I was finally able today to take a call from "Labour for a New Democracy", who are lobbying for UNISON conference delegates to re-prioritise motion 102 at National Delegate Conference, which only stands any chance of getting debated if it is reprioritised for the Friday afternoon.
I am not at all unsympathetic to the arguments for electoral reform for the Westminster Parliament. It is, noteworthy that every new legislature created in the past generation in the United Kingdom has not been created with the "first past the post" voting system.
However, this weekend more than any other, I can't help feeling that there is more to new democracy in the UK than changing the voting system for the House of Commons.
Because New Labour started, but did not finish, reforming the House of Lords we are now saddled with a larger second chamber which consists very largely of appointees, plus a small number of people who continue to attend due to an accident of birth.
The only element of democracy in the Upper House are the by-elections which take place when one of the hereditary peers dies (and in which only certain hereditary peers can vote), an arrangement that would seem far-fetched if it were the plot of an Ealing comedy (which in fact, it almost is).
Today, in the third decade of the 21st-century, there are more unelected legislators in the House of Lords then there are Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. This is hardly a sign of a healthy, vibrant modern democracy.
The House of Lords is not the only archaic, undemocratic feature of the British constitution which needs to be swept away if Labour is really going to be about a "New Democracy”.
The Corporation of the City of London stands out as a local authority in which businesses as well as citizens still have a vote, and also as the only local authority which has, for centuries, had an official seated in the House of Commons (“the Remembrancer”) to protect its interests from elected Members of Parliament.
The Corporation - which it was Labour Party policy to abolish until Tony Blair was elected Leader - maintains that there is nothing untoward about the presence of the Remembrancer in the House of Commons, but no other local authority has such an official (and other local authorities, for all their flaws, are elected democratically by citizens).
Except of course, in another of the offensive and archaic features of our constitution none of us are citizens. We are subjects of the Crown and the Crown in Parliament is sovereign. No Bill before Parliament can become an Act without Royal Assent, and, whilst I was taught when I did “O-level” Politics that this was a mere formality, we now know that the Royal family can - and do -intervene much earlier in the legislative process to protect their particular, and very considerable, interests.
The real political power of our Royal Family is not, however, only used in a venal way to protect their own financial interests. Within living memory, in 1975, the Governor General of Australia, using the powers of the sovereign, dismissed an elected Labor government and appointed the Opposition Leader as Prime Minister without an election. The real power of the sovereign and of the Royal Family is clearly not something that we have left behind in the Middle Ages.
A hereditary head of state is an anomaly in 2022 and an absurd hangover from an age of Empire which is a bloody stain upon the history of this country. The Royal Family themselves offer nothing to the people of the United Kingdom (or of any other territory of which the Queen is Head of State) except that they stand at the apex of a system designed to hold back effective democracy that would place power in the hands of the people.
That's why I am very pleased that my local Labour Party has voted to support Labour for a Republic, the campaign group that seeks to commit our party to support the abolition of the monarchy. This won't find favour with the weak hearted souls who crave popularity in the moment, but it is the only honest position for a socialist who understands how power is wielded by the ruling class and who genuinely wants to change our society.
I won't live to see the end of the British monarchy, but I hope that my children shall. We will not be able to transform our society until we can drag it, kicking and screaming if needs be, at least into the 20th century if not the 21st.
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