Whoever you vote for, the bosses win…Let’s do things differently.

Another 5 years have passed by, and once again we are being treated to the spectacle of a General Election. And that’s all it is, really – a spectacle, a circus, a placebo, a safety vent. The ‘Political Class’ justifies its existence with claims of democracy and a mandate. This façade needs to be carefully maintained, and to do this they need to make a regular public display of ‘big-P Politics.’The promises are made, posters are put up, hands are shaken, babies are kissed (is that even allowed anymore?) – but the whole process has more to do with securing the interests of the wealthy and powerful than providing representation of our needs. 

And we know this! Over and over again the Political Class are exposed as corrupt and self-serving – expenses scandals, MPs voting themselves a pay rise while wages stagnate for everyone else, the revolving door between Parliament and the City, ‘favours’ for powerful corporate sponsors. None of the major parties standing in the 2015 election are any different. Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour, and now UKIP, all rely on money from corporate sponsors for their election campaigns, and all of them sign up to the same economic world-view, which prioritises profit over people, and makes excuses for the increasing inequality all around us. And we’re not stupid, we see all this happening, we sense the growing distance between ‘Politics’ and our daily lives, alongside the growing gap between rich and poor. A choice between two (or three, or four) shades of the same shit is no choice at all! General Election voter turn-outs have been falling for decades. We are not apathetic – we’re angry, we’re unrepresented, and it can’t go on. 

We can do so much better than the farce that passes for democracy at Westminster and Council meetings. We can take power back by organising ourselves and making decisions within our local communities and workplaces. Direct democracy means keeping our own mandate for self-government, instead of giving away power to the Political Class. Every time we organise for ourselves instead of relying on the government we undermine their legitimacy, and bit-by-bit, little-by-little, we can build effective alternatives to the systems of exploitation and unfairness that exist all around us.We can build and organise a better world ourselves – or at least, we can’t do any worse than the status quo! 

That’s what Leicester Solidarity Group is all about – building community level networks to improve things for ordinary people. As isolated individuals we’re vulnerable to the actions of unscrupulous landlords and exploitative bosses, but together we can resist these injustices.