What if Proportional Representation Been Introduced in the UK in 1918?

In January 1917 the Speaker's Conference, which had sat since October 1916, proposed that Britain adopt the Single Transferable Vote form of proportional representation for its electoral system.  This would have replaced the so called 'first past the post' system which was (and remains) in place in the UK. The first-past-the-post system means that even if a candidate wins by 1 vote they get the seat and the second (and subsequent candidates) get nothing.  This is despite the fact that they may have received almost as much support from the public. Thus the proportional representation system was seen as being 'fairer' to voters.  More than one candidate would be returned from each constituency.  It was also seen as allowing a wider spectrum of political opinion to be voiced at a time when there were only the Liberal and Conservative parties and the  small Labour Party. 

Proportional representation was adopted in Germany and Belgium following the First World War.  It is in common usage in different forms across Europe now.  In the UK it is used for European Parliament elections and for general elections in Northern Ireland as it better reflects the sectarian diversity of the constituencies there. The Prime Minister in 1917 was David Lloyd George, the Liberal leader.  He had opposed proportional representation as early as 1884.  With the Liberals in government, albeit in a coalition, he was in no hurry to alter the system.  The same happened in 1997 when the Labour Party gained a large majority it immediately abandoned its previously developed plans to introduce proportional representation.

The big fear about proportional representation for the British which continues in a misinformed way even now, is that it automatically leads to governments which cannot command a majority.  Thus it is felt that they would need to negotiate on every piece of legislation and this is seen as leading to weak rule. This view was increased by the difficulties in the Third Republic of France (1870-1940) and Weimar Germany (1918-33). However, it ignores the stability of states with proportional representation, notably West Germany (1949-91).

In this posting I am going to look at what would have happened if Lloyd George had not been so hostile to the approach or if he had been aware of how the Liberal Party was crumbling. It was never to hold office alone again after 1922 and was not even part of a coalition until 1931-45, though individual Liberals participated. Alternatively, as Nina Barzachka shows in an online article, it can be imagined that he would have had a more enlightened view like the Catholic Party of Belgium which adopted Proportional Representation at national level.  Belgium had had it locally since 1895.  They did this despite it leading to losses for them. Anyway, let us imagine if proportional representation, like votes for women, had been introduced in 1918, how would the political picture of Britain been different?

Now, one caveat, STV is a complex system and the UK's constituencies are very imbalanced, with Scotland and to a lesser extent Wales being over-represented, for their populations, in the Westminster Parliament. I have adopted a simplistic system of giving the parties the same percentage of the available seats as they got percentage of the overall vote. However, I think different anomalies would have cancelled each other out.  There would certainly have been an alteration to the size and number of constituencies to fewer, but larger, ones.  Representation for Scotland and Wales may have been balanced at that time. Of course, with the new system in place voter choice may have been very different and new parties which never materialised in our world are likely to have appeared as they did in other countries.  Most likely there would have been a left-wing Socialist and/or Communist party and a right-wing British nationalist party. As now, Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties may have also emerged, but sooner. There may have also been an Agrarian party and/or a small Business-focused party.  However, the Conservatives may have been able to retain these within their bounds.  Moving into the latter part of the 20th century, a women's party or a 'grey' party, i.e. one for the interests of the elderly may have appeared.

As the Irish Free State left the UK in 1922 and that was probably the first year that the new system could have been put into effect having been introduced in 1918, I will start at the 1922 election. The format is -

Year: Total number of seats available (Party that formed government in our world)

Party [party forming government shown in Bold]: (Percentage of the vote received); Seats under PR [Actual seats received in our world].

1922 Election: 615 seats (Conservative Party) 
Conservative: (38.5%); 237 seats [344]
Labour: (29.7%); 183 seats [142]
Liberal: (18.9%); 116 seats [62]
National Liberal (9.9%); 61 seats [53]
Irish Nationalist (0.4%): 3 seats [3]
Others (2.8%): 15 seats [15]

This would have led to a minority government in that Labour and the main Liberal Party could outvote the Conservatives (even if had National Liberal support) something they could not do in our world. If the Conservatives had been unable to form a government then a new coalition is likely to have been formed between the Liberals and Labour. This would have brought Labour into government two years earlier than actually happened and in a slightly dominant position as it had more seats than the Liberals. This is feasible given that the Liberals supported Labour's brief minority government in 1924.

Labour's relative inexperience would probably have meant senior Liberals playing a central role. Policies probably would have embraced some extension of the nascent welfare state began by the Liberals before the First World War, but there would have tensions arising over the impact of the Russian Revolution. If Labour and the Liberals had fallen out, say in 1924, then we might have indeed seen the jockeying for position between the three main parties.  This in itself would have been a first for Britain.  Then maybe there would have even been a resurrection of the wartime Liberal-Conservative coalition. However, even with proportional representation, the eclipse of the Liberals as a leading party, would seem to have been as apparent in this alternate world as in ours.

As in Germany, there may have been a split in the Labour Party with a Communist Party appearing and able under this system to gain some seats in a way that was impossible in Britain until 1945.  Their gains would have just weakened Labour, though probably not to the extent that they would have been smaller than the Liberals.  Establishing a Communist presence in parliament is likely to have had an impact when the economy began to go into depression in the late 1920s.

1923: 615 (Conservative Party; then Labour Party)
Conservative: (38%); 234 seats [258]
Labour: (30.7%); 188 seats [191]
Liberal: (29.7%); 183 seats [158]
Others: (2%); 10 seats [8]

In our December 1923 Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin, despite a reasonable majority decided to call an election just 13 months after the previous one.  This was because he wanted a mandate on his adoption of tariffs and abandonment of free trade. This election actually decreased his majority and he ran a minority government (so, who says first-past-the-post avoided this) until it collapsed in January 1924. Then a minority Labour government ruled until October 1924 when it fell.

The effective elimination in 1923 of the National Liberals through lost seats and defections to Labour and the Conservatives to some extent reinforced the main Liberal Party. In the proportional representation system this would have been even more apparent and a true three-party state would seem to be in position. Again, the opportunity for a true Labour-Liberal coalition would have appeared but the partners would have been on more equal terms now. The Liberals might have been reluctant to partner with an increasingly established Labour party but with their support of Free Trade would have been unlikely to go to the Conservatives unless they dropped this policy. It is clear that at this time, no matter what system was in place, British politics was unstable as Labour sought to replace the Liberals. With proportional representation that process may have taken far longer.

1924: 615 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (46.8%); 288 seats [412]
Labour: (33.3%); 205 seats [151]
Liberal: (17.8%); 109 seats [40]
Others: (2.2%); 13 [12]

This election is where we begin to see a real divergence. The slide of the Liberals is apparent even with proportional representation though slowed down.  The huge difference is that rather than a 209-seat majority, the Conservatives still have a minority government. Of course if the Labour-Liberal coalition had continued from 1922 onwards, even if it had faced an election at this stage it could have continued. However, increasing division between Labour and the Liberals would have made this difficult. In addition, Labour would by now increasingly have felt the Liberals were splitting the vote that could have given it access to power. 

The Conservatives who adopted a very cautious policy in the light of economic turmoil would have probably had to address more policies towards the other parties' constituencies in order to remain in power. Of course, as opponents of proportional representation argue, the UK may simply have become like France of the 1920s and Italy before the advent of Fascism, in having governments only lasting a few months. In our world the 1924 election halted that for a while.  As in 1922 with the example of the rise of the Communists in Russia, in 1924, perhaps even earlier, the model of Fascism, though it did not gain complete power until 1925, may have led to the appearance of a Fascist Party in Britain.

1929: 615 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (38.1%) 234 seats [260]
Labour: (37.1%) 228 seats [287]
Liberal: (23.6%) 145 seats [59]
Others: (1.4%) 8 seats [12]

In 1929 in our world another minority Labour government was formed and by this stage the Liberals had really faded from the scene politically though in terms of individuals and their ideas they remained important. With proportional representation, the election in May 1929 may have been one of a pattern of the 1920s. The system would have offered another minority Conservative government or possibly yet another continuation of the Labour-Liberal coalition which might have dominated British politics throughout the 1920s. 

Those who might have seen the death of Liberalism in 1924 would have witnessed the party rallying and the persistence of British three-party politics. With the two class-based parties seemingly so close, the Liberals would have been the kingmakers right throughout this period and effectively would have almost become the 'true party of government' forming the core around which successive coalitions would have formed.

What is interesting is that Britain's political centre ground, while weaker than what it had been would have been far stronger than in Germany, which had adopted proportional representation in 1918. Of course, proportional representation may have led to the fracturing of parties and the one which could retain its cohesion may have been the one to keep winning, for example if the Conservatives could rein in their nationalist wing and Labour could hold on to radicals moving towards Communism.

It is more likely that Labour would have haemorrhaged to the left more that the Conservatives to the right, so the Conservatives would have been in power, though not coming close to having a majority whilst three-party politics continued. The Liberals probably would have clung together having witnessed the danger of fragmentation with the National Liberals in the past.  There is nothing to say that sustaining themselves as a reasonably large party in the 1920s they would not have received support from the left of the Conservatives. Remember Churchill only returned to the Conservatives in the 1920s because the Liberal Party, where he had been so important in the 1910s, had effectively dissolved. It is certainly not impossible to envisage a Liberal Party of the late 1920s led by Churchill with a combination of a patriotic approach but with social welfare policies.

1931: 615 (National Government)
Conservative: (55%); 338 seats [470]
National Labour (1.5%); 9 seats [13]
National Liberal (3.7%); 23 seats [35]
Labour: (30.8%); 189 seats [52]
Liberal: (6.5%); 40 seats [32]
Others: (2.7%); 17 seats [13]

In this alternate UK, 1931 would have really been the year three-party politics died. The Labour government fell over its inability to agree how to tackle the global financial crises. The Conservatives won a huge majority in our world and would have become the first post-1918 majority government in the UK. They barely needed the Liberals and Labour members who joined them in the National Government coalition but symbolically as a coalition of supposed national unity it was useful to suggest it was so broad.  It was Ramsay MacDonald, former leader of the Labour Party who, as head of National Labour continued to serve as Prime Minister 1931-5.  The picture shown here actually does not really reflect how fragmented the Liberals had become with a faction of 5 MPs around official Liberal leader David Lloyd George, here contained among the 'Others'.

People who say Britain had a more stable system without coalitions forget that 1931-45 the country was run by a coalition stretching across the political spectrum. The key beneficiaries of the proportional representation system would have been Labour who whilst shrinking would not have been almost wiped out in the way they were in our world. This would have meant more personalities to fill the front benches and possibly offer more alternative policies. 

Note that under proportional representation the number of 'Others' would be higher and 1931 saw the launch of the New Party, a Fascist party which contested 24 seats. With proportional representation they may have gained more ground and eaten into Conservative support.  Labour may not have done as well as shown here if a Communist Party was similarly taking away its support as people looked for a more radical solution to the crisis. The National Government effectively made up for the death of the centre in the UK as had happened in other European states by locating the whole system near the centre ground with cautious policies that could do little to oppose the Depression.

1935: 615 (National Government)
Conservative: (47.8%); 294 seats [387]
National Labour (1.5%); 9 seats [8]
National Liberal (3.7%); 23 seats [33]
Labour: (38%); 234 seats [154]
Liberal: (6.7%); 40 seats [21]
Others: (2.4%); 15 seats [13]

Now, in our world, the National Government continued with minimal challenge. MacDonald was replaced by Stanley Baldwin before the 1935 election as MacDonald retired on grounds of ill-health. Baldwin retired in 1937 and was replaced by Neville Chamberlain. He was effectively ousted in 1940 over the handling of the German invasion of Norway and was replaced by Winston Churchill. There was no general election 1935-45 but Churchill restructured the government and brought the non-National Labour Party into the wartime coalition with its leader, Clement Attlee, as his deputy prime minister.

In this alternate UK, in 1935 Labour would have bounced back reducing the coalition's majority to 37 compared to the 240 majority it had in our world. Certainly Labour could have claimed it represented a sizeable body of opinion possibly pressing for more imaginative policies to combat the economic crises and as critics of appeasement. The British Union of Fascists had almost crumbled by 1935 and so is unlikely to have made any showing in the elections, though having won a seat or two in 1931 may have retained some credibility and cohesion. However, even so, divisions over anti-Semitism and street fighting were likely to have caused fragmentation.

1945: 640 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (34.7%); 224 seats [178]

Labour: (47.9%); 308 seats [392]
Liberal: (9%); 58 seats [12]
Liberal National (3%); 19 seats [0]
Ulster Unionist (1.5%); 9 seats [9]
Independent (0.8%); 5 seats [0]
National (0.6%); 4 seats [2]
Common Wealth (0.4%); 3 seats [1]
Communist (0.4%); 3 seats [2]
Indpendent Conservative: (0.16%); 1 seat [0]
Labour Independent (0.2%); 1 seat [2]
Irish Nationalist (0.6%): 4 seats [0]
Scottish Nationalist (0.12%); 1 seat [0]

What we see in the alternate 1945 is still Labour winning, though effectively with a minority government rather than the majority of 150.  With a stronger rather than almost disappeared Liberal party they may have been able to revive the 1920s Labour-Liberal coalition to help them make up the 24 votes they need to pass legislation. What this would have meant probably is whilst the welfare state would have proceeded in the way it did, especially given it was based on the theories of William Beveridge a Liberal.  However, nationalisation which was much more of a purely Labour approach, though the Conservatives had done some on efficiency grounds between the wars, would have been restricted.  It certainly would not have reached the steel industry, though railways and coal would have come under state control. 

The other interesting thing, emphasised by the greater range of information that I have about the post-war elections, is the appearance of more minor parties.  They would have had 31 seats compared to numbers in the teens for the Others in the inter-war era. Particularly notable is the Liberal National Party which in this world would have been larger in parliament than the main Liberal party was in our world. 

The Communists would not have benefited a great deal, probably adding just one other MP. Of course, their credibility in the UK was at an all-time high in 1945 in the UK and with proportional representation they may have picked up more votes in Labour areas. This would have provided even more of a challenge for a minority Labour government, if they had, for example, reached double figures. The Scottish Nationalists may have disappeared at the next election or maybe, as they were to do later in the century, their single MP could have been the grounds for attracting support to the party.

1950: 625 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (38.9%); 247 seats [271]
Labour: (46.1%); 293 seats [315]
Liberal: (9.1%); 59 seats [9]
Conservative & National Liberal: (1.2%); 7 seats [4]
Liberal & Conservative: (0.2%); 0 seats [2]
National Liberal & Conservative: (1.3%); 7 seats [2]
National Liberal: (0.2%); 0 seats [2]
Communist: (0.3%); 2 seats [0]
Ulster Unionists: (1.2%) 9 seats [10]
Irish Nationalists: (0.2%) 1 seat [0]

There had been rationalisation of the constituencies since the last election, for example, removing university seats, which is why there were fewer seats contested than in 1945.

At the 1950 election in our world Labour's majority was cut to 6. In this alternate UK it would have been a minority government having to find an additional 15 seats compared to the previous parliament, in order to pass legislation. Again, with proportional representation the Liberals, though a shadow of their 1920s strength, would be useful allies.

It is interesting to see what would have happened to the plethora of small parties. In our world Others got 2 seats and the Communists disappeared at this election. There were a range of weird national government leftovers as can be seen here, some would have gone entirely until proportional representation and others would have been almost as strong as the Liberals were in our world at this time. It is still likely they would in time have been absorbed into either the stronger Liberal Party or, as tended to happen in reality, into the Conservatives. These various national liberals mixed in with other conservatives were simply counted as being part of the Conservative figure, as are the Ulster Unionists; I have disaggregated them here to show the impact of proportional representation on these very small parties.

Of course, like West Germany, established in 1949, the UK after 1945 may have barred parties not achieving at least 5% of the vote from getting seats. This would have disposed of the embarrassing Communists and tidied up this range of political parties, though the consequent gains are not likely to have helped Labour's search for a majority.

1951: 625 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (43.4%); 273 seats [293]
Labour: (48.8%); 306 seats [295]
Liberal: (2.6%); 17 seats [6]
Conservative & National Liberal: (1%); 6 seats [2]
Conservative & Liberal: (0.8%); 4 seats [2]
National Liberal & Conservative: (0.7%); 4 seats [7]
Liberal & Conservative: (1%); 6 seats [7]
National Liberal: (0.07%); 0 seats [1]
Ulster Unionists: (1%) 10 [9] [Though they would not be entitled to 10 under PR, the fragmentation of the Irish nationalist parties would have prevented them beating the Ulster Unionists for the seats which mainland British parties did not contest].

Our 1951 election was brought about by Labour having such a small majority so it is very likely to have occurred in the alternate UK where they would remain a minority government. In our version though Labour increased its vote it fell from being the largest party and the Conservatives got a majority of 17. Hardly an outstanding victory but this gentle swing back and forth between Labour and the Conservatives was characteristic of Britain 1945-79/83. 

In this alternative UK, Labour remains the largest party in 1951. In fact the size of its shortfall in votes in parliament declines to 13. This means that even with the Liberals having declined sharply since 1950 the old Labour-Liberal alliance may have worked.  The Liberal decline may not have been so great if they had had representation in the 50s in the 1940s as they would have seemed more credible.

The interesting challenge for Labour in this period with the beginning of removal of wartime restrictions, the last rationing ended in 1956, would be how they addressed the beginning of prosperity. Of course Britain may have been like the French Fourth Republic (1944-56) constantly plunged into chaos as governments came and went scrabbling around for a majority. Techniques such as barring parties below 5% or a premium of, say, 20 seats for the winning party, would have eliminated the problem and Labour would have had a small majority. With Labour in power, economic controls would have been retained longer and it is unlikely that Britain would have become involved in the Suez Crisis in 1956.  Conversely decolonisation may have proceeded far faster.

1955: 630 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (44.9%); 285 seats (316)
Labour: (46.2%); 294 seats [277]
Liberal: (2.7%); 19 seats [6]
Conservative & National Liberal: (0.9%); 6 seats [3]
Conservative &  Liberal: (0.6%); 3 seats [3]
National Liberal & Conservative: (0.6%); 5 seats [6]
National Liberal: (0.2%); 1 seat [2]
Liberal & Conservative (0.9%); 6 seats [5]
Ulster Unionists (1.7%); 10 seats [10]
Sinn Fein (0.5%); 3 seats [2]
Welsh Nationalist: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]

Rather than a second clear win in a row for the Conservatives and a majority of 59, the 1955 election under proportional representation would have seen a real contest with the Conservatives and their allies raising 319 seats versus Labour and Liberals on 313. Thus the Conservatives would have been in power but with a tiny minority of 2. What would this have led the Conservatives to have done: maybe to promote a slightly more independent identity for their shoal of allied parties in the hope of capturing some of those on the right of the Liberal Party. Some, notably the National Liberals, may have already gone, meaning a few additional seats to those other combinations remaining.

Of course, given the constant role of the Liberals as government makers their credibility would have been much higher and their support may have sustained something closer to the 1945 level. In our world, Labour survived with a majority of 6 after 1950 but for less than a year, so I imagine an election early in 1956 or later in 1955, this one occurred in May, would have been the result. Possibly the Conservatives would have done more to attract the Liberals to their side.  Yet again, even in their shrunken state, though three times larger than in our world, they would have been the kingmakers once again.

The Communists may have scraped a single seat as they got 0.12% of the vote, but more likely we would have seen the first Welsh Nationalist MP again beginning to give credibility to a small party. It is difficult, given the small size of Northern Ireland, to correctly map the shifts between the Unionists and Nationalists, by now represented by Sinn Fein, but the latter may have picked up a seat in areas outside Northern Ireland with a high Irish population, notably Liverpool or London.

1959: 630 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (45.3%); 287 seats [334]
Labour: (43.7%); 277 seats [258]
Liberal: (5.9%); 38 seats [6]
Conservative & National Liberal: (0.9%); 6 seats [6]
Conservative & Liberal: (0.5%); 3 seats [2]
National Liberal & Conservative: (0.5%); 3 seats [4]
National Liberal (0.03%); 0 seats [1]
Liberal & Conservative: (0.6%); 4 seats [6]
Ulster Unionists: (1.5%); 10 seats [11]
Sinn Fein (0.2%); 2 seats [1]
Plaid Cymru (0.3%); 2 seats [0]

The 1959 election would have been similar to the bulk of those we have looked at with subtle shifts back and forth between Labour and the Conservatives.  The Liberals would still be the brokers in the middle. In this case what I said about the Liberals gaining credibility proved actually to be the case in our world and this would have been turned into more actual seats in the alternate world we are looking at.

The Conservatives and their allies could raise 312 seats another minority as a Labour-Liberal alliance could provide 315 seats. Again the Conservatives would have win over the Liberals in order to remain in government, in sharp contrast to the 100 majority they won in our 1959. 

Plaid Cymru is what the Welsh Nationalists had evolved into and regionally with 2 MPs they may have been able to gain momentum. There is effectively a gap here for the Northern Ireland seats. Though the Ulster Unionists would not have been entitled to the additional seat (they should have got 9) there may have been no-one else strong enough to be awarded them, so I have assumed that Sinn Fein under this system could have picked up one more and the Ulster Unionists would be over-represented, though less than they were in reality.

1964: 630 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (40.7%); 257 seats [285]
Labour: (43.8%); 279 seats [317]
Liberal: (11.2%); 71 seats [9]
Conservative & National Liberal: (0.9%); 5 seats [4]
National Liberal & Conservative: (0.2%); 1 seat [2]
Ulster Unionist: (1.5%); 9 seats [12]
Republican: (0.4%); 2 seats [0]
Northern Ireland Labour: (0.4%); 2 seats [0]
Scottish Nationalist: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Plaid Cymru: (0.3%); 2 seats [0]
Communist: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]

Labour won the 1964 election in our world with a majority of 6. In the alternate UK they would still be in a minority, but the key thing is the upwards momentum of the Liberals whose seats in our world severely under-represented their level of support. The revival of the old Labour-Liberal coalition would be very feasible or the persistence of the Conservative-Liberal one of the 1950s would also be a possibility. The big difference would be in Northern Ireland. You will have noticed in the square brackets of how dominant the Ulster Unionists, allied to the Conservatives, were in the few constituencies of Northern Ireland.

The growing interest in politics can be seen at the 1964 election when 39 different parties put up candidates. Many of these were issue-focused for example, two Christian parties and others regarding the EEC and nuclear disarmament. This was the first time that the British National Party, Britain's current Fascist party first appeared. In this environment of issue politics the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru were to begin to really appear on the scene. Of course, in this alternate Britain this would have been part of a process that had been occurring since the 1950s rather than something seemingly new in the mid-1960s.

1966: 630 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (39.9%); 253 seats [242]
Labour: (47.6%); 303 seats [363]
Liberal: (8.6%); 55 seats [12]
Conservative & National Liberal (0.53%); 3 seats [0]
Ulster Unionist: (1.4%); 9 seats [11]
Northern Ireland Labour: (0.3%); 2 seats [0]
Republican: (0.2%); 1 seat [1]
Scottish Nationalist: (0.5%); 3 seats [0]
Plaid Cymru: (0.2%): 1 seat [0]
Communist (0.2%): 1 seat [0]

In our 1966 the Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, returned to the electorate to try to boost his majority in order to carry out the tough economic policies that were necessary to cope with the weakening trade position. He was successful, lifting Labour's majority to 97 seats. In this alternate world he would have been far less successful. Whichever coalition had come about in 1964 probably would have been looking for a stronger position in 1966, though with over forty years of proportional representation by now this might not have been expected. In this world Labour would still be a minority government, needing the support of the Liberals yet again. However, it would have done sufficient, given the range of smaller parties, notably the nationalist ones liable to help Labour, to rule out another attempted Conservative-Liberal coalition.

Again, the situation in Northern Ireland would have been different as tensions were coming to a peak in the mid-late 1960s and British troops were sent in to protect the Catholic population. A few MPs in Westminster would not have altered this drastically but may have made Catholic voters feel less totally excluded from politics in the Province, especially if there was a better local reflection of the population make-up. If proportional representation is good for Northern Ireland today it is likely it would have also been the case in the past.

1970: 630 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (44.9%); 283 seats [322]
Labour: (42.6%); 268 seats [287]
Liberal: (7.5%); 47 seats [6]
Ulster Unionists: (1.5%); 9 seats [8]
Northern Ireland Labour: (0.4%); 2 seats [0]
Republican Labour: (0.1%); 1 seat [0]
National Unity: (0.3%); 1 seat [0]
National Democrat: (0.1%); 1 seat [0]
Scottish Nationalist: (1.1%); 7 seats [1]
Plaid Cymru: (0.6%): 4 seats [0]
Communist: (0.1%): 1 seat [0]

Rather than the Conservative majority of 31 we would have seen a very similar pattern to all the post-war elections. Of course the Liberals may have been even more powerful than this as in our world they were seen as a very minor concern lower in number by now than the Ulster Unionists, whereas under proportional representation they would be a second rank rather than third or fourth rank party in terms of size and influence.  As with many third parties their power would be greater than their weight. 

By now, one might envisage that the Liberals would have developed a policy for how they engaged with coalitions, given how common they would have been. Thus, 1970 may have seen the choice of a Labour-Liberal or Conservative-Liberal government. Given that Labour did not do too badly 1964-70 in our world and were expected to win the 1970 election until the last moment, their ongoing coalition would probably have continued. Whilst proportional representation may have stripped Labour of its 1945 landslide, it is likely that it would have been in government far more often than was the case in our 20th century when it faced 1900-24; 1924-9; 1931-45, 1951-64, 1970-4 and 1979-97, i.e. 78 years outside the government in the space of the century which can be seen as being dominated by the Conservatives.

Issue politics had not died but had shifted. In 1966, 35 parties had put up candidates, in 1970 it had risen to 45. Whilst things like Social Credit and Ratepayers persisted, the nuclear disarmers had gone and what is noticeable is the range of far right-wing parties, notably the National Front and others using Nazi titles like National Unity and National Socialist. Also there were more 'anti-' parties with a right-wing focus, e.g., Anti-Immigration Party, Anti-Labour Party as well as more left-wing radicals such as the Anti-Election Party, Anti-Party Party as you would expect lingering on after the cold shock of the death of hippyism as the new decade began. Also noticeable is the appearance of more parties in Northern Ireland, and in the wake of the appearance of the Scottish Nationalists in Parliament of regional parties like Independent Scottish Labour and Independent Scottish Nationalist; even Mebyon Kernow supporting an independent Cornwall.

Britain entered a turbulent political period due to industrial unrest leading to more states of emergency being declared than at any time in British history and the adoption of power shortages and the so-called 'Three-Day Week' through 1973 and into 1974.  This led to the 1974 elections as the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath tried to gain a mandate to tackle these problems in the way he saw fit.

February 1974: 635 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (37.8%); 242 seats [296]
Labour: (37.2%); 239 seats [301]
Liberal: (19.3%); 124 seats [14]
Ulster Unionists (3 parties) (1.4%); 9 seats [9]
SDLP (0.5%); 3 seats [1]
Scottish Nationalist: (2%); 13 seats [7]
Plaid Cymru: (0.6%); 4 seats [2]
National Front: (0.3%); 1 seat [0]

The elections of 1974 even with the first-past-the-post system demonstrated the challenges of coalition politics. This is where the two versions of the UK come closest as Labour was a minority government needing at least the agreement of the Liberals to get legislation passed. In the alternate world, with the Liberals back to the size of the 1920s any coalition they supported would not have needed to scrabble around for votes in parliament but could have continued without difficulty. 

You can see why the Liberals became supporters of proportional representation as they were getting almost a tenth of the seats their support from the electorate would have suggested. On this system the Scottish Nationalists did a great deal better than the Liberals but still would have gained more under proportional representation. The system would also have let in another Fascist to Parliament, this time representing the National Front. Given the range of tiny anti-immigration and pro-(Enoch) Powell candidates, the NF getting a seat may have drawn their supporters to it. The far left was terribly fragmented at this time and so the Communist MP disappears once again.

October 1974: 634 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (35.7%); 227 seats [276]
Labour: (39.2%); 249 seats [319]
Liberal: (18.3%); 116 seats [13]
Ulster Unionists (1.5%); 8 seats [11]
SDLP (0.53%); 3 seats [1]
Alliance (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Scottish Nationalist: (2.9%); 18 seats [11]
Plaid Cymru: (0.6%); 4 seats [3]
National Front: (0.4%); 2 seats [0]

Harold Wilson managed to secure a majority of 4 at the October 1974 election of our world and had to enter the so-called Lib-Lab Pact with the Liberal Party in order to function as a government and even then with a small majority. In the alternate UK if there had even been a need for an October 1974 election, the Labour-Liberal coalition would have been far stronger.

In our world there was a referendum in 1978 on whether Scotland and/or Wales should receive greater devolution. Partly due to poor turnout, these steps did not win. Would the outcome have been different with the SNP growing election by election in strength in Parliament to the extent that they were the fourth largest party? Would the slow, but seemingly steady growth of the NF have led to the introduction of the 5% rule now assuming it had not come in 1945? Would the seeming respectability of this Fascist party now with 2 MPs have led them to rein in their violence on the streets?

1979: 634 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (43.9%); 281 seats [339]
Labour: (36.9%); 236 seats [268]
Liberal: (13.8%); 88 seats [11]
Ulster Unionists (4 parties): (1.3%); 7 seats [5]
SDLP: (0.4%); 3 seats [1]
Alliance: (0.3%); 2 seats [0]
Scottish Nationalist: (1.6%); 10 seats [2]
Plaid Cymru: (0.4%); 3 seats [2]
National Front; (0.6%); 4 seats [0]

The 1979 election is a pivotal one in British 20th century history as it ushered in 18 years of rule by the Conservatives. They differed greatly from the party that had been in power under Heath in the early 1970s.  In the mid-1970s the Conservatives had embraced New Right, monetarist thinking. This was welcomed by many people who were tired of the industrial unrest and inflation of the 1970s.  Most never understood that it would mean the vast destruction of British industry and infrastructure plus unemployment of over 4 million that would follow when Margaret Thatcher came to power.

The fact that Thatcher was able to stay in power for so long, whilst receiving so little support from the electorate, led Lord Scarman at the end of the 1980s to refer to the 'elective dictatorship' of British politics,  Unsurprisingly, attention returned to the possibility of proportional representation. Thatcher left in 1991 but the Conservatives under John Major continued in power until 1997. 

Whereas in the 1940s there had been a consensus around what the Labour government, itself more founded on Liberalism than Socialism, had broadly tried to do, by the 1990s the consensus had shifted to the market-orientated focus of Thatcherism. New Labour, who came to power in 1997, can clearly be seen as a Thatcherite Conservative party rather than either a Liberal or Socialist one.

The Conservatives in our world got a majority of 44 in 1979 and the Liberals jogged along just in double figures. While under proportional representation the Liberals would have lost about a quarter of their seats they still would have been a significant force and clear of the other small parties. The SNP, also battered, would not have been pushed back to its standing of the early 1960s. 

The shift to the right is apparent and the NF would have continued its rise. There would be no majority for Thatcher and she would have been seeking at least 72 seats. Given the breakdown of the Lib-Lab Pact especially over the so-called Winter of Discontent of 1978/9 it is likely that the Liberals would have been willing to give the Conservatives a go in coalition. The tension would have soon developed as Thatcher began privatising utilities and also her brash policy that led to the Falklands Conflict in 1982. Dependent on Liberal support she may have either gone for another election quickly or chaffed at the restraint as her radical programme was slowed or diverted.

1983: 650 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (42.4%); 280 seats [397]
Labour: (27.6%); 181 seats [209]
Liberal-SDP Alliance: (25.4%) 167 seats [28] - consisting of Liberal: (13.9%); 91 seats [17] and Social Democratic Party: (11.5%); 76 seats [11]
Scottish Nationalist: (1.1%); 7 seats [2]
Plaid Cymru: (0.4%); 3 seats [2]
Ulster Unionists (2 parties): (1.4%); 9 seats [11]
Sinn Fein: (0.3%): 2 seats [1]
Alliance: (0.2%): 1 seat [0]
Ecology: (0.2%): 1 seat [0]

Following a wave of patriotism after the Falklands Conflict, Margaret Thatcher was able to extend her majority to 143 seats in our world and really push ahead with the dismantlement of manufacturing industry and the selling off of utilities. Of course, having had a minority government or a coalition in this alternate UK she may have not been able to declare war on Argentina in 1982 and a prolonged negotiated settlement over the Falkland Islands would not have gained her the right-wing kudos she benefited from.

The ructions in the Labour Party following the 1979 election had led some MPs to go off and form the Social Democratic Party (SDP) which for the 1983 election formed half of the electoral coalition with the Liberal Party: the Liberal-SDP Alliance. In our world they achieved more seats than the Liberals had done alone, but in this alternate UK they would have just had 14 fewer seats than Labour. This would have marked the return of the strong centre in British politics. 

Under proportional representation even with the 'Falklands Factor' in play, the Conservatives actually would have had to find an additional 15 seats compared to 1979 in order to hold power, being 90 short. The thing is with the divisions of the time the Alliance was unlikely to have worked either with Labour or the Conservatives. Ironically it may have been them who came into power with either the tacit support of one of the other two parties.

 Certainly the Thatcherite agenda, even there had been the war in the Falklands, would have been entirely derailed.  Either the Conservatives would have been kept out by a centrist government or dependent on their support for each policy.  This would have meant nothing extreme. In particular the year long miners' strike, 1984-5, engineered by Thatcher which led to the destruction of the coal industry and damage to civil liberties, would never have occurred. Notice that the NF have slid from.  However, reflecting the rise of the Green movement in the 1980s, there would have been 1 Ecology MP, probably representing somewhere like Oxford where Greens began appearing on the council.

1987: 650 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (42.2%); 276 seats [375]
Labour: (30.8%); 202 seats [229]
Liberal-SDP Alliance: (22.5%): 147 seats [22] - Liberal: (12.8%); 84 seats [17]; SDP: (9.7%); 63 [5]
Scottish Nationalist: (1.3%); 8 seats [3]
Plaid Cymru: (0.4%): 2 seats [3]
Ulster Unionists (2 parties): (1.1%) 7 seats [9]
Alliance: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Sinn Fein: (0.3%); 2 seats [1]
SDLP: (0.5%): 3 seats[3]
Green: (0.3%): 2 seats [0]

Rather than the 100 majority that Thatcher managed to attain in 1987, the Conservatives would have continued on the downward slide they had faced since 1979, by now needing to find 102 seats to make a government. Labour showed some improvement mainly at the expense of the SDP. We might have seen a similar result, if the Liberal-SDP Alliance had been in power. With the reduction of the Cold War which came after 1985 they would have come into their own in place of the cold warrior, Thatcher. 

The 1987 election would be characteristic of the three-party politics of 20th century Britain, though with a cowed Labour less able to play a leading role than before. Of course, by 1987 the tension between Labour which was purging its extremists and the centrist bloc may have declined sufficiently to allow them into coalition. Certainly the Conservative Party would be weaker than before and there would have been nothing like the unfair poll tax (so-called Community Charge) introduced in 1989-90. The Green Party would have gained another seat, and as we have seen with small parties before, it may have thus gained in credibility so would have won more seats at the next election than the pure statistics based on our world show.

1992: 651 (Conservative Party)
Conservative: (41.9%); 273 seats [336]
Labour: (34.4%); 224 seats [271]
Liberal Democrat: (17.9%); 116 seats [20]
Liberal: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Scottish Nationalist: (1.95%); 12 seats [3]
Plaid Cymru: (0.5%); 3 seats [4]
Ulster Unionists (2 parties): (1.1%); 7 seats [9]
Alliance: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
SDLP: (0.6%); 4 seats [4]
Sinn Fein: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Green: (0.5%); 3 seats [0]
Natural Law (0.2%); 1 seat [0]

The 1992 election was seen as the one which Labour, under Neil Kinnock, lost rather than the Conservatives, since 1991 under John Major, won. Major only achieved a majority of 20 and this deteriorated through the mid-1990s.

In our alternate UK, 1992 is most likely to have seen the return of the old Labour-Liberal alliance to form government. The Liberal Democrat Party had been effectively formed in 1988, though some Liberals and SDP members stayed out. The de facto disappearance of the SDP which had been a breakaway from Labour may have made working together easier. 

Major was a watered-down version of Thatcher still following privatisation of the railways. The weakening of Conservative support, which actually occurred in our world but was not reflected in seats, may have meant the party abandoned Thatcherism.  It may moved towards policies of the kind more common among right-wing parties in Europe. As before, proportional representation may have made bigger changes in Northern Ireland with larger representation of the Catholic voice. Note the Greens' slow increase and the appearance of the party based on transcendental meditation, Natural Law, who fielded 309 candidates at the election, compared to 253 Green and 632 Liberal Democrat candidates.

1997: 659 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (30.8%): 206 seats [165]
Labour (43.2%); 291 seats [418]
Liberal Democrat: (16.8%); 112 seats [46]
Scottish Nationalist: (2%); 13 seats [6]
Plaid Cymru: (0.5%); 3 seats [4]
Ulster Unionists (2 parties): (1.1%); 7 seats [10]
SDLP (0.6%); 4 seats [3]
Alliance (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Sinn Fein (0.4%); 2 seats [2]
Referendum Party (2.6%); 17 seats [0]
Green (0.3%); 2 seats [0]
Socialist Labour (0.2%); 1 seat [0]


Rather than the 1997 Labour landslide in which the Labour Party gained more seats than any party in British history and the Conservatives returned to the level they had not seen since 1906 and without any MPs in Scotland or Wales, we would see the continuation of the Labour-Liberal coalition.  The Conservatives would not be much worse off than they had been becoming in the 1980s.

In our world, Tony Blair had talked of the 'big tent' and working with the Liberal Democrats before the 1997 election, clearly fearful of a narrow victory like Major had had in 1992. He also promised proportional representation but all of this was forgotten with such a vast victory. Of course, in the alternate UK where the Labour-Liberal coalition had been the dominant political pattern of the 20th century it would have happened again. 

Interestingly whilst Thatcherism would have been blunted by the decreasing strength of the Conservatives in the 1980s, Blair might have actually been prompted to do more than he actually did when in office. There is little bar the Freedom of Information Act and the Minimum Wage which mark out Labour's period, in sharp contrast to our 1945-51. The Liberal Democrats actually had more of a radical agenda and a greater portion of this would have been passed, if not all of it, given that they would still be the junior partners.

Of course those tired of the Conservatives in this alternative UK may have turned to the Liberal Democrats rather than heading right over to New Labour given how much stronger the Liberal Democrats would be in this world than in ours. 

Note the appearance of the Referendum Party, a right-wing single issue party aimed to pressurise the government to have a referendum on the EU's Maastricht Treaty. In our world it was a failure, in this alternate one it would be the fourth largest party, ahead even of the far longer established Scottish Nationalists. Whilst it may have had minimal impact on the coalition government its presence may have provoked the Conservatives to being more strongly Eurosceptic than some of them were in our world.

2001: 659 (Labour Party)
Conservative: (31.7%); 210 seats [166]
Labour: (40.7%); 270 seats [413]
Liberal Democrats: (18.3%); 121 seats [52]
Scottish Nationalists: (1.8%); 12 seats [5]
Scottish Socialist Party (0.3%): 2 seats [0]
Plaid Cymru: (0.7%); 5 seats [4]
Ulster Unionists (2 parties): (1.5%) 9 seats [10]
Sinn Fein: (0.7%); 5 seats [4]
SDLP: (0.6%); 4 seats [3]
UK Independence Party: (1.5%); 10 seats [0]
British National Party: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Green: (0.6%); 4 seats [0]
Socialist Alliance: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Socialist Labour: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Independent: (0.4%); 3 seats [1]

In our world, the 2001 election was seen pretty much as 'no change' and that would predominantly have been the case in the alternate UK. The most notable feature was what the media termed the return to three-party politics with the Liberal Democrats achieving the strength of the Liberals in the 1920s.  Of course in the alternate UK, bar a period in the 1950s, the Liberals would have been far stronger throughout, possibly even coming into government in the mid-1980s. 

Note the appearance of the UK Independence Party in 2001; it had been founded in 1993. This is a more strongly anti-European Union party but if the Referendum Party had won seats in 1997 it may have grown or mutated by 2001. The RP had effectively been run by Sir James Goldsmith its leader and after his death following the 1997 election it may have encountered difficulties. Whether UKIP replaced it or not, we would still have an anti-European pepper group in Parliament especially needling the Conservatives. 

Note also the appearance of the BNP. Like the NF in the 1970s, seats may have given it credibility, but the British public seem uninspired to adopt Fascism to any large extent. Also interesting is the appearance of more left-wing parties in the wake of New Labour's move to the Thatcherite consensus ground. Of course, in our world, there have been tens of left-wing parties on the margins of British politics certainly from the 1960s onwards, but never achieving anything in parliament. This might have been the biggest change in 2001, hidden by first-past-the-post but shown by proportional representation that on the fringes on both ends of the political spectrum people were becoming more radical. The Greens would also double their seats from 1997.

2005: 646 (Labour Party)
Conservative (32.3%); 209 seats [198]
Labour: (35.3%); 228 seats [356]
Liberal Democrat: (22.1%); 143 seats [62]
Scottish Nationalists: (1.5%); 10 seats [6]
Scottish Socialist: (0.2%); 1 seat [0]
Plaid Cymru: (0.6%); 4 seats [3]
Ulster Unionists (2 parties): (1.4%); 10 seats [10]
SDLP: (0.5%); 4 seats [3]
Sinn Fein (0.6%); 4 seats [5]
UK Independence Party: (2.2%); 14 seats [0]
BNP: (0.7%); 5 seats [0]
Green: (1%); 7 seats [0]
Respect: (0.3%); 2 seats [1]
Independent: (0.5%); 3 seats [1]

The Labour-Liberal coalition, if they were not heartily sick of each other, would be going still into the 21st century with the Liberals becoming stronger with each election. The coalition could argue legitimately that it represented a majority of voters receiving over 57% of the vote. 

The Conservatives, ironically, would have done far better with proportional representation than they did under our system, not fading away so drastically as they did post-1997 in our world. Hanging on their coat-tails though is the UKIP growing slowly in strength and shaping Conservative policy, no doubt. 

Note the steady advance too of the Greens and of the BNP, suggesting that the mainstream parties are not addressing concerns of a growing number of people on issues around the environment and immigration/a Fascist state. Of course, under proportional representation their growth may have been even faster, as, like with the Liberals, people who supported these parties would not feel they were 'wasting' their vote with no chance of getting an MP. To a lesser extent the dissatisfaction with Labour in particular is shown by the Scottish Socialists clinging on and the Respect Party headed by ex-Labour MP and maverick, George Galloway. His small party would have done a little better under proportional representation.

Conclusions
This posting has taken 3 days to assemble and in that time I have realised that my assumptions about proportional representation were partly wrong. If it had come in from 1918 then the UK is unlikely to have seen a majority government subsequently. However, at some times, notably in the 1920s and 1970s the political scene would have been little different to what the real UK faced. 

In contrast to what is usually argued, however, the British centre ground would have been far stronger with the Liberals, except in the 1950s, being a clear third party for much of the post-1918 period.  They would certainly have been key players in the formation of governments. It seems clear that Britain might have suffered the turbulence of politics, especially in the 1920s and later, that France faced. There in 1958 the political system was overhauled to promote stability and possibly by the 1960s the UK would have seen modification of its system as well. However, ironically, at times of severe crisis, as in the First World War (1914-18), the Depression (1931-40) and the Second World War (1939-45) the UK has been ruled by coalitions and has done not badly out of it. We probably would have seen a centre-left coalition for the bulk of the 20th century and into the 21st century.

If Lloyd George had opted for proportional representation then the Liberal Party would have declined as maybe it was fated to do in the century of class based politics. However, this decline would have been a great deal slower and its revival in the era of prosperity, rather than hot conflict, in the 1960s would have been far quicker. In addition, given the electorate's seemingly almost equally divided loyalty between Labour and the Conservatives the Liberals would have been an essential part of almost every government created in 20th century Britain. There would have been issues around which way they turned and there was no guarantee between the 1920s and the 1970s that they would have been natural allies of Labour. Given that anyway the difference between Labour and the Conservatives on policy was so narrow from the later 1940s right through to the mid-1970s it may have simply come down to personalities.

As for small parties, the key beneficiaries would have been the Scottish National Party who from the 1960s onwards would have had a standing similar to the Liberals in our world. Fascist parties, the BNP and NF would have gained some credibility with a handful of MPs, but it seems that British political culture is not supportive of Fascists. Also, there have been small anti-Fascist parties since the 1970s and these may have gained ground in a way they never did in our world because of seeing the Fascists get seats and also the 'not wasted vote' issue. Similarly, Britain may have seen a Green movement more akin to that of West Germany which may have had an impact on particular social, industrial and environmental policies.

Some of the multiplicity of extreme left-wing parties may have gained ground. The Communists certainly would have had some seats after 1950 and in the 2000s we would have seen radical socialists appearing. All mainstream parties did a solid job of opposing Communism, Labour no less than the Conservatives and the behaviour of the USSR and China in the 1960s and 1970s discredited domestic Communists. In addition the continued fragmentation of the far left would have made it difficult for them to organise sufficiently to gain ground. However, as occurred in West Germany 1966-1969 when the Socialist SPD and Christian Democrat (Conservative) CDU/CSU were in the Grand Coalition there was resentment that everything was all sewn up in the centre and people turned to radical politics and violence as they felt that in such a corporatist system their voices were not heard. Whether the regular Labour-Liberal coalitions and occasional Conservative-Liberal ones would have made people feel similarly is open to speculation.

The biggest difference would have been the shifts in government in 1979 and to a lesser extent in 1945. In 1945 the different sides were far closer together on policy so the appearance of a strong Labour government did not mean huge differences compared to if the Conservatives had returned, especially in terms of the welfare state and foreign policy. In contrast the failure of Thatcher to achieve a strong majority in 1979 and the steady decline of support for the Conservatives through the 1980s would have prevented the extreme economic policies and the harsh social consequences that the UK faced. Consequently the Labour Party that would have evolved without the prick of Thatcherism probably would not have become New Labour, but rather have had more of a Kinnockite flavour.

The position in Northern Ireland would have been different with more Catholic representation at an earlier stage. However, it is doubtful whether this would have reduced the tensions and subsequent violence that occurred from the mid-1960s onwards, right through to the 1990s.

Your overall view of the proportional representation UK probably depends on how you view the big political shifts. Certainly Thatcherite Conservatives feel she did necessary things to the UK, despite the pain, and that the alternative was sustained crisis. The Labourites would mourn the loss of the sweeping changes of Attlee's governments, though I imagine many aspects like the National Health Service would have been created anyway. There would have been no need for New Labour which, as regular readers know, I feel owes little to Labour and more to an authoritarian mindset.

What is certain is that with proportional representation the fact that in general the British public is in three main groupings of similar sizes would have been apparent throughout, rather than seemingly making huge swings in one direction or the other. Looking at the percentages the changes have not been great and have arisen simply because of the distortion of the political system, it is usually a party with a minority of the votes who comes to power because they achieve far more seats. The British electorate is surprisingly stable, but this is not shown by the system we use. Well, I have learnt a lot from this exercise and my views on proportional representation have shifted as a result.

When Will Cars Be Considered the Weapons They Are?

Driving through one English region recently I was struck by the range of sentences handed down for similar crimes. These were:

Wife attempting to murder her husband using anti-freeze leading him to be disabled but to survive: Attempted Murder - 30 years

Man punched and kicked a man to death in a fight: Manslaughter - 14 years

Woman killed a cyclist by running him over in her car while texting someone on her mobile phone: Death By Dangerous Driving - 4 years

On these grounds it is actually more risky in terms of a prison sentence not to kill someone with anti-freeze than it is to murder them with a car. While researching this posting I came across similar comments from the late 1990s about people getting light sentences for being convicted for the offence of Death By Dangerous Driving:

http://www.iankitching.me.uk/articles/death-driving.html

Ian Kitching points out that if this offence which carried a sentence of 6 months to 2 years in those days, though in theory it has been raised to 14 years so in line with Manslaughter (though I yet to hear of a case in which a dangerous driver gets 14 years and guidance to courts is generally 2-5 years). Kitching shows cases in which drivers who have killed one or more people were getting sentences as short as 6 months. You can get 5 years for Actual Bodily Harm and Greivous Bodily Harm sentences can be 5 years to life and in these cases the person attacked is still alive; in addition aggravation such as a racial motive adds typically 2 years to the sentence. So for beating up someone on racial grounds you could get 7 years in prison but if you ran them down with a car you could get away with 6 months to a maximum of 4 years it seems.

Why is it in the UK that the car is not considered to be a weapon? I think partly it stems from the people who are judges. In 2004 16% of judges were women; judges earn £96,500-£129,900 (€128,35-€172,235; US$194,930-U$261,590) which is four to six times the national average salary so they are all very rich people. Though I accept that there are aggressive female drivers the bulk of the aggression on the roads is caused by men. The number of incidents of drivers following others home to attack or berate them has increased sharply even in the past two years (this happened to me and is very frightening, the motives for why they are offended by you are usually obscure). Thus, I believe that judges who rarely walk around outside or find themselves fighting in pub car parks are more sympathetic to accused who harm people using a big car like they drive. They can easily see themselves mowing down some defenceless pedestrian or cyclist without noticing, so they are lenient on the people like themselves, careless, rich men in many cases. It also explains why sentences for rapists are so lenient too and why attempted murder by women of their husbands conversely receives such strong punishment as the judges want to send a warning to their own spouses.

Until the sentences for causing death using a car come in line with sentences for using a knife or a gun or your fists (or ironically tools from a car like the jack) to commit violence then people are going to continue to drive around recklessly fast, using hand-held equipment and know that they are going to get off lightly.

I always warn the six-year old who lives in this house that he is far more likely to be killed by a driver than any other weapon. In 1997 following the Hungerford and Dunblaine attacks most handguns in the UK were banned and deaths from shootings in England, Scotland and Wales combined were only 58 in 2005/06 and 67 in 2006/07 (down from a peak of 102 in 2001/02). In 2005, 3,201 people were killed by or in cars; 48% of these were people not using the cars themselves, which suggests that 1,537 people were killed through a car inadvertently or intentionally used as a weapon. Hence you are 22 times more likely to be killed by a car than by a gun in England, Scotland and Wales (in fact the chance is far greater in Scotland where gun deaths have been in single figures through the 2000s). In 2004 in England and Wales, 282 murders were committed using a sharp implement, predominantly knives so it suggests that in England and Wales you are approximately five times more likely to be killed by a car than a knife.

Why then do courts and sentences see cars for what they really are? Commonly available lethal weapons given to people who would often be refused any firearm or even a knife? A kitchen knife, like a car, is a mundane object, but that does not stop people for recognising it for the lethal object it can become. A car is many kilogrammes of metal able to travel fast enough to smear people across a road and kill them instantly. Even at 30mph (56 kph) someone hit is 10% likely to be killed, this rises to 90% by 40mph. Cars drive down my residential road at 60mph (the speed limit is 30mph but is uneforced by speed cameras) guaranteeing anyone who steps or is on their bicycle and is hit by a car will die. Pro-speeding organisations like SafeSpeed contest the government's figures for road deaths, but to me 827 pedestrians killed by cars in 2001 plus 39,470 injured is far too high and exceeds by many times the deaths from shootings or stabbings for which people receive far, far longer sentences. Speeding in Britain is seen like gun ownership in the USA as some kind of God-given right and one that to these arrogant, usually prosperous men (who resent that the rest of society comes anywhere near their perceived 'level' of course in fact none of us want to go down to their caveman behaviour) is far more important than life itself. The death of even one person from a car is excessive and the sense that there are 'tolerable' levels such as the 107 child pedestrians killed by cars in 2001, is sickening, to seek to do as SafeSpeed does to put the blame on pedestrians for daring to get in the way of their speeding cars, is akin to a gunman saying it was the dead person's fault for not moving out of the way of the bullet that was being fired at them.

It is simple:

Cars are weapons. Reckless drivers are armed murderers. Murderers should be sentenced in line with the law on murder.


P.P. After posting this, another thought came to my mind in regards to sentencing of criminals. In setting down the sentence the judge will often consider how much there is a risk that the criminal will offend again. This is why sometimes people who have murdered their partner or family members get quite light sentences on the assumption that they do not have such a close relationship with the bulk of the population and so are not a hazard to people they are not related to. The things about killer drivers is that they are highly likely to offend again and they are a threat to anyone in society. In the large majority of cases they have no idea who they actually killed, often they have not even seen them when they run them down, and as SafeSpeed makes clear, these kind of people blame the victim for the collision not themselves. Thus, they are actually far more dangerous to the population as they do not believe they did anything wrong and also because their victims are totally random. Even someone running round a US town with a rifle tends to target people he knows or knows of whereas a killer driver in the UK is a risk to all of us. Thus, on this basis their sentences should be higher rather than lower than those people who have a restricted pool of targets. I fear that the issue comes round premeditation and that killer drivers are seen as 'accidental' killers. That is generally true but they have taken a premeditated decision to drive too fast and dangerously and so are effect setting themselves up to kill even if they have not yet selected their target. This is playing Russian Roulette with other people's lives and they should be sentenced in the way you would sentence someone who runs through a city centre blindfolded and firing a pistol and kills someone, they are as dangerous as that. The judges cannot apparently see that, as they are so similar to these criminals in their own behaviour.

In Big Brother Britain Don't Dare Move

I have long said 'Big Brother may be watching, but he's got poor eyesight'. Having worked for the civil service in three different branches I have been aware how dependent it is on human input. So many times do people misread things or transpose digits or drop files down the back of the shelving, that you can often find errors creaping in. My father ended up with three separate tax files because on different occasions when he had contacted the tax office they had got one or more of the digits of his national insurance number wrong or in the wrong order. The problem of such technical error, especially in an increasingly authoritarian regime, was shown sharply in the movie 'Brazil' (1985) in which an insect falls on a typing machine in a sinister 1984-style state and changes the first letter on the name of people to be arrested and a loyal servant of the state is arrested instead. In my own life changing branches at a bank once my middle initial was altered and the last three letters of my surname were left off creating a whole new name associated with my bank account. As we rush headlong towards identity cards in the UK I anticipate many more errors of this kind creaping in and you will find yourself picked up and held for 42 days without charge as your mistyped identity card number happens to be the same as a suspected terrorist. As people such as the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six innocent people wrongly convicted of terrorist activity in the mid-1970s demonstrated it is almost impossible to prove you are not a terrorist.

This post has rather branched off from my intended focuse which was a little more mundane, though for me far more immediate. Despite the fact that I moved house three months ago there still seems to be an incessant amount of people I have to inform about the fact. Partly I imagine that this stems from all the pbobia around identity fraud. This has reached such an extent with online shopping that given I forget all the identity names and passwords (and you are increasingly compelled to have very complex ones missing cases and numerals into the words) that I have abandoned buying online and gone back to doing it over the telephone, which seems to be a retrograde step and certainly more costly for me. Anyway, it took three attempts to get my bank to recognise that I had moved house though ironically they were the ones providing the mortgage for the house I am now living in. I had to change my credit card details separately as though the credit card comes from the bank it is actually supplied by a different company, something I was oblivious to as it has never come up before despite holding the credit card since 1987. Then of course there were the utilities. The fact that gas and electricity comes from a single company reduced one occasion of informing of change of address (and the company then charged me for fuel use at my old address and then refunded most of it generating even more paper) has to be balanced by the fact that in my town we have a separate water company and a sewage company both of which had to be informed. There was council tax and television licence too.

The main problem has come with things connected to the car. When you move you have to have a new insurance certificate which costs more money and they reassess if your new postcode is more hazardous than the previous one. Then I had to change my driving licence and I assumed that as this is handled by the DVLA that they would also change the vehicle registration details and car tax, but of course no, I found today that has to be done separately. Not only does this entail more phonecalls (no companies ever seem to respond to emails) but yet more paperwork as they never simply send you a licence but accompany it with a whole host of pamphlets. I do wonder if there is anything else I have forgotten to change. The electoral register is after us too, but we are loath to change that as we know our former landlord's representative is hunting us down and being public it is one source he will use to try to find us. Oh yes, and I forgot re-registering with a doctor and them wanting you to take out time to have a bloodtests and they are only open for that during office hours Monday to Thursday when I am working 30 miles away.

Of course once the identity cards come in we will have to change them each time we move too, and probably have to go for an interview. As with everything which is being added in British society, the poorer you are and thus the more mobile you are (as you have to seek out employment and housing) the more you are weighed down by such regulations and the cost of delay in changing things. The number of overlapped utility bills I have to pay is ridiculous. No-one seems to conside the burden of getting two bills on gas, electricity, water (they had cancelled the standing order when we moved for some reason then sent out a late payment letter), sewage, telephone (I had forgotten that one though this time it was resolved 5 weeks quicker than the last time I moved) occurring because they now insist you pay in advance for all utilities but they only stop charging you a month after you have left. Heaven help you if you lose one letter or scrap of paper, the authorities are unforgiving. Whilst I have no desire to have all information centralised I just wish bodies reacted as quickly as they expect us to do and not charge us double every time we move house.

The least companies can do is not tell you to inform them of change of address and yet throw away your details each time you move. They should not charge you in advance for utilities anyway and even if they do realise you do not have the capacity for two bills in one month. They should also pay attention when you actually send in change of address details, banks especially as an error in your address now mucks up so much verification of online purchasing. Finally when a company or organisation provides you with more than one service you should not have to change your address separately for each one. For a country which wants greater population, well in fact labour, mobility, its companies and government departments make it a nightmare even to move a mile.

The Guilt at Being Sick

This is another posting inspired by an article I have read but it goes to something that many of us living in the UK and probably many other countries have experienced. The portrayal of the average UK worker by employers in whatever media they are asked to comment is that we are lazy and that we are always trying to get out of work. Every year it is reported how much money is lost through UK workers having bank holidays (despite the fact that we have 5 fewere per year than the next nearest country) and how we will not work long hours (though the UK is the only EU country that has been exempted from the Working Time Directive restricting workers to 48 hours work per week) and so despite working longer than elsewhere we are made to feel guilty that we are somehow weakening the British economy. There is never any reference to how little work bosses do or how their high salaries and bonuses eat up far more profits than the few bank holidays that workers get in the UK.

The new focus is on sick leave. The Health Secretary Alan Johnson wants to stamp out the 'sick-note culture' in this urge to make us all work harder or pay the price. It is stated that apparently there are 175 million sick days taken each year (about 7 per person of working age) costing the country £13 billion (compared to the £5 billion it is spending on identity cards, though how they calculate this loss from missed work days is never revealed and there is no consideration that many of us make up the work we have missed by being off sick). Apparently the DVLA, the motor vehicle licensing authority says on average its workers take 11 sick days per year and they are seeking to clamp down on it.

Nowhere does anyone seem to look at this issue with anything except the sense that everyone is faking illness to get free time of work and it is something they should be stopped from doing. No-one looks at how inhospitable many workplaces are where bullying is very common and the prospects for a decent salary and promotion are limited or non-existent. No-one takes into account that many sick days are taken when parents are actually not sick but have to stay home to look after their ill children especially these days when schools are loath to have anyone exhibiting signs of (or being suspected of having been in contact with) illness. No-one analyses how stressful workplaces are in the UK where so many of us on short-term contracts are fearful of slipping up and losing our jobs. In addition, in an environment where the bulk of us feel compelled to keep on working while still ill or get back to work as soon as we can, no-one considers how many infections we pick up from our fellow workers who should be at home.

There are lazy people in the UK, but the bulk of the population is keen to work a decent day for a decent wage. We know that employers look askance at us if we reveal that we have had more than 2 sick days off within the past 2 years (the usual maximum permitted in the UK before questions are asked), so we try to keep ill-health to a minimum. We even try to keep the ill-health of our children to a minimum so as not to affect our jobs. Yet, this is not enough and employers seem to have a free hand to accuse us all of being malingerers when so many of them have poor attendance and slide off to pay golf. In the UK you have to accept that you will work longer than people across the English Channel, in poorer conditions and at lower wages and yet you should be so grateful for the job you have and never dare to be ill. Ironically if employers finally moved away from this 'master-and-servant' criticising and hostile attitude to the workforce and recognise that 'life happens' in fact they would find poor attendance would fall. Bullying workers and making them fill guilty worsens how people feel and brings sick people back to work to contaminate the rest. Vomiting sicknesses like Novovirus are rife in British society at present and are spread easily when sick people return to work alongside tired, stressed colleagues. Of course, British employers have no desire to invest in their staff just in flogging what they can out of them and to make them feel guilty that they are not grateful for that flogging. If the UK economy is ever going to survive in the 21st century it needs to change from the sickness guilt trip.

P.P. Since writing this I read that in France sick leave days come out of your holiday allowance and if you take off 3 days in a single month your salary is reduced to 85%. To me this seems harsh and encouraging the kind of problems I have noted in the UK example. The issue in the UK though is that pay is so low compared to a rapidly rising cost of living (fuel up 20p per litre (23%) in 12 months, utility costs rising at 11-15% per year, house prices rising at anything from 2%-48% depending on what area you live in but salaries rising at 1.5-3%) losing such pay would raise repossessions. In addition, the working week is shorter, the lunch break longer (often 2 hours still in France compared to the average of 23 minutes in the UK) and they receive more holidays (not least bank holidays) and retire at 60 rather than 65. The trouble with the UK is that it might be less regulatory in some things but it offers so much less to its employees in the first place.

Next Steps in Constructing the British Police State

With the announcement this week that identity cards which had fallen from public attention in the past few months were not only going to be introduced but on a more rapid schedule at a cost over over £5 billion (€6.65 billion; US$9.95 billion) and the continued attempts to increase the time a prisoner can be held without charge from 28 days to 42 days indicates that the Blairite agenda of sweeping away civil liberties is continuing full force under Brown. The question is what can we expect next? Obviously opposition to identity cards and extended detention (which they want to extend to 90 days, 42 days is the 'compromise') has slowed down the programme, but given the government's desire to push it on it is likely to continue. Now, there are lots of examples of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that we can look at for examples. Some of these are getting out of date now. The last fascist regime in Europe ended in Spain in 1975 and the last Communist states in Europe fell in 1991. However, even if we have to look back to the 1940s, it is really only the technology that has changed and not the way in which governments want to control people, so we can draw parallels. The Nazis did not have CCTV or retinal scans or computer databases (though IBM helped them number crunch the Holocaust), they still kept track of people as governments wish to today it just needed more time and effort.

In the past I have argued that the kind of state that Blair was seeking to construct resembled Vichy France 1940-3/4 or Corporatist Austria 1934-8 (i.e. before it was absorbed by Germany) in having a prejudiced state without democratic rights and with strong police powers but based on a Christian nationalist basis so lots of emphasis on the (Catholic) Church, national identity, hard work, sacrifice and the family. Blair used rhetoric from Vichy France and so I imagine this is still the model the government is aiming for. However, with the departure of Blair (soon formally to become a Catholic) and his replacement with Brown has shifted the emphasis towards a more Presbyterian, quietist rhetoric, but still aiming for the state attributes that were Blair's goals. This is unsurprising as Blair and Brown worked closely for over a decade and whilst they did not agree on everything, they cannot have had diametrically opposed views on what they wanted for British society.

Right, now by 2009 I anticipate we will have 42-day detention without charge and identity cards, already in place for foreigners and coming in for British people too. Already in 2008 you now have to wait 6 weeks to get a passport and will have an interview before being given one. This kind of thing will increase so that you will be checked up on more regularly by government bodies. The excuse is that it prevents identity fraud but there is no evidence it has reduced it at all. You will probably start being checked before you can get a national insurance number or a driving licence, not just whether you qualify but whether you are the 'right' kind of person. This legal shift from people being guilty because of what they do, i.e. commit a crime to being assumed guilty because of who they are, e.g. a foreigner or a 'subversive' is always characteristic of authoritarian regimes. The government has already revived the police power of 'stop and search', popularly known as 'sus'. They have also talked about curfews of 9pm for under sixteens. Before long it will be a crime to be out without your identity card leading to immediate arrest and then I envisage, taking slightly longer we will have curfews for adults too. The use of ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) is supposed to stop disruptive youths but they are often applied to mature and elderly people and now they are in place they will be used to stop people assembling in certain areas or meeting with each other. ASBOs seem ineffectual, but that is actually beneficial for the government as few people have noticed they actually curtail the right of individuals to the freedom of assembly or to go where they like in public areas.

The other noticeable thing is that universities are being asked to keep check on 'suspicious' students, especially from abroad. In fact this was already in place during the Cold War, it is now just becoming more overt. Lecturers have resisted this, but once they start seeing that the universities and the staff that get government funding are those that best comply with what the government is asking for on surveillance they will get in line or be forced to do so by their managers, desperate for funding. Such checks I envisage will extend through other sectors of society, next, I imagine will be the National Health Service, particularly due to how dependent Britain is on doctors and nurses from abroad, and the Civil Service. These three areas were the professions which the Nazis purged the Jews first.

Within, say, five years, appraisals in all jobs, and certainly those in the public sector, will include checking how loyal you are to the state and whether you are involved in 'subversive' activity. I also imagine that we will get something as they have in China where everyone has a file that goes with them as they move from job to job and in particular records any protests they have been involved in. Effectively it creates an automatic blacklist because if you go for a job interview and the employers see in your file that you are politically active they simply do not employ you. Nazi Germany had a similar work card system. Most people will keep quiet to keep their jobs, especially as the media is telling us we have to compete so hard for them especially with foreign workers and especially if you are a man. This builds up compliance and also increased resentment against people who are 'other', two things the government is keen to do.

One clear element of an authoritarian regime is its secret police force. Well, first there is the issue of surveillance. Already we are moving to bugged or wire tap evidence being used in court. The standard police already make use of such devices but clearly they are incredibly beneficial to secret police bodies. Whilst torture is banned in the UK there seems an increasing willingness to use evidence gained under torture in other countries notably the USA. Britain may find that like the Americans with Guantanamo Bay on Cuba, that there is a little bit of empire left which is strictly not Britain and where they can use torture without violating UK laws or maybe they will just leave it to the Americans to do it for them. The use of torture to gain evidence in the UK, I doubt will be here until late in the 2010s, especially as surveillance technologies are so sophisticated that they allow 'suspicious' people to damn themselves with their own words. Since the early 2000s all emails sent from the UK have passed through security service devices (surprisingly in the Clinton era this fact actually upset American businesses, but since 2001 they seem to have stopped complaining) and GCHQ in Cheltenham has long been tapping telephone conversations. It is always fun to wind them up by using buzz words that their computers are looking for in innocent conversations on the phone. Mobile phones and laptops are even easier to get a grip on, even a member of the public with a few hundred pounds can get enough equipment to start listening into you and parents now can subscribe to a service that allows them to locate their children by their mobile phone usage. In addition, bascially anything you see on a spy movie has been in use 5-10 years by the time you see it.

Back to the secret police. Well, we have MI5 (also known as the Security Service) as our counter-intelligence agency, which gets great PR from the televisions series 'Spooks'. If you look at the very complex police structure of Nazi Germany you find MI5 resembles most the SD (Sicherheitdienst, literally Security Service), but MI5 lacks the power of arrest they are just about intelligence gathering. Though I am sure they do not hold back from abducting the odd person here or there. Britain had Special Branch which was a part of the Metropolitan (i.e. London) police force founded in 1883 and throughout its history often focused on Irish terrorism, though in the 1960s and 1970s it also focused on trade unionists and political extremists. In 1992 MI5 out of work following the end of the Cold War took over much of its anti-terrorist work. Special Branch (600 officers) was merged in 2005 with the Counter-Terrorism Branch SO13 (500 officers) to create a new body, the Counter-Terrorism Command with extra officers to lift its number to 2000. Special Branch is assigned the intelligence gathering and the former SO13 part the investigative (and arrest part). This is similar to what happened in Nazi Germany in 1939 when the Gestapo and SD were merged in the so-called RSHA but kept their previous roles. The new CTC explicitly mentions that its roles now branded 'counter-extremism' includes monitoring political, animal rights, anti-globalization, and environmental 'extremism'. This has nothing to do with al-Qaeda it is just about keeping down protest. So while the UK does not have a Department of Homeland Security, it certainly already has its secret police force and in larger numbers than at the peak of the Cold War and Irish terrorist activity. I have forgotten the new UK Border Agency launched this week bringing together customs and excise and immigration units. It is going to be responsible for identity cards for foreigners in the UK and is aiming to increase its detention capacity as part of its year long programme. This is one irony of the UK's rush to become a police state, its prisons are currently full, so maybe they will have to concentrate people in camps in rural areas just like the Australians do when they intern asylum seekers in camps in the outback. The UK has just adopted the Australian system for regulating foreigners coming into the UK so it cannot be long before it adopts the Australian concentration camp system too (of course invented by the British anyway at the start of the 20th century for interning Boer families in South Africa).

Censorship, well, that seems already to be effectively in place given that we had to wait 10 weeks to find out about where Prince Harry was. The UK has always had its D-Notice Committee which sends out notices to British media blocking them from reporting various things and at times journalists have had their resources seized. The fact that so much of the media is in the hands of so few people and the BBC network is semi-state owned. I never understand when politicians call it left-wing, it is so pro-Establishment that it is painful, I think that is just a blind played by politicians who want overt censorship powers and it is interesting that authoritarian regimes do not like interesting programmes. Only Josef Goebbels, propaganda minister of Nazi Germany recognised that you just had to provide tacky entertainment to keep the masses happy and we seem to have arrived at that stage now with all the reality shows. George Galloway's failure to subvert the 'Big Brother' series by appearing on it demonstrated the inability to dent that power. However, control of the media is far tougher now even when you have the media producers on your side. China spends immense amounts of money policing the internet and Singapore has had to give up as it is too expensive. When you can log on and get news coverage from across the planet it is difficult to stop people seeing a different viewpoint. The Chinese do it by arresting bloggers and others who take a political line and by encouraging society to see it as bad to look at other sources of information (animated police characters come on screen when you connect to such websites). So establishing societal norms against accessing 'improper' information and arresting the most outspoken is probably the path the UK will adopt. It is helped by the fact that the UK has long been a country disinterested in politics anyway, few people vote or read political news stories, and that is actually in sharp contrast to the population of China which has a long history of political activism. Censorship and self-censorship and shoving meaningless news and programmes at us is already under way and is liable to keep increasing at its current steady rate.

The other element the government needs to put in place more actively if it is truly going to get the authoritarian state it desires is a mass movement. As noted above the British are apathetic so are reluctant to get involved. Various newspapers run bigoted, pro-military campaigns that attract short-term support, but unlike the Americans, the British do not adhere to mass movements even when scared and they forget the frights very quickly. Partly the problem with a mass movement is that British society is so fragmented with region, class, age, etc. and lacks common grounds that groups in places like the USA can coalesce around. We cannot even agree on St. George's Day let alone the flag and so on. Getting people together in the UK shows up the class differences which riles the British more than anything else. So, what I envisage is again that the British government will follow the Nazi model and have a whole series of patriotic groups, ones associated with teachers and nurses and truck drivers and mothers and young people and old people and so on. They can draw in groups that already exist, the scout movement in the UK already has a very patriotic agenda and I imagine we will see it increasing in size and support from the state. Something like a spin-off from the Countryside Alliance may become the rural arm and across the UK we will see more of these bodies becoming corporations of the state, seeming to represent the voice of their members but in fact constraining them to the line set by the government. Fascist Italy was very keen on this approach and even ended up with a part of its parliament at which all these different groups were formally represented.

The spin-off from the mass movement is to get a watcher on every street. Authoritarian regimes are fuelled by the so-called 'little Hitlers' you see in every country. These are the self-righteous busybodies who love to have some power over their neighbours and to police their behaviour. They are everywhere especially on residents' groups and pushing for ASBOs against people they take a dislike to. There are many on local councils too and most magistrates (the part-time judges at the British equivalent of police courts) fit this category. They think they are better than the rest of us and love getting official power from the state. They flourished during the Second World War when every Home Guard soldier and every ARP (Air Raid Precautions) officer fell into this category (excellently portrayed in the long-running TV series, 'Dad's Army' in all their officiousness) to the extent that Home Guard checkpoints slowed up the movement of the regular army as their officers could often not prove they were not German agents in disguise and would be arrested. Millions of Britons would relish the chance to become Anti-Terrorist Warden for their street and bully anyone they feel is 'different' or 'improper' with official sanction. Again, this was an approach the Nazis adopted with their block wardens (as Germans generally live in blocks of flats) and China does with its danwei work group system. People say that the British do not like behaving this way and policing their neighbours, that is utter rubbish. If like me you ever work in the post room of the local tax office or benefits office, every day you have to deal with letters from people 'shopping' (i.e. asking people to be investigated and arrested) their neighbours who they suspect of defrauding the government. Only a tiny fraction of these letters are ever accurate and most simply reflect jealousy of what the neighbour has or indignation at how they live their lives. So, Britain has got a ready made body of ATWs just waiting for the government to mobilise them. There was one minor attempt back in the early 2000s when the government sent round information about defending yourself from terrorism, but they did not really follow it up or get a movement behind it.

So, these are the next steps the UK is likely to take in building its police state. Many things like ASBOs are well established it just needs other elements to come together with them and suddenly they become much more powerful. Things that have been growing in recent years such as censorship and control over our movements will continue to do so quietly. We have already lost so many freedoms since 1997 that you do not realise until you sit down and look back that you can see the changes. Of course there is an injection of fear once in a while and the British need more of them because we forget our fears much faster than the Americans do. I predict some terrorist attack at a large event this Summer just to cap off the new developments with identity cards and show us why we would should yield to our fears and instead accept the warm protecting arm of our authoritarian government. Get out now and ramble through the countryside possibly bringing you near some base (driving through southern England last year, I pulled over to check my map and found I had inadvertently pulled into the entrance to the Porton Down chemical and biological weapons research centre, I did wonder why there was such a big fence and all the cameras), and meet up with your friends on a street corner one night, go into town without it being filled with people in military uniforms (do that one quick as the rules are being changed as we sit here), do all these things before you lose the right.

While researching for this posting I came across a useful site called Statewatch which monitors civil liberties right across the European Union. It has great resources on all of the issues I have covered here, go visit it at: http://www.statewatch.org/

The Trouble After Suicide Fails Is That You Still Have To Face Life

One reason why I have not been blogging much recently is because I have been facing pressures: severe ill-health during my first holiday since 2005 and now bad news about my employment prospects. I suppose I should have not expected any more. In this age we should expect to have to have twenty plus jobs in our lives. I have been fortunate that at a time when 2 year contracts or less are the norm, my last job went on for 4.5 years and this one will reach 4 years too if I complete the latest contract in August 2009. For a man in his twenties, two years is probably enough in a post, but as I age it gets harder, exacerbated by having to move across England and then move house twice more during the 2 years 7 months that I have had this current job. Anyway, yesterday it was revealed to us that the company had found out it was doing worse than it thought and was looking at cutting jobs. Of course the high ups will be unaffected they always are and will not even see a pay cut. The most vulnerable are people like me, the contract workers. They do not need to pay redundancy money they just do not re-employ us. This means another move and now of course I have to sell the house (the value of which is falling) which could easily take 5 months or more given it took 7 months to get in here. My industry is not one with jobs everywhere so I will be back on the road again. The longest I have spent in one town was 6 years in London and it looks like the average is about 4 years. Anyway, I just could not face the uncertainty, the need to keep on applying for jobs (I usually get 1 interview for every 25 applications I make and 1 job for every 125 applications, that is hours and hours of filling in forms) all made worse by now being over 40 (my insurance companies keep telling me this fact and why it means my premiums have to rise).

You will not be surprised to find that all of this simply made me tired with life and I began taking an overdose of prescription medicine last night. Of course I bottled it (for non-UK readers, I lost the courage to finish it off), I made the mistake of not getting drunk first and having watched a particularly bleak episode of the science fiction series 'Torchwood' this week about a man brought back to life, I became terrified of what lurked waiting for me beyond life. Initially it had felt really relaxing and I had no desire to write a note or anything, just to get away from all the stuff piling on my head. Today I feel incredibly cowardly that I am still here, extremely weak in terms of my resolve and so rather than yesterday when I felt courageous I now despise myself even more. I do feel rather numb which is quite a good sensation because the big problem of failing to kill yourself is that you still have to face up to all the rubbish you were trying to leave behind and that is where I am now, but the fear of unemployment and the house respossession that would inevitably fail, the need to throw away so many of my possessions so I could fit into a flat I could afford and give up what I have accumulated in my life, is dulled now, though of course it has not gone away and is still to be faced.

They say unemployment has fallen from the 4 million out of work of the 1980s down to somewhere like 1.6 million people these days. However, I think there is a lot of missing unemployment, unreported and also for people like me, underemployment in the sense that my next job is unlikely to pay sufficient to keep the house. How foolish I was to fall for the pressure and the lure of buying the house, and how incredibly quickly (it is just over 3 months since we moved in) that it is all coming apart. This is my moment of being truly middle class, it is likely to expire in 17 months if not sooner. Men are obsolete, the new jobs being created are low paid and unappealing. What a waste of government money all my education was in that it cannot keep me in a decent job and in my house. I should have simply left school at 16 and I would be in no different position now. I would probably have had fewer experiences, but so many of them have been about stress and pressure, I would have given up the bulk of them. I can see why the suicide rate among young men in the UK is so high, there is nothing to live for. If you are lucky you will get a decent life for a few years, but then it will evaporate sooner or later and certainly when you retire if not before. How dare people try to stop young men exiting the so bleak existence that lies before the bulk of them.

This was another point which angered me. My housemate got angry that I would kill myself in my own house with a 6-year old living here. For a start I reserve the right to kill myself in my own house and no-one is going to stop that. Second, I have ended up as de facto father figure to this child (you cannot avoid it, beware of this two adults plus child, no matter what the relationship, end up being perceived as the parents no matter how badly qualified one or other is for the role. I imagine it even applies with two people of the same sex living in the house but it is even easier if you are a different gender to the real parent) and apparently that means I cannot kill myself. That is ridiculous, the strongest woman I ever knew had had both her father and uncle kill themselves and it made her outward going and intelligent and incredibly well travelled. The reason behind this is because children who come from two-parent families are too weak to live in this modern world. Only children from single parent families stand any chance these days. They are not pandered to and early on they learn to be tough and resourceful. If I had not been brought up by two parents I am sure I could cope far better with the situations I am facing. It is rubbish to say families need fathers; two parent families are unsuitable for western society in the twenty-first century and that 6-year old would be better off without some pretend father.

So where does this leave me now? Well, I guess the numbness will wear off and the fear of the future will return. Also massive regret over so many things I have done wrong. Every decision I seem to have made since 2005 has been a big error. Leaving my old permanent post for a contract job in more expensive region of the UK was a major mistake especially as they reneged on three-quarters of the relocation expenses I had been promised. The second thing was not to downsize immediately and try to keep the space I had previously enjoyed, that is impossible in South-East England. I picked two wrong houses to rent. They initially seemed good but the behaviour of the landlords cut the ground from beneath me and costs thousands of pounds in moving and moving again let alone a lot of stress. Of course the house purchase was handled very poorly, getting so little for my London flat, paying so much for this house and getting a fixed-rate mortgage when interest rates were at their peak. Done differently I could have got £5-10,000 more out of the deal and not eaten up all my savings for a house I will not see two years in and that money could have tided me over the period of unemployment that is coming up. I have been a fool at every turn.

As you can tell given that nothing has changed in the circumstances that led to me trying to take my own life (something I can never get right, I tried to hang myself at the age of 22 and the hook to which the rope was tied broke dropping me to the floor) remains. Next time I am going to get a lot of alcohol to keep the frights away as I do it and I am going to make sure that I have far far more medicines so that there is no chance I will come back simply with a headache. Then the government can simply continue its authoritarian steps (still trying to push for 42 days detention without charge and now rushing through identity cards for all foreign nationals in the UK, a cynical ploy as the libertarian right are strongly against identity cards but they hate immigrants even more) without me.

Prince Harry's Tour of Duty

Now before I launch into this post I must state a vested interest first, which is that I believe having a royal family is only a bad thing for the UK. They are expensive and the are part of the non-democratic political system that we have in this country. I do not see that happening to be the only available Protestant family in 1714 deemed fit enough to rule Britain qualifies you for being anything of use in 2008. That aside we come to more current issues. The British Royal Family have long had connections with the military. All of the mature members are colonels-in-chief of at least one regiment and they regularly visit naval and airforce units too. This is part of the military-nobility-Anglican clergy complex we have in the UK, because the Queen is also head of the Church of England and the senior noble in the country. Whilst monarchs have not led units to war for almost three hundred years, their children have seen action. One of the Queen's uncles died in an aircraft crash while in the RAF and her husband saw action in the Second World War; her second son, Prince Andrew was in the Falklands Conflict of 1982 where in fact given how badly things went for the British at some stages he could have been killed. One of her grandsons, second in line to the throne, Prince William was barred by the military from going to fight in Iraq as they apparently feared that he would make his unit a particular target, though given the regularity of death among British soldiers in Iraq they would still have faced a great risk with or without him. Now it turns out his younger brother, so third in line to the throne, Prince Harry had been serving for 10 weeks in Afghanistan but since the story broke was brought home.

Now there are so many things wrong with the whole incident. The first one is that the government gagged all British media to prevent it from reporting that the prince was serving in Afghanistan, naively believing that if the bulk of the British population did not know then somehow terrorists would not either; surely if they are as strong as we are told they have infiltrated every British newspaper, radio and television company. If al-Qaeda actually existed or were as sophisticated as the US government makes out, they would have known about Harry's destination before he left the UK let alone by the time he reached Afghanistan where Osama bin-Laden is supposed to be hiding and the Taleban that the British are fighting are supposed to be his ally. Anyone with minimal skill could get his picture from the internet and see him on patrol in Afghanistan. (Personally I think bin-Laden is tucked up safely in a nice discreet palace in Saudi Arabia protected by his wealthy family and friends). The gagging or probably more accurately, bribing as the media was promised exclusive coverage when he returned, was more about keeping it secret from the British public for fear of comment.

One reason why the British government does not want such attention is that they are receiving growing criticism. So, most of the British population accepted fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, though many did not, but there was an expectation from all that the British Army was professional and had the latest equipment. Yet at inquest after inquest we find that British vehicles have insufficient armour, British military police lack bullet-proof vests, that British soldiers are sent into night battles lacking even basic night vision equipment. We are trying to police the world on the cheap. I expect Prince Harry got all the equipment he needed, but if his mother had married some different man than the Prince of Wales, he or his equivalent could quite easily be killed by a poorly armed local guerilla just like scores of other British men and women.

The second problem is why was he brought back? Either he is a soldier and should serve as all other soldiers do or he is not and he should be kept for ceremonial activities like his grandmother. He cannot be a proper soldier and yet not be a proper soldier. It seems clear that he relishes the normality of service, but at the end of the day he is very different to his comrades just because of the bed he was born in. What would happen if you or I had a son or a daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan and I decided that it was a bit too dangerous for them, could I simply have them sent home? No. I would have to leave them there to get killed and maimed while serving in an ill-equipped force acting with no clear objectives. I do not wish any ill-will to Prince Harry or anyone in the Armed Forces, but what difference do you think it would make to British policy if he was killed or injured? It is sickening that the fate of one man could swing things in a way that the death of hundreds of 'ordinary' people cannot.

What this whole debate seems to have been around is the fate of a single man. What it should be about is what light that discussion throws on British involvement in both Afghanistan and Iraq and why the British government feels it has the right to censor coverage of issues that are impacting on so many families both in Britain and the countries we have invaded.