Why do we insist on sticking to the politics of the reign of Queen Anne?

Why do we insist on sticking to the politics of the reign of Queen Anne?

If you were a voter in the eighteenth century – and not many people were - your electoral choice was between two ruling elites, the Whigs and the Tories. FPTP was an efficient way of choosing between them. FPTP concentrated power in the hands of two alternating strong elites and took little interest in the views of the electors or the people, only in the views of the elected. FPTP reflected a class-based social hierarchy and set into the political structure the dominance of one section of the people over another – namely the commercially wealthy and landowning classes, later the industrialists, over the mass of labouring people. This era is passing slowly into history. Since 1892 with the election of Keir Hardie parliament has opened up to politicians representing the interests of labour. In 1918 the first woman was elected to Parliament and in the People Act of 1928 women got the vote on equal terms with men. Since 1997 the Labour Party in power has implemented the principle of devolved power and is seeking to strengthen this.

In our civic life for more than a hundred years our country has been moving towards a more inclusive and less top-down attitude to decision-making. Most notably the Labour Party in power, through the Freedom of Information Act, has given people unprecedented access to the information held by public bodies on the matters that affect them; the rights of the citizens particularly in civic life have been hugely strengthened by the Sustainable Communities Act; and the Duty to Involve which came into force in April this year will gradually engage many thousands of people in the design and scrutiny of their local services.

You cannot argue that you desire a democracy in which people participate in the decisions that affect them, and still cling to FPTP. That is the politics of the reign of Queen Anne. The mechanism is fundamentally a denial of participation and this was part of its perceived virtue in the nineteenth century. FPTP is inconsistent with the ideal ofparticipative democracy. As Tony Benn said “If voting changed anything, they’d abolish it”. FPTP is the next anti-democratic obstacle to be overcome. The fear of participation of undesirable groups such as the BNP should not hold us back from casting out this electoral anachronism. It is a political reform 100 years overdue. Only the Labour Party in power is ever likely to deliver this fundamental reform. If we do not succeed in getting a referendum at the time of the next General Election, we will be denying the historical momentum that now exists to change the balance of power between the people and their government.

This is an early extract from a series of essays I am writing on the reform of adult social care. Comments appreciated.

Why care homes are immoral

What should we do about all the people who are living longer in the UK?

I wish to argue here that this is a moral as well as a political or economic question. I argue that the existence of residential care homes is proof of the failure of society to attend to the moral dimension of our aging population.

Being young is a social good. We recognise and give status to young people as the hope of the future. Being old is a social good in so far as one believes that life itself is a good, and that long life is a social good. Yet there is an imbalance in the value which we accord to young people, old people and those in the middle. They are not treated in our society as morally equal. Thus a person may be viewed as worthy of recognition at one stage in their life and yet discounted at another stage.

In order to decide as a society what we should do about all the people living longer we must decide what is the political, economic and moral worth of the part of the population labelled “old”. And we should decide what we mean by “old”. When, or perhaps how, being recognised as being “old” changes the status conferred on us..

What is the political worth of old people? The over 50s are more likely to vote. They are least likely to campaign, demonstrate or otherwise disrupt their representatives in office.

What is the economic worth of older people? That’s easy. Everyone knows old people are a burden, a drain on the economy. Their economic value generally increases when they can be persuaded to release the spending money locked up in their homes. As we shall see this quality is what makes them such targets for the big business which is the care home sector in the UK.

What is the moral worth of older people? In other generations and other societies this may be linked to the veneration given to people who have lived a long time, as repositories of history, wisdom, even magical powers. More recently older people in the UK were seen as worthy of respect for having fought in two world wars to preserve democracy in Europe. Now there is population pressure on scarce resources such as houses. The economic pressure to remove a person from their house and pop them into a residential care home until they die, is growing. The moral worth of older people is under threat.

Residential care homes are a phenomenon of the USA and UK. Their origins lie in the workhouses and mental asylums of the nineteenth century. These bedlams were places to hide away the socially unacceptable and to remove the old poor from the street.

Our present day residentail homes, however disguised, serve the same social purpose as the asylums: to lock up old people away from view. It has become socially acceptable to warehouse our old people.

The moral worth of a person in a social warehouse is almost nil. There are no social goods to be derived from this person, especially once they are out of sight or reach. They have no independence, little freedom of movement or association, and cannot be gainfully involved in society or in their family. They have become economically a burden, and politically, since so few continue to exercise power over their lives, or get a postal vote, they are disenfranchised. Without action and engagement these are beings outside the human condition. They are, so to speak, in the “place of exception” in Arendt’s words, a place which is not fit for a person with a moral standing and which is dehumanising. A place where the human being is commoditised into a “revenue source” in the private market or objectified into a “bed” in the public sector. Places where the maximum effort is expended not to preserve personhood but to maximise their profitability to the provider

A care home – even a well-run one – is evidence of a moral failure of a country to decide what is the worth of their citizens, beyond economics, beyond politics. What is the moral worth of an old person?

Hay! Books I am reading at the moment

Part of an occasional series on this blog where I try to remember all the books I am re/reading at the moment and why

Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media by Herbert and Chomsky - media grip on the public mind dissected

Illusion of Consent: Engaging with Carole Pateman  - feminist critique of democratic theory

Auschwitz by Laurence Rees - how a population comes to see hatred of other people as politically acceptable -  parallels with a well known fascist party in UK

Who Runs Britain? by Robert Peston - especially helpful on the pensions crisis

My Life with Nye - Jennie Lee - a bit of hero-worship for the founder of the OU and her husband

Without knowledge of our history our present is incomprehensible, and the quality of our future imponderable.