‘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 Faxy​ourmp.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.

Posted at 3pm on 05/02/03 by Jack Mottram to the politics category.
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