Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 14:05:49 +0100
Subject: Re: voting



I wrote

 >> People have taken direct action for the right to vote. For instance,
 >> in the UK during the 19th Century there was a huge "chartist" movement,
 >> with millions of activists, but divided between the "moral force" chartists
 >> and the "physical force" chartists. In other words, there was general
 >> agreement that some form of direct action was necessary, the disagreements
 >> were about whether it had to be kept non-violent or not. In south Wales
 >> there was an armed uprising by five thousand chartists in 1838. During
 >> the early 20th Century, suffragettes took direct action for "votes for 
women",
 >> the most dramatic example of this being in 1913, when Emily Davison
 >> completely spoiled the royal family's fun by throwing herself in front
 >> of the king's horse at a fashionable horseracing event. Her battered
 >> and now lifeless body prevented the king's horse finishing the race.
 >> Such "rights" as we have were not "given" to us by the state, but won
 >> through direct action. Personally, I have sometimes voted and sometimes
 >> not. It is important that there should be a right to vote,  but it is 
equally
 >> important that there should be a right  NOT  to vote. If I lived in a 
country
 >> where voting was  _compulsory_  , I think that would make me  _less_
 >> likely to vote.

and Jeremy responds

 > Well maybe, there are those in Australia who agree.
 > But then maybe this is just a case of being "led
 > around by ones Nos"

I already made it clear that I wasn't against voting as such. As I explained,
the right to vote had been won through direct action. But the right NOT
to vote is just as important. When the state makes participation in
its rituals compulsory, that makes me personally more likely to refuse.
For instance, when the British government passed a law saying that
_everybody_ had to register with their local authority for the poll tax,
I refused.  Tayside Regional Council knew my name of course, but
they didn't have my date of birth, and without that their registration
database wouldn't work properly. I was one of just fourteen people
who refused this information. Of course millions of us refused
to pay the poll tax, but just a few of us refused to register.
In the end, after soft words and threats had failed, what they
did was the authorities arbitrarily allocated us all a new date
of birth, 1st of January 1901, so that their database could work.

 > ornery old Scoots

Aye, one of just fourteen with the allocated birthday 1/1/1901.

Dave C