Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a ‘If you will not give us greater democracy, we will simply take it from you’
Anticipating the 50,000th fax sent via Fax Your MP, Stefan Magdalinski posts The Facts About Faxyourmp.com.
It is both heartening and depressing reading. Heartening, because I had, rather lazily, assumed that the service was being used by the sort of people who are already politically engaged, but Magdalinski reports that many of the site’s users have never before contacted their MP. This means the site has made a genuine contribution to open government.
It’s depressing news too, though, because there should be no need for Magdalinski and his colleagues to be providing this service in the first place. MPs are meant to be our representatives, and we vote for them on the basis that they will serve our interests in Parliament. If it is nigh on impossible for us to contact our MPs so as to inform them of our interests, they come close to breaking the tacit agreement on which Parliamentary democracy rests. And what are they doing to rectify this in Westminster? Worse than nothing; they are making it harder than ever to contact your MP.
It hardly needs pointing out that right now, with no mandate whatsoever from the British people, we are going to war, for reasons no one seems able to explain. Sure, you can march in London on the 15th of this month, or sign up to The Mirror’s anti-war campaign, or use Fax Your MP to register your protest. But this is too little too late: innocent Iraquis are going to die, and the killing will be done in our name. Democratic government should be a process of constant consultation and debate between the electorate and the elected and, since it’s hardly practicable for the people to meet and vote on every issue on the table, open and direct lines of communication to our elected representatives are essential. Fax Your MP is only a tiny step towards this, but an important one, so make use of the service.
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