Download full 4 page anti-manifesto ‘WHY BOTHER VOTING?’:

http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_why_bother_voting.pdf


Read front page text online below:

WHY BOTHER VOTING?

“When it comes to solving your problems, voting is about as effective as wishing on a star.”

The general election is here, and once again the parties are falling over themselves to promise us the earth. They talk blandly about

“fairness”, “opportunity”, “security” and “a better future”, doing their best to avoid saying anything meaningful.

But a whopping 83% of the UK general public do not trust politicians, according to a 2009 poll. Just 13% think that they tell the truth. MPs

came bottom of the list of least trusted occupations – even lower than journalists and lawyers! This is hardly surprising. If anything, it’s hard to

work out what the 13% who do still trust politicians are thinking – have they ever paid attention to an election campaign?

Everyone knows that parties make promises in their manifestos that they have no intention of keeping. For example, when first elected 13

years ago, Labour promised to end child poverty by 2010. Today 4m children in Britain are living in poverty – more than in any other

European country. It’s not hard to find other examples of politicians lying through their teeth, from local councillors trying to inflate their

own importance, to the massive pack of lies Tony Blair came out with to justify the invasion of Iraq. Events of 2009 further underlined how

untrustworthy our rulers are, as many of them were revealed to be fiddling their expenses – despite earning £64,766 a year – and using

various other sleazy tricks, such as employing members of their own families. Meanwhile many of the rest of have to scrape by on a

minimum wage of £5.80 an hour.

Despite superficial differences in their rhetoric, in reality life under any of the parties will feature the same things – cuts to public services,

attacks on pensions, over-crowded classrooms, job losses, poor housing, under-equipped hospitals, poor public transport, and more

war. Before the economic crisis, politicians were coming out with wild claims about the end of the cycle of boom and bust – an idea few of

them would defend today. Then when the banks went into meltdown, they threw billions of pounds at them. The official cost of the bank

bailout is a staggering £850 billion. That’s a bill we will be forced to pay through cuts in public spending, no matter which party wins the

election. Labour cuts will hurt as much as Tory cuts or Liberal Democrat cuts or Scottish or Welsh nationalist cuts.

Governments don’t serve us, whether they’re Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, BNP, SNP, Sinn Féin, Green or whatever. And the “alternative” leftwing

parties are no better. Respect promised to be a radical alternative to traditional parties, but all it produced was George

Galloway’s cat impressions on Celebrity Big Brother.

But now it’s election time and politicians want our vote, so they’re desperate to convince us that they care what we think. Like spam

emailers or nuisance callers trying to sell us car insurance we don’t need, they turn up on our doorsteps, push their leaflets through our

letterboxes, and appear every night on our TVs. Of course once they get into parliament they won’t give us another thought for the next five

years. But at the moment, they’re all over us like a rash.

Well, we’re all busy nowadays, and there are a lot of things that are more important, more useful, or just more fun than voting. It’s hard to

blame people who can’t see the point of trudging down to their local polling booth to put a cross next to the name of someone who doesn’t

really care what they think. The simple truth is that our “representatives” don’t represent us, and voting doesn’t give us any

say in the decisions that really matter. That’s why turnout in elections is dropping right across Europe – not because people are lazy or

apathetic, but because they know that voting doesn’t change anything.

In fact people are realising that voting isn’t part of the solution – it’s part of the problem. Voting means accepting this rotten set-up,

pretending that we have a meaningful say in how things are run. The fact is that politicians couldn’t really change anything even if they

wanted to, because of the way the political system is set up. The main aim of parliament is to keep things going the way they always

have, so that a rich few at the top have all the power and the vast majority of us have none. Voting just props the whole system up by

making it look democratic.

Not voting or spoiling your ballot paper is a symbol of wanting something better. The millions and millions of us who won’t vote will be

doing so because we don’t believe the lies the politicians come out with, because we recognise that they’re a part of our problems, not the

answer to them, and because we want a better world.

Instead of voting for some politician’s empty promises to solve our problems, we’ll be talking to the people around us – our friends,

families, neighbours and workmates – about what we can actually do to solve our problems ourselves. We believe that real change comes

through direct action, solidarity and campaigning. Won’t you join us?

http://www.afed.org.uk

Full text:

http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_why_bother_voting.pdf

Sticker designs:

http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_all_stickers_6s.pdf
http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_sticker_1_v2_6s.pdf
http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_sticker_3_v2_6s.pdf
http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_sticker_5_v2_6s.pdf

Poster designs:
http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_poster_1_A3_v2_6s.pdf
http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_poster_3_A3_v2_6s.pdf
http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_poster_5_A3_v2_6s.pdf

More short texts:

http://www.afed.org.uk/publications/short-texts.html

Links:

Solfed: Vote for change? http://libcom.org/library/vote-change (Article taken from the Spring 2010 issue of Catalyst).

Liverpool Solfed anti-election ‘The Other Campaign’ material:  http://theothercampaign2010.wordpress.com/

Class War anti-election ‘Wankers’ material: http://www.londonclasswar.org/newswire/index.php?itemid=415

South Wales anti-election ‘Vote Nobody’ material: http://www.myspace.com/votenobody

Meeting in Bristol:

Steve Mills and Ian Bone relate their experiences of contemporary interventions into the electoral process including The Alarm the Swansea based forerunner of The Bristolian, the legendary anarchist tabloid Class War and the Vote Nobody campaign of 2001. These two renowned local troublemakers will also provide their own searing critique of the upcoming General Election.

Date: Monday 12th April 2010
Venue: The Stag & Hounds, 74 Old Market Street, BS2 0EJ
Time: 7:30pm
Price: Donation
Speakers: Steve Mills, Ian Bone.