The Full Story of Voters Revolt

This long page explains the concept of Voters Revolt in one go.  How it started.  How it will work.  And how, with your support, it will succeed in restoring British democracy.
 
Other pages tell you about it in more easily digested mouthfuls or give you more detail.  Click on underlined words or the menu to switch pages.

Origins

For years a local non-party-political group in North East Lincolnshire has campaigned for freedom and democracy, which they believe are under threat in this country, in Europe, in every part of the world.  They oppose undemocratic bureaucracy wherever they see it spreading its tentacles around the people of the UK.
 
The group began to see, however, that these concerns are only part of a deeper problem. This page describes in their words the whole story of the Voters Revolt from its original conception.  This is how the group put it. . . .
 
We came to understand two things:-
 
(1) The real need is to restore proper representative democracy in this country.  The challenge facing us all is to stop the UK political establishment taking us further into a "post-democratic" corporatist society in which they can ignore the views of ordinary people.
(2) There is a rapidly growing groundswell of discontent in many quarters at the widening gulf between "us" and "them", the people and the political elite. This resentment is showing itself in so many ways - letters to the press, media comment, articles and books.  Most campaigns on specific issues are in fact facets of the same great battle against an increasingly arrogant and totalitarian State.

The country is ripe for a Voters Revolt.  We believe that the disgruntled leaderless ordinary men and women of Britain can still take back their lost authority from those who are set on creating an undemocratic political structure not unlike that envisaged by the British Fascists of the 1930s.

For the people to succeed in changing the course of history, all that is needed is for them to understand the real source of their discontent and to realise that they are not as powerless as they think.

We do not want a bloody revolution or violence in the streets. We are not seeking to form yet another protest organisation or political party. We think the country has reached a point similar to the outburst of popular feeling that led to the Great Reform Act of 1832.

We have identified a mechanism that will put pressure on the party machines to espouse the cause of restoring representative democracy, however reluctantly. This mechanism is explained later. 

Plan of Action

We want to enlist the help of opinion-formers to illuminate the breakdown of traditional democracy and to assure people that they are not powerless. The way will then be clear for Voters Revolt to cast its shadow over the elite well ahead of the next election. Its support must be at its peak by then.

We will encourage the multitudes of campaigns and protest groups throughout the country to support the principle of the Voters Revolt while continuing to pursue their own causes. If we win the big battle, it will go a long way to helping many of these groups to win their own particular crusades.

We intend to say to all the political party leaders and their MPs that we expect them to include in their manifestos a convincing programme to restore effective representative democracy. We would leave it to the parties to frame what each considers the key measures to restore the people's authority. We would point out to them that a large slice of the electorate considers this to be a significant issue which will greatly influence their votes. We will also explain our chosen weapon of civil disobedience, which we will use if the newly elected government does not make substantial progress on this issue in its first year.

Electoral Reform

If asked what we ourselves would consider a key step in restoring our democracy, one example we might give is reform of the electoral system. A case can be made that a large factor in the breakdown of the mutual trust between people and government is that the venerable first-past-the-post system has failed modern Britain. More

Nowadays the next Government is decided by the voters in less than a quarter of the constituencies, leaving 75% of the electorate effectively disenfranchised - a potent reason for voter apathy and as great a scandal as the "rotten boroughs" of the bad old days. We should consider a form of proportional representation that retains one member per constituency and avoids closed party lists.  This would weaken the stranglehold of the party machines.

This reform would perhaps be the biggest single step that could be taken to restore the health of our democracy. It would make most of our MPs realise that in future elections their fate would again be in the hands of the voters rather than their party hierarchy. This would re-enfranchise over half of the electorate. But it will take years to reverse the enormous damage done over past decades.  Many other steps will have to be worked out and proposed by the parties.

Whatever the specific means, we want to see the parties competing to find ways to satisfy the people's expectations of a restoration of democracy – and to recreate a proper balance of respect between the voters and those to whom we temporarily entrust the authority to govern us

The Threat

Let us describe the way we propose to put pressure on the establishment through the political parties. We must stress that we see this as a long-term threat that would probably never have to be put into effect. If the manifesto proposals are satisfactory, the need for action would not arise until the next government has been in office for twelve months. There is no question of an immediate call to arms. People will have plenty of time to make up their minds and decide they will not be at risk if they join in. It will be up to us, with your help, to convince them we need to take this action.

The Mass Withholding of Council Tax

Most taxes that citizens have to pay are collected in ways that give us no real option but to pay. We cannot refuse to pay income tax or VAT. The one exception is Council Tax. Payment of this tax involves an act of will by the payer. It has to be paid in cash or by cheque or by direct debit. It is therefore uniquely easy to withhold payment. It involves no cost or effort.

A few brave individuals have done this, usually as a protest about Council Tax itself. Such protests attract good publicity, but an individual is easily brushed aside by the authorities, who can bully the dissenter with prison or the bailiffs.

A mass withholding is an utterly different matter if sufficient numbers take part. As soon as any withholders are individually threatened, they should surrender, paying the tax or reinstating their direct debit. They can withhold their tax again later. There will always be many more withholding their tax than the establishment can hope to bully individually. Sheer numbers will allow individuals to bend before the storm, so that no one pays any penalty for daring to dissent. The authorities will not be able to make examples of a few, hoping to overawe the hostile crowd.

If millions of taxpayers take part, it would put some strain on the flow of public finance. But much more significantly, it will demonstrate to the political parties that they face a block of angry voters massive enough to affect the result of future general elections. This last factor is the non-violent weapon that we need.

Please be quite clear, however, that Voters Revolt is not a campaign against Council Tax.  Nor indeed is the withholding of Council Tax a vital feature of the Revolt.  It is a threat that we hope may never have to be put into effect.  Supporting Voters Revolt certainly does not mean you are pledging yourself to withhold your Council Tax immediately.

Credibility

The question of credibility is all-important. The political parties, the media and the voters will all have to be convinced that the threat truly has massive support. We will tackle this in a number of ways, including evidence of interest in our website and the extent of support in the media and from other campaigns.

The Voters Revolt has to involve millions of people.  It cannot depend on a formal organisation or lavish funding.  It must involve no cost and minimal effort from the public-spirited men and women who support the Revolt.  It must not be vulnerable to easy counter-action by the authorities.

The method will be open to anyone else to use at any time.  But we believe that its reliance on numbers and the need to avoid any divisive controversy make it unlikely that it could be used effectively except in the cause of a historic mass movement comparable with the growth of democracy in the 19th Century or the abolition of slavery.

We cannot prevent others attempting to use the method. We will not seek to dissuade them, beyond pointing out the awesome preconditions for its success.

Conclusion

Voters Revolt will not record details of supporters or solicit donations, though these are welcome.  There is no need for an organisation or a hierarchy to run the Revolt. All that is needed is for millions of citizens to make personal decisions that - if and when the time comes - they will join in the action, at no risk to themselves. For this we must rely on the spread of a new realisation that a resolute united people has enormous power.

This is a movement that will gather its own momentum. Our functions as the instigators of the Voters Revolt will simply be:-
(a) to enlist influential sympathisers to spread the good news through the internet and the media,
(b) to send the bad news to the party leaders that their world is about to change.

Please take the time to study the rationale of the Voters Revolt.  Make a personal decision to support it if and when the time comes.  Tell everyone you can that they should visit this website. 

Browse through the other pages to find out more about the background to Voters Revolt.  Click on words that are underlined to explore different aspects of the battle between "us" and "them".

To plan your survey of the battlefield, have a look at the sitemap. 

You will surely agree with the aims of Voters Revolt. Please don’t go without clicking the Support counter.

It is at the top right of every page.

Only one click will be counted.

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$Updated: 28/03/06$