Back in April, whilst delivering political leaflets is the pouring rain, I asked myself (not for the first time) “why do I do this?”
After all I do not hold some Conservative party policies in high regard – state pensions increases linked to the rise of average earnings, free higher education, bankrupt private pension funds bailed out with money found from “money forgotten about in banks” and so on.
Also I do not like some of the things that the leader of the Conservative party has been doing recently – getting rid of Conservative candidates because he does not like the (very mild) things they have said, or because they happen to have had their photograph taken where there were firearms (which did not belong to the candidate) also in the photograph.
Indeed Mr Howard recently got rid of a serving Conservative MP (Howard Flight) for saying he that he thought there was greater scope for savings in the government budget than the Conservative party was committed to (Mr Flight said nothing about “secret plans” and, as his remarks were recorded and published, Mr Howard knows he said nothing about “secret plans”).
So why was I getting soaked in the rain putting out leaflets? Well I quite like the people who are standing locally for the Conservative party (I would not like to see them upset – and they would be upset if they lost). But there is another factor – a bad conscience.
In 1989 (just as this year) there were County Council elections in Northamptonshire, and a person I knew and liked was in line to become the leader of Northamptonshire County Council.
Everybody told me that the lady was in a safe seat and that I need not concern myself with the campaign. And, besides I was off at university (anyway I was going to become a academic and was bored of my years of helping out with practical politics – if I had known what the future really held in store for me I would, if I had found the courage, taken my own life, but that is another story). So I contented myself with coming home for the day of the election and left it at that.
The lady lost by three votes and the Conservatives lost Northamptonshire Country Council by one seat.
The Labour party made much of the Conservatives losing Northamptonshire and it was one of the factors by which some Conservative MPs justified their attack on Mrs Thatcher in 1990 – an attack the Conservative party (and Britain in general) has never recovered from. I will never know whether Mrs Thatcher would have fallen anyway (wicked people can always find an excuse for their wickedness), but I did leave a local friend to lose.
So yes ordinary people “can make a difference”, I proved that by making a difference for the worse.
You really should stop beating yourself up so, Paul.
EG
For once, I unreservedly agree with Euan Gray.
I should, perhaps, add that I also agree with Mr Marks about the vicious back-stabbing of Margaret Thatcher and its dire consequencies, the worst of which has been the ascendency of Za-NuLabour.
But there were far greater villains than someone who, for once, neglected to pop rain-sodden leaflets that no one reads, through blind, indifferent letterboxes.
Years ago I once did door to door canvassing for the Tories. I’m not sure how much difference it made but we did win.
Fast forward to 2005 and I catch sight of my Tory MP standing at the corner of my street. I was quite looking forward to having him knock at my door and giving him a piece of my mind. At the same time though if he had asked me to help with the campaign and listened to what I had to say I probably would have helped. It never happened. He stood at the end of my street chatting with some young studenty types who he had brought with him for half an hour and then wandered off.
I voted for UKIP in protest – despite wanting to stay in the EU!
England is done. Stick a fork in it.
Regret is really bad for mental health!
But I think you are right, you could have made a difference and that knowledge will probably continue to inspire you to do the drudgery for ages.
One person can make a difference. It’s certainly the reason I volunteer and help out various groups.
Thanks for the reminder, because it sure isn’t all sweetness and light being a volunteer for some things!
Dear Paul,
I hope you don’t take this the wrong way. I have noticed that you often include quite morose sentiments when writing your posts – things like “I would…[have] taken my own life”, “I’m really not the man I once was”, “made a mess of my life” etc.
It is quite disarmingly honest, however why do you do this? It seems as though you want people to know about the sadness in your life, because you often allude to it – so why not post about it more explicitly?
Regards,
Odd that this post should turn up (I wrote it months ago), perhaps my post on “A choice between two types of freedom” will turn up at some point (the strange world of computers is little understood by me).
On James Waterton’s point. Why do I refer to silly things about myself? Because I am a self obsessed middle aged man (and one who clearly has not the guts to take his own life).
It is best to ignore anything I say about myself (as I write and post everything “first draft” I tend to be unaware that I have written anything about myself at all), and just look at the “non Paul Marks things” in any post I write.
There was interesting news from Kettering recently (no that is not a contradiction in terms – middle sized East Midland towns can produce fairly interesting news).
After boasting of the great recycling scheme (in fact forced on the town by the Labour government) which had helped push up local tax by 14%, the Conservative party lost a seat – the marginal seat in which I live.
The seat was lost by a almost hundred votes which (considering that I only a few hundred people vote in such elections and that town council wards do not contain very many people anyway) was a landslide.
Of course the Labour and Liberal candidates would have increased the tax by at least as much as the Conservatives have (local democracy is bascially a farce with the national government mandating spending and “codes of conduct” preventing councilors from even speaking critically about local government officers – let alone giving them enforceable orders), but it was still a clear anti tax increase vote.
At national level most of the leading Conservatives are busy talking about how much the love “social justice” – I hope they do not know what this term means.
Paul,
Feh. That is one thing I hope you never find the “guts” to do! ^_^;
Mistakes are a part of being human so why beat yourself up over not being perfect? The greater courage and the greatest victory lies in living. I hope you do that in health and happiness for a long, long time yet! ^_~
Sincerely yours,
Snark
If mistakes are a mark of being human I am certainly human – witness all the typing mistakes in my last comment.
“that I only”, rather than “that only” and “the love” instead of “they love”, being two mistakes that catch my eye.
ROTFLMAO at this anguished confession. Given that county councils get most of their money from central government and have little room to do anything except execute its will, how much does it matter whether the Tweedledum Fraction or the Tweedledee Tendency “control” Northamptonshire?
There are probably fewer than 100,000 people in the whole country who are active in party politics at any level, compared with millions who attend places of worship every week.
God is great and politics is moribund. Even in Britain folk have given up caring about economics and elections. They are realising that conflicting images of God, clashes of morality and arguments about the purpose of earthly existence are what really ought to interest a grown-up.
May God bless you all and teach you to study the things that abide, instead of fretting about transient trivia.
To clear up any possible confusion, it was not politics that led me to a dark state of mind. It was my lack of productive work.
Finding a job has not been a problem. However, I was blocked from doing any work that meant something to me.
A man without purpose is prone to dark thoughts. The standard secular response “you can turn your life around by doing such and such” actually makes such thoughts worse – because it is, for many people in many situations, simply false. One then has to deal not only with the thoughts of despair, but the thoughts of anger (anger against the well meaning people who suggest doing various things that one has already tried years before).
However, I agree that a man with strong faith has a defence against such thoughts.
“I may be doing things I despise for X number of decades, but then I have all of eternity”.
A man who gets upset because his life is not what he wanted it to be, is indeed showing his weakness of faith.
As one of the few people on this site who would call himself a Christian I have no excuse.