musical chairs are those that are playing. The spectators – the electorate just get to look on and hope that the players notice they are there.

Everyone needs to decide based on their own knowledge and their own experiences whether and who they should vote for, I do that every time there is an election and as yet none of them have persuaded me to hand over that tiny bit of power I have.