Well done, Sister Suffragette!

'I’ve thought of a better way than sticking in a pin,’ Grange Girl said, passing me a cup of tea and taking the pin out of my hand. I tend towards the literal when it comes to metaphors, sayings and proverbs. For instance, I do actually grind axes, I tend to put pans to the back burner, and I make goldfish faces when I drink too much.

‘I don’t know anything about any of these candidates,’ I protested, ‘so I need the pin to help make a democratic choice.’

She shook her head, and I said, panicked, ‘I know you’re going to make me read their manifestos or something. If so, give me back the damn pin, and I’ll use it to stab myself.’

‘Do town councillors even have manifestos?’ Grange Girl turned my list round so she could read from it. ‘Look at their names.’ She pointed to the first candidate. ‘Mr Flake, for the Lib Dems. Well, say no more.’

I nodded. ‘I see what you’re doing. But actually the word ‘flake’ for me conjures up, not an unreliable person, but a delicious chocolate bar which, thanks to the power of advertising, is forever associated with a sex act.’

‘This is an art, not a science. If you like the sound of his name, Mr Flake might be your man.’ She moved down the list. ‘Ms Makepeace, for the Greens. Make Peace. That’s nice, isn’t it? And look, here’s another Green, Alexander Fleming. Discovered penicillin, right?’

‘Different chap, I’m guessing, on the grounds of age.’

‘You can tell so much from a name,’ Grange Girl said. 

‘You can’t, though. That’s a proverb you’ve just made up.’

‘Here’s a Labour candidate called Mr Blair.’

‘Well, to be fair to him, he couldn’t really stand for any other party, could he? It would seem like he was trying to avoid his fate: ergo, evasive.’

‘Exactly. And look, another useful-sounding Green: Mr Handy.’

‘Don’t tell me, the Tories are fielding Mr Tickle.’

‘No, they’ve got Ms Orwell, which makes me think of Big Brother and double-think. You know, I think this method does actually work.’

I looked under the table at Grange Girl’s feet. There’s no-one I admire more, but I wasn’t surprised to see that she was wearing clay slippers.

‘Grangey, how is choosing a candidate by their name any less arbitrary than sticking in a pin in?’

‘How is it any more arbitrary?’

‘Fair point. I guess this is the exact sort of random freedom the Suffragettes fought for. So,’ I asked her, ‘You going to use this method for the parliamentary election too?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. She held up my pin. ‘I’m really going to need to keep my eyes closed for that one.’

 Beth Miller, 5th May 2015

I never knew you, you never knew me

When I met American Girl in Neros for an almond croissant, I thought we would be gossiping about mutual friends, not discussing the merits of proportional representation. But it turned out she was still a bit excited about her first vote as a new citizen of this sceptred isle. Whenever I tried to move the topic onto X’s hideous new handbag or how Y had been banned from the John Harvey’s for eating beer mats, Am-Girl behaved as if these were trivial matters unworthy of consideration.

‘Yes, the Gardeners threw him out as well’, she said dismissively. ‘Anyway, can you explain this Alternative Vote system?’

I wasn’t much help on AV, nor on how the newsreader managed to announce ‘Theresa May gets equalities role’ with a straight face, nor what a coalition actually meant in practice (though to be fair to me, the ‘government’ also seemed unsure).

As I wiped the crumbs off my chin, preparing to leave her to an intensive study of last week’s newspapers, she said casually, ‘Weird about the BNP, isn’t it?’

‘What, weirder than usual?’

‘You wouldn’t think they’d get almost 600 votes in Lewes, would you?’

‘How many?’ My shriek caused all the baristas to spill those little espresso glasses they mess about with.

She showed me the stats: 594 people who looked at the numerous options and thought, ‘Well, that Nick Griffin, he’s got a point.’

A lost deposit, sure, and less than the Green Party (though not by much). But considerably more than I’d have guessed. And oodles more than the poor Independent candidate, who with just 80 votes couldn’t even have counted on all his Facebook friends.

I walked home, not in my usual happy perambulating mode, but anxiously, paranoid-ly. I scrutinised the faces of passers-by. Did he vote for them? Did she? Later, I looked up the history of Lewes voting (there was nothing on telly), and discovered this was the first time the BNP had stood here. Though back in 1979, when skinheads had a brief fashion moment, the National Front gained 764 Lewes votes.

When Aging Lad popped round, I was lost in melancholic thought. ‘You live somewhere, you think you’ve got the measure of it, then it turns out there are hundreds of people who don’t read the Guardian after all’, I whinged.

‘Ah’. He looked embarrassed. ‘You know how you forced me to vote?’

‘Yes indeedy. Universal suffrage, not to be taken for granted.’

‘Well, as you know, I’d never done it before. Got flustered. Couldn’t remember if it was a tick or a cross. Dropped the pencil. Got the BNP muddled up with the SDP.’

So that accounted for one of the votes. I had just another 593 to track down.

‘The SDP weren’t even standing, Lad. Because they disbanded twenty years ago.’

‘I’m very sorry’, he said. Then brightened. ‘But it didn’t make any difference, did it? My vote didn’t count, anyhow.’

There were many of us who could say the same.


Beth Miller, 19th May 2010

I’m on the pavement, thinking ‘bout the government

Not long now till we set off to put that vital X on the ballot paper. Thing One is beyond excited. Since last time we voted in Lewes, for the County Council, or whatever it was, she regards elections with an awe bestowed upon very few other activities. Going To Vote is in the same league as spending an hour in the Build-a-Bear Workshop in Churchill Square, or being allowed an ice cream and a cake at the Grange.

If only it were the spirit of democracy that so fired her imagination. I wish she were enlivened by a deep and historical understanding of the struggles Emmeline Pankhurst and the Monster Raving Loonies went through to bring suffrage to all. But no. I’m afraid the reason for her anticipation is because at the Council election, a kind man at the desk gave her a gobstopper. She’d never seen one before, due to my Lewes parent’s internal checklist, in which gobstoppers are clearly listed as a choking hazard, between ‘gherkins’ and ‘golf balls’.

She reverently took the sweetie and popped it in her mouth. Then I voted, which doesn’t take nearly long enough, by the way. All that fuss, all that campaigning, all that media hype and canvassing, all that listening to commentators sticking the word ‘gate’ on the end of every gaffe, all that watching three white men in different coloured ties arguing on telly, and then it’s just one quick squiggle on a piece of paper. I did a little smiley face next to it, to spin out my time in the booth, and to show that I understood the importance of the thing.

I remember the strength of my conviction, when I cast my first vote as a student in 1987, that my choice would get into power. They were bound to, simply because I was now participating. I was staggered to find this wasn’t the case, and it was a useful life lesson, I guess. One I’ll have to explain to Thing One in twelve years or so.

We left the church hall and I made the mistake of telling Thing One that when I was a kid, and before gobstoppers (and British Bulldog) were banned, they changed colour as you sucked them. She took the sweet out of her mouth to inspect it, and dropped it instantly into some mud. It did change colour, right enough, but only to brown. She was pretty good about it, sobbing for little more than forty minutes.

So that’s why she’s excited about going to the polls. She’s hoping to have another shot at a gobstopper. Something about her optimism reminds me of all us voters, shlepping off to make our mark. Even though we know that whatever we do, the government will still get in. And once they’re in, whoever they are, experience shows us that it won’t be long before the shiny coloured sweetie slips, and falls in the dirt.


Beth Miller, 5th May 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith