In the 2024 UK general election campaign, it’s taken for granted that 1) politicians of all political parties are unapproachable and 2) that’s a bad thing. Mark Rowe queries those assumptions.
A piece in a recent edition of the satirical magazine Private Eye went into some detail about how political leaders while out ‘on the stump’ are in fact anything but. This matters to the private security sector because (as Private Eye pointed out) the security around politicians, while accepted as necessary (particularly since the murders of the Labour and Conservative MPs, Jo Cox and Sir David Amess), is presented as an accomplice in keeping politicians and the people apart.
The assumptions, unspoken or not, are that politicians and democracy are lacking when they are not interacting with the public, even when they appear to be trying to (which might bring the added complaint of deceit); and that in the past things were better. Even Private Eye had to admit that when (its example) the Labour Prime Minister of the later 1970s Jim Callaghan addressed a gathering, the audience was (it presumed) the Labour faithful. We’re talking about two things – politicians at meetings; and canvassing one household or person on the street at a time, hardly the most efficient use of a VIP’s time. Besides, as with sports people or entertainers, when a major politician meets someone while out and about, the result is often a ‘selfie’ to boast that the member of the public has truly been with the politician or whoever’s famous.
Such half-minute encounters are hardly going to convince someone to vote (at all) or to vote for that politician’s party. The Local Government Association (LGA) in January, while acknowledging that canvassing encourages people to register to vote (and hopefully for you, the canvasser’s party) published ‘principles for safe canvassing’, including going about in pairs or groups; which can give the impression of ‘minders’ filtering out the unwanted – journalists asking sudden and therefore dangerous questions, the village or town idiot, ‘auditors’ (a much-discussed issue among the guarding world, people filming themselves going up to police, security guards or others, all in the name of provoking something worth watching, to drum up views and therefore income for the ‘auditor’) or time-wasters generally, besides those with evil intent.
A century ago, every village and part of town would have at least one general election meeting, where a candidate alone or in debate with rivals would speak and most likely be heckled. Candidates would do several in an evening, dashing by motor car from one to the next, so as to cover the constituency.
What few meetings are now run, are far less tolerant of heckling; odd, given the zoo-like noise in the House of Commons, should a candidate make it to Westminster. Britain’s fine tradition of election-time rowdiness, or political violence at any time, has a bearing on private security; the Public Order Act 1936 that banned the wearing of political uniform – to counter Sir Oswald Mosley’s fascist Blackshirts – was part of the police’s suspicion of anyone in uniform carrying out police-like tasks that might challenge their authority and monopoly, which only faded with the coming of the Security Industry Authority (SIA) in the mid-2000s and above all with public sector austerity of the 2010s.
Election meetings fell away drastically in the 1970s, due to television. People sat at home to consume their politics like so much else. They voted with their feet (or rather, chose not to use them); because, almost all actually preferred not to see politicians in person. The same as, people may say that they want post offices, buses into town, public libraries, and a local pub, and they moan when they stop or shut. They stop or shut because next to no-one uses them.
Photo by Mark Rowe: late summer afternoon, London from Lambeth Bridge.
